Today is the first day of the twenty-first century and a good time to take stock.   The ascent of a country from poverty to prosperity, from tradition to modernity is a great and fascinating enterprise. India has recently emerged as a vibrant, free market democracy after the economic reforms and it has begun to flex its muscles in the global information economy. The old centralised, bureaucratic state, which killed our industrial revolution over the past fifty years, has begun a subtle but definite decline.