Standing in front of the historic Red Fort in Delhi, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday pledged to transform India into a developed country in the next 25 years.
“The way the world is seeing India is changing. There is hope from India and the reason is the skills of 1.3 billion Indians,” Modi said. “The diversity of India is our strength. Being the mother of democracy gives India the inherent power to scale new heights.”
Modi’s words came as millions celebrated 75 years of Indian independence since the stroke of midnight on August 15, 1947 that ended nearly 200 years of British colonial rule.
At the time, India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru said the country was on a path of revival and renaissance.
“A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new,” Nehru said. “When an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance.”
Seventy-five years later, the India of today is almost unrecognizable from that of Nehru’s time.
Since gaining independence, India has built one of the world’s fastest growing economies, is home to some of the world’s richest people, and according to the United Nations, its population will soon surpass China’s as the world’s largest.
But despite the nation’s surging wealth, poverty remains a daily reality for millions of Indians and significant challenges remain for a diverse and growing nation of disparate regions, languages, and faiths.
