India is the Greatest Country in the World Why we must stop preaching this lie.

“Sare Jahan se Accha, Hindustan Hamara” (Better than the entire world, is our Hindustan) are words etched in every Indian person’s psyche.
It is the unofficial national song. It forms the basis for our national identity.
Of course, the notion that one’s nation is the greatest is not exclusive to India, but in this country of 1.2 billion people, we drum it in with so much gusto, that we often forget it completely contradicts with our national motto — Satyameva Jayate (Truth Alone Prevails).
I suppose it’s easy for a country like India — with more than five* thousand years of documented history, one of the world’s oldest religions, the largest democracy, the third highest purchasing parity, the fourth longest rail network, the sixth highest number of billionaires — to imagine that it is the “greatest” country in the world. Of course, what it forgets is that a lot of the aforementioned “achievements” are either consequences of simply having been inhabited for a long time or having the second largest population in the world. For the former, the current citizens cannot take credit, and surely, for the latter, they shouldn't want to.
Indians have always been overly patriotic (a byproduct of the British Raj and the consequent struggle for independence), but in the last decade and a half — a period of unprecedented economic growth and the rise of the Great Indian Middle Class — a new, extremism-driven wave of nationalism is taking hold of the country. One that is making it “cool” to beat your chest and blindly proclaim that your country is the greatest, whereas those who dare to criticise the many pandemic flaws and point out the potpourri of contradictions that is “India Inc”, are chastised and labelled unpatriotic.
While the modern, educated, middle-class Indian will rattle of a bunch of statistics and rankings off the top of their head to prove to you how well India Inc is performing, we often forget (and/or don't like to be reminded) about the various problems that plague this behemoth nation.
Although we have the 10th highest GDP in the world, we rank 133rd, behind China (93rd) and Congo Republic (128th) for GDP per capita. We’re 50th (out of 224) for Infant Mortality Rate. 155th when it comes to environmental performance — only 23 nations are worse than us and most of them are the poorest of Africans states. 147th “best” in education — Cambodia, where Pol Pot tried to kill anyone with the ability to read or write ranks 134th. 105th in the Gender Gap index. 135th on the Human Development Index. Nearly 69% of the population, that’s roughly 850 million people live on under $2 a day.
In a nation that is home to the world’s third largest Muslim population, our political leaders keep using the offensive misnomer “Hindustan”. The colours on our flag were supposed to represent our unity in diversity and secularism, but modern India is a nation of 29 states, of which an alarming number would happily secede; and in a vacuum of genuine leadership, we’ve elected a Prime Minister who was embroiled in a sectarian violence court case (then acquitted — this is India after all).
At the stroke of midnight 15th August 1947, when Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first Prime Minister, delivered his stirring speech “Tryst with Destiny”, I doubt he could have envisioned a country so far from his vision less than just seven decades after he made his famous proclamations.

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