5 min readMar 16, 2025 09:59 AM IST
First published on: Mar 16, 2025 at 07:15 AM IST
An odd thing happened after my column appeared last Sunday. Soon after I posted it on X, it came under full attack from hyper-sensitive, hyper-nationalistic Indians who thought that I had portrayed China in a better light than India. The thrust of the attack was that I had failed to notice that China was not a democratic country with a free press, aggressive opposition parties and the freedoms we take for granted. When it became clear that there were many readers of the column who felt this way, I responded to a particularly belligerent critic by saying that instead of behaving like a chippy Indian with an inferiority complex, he would do well to notice what China had got right and what we in India have not. Suddenly I was inundated with an unexpected flood of support.
So let me begin by admitting that I was gratified to see that I had touched an empathetic nerve. There are clearly many Indians who agree that China invested in the things that go towards making a strong country and we did not. No country can be strong if its population is weak. I am personally not mad about the term ‘human resource development’ but use it here because it is in exactly this area that the leaders of India have failed to invest.
This is why I plan this week to expand on what I believe India needs to do urgently to make us more able to compete with China, a country that is without question our biggest and most powerful enemy. We also need young Indians to be given the tools to compete in an increasingly competitive world. It is my fervent hope that our political leaders will urgently discover that without proper schools, healthcare and nutrition, young Indians will remain unable to deal with the changing realities they face.
The average Indian child is forced to go to schools that are so bad that they are lucky if they leave school with basic literacy. Study after study has revealed that Indian children finish school without being able to read, write or count adequately. This is not just because educational standards in our ancient land are abysmal but because they are not healthy enough to concentrate on learning. Last week, Parliament was told by the Minister of Women and Child Development that 38% of Indian children under the age of six are stunted and another 17% are below the weight they should be. Of these, some are so below normal weight that they are considered ‘wasted’. In recent years midday meal schemes have helped but not sufficiently yet.
In this age when Artificial Intelligence is beginning to compete with human intelligence, most Indians leave college without the qualifications needed to become employable. Is it any wonder that young people from our richest states pay small fortunes to human traffickers who promise to take them to better countries? In the few weeks since Donald Trump has returned to the White House, some of these desperate young Indians have been sent back to India in chains and fetters. Others have been rescued from slavery in Chinese scam factories in Thailand where they are forced to commit digital crimes.
When are our political leaders going to admit that the prospects for young Indians are so grim that this should be considered a national emergency? The Prime Minister likes to tell us that he is working on securing our ‘virasat’ (heritage) while at the same time ensuring that as much attention is being paid to ‘vikas’ (development). Has he noticed that if weighed on a scale it would be ‘virasat’ that would weigh a great deal more than ‘vikas’? Almost not a day goes by when some BJP leader is not seen banging on about our culture and heritage. They rarely tell us what they plan to do about bringing us closer to become a fully developed country by 2047. This is a goal that the Prime Minister personally set.
In fairness to Narendra Modi, it must be said that since he became prime minister the speed at which roads, ports, airports and other vital infrastructure is being built has been truly remarkable. If there are failures, it is at the level of his chief ministers who have mostly performed dismally. It is because of their failures that we have not yet seen that improvement in schools, healthcare, nutrition and the other things that are needed for our vast population of young people to become competitive in the world.
This is the reason why foreign investors when choosing an alternative to China to build their factories usually choose countries in East Asia. They have invested heavily in the things that really matter. Some of the people who responded to last week’s column said we needed a dictatorship in India for us to get ahead. No, we do not. We need our political leaders to drastically change their priorities. We need policies that will help us take advantage of having the largest population of young people in the world. Instead of just boasting about this in international forums we need our leaders to start doing something on the domestic front that will make a real difference. There is no sign so far that this has begun to happen, but we must continue to hope that it will. India is beginning to run out of time.
When are our political leaders going to admit that the prospects for young Indians are so grim that this should be considered a national emergency? (Express Archives/Representational) 
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