Around the time India awoke to ‘life and freedom’, a few other countries too were throwing out colonists, monarchies and other old regimes to form modern states. In the race to progress since then, who has fared the best? We compare India’s performance on six parameters with five countries that gained Independence in the late 1940s— China (1949, Communist revolution), Pakistan (1947), Bangladesh (1947 from Britain, 1971 from Pakistan), Sri Lanka (1948) and Indonesia (1949).