This week, I am departing from my usual thoughts about the future of technology. There is another question on my mind — one that matters equally to India’s future: Whether the next generation of Indians understands what good governance produces, and what its absence costs. The signal versus the noise.

I have spent two decades in public life. In that time, I have watched political discourse become progressively noisier and less connected to the question that determines the quality of a citizen’s life: Is their elected government doing its job? The most important audience for an honest answer is the 150 million Indians who have joined the electorate since 2014, and the hundreds of millions more who will join over the next decade.

The key question is this: What is the difference between India in the lost decade (2004-2014) and the India being built now?

The answer is not a list of schemes. It is a change in the fundamental relationship between a citizen and the state.…