Dear India, we need to talk
Let’s start with the obvious, petrol prices are doing their best impression of a SpaceX launch. Going up, up, and never coming back down. Meanwhile, our wallets are left standing on the launchpad, waving goodbye.
But sure, let’s talk about what’s not being talked about.
Manipur. You know, the state that’s been on fire, literally and figuratively, for over a year now? Our PM found time to visit Israel, inaugurate stadiums, push through the Broadcast Bill his party had been quietly cooking, and give roughly 47 speeches about how India is rising. But Manipur? Crickets. A sitting Prime Minister has still not visited a state in his own country that has been burning. Let that sink in.
And speaking of burning, the Nicobar Islands. We’re bulldozing one of the most ecologically sensitive zones on the planet, displacing indigenous communities, in the name of “countering China.” Because nothing says strategic strength like destroying your own coastline first.
Then there’s the employment promise. The glorious, laminated, repeatedly-quoted promise of jobs. Unemployment is at a generational high. Graduates are driving cabs, not because they want to, but because there’s nothing else. But don’t worry, we got a new Parliament building.
The opposition isn’t some clean, heroic alternative either. They’ll point out every wrong thing the government does, and they’re often right about the problem, but ask them for a solution and you get either silence or the same old dynasty politics dressed in a kurta. They don’t represent us. They represent the idea of not being them, which is not a governance plan.
Every party, at its core, is running the oldest playbook in the book, the one the British perfected before they left: divide, distract, and rule. Religion, caste, region, language, pick your flavour of the week. We’re too busy fighting each other to notice we’re all being played.
Here’s what nobody in power will say out loud: they will retire. They will be fine. Their children are abroad, their money is safe, their future is secured. It is us, the 20-somethings, the 30-somethings, who will inherit the debt, the climate damage, the broken institutions, and the divided society they’re building right now.
We are not Congress kids or BJP kids or AAP kids. We are India’s kids. And we’re the ones who have to live here long after the current cast of characters takes their final bow.
They’re playing chess with our future. Maybe it’s time we flipped the board.