Modi’s rockets vs. Indians rations by Avani Devi

India is reaching for the stars, literally. Rockets blaze into the cosmos, satellites map the moon’s dust, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi speaks of a grand future: a spacefaring nation with a mighty army to match. He sells us a dream where India is no longer a developing country scrambling for relevance, but a superpower whose shadow falls over Mars and the Indo-Pacific alike.

But beneath the triumphant headlines and glittering parades, something else is happening: a quiet, aching hunger that grows by the day. Not in some distant corner of the country, but everywhere, in rural fields, urban slums, even among the so-called middle class. The dream of a "new India" is being built atop an old reality: poverty, crumbling health systems, failing schools, and a job market that’s tighter than a miser’s wallet. In Modi’s India, the stars are for the few, but the struggle is for the many.

Let’s begin with the elephant in the room or rather, the tank. Modi has poured vast sums into military spending. India now boasts one of the world’s largest standing armies, with grand displays of power at every opportunity. “Strong borders, strong nation,” they say. But ask a young farmer in Uttar Pradesh what that strength means to him as he watches his crops fail and his loans grow teeth.

While soldiers march in synchronized perfection, 74 million Indians live without proper shelter. And let’s not talk about toilets, Swachh Bharat was supposed to fix that. Yet, many villages still wait for clean water, let alone dignified sanitation.

Of course, national security is important. But what is a secure nation without secure citizens? If you can't feed your child or afford insulin, the size of your navy is a rather hollow comfort.

India’s recent space missions were, no doubt, technological marvels. ISRO scientists deserve applause. Chandrayaan, Aditya-L1, and talk of a crewed Gaganyaan mission, it’s ambitious, it’s brilliant, and it captures the imagination. But it also serves as a very useful distraction.

Each launch becomes a headline-grabbing celebration, a smokescreen for the burning issues back on Earth. As fuel propels spacecraft beyond Earth’s pull, it also fuels a nationalist narrative meant to silence dissent. You’re told to marvel at our lunar ambition while turning a blind eye to underfunded schools where children still sit on cracked floors and teachers double as janitors. After all, who dares criticize a moon landing? Well, someone should.

Because while India plots its celestial conquest, 1 in 3 Indian children is malnourished. In a country where more than half of all primary school students can’t read at grade level, a space race starts to look like a luxury, if not a cruelty.

The COVID-19 pandemic should have been a wake-up call. Instead, it became a spectacle of chaos: bodies floating in rivers, oxygen cylinders hoarded like gold, crematoriums burning day and night. India’s healthcare infrastructure, already stretched thin, collapsed in slow motion on live television.

Yet post-pandemic, instead of investing robustly in public health, we returned to the business of missiles and mega-events. AIIMS and other premium hospitals are swamped, while rural clinics lack even basic medicines. The irony? Many of the workers who built India’s high-tech hospitals and pharma factories can't afford to be treated in them.

Modi dreams of India exporting vaccines and AI, but within our own borders, medicine remains a luxury and education a gamble.

The language of nationalism is seductive. It makes people feel important, included in a grand narrative. But it's a cruel seduction when it becomes a substitute for real progress. “Bharat Mata ki Jai” doesn’t put food on the table. A child chanting “Vande Mataram” in a classroom without a roof is not patriotism, it’s tragedy dressed up as virtue.

Modi has made patriotism performative. We wave flags while ignoring the widening economic divide. Billion-dollar infrastructure projects coexist with street vendors being evicted without compensation. When people protest rising food prices, they're told they're ungrateful. When journalists highlight homelessness, they’re labeled anti-national. This isn’t just bad policy. It’s moral failure.

There’s a haunting phrase used often in post-imperial studies: “bread and circuses.” Give the masses enough spectacle, and they won’t notice the famine.

Modi’s India seems to have learned that lesson well. Space launches, military tattoos, digital dreams, it’s a dazzling circus. But the bread is missing.

We should be proud of our scientific advancements. But we should be ashamed if they come at the cost of leaving millions behind. A truly powerful nation feeds its people before it feeds its ego. A truly visionary leader builds classrooms before missiles. A real space program lifts a nation, not just its rockets.

India deserves ambition. But not empty ambition that sacrifices its people at the altar of prestige.

Modi’s grand projects may one day put an Indian flag on Mars. But what will it mean if, back home, that flag flutters over a hungry child, a homeless family, or a young girl who drops out of school because her parents can’t afford a uniform?

India is not just its military or its space agency. It is its people. Their future, their dignity, their well-being, that is the true measure of national greatness.

And until we get that right, no rocket will ever take us where we need to go.