Much as for individuals, for nations too, special occasions present a reason to step back and take stock of an ongoing journey, learn from the past, make course corrections where needed and reset the course for the future. Today is one such occasion as the nation celebrates its 70th Independence Day. As we look back on the journey of independent India, there’s obviously a lot that the nation can be justifiably proud about. From an agrarian economy, the country has transformed into a services and manufacturing-led one, which is a sign of maturity. There has been impressive progress in the campaign against poverty with per capita incomes steadily rising over the years. Important social indicators such as literacy (including female literacy), health, sanitation, life expectancy and infant mortality have all steadily improved over the years. For instance, female literacy has advanced from just 9 per cent around Independence to over 65 per cent now; infant mortality is down from over 180 per thousand births to 44, while life expectancy has increased to 66.1 years from 32.1 at the time of independence.

Yet, the fact is that India lags behind even its South Asian peers such as Sri Lanka and Bangladesh on social indicators, including primary education, health and sanitation and even core infrastructure in some cases. Clearly, there is a long way to go despite the high absolute number of citizens whose quality of life has improved over the years. If the challenge till now was to find the resources to help raise living standards of the people, going forward, the challenge will be how to deploy the resources generated from high economic growth for the benefit of the people, and leverage our human capital. India’s ‘demographic dividend’ — India has, and will continue to have for decades to come, the largest working age population in the world, with a vast majority of it in the most productive age group of 20 to 35 years. Yet, this potential gold mine remains largely untapped, with the vast pool of young people joining the labour force every year lacking the skill or resources to become a productive part of the new India’s booming economy.

It is with this aspirational India that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s campaign promise of ‘Sabka saath, sabka vikas’ — which Modi himself translates as ‘collective effort, inclusive growth’ — resonated so strongly. The challenge before Modi, his government, and indeed, all of us, is to make that promise a reality. A disturbing feature of post-liberalisation India has been the rising inequality. The middle class has grown, the list of Indian billionaires has lengthened, but the gap between the privileged few and the rest has widened. Some of the social tensions that we have been witness to in recent times is a direct offshoot of this. Freedom does not mean only the freedom to elect a government of our choice. True freedom means that every Indian enjoys the freedom to maximise his or her potential — whether economic, cultural or personal — to the fullest, without let or hindrance.

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