THE INDIA I STILL BELIEVE IN

An Epic Ode to a Civilisation, a Republic and the Indian Dream of 2047

Some countries remember their history.

And some countries are still living inside it.

India is both.

She is ancient and unfinished; wounded and ambitious; chaotic and astonishing; poor in some places, technologically brilliant in others; deeply spiritual and fiercely material; divided by language, united by memory; suspicious of change, yet constantly changing.

That contradiction is not India’s weakness alone.

It is the raw material from which her next century can be built.

Shashi Tharoor describes India as a country that can only really be understood in the plural—a civilisation in which many faiths, ideologies, languages and ways of life coexist and contest one another. That complexity is not an accident of modern politics. It is one of the deepest facts of India.

So when I say “The India I Still Believe In,” I am not speaking about the India that merely existed.

I am speaking about the India that could exist.

The India We Inherited

I remember an India beneath an empire’s heavy crown.

I remember the economic scars, the broken confidence, the weakened institutions, the world in which the colonised were too often taught to see themselves through someone else’s eyes.

Colonial rule was not simply a change of rulers. It altered the economic and institutional path of the country. Tharoor’s account describes an India left in 1947 with extremely low literacy, very low life expectancy, little domestic industry and enormous poverty; he also argues that colonial extraction obstructed the organic development of Indian industrial, scientific and civic institutions.

That history matters.

But here is the first uncomfortable question:

How long should a civilisation remain psychologically imprisoned by the man who once imprisoned it physically?

A wound deserves remembrance.

A wound does not deserve worship.

India must remember colonialism without allowing colonialism to become an eternal explanation for everything that goes wrong.

Because history can explain our starting line.

It cannot decide our finish line.

Freedom Was Never a One-Man Story

Indian independence was not delivered to the doorstep like a parcel.

It was fought toward.

It was argued toward.

It was marched toward.

It was suffered toward.

Gandhi gave mass politics a moral and non-violent force.

Bose and the Indian National Army represented another, militant current of resistance.

The 1946 Royal Indian Navy uprising revealed discontent within the machinery of the colonial armed forces.

The Quit India movement shook imperial authority.

And the Second World War left Britain economically and strategically weakened, making the continuation of empire increasingly difficult.

The chronology in An Era of Darkness records these different pressures from Gandhi’s satyagraha and the Salt March to Quit India, the INA and the 1946 Royal Indian Navy Mutiny before independence and Partition in 1947.

So let us be precise.

Gandhi did not win freedom alone.

Bose did not win freedom alone.

The sailors did not win freedom alone.

No single man did.

Freedom emerged from a convergence of resistance, sacrifice, political mobilisation, military pressure, changing public opinion and Britain’s post-war exhaustion.

That is not a smaller story.

It is a greater one.

Because it means millions participated in making the nation.

And now comes the responsibility:

If they could sacrifice to give us a country, what will we sacrifice to make that country worthy of them?

The Question History Throws at Us

Look across the twentieth century.

France was devastated.

Italy was devastated.

Germany was devastated.

Russia endured enormous destruction.

China faced war, poverty and upheaval.

Japan was struck by atomic bombs.

Europe lay shattered after the Second World War.

Yet countries that had suffered destruction eventually rebuilt institutions, industries, infrastructure, scientific capacity and national strength.

Some succeeded faster.

Some failed and recovered.

Some took different paths.

But they moved.

So I ask:

If societies that stood amid ruins could rebuild their future,

why must India treat poverty as destiny?

Why?

Because we are too poor?

India was poorer at independence.

Because we lack talent?

We have produced extraordinary scientists, doctors, engineers, entrepreneurs, artists and thinkers.

Because our population is too large?

It is also a gigantic human resource.

Because our diversity is too difficult?

Our diversity is precisely what has allowed India to remain a plural democracy despite enormous internal differences.

Then what is stopping us?

Perhaps the most frightening answer is:

We sometimes expect greatness from India while demanding very little greatness from ourselves.

We want world-class cities but throw garbage in the street.

We want honest governments but negotiate our own small bribe.

We want innovation but punish failure.

We celebrate an Indian becoming CEO abroad but rarely ask why so many world-class ecosystems were built elsewhere.

We demand powerful institutions while teaching children to bypass them.

Sometimes our national ambition is enormous.

Our personal discipline is microscopic.

That contradiction must end.

India Today: The Country of Two Realities

Look at India today.

A rocket rises.

A child studies under inadequate conditions.

A satellite enters orbit.

A village still asks for better healthcare.

India manufactures sophisticated medicines.

A family cannot always afford treatment.

India has nuclear capability.

Some citizens still struggle with basic infrastructure.

India has brilliant digital systems.

And yet we still see corruption, poor civic behaviour, unequal opportunity and weak public systems.

This is not an argument for despair.

It is an argument for honesty.

India: The Future Is Now itself presents this duality—India possessing advanced capabilities while simultaneously facing serious inequalities in health, education, infrastructure and human development.

That contradiction should not make us ashamed.

It should make us restless.

Because development is not proved by the height of the tallest building.

It is proved by the quality of ordinary life.

A nation is developed when an ordinary child gets a fair chance.

When a patient receives treatment without becoming bankrupt.

When a worker is treated with dignity.

When a woman can travel safely.

When a citizen does not need a bribe to obtain what the state already owes him.

When merit can defeat privilege.

When law means the same thing for the rich and the poor.

One striking formulation in India: The Future Is Now is that development becomes social development when paying a bribe is regarded as abnormal rather than normal.

That is a profound test.

GDP is a number.

Character is a civilisation.

So What Should “Viksit Bharat 2047” Actually Mean?

This is where slogans must surrender to questions.

What does “developed India” actually mean?

Is it merely a large GDP?

More skyscrapers?

More luxury cars?

More malls?

More airports?

More billionaires?

Certainly these can be signs of economic progress.

But they are not sufficient.

A truly developed India should mean:

·       a capable citizen

·       a healthy citizen

·       a protected citizen

·       a skilled citizen

·       a free citizen

·       a responsible citizen

That requires a blueprint.

Education: Create Thinkers, Not Examinees

India does not merely need more degrees.

It needs better minds.

A school should teach a child to ask:

·       Why?

·       How?

·       What if?

·       Can we build it better?

Education must move beyond memorisation toward scientific thinking, problem-solving, communication, creativity, vocational ability and character.

Tharoor’s education discussion similarly argues for stronger foundational education and a greater emphasis on vocational and professional pathways rather than concentrating opportunity in a narrow educational elite.

The future Indian university should not be a factory producing certificates.

It should be a place producing:

scientists, engineers, doctors, teachers, philosophers, entrepreneurs, designers, researchers and citizens.

Health: A Nation Cannot Be Strong if Its People Are Sick

A superpower with unhealthy citizens is a contradiction.

India needs:

·       accessible primary healthcare

·       strong public hospitals

·       preventive medicine

·       nutrition

·       mental-health support

·       medical research

·       and world-class biotechnology

A poor person should not have to choose between treatment and survival.

Health is not charity.

Health is national infrastructure.

Law and Order: Freedom Needs Rule of Law

Freedom does not mean that everyone can do whatever he wants.

Freedom survives because law protects it.

India needs:

·       swift justice

·       professional policing

·       predictable enforcement

·       independent institutions

·       and equal application of law

The real test of democracy is not what happens to the powerful.

It is what happens to the ordinary citizen.

Can the ordinary person trust the system?

That question decides whether a republic is strong.

The Infrastructure of Dignity

A road is not merely a road.

It connects a farmer to a market.

A railway is not merely steel.

It connects opportunity.

A port is not merely concrete.

It connects an economy to the world.

Electricity is not simply power.

It gives a child the chance to study after sunset.

Water is not merely a utility.

It is health, dignity and life.

So the India I believe in must build:

railways, highways, ports, airports, energy systems, water networks, digital infrastructure and planned cities—

but also the institutions that make them work.

And India has already shown that transformation is possible.

The telecom story is one example: a sector that once involved scarcity and informal payments later became extraordinarily widespread, demonstrating how regulation, private participation, competition and infrastructure investment can change daily life at scale.

This is the lesson:

Reform is not theory when people can feel it in their lives.

The Soldier Must Carry Science

India cannot become strategically independent by courage alone.

Courage needs capability.

The soldier of the future needs:

·       satellites

·       secure communications

·       drones

·       artificial intelligence

·       cyber capabilities

·       advanced weapons

·       precision systems

·       semiconductors

·       materials science

·       space technology

The Indian soldier should not merely carry an imported weapon.

He should carry the result of an ecosystem built by:

the scientist, engineer, manufacturer, entrepreneur and soldier working together.

Strategic autonomy is not isolation.

It is the ability to make choices because you possess capability.

That is close to the broader theme of strategic agency and a more self-confident external posture reflected in Jaishankar’s Why Bharat Matters, whose chapters explicitly address the world order, China, security and India’s place in global affairs.

The Factory Must Become a Laboratory

India cannot build a superpower economy by consuming products made elsewhere.

We need factories.

But we need more than factories.

We need research connected to industry.

We need:

·       semiconductors

·       electronics

·       robotics

·       AI

·       biotechnology

·       pharmaceuticals

·       space systems

·       clean energy

·       advanced materials

·       defence technology

And here lies a painful question:

If an Indian can become a leading scientist, engineer or corporate executive abroad, why can India not create more of the ecosystems in which such talent can flourish at home?

That question should produce neither anger nor self-pity.

It should produce policy.

Talent must meet opportunity.

Opportunity must meet capital.

Capital must meet research.

Research must meet industry.

Industry must meet global markets.

That chain is the backbone of a technologically sovereign India.

Learn From the World Without Becoming Someone Else

India does not need to become China.

India does not need to become America.

India does not need to become Japan.

India needs to become a better India.

But every intelligent civilisation learns.

From China, we can study the power of long-term strategic planning and national technological capacity.

From Japan, discipline, precision, civic responsibility and reconstruction after catastrophe.

From America, entrepreneurship, individual freedom, meritocracy and the courage to experiment.

From Bhutan, restraint a reminder that consumption is not the same as happiness.

From efficient Asian economies, administrative discipline.

From other neighbours, the humility to admit that nobody is too small to teach us something.

And from ourselves, perhaps the greatest lesson of all:

India already contains many successful experiments.

The question is whether we can scale them.

The right philosophy is therefore:

·       Borrow the principle.

·       Keep the identity.

·       Adapt the method.

·       Build the Indian version.

Israel and the Mathematics of Resilience

There is another historical lesson worth considering carefully.

The Jewish people endured persecution culminating in the Holocaust, after which the State of Israel was established in 1948 amid war and insecurity. Over the decades, Israel developed significant capabilities in agriculture, science, medicine, defence and technology.

This is not a comparison of suffering.

History should never become a competition over whose tragedy was greater.

The lesson is different:

A difficult beginning does not automatically condemn a people to a small future.

Survival can become institution-building.

Scarcity can create innovation.

Danger can produce preparedness.

Memory can become responsibility.

India too must learn to convert historical memory into capability.

Not permanent grievance.

Capability.

The Indian Dream

Here I want to borrow an idea from America without borrowing America’s entire identity.

America popularised the idea of the American Dream the belief that opportunity, effort and freedom can allow an individual to build a better life.

India needs an Indian Dream.

But ours must be different.

The Indian Dream should mean:

freedom with responsibility,

prosperity with dignity,

ambition with restraint,

innovation with conscience,

power with self-control,

wealth with social purpose.

A child should be able to say:

“I will become a scientist.”

And society should answer:

“Try.”

Another should say:

“I will build a company.”

The system should answer:

“Build.”

Another should say:

“I will become a farmer using technology.”

The market should answer:

“Grow.”

Another should say:

“I want to serve in the armed forces.”

The nation should answer:

“We will equip you.”

That is the Indian Dream.

The Greatest Battle Is Inside the Indian Mind

This may be the most important part of the entire argument.

A country can build roads.

A country can buy weapons.

A country can launch satellites.

A country can build AI.

But if its citizens remain:

·       dishonest

·       irresponsible

·       intolerant

·       lazy

·       easily manipulated

·       obsessed with status

·       afraid of failure

·       and dependent on shortcuts

then no amount of infrastructure will create a truly great nation.

The external revolution must be matched by an internal revolution.

This is where Vivekananda becomes relevant.

His writings repeatedly connect national regeneration with strength, self-belief, perseverance, character and work. His message was not simply spiritual escape; it was a call to build strong individuals capable of serving society.

Karma Yoga makes the same connection between action and character: work is not merely something we do; the quality of our actions helps shape the person we become.

This is why the real slogan of national development cannot be:

“Government will fix India.”

Nor can it be:

“Someone else will fix India.”

The real sentence is:

“I will become the kind of citizen a great India requires.”

And Here Comes the Next Generation

The freedom generation inherited a country.

Our generation has inherited a possibility.

The next generation will inherit the consequences.

That is why the young Indian must ask different questions.

Not:

“Can I get a job abroad?”

But also:

“Can I build something here?”

Not:

“Can I escape the system?”

But:

“Can I improve the system?”

Not:

“What brand should I buy?”

But:

“What can I create?”

Not:

“What will India give me?”

But:

“What will I give India?”

That does not mean everyone must stay in India.

It does not mean international success is betrayal.

Quite the opposite.

Go into the world. Learn. Compete. Win. Return with knowledge. Build bridges. Build companies. Build laboratories. Build institutions.

India should not fear Indians succeeding abroad.

India should fear a world in which too many of its best opportunities exist elsewhere.

To Preserve India Is Not to Freeze India

There is another misunderstanding we must defeat.

To preserve a civilisation does not mean putting it inside glass.

A civilisation that refuses to change becomes a museum.

A civilisation that knows how to renew itself becomes a living force.

India has survived because it has absorbed, argued, adapted and reinvented.

So preserving India does not mean:

·       rejecting science

·       rejecting modernity

·       rejecting other cultures

·       rejecting technology

·       or pretending that the past solved everything

Preserving India means protecting the deeper civilizational values while allowing the outer forms to evolve.

The soul may remain; the tools must improve.

A five-thousand-year civilizational memory does not demand five-thousand-year-old technology.

It demands a people confident enough to use the newest technology without losing their sense of who they are.

And What About Patriotism?

Patriotism should not mean saying:

“India is perfect.”

That is not patriotism.

That is flattery.

True patriotism says:

“India can become better and I will help.”

It allows criticism because criticism can be an act of loyalty.

It allows admiration because admiration can create courage.

It allows humility because no civilisation knows everything.

It allows pride without arrogance.

It allows strength without hatred.

And it allows love without blindness.

I do not want an India that shouts endlessly about being great.

I want an India that becomes so capable that it does not need to shout.

The Epic Question

History gave us independence.

Will we give history something worthy in return?

The freedom fighters asked:

Can India become free?

We must ask:

Can India become capable?

They fought for political sovereignty.

We must fight for:

·       educational sovereignty

·       technological sovereignty

·       economic strength

·       institutional integrity

·       scientific confidence

·       social dignity.

They broke the chains of empire.

We must break the chains of:

·       fear

·       corruption

·       mediocrity

·       fatalism

·       dependency

·       and self-doubt

Their battlefield had prisons and protest marches.

Our battlefield has:

·       classrooms

·       laboratories

·       factories

·       courts

·       farms

·       start-ups

·       hospitals

·       universities

·       and our own minds

The India I Still Believe In

I believe in an India that remembers the dead without living in death.

An India that respects Gandhi without rejecting science.

An India that remembers Bose without glorifying violence.

An India that honours soldiers without diminishing the citizen.

An India that celebrates its ancient civilisation without pretending every ancient answer is sufficient.

An India that learns from China without becoming China.

That learns from America without becoming America.

That learns from Japan without becoming Japan.

That learns from Israel without turning suffering into ideology.

That learns from the world while remaining unmistakably Indian.

I believe in an India where a child from a village can become a scientist.

Where a daughter can walk without fear.

Where a farmer can use technology without drowning in debt.

Where an entrepreneur can fail without being socially destroyed.

Where a scientist can build without begging for permission at every door.

Where a soldier carries not merely courage, but the best technology his country can produce.

Where a citizen does not ask whom he knows before asking what the law says.

Where a politician understands that office is temporary and the nation is not.

Where patriotism is measured not by volume but by contribution.

2047 Is Not a Date but It Is a Test.

When 2047 arrives, the real question will not be:

“Did India become richer?”

It will be:

“Did India become stronger in the deeper sense?”

Did the child become more educated?

Did the patient become safer?

Did the worker become more productive?

Did the farmer become more secure?

Did the woman become freer?

Did the scientist become more ambitious?

Did the entrepreneur become more courageous?

Did the institution become more trustworthy?

Did the citizen become more responsible?

Did the country become more capable?

Because a superpower is not merely a country with weapons and wealth.

A superpower is a country whose people, institutions and capabilities can withstand pressure without losing direction.

The Final Oath

So let the old civilisation speak once more.

Not as a ghost.

As a challenge.

I gave you scriptures then give me science.

I gave you memory then give me mastery.

I gave you sacrifice then give me responsibility.

I gave you freedom then give me character.

I gave you a civilisation then give me a future worthy of it.

And I answer:

We will.

Not by worshipping the past.

Not by copying the powerful.

Not by waiting for governments.

Not by blaming history forever.

But by working.

By learning.

By building.

By questioning.

By protecting.

By innovating.

By serving.

By refusing to surrender to mediocrity.

Because the India I still believe in is not merely the India I remember.

It is the India I intend to help build.

And perhaps that is the real meaning of patriotism:

To inherit a civilisation and refuse to be the generation that merely consumed it.

To preserve what is worthy.

To repair what is broken.

To create what does not yet exist.

And to leave India stronger than we found her.

That is the Indian Dream.

That is the challenge of 2047.

And that is the India I still believe in.