Tarun Chugh
Every year on the 14th of April, India commemorates the birth anniversary of Baba Saheb Dr. Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar. This is not merely a day of remembrance – it is a moment for the nation to reflect on the democratic and social character it aspires to embody. History has seen many individuals leave their mark upon the world, but very few have actually shaped it. Dr. Ambedkar was one of those rare architects of civilisation who did not simply live through history – he built it.
Born into a society where caste-based discrimination permeated every walk of life, Ambedkar endured personal humiliation and social injustice at every step. He absorbed the poison of contempt across institutions, schools, and public life – yet never allowed it to define the limits of his ambition. He transformed education into an instrument of liberation, becoming the first Indian to earn advanced degrees from both Columbia University and the London School of Economics. By the time of his passing, his personal library had grown to over 35,000 volumes – a testament to a man for whom knowledge was a lifelong sacred pursuit.
Most people know Baba Saheb as the architect of the Indian Constitution or as a fierce critic of the caste system. Far fewer know that his career began as an economist of formidable international standing. In 1915, he earned his Master’s in Economics from Columbia University, followed by a PhD in 1917. He subsequently obtained a Master’s degree and Doctor of Science from the London School of Economics – two PhDs, and an analytical depth that placed him among the most remarkable economic minds of his era.
His research paper on the East India Company’s administration exposed, with hard data, how British economic policies had systematically impoverished India. His 1923 masterwork ‘The Problem of the Rupee’ challenged the views of John Maynard Keynes himself and laid the intellectual groundwork for what would eventually become the Reserve Bank of India. His Columbia thesis, published in 1925 as ‘Provincial Finance in British India’, earned international acclaim – and scholars today recognise its direct influence on the concept of India’s Finance Commission.
He identified ‘disguised unemployment’ as a concept before it entered mainstream economic thought, outlined a two-sector economic model decades before Arthur Lewis made it famous, and argued for an MSP of at least fifty per cent above production costs – well before the Swaminathan Commission. He established the Central Water Commission, the Central Electricity Authority, and envisioned the National Power Grid as a means of carrying electricity to every corner of a vast nation. These were not abstract ideas – they were the structural blueprints upon which independent India was built.
As Chairman of the Drafting Committee, Ambedkar produced a document that not only lays out the architecture of governance but guarantees protection, rights, and dignity to the most vulnerable sections of society. The most profound expression of his greatness lies here – a man who had endured a lifetime of discrimination and humiliation, when he finally held the pen that would shape the nation, wrote not a single word of bitterness or revenge. His commitment to constitutional morality, equality, liberty, and fraternity was total and unconditional. His message was clear: political democracy cannot survive unless social and economic democracy are established alongside it.
It is a historical irony that for decades, the parties which most loudly invoked Ambedkar’s name never truly translated his ideas into governance. They used his legacy for vote-bank politics, divided society along caste lines, and kept the poor dependent rather than empowered. Today, it is Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government that has genuinely honoured Baba Saheb – not through rhetoric, but through concrete policy decisions that reflect the very soul of his vision.
“Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas, Sabka Vishwas, Sabka Prayas” – this is not merely a political slogan. It is the direct translation of Ambedkar’s dream of a nation where every citizen – regardless of caste, class, gender, or geography – is an equal participant in the journey of progress. Every major scheme of the Modi government, when examined closely, is a chapter drawn from Ambedkar’s idea of India.
Ambedkar’s memory deserves to be enshrined in the national consciousness permanently – not celebrated once a year and forgotten. The Modi government developed the five sites most sacred to his life and legacy – his birthplace in Mhow, his place of education in London, the Deekshabhoomi in Nagpur, the Ambedkar National Memorial at 26 Alipur Road in Delhi, and the Chaityabhoomi in Mumbai – as Panch Teertha for the nation. It is worth noting that for sixty years after Baba Saheb’s passing, no memorial had been built at his Delhi residence. The Modi government fulfilled this long-pending duty.
Formally instituting November 26th as Constitution Day – Samvidhan Divas – was a powerful acknowledgement of Ambedkar’s greatest contribution. It institutionalised the spirit of ‘constitutional morality’ that he championed throughout his life, embedding it into the national calendar as a day of reflection and recommitment.
When Prime Minister Modi discovered that 18,000 villages had still not received electricity even after seven decades of independence, he was deeply troubled. From the ramparts of the Red Fort, he pledged to electrify every one of these villages within 1,000 days – and fulfilled that promise ahead of schedule. Ambedkar had given India the concept of the National Power Grid; Modi used that very grid to carry light to the last, forgotten citizen. This is not coincidence – it is continuity. When a village that had lived in darkness for generations celebrated the arrival of electricity with a week of music and festivity, that joy was the sound of Ambedkar’s vision finally arriving at its destination.
Ambedkar’s economic philosophy held that financial inclusion is inseparable from social justice. The Jan Dhan Yojana opened bank accounts for hundreds of millions of poor Indians – liberating them from moneylenders, protecting them from fraudulent chit funds, and providing them with a Rs. 2 lakh insurance safety net. For the first time, the poorest Indian became a participant in the formal economic mainstream. This is precisely the financial dignity Ambedkar spent his career demanding. The scheme did not merely open accounts – it opened a door that had been closed to the poor for seventy years.
Naming India’s flagship digital payments platform after Baba Saheb – Bharat Interface for Money – was a gesture of both tribute and purpose. Ambedkar believed that economic empowerment was the foundation of social liberation. Today, the humblest citizen in the most remote village can conduct a digital transaction, participate in the formal economy, and access financial services with a mobile phone. This is Ambedkar’s vision of economic inclusion expressed in the language of the twenty-first century.
Ambedkar believed that no measure of social progress is meaningful if women remain trapped in conditions of suffering and indignity. Science tells us that a woman cooking on a wood-fired stove absorbs the equivalent of 400 cigarettes of smoke every single day. The Ujjwala Yojana extended clean cooking gas connections to five crore poor families, freeing millions of mothers and sisters from this invisible torment. To protect the health and dignity of India’s poorest women – this is Ambedkar’s vision of women’s empowerment made real.
Ambedkar was unequivocal – India’s true development must begin in its villages. The Swachh Bharat Mission, which built crores of toilets to protect the dignity of women who had no choice but to defecate in the open, is a direct honouring of that conviction. The “Gram Uday Se Bharat Uday” campaign – deliberately launched on the 14th of April, Ambedkar Jayanti – was the Modi government’s declaration that rural development is not a welfare programme but a national mission rooted in Ambedkar’s idea of India.
Very few know that Ambedkar had a far-sighted vision for India’s maritime development and navigation infrastructure, and built foundational institutions in this domain during his tenure in government. Prime Minister Modi chose the 14th of April to inaugurate a landmark international maritime event in Mumbai – fulfilling Ambedkar’s vision for the coastal communities, fishermen, and youth who live along India’s vast coastline. A legacy that had been deliberately obscured for decades was brought back into the light, in the most fitting way possible.
Ambedkar’s message to India’s youth – “Educate, Organise, Agitate” – finds its policy expression today in the Skill India mission, digital education initiatives, scholarships for SC/ST students, and the Start-up India ecosystem. The Modi government understands what Ambedkar always insisted upon: education is not merely a path to employment – it is the foundation of civic responsibility and social transformation.
His belief that the progress of any society must be measured by the status of its women is reflected in the Beti Bachao Beti Padhao campaign, the expansion of maternity benefit laws, and the systematic financial empowerment of women’s self-help groups across rural India. These are not isolated schemes – they are a coherent vision of gender justice drawn directly from Ambedkar’s social philosophy.
Ambedkar’s three pillars – Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity – live today in the Modi government’s guiding principle of Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas. The India that Ambedkar dreamed of was one where the benefits of growth and governance reached the last person in the last village. Every Jan Dhan account, every gas connection, every lit home, every paved road in a previously neglected village, every scholarship awarded to the child of a daily-wage worker – these are not government statistics. They are Ambedkar’s India coming to life.
For decades, certain political establishments treated Ambedkar as the exclusive symbol of one community – weaponising his identity while ignoring his ideas. The Modi government has reclaimed and restored Ambedkar to his rightful place: as the architect of all of India, a visionary whose ideas belong to every Indian, and whose legacy must be honoured not with flowers on a statue but with justice in policy.
The legacy of Dr. Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar teaches us that democracy is not simply about the transfer of power – it is a continuous process of establishing justice, equality, and dignity in the lives of every citizen. He was not merely a man – he was a resolve that endured an entire lifetime of humiliation without ever wavering from its course.
Ambedkar Jayanti is therefore not just an occasion for commemoration. It is a moment for honest reflection and renewed national commitment – a commitment where the youth are awakened by his example, women are empowered by his belief in their potential, farmers are supported by his economic wisdom, and the poorest citizen is brought into the mainstream by his lifelong insistence on dignity.
When a government translates his ideas into policy, when a young person is educated and rises above poverty, when a village woman cooks without the burden of toxic smoke, when a tribal family turns on a light switch for the first time – in those moments, Baba Saheb receives his truest tribute.
(The author is National General Secretary of the BJP and In-Charge of Party’s SC Morcha)
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