Almost from the day that Narendra Modi became prime minister, he has urged Indians to dream big dreams. At international events he has boasted often that India no longer has small dreams. And we have been reminded so often that by 2047 India will be a developed country that on social media, there are jokes about how the prime minister seems to believe that 2047 is the year that comes after 2026. Following Modi’s lead, his chief ministers routinely tell us in expensive full-page newspaper advertisements and glittering TV promotions that their states, in keeping with ‘the vision of Modiji’, are aiming to become trillion-dollar economies by 2047.

It is a good thing to dream big dreams. I totally support big dreams and have been very proud of the pace at which the Modi government and sundry other ‘double-engine’ governments have speeded up the building of glittering, new highways. They look dismal as they disintegrate when the rains come, but that is another story. I also support the idea of building ‘smart cities’ and bringing high-quality urban services to rural parts and have said more than once that Modi’s toilet-building programme has been transformative. Those long lines of men squatting beside the tracks is no longer a common sight when you look out of the window of your Vande Bharat trains. But, in building big dreams some very important small dreams have been forgotten.

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If you have been following the ‘School Theek Karo’ campaign of the Cockroach Janta Party, you would have been horrified by the state of rural schools. And this is not even half the story. Did you know that there are no properly trained teachers teaching in government schools? Trained teachers are not going to miraculously appear out of thin air. To create enough of them, we will need to build hundreds of thousands of teacher training schools. Some months ago, I quoted in this column the educationist, Michel Danino, saying this as the second of the three most important reforms needed. He believes that the District Institutes of Education and Training need a ‘complete overhaul’. So does the entire education system so that children are taught to think and not learn by rote. Schools also need libraries, playgrounds, clean water and toilets.

These may sound like small things compared to national highways and bullet trains, but they are not. They might be more important. There are other small dreams that have been recklessly forgotten. There is the dream of having clean air in our cities, clean water in our sacred rivers and efficient waste management so that our ‘smart cities’ do not seem to be sprouting out of garbage dumps. A Yale University survey reported last week that when it came to environmental matters, India was at the very bottom of a list of 177 countries. Only Laos is dirtier and more degraded than India.

So instead of the big dream that has made not singing Vande Mataram a crime, what about making it a non-bailable offence for political leaders to forget the meaning of its first line? Sujalam, Suphalam, Malayaja-sitalam. A land of pure water, abundant fruit trees and clean air is what the poet described. And this is most certainly not an accurate description of our dear Bharat Mata as she is today. As for the damage reckless construction activity has done to our mountains, it is beyond criminal. The disaster last week in Nepal should remind our political leaders about what happens when the environment is criminally neglected.

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What then has gone so wrong with our policies that they have brought us to this sorry pass? Could it be that in pursuit of big dreams, political leaders have forgotten the importance of small dreams? Have our policy-makers failed totally to notice that young Indians, among them schoolchildren, are now regularly taking to the streets to demand such small things as teachers and clean toilets in their schools? They also declare openly that what makes them feel most hopeless is the absence of decent jobs. It is true that in the past decade a handful of very rich Indians have got very much richer and are not shy of showing off their enormous wealth. Personally, I have no problem with this.

What I have a problem with is that millions more Indians have not got rich as well. Why has this not happened? Could it be because the Prime Minister lulled himself into believing that he had truly made doing business in India easier? It is not easier to do business for most Indians and one big reason for this is that corruption in his ‘double-engine’ governments is so deeply rooted at almost every level that only those who can pay huge bribes find it easier to do business.

In this time of big dreams, it is vital, if Modi wants to win back his fading popularity before that crucial election in Uttar Pradesh next year, that he personally concentrates on small things. And that he gets his high-flying chief ministers to plant their feet back firmly on the ground and explain why there have been so many big failures when it comes to the small dreams of ordinary Indians. The ugly truth is that below the shining highways that stand suspended today over towns and cities across India, far too many things have remained unchanged, and they need to start changing fast.