Prime Minister Modi, please ask the Indian diaspora to flash their mobile phone lights if they want to return to their homeland.
Time for homecoming.
There is no room left for imagination. Marvel Stadium is wrapped in darkness, silent as a paused clock, as if saap soongh gaya ho has descended upon a roaring and jubilant crowd of 20,000.
Now we have crossed every barrier on our way to an Australian utopia. Futures are secure, with innumerable Bollywood nights, celebrity concerts and thrilling cricket matches to ease our homesickness.
Let us reimagine our lives in India, through the past, the present and any possible future.
India now produces more graduates than ever, more than eight million a year, while the unemployment rate among graduates stands at 29.1 per cent.
For every job advertised, young graduates carrying degrees and debt queue each morning for walk-in interviews, willing to accept work that does not match their aspirations or skills, and often does not offer a decent salary. They are left with Hobson’s choice: take it or get nothing.
Education, once the great hope of Indian families, has stopped delivering on its promise. The system is failing to translate education into stable, progressive and salaried employment. The government, callous and dismissive, appears unwilling to acknowledge the frustration and pain of India’s unemployed youth.
For those in power, every movement or uprising led by young people will drift like a season. Every hunger strike will mellow and fade into oblivion.
Corruption, we are told, has vanished from Indian society. Perhaps it is time to remove the word ghoos from our dictionaries. There is apparently no such thing anymore. Bribes are simply “an additional hidden fee”, and no one shies away from paying as long as the work gets done.
Highlighting India’s digital public infrastructure, Prime Minister Modi said: “For us, the citizen is paramount. Today, most tasks can be accomplished through self-attestation. That journey has now led to the creation of DigiLocker, where Indians can securely store, verify and share documents digitally with just a click.”
On the ground, however, an application for a simple approval may remain stuck until the applicant physically visits the office and pays the “additional fee” to the assessing officer in the region.
Building roads and highways is unquestionably important to any nation’s growth. Yet daily tragedies on flawed and unsustainable road infrastructure paint a troubling picture.
In 2023 alone, more than 172,000 people lost their lives on Indian roads, an average of 474 deaths each day, or nearly one every three minutes.
Despite investment and repeated efforts, India’s roads remain among the most unsafe in the world.
Cyclists and two-wheeler riders compete for space while an estimated 20,000 to 30,000 cars and heavy vehicles are registered across the country each day.
Crowds of pedestrians stand precariously on road medians as high-speed traffic passes by. Three or four times a week, ordinary citizens may find themselves held up in traffic for hours while a politician’s convoy moves along the route.
Given that the Bharatiya Janata Party is in power in 22 Indian states, such convoys are often associated with BJP leaders.
Life under the BJP-RSS ecosystem is one in which cultural majoritarianism, neoliberalism and religious revivalism coexist within Indian democracy.
Rather than addressing unemployment, inflation or agrarian distress, the BJP-RSS combine has fused market fundamentalism with majoritarian authoritarianism.
Corporate deregulation, privatisation, weakened labour protections and the concentration of capital among major conglomerates have become defining features of this period. Critics frequently point to the Adani and Ambani groups, both widely regarded as close to the Modi government.
Hindutva’s strategy has also included educational revisionism. History textbooks have been rewritten to glorify Hindu kings and demonise Muslim rulers, especially the Mughals.
Government bodies such as the National Council of Educational Research and Training have been accused of being stacked with ideologues who reinforce Hindu-Muslim binaries.
Critics also argue that control over institutions such as the Election Commission, the judiciary and investigative agencies has weakened legal and political opposition.
The “hat-trick” mega event in Melbourne was not merely a spectacle. It was also a demonstration of how sections of the Indian diaspora have become diplomatic, financial and ideological intermediaries, helping to normalise Hindutva in Western capitals and providing political cover for what many see as India’s authoritarian drift.
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