Dreams which should not let India sleep.

Awake at Midnight: The Dreams India Cannot Sleep On

On the night of 14 August 1947, moments before the stroke of midnight, Jawaharlal Nehru told the Constituent Assembly that "when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom." It was a striking image: a nation waking while others slept. Half a century later, A.P.J. Abdul Kalam gave young Indians a related thought, often quoted in his name: a dream is not what you see in sleep, but what does not let you sleep. Between these two lines lies the story of modern India. Freedom was the first dream, and it was won. But a free nation also inherits unfinished dreams, and their urgency should keep it restless. The dreams that should not let India sleep are those whose fulfilment decides whether every Indian, and not only India, becomes free: freedom from want, from discrimination, from ignorance, from insecurity and from a poisoned planet.

Dreams of this kind differ from fantasies. A fantasy comforts; a national dream disturbs. It names the gap between what the Constitution promises and what citizens live through, and it makes that gap feel intolerable. The Preamble itself is such a dream, promising justice, social, economic and political, liberty of thought and expression, equality of status and opportunity, and fraternity assuring the dignity of the individual. Rabindranath Tagore captured the spirit of this restlessness in Gitanjali, praying for a country "where the mind is without fear and the head is held high", and ending with a single plea:

"Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake."

The first dream is freedom from want. Nehru reminded the Assembly in 1947 that the ambition of the greatest man of their generation, Gandhi, had been to wipe every tear from every eye. India has travelled far on this road. The Green Revolution ended the famines that haunted the colonial era, Verghese Kurien's Operation Flood made India the world's largest milk producer, and a NITI Aayog discussion paper of 2024 estimated that about 24.8 crore people moved out of multidimensional poverty between 2013-14 and 2022-23. Yet hunger, child stunting and precarious informal work persist for millions. A nation that has reached the Moon cannot rest while some of its children still sleep hungry. This dream must keep India awake because it is the foundation of every other.

The second dream is the one B.R. Ambedkar warned about on 25 November 1949. He told the Constituent Assembly that on 26 January 1950 India would "enter into a life of contradictions": equality in politics, through one person one vote, but inequality in social and economic life. That contradiction has narrowed through reservations, the abolition of untouchability under Article 17 and the rise of leaders from historically excluded communities. It has not vanished. Caste still shapes marriage, occupation and violence, and manual scavenging survives despite being outlawed. Social democracy, as Ambedkar called it, remains the most demanding of India's dreams because it asks citizens to change their own conduct, not merely their laws.

Closely linked is the dream of gender equality. Women in India won the vote in 1950 without the long struggles seen in many Western countries, and the 73rd and 74th Amendments brought lakhs of women into panchayats and municipalities. The Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam of 2023 promises one-third of seats in the Lok Sabha and state assemblies to women once it takes effect after the next delimitation. Yet women's participation in paid work remains low, unpaid care work falls overwhelmingly on them, and fear of violence still limits their movement in public spaces. A country cannot become developed while half its talent is kept at home. This is a dream that should cost India more sleep than it does.

The fourth dream concerns the mind. In 1951 barely eighteen per cent of Indians could read; by the 2011 Census about seventy-four per cent could. Enrolment is now close to universal at the primary level. But the dream was never mere enrolment. Surveys of learning, such as the Annual Status of Education Report, have repeatedly found that many children in the middle grades cannot read a simple text or do basic arithmetic. The National Education Policy 2020 responds with a mission for foundational literacy and numeracy and a push for research, but India still spends less than one per cent of its GDP on research and development. Kalam's own vision of a developed India, set out in India 2020, rested on knowledge and scientific temper. Without them, demographic dividend can turn into demographic burden.

Moreover, India must dream of institutions worthy of its people. Democracy is not only elections; it is courts that decide cases in reasonable time, police that citizens trust, legislatures that debate before they legislate, and a free press. India's crores of pending court cases and its patchy record of police reform show how far this dream has to travel. Federalism, too, must remain cooperative rather than combative if a continental democracy is to keep its many languages, faiths and regions together. The dream of fraternity, without which, Ambedkar warned, liberty and equality would be "no deeper than coats of paint", depends on institutions that treat every citizen alike.

Yet some dreams belong to the future generations who cannot yet vote. India is among the countries most exposed to climate change, from heatwaves on the plains to glacier retreat in the Himalaya. At Glasgow in 2021 India pledged to reach net zero emissions by 2070, and its solar and wind capacity has grown rapidly through the decade. The dream here is to prove that a developing country can lift its people out of poverty without repeating the carbon-heavy path of the industrialised West. Mahatma Gandhi's insight that the earth provides enough for every man's need but not for every man's greed gives this dream a moral core.

There is also a dream beyond India's borders. A nation of more than 1.4 billion people, with an ancient civilisation and a democratic constitution, has something to offer a divided world. India's presidency of the G20 in 2023, held under the theme "One Earth, One Family, One Future" drawn from Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam, and the admission of the African Union as a permanent member at the New Delhi summit, showed what that voice can do. But India's voice abroad will be only as strong as the dreams it fulfils at home. A country that lets its poorest citizens down cannot speak convincingly for the Global South.

Dreams can, of course, become dangerous when they turn into slogans. A target such as a developed India by 2047 is useful only if it is measured honestly and pursued through institutions rather than announcements. Dreams that serve one community against another are nightmares in disguise. The test of a genuine national dream is the one Gandhi offered in his talisman: recall the face of the poorest person you have seen and ask whether your next step will be of any use to him.

When Nehru spoke of India awaking at midnight, he added that the achievement of freedom was "but a step, an opening of opportunity". Nearly eight decades later, that opportunity is still being redeemed. The dreams of food for all, dignity regardless of birth, equality for women, minds that can think, institutions that can be trusted and a planet that can be inherited are not luxuries to be enjoyed in sleep. They are duties that ought to keep a nation restless. A country that sleeps soundly while these dreams remain unfinished has forgotten why it woke up in 1947. India's task is to stay awake until Tagore's heaven of freedom becomes the ordinary morning of every citizen.