Listen to this article:

Every August 15, the prime minister of India stands before the Red Fort in Delhi and speaks to a nation that is at once ancient and young, confident and anxious, proud of its achievements and uncertain about its direction. The Independence Day speech has, over the years, become a familiar ritual of national celebration: a catalogue of schemes, achievements, milestones and promises.

But perhaps the most powerful Independence Day speech is one that refuses the comfort of triumphalism.

I sometimes wish I could write the prime minister’s Independence Day speech. Not because I would want to put words into his mouth or because I imagine that my political preferences should become the language of the nation. I wish I could write it because I would like to imagine what such a speech could sound like if it began with an honest audit of the year gone by.

To possess the courage to acknowledge failures alongside achievements, anxieties alongside aspirations and wounds alongside triumphs. That, perhaps, would be the greatest service a prime minister can render to the republic on its Independence Day.

To speak to citizens not as voters, but as fellow citizens capable of hearing the truth.

The courage to look into the mirror

Such a speech would not be an exercise in political self-flagellation, nor would it be an invitation to the opposition to score points. It would be something much more difficult: an act of statesmanship.

It would recognise that the country does not need a government that merely tells citizens how well everything is going. It needs a government capable of looking into the mirror.

An Independence Day speech should, therefore, begin with an audit of not just what we have achieved, but also of where we have fallen short.

Also read: How My Grandmother Remembered India’s First Independence Day

The first admission would have to concern inequality. India has grown. The economy has expanded, infrastructure has improved and India has acquired greater visibility in the global economy. But the relevant question for a republic cannot simply be how large the economy has become. It must also ask:

Who has benefited, who has been left behind and how equitably are opportunity and wealth distributed?

Who has benefited, who has been left behind and how equitably are opportunity and wealth distributed?

Growth that produces extraordinary concentration of wealth cannot, by itself, be presented as the full story of national progress.

Addressing the youth’s anxieties

The........

© The Wire