There's more than mere mathematical symmetry in having 56 year olds write about how their lives have changed in independent India's 56th year of existence. Anyone born in 1947 would have spent their first 44 years in a socialist economy and the next 12, arguably, the best years of their lives, in a country moving towards becoming a free market economy. There's no question that the life of the typical 56 year old has changed in ways he or she couldn't have visualised in the late 1980s. There's the banker who was so taken in by the power of computing that she opted for voluntary retirement and is training to be a computer science instructor. There's the entrepreneur who saw his market vanish post-liberalisation. There's the farmer who believes things could be better. And there's the soap-loving housewife who likes the profusion of channels but not how people seem to have become self-centred. Remember, all this has happened in the past 12 years.

Swathanthra Krishnan 56
Retiree and instructor-in-training, Ahmedabad

Krishnan owes her name to the fact that she was born on august 15, 1947. And she owes her current vocation-she is on her way to becoming a trained software programmer and instructor-to another Independence Day, this one in 1991 when India started its tentative march towards becoming a free market economy. For 29 years of her life, between 1972 and 2001, Krishnan worked in a bank; she opted for voluntary retirement in 2001, when she was the assistant manager of the Breach Candy, Mumbai branch of Indian Overseas Bank. "I had not thought of a life after the bank before 1990, but then, things changed," says Krishnan. Computerisation blew her mind and she decided that "I had to be part of the world of computers". A decade later ("You cannot decide to retire overnight"), Krishnan took advantage of a Voluntary Retirement Scheme launched by her bank and quit. Then came a basic course in computing from C-DAC, a programming one from NIIT, and a diploma in computer science from the Indira Gandhi National Open University. Now based in Ahmedabad her aim is to "teach post-graduate students eventually".

Mari Gowda 56
Farmer, Mandya, Karnataka

Farmers don't have weekends. On this Sunday in early August, Gowda is busy de-weeding his five acres of land. Still, he isn't complaining. The past 12 years have brought him his share of good: a reinforced concrete roof over his head, electricity, a Bajaj scooter (bought second hand), and a black and white television set. A co-operative buys the milk produced by the three cows Gowda owns; he operates an account at the local credit co-operative; and a land records computerisation drive has made it possible for him to obtain records at a near-by kiosk. "All this has made life easier," admits Gowda. Rising prices and the quality of power supply offset these to some extent says the farmer who believes events of the past decade have made people "more money-minded". "Today, no one serves milk because the co-operative buys it at Rs 9 a litre and they'd rather sell it." Gowda is happy his grandchildren go to school where they learn English and how to use the computer. "I hope they make a life in the city."

Swatantra Radhakrishnan 56
Government Employee, New Delhi

Radhakrishnan remembers growing up in Delhi in the 1950s and 1960s. She was the third child in a brood of seven, and like most families of the time, hers believed in austerity. "We weren't rich, but then, we didn't want much either," says Radhakrishnan. Hers was the radio generation that grew up listening to Ramanathan Krishnan's semi-final loss to Rod Laver in Wimbledon '61 and M.S. Subbulakshmi's performance at the un General Assembly in 1966. The generation has taken to the new India like a fish to water. "I watch every Tamil soap on television," says Radhakrishnan, an officer at New Delhi Press Information Bureau. And everything-a car, telephone, refrigerator-has "become a necessity". The 1971 batch Central Information Services officer likes the way things have turned out. It's less expensive to call her sister in the US now. And while her daughters didn't take up medicine or accounting like she wanted them to, they are doing well in their chosen profession, journalism. After retirement, Radhakrishnan plans to venture out on her own, maybe "corporate media relations", or "running a nursery school".

Anita Chatterjee 56
Homemaker, Kolkata

Over the past decade, Chatterjee has succumbed to the creature comforts promised by a clutch of household- and kitchen-appliances. "They really do away with the drudgery of housework and I am no longer at the mercy of the maid," she says, listing soaps-on-satellite-channels, ATMs, falling telephone tariffs, and, of course, appliances as the best part of the past 12 years. Expenses "that have increased 100 per cent over 10 years", and the fact that theirs is no longer the close-knit community it used to be takes away some of that. The Chatterjees spend most of their time in their modest two-storey house in South Kolkata, surrounded by sepia-tinted photographs of the past.

R. Jayaraman Iyer 56
Senior Executive, Mumbai

At his age, and in his position, executive director, IDBI, Iyer should be in cruise-mode. Instead, says the man, he has to "keep reinventing" himself to do well in a knowledge-intensive job, something that's as true for organisations as it is for individuals. "Competition has ensured that just innovation won't get you ahead," says Iyer. "Today, you need to think out of the box." He's also working faster (and out of the office as well, courtesy a portable computer and a mobile phone). When he graduated from engineering school, Iyer thought he had arrived, an idea he confesses he doesn't subscribe to anymore. "Today, a person with a basic qualification like an engineering degree finds himself under-qualified for a certain job and over-qualified for another," says Iyer. The banker still retains some old-world notions, especially when it comes to the credit culture. And the fact that one is able to buy more material things now, he argues, is offset by the fact that most people have little time for the important (but non-material) things in life.

M. Sambasivam 56
Shop Floor worker, Chennai

Have the past 12 years changed Sambasivam's life? Well, to the extent that they have changed the fortunes of the company he works for, Sundram Fasteners. A preferred global vendor to General Motors (its exports story began in the early 1990s), the company is also renowned for its progressive labour policies, something Sambasivam, a packer at its Padi, Chennai factory can vouch for. Today, one of his daughters works for Airtel and is working towards an MBA; the other is halfway through engineering school. The company offered both merit-based scholarships. Out of his savings, Sambasivam has also managed to buy a small piece of land on which he plans to build a house after he retires. Not bad going for a man with no college education who earns just over Rs 10,000 a month.

Kuriakose Mamkoottam 56
Professor, New Delhi

June 1991, and Mamkoottam is at his parent's house in Kottayam, Kerala, when he reads a newspaper report about the then Finance Minister Manmohan Singh's new economic policy. Today, 12 years later, the man is Director, Faculty of Management Studies, having in the same period, seen his salary more than double, acquired a flashy small car, and benefited from the University's munificence regarding foreign jaunts. Thanks to the past decade, it is now alright for the young to consider career options that go beyond the usual suspects such as medicine, accounting, and engineering. Mamkoottam's 20-year old son, for instance, has taken to art and design, a career in which, the professor admits "would have been considered ridiculous even in the late 1980s". Poor quality and corruption are issues that worry Mamkootam but he is hopeful. "We shall overcome," he says.

Rajam Rajaram 56
Social Worker, Chennai

India's reforms programme hasn't just meant economic benefits for a cross-section of the populace. The past 12 years have made individuals and corporates more socially aware. Increasingly, representatives from both constituencies are involved in activities that seek to make the world a better place for everyone. In 1990, Rajam Rajaram, then a 43-year old widow at a loose end and possessed of an abiding interest in social work joined Exnora International, an organisation founded by a former banker, M.B. Nirmal, who quit his job to, literally, clean up the city. While most people have spent the past 12 years furthering their careers and enriching their coffers, Rajaram has plodded on, spreading the message of cleanliness, spearheading civic projects, some funded by corporates, or just planting trees. "There is so much to be done," she says.

V.B. Shanker 56
Entrepreneur, Hyderabad

Valadi Balasubramaniam Shanker may smile now, but there was a time in the late 1990s when his future looked grim. In 1970, Shanker founded Athreya Engineering, a carbide-tipped tools manufacturer. His business model was sound: carbide tools are required for a clutch of machining operations; public sector companies presented a huge market opportunity; and Hyderabad, where the likes of bhel, HMT, Praga, BDL, and Allwyn had factories was the place to be. Liberalisation changed all that: several public sector companies faced the brunt of the reforms process, some of them shut down lines, even entire plants, and Athreya's revenues dipped to a mere Rs 15 lakh in 2000, from around Rs 45 lakh in 1998. Today, courtesy its focus on partnerships and customers, the company's revenues are a healthy Rs 30 lakh and Shanker, as President of the Federation of Andhra Pradesh Small Industries Association is helping small enterprises become competitive enough to benefit from the global sourcing agendas of multinationals in the automotive, defense, and aerospace sectors (an agenda about which he is passionate), a task he believes he is cut out for. The die-hard entrepreneur is also working out the details of a component manufacturing joint venture targeted at some of these sectors. The investment? A respectable Rs 20 crore. "I have learnt that it is important for us to produce for the mass market and pooling our resources is one way forward," says Shanker. Important lesson that, and he learnt it post 1991.

B.N. Rattan 56
Banker, Mumbai

Next month, when Shakshi Sharma joins a bank in Mumbai, she would be following a hoary family tradition. Her father B. N. Rattan is a banker and so was his father. Except there's one big difference this time around. A management graduate, Shakshi has given public sector banking, where her father has made a career over the last 35 years, a wide berth. Is the dad feeling hurt? Maybe just a little, but in many ways it's also a symbolic coming-to-a-head of changes that Rattan himself has lived through the last 10 years. "A private sector bank obviously provides a better service structure and more amenities than a public sector bank," says Rattan, who joined Allahabad Bank as a clerk rose to be its Deputy General Manager. But that's not how the native of Ludhiana always saw things. At one point in his career, Rattan- his original ambition was to be a lecturer until his father nixed it-was a union activist, shouting slogans and protesting against change. Then, private sector competition came and banking changed forever. "Earlier people used to literally worship bank managers, but now we worship the customer," admits Rattan. No doubt that's the first thing his daughter will be told when she joins the private bank next month.

-compiled by Shailesh Dobhal, Moinak Mitra, Abir Pal, Shilpa Nayak, E. Kumar Sharma, Nitya Varadarajan, Venkatesha Babu and Dipayan Baishya