There is a time in the affairs of men,
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
William Shakespeare in Julius Caesar

Statisticians call it an inflection point; others call it a cusp. The precise nomenclature is irrelevant. What's important is that future economists will probably identify 2005 as the year when India's economic jigsaw puzzle finally started taking coherent shape. Pundits of every hue are near unanimous that the country is-and will remain-on a high growth trajectory over the foreseeable future. And it is this upturn in the growth curve that promises to pull India's 260 million below-the-poverty-line citizens out of their misery. The task ahead is daunting: we will have to clock a 10 per cent GDP (gross domestic product) growth rate every year for a decade and more to achieve the target. But the country has made a good beginning. The numbers say it all: GDP has grown 8.1 per cent in the first half of the current fiscal. The Reserve Bank of India projects the full year growth rate at 7-7.5 per cent. Finance Minister P. Chidambaram is more bullish-he expects the figure to cross the 8 per cent mark. Water, energy, education, infrastructure and employment generation, among others, are feeding this growth even while remaining critically dependent on it. But some chapters in the growth story are causing concern. It is now almost certain that agriculture will not grow at the projected rate of 4 per cent. This is just one of the many imponderables that makes the journey so fraught with tension.

We've identified five themes for the overall growth story-and 25 challenges within them-that need to be addressed, pronto. We must find answers to the questions involved. They cover a broad spectrum of issues-from the economic to the aspirational-and include challenges relating to delivery, to our quality of life and, indeed, to the very basic issues of development themselves.

As Arun Maira, Chairman of Boston Consulting Group, says in his article on What Will It Take To Create A Market Out Of India's Poor?, creation of incomes is essential for the creation of markets. Taking this analogy further, the creation of markets is sine qua non for a vibrant economy. But our policy planners often seem to lose sight of this tautology. But we were pleasantly surprised to learn in the course of our research into the subject that lots of companies in India are targeting the bottom of the country's pyramid, and many of them, in fact, are being generously rewarded for their labours. An untapped market of 600 million consumers-albeit small and even marginal ones-is too big to be sneezed at.

Similarly, Anand Mahindra, Vice Chairman and Managing Director of Mahindra & Mahindra, makes out a compelling case for more FDI: since India's savings rate will not support the rate of investment needed to grow at 8 per cent, the deficit has to be made good with foreign investment.

All our contributors bring their own unique understanding of the Indian economy into play. Kumar Mangalam Birla, Chairman of the Aditya Birla Group, breaks down India's journey to economic superpower status into five discrete components and proceeds to take the issue forward from there.

But away from the boardrooms and the thrust and parry of the corporate world, there's another universe whose needs are just as important. Our children need education to prepare them for the road ahead, our ailing need easier and better access to healthcare, our farmers, who still make up two-thirds of our population, need to find a voice, and our citizens deserve a far better quality of life than is currently available.

From eradicating poverty, fighting corruption, overcoming aids, and bridging the digital divide to winning a Nobel Prize and an individual Olympic gold medal... we've addressed them all. Our stellar team of 25 guest contributors has laid out the roadmap. We've already attained critical mass to move into the next orbit. We must break the shackles that are still holding us back.