"Gandhiji too would've repented having driven the British away," says Gour Hari Das, who was blessed by the Mahatma for his contribution to the freedom movement when only 14. The searing indictment of the India of today is not because he's cynical but because he's frustrated, says the octogenarian freedom fighter.

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He explains why at length. "The British looted our country to create their own surplus economy. Instances like buying raw material like cotton here, shipping it across to Britain where cloth was made and selling it here while closing down our industries broke India's back. Yet, whatever they left behind is what keeps us going. Look at our government buildings. Unlike what was constructed by them, look at any building that has come up in the last 25 years and you can see what I mean."

"They maintained a certain level of honesty in what they did in public life. It is lamentable that the government in British India was far more accountable to the average citizenry of its colony than our government is in free India," Das says when we meet him at his Dahisar home.

He insists he is saying this not out of bitterness but because of the denial and humiliation he has faced from the Maharashtra government towards his own 32-year struggle for recognition of his contribution to the freedom movement. The state government said since he had participated in the freedom struggle in Odisha, it would only come there. "But I had fought for India's independence, not my own state's," he says simply.

Das, whose story found celluloid expression in the Hindi film Gour Hari Dastaan: The Freedom File (2015), first wrote to the local police asking them to investigate on March 12, 1976. It took 1,000 letters to more than 300 different levels of authority before he got governmental recognition of his freedom fighter status.

"During my repeated visits to Mantralaya, doing rounds of various administrative and ministers' offices, I met so many who'd travelled long distances for merely a signature or a one-line-letter to help them. Often, it seemed obvious their work could've been done at their own village, block or district level. It was unnecessarily being pushed ahead for corruption. My late Gandhian father, Sri Hari Das, a Congress worker and actively involved in social work, often said how all pending work in government is apathy and corruption. I experienced it in my own case."

He believes that pent-up frustration over delays and unaccountability is leading to widespread alienation. "The desire to work is not even 10 per cent in the government. Everybody wants to come to power with whatever means possible, dislodging others. This is not the India we fought for."

Today, no political party is different, he adds. When in opposition, every party blames the other. "It's simply like the sieve mocking the needle, saying it has a hole." he says.

This increasingly heightened inequity in wealth and power distribution, Das warns, is like sitting on a ticking live bomb. "Disaffection, which was first only seen in the Naxalite red corridor, is now on the rise across other parts of the country."

According to him, internet connectivity, malls and multiplexes can at best divert youth from this burning situation for only a while. "Eventually, it will hit them how they are being cheated out of opportunities while the net worth of the filthy rich keeps growing. When this grassroots revolution begins, the rich who do not share the benefits of development with those on the lower rungs may scream anarchy as much as they want, but there will be no stopping it."

He asks if hunger, poverty and destitution have really been wiped off the face of the country. "Instead of working on public awareness, the media seems to have bought into this consumerist dream, which it peddles and amplifies on behalf of its corporate masters or the government. It's like the safety valve's become dysfunctional."

But Das is no cynic. He feels change will come.

"If we were able to shake of the yoke of British rule, this too can be taken on. We need another freedom movement to free ourselves of corruption, apathy and communalism."

India's septuagenarian democracy is tired of waiting.