India's Broken Tryst

Seventy years after independence, millions of people across India still live on the edge of basic survival. Children miss school, women lack safe toilets, and unemployed men drift through their days with nothing to do. Even in the cities, where enterprise ought to thrive, the state weighs heavily on every ordinary effort. Veteran columnist Tavleen Singh moves from the crowded pavements of Mumbai to the luxury flats of the wealthy, telling the stories of people she encounters along the way: a woman who remembers hunger, a street vendor pushed out of his trade, young boys taken from their mother over begging. Singh examines how India's political class has let its promise slip away, and asks what kind of future a country can build when even basic needs go unmet.