India, Oct. 5 -- My name is Sushila. I am 48, and I have spent the last two decades filling a gap no policy paper mentions - the space between a government scheme and the child it was meant to reach. In Bawana's Lal Flats, that gap looked like babies with no safe place to be minded while their mothers earned a day's wage, and children who had never seen a classroom because no one had noticed they were missing. Over 11 years, that gap-filling work reached nearly 100,000 children and 22,000 women - not through any grand design, but through one woman refusing to look away. This is the story of India with over 145 million children who will need nurturing care by 2047 for a Viksit Bharat. What we lack is more Sushilas.

For decades, that has b...