The Breakaway Decade

A decade is but a human construct. It was conceived primarily to measure a period of time rather than define a span of human existence. As the English author Rose Macaulay observed, "Decades have a delusive edge to them. They are not, of course, really periods at all, except as any other ten years may be. But we, looking at them, are caught by the different name each bears, and give them different attributes, and tie labels on them, as if they were flowers in a border."

Yet, if a week is a long time in politics (and, as we saw in Maharashtra recently, a night can be even longer), the passage of 10 years in the life of an individual, state or nation is often witness to dramatic changes. The heroes of one decade can end up as villains of the next -- and vice versa -- as