🪓India is a Failed "Ozymandias."
India’s melancholic era has ended.
With it comes the unsolicited opinions for finding the next growth story.
Guess who’s getting paramount attention, cosmetically?
India.
An English sonnet explains India’s conditioning well, the only caveat is: India is none of the things that sonnet explains. It’s quite opposite.
The sonnet is famously called “Ozymandias.”
And the world is not ready to accept the truth of India...or be vocal enough to answer my BRUTAL question: How India is becoming a FAILED Modern day Ozymandias?
Everything is opposite of what Ozymandias claims to be.
Percy Bysshe Shelley’s magnum opus poem tells of traveler who encounters ruins in desert. Two vast trunkless legs of stone stand in sand. Near them lies shattered visage, half sunk. Face shows frown and wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command. Sculptor understood passions well. On pedestal, words remain: “My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings. Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair.” Nothing beside remains. Round decay of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, lone and level sands stretch far away.
This is Ozymandias. King who built empire. King who proclaimed supremacy. King who believed his works would last forever. King whose works vanished completely. Only inscription remains, mocking the ambition it once declared. The mighty fell. The empire crumbled. The works disappeared. Only desert remains. This is tragedy of pride, of hubris, of believing your greatness is permanent when everything is temporary. This is warning that all empires fall, all kings die, all works decay. Time defeats everything. Even Ozymandias, King of Kings.
People (or so called haters of my nation) tend to feel the same.
If I could exemplify Napoleon’s philosophy & his understanding of how nations rise to power. You could find the irony. Centralized authority. Military strength. Clear ideology. Unified purpose. Meritocracy rewarding talent over birth. Legal framework providing stability. These elements create empire. But Napoleon also understood how empires fall. Same elements that create rise create fall. Centralization becomes tyranny. Military strength breeds overreach. Ideology becomes rigid. Unity becomes conformity. Meritocracy becomes oligarchy. Law becomes oppression. The very things that build empire contain seeds of empire’s destruction. This is cycle. This is pattern. This is what happened to Napoleon’s empire. This is what happened to Ozymandias’s empire. This is what happens to all empires.
But this is where we are different.
India is different.
Written in 1818 by the English Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, “Ozymandias”:
I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—”Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
India is a modern day FAILED Ozymandias.
Not because India built great empire that fell. Because India never built empire at all. World puts India on pedestal. “India is next superpower. India is rising giant. India is future.” But this projection has no major founded evidence. This is nothing but hope. This is what people want to believe. And that’s scary. India is not becoming Ozymandias, anytime soon. And paradoxically, this failure might be blessing.
Everyone says India is next big thing. But there are ground realities of India which will never make it become Ozymandias. Not cannot. Will not. Because becoming Ozymandias requires things India does not have and will not develop. Requires unified national identity. India is fragmented by caste, religion, region, language. Requires meritocracy. India operates on reservation, nepotism, corruption. Requires rule of law. India has selective enforcement based on power and connections. Requires long-term thinking. India operates on election cycles and short-term gains. Requires institutional integrity. India’s institutions are captured by political interests. Requires infrastructure. India’s infrastructure is crumbling or nonexistent. Requires education. India’s education produces certificates, not capability. Requires innovation. India copies and optimizes, never originates.
In order to fall like Ozymandias, you need to rise like one.
This is more like we are cutting down or reversing tragedy with tragedy which is also good for us. In Ozymandias, entire empire and everything king achieved is gone, vanished. But in India, this is more like we are not shining object Ozymandias as we have lot of work. Thus we are counterintuitive of Ozymandias.
This might be hurtful, but that’s the truth: We are failed Ozymandias not because we rose and fell. Because we never rose. We are stuck at base of mountain while world tells us we are climbing successfully. We are performing rise without actual rising. We are acting like superpower without power. We are claiming greatness without achievement. This is different kind of failure. Failure of aspiration never realized rather than empire lost.
Traditional Ozymandias built something. Even if it fell, it existed.
Ruins prove something was there. India has not built anything to ruin. We have potential. We have rhetoric. Aspirations. Projections. But we have not built enduring institutions, infrastructure, innovations that would remain even if we fell.
Metaphorically, if India collapsed tomorrow, what would future archeologists find? What works would they marvel at? What achievements would they study? What legacy would remain? Nothing that current generation built. Only what ancient civilizations built thousands of years ago. Temples. Sculptures. Texts. All from ancestors. Nothing from us.
That scares me. And if you’re a true Indian, it should scare you.
We are living off capital built by previous civilizations.
We point to Vedas, Upanishads, temples, mathematical discoveries, philosophical systems. But these are not ours. These were built by people who lived thousand or two thousand years ago. What have we built? What is our contribution? What will remain five hundred years from now that proves we were here and we were great?
You take pride in being just another middle child of history.
Laugh at yourself. You have built nothing of permanence. You have achieved nothing of significance. You have contributed nothing original. You are consuming what ancestors built while producing nothing for descendants. You are part of this corroding system, leading it to civilizational bankruptcy.
Ozymandias failed because hubris made him believe his works were eternal. India is failing because we believe our potential is same as achievement.
We confuse having resources with using resources. We confuse having talent with deploying talent. We don’t know the different between having opportunity with seizing opportunity. We think being large population makes us powerful. Being diverse makes us strong. Having ancient civilization makes us relevant. None of this is true. None of this matters in long term. Large population without productivity is burden, not asset. Diversity without unity is fragmentation, not strength. Ancient civilization without current contribution is nostalgia, not relevance.
Napoleon’s philosophy of rise required action. Decisive action. Bold action. Sustained action. India substitutes talk for action. We have five-year plans that are never executed. We have policies announced and never implemented. We have laws passed and never enforced. We have goals declared and never achieved. We have infinite talk. Infinite debate. Infinite committees. Infinite reports. Zero action. This guarantees we never rise. Because rise requires building. Building requires doing. Doing requires moving from talk to action. We cannot make this transition. We are paralyzed at talk stage.
The counterintuitive aspect is that being failed Ozymandias might save us from being actual Ozymandias. Actual Ozymandias built empire through conquest, through subjugation, through projection of power. Then empire collapsed. Those who built it suffered most in collapse. India cannot build empire. We lack capability. But this means we also cannot fall as empire falls. We cannot lose what we never gained. We cannot mourn works we never built. It is cold, but comforting.
“Be grateful you never achieved anything because achievement would have been temporary anyway”, such cowardice thoughts.
Ozymandias’s tragedy was hubris. Believing works were eternal. Building monuments to own greatness. Proclaiming supremacy. Then watching everything crumble. India wins but at the cost of its tragedy.
India’s tragedy is different. We believe we are rising while we stagnate. How are we calling ourselves superpower while we remain dependent. We point to past while building nothing for future. Isn’t this worse than being labeled Ozymandias? F*ck yes.
I would like to quote Mahabharata warning against this: Duryodhana had pride without merit. He believed he deserved kingdom despite not earning it. His pride led to the Kurukshetra war. War led to destruction. Every dear ones lost. Nothing to hold onto. India has collective Duryodhana consciousness. We believe we deserve superpower status because of size, because of history, because of potential. But the question is: have we earned it? have we built it? Then why do we just believe we deserve it? Why? This will not end well. Because reality does not care about belief. We are not acting. We are believing. Belief without action produces nothing except disappointment when reality fails to match belief.
Dostoevsky understood that humans lie to themselves. We create narratives that make us feel good regardless of whether narratives are true. India’s narrative is: we are rising superpower. Evidence contradicts this. To list a few:
Our infrastructure is falling apart.
Our healthcare is inaccessible.
Our environment is poisoned.
Our institutions are corrupt.
Our society is fragmented.
Our education is broken.
Our politics is theater.
But we ignore evidence because narrative feels good. This is lying to ourselves at national scale. This guarantees failure because you cannot fix problems you deny exist.
The failed Ozymandias concept is that we are not even in tragedy yet.
Traditional tragedy requires rise before fall. India has not risen. We are stuck at beginning. We keep saying we will rise. Next decade will be India’s decade. This time will be different. But decade after decade passes. Potential remains undeveloped. Growth? What’s that.
We never actually rise. Tragedy that never completes because protagonist never achieves greatness to lose.
This is worse than being Ozymandias. Ozymandias experienced greatness before losing it. Better to have built and lost than never to have built at all. Better to have risen and fallen than to have remained stuck. India is choosing to remain stuck. Not through lack of resources. Through lack of will. Lack of unity, competence and everything except pride.
Indians have abundant pride. Why? Concocted pride is wearing capes thinking you will fly. But deep down you know, you won’t. There’s no logic & justification. Pride that prevents us from seeing our failures clearly and therefore prevents us from fixing them is dangerous.
The ground reality is brutal. Drive through any Indian city. Infrastructure is mostly crumbling. Pollution is choking my generation and deteriorating living conditions of the upcoming generation. Traffic is chaos. Garbage is at every corner of your city roads. Everywhere. Public spaces are degraded. Services are unreliable. Corruption is assumed. People of India see this reality and still believe: we are rising. This is next decade. This time is different. This is not based on evidence. This is based on hope. Hope is not strategy. Hope is not plan. Hope is what you rely on when you have no strategy and no plan.
The counterintuitive benefit of being failed Ozymandias is we avoid catastrophic fall. Ozymandias’s empire collapsed. Collapse was traumatic for everyone involved. India cannot collapse what was never built. We are perpetually at low equilibrium. We cannot fall further because we never rose. This is stability of sorts. Stability of stagnation. Stability of underperformance. Stability of mediocrity. But stability nonetheless. Maybe this is best we can hope for. Maybe we are not capable of greatness. Maybe accepting this is wisdom rather than defeat.
But this is my kind of nihilism. Accepting failure as inevitable. This denies possibility of change. India could rise. India has resources. India has talent. India has potential. But potential is not destiny. Potential requires actualization. Actualization requires action. Action requires leadership, unity, sacrifice, long-term thinking, institutional integrity, rule of law, meritocracy. India has none of these. India shows no signs of developing these. Therefore potential will remain potential. India will remain failed Ozymandias. Not because we rose and fell. Because we never rose despite everyone believing we would.
This is our legacy.
This is our contribution to history.
We will be studied as example of civilization that had everything needed to rise but failed to rise. That had resources but wasted them. That had talent but drove it away. That had opportunity but squandered it. That had potential but never actualized it. That talked endlessly about greatness but built nothing great. That proclaimed its destiny but chose mediocrity. That performed success but achieved failure. This is worse than actual Ozymandias because at least actual Ozymandias tried. At least he built something. At least he failed gloriously.
Failing without even attempting greatness. Failing through passivity, through incompetence, through fragmentation, through corruption, through every possible way to fail except dramatic collapse. We are failing slowly. Failing quietly. Failing while proclaiming success. This is most pathetic way to fail.
This is India. This is us. This is our choice. And choice has consequences. Consequences are already visible. And will become more visible. But we will keep proclaiming we are rising. Keep believing our own lies. Keep performing greatness we do not have. Until nobody believes us anymore. Not even ourselves. And then maybe, finally, we will look at ruins we never built. Read inscription of greatness we never achieved. Stand in desert of potential never actualized. And realize we were failed Ozymandias all along. We just did not know it.
Or we knew and pretended we did not. This is worse. Failure to even fail properly. Failure to be tragic. Just failure. Failed Ozymandias.
Nothing beside remains. This is the end. This is what we built. Nothing. Absolutely nothing.
~vivan.