BY Navin Upadhyay
New Delhi | August 15, 2025
As the tricolour unfurled over the Red Fort this morning and fighter jets roared overhead, Bhupen Hazarika’s haunting words seemed to echo in the hearts of those unseen by the television cameras:
“Vistar hai apar, praja dono paar, kare hahakar… Nishabd sada, oh Ganga tum… Ganga behti ho kyun?”
(Your vast expanse is endless, people on both banks cry in despair… Yet you remain silent, O Ganga, why do you flow?)
India marked its 79th Independence Day today with grand parades, patriotic speeches, and a proud display of military might. Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressed the nation with promises of progress, youth empowerment, and economic growth. Schoolchildren in crisp uniforms sang the national anthem in city squares; streets bloomed in saffron, white, and green.
But away from the pomp and pride, there exists another India—where “freedom” is an unkept promise and survival itself is a daily battle.
The Children Who Eat with Stray Dogs
In the underbellies of our shining cities, barefoot children scavenge in garbage heaps for food, their small hands blackened by the filth of a nation’s neglect. They share scraps of stale bread with street dogs, their bellies swollen not from nourishment but from malnutrition. According to UNICEF’s 2024 report, over 36 million Indian children under the age of five are stunted or wasted due to poor nutrition—numbers that shame a country celebrating 78 years of independence. On the streets of Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, and countless smaller towns, you can still see children sleeping under flyovers and beside railway tracks, their “playgrounds” littered with broken glass and rusted tin. For them, childhood is not a time of dreams, but of survival.
On the streets of delhi poor children earn their lunch by selling national flags ahead of 78th independence day.
📷Gowhar wani#IndependenceDay2024 pic.twitter.com/sRKqRKAlr8
— Gowhar Wani (گوہر وانی) (@GowharSpeaks) August 14, 2024
( Nothing changes. This is last year’s picture. It’s the same this year’s too)
The numbers are no less grim in rural India, where seasonal hunger claims young lives every year. A 2023 National Family Health Survey revealed that one in three rural children suffers from chronic malnutrition. In drought-hit Bundelkhand, children accompany their mothers to collect water from distant wells before dawn, often skipping school to work in the fields or beg in nearby towns. Many never learn to read or write, their futures sold cheaply to the daily demands of hunger and poverty. While the nation’s leaders speak of becoming a $5 trillion economy, these children grow up invisible, caught in a cycle that no Independence Day speech seems able—or willing—to break.
Farmers Who Die with Their Debt
In the fields of Vidarbha, Bundelkhand, and Telangana, over 10,000 farmers take their own lives every year. Crushed under the weight of unpaid loans and crop failures, they drink pesticide under the same sun that shines over Delhi’s parades. Their widows, draped in faded sarees, stand silently in doorways—symbols of a rural despair that never makes it to the victory speeches.
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Daughters Burned for Dowries
In villages where the tricolour waves proudly, the silent fires of dowry deaths still burn, claiming the lives of over 6,450 women in 2022 alone—an average of nearly 18 every single day, according to the National Crime Records Bureau. Between 2017 and 2021, more than 35,000 young brides were killed, often doused in kerosene and set alight under the pretext of “kitchen accidents,” their screams lost behind closed doors and their deaths buried under layers of stigma, silence, and complicity. The reality is grimmer still, for countless cases remain unreported, masked by family shame or threats from perpetrators. Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, West Bengal, Rajasthan, and Haryana account for the overwhelming majority,
The Jobless Youth, Waiting for a Tomorrow That Never Comes
In cities from Patna to Bhopal, young graduates queue at job fairs that end in disappointment. Degrees yellow in folders while parents age waiting for their sons and daughters to find work. For many, Independence means little when economic chains keep them bound.
Manipur’s 60,000 Forgotten Citizens
Far from the celebratory parades and flag-hoisting ceremonies in Delhi, in the rain-soaked hills and crowded plains of Manipur, over 60,000 people remain displaced by months of brutal ethnic violence that erupted in May 2023. They live crammed into temporary relief camps—abandoned school buildings, makeshift sheds, and flimsy tarpaulin shelters that leak with every downpour—where privacy is a forgotten luxury and clean drinking water is scarce. Many have lost not just their livelihoods, but also loved ones—siblings, parents, or spouses—whose names are now part of a growing list of the dead. As the rest of the country marks 78 years of independence with speeches, fireworks, and televised pageantry, the people in Manipur’s hills and valleys count another day in exile, unsure when they will return to homes that may no longer exist. For them, August 15 is not a day of pride but a painful reminder of the promises of unity and peace that remain tragically unfulfilled.
The Victims of Hate
The politics of division has left thousands uprooted, scarred by hate campaigns, communal violence, and unforgivable acts of mob lynching. Most recently, in Jalgaon’s Jamner taluka, a 21-year-old youth named Suleman Rahim Khan was lynched in broad daylight. Spotted at a café with a 17-year-old girl, he was brutally dragged off by a group of men and beaten repeatedly—his body bearing injuries to “sensitive parts”—before collapsing outside his home, where even his grieving family was assaulted as they tried to save him
READ: Rahul Gandhi: BJP Erasing Tribal Land Records to ‘Steal Rights
The Hunger That Doesn’t Make Headlines
Despite decades of food grain surplus, millions in India still sleep hungry. The Public Distribution System fails in remote areas; ration cards lie unused in the pockets of the illiterate and displaced. Independence Day feasts in government halls contrast starkly with the empty thalis in countless homes.
Freedom’s Unfinished Work
Was this the India for which Bhagat Singh, Gandhi, and Nehru dreamed? Where farmers drink poison, children fight dogs for scraps, women burn for dowries, youth beg for jobs, and citizens are killed over their names, faiths, and identities?
Naitikata nasht hui, manavta bhrasht hui
Nirlajya bhav se behti ho kyun?
Itihaans ki pukaar, kare hunkaar
O Ganga ki dhar, nirbal jan ko
Sabal sangrami, samagragrami
Banati nahi ho kyun?
Bhupen Hazarika’s lament flows on—reminding us that until every Indian shares equally in dignity, safety, and hope, the Ganga will keep asking her eternal question: Why do you flow silently when your children cry?
Until no one sleeps hungry, no farmer dies in debt, no girl is killed for dowry, no family lives in a camp, and no citizen fears the mob, our tryst with destiny remains unfulfilled.
