As India marks 75 years since independence, Indians share their hopes for future
In a swirl of orange, green and white, India today marks 75 years since the country became independent and ended almost 200 years of British colonial rule.
It also marks the partition of the subcontinent into India and Pakistan — with ripple effects of that delineation still being felt today.
From a movement inspired by Mahatma Gandhi, often regarded as the architect of nonviolent resistance, India has seen a meteoric rise.
India will soon become the world's most populous nation — it's projected to overtake China's 1.4 billion population next year, according to the UN.
It has grown its agricultural sector, made its mark in global politics, developed nuclear capabilities, has a thriving tech industry and is making leaps in the space race.
But many challenges remain — the ABC spoke with Indians, who shared their ambitions and concerns about inequality, climate change, development and diversity.
Emergence as an economic powerhouse
Back in 1947, India's gross domestic product was just 3 per cent of the world's GDP — now it's the world's sixth largest economy.
Lisa Singh, CEO of the Australia India Institute, said India had been protectionist in the 1950s and 60s.
"That protectionist nature that India had earlier on, really came out of the fact that it had been ruled by the East India Company," she said.
A significant shift occurred in 1991 with economic liberalisation, which saw an influx of foreign investment and radical globalisation, and India became a leader in manufacturing.
Agriculture still employs 60 per cent of Indians, but contributes to just 23 per cent of GDP, according to the UN.
Anand Shriram, 35, is the vice-president of an agribusiness company in north India, with a focus on fertilisers, chemicals and plastics.
He's the fifth generation to enter agribusiness and has witnessed a transformation of the sector, but notes there's a long way to go in agricultural policy.
"I feel very, very proud to be Indian. We've come a long way, and it's great the way the country has progressed over the years," he said
At the same time, there are contradictions — literacy rates have lifted, but unemployment is an ongoing concern, he said.
"We're talking about going to Mars and reaching outer space, but electricity and poverty and clean water for all is still an issue," he said.
India has invested heavily in research and development, becoming more competitive, but is still impacted by daily issues with traffic, pollution and corruption, he said.
The youth population is huge — more than half the country's inhabitants, or more than 600 million people, are under the age of 30.
That means there's a lot of opportunities, but an economic challenge to be met too, with the country needing to create about 10 million jobs per year for the next five to seven years, Mr Shriram said.
Many of those jobs could be in the tech and start-up sectors — India recently reached the milestone of 100 unicorns, or start-up companies worth $US1 billion.
But musician and entrepreneur Bindu Subramaniam, 38, hopes more career opportunities open up in the arts sector, too.
Ms Subramaniam was born in the US but her parents moved back to India when she was a teenager, and she has since become involved in music education.
She said India's policy of having arts education as part of every child's schooling until grade eight would help to broaden their horizons.
"A decade ago, someone who wanted to leave a stable engineering job to be a musician would be looked at as like crazy," she said.
"But I think more and more people are embracing the idea of different career pathways."
She said the 75-year milestone was an opportunity for people to reflect on how far the country had come.
"Being born outside India but very much part of the Indian diaspora gave me a unique understanding of what India was and what India is," she said.
"Because sometimes when you're born outside, you are part of the culture that your parents carried."
India's 'new place in the world'
A significant moment in India's history was the forging of its constitution in 1950.
Manuraj Shunmugasundaram, 39, a lawyer in the high court of Madras in the state of Tamil Nadu, in the country's south-east, says one of the most significant moments was the first amendment.
That extended affirmative action in education and government jobs to include groups that had been historically and systematically discriminated against, he said.
Minket Lepcha, 39, a researcher and filmmaker from the Lepcha Indigenous community in West Bengal, is documenting folklore and traditional knowledge, especially in relation to women and water flows.
"India has come a long way, because we have a president who is from an Indigenous community. It's very empowering and positive that India has been addressing and acknowledging the role of Indigenous communities across India," she said.
With its many borders, she said India is "a beautiful kaleidoscope of influences" and there should be a deeper listening to ethnic and Indigenous groups.
The country has seen a transformation under Narendra Modi's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), elected in 2014.
The government has invested heavily in constructing roads and building toilets, as well as policies to uplift those who are most impoverished.
But it has also been accused of fostering right-wing nationalism, stoking religious tensions and excluding Muslims and other non-Hindu groups.
Charu Pragya, 38, who works for the BJP political party, said the whole country was coming together to mark independence this year.
"This is a big birthday that my country is celebrating," she said.
Internationally, India has forged partnerships with Australia, the US and Japan under the Quad, and with Brazil, Russia, South Africa and China through BRICS. India is also set to take on the G20 presidency next year.
"After the pandemic especially, I feel that we have found a new place in the world," she said.
"India went on from being a country that needed to import basic N95 masks to today … we have become a vaccine supplier to the world. So that's the progress that we have made in a very short period of time."
But Mr Shunmugasundaram, who is also a spokesperson for the progressive social justice DMK political party, said despite gains for India's diverse groups since independence, he feared an erosion under the current government.
He said moves like the passage of a citizenship law for new migrants that excludes Muslims were not just nationalism, but exclusionary to the point of "fascism".
"They want this one nation, one language, one religion," he said, saying his party historically opposed the imposition of the Hindi language on other groups.
"[This] is a starting point or something which I feel is going to be much more exclusionary, much more discriminatory and much more polarising."
Ms Pragya deflected accusations of exclusionary nationalism as "political posturing" and described India as "truly secular and truly welcoming" to refugees.
She said the country was looking to further improve healthcare and education, subsidise housing for those in need and connect even the tiniest villages to the electricity grid.
"Once you get the basics to your people, only then you can start making sure that this disparity is done away with. And that's what we have focused on."
She said the country was also prioritising the economy and tackling climate change.
"We're working on those modern things, while we ensure that we keep our culture intact," she said.
"We are taking our rightful place in the world.
"That gives us a lot of responsibility that also makes a lot of other countries look at us with hope."
India is not 'China 2.0'
Ms Singh from the Australia India Institute said the relationship between the two countries had a lot of potential — especially in education and technology — but there needed to be a deeper understanding.
"Misunderstandings and stereotypes play a disruptive role in forging closer links between our people and countries," she said.
She said there was jubilation after independence and India was a tremendous growth and development story; the world's largest democracy lifting millions out of poverty.
She said Australia and India had much in common. More than 780,000 people of Indian origin now call Australia home, according to the latest census.
"Australia's pivot to India shouldn't be borne out of the fact of its challenges with China," she said.
"You can't look at India as China 2.0.
"India is all about relationships, it's about building trust. And that can only happen by listening to India."
She said while India was made up of diverse groups and identities, it projected a unified national identity on the world stage, including on the cricket pitch and at the Commonwealth Games.
Looking ahead, lawyer Mr Shunmugasundaram said he wanted to see more vulnerable sections of society protected, and key areas to improve on were gender justice and equality.
Until recently, non-heterosexual people could be criminally charged, but the Supreme Court issued a historic decision to decriminalise gay sex in 2018.
But gay marriage has not yet been legalised, and there were knock-on effects for that for adoption and inheritance.
"The LGBTQIA+ community is in a grey area — they will not be charged for being a lesbian or gay person, but beyond that, there is nothing there, they cannot join a house together, for example," he said.
Another important factor was climate justice; nearing the world's largest population gave India an obligation to act, he said.
Ms Lepcha said India needed to deepen its understanding of ecology to deal with a coming water crisis and climate change.
"The sacred understanding of water goes beyond what is taught to us," she said.
"Sometimes we do not realise that we are basically creating an ecological imbalance, and it is us who as the community, as the population who really needs to address these issues of climate change at a very personal level."
Musician Ms Subramaniam also wanted to see more equality for India, adding she thinks state governments are taking steps in the right direction.
"We should continue moving towards LGBTQIA+ rights, we should continue moving towards social equity … making sure that access to good education and healthcare is more fundamental," she said.
"These are gaps that are really critical to fill, and I hope that that's where we can continue to move forward."
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-08...ependence-people-share-hopes-future/101312202
