India, Aug. 10 -- Our grandparents were killed by the water they drank; we are being killed by the air we breathe. The problem changes each generation - what solves it never does. And the first quality any generation needs is gratitude, because none of us reached the starting line unaided. There is a comforting myth that some earlier Indian generation had it easy. Examine any of them and it collapses.

The generation of 1942 faced a problem no textbook could solve: the country was not its own. The generation that inherited freedom was handed an almost empty house - life expectancy of about 32 years, roughly 145 of every 1,000 babies dead before their first birthday, one Indian in eight literate. Imagine graduating into that country at twe...