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.AdvertisementThe 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. During the lost decade, the question that decided a young person’s life was not “What can you do?” It was “Whom do you know?” Contracts were not won on merit. Capital did not flow to the best idea. It flowed to the best connection. In 2012, a Credit Suisse report disclosed that 10 business groups had borrowed the equivalent of roughly 98 per cent of the net worth of the Indian banking system — while a woman in Thrissur with a shop, or a young engineer in Surat with an MSME, was turned away.A former PM himself acknowledged that less than 15 paise of every welfare rupee reached the intended beneficiary. The JAM Trinity — Jan Dhan, Aadhaar, mobile — was not a technology story. It was a governance story. It removed the middleman from the transaction. Over Rs 53 lakh crore has been transferred directly to citizens’ bank accounts since 2014. The 15-paise system was not reformed. It was shut down.AdvertisementNITI Aayog data shows nearly 250 million Indians were lifted out of multidimensional poverty in just nine years. The number of people classified as such plummeted from 29.17 per cent in 2013-14 to 11.28 per cent in 2022-23. Rs 4.47 lakh crore to farmers, nearly 95 million in the latest instalment, with no intermediary taking a cut. Good governance compounds. A family lifted from poverty most likely does not go back. A farmer whose income no longer depends on the generosity of a scheme acquires a dignity that cannot be reversed.But compounding works in both directions. Look at Karnataka: Borrowings climbed from Rs 90,280 crore to Rs 1,04,000 crore in a single year to fund Rs 52,000 crore in leaky guarantee spending. The intentions are not in question. But capital expenditure — the money that builds roads, hospitals, and industrial capacity — has been crowded out.Keralam’s new government tabled a White Paper in June 2026 documenting Rs 5.07 lakh crore in debt from a decade of Left governance. The state was in RBI overdraft for 84 days in 2025. Capital expenditure: 1.3 per cent of GSDP, less than half the national average.Genuine protest against genuine injustice is the lifeblood of democracy. India’s history is full of it. I have participated in many. A citizen’s right to challenge power is non-negotiable.What I am describing is different: The systematic, manufactured disruption of governance as a political strategy — the deliberate creation of the appearance of crisis to mask the absence of a credible alternative programme. Parliament disrupted not to raise a specific grievance but to prevent the passage of legislation. Highways blocked as a pressure tactic.This is not accountability. It is the substitution of noise for argument. And its deepest damage is to young people: A political culture in which the ability to create chaos is mistaken for the ability to govern. That produces the most dangerous democratic outcome: A generation of cynics who neither participate nor hold leaders accountable.India has the largest youth population in the world. The political values this generation develops will shape Indian democracy for the next 50 years.Look at UP: from BIMARU state to Rs 36 lakh crore economy in nine years, revenue surplus, riots eliminated, investor confidence transformed. Look at Maharashtra topping India’s FDI rankings with more than half of all foreign investment in a single quarter. Then look at what the alternative has produced in Keralam and Karnataka: Debt constraining future investment, reckless spending crowding out capital formation, corruption diverting money meant for welfare.The question for a young Indian is not ideological. It is personal. Which system gives you a better chance? The one where your success depends on what you can do — your skill, your idea, your work ethic? Or, the one where it depends on whom you know and which party you are connected to? The one that builds the road to your village and the industrial park that might employ you? Or, the one that borrows to pay today’s expenses and leaves tomorrow’s infrastructure unfunded?you may likeOn reflection, this article is not such a departure from technology. The argument for good governance is the same I make for technology governance: Systems designed to work for the citizen, transparently and accountably, produce better outcomes than systems designed to serve those running them.The democratic choice is always this: Which government actually builds something — and which one leaves the next generation poorer than it found them.That is the signal. Everything else is noise.The writer, former MP, former minister of state for Electronics & Information Technology and Skill Development, Government of India, is BJP Kerala state president and MLA for Nemom. Views are personal