Nirupama Menon Rao
Ours is a country of astonishing paradoxes. We are the nation that can send a rocket to the moon on a fraction of NASA’s budget. And yet we cannot keep our railway stations clean. Walk into any platform after a train has pulled out—banana peels on the tracks, plastic cups scattered, empty packets blown by the hot wind, a stray dog nosing through the mess. And above it all, a triumphant poster of Chandrayaan like a lark ascending. This is a contradiction that stares us in the face. We conquer the heavens with justified pride, but are booby-trapped by our own garbage back on earth.
Why do we tolerate this? Why does a civilization that once built Nalanda University and the Kailasa at Ellora, the ghats of Varanasi and the ethereal fastnesses of Mandu, allow its public spaces to drown in ugliness? Where and what is our definition of the aesthetic of public spaces? Why have we forsaken the sublime for the subliminal? We are assaulted daily by broken pavements, crooked dividers, men relieving themselves on walls, unplanned facades screaming chaos. These are not small irritations. They are assaults on our dignity.
And here is the truth: a nation that cannot walk with dignity on its footpaths cannot stride with confidence on the world stage.
We talk endlessly of our demographic dividend. But what dividend is it, when every new child must fight for a hospital bed, for a seat in an overcrowded classroom, for a job on a crowded street? I have seen government wards where three patients share one bed, where mothers with newborns queue for oxygen. Is this dividend—or debt? Why do we not speak openly of family welfare grounded in planning, of small families as a duty, not a taboo? We must stop imagining that every new birth is a gift if we cannot give that child dignity.
A developed India is not one where every city has a flyover. It is one where every child has a library. Once upon a time we had Nalanda and Takshashila, temples of learning that drew the world. Today, in too many towns, children study under a dim streetlamp because their school has no library at all. We build malls of marble and glass, but our public libraries gather dust or decay. What kind of future are we constructing if our children have shopping arcades, but no sanctuaries of knowledge?
We must create the searchlight mind—the enquiring mind that questions, that refuses to sink into the dreary desert sand of habit. That is the true infrastructure of a developed India. Flyovers will crumble. But minds, once lit, shine forever.
And what of our Constitution? We swear allegiance to it. But do we understand what that means? To honor the Constitution is not to cheer a leader. It is to honor a republic that makes leaders servants, not masters. Every Republic Day, we see tanks and parades, flags waving high. But the real parade is invisible—it is millions of us paying taxes honestly, obeying laws, respecting courts, treating strangers with dignity. Our flag should be a covenant.
And yet beneath all of this lies something deeper still: our ethics, our values. What, after all, are values? They are not sermons in a civics textbook. They are how we behave when no one is watching. They are honesty in the smallest of things: not bribing the constable, not cutting the queue, not forging the certificate, not exploiting the weak. Today, too often, we excuse corruption as cleverness, deceit as ingenuity, bending rules as pragmatism. We admire the man who “manages” the system, not the one who obeys it. But nations are not built on cunning. Nations are built on character.
Our civilization gave the world the idea of dharma—duty, righteousness, the right path. But we have shrunk dharma to ritual, to temple visits, to public displays. We forget that dharma is how we treat our neighbor, how we treat the powerless, how we care for the common good. The true test of our values is not how we worship in private, but how we behave in public.
Religion too must be asked of its true purpose. Our rishis, our saints, our gurus—did they preach hatred? Did Kabir divide? Did Nanak exclude? Did the Buddha ask us to hurl stones at one another? Religion was meant to teach us compassion, to teach us to look within. But today, temples and mosques and churches too often echo with the rhetoric of exclusion. We are missing the true message of our spirituality. We are trading bhakti for bigotry.
And how do we treat our history? As a great river of diversity, where tributaries meet? Or as a blunt instrument, to settle scores across centuries? We forget that history is a mirror—meant to teach, not to be wielded as a weapon.
Then there is how we see ourselves. We have begun to worship leaders as heroes cast in stone. We build giant statues while our schools crumble, while our libraries shut down. We pour concrete into idols, while our civic sense withers. Let us be clear: real heroes are not 600 feet tall. They are the teacher in a village classroom, the nurse in a government hospital, the mother saving so her daughter can study. They are flesh and blood, not bronze and granite.
Even E.M. Forster, in A Passage to India, wrote of us as sheep—sheeple, too willing to follow, too afraid to question. Shall we prove him right? Or shall we show that we are citizens—questioning, thinking, shaping our republic with conscience?
And what of our neighbors? India is the largest in South Asia. But to be dominant is not to be domineering. A giant that bullies is not respected. A giant that reconciles, that lifts others, that resolves old quarrels—such a giant commands true leadership. Europe was once torn by centuries of war between France and Germany. But they chose reconciliation. They chose courage. Do we have that courage? Or will we remain chained to quarrels that keep us diminished?
And yet, I end not in despair, but in hope. Because I believe in the unknown Indian. The woman sweeping her doorstep at dawn who can eclipse Michelangelo in the cosmic geometry of the Kollam she draws. The father who insists on sending his daughter to school. The street vendor who gives you exact change though he has so little. The autorickshaw driver who keeps his vehicle spotless. The farmer who bends his back in the heat, not for praise, but because that is his duty.
This is the wellspring of our future—the basic goodness, the stoicism and common sense of our people. If we can tap that, if we can shape it with civic discipline, with education, with compassion, with dignity, then we can build not just a strong India, but a beautiful India.
Because India does not just need to grow. India must grow up.
And I believe it can.