“From a fragile new nation to a three-trillion-dollar democracy — and the long road still ahead.”

By Ravishankar Kalyanasundaram

Today, India marks two anniversaries that quietly belong together. We celebrate Republic Day, the moment we gave ourselves a Constitution. And we mark 150 years of Vande Mataram — a song that first taught a colonised people how to call a land their own.

Between those two moments lies one of the most unlikely journeys of modern history.

In 1950, when the Republic was born, India’s economy was about $30 billion. We imported food. Life expectancy was barely 32 years. Fewer than 1 in 5 adults could read. Our foreign exchange reserves could not cover three weeks of imports. Democracy itself was considered a risky experiment in a poor, deeply divided country.

Today, that same Republic stands as a $3.5 trillion economy, the world’s fifth largest. We are the largest food producer after China, the second-largest mobile phone maker, the third-largest startup ecosystem, and one of the top three digital payment markets on Earth. Over 1.3 billion people carry a biometric identity. UPI alone processes more transactions each month than Visa does globally.

This did not happen by accident.

We did not wake up one morning to find ourselves a democracy. We built it — slowly, imperfectly, sometimes painfully — through 75 years of elections, courts, budgets, public enterprises, farmers, teachers, nurses, engineers, and small entrepreneurs. Millions of ordinary Indians, doing extraordinary things without ever being noticed.

From importing rice to exporting food.
From ration cards to digital wallets.
From bullock carts to bullet trains.
From a fragile rupee to a stable currency backed by $600 billion of reserves.

And yet, even on this proud day, something inside us knows this is not the summit.

This is only a milestone.

Our Republic is still unfinished.

Because even today, nearly 30% of India’s harvested food is lost before it reaches a consumer — a silent tax on farmers who work under the sun and the rain. A finished Republic would not allow crops to rot for want of cold storage, silos, or transport.

Because even today, over 50 million court cases are pending in India. Justice delayed is not a technical problem — it is a moral one. A finished Republic would not make a poor citizen wait a decade to be heard.

Because even today, too much of our politics is driven by money and muscle rather than public service. A finished Republic would remember that governance is not a business — it is a trust.

Because even today, the media often confuses noise with truth. A finished Republic would value facts more than frenzy, and credibility more than clicks.

Because even today, too many children and vulnerable citizens still fear power instead of being protected by it. A finished Republic would make authority a shield, not a threat.

And because even today, India’s entrepreneurs — our MSMEs, our startups, our manufacturers — are asked to compete in a world of AI, robotics, quantum computing and advanced logistics without access to national-scale technological infrastructure. A finished Republic would give its innovators the tools of the future.

This is why the idea of the Unfinished Republic matters so much.

We are not behind. We are not failing. We are mid-journey.

The India that built IITs when it was poor, the India that launched satellites when it was still rationing food, the India that digitised a billion lives in a decade — that India is capable of much more.

But progress is not self-executing.

The Republic is not a spectator sport.

Its future will be written by how we vote, how we question, how we refuse corruption, how we demand justice, how we tell the truth, and how we insist on building real national capability — in farms, in courts, in technology, in governance.

Vande Mataram once gave us the courage to imagine freedom.

Now it must give us the courage to complete it.

This Republic is strong.
This Republic is proud.
And this Republic — like all living things — is still unfinished.

Vande Mataram. Jai Hind.