Who Takes Responsibility for India’s Unfinished Development?

India’s Unfinished Development?

78 Years Later: A Nation in Development or in Denial?

Since 1947, India has been "developing"—a word that has become a euphemism for deferred accountability, systemic ambiguity, and strategic blame-passing. For 78 years, politicians have come and gone, bureaucrats have retired with honors, and institutions have grown in prestige. Yet, one fundamental question remains unanswered:

Who is responsible for India’s development—or the lack of it?

The Rot in the Blame Game

Whenever questioned about poor outcomes—be it crumbling schools, erratic healthcare, rural distress, or faltering infrastructure—every stakeholder masterfully plays the victim:

• Politicians blame "previous governments" or opposing parties.

• IAS officers and bureaucrats hide behind political instructions and constitutional service rules.

• Judiciary avoids overreach by citing the need for executive independence.

• Media sensationalizes but rarely audits power structures with consistency.

• Think tanks publish reports but seldom hold names and systems accountable.

• Academia theorizes but stops short of naming institutional inefficiencies.

And amid this elaborate deflection mechanism, the Indian citizen is left with symbols, slogans, and selective schemes that seem to change with every electoral cycle—but not with systemic reform.

The Selective Distribution of Development

Why do some constituencies flourish while others decay? The answer is not governance capacity—it’s governance will, entangled with:

• Vote bank politics

• Caste arithmetic

• Religious polarization

• Funding favoritism

• Media optics over impact metrics

Schemes are often tailored not based on need, but on strategic loyalty and ideological alignment. Favored MPs and MLAs manage to bring flyovers, IITs, AIIMS, and mega projects. Others languish without basic connectivity.

What’s missing? A transparent audit of public investments by constituency, by year, by project. Why hasn’t any ruling party—past or present—implemented a "Public Development Ledger" for each MP and MLA constituency?

Because transparency threatens control.

The Caste-Card and Religious Rhetoric: Diversionary Tools

Every time real questions are raised, public discourse is deliberately rerouted:

• Talk about corruption? Suddenly, the debate becomes about secularism vs nationalism.

• Talk about inefficiency? You're now in a pro- vs anti-reservation discussion.

• Ask about constituency-level development data? You are labeled a stooge of opposition forces.

Dalits, minorities, farmers, and tribal communities are spoken for, but rarely spoken to. Their lived realities become electoral assets—used, not transformed.

Where Are the IIMs, IITs, and Think Tanks?

The very institutions built to produce India’s intellectual vanguard have become strangely absent from systemic interrogation. There are brilliant policy researchers, yes. But institutional courage to challenge entrenched interests is missing.

• Why don’t IIMs build frameworks to audit public service delivery constituency-wise?

• Why don’t IITs work on real-time infrastructure accountability dashboards?

• Why hasn’t IISc led a national platform to trace the money trail from budget to beneficiary?

Because the moment an institution becomes inconvenient to the state machinery, it is defunded, discredited, or dismantled.

A Citizen-Centric Future: Time for PNCDNC Thinking

What India needs is a PNCDNC mindset—Post-Narrative, Citizen-Driven, Non-Captured thinking:

1. Post-Narrative: Move beyond ideological binaries. Demand facts, not filters.

2. Citizen-Driven: Civil society must take charge—track budgets, monitor outcomes, and create parallel scorecards.

3. Non-Captured: Institutions, media, and academia must fight intellectual capture. Independence is the new patriotism.

Action Items for a New Democratic Culture

• Constituency Report Cards: Crowdsourced data on each MLA and MP’s 5-year performance.

• IAS Accountability Index: Evaluate bureaucrats not just by service tenure, but impact metrics.

• Public Ledger Platforms: Track every rupee sanctioned and spent per district.

• Participatory Budgeting: Allow local citizens to vote on development priorities annually.

• Decentralized Journalism: Empower local citizen journalists with training, tools, and tech.

The Wake-Up Call

India is not poor because it lacks resources—it’s underdeveloped because accountability has no address.

We need to stop blaming "the system" and start unpacking who builds and benefits from it. Real freedom will come when citizens stop being clients of politicians and become auditors of democracy.

It’s time we ask:

“Not just who rules us, but how transparently and equitably are we being ruled?”