The freedom we inherited must become the resilience we leave behind By Prof. Ashok Kumar
Every year on 15 August, when the Tricolour rises over the Red Fort and across millions of homes, schools and institutions, we remember the extraordinary generation that fought for India’s freedom.
They gave us Swaraj.
They gave us the right to determine our own destiny.
They gave us a nation.
But Independence Day is not only a day to remember what we received from the past. It is also a day to ask what we are going to leave behind for the future.
And today, perhaps one of the most important questions before India is this:
Can we build a developed India without compromising the environment that sustains us?
- This is not an abstract question anymore.
- Climate change has moved from scientific reports into everyday life.
- A farmer watches the monsoon become less predictable.
- A family worries about the falling level of groundwater.
- A city struggles through extreme heat.
- A Himalayan community faces floods, landslides and changing snowfall.
- A coastal village watches the sea with growing uncertainty.
- A child grows up breathing air that is not as clean as it should be.
- These are not merely environmental problems.
- They are questions of livelihood, health, dignity, security and justice.
- And therefore, climate change must become part of our national conversation on independence.
The Next Freedom We Must Secure
- India’s freedom struggle was a struggle against political domination.
- The challenge before our generation is different, but no less consequential.
- We must secure our freedom from energy insecurity, water insecurity, ecological degradation and climate vulnerability.
- A country cannot call itself truly resilient if its farmers are increasingly vulnerable to climate shocks, if its cities cannot withstand extreme weather, or if its rivers, forests and groundwater systems are steadily losing their capacity to support life.
- This is why environmental protection cannot be treated as an obstacle to development.
It is the foundation of development.
- India has demonstrated that economic aspirations and climate responsibility can move together. The country has rapidly expanded renewable energy, strengthened its climate commitments and pursued initiatives in solar power, green hydrogen, energy efficiency, sustainable mobility and ecosystem restoration.
- India’s 2026 Independence Day comes as the country marks 79 completed years of independence and celebrates its 80th Independence Day—a moment that naturally invites us to think not only about how far we have travelled, but about where we are going next.
- The destination cannot simply be a larger economy.
- It must be a stronger, healthier and climate-resilient India.
Climate Change Is Not Only About Carbon
- Climate discussions often become conversations about emissions, carbon markets, renewable capacity and net-zero targets.
- All of these are important.
- But climate change is ultimately about people.
- Behind every degree of warming is a change in the conditions in which someone lives.
- Behind every extreme heat event is a worker who has to step outside.
- Behind every failed monsoon is a farmer making difficult choices.
- Behind every flood is a family trying to protect its home.
- Behind every disappearing glacier is a warning about the future of rivers and water security.
- This is why India’s climate response must be human-centred.
- We need policies that reduce emissions, but we also need policies that help people adapt to the changes that are already underway.
Climate mitigation and climate adaptation must move together.
The Village Must Be at the Heart of India’s Climate Future
- India’s climate resilience will not be built only in laboratories, ministries and corporate boardrooms.
- It will be built in villages.
- It will be built through restored ponds and watersheds.
- Through climate-resilient agriculture.
- Through rainwater harvesting.
- Through agroforestry.
- Through community-managed forests.
- Through decentralised renewable energy.
- Through women and local communities becoming active participants in climate solutions.
- The knowledge already present in our communities is an enormous national asset.
- For generations, Indian communities have developed ways of living with the rhythms of seasons, forests, rivers and landscapes.
- We should not romanticise traditional knowledge or reject modern science.
- We need both.
- Satellites can show us where a forest is changing.
- Local communities can tell us why.
- Climate models can project future rainfall.
- Farmers can tell us what the changing seasons are already doing to their crops.
- Technology gives us new eyes.
- Community knowledge gives us context.
- India’s climate strategy must bring the two together.
Our Renewable Energy Journey Is a Story of Hope
- There are reasons for optimism.
- India’s transition toward renewable energy demonstrates that climate action can also become a pathway to energy security, innovation, employment and economic opportunity.
- Solar panels on rooftops, solar pumps for farmers, renewable-powered villages, green hydrogen, battery storage and modern electricity grids are not simply environmental interventions.
- They are investments in India’s strategic independence.
- The global energy system is changing rapidly, and energy security has become inseparable from national security. Recent discussions around India’s energy security on Independence Day itself underline how important reliable and diversified energy supplies have become in an uncertain world.
- For India, the long-term goal should therefore be clear:
- An India that powers its development increasingly from clean, secure and domestically available sources of energy.
- That is not only good climate policy.
- It is good national policy.
The Himalayas Are Sending Us a Message
- Perhaps nowhere is the urgency of climate change more visible than in the Himalayas.
- The Himalayas are not simply a spectacular landscape.
- They are a life-support system.
- They influence rivers, agriculture, biodiversity, livelihoods and water security across much of South Asia.
- Glacier retreat, changing snowfall, landslides, floods and other cryospheric changes are reminders that the climate system is interconnected.
- When the mountains change, the plains cannot remain unaffected.
- When a glacier changes, a river eventually responds.
- When a river changes, agriculture and communities respond.
- Climate change has no administrative boundary.
- That is why climate resilience must be integrated into infrastructure planning, disaster management, agriculture, water policy and urban development—not treated as a separate environmental department’s responsibility.
A New Definition of Patriotism
- Independence Day also gives us an opportunity to think about patriotism differently.
- Patriotism is not only remembering the sacrifices of our freedom fighters.
- It is also protecting what they helped us inherit.
- Saving water is patriotism.
- Protecting a forest is patriotism.
- Keeping a river clean is patriotism.
- Reducing pollution is patriotism.
- Restoring a degraded ecosystem is patriotism.
- Building a climate-resilient village is patriotism.
- And choosing a development path that does not leave our children with an ecological debt they cannot repay is perhaps one of the greatest responsibilities of our generation.
- The Tricolour represents a free India.
- Let us ensure that it continues to fly over an India where people have clean air to breathe, safe water to drink, fertile soil to cultivate and healthy ecosystems to depend upon.
The Youth Will Decide the India of 2047
- The India that celebrates Independence Day today will not be the India that exists in 2047.
- That India will belong to today’s young people.
- They will inherit the consequences of the choices we make now.
- Therefore, our youth must not be told only to fear climate change.
- They must be inspired to solve it.
- We need young climate scientists.
- Young environmental entrepreneurs.
- Young farmers experimenting with resilient agriculture.
- Young engineers designing clean technologies.
- Young administrators integrating climate risk into development.
- Young citizens restoring nature in their own communities.
- Climate action must become an opportunity for innovation, enterprise and nation-building.
- If India is to become Viksit Bharat by 2047, development must mean more than higher incomes and better infrastructure.
- It must mean human development within ecological limits.
- A developed India must also be a water-secure India.
- An energy-secure India.
- A biodiversity-rich India.
- A pollution-resilient India.
- And a climate-resilient India.
The Freedom We Owe to the Future
- Our freedom fighters could not have known the precise nature of the climate crisis we face today.
- But they understood something fundamental:
- A nation’s future depends on the courage of its people to act in the present.
- That responsibility now belongs to us.
- The question future generations will ask is not whether we knew climate change was happening.
- We already know.
- They will ask:
- What did we do when we knew?
- Did we continue as before?
- Or did we change?
- Did we wait for others?
- Or did India lead?
- Did we see nature as an unlimited resource?
- Or did we recognise it as the foundation of our survival?
- Our answer must be worthy of the India we inherited.
- Seventy-nine years of independence have given us enormous reasons to celebrate.
- But the next chapter demands something more than celebration.
- It demands responsibility.
- We inherited a free India.
- Let us leave behind a resilient India.
- An India where development does not come at the cost of nature.
- An India where prosperity reaches without destroying ecological security.
- An India where every village, city and community has the capacity to face a changing climate.
- And an India where the freedom we celebrate today is matched by the freedom our children deserve tomorrow—the freedom to live, breathe, grow and dream on a healthy planet.
- This Independence Day, let us salute the India that our freedom fighters gave us.
- And let us make a solemn promise to the India that future generations are waiting to receive.
- Because true independence is not merely the freedom to build our future.
- It is the wisdom to ensure that there is a future worth building.