India @ 79: The freedom still to be won

Maj Gen Sanjeev Dogra (Retd)

sanjeev662006@gmail.com

Two videos have stayed with me this week.

In the first, a line of schoolchildren hop across a broken bridge, satchels on their backs, water moving beneath their feet. In the second, children sit on the ground for their midday meal. On their plates is a thin, colored liquid with a few pieces of vegetable floating in it. They dip their rotis into it and eat.

I cannot say whether these clips capture the whole truth of the places they were filmed in. But the questions they raise will not stay quiet. Seventy-nine years after Independence, should a child have to risk his life to reach a classroom? Should a meal meant to nourish a growing child look like an exercise in survival?

We won freedom from British rule in 1947. When do we win freedom from corruption, unemployment, poverty, poor-quality education and the quiet, everyday acceptance of substandard public services?

None of this denies what India has achieved. We have preserved democracy, built one of the world's major economies, developed real strength in space, technology, medicine and defence, and lifted millions out of extreme deprivation. That progress is genuine.

But so is the distance between our national achievements and the daily experience of ordinary Indians. Nowhere is that gap more consequential than where education, employment and poverty meet.

Schooling is not the same as education

India has done well at getting children into classrooms. What happens after they enter is a harder question. ASER 2024 found that only 44.8 per cent of Class V children in government schools could read a Class II-level text, and nationally, only 30.7 per cent of Class V children could solve a basic division problem.

These are not merely educational statistics. They are future employment statistics. A child who reaches Class V without basic literacy and numeracy carries that gap into a workplace increasingly shaped by technology and global competition. An education still built around rote learning and marks, rather than comprehension and problem-solving, may produce more certificates without producing more capability.

Then there is the examination system itself. Paper leaks do not merely cancel an exam. They waste years of preparation, drain a family's savings, and tell an honest young person that effort alone may not be enough.

Education has to move from enrolment to learning, from degrees to competence, from an exam-centred schooling to a preparation for life, one that makes room for sport, teamwork, civic sense, vocational exposure and critical thinking alongside the textbook.

A job is not always enough

The second link in this chain is employment. The Periodic Labour Force Survey 2025 puts unemployment among Indians aged 15 to 29 at 9.9 per cent. But the number understates the real problem, because India's difficulty is not simply jobs versus no jobs. It is underemployment, insecurity and inadequate pay.

Speak to young people in our Tier-2 and Tier-3 towns and a familiar story surfaces. Graduates accepting fifteen to twenty thousand rupees a month. Engineers or MBAs from ordinary colleges starting around twenty-five to thirty thousand. These are not national averages, but such offers are far from unusual. After rent, transport, food and family responsibility, what independence does that income actually provide?

Thousands of educated young Indians spend their most productive years chasing a handful of government vacancies. Others work in jobs that have nothing to do with what they studied. The ILO's India Employment Report has repeatedly flagged how many young people cannot find work that matches their education, and how job quality remains the unresolved half of the story.

The answer cannot lie only in government recruitment. India needs far greater employment generation through manufacturing, MSMEs, tourism, agro-processing, construction, logistics, healthcare, defence production and local enterprise, with apprenticeships built in as a normal bridge from classroom to workplace. A degree should not merely certify attendance. It should signify capability.

Between survival and security

India has genuinely reduced poverty. World Bank estimates show real progress over the past decade, and that deserves acknowledgment. But poverty is not only a statistical line.

There is a difference between survival and security. In July 2026, the Government stated that more than 80 crore people receive free foodgrains under the country's food-security system. This does not mean all 80 crore are poor. The National Food Security Act deliberately covers a much wider vulnerable population than that. But the scale of the number should still make us pause. If this many Indians need food-security support, how economically secure are Indian families, really?

A household can cross a poverty line on paper and still be one illness, one crop failure or one lost job away from distress. A farmer may own land and still struggle with small holdings, uncertain prices and debt. A worker may be employed and still unable to save. A graduate may draw a salary and still depend on parents for housing and healthcare.

Welfare is necessary. It cannot be the destination. Free grain can prevent hunger; it cannot create prosperity. A subsidy can soften hardship; it cannot substitute for a livelihood. The most durable anti-poverty programme remains a good education followed by a good job.

The freedom still to be won

This is where the three threads meet. Poor education produces weak employability. Weak employment keeps families economically fragile. And poverty then denies the next generation the nutrition, health and quality schooling it needs to break the cycle.

Around all of this sits the larger question of governance. What does it say about us when a newly built road develops potholes after a single monsoon, when public infrastructure fails soon after its own inauguration, when a school meal is reduced to watery liquid, when children must negotiate a broken bridge to reach a classroom? We do not lack schemes, budgets, announcements or talent. Too often, we lack accountability.

The men and women who fought for India's freedom, and the soldiers who defended it across 1947-48, 1962, 1965, 1971, Kargil, Siachen and countless quieter operations since, did not sacrifice themselves merely to protect a line on the map. They protected the possibility of a better India. Patriotism cannot end with raising the flag on 15 August. It must also mean refusing corruption, demanding quality, protecting public property, respecting merit and doing one's own duty honestly.

India at 79 is not a story of failure. It is a story of extraordinary achievement standing beside extraordinary unfinished work. In 1947, we became free from foreign rule. The freedom still ahead of us is from ignorance, unemployability, poverty, corruption and indifference.

Perhaps that is the question worth asking this Independence Day. Not merely, are we proud of India? Of course we are. The harder question is whether we are willing to build an India worthy of that pride.