@kazani

Republic Day marks the adoption of India's Constitution on January 26, 1950. It turned the country into a republic and, on paper, committed it to democracy, equality, and justice. Every year we get parades, flag-hoisting, patriotic songs, and a display of military hardware. It's meant to be a celebration of the "world's largest democracy." I don't feel much of that pride anymore. For me, and for a lot of people who are paying attention in 2026, it mostly feels like ritual without substance. The country puts on a grand show on Rajpath, but behind it the system looks badly corroded. Corruption isn't an exception here. It's the operating model. Politicians siphon off public money while roads fall apart and hospitals run out of basics. We saw it with the Commonwealth Games in 2010. We've kept seeing it since, in coal, real estate, defense, and public works. Ordinary people still pay bribes to get a driver's license, a hospital bed, or a file moved from one desk to another. It's hard to celebrate a "republic" when the rule of law feels like something you can buy. Crime has become background noise. Murders, thefts, communal clashes none of it shocks anyone anymore. And then there's violence against women, which is impossible to ignore. India has built a global reputation for being unsafe for women, from big cities to small towns. The Nirbhaya case in 2012 was supposed to be a turning point. It wasn't. Assaults keep rising, convictions stay low, and well-connected perpetrators often walk free. Politicians give speeches, promise action, and move on. Waving the tricolor feels hollow when so many women live with daily fear. Politics doesn't help. What used to look like a messy but real democracy now feels like a permanent shouting match. Parties polarize people along religion, caste, and region. Leaders stoke resentment because it wins votes. Lynchings, hate crimes, and online mobs are treated like collateral damage. Much of the media sounds less like journalism and more like a party newsletter. The Constitution talks about secularism and free speech. In practice, both look weaker every year. Laws target minorities. Dissent gets branded as anti-national. Criticize the wrong person and you're hit with legal trouble or a coordinated online pile-on. Meanwhile inequality keeps widening. Crony capitalism rewards the same few families. The poor fight over scraps. Unemployment stays high. Farmers keep protesting. Young people leave the country because they don't see a future here. Add the rest of it to the pile: filthy air, broken public healthcare, an education system built on rote learning, rivers drying up, forests disappearing. COVID made the cracks impossible to ignore. Oxygen ran out. Hospitals collapsed. The state failed people in plain sight. Against all that, Republic Day starts to feel like theater. A way to manufacture nationalism while ignoring structural failure. Celebrating a Constitution that's routinely violated feels like throwing a party in a burning house. There's one part of the day I still find hard to hate: the kids. Children in tricolor outfits, school parades, face paint, badly synchronized dances. They're not performing loyalty to a broken system. They're just excited. For them it's fun, community, and a sense of belonging. In a country where childhood is often cut short by poverty or worse, that innocence feels rare and real. So what does Republic Day mean to me? Mostly a missed opportunity. It could be a day for honest reckoning and pressure for reform. Instead it's pageantry. India still has enormous potential smart people, deep culture, a young population. But until the country confronts corruption, crime, inequality, and political decay head-on, these celebrations will keep sounding empty.

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