F or sixty years, one fighter jet didn’t just serve India; it forged the nation’s soul. The MiG-21 was never merely a machine threading through monsoon clouds or carving contrails across desert skies. It was a demanding mentor that built factories from dust, transformed farm boys into fighter pilots, and dragged an entire nation into the brutal reality of modern aerial warfare.

Now, as the last MiG-21 prepares to taxy down the runway for the final time, we stand at a crossroads. We can either spend our energy mourning the ghost in the hangar or harvest the hard-won wisdom it leaves behind. The most fitting farewell is selective inheritance: keeping the steel-forged strengths that catapulted us forward while deliberately discarding the inherited weaknesses that held us back.

The calculus

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