Independence Day, stock-taking day: Where have we come from? Where have we got to? Where should we be going? Fifty-five years is the right kind of alliterative birth anniversary for such questions. So: What in the last 55 years has changed? And what has remained the same?

Here goes:
Democracy and politics

NOT CHANGED: We were born a democracy; we remain a democracy. Few countries liberated with or after us can make the same claim. Not only are we the world's biggest democracy, we are also now, thanks to Rajiv Gandhi, the world's most representative democracy: 30 lakh elective positions in the panchayats, 10 lakh of which are occupied by women, the most dramatic empowerment of half of humankind ever seen. India, we can say with pride, 55 years on, is among the very, very few nations to have translated independence for the country into freedom for her people.

CHANGED: The quality of our political leadership. In 1947, our entire political leadership comprised men and women steeled in the furnace of the freedom movement, a movement based on the politicisation of a code of high ethics and demanding morals set by the most saintly politician of all time. It was, however, an elite leadership in the best and worst sense of the term: highly educated, often independently wealthy, almost all with professional qualifications, fitted to lead the country, yes — but hardly a mirror of society at large. Five decades on, democracy has lumpenised our political class, but Parliament, particularly the Lok Sabha, is much more representative of the real India than was the Constituent Assembly. This has lowered the quality of our public life and leached it of its moral content, but at the same time made the composite leadership much more a reflection of our people and society. That is, at once, democracy's greatest success — and its greatest failure.

Poverty and consumption
NOT CHANGED: The staggering reality of poverty. Fifty-five years on, there are as many Indians below the poverty line as there were at Independence. We were then just about the poorest country in the world. We are still just about the poorest country in the world.

CHANGED: At Independence, two-thirds of our population lived below the poverty line. Today, two-thirds live above the poverty line. In other words, at Independence, about 100 million Indians were above the poverty line; today 700 million Indians are above the poverty line. A third of this 700 million, about 200-300 million are "consumers", about 100 million of whom are in the higher echelons of the middle class. That is, there are as many million relatively prosperous Indians today as there were Indians below the poverty line in 1947. Income distribution has dramatically improved — but still, alas, 10 per cent of the population garners 40 per cent of the nation's income. You see why I remain an unreconstructed socialist?
However, growth is accelerating, and income distribution has not, as in many growth-conscious developing countries (notably China), significantly worsened. In the first half of the 20th century, the colonial Indian economy grew at an average of 0.7 per cent per annum. Under Manmohan Singh, it grew at over 7 per cent per annum — ten times higher! There has been a slide since (beginning with P. Chidambaram's "miracle" budget) but the trend rate is still within kissing distance of 6 per cent, among the highest in the world.

United nation and divided people
NOT CHANGED: The nature of India's nationhood. We are still the world's greatest celebration of diversity; the only civilisation in world history to have combined antiquity with heterogeneity; the proud inheritors of a composite culture which is a living and dynamic tribute to all the many cultural and spiritual influences from all over the world.

CHANGED: The fracturing of our polity as we move from single-party dominance to coalitions of convenience. The restructuring of our polity, welcome for what it does for a democracy of alternatives, is, however, tragically founded on an amoeba-like splitting of society into caste and communal and regional identities that emphasise sectarian interest at the cost of the integrity of society and the nation at large. The inclusiveness which characterised the freedom movement and the early decades after Independence is giving way to narrow exclusivisms which seek advantage for their segments by disadvantaging other segments. Gujarat is only the latest and most vicious expression of this politics of hatred.

Art and the absurd
NOT CHANGED: Bharatnatyam. Khajuraho. Pahari miniatures. Rabindrasangeet. The scriptures. Meera bhajans. Christmas carols. Sufiyana kalam. Nargis then, Madhuri Dixit now. Everything that makes India great.

CHANGED:Mulk Raj Anand, then (explaining what b..c.. means to the white man); Arundhati Roy now, making the white man pick that up on his own. Also: TV. TV ads. TV soaps. Devdas in opulent colour. Necklines in urban India. Having to ask Choli ke peeche kya hai? in rural India. North Indians eating dosas; Madrasis guzzling tandoori chicken. Fashion shows. Anu Malik's plagiarisation (started post-Independence by O.P. Nayyar). Hockey (Oh! What a fall there was, my countrymen!). A Test team with world-class batsmen but no world-class bowler — an absurd inversion!

But the biggest change of them all: The spiritual aulad of Veer Savarkar and Guru Golwalkar finding salvation in a pitrabhoomi called California and a punyabhoomi further west than even Makkah! Jai Shri Ram. And — good God! — a knickerwallah government in Gandhi's land.