India always reminds me that I am not an Indian. It isn’t simply the loudness of the cuisine, the scent of the sights, or the shape of the noise. As I’ve said prior – India is an assault on the senses – this I accept wholeheartedly. What I am referring to, however, is a difference in mentality. Indeed, the average Indian has been carved by the chisel of experience, their mind conditioned to inertia, extraction, and an unshakable cynicism.

This is very foreign to me as an American. The American spirit is optimism, enterprising, extroversion, hope, and tenacity. In that way, American thinking is more sattvic than the modern Indian mode, which has long been in the raptures of tamas. It disgusts me, honestly.

This has become an unfortunate underpinning of my view of India. I am still bullish on it, especially but not solely because of Narendra Modi, who we will get to shortly. But I am gaining a hatred of the mentality of Indians. Particularly the unimaginative, constantly complaining Dasa character spewing from this un-Aryan cynicism. Frankly, Indians complain too much and do too little. These forthcoming reflections stemmed from a recent trip to India and numerous conversations with those intimately involved in its political and economic life.

Inertia

Inertia is the single word that has defined India for decades. Newton’s First Law states that an object at rest stays at rest, and and object in motion stays in motions with the same speed in the same direction unless acted upon by a net external force. The greater the mass of an object, the more inertia it has and the larger force required to remove it from its stupor and stagnancy. The gravity of Indian society rivals a black hole. It has made the state submit to its whims via democracy, yet it also blames the state for all its ills. And there is indeed some truth to this. India’s elites have been abysmal.

This is a group that pulled their nose up looking the other way while most Indians defecated in the open across the Republic’s history, with as much as 48% of Indians as late as 2012. Their interest was geared towards signaling virtue abroad rather than cultivating it at home. They saw themselves as a different species rather than recognizing their blood, their skin color, their features in their fellow compatriots. They ruled like the Raj rather than a Raja. That said, this caste, defunct of any semblance of class, is on the decline. A New India has arisen – or has it?

A dismaying feeling I got from many I spoke to in India was that things will always remain the same. A shock setback in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections put Modi and the BJP, the harbingers of a New India and that much heralded change, down to 240 seats from 303 in 2019 as they needed allies to form a majority. But it isn’t simply that they lost seats that is the issue – it is why they lost seats. Modi went into the 2024 elections without a marquee welfare scheme, while the opposition promised a mixture of Venezuelan economics with Lebanese cultural policies culminating in a caste-based wealth redistribution policy docket. This strategy would gut the BJP’s tally. The lesson the BJP learnt from Lok Sabha was that it also needed to indulge in ideas that reveal the worst of Indians.

The BJP would bounce back in a bombastic manner with three unexpected state victories on the trot. But politicians and political consultants who worked on various victorious state level campaigns post-Lok Sabha weren’t as enthusiastic about this comeback story. They spoke of the BJP’s main difference-maker in their state victories compared to their Lok Sabha slide: the BJP bent the knee to the “hafta” – a word meaning “week” in Hindi but in colloquial slang it means a weekly bribe or extortion payment. It was Indians’ weekly weakness. Other parties offered such, so why couldn’t the BJP do as much? In addition, the BJP upped their micro-targeting messaging, pinpointing identitarian or niche-issues of certain castes and classes creating a sophisticated communication network over social media and beyond. Electoral victory really did come down to cash and caste. Pathetic.

Party Poopers

Modi remains popular but the intensity of popularity has waned. In a way, this is good. Local leaders are gaining more experience and exposure as they cannot ride the coattails of Modi. But this local element isn’t always a good thing. As always, Indian localism isn’t the efficient expression of the Talebian type but rather it is an extortionate and feudal avatar. One complaint I came across throughout regions was the brazenness of corruption of even the BJP’s lower brass. While people viewed Modi as incorruptible, they complained of BJP leaders becoming Congress-like in terms of corruption. They would lament at Modi’s work being undone by lower level indiscipline but characteristically sighed in the usual cynical way. Some would remark that as long as they do more work than Congress, they’ll tolerate the corruption.

And I think this last statements gets to the meat of the subject – Indians want to see work being done even if there is corruption. Any research into Gilded Age America or the industrialization of Asian tigers would yield the common cronyism occurring in state capitalist models. Yet at the end of the day, this is how these countries industrialized and we haven’t found another path. Many young Indians have realized this. They’d like India to move fast but firstly they want to see it moving more. This is another large theme I felt – the youth’s dil maange more.

The youth want more in governance, in politics, in technology, in infrastructure, in ideology…in everything. The rotting inertia of India contrasts with the world glistening on their phone screens everyday. They recognize that Indians are not incapable of civilization, strong institutions, and aren’t doomed to a rock bottom civic sense. They fear for India going back to the ways of old. There is a creeping radicalism emerging beyond the usual moaning and complaining that is far too characteristic of the urban Indian. There are young Indians who want to make a dent in India. Not everyone can migrate. There are some who have decided to stay and are hell-bent on transforming their country, no matter the cost. And there are a few reasons why I think they will win.

Bit By Bit, Then All At Once

Much of the angst of India is actually growing pains. The dust of endless construction is a sign of an infrastructural Big Bang. The suffocation of cities is an omen of rapid urbanization. The gaping of inequality is an indication of growth. Not to say all these concerns are not real, but great churns produce both prizes and poison.

There is a reason Modi still remains popular. The transformation in India plays out in front of your eyes. For foreigners, it is difficult to imagine the crowd of construction cranes, the volume of billboards advertising new real estate, the new skyscrapers shadowing slums, the throng of 4 wheels replacing 2, and so many other obvious signs of development. Hundreds of millions of people have received toilets, electricity, running water, permanent housing, and so much more from the fingertips of Modi’s governance. I have no hesitation in saying that Narendra Modi dragged much of India from the 19th to 21st century in just a decade.

But what is really missing in India still is economic reform. And indeed, Trump’s shakeup of the global economic order via his tariff war may provide a window for central action from Modi, but the scars of not just 2024 but the past at large run deep. India’s reformers, whether PV Narasimha Rao or Atal Bihari Vajpayee, fell into the jaws of defeat after displaying their bravery. Though, it must be remarked that the reason for the BJP’s 2024 reduction in tally doesn’t simply come down to not producing a new grand welfare scheme to satiate the masses (though that angle is undoubtably true), but also that it didn’t deliver that organic bottom-up animalistic growth so that such schemes are not so necessary. No doubt India has been the world’s fastest growing economy coupled with a rare responsible fiscal scenario, but excess fiscal hawkishness, COVID, & putting out macroeconomic fires from prior administrations earlier in the term have hamstrung the government.

India and as a result the Indian people are shackled by its land, labor, agriculture, and business laws. Proposed changes to these laws will agitate rent-seekers who extract off of the current equilibrium. They will quickly incite others off of reasons of community, honor, class, or whatever other reason for people to protest. This happened with failed and stalled land, labor, and farm reforms. There is an electoral cost towards reform in India – at least at a central level. During my conversations with a politician in the BJP, he told me that the old strategy of “masterstroking” wouldn’t do. Reform must come from stealth and the state.

This is an unfortunate reality. What this means is that India’s growth story will become more lopsided than ever. The South and West have embraced industrialization and capitalism more than most other states. Their pace will continue to accelerate. However, I believe the West will soon leave even the South behind. The golden stretch between Amdavad, Gujarat and Mumbai, Maharashtra is the crucible of India’s tryst with capitalism. Capital friendliness is the name of the game in that sliver of silver. While the South contends with an unaffordable regionalism considering their lower TFR rates, Gujarat and Maharashtra choose cosmopolitanism.

No doubt, there will be regionalist murmurs in the West as well. A usually jolly family friend of ours in Gujarat remarked how the new migrants from the heartland don’t even understand Gujarati while prior ones would at least lend an ear the earthy West Indian tongue, though responding back in Hindi. A slight simmer is brewing in Gujarat while Maharashtra preempts feelings by enacting laws forcing compulsory Marathi speaking in government offices. But relative to other parts of industrialized India, these states are still the most open. And India’s future will belong to those whose markets are most free – to places and people that are capitalist and cosmopolitan.

This regionalization of India’s growth story has a predecessor across the Himalayas. Deng Xiaoping’s epochal Southern Tour had him pitching Special Economic Zones (SEZs) in southern cities such as Shenzhen and Shantou before rolling out his reforms across the country. These zones needed to demonstrate the rewards of capital-friendly policies to convince other regions of China to join in. Currently, we are in the middle of that conversation of convincing for India.

Already, some states are taking on aspects of the failed farm laws on their own while others ease labor regulations. Indian states are now tussling in a Battle Royale over investment opportunities. This has also bled into the realm of culture wars as well. One interesting trend I’ve noted is that compared to 3 years ago, regionalists online are competing over which state gets the most investment, something unheard of prior. Naturally, this has led to jealousy over places like Gujarat, but ultimately this is a great thing. There is an organically emergent section of India, its aspirant class, that wants their city, their region, their state to be the nest of India’s next big investment egg. These are green shoots not only in the soil of India’s growth story but more so in the minds of Indians themselves.

India’s impasse is not merely political or economic—it is profoundly spiritual. At its core, this moment tests India’s soul, challenging its people to rediscover an inner optimism buried beneath layers of historical disappointment. The tension between the familiar weight of inertia and the magnetic pull of ambition invites a deeper introspection: Can India reclaim the spirit that once made it a cradle of imagination and dynamism, or will cynicism calcify into destiny?

Perhaps India’s greatest revelation lies in understanding that the nation’s external transformation is inextricably linked to an internal renaissance. The youth’s hunger for growth signals not only economic aspiration but a collective desire for self-respect, pride, and purpose. India’s path forward depends not solely on policies or politicians, but on reigniting a dormant idealism—a rediscovery of hope as a catalyst for genuine, lasting change. In facing its contradictions openly, India may yet illuminate a uniquely Indian path forward, proving that true progress begins when a nation decides to believe in itself once more.