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India before Independence: Smaller struggles for freedom

‘Conflict with the Ghazees before Bareilly’, 1857

The Uprising of 1857 was India’s first widespread struggle against the British government. Even though it wasn’t a struggle for sovereignty, it planted the desire for freedom in indigenous minds and shook up the very foundations of British rule in India. An early nationalist perspective on the events of 1857 was offered by VD Savarkar, who termed the Revolt as ‘India’s First War of Independence’.

It is difficult if not impossible to fully map the breadth, scope and aftermath of the rebellion of 1857; its echoes were lingering and far-reaching. The study I have attempted here focuses on specific events and regions, and uses the Sarmaya collection to go beyond the dates and numbers to tell the story of a revolution.

Tension in the ranks

By the nineteenth century, the British had largely consolidated their hold over the Indian subcontinent. Territories like Bengal, Awadh and Mysore had been cleverly brought under British control through tactful annexations and alliances. Political and administrative control was accompanied by reforms in the socio-cultural and military realms to simplify and improve governance and ‘civilise’ the natives. Such measures—the abolition of sati, adoption of English as the language of instruction, reorganisation of the military system of privileges—hurt native sentiments, as they hit at revered social and religious structures. In the period immediately preceding the Revolt, these factors became more pronounced, sparking widespread dissatisfaction.

Besides this, concessions granted by the government in the past —the passing of sepoy letters free of postage tax and the personal role of soldiers in determining promotions and overseas service—came to be seen by the soldiers as their rightful privileges. The sudden withdrawal or curtailment of these, coupled with the inability of their European officers to communicate the reason for this in the language of the soldiers, became the primary grievance of the native troops.

But what acted as the final trigger for the Uprising was the introduction of the Enfield rifle. The bullets of the rifle had to be bitten before firing, and they were rumoured to be greased with the fat of cows and pigs, which was hurtful to the sentiments of Hindus and Muslims. Given their growing disillusionment with the Empire, the Bengal army found it plausible that the British would use such insidious means to ‘Christianise’ them. The rage of the soldiers bubbled over and led to the burning of a telegraph office on 24 th January 1857 in Barrackpore. A government order to repeal cartridges only fuelled the fire; it was assumed that the rumours about the cartridges was true, and other secret attacks on Indian caste would be launched.

League of the extraordinary

Although the British did their best to downplay the scale of rebellion and project it as chaotic and unplanned, the works of nationalist writer Rudrangshu Mukherjee suggest otherwise. These prove that while the revolt itself may have been sparked by mutinies in the sepoy lines, it took some organisation to carry forward the struggle. There existed a pattern in the order the mutinies were carried out; the firing of the evening guns in Meerut, Lucknow and Bareilly occurred as if part of a chain reaction.

Kuwar Singh of Arrah, 1857, monochrome engraving on paper, The Illustrated London News © Sarmaya Arts Foundation (2015.3.9) — click on image for more

The Revolt appears to have been a popular uprising that drew diverse leadership, cutting across geographical and social differences: Kunwar Singh from Bihar, Nana Sahib from Kanpur, the aged Mughal emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar II from Delhi, and the warrior-queen Rani Lakshmibai from Jhansi. What is interesting is that many such men and women were forced into positions of importance—they were called upon by the masses to take charge of the movement and didn’t get much say in the matter. Kunwar Singh, for one, was nearly 80 and in poor health when he was called upon to take up arms. He assumed command of the soldiers of Danapur on 25 July, following which he fought battles in Arrah, Lucknow, Azamgarh and Jagdishpur. Before his final battle, Singh cut off his left hand to prevent the threat of infection after a bullet shattered his wrist. A few months later, on April 23, 1858, this venerable warrior was killed by British troops near Jagdishpur.

Mutiny at Meerut

Left: Death of Colonel Finnis at Meerut, from Sarmaya’s collection of engravings; right: Mangal Pandey, Flickr/Public.Resource.Org

The mutiny of 1857 began in Barrackpore under the leadership of the sepoy Mangal Pandey of the 34th Regiment and ended with the killing of Sergeant Major Hewson and the injury of Lieutenant Baugh. Pandey was eventually hanged, which, coupled with the disbandment of the 29th Regiment, brought an end to the mutinous spirit at Barrackpore and Behrampore. However, discontent soon cropped up in districts like Sealkote, Agra, Ambala, and, most importantly, Lucknow.

Simultaneously, in Meerut, disaffection was more plainly visible than in any other station of the North-Western Frontier Provinces. On 10 th May, 1857 the Bengal army revolted at the sounding of the fire alarm and the bugle. Once the alarms went off, the 3 rd Light Cavalry and the 20 th Native Infantry rushed out of their lines, fully armed, releasing inmates in prison, burning buildings and killing British officers and other Europeans.

Battle for Delhi

Left: Storming of Delhi, from Sarmaya’s collection of engravings; right: Bahadur Shah Zafar, Wikipedia Creative Commons

On the morning of 11 th May, the news of Mangal Pandey’s execution and the subsequent disbandment of his regiment reached the Delhi sepoys. This produced much muttering in the ranks. Soon after, the rebels from Meerut arrived in the capital, forcing Bahadur Shah Zafar II, the aged Mughal emperor, to take up leadership of the Revolt, which he did reluctantly. Under Company rule, Delhi’s position had been undermined, and hence was not a station for any units of the British army, which simplified its takeover by the rebels considerably. The British plan to fight the rebels by launching an attack from Cashmere Gate in Delhi was jeopardised by the betrayal of the 54 th Regiment, which immediately joined the rebels, leaving the British to be mercilessly killed. Delhi, as will be shown, was taken over with ease by the troops, who quickly gained fresh recruits from the 38th and 74th Regiments. The reason behind the mutineers’ march to Delhi was the unique position held by the city as the Mughal capital, making the breakdown of British law and order here symbolic of complete victory over the British. The Company officials made desperate attempts to close off all city gates, but failed to prevent the entry of raging rebels through the Rajghat Gate. The events that followed over the next few days involved the slaughter of British officials and civilians. With the continuous arrival of large contingents of rebellious sepoys in Delhi, it quickly became apparent to the British that the city was too well-fortified and strongly held to fall to a swift attack. The mutineering sepoys carried out attacks through June and July, the major ones being the attacks of 19th June, 23rd June and 9th July, in which the besiegers were bogged down by heavy losses.

In early August, the besiegers found necessary reinforcement in numbers and arms by the arrival of Brigadier John Nicholson and his forces, joined by a siege train in early September. Immediate action was decided upon, led by Richard Baird Smith, an engineer officer, who drew up elaborate plans to breach the city walls and make an assault—every column was to launch its attack from a different place. The operations of this phase of the British siege resulted in a part of the walls of Delhi falling back into British hands, first the Cashmere Gate region, followed by the Magazine, the Palace and Jama Masjid, and Lahore Gate.

On 21 September, the city was finally declared captured, but at a terrible cost; not only did British officials like Nicholson and native sepoys lose their lives, but innocent civilians did too. By recapturing the Indian capital city, the British and Company forces dealt the Indian Army mutineers a major military and psychological blow. Bahadur Shah and his three sons were captured by Major William SR Hodson, leader of the irregular Light Cavalry at the time, who had the latter executed. The emperor was spared but exiled to Rangoon. Hundreds of rebel prisoners, suspected rebels and sympathisers were hanged without trial or legal process.

Carnage in Kanpur

Left: ‘Massacre at Cawnpore’, engraving from the Sarmaya collection; right: Nana Sahib, Wikipedia Creative commons/Illustrated London News

The revolts at Meerut and Delhi provided the necessary inspiration for a general rising across India, first in Ferozpore, Aligarh, Etawah and Mynpoorie, and later in Benares, Allahabad, Kanpur, Awadhi and Rohilkundi provinces. Of these risings, the ones at Kanpur and Lucknow were the most significant. By end May-early June, the British forces in Kanpur had been reinforced: a month’s provisions had been stored in the entrenchment and additional guns strategically positioned. The rebellion broke out on the night of 4 th June, led by the 2 nd Cavalry and joined by the forces of Nana Sahib, the adopted heir of Baji Rao II, former peshwa of the Maratha Confederacy. As Nana was not a natural-born heir, the Company had decided to cancel the transfer of pension and honours of the lineage to him. He took up residence in Kanpur to excite the sepoys into revolt and protect the treasury himself. The 2 nd Cavalry and Nana’s men were quickly joined by the 1 st Native Infantry and the native artillerymen of the Awadh Battery.

The aim of all groups of insurgents was to make their way to Delhi and join the other rebels. This, however, posed a challenge to Nana Sahib, as the departure of the mutineers for Delhi would mean that the advantages he had promised himself from the Revolt—the restoration of the Peshwa and Maratha with Kanpur as the centre of sovereignty—would be lost. He therefore made every effort to persuade the marching troops to return to Kanpur and kill the Britishers left behind, in order to secure their own lives, which would be threatened if the rebellion were unsuccessful. The news of more treasure in the entrenchment and the gunpowder and guns remaining in the magazine gave the rebels added incentive to place themselves under Nana’s orders and return to Kanpur.

Satichaura Ghat, a photograph by Samuel Bourne

On 25 th June, the British surrendered, giving Nana control over government money, the magazine and guns, in return for the safe passage of the surviving English families to Allahabad after a day of preparation and burying their dead. On the 27 th , carts and elephants were sent by Nana to enable British women, children and the sick to proceed to the river banks, from where they would be taken to Allahabad. The British officers and military men were allowed to take along their arms and ammunition, and were escorted by a large portion of the rebel army. As soon as the British party reached Satichaura Ghat and set aside their musketry, however, they were once again attacked by sepoys. Although the British hold him responsible, there is no evidence to prove that Nana Sahib had pre-planned or ordered the massacre.

Some modern historians suggest the Satichaura Ghat massacre was the unfortunate result of some confusion. Nevertheless, the departing Britishers were killed and captured by rebel sepoys, and the few boats that escaped, including Wheeler’s, were pursued and attacked. Even those who surrendered were captured and taken to be fired on. The women and children survivors of the Satichaura Ghat massacre were placed in captivity in Kanpur, first at Savada House and then at Bibighar. The prisoners were placed under the care of a sex worker, Hussaini Khanum, and used to bargain with the Company, whose armed forces, led by Henry Havelock and Colonel James Neill, had set out from Allahabad to retake Kanpur and Lucknow.

Nana’s demand for the retreat of the relentlessly advancing Company forces was ignored. It was clear that his bargain had failed and drastic action needed to be taken. When the rebel leaders of Kanpur received news of violence against innocent Indian villagers by Havelock’s and Neill’s forces, they issued an order on 15 th July to murder the women and children imprisoned at Bibighar, after much discussion. A merciless murder of the innocent took place once more, with every kind of weapon, from bayonets to clubs to butcher’s knives to battle-axes. Once everyone had been killed, the butchered corpses were then thrown into a well.

Left: Map showing track of rebels under Tantia Topi from the Sarmaya collection; right: Tantia Tope, Wikipedia Creative Commons

The British troops arrived at Bibighar on 16 th July, only to find the captives murdered brutally. Infuriated and disgusted, they engaged in a surge of violence against the local population of Kanpur, their justification being that the local noncombatants did nothing to prevent the massacre. The fate of Nana Sahib remains unknown, but the British claimed that he was captured. Slowly, order was restored in Kanpur. A final attempt at recapture by the rebels was led by Tatya Tope in November, but his army of rebel soldiers from the Gwalior contingent were defeated by the Company forces commanded by Sir Colin Campbell in the Second Battle of Kanpur, concluding the phase of rebellion in the Kanpur area.

A fault-line grows

The events of 1857 led to the death of thousands, with estimates placing this number somewhere between 800,000 and 1,000,000. Both sides committed brutalities and atrocities against civilians, although the numbers of those who suffered were far greater on the rebel side. Given the magnitude and scale of the rebellion, not only in terms of these numbers but also its spread geographically and socially, it was obvious the Revolt would not be forgotten easily.

Two things happened immediately in its aftermath. First, the British cracked down heavily in punishment. The events of 1857 left the colonisers feeling embittered and angered, sentiments that were expressed in the journals and diaries of the time. The graphic portrayal of the mutilation and violence wrought against women, children and the wounded, horrified and enraged the British public, making them wholeheartedly support the desire of their soldiers who sought revenge. Indian rebels were brutally punished by hanging or by being blown to pieces from cannons.

‘English Homes in India 1857′, Monochrome Engraving on Paper, Illustrated Times © Sarmaya Arts Foundation (2017.4.88) — click on image to see more

The second, more interesting shift happened in the attitudes of the colonial masters towards their subjects and vice versa. Politically, the nature of British rule in India underwent a transformation. The issuing of the Government of India Act of 1858 marked the transfer of the East India Company’s ruling powers to the British Crown. Administrative policy in India was now formulated and implemented by the new government department called the ‘India Office’ and its head, the Secretary of State for India, and the Governor-General, under the new title Viceroy, respectively.

In 1877, Queen Victoria took up the title of Empress of India. Colonial administrators dedicatedly pursued the path of reform, giving up their earlier attempts at Westernisation. They adopted a tolerant stance on religion and incorporated those from Indian upper and ruling castes into the government. Although the old Company bureaucracy essentially remained, attitudes underwent a drastic change—a new philosophy that stressed the preservation of tradition and hierarchy took shape. This was rooted in the belief that the causes of the Revolt lay within the spheres of religion and economy. With respect to religion, the British believed there was earlier an excessive interference in indigenous traditions. On the matter of economy, it was stated that the Company’s attempts to create an environment of free market competition had undermined traditional power structures and bonds of loyalty, placing the peasantry at the mercy of merchants and money-lenders. Politically, it was felt that the severity of relations between the rulers and ruled created a wide gap that fomented unrest.

As a direct result of this school of thought, Indians were drawn into the government at a local level, albeit on a limited scale. This, along with the opening of universities at Calcutta, Bombay and Madras created a new professional middle class, members of which would be drawn to the early mission of the Indian National Congress. Founded in 1885 by two Parsi industrialists and a retired British civil servant, the Congress started off as a platform that would debate the issues of the day and put the concerns of Indian citizenry before its rulers in England. By the early 20 th century, the party would be at the forefront of the freedom struggle, led by personalities who are known today as the founders and architects of free India.

In the end, the events of 1857 were never to be India’s ‘tryst with destiny’. But in the aftermath, an awareness grew among the masses, who had learned to fight for what was rightfully theirs. The Uprising planted the embers of defiance that would feed the blaze in which our national identity was forged less than a century later.

A student of history from St Stephen’s College, Devika Dua had interned with Sarmaya

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Ball, Charles; The History of the Indian Mutiny
Forbes-Mitchel, William; Reminiscences of the Great Mutiny; Macmillan and Co.; London, 1894
Gubbins, Martin Richard; An Account of the Mutinies in Oudh and of the Siege of the Lucknow Residency, Woodfall and Kinder; London; 1858
Lady Inglis; The Siege of Lucknow: a Diary; James R Osgood, McIlvaine and Co.; London; 1892
NCERT, Themes in Indian History Part III
Pati, Biswamoy; The 1857 Rebellion, Debates in Indian History and Society; Oxford University Press; 2007
Rees, L.E.R.; A Personal Narrative of the Siege of Lucknow, From its Commencement to its Relief by Sir Colin Campbell; Spottiswoode and Co.; London; 1858
Sedgwick, F.R.; The Indian Mutiny 1857, A Sketch of the Principal Military Events; Forster Groom & Co Ltd.; London; 1920
Unknown; The Mutiny of the Bengal Army; An Historical Narrative, Bosworth and Harrison; London
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Before and after independence: How patriotism has changed over the years

HYDERABAD: August 15 the day we celebrate India’s freedom from the British, the day we show our love for our country and the day (apart from Republic Day) most of us feel patriotic.

While we are caught up with our daily grind and make time to reflect upon the sacrifices of our jawans and the fight that our freedom fighters put up, for some, being patriotic is their way of life. Ahead of the 75th Independence Day, we speak to the real heroes about their sacrifices and the people who have witnessed pre-Independence India.

Nawab Najaf Ali Khan, the grandson of H.E.H late Nizam VII of Hyderabad Nawab Mir Osman Ali Khan and the son of late Prince Hasham Jah Bahadur, recollects how Hyderabad was during the pre-independence era and how the city has changed now. “Before Independence, Hyderabad was one of the best States in all aspects.

It had all amenities of its own and was truly an independent State — a well-functioning transport system with its own railways, airways, roadways, thermal power stations, world-class universities which admitted students from all religions, castes and creeds, etc. Hyderabad, under my grandfather’s rule, was the most well-governed and prosperous State of pre-independent India. Today, it has become fast-paced where there is no harmony among people of different walks of life. Religious intolerance towards other faiths, harbouring of enmity between communities which is encouraged by politicians — all of these make today’s Hyderabad vastly different from what it used to be in my grandfather’s time,” he says.

For Najaf Ali Khan, the concept of patriotism has changed over the years. “Times have changed; different people have different perspectives about patriotism. Patriotism means loyalty towards your motherland and being compassionate to the people you share this beautiful motherland with. My family has ruled this land for more than 200 years, and patriotism to me is ensuring that the work and efforts of my grandfather don’t go in vain.”

Every defence personnel in the country lives their life based on the Chetwode Credo. ‘The safety, honour and welfare of your country comes first always and every time. The honor, welfare and safety of the men you command comes next. Your own ease, comfort and safety comes last always and every time.’

Col Tarun Kumar, who had volunteered to go to the Siachen glacier for Operation Meghdoot as the observation post officer (OPO), lives by the Chetwode Credo. “Every dictionary defines patriotism as one’s love and devotion to the country. To us, in the uniform services, especially in the armed forces, this is the very ethos on which we have been brought up. This exactly what the Chetwode Credo is based on. Most people talk about patriotism on August 15 and January 26. All of a sudden faujis are remembered and when a soldier’s mortal remains arrive in the city, they raise slogans,” he says.

essay on india before independence and after independence

But patriotism, Col Kumar says, comes naturally. “It is the environment that creates this upbringing. The goodness of people gets suppressed because of the surroundings. The younger generation will not follow us till such time you do something good. As a commanding officer, your lonely at the top, you need to make important decisions. But at the end of the day, were my decisions for the people’s good or worse? That’s all that matters.” Speaking about what is freedom, he says: “You have to work for yourself and that is where your freedom lies. When you are strong, you become an inspiration and that’s where your journey of growth begins. Find your own pace and that is what freedom, liberation and empowerment are.”

Aparajita Acharya, the daughter of late Major Padmapani Acharya, was raised by her mother alone. Based on the stories her mother told her about her father, she had penned a coffee-table book, Our Babloo, The Hero of Drass. Aparajita does not believe in chasing an ideal abstract definition of ‘patriotism’. “Patriotism to me is a non-negotiable aspect of my life; a feeling and duty I owe to my nation that has given me so much. I believe a lot of us question the smallest, harmless gestures of patriotism, demanding a logic that raises the question of hypocrisy.

"Not everything in life needs scientific reasoning. We love our parents every day, yet we unapologetically voice it on corporate-invented celebrations such as Mother’s Day and Father’s Day. How are these celebrations any different than freedom over the years? We need to make a larger effort in reinventing the definition of our nation time and again. Let us be grateful for the good and constructively work towards betterment. Let this year be all about giving deserved credit, recognition, criticism and realistic goals rather than chasing an ideal abstract definition.”

Charulatha Acharya, wife of Late Major Acharya, lost her husband when she was pregnant with Aparajita. For her, patriotism was always about having a deep connection with her country.

“Whichever country you are born in, we call a country as motherland and we cannot point fingers at it. We have to be loyal to our country and not think about it only on specific days or occasions. We remember the sacrifices of soldiers and leaders on a few occasions only. The way we believe in our religion, we should have the same faith in our country as well. We should instill these values in our kids, talk to them about the sacrifices different people have made for the country to be independent. Not only during national celebrations, but we have to remember the essence of Independence always,” she says.

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75 Years After Independence, a Changing ‘Idea of India’

India’s liberal founders recede from view as its current leaders craft a new, less tolerant nation..

The evening before he was sworn in as newly independent India’s first prime minister 75 years ago on Aug. 15, Jawaharlal Nehru addressed the Indian nation. There was immense curiosity around the world. Nehru’s address, which quickly became known as his “tryst with destiny” speech, is remarkable for its eloquence and his awareness of the task that lay ahead for his nation. At the time, the subcontinent was still undergoing a bloody partition, during which millions of people would die and tens of millions of lives would be uprooted.

Three-quarters of a century later, under Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s leadership, the country’s narrative is undergoing its broadest shift since independence. India’s secular, liberal founders such as Nehru are increasingly lost from view—and blamed for the tragedy of Partition. Modi’s government wants to turn India into a more assertive, nationalistic, Hindu nation—where minorities exist but are expected to be subservient and grateful. As government officials, including Modi, increasingly mix Hinduism with politics, and as minorities, particularly Muslims, find increased restrictions against displaying their faith, India is fast becoming the country Muhammad Ali Jinnah, Pakistan’s founder, warned about when he demanded a separate nation for British India’s Muslims.

At the time of independence, there was understandable apprehension in foreign capitals about what India might become. Former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who had never liked the idea of granting his country’s biggest colony its freedom, had ridiculed India as “a geographical term … no more a united nation than the equator.” When the British left India, it was divided into two nations—two wings of Pakistan to the west and east for the subcontinent’s Muslims and a much larger Hindu-majority nation that said it would be a secular democracy. India included not only regions directly administered by the British but also more than 500 princely states, large and small, whose rulers believed themselves to be sovereign. Many thought Balkanization was inevitable. India would remain the poster child of poverty, many insisted, particularly after the Nehru government opted for post-independence economic policies that professed socialism, vastly expanded state control of the economy, and did not succeed in promoting economic welfare while announcing plans to do so. Indeed, for many decades, the poor remained poor.

Much more recently, Singaporean elder statesman Lee Kuan Yew, too, dismissed India, insisting it is not a real country . “Instead,” he said, “it is 32 separate nations that happen to be arrayed along the British rail line.” Reality, however, looks different: The multiethnic former Yugoslavia has broken up, the Soviet empire has splintered, and Pakistan has split into two. India, however, remains a unitary state, notwithstanding challenges such as the future of Kashmir.

India did bring together those princely states, and over three-quarters of a century, it has not only stayed united but emerged stronger, became self-sufficient in food, and turned into a much wealthier economic powerhouse. Crucially, India has continued to hold democratic elections, even if election campaign finance is opaque. It has a judiciary that’s independent in theory but rarely pronounces verdicts the government doesn’t like. The Army has not intervened in politics, even though retired generals fulminate in the media. The Indian media is free to criticize—but directs much of its criticism at the opposition while mostly sparing the government.

India has had major internal strife and fought wars. Today, its relations with most neighbors are fragile. Income inequality has widened. But New Delhi no longer needs help from foreign governments when facing emergencies such as natural disasters and no longer seeks concessional aid from rich countries.

India’s singular achievement since independence has been to remain a democracy that clings to its liberal, secular ethos. True, there were significant setbacks—most notably, the Emergency of 1975-1977, when then-Prime Minister Indira Gandhi suspended key civil rights provisions, jailed opposition leaders and workers, and censored the press. But she held elections in 1977. When she lost, she stepped down without disputing the outcome, returning to power legitimately by winning the next elections in early 1980, following the collapse of the government that replaced her.

The world was impressed and inspired by Indian democracy and its astounding ability to hold together a vast geographic, ethnic, and religious tapestry. John Kenneth Galbraith, who later U.S. President John F. Kennedy’s ambassador to India, called India a “functioning anarchy” in 1958. Many Indians bristled at the word “anarchy,” but Galbraith’s point was valid: Even in what appeared to him as anarchy, India functioned. Anarchies aren’t meant to function. To many outsiders, there seemed to be an Indian genius at work.

Because of India’s democratic exterior—and the socialist, nonaligned policies with which many of in the international liberal community sympathized—the world gave India a free pass for many of its flaws. India’s pernicious caste system that defined an entire swath of society as “untouchable” persisted despite laws banning the practice, and India was never subjected to the kind of campaigns that rightly targeted South Africa’s apartheid regime. Frequent outbreaks of sectarian violence killed hundreds and at times thousands, but India did not face sanctions. Its robust democratic norms—politicians challenging one another, newspapers exposing scandals, and the occasional resignations of politicians guilty of corruption or misdemeanors—strengthened India’s image, suggesting that the country was adhering to its remarkably progressive constitution. And that document was progressive indeed: From the moment of independence in 1947, every Indian of a certain age, regardless of sex, religion, caste, language, or social status, had the right to vote.

In spite of major crises—several wars, droughts, incompetent leadership, corruption, and internal strife, to say nothing of autarkic economic policies and growing inequality—India continued on its path of remaining a liberal, secular, democratic country. It was an oasis surrounded by authoritarian regimes, where generals took over when they didn’t like the elected civilian government, including Myanmar, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. The comparison to its neighbors further enhanced India’s reputation. How deserved that reputation was is a different question. One problem was the government’s ability to curb freedoms whenever it wanted under esoteric so-called national security laws, which independent India actually tightened, making its citizens’ freedoms more vulnerable than during colonial times. But India’s earlier governments played by known rules. The constitution India had adopted with independence was imbued with a liberal, secular, democratic ethos. Part of the reason India got a free pass for many horrible things was because the international community trusted India to get it right. And unlike other countries in the region, India did not export its problems, not least because its very large Muslim population wasn’t radicalized by the ideologies that were sweeping Islam from the Middle East to Southeast Asia.

Instead of being a multi-everything society that celebrates its diversity, India has become a majoritarian entity, fearful of its minorities and keen to subjugate them.

I recall a private conversation with a U.S. diplomat in what was still called Bombay, now Mumbai, in the late 1980s. By then, Eastern Europe was restless and in the process of shaking off the Soviet umbrella. One by one, Moscow’s satellite states were freeing themselves. Vaclav Havel, a writer I deeply admire, would soon become president of Czechoslovakia—and later the Czech Republic. (Disclosure: I am a jury member for the Vaclav Havel Library Foundation’s Disturbing the Peace Award given annually to a courageous writer.) The diplomat at whose home I was having dinner told me, quite frankly: “India’s free ride is going to end soon. Until a few years ago, there were a handful of democracies, and most were in the West. You were the exception. Now, with [protest leader Lech] Walesa in Poland, Havel in Czechoslovakia, the world is changing—there are going to be many more democracies. They will write liberal constitutions. Their new leaders have been close to the West. And India’s flaws—the communal riots, caste riots—will be far more visible.”

He was right. In 1990, I went to South Africa for the first time. Interviewing politicians across the political spectrum, I learned early on that the constitution they planned to write after the end of apartheid was going to be far more liberal than India’s. South African intellectuals and politicians such as Nadine Gordimer, Zach de Beer, Allister Sparks, Nelson Mandela, F.W. de Klerk, and many others I talked to admired India and its democracy, not least because of Mohandas Gandhi’s years in South Africa. As South Africans often tell Indian visitors, “You gave us Mr. Gandhi, we gave you the Mahatma,” and anyone who has followed Gandhi’s life would agree that South Africa strongly shaped the Indian leader’s views and political talents.

The “idea of India,” as political scientist Sunil Khilnani described the ethos of the nation’s early years, was assumed to be what every Indian believed in: democracy, liberalism, secularism, and a concern for the poor.

However, since 1925, an organization called the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (abbreviated RSS, meaning “National Voluntary Union”) has sought to write a different narrative. Many of its early leaders have written approvingly or been unabashed admirers of Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini and Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, admiring in particular Nazi Germany’s nationalism and ideas of racial purity. During the struggle for independence, the RSS vehemently opposed Gandhi’s and Nehru’s cooperation with Muslims. But for all their admiration of nationalism, no major RSS leader made a notable contribution to India’s struggle for independence. Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, a prominent icon of Hindu Mahasabha, another right-wing organization, was charged as co-conspirator in Gandhi’s assassination in 1948, though he was acquitted. Gandhi’s actual assassin, Nathuram Godse, was a member of Hindu Mahasabha and had previously been a member of the RSS.

India has banned the RSS three times—in 1948, after Gandhi was killed; in 1975, during the Emergency; and then again in 1992, after right-wing zealots destroyed a mosque in Ayodhya because they claimed it was built on a site where they believed Rama, the Hindu god-king, was born millennia ago. One of the RSS’s allied organizations is today’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which, since its inception in 1980, has steadily expanded its influence. Since the Indian electoral system follows the British first-past-the-post system, it’s enough for the BJP to get a plurality of votes, most recently 37 percent in 2019. The opposition vote is splintered, and the grand old party of India’s independence movement, the Indian National Congress, is struggling. Thanks to the first-past-the-post system, the BJP—under Modi’s charismatic leadership—has been in power without a majority of votes since 2014.

The eight years of BJP rule have changed India’s governing ethos—and what the “idea of India” means today. Instead of being a multi-everything society that celebrates its diversity, it has become a majoritarian entity, fearful of its minorities and keen to subjugate them. Hindus have lynched Muslims on the suspicion of possessing meat. The central government has used national security laws to arrest human rights defenders—including Christians and Muslims—who had been working for the poor, in many cases with no charges filed and bail denied. In the populous state of Uttar Pradesh, the BJP-run state government has razed the homes of Muslims who have challenged the government. Indian jails are filled not only with criminals awaiting trials but also with dissident human rights activists, journalists, writers, and others whose voices an older India might have celebrated.

Continuing to describe India as “the world’s largest democracy” is increasingly bizarre; it is merely the most populous country to hold elections.

The Modi administration is unabashed in promoting the Hindu faith over others. Modi ritually prostates himself before Hindu idols and participates in religious ceremonies on state business—when unveiling national monuments, for example. Under his government, India has become a Hindu country whose minorities must accept second-class status without equal rights and protections as citizens. State schools in many BJP-ruled states no longer offer meat to children at lunch out of a mistaken belief that Hinduism prohibits eating meat. Other Hindu nationalists have been running campaigns on social media singling out films with Muslim actors for boycotts. Hindi, a language spoken as their first language by less than half of India’s 1.4 billion people, is increasingly imposed on regions where it is neither spoken nor popular as a second language. Southern Indian states, where the BJP is generally weaker than in the north, often have superior literacy rates, greater female empowerment, and lower birth rates. In cities in southern and western India, such as Mumbai, Bengaluru, Chennai, and Hyderabad, the BJP vote is boosted by large numbers of job-seeking, Hindi-speaking, hard-to-assimilate migrants from BJP-ruled states. “India is like Europe,” the actor Mohan Agashe once told me. “A common civilization, but different local cultures.”

It is that distinction that bothers the BJP, whose long-term aim is to mold India into a unitary state with a single identity and following a single faith. Former Indian Prime Minister Morarji Desai once told me he considered this vision as ridiculous because, in his view, Hinduism is a faith with many interpretations, many gods, and many paths toward spiritual salvation, and not the singular narrative the nationalists are making it out to be. But, for better or worse, that’s the direction the BJP is headed. Like other strongly ideological parties—communists come to mind—the BJP’s aim is not the next election but the next generation.

In Modi, India’s Hindu nationalists have found a leader who galvanizes the population, even though he was the chief minister of the state of Gujarat when one of the worst massacres in independent India took place in 2002, and his government was severely castigated by human rights groups at the time. Many have forgotten that Modi was banned from entering the United States until he became prime minister in 2014. That the BJP’s vision vastly diminishes India is hardly a concern for its supporters. If it succeeds, India will be reshaped into something very much different from what Nehru described in the 1940s: “[India] was like some ancient palimpsest on which layer upon layer of thought and reverie had been inscribed, and yet no succeeding layer had completely hidden or erased what had been written previously.”

Continuing to describe India as “the world’s largest democracy” is increasingly bizarre. Today, India is merely the most populous country to hold elections. It has the form of democracy but has lost the content. Since Modi came to power, India’s ranking in the United Nations Development Program’s human development indicators has stagnated. In its annual review of political freedoms around the world, Freedom House no longer categorizes India as “free.” India is the only nominal democracy among the 10 worst jailers of writers and journalists, according to PEN America; according to Reporters Without Borders, India has become one of the most dangerous places in the world for journalists to work.

Modi operates like a master performer with a keen eye for exceptional photo-ops. Never mind that many of his policies are whimsical—like the sudden demonetization of the currency in 2016—or woefully inadequate, such as India’s response to the pandemic or to the country’s widening inequality. There are 200 million Indian Muslims—and currently not a single one in Modi’s cabinet.

Of course, India remains a hugely important country. During one of my conversations with Lee when I was a reporter in Singapore, he told me his biggest worry was turmoil in China. But have we thought about what might happen if instead of China, it’s India that disintegrates? If poorly educated, Hindi-speaking northern India increasingly imposes its retrograde values on a more educated, prosperous south, there will be trouble ahead. Going back to a social order before British rule (if it ever existed at all)—requiring moral codes that restrict women, enforcing religious practices, legislating bizarre vegetarian dietary practices, and requiring everyone to speak a single language, believe in one faith, and support one ideology—then Indian unity, preserved for the past 75 years, could begin to unravel. As any glance at a history book makes clear, that is unlikely to be a pleasant process.

An outwardly democratic India may seem like a good counternarrative to an autocratic China. But India has been an unreliable ally of the West and is looking increasingly odious. Look no further than India’s votes at the United Nations abstaining from condemning Russia’s unlawful and brutal invasion of Ukraine.

To regain the moral ascendancy India had at independence, the country needs a makeover. India needs to return to its origins—the “idea of India” and the spirit that its sole Nobel laureate in literature, Rabindranath Tagore, celebrated in his poetry . Even democratically constituted nations can be gripped by madness, as Europe’s bloody 20th century shows. India is a great adventure and fantastic experiment, but its current leadership is turning it into a mere shadow of what Gandhi, Nehru, and Tagore imagined. That failure of imagination is the ultimate tragedy as India now turns 75.

Correction, Aug. 15, 2022: A previous version of this article misstated the jurisdictions Narendra Modi was barred from entering before becoming prime minister.

Salil Tripathi is a writer based in New York. He reported from Southeast Asia in the 1990s, including on the fall of Suharto in Jakarta. He is the author of The Colonel Who Would Not Repent: The Bangladesh War and its Unquiet Legacy , and he is working on a book about the Gujaratis.

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India After Independence Timeline

India After Independence Timeline: Notes for UPSC History

Recently we have celebrated the 70th Indian independence day. The history of Indian is an important topic in UPSC IAS Exam. UPSC IAS exam is all about hard work and smart study. If you have the right strategy, you can easily crack this exam easily. India marks 70 years of independence on August 15, celebrating the end of British colonial rule in 1947.

To spice up your UPSC prelims preparation we would like to give some easy capsule for retention. Here we are giving a timeline of Indian after independence. Modern history is an important topic in the Prelims exam. This timeline will help you to study polity, history and some economic aspects as well.

India After Independence Timeline (1947-2020)

A list of important events that happened in India post-independence is given in brief in the table below:

Major Events in India After Independence (1947 – 2020)

India After Independence: UPSC Notes:- Download PDF Here

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The history of economic development in india since independence, the background.

The task that the democratically elected leaders of newly independent India embarked on in the early 1950s was not for the faint of heart. It was to lift living standards of a people accounting for one-seventh of the world’s population who earned an average income that was one-fifteenth of the average American income of the time. 1 Three-fourths of the Indian people were engaged in agriculture working with primitive tools and techniques, as either destitute landless laborers, highly insecure tenants-at-will, or small-plot holders eking out subsistence living from their meager plots. The literacy rate stood at 14 percent, and the average life expectancy was thirty-two years.

How successful has the country been in fulfilling the task over sixty years later? The charts in this article, using World Bank data, show how some of the country’s development indicators have changed in the last half-century. The country has experienced an increase in per capita income—especially since the 1980s—as well as reductions in poverty and infant mortality rates. These improvements are not insignificant and mark a sharp break from the near stagnation that the country experienced during British rule. But a comparison with the later superior performance of China and South Korea, countries with a comparable level of development in the 1950s, reveals that India’s performance remains below its potential. How did that come about? This essay provides an account of India’s strategy of economic development, its achievements, shortfalls, and future challenges.

The Initial Strategy

The government in the 1950s adopted a very particular strategy of economic development: rapid industrialization by implementing centrally prepared five-year plans that involved raising a massive amount of resources and investing them in the creation of large industrial state-owned enterprises (SOEs). 2 The industries chosen were those producing basic and heavy industrial goods such as steel, chemicals, machines and tools, locomotives, and power. Industrialization was pursued because leaders believed, based in part on the beliefs of some economists, that the industrial sector offers the greatest scope of growth in production. It was not that the Indian agricultural sector offered no scope for growth. Crop yields in India were quite low compared to other countries, and the recent famine in 1943 had underscored the need to increase food production. Still, Indian leaders did not want to make agriculture the mainstay of their strategy. The preeminence of agriculture they believed was characteristic of a backward economy, and growth in agriculture eventually runs up against the problem of insufficient demand. There is only so much, after all, that people are willing to eat.

Investments in the creation of public enterprises were chosen because one goal of the government was to establish a “socialistic pattern of society,” i.e., using democratic methods to bring large swathes of the country’s productive resources under public ownership. Industries producing basic and heavy goods were chosen for investment over consumer goods because the government wanted to reduce the country’s reliance on imports of basic and heavy industrial goods in line with their belief in the goodness of national self-reliance. “To import from abroad is to be slaves of foreign countries,” the first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, once declared. 3 The production of consumer goods such as clothing, furniture, personal care products, and similar goods was left to small privately run cottage industry firms that had the added advantage of being labor-intensive and therefore a potential generator of mass employment.

Chart of Percent of People living on less than $1.25 a day

Another strategy could have been to rely on private enterprise for industrial development while the government focused its resources on investments in infrastructure, public health, and education—sectors that are not served well by the private sector. Though leaders were cognizant of the dynamism of the private sector and the existence of India’s vibrant entrepreneurial class, they rejected the strategy that involved a prominent role for the private sector out of a commitment to establishing the socialistic pattern of society that they believed was morally superior. As things eventually turned out, the country came around in the 1990s to adopting this previously rejected strategy.

In order to assure the success of the government’s chosen strategy in the 1950s, complementary measures were put in place. Most industries were given significant trade protection so that their growth was not hampered by competition from more efficient foreign producers. An industrial licensing system was set up to ensure that private enterprises would not expand beyond the bounds that national planners had set for them. The system required all private firms beyond a certain small size to obtain a license whenever they wanted to expand capacity, produce new products, change their input mix, import inputs, or relocate plants. The system put the activities of the private sector under significant control of the government. Pundits and students of political economy who were not socialists derisively nicknamed this stifling system “the license Raj,” comparing this economic format of oppression to the political control of the imperialist British Raj.

Their strategy of increasing agricultural production was based on plans to reform agrarian institutions. According to the thinking of the planners, the poor performance of Indian agriculture was due to the fact that tillers did not own the land they worked, so they had little incentive to make land improvements that would increase long-term productivity. The government planned to implement legislation to redistribute land from large landlords to actual tillers and improve the terms under which tenant cultivators leased land from the landowners. The government also planned to organize small farmers into cooperative societies so that their resources could be pooled in order to buy modern tools and implements and the strength of their numbers could be used to obtain higher crop prices. In addition to increasing agricultural production, such reforms were also expected to alleviate the poverty of the huge class of peasants.

The Initial Results

Industrialization was a moderate success. The newly created public enterprises, albeit after major cost overruns and several delays, turned out steel, chemicals, and other products that were generally associated with developed countries. A British colonial official in the early twentieth century once scoffed that he would be willing to eat all the steel than the Indians would produce. 4 If alive in 1960, he would have eaten 6,300 tons of steel. 5

Still, by the late 1950s several problems resulting from the planners’ chosen strategy of economic development were coming to the fore, and such problems intensified in the 1960s and the 1970s. Many SOEs were run on political rather than economic considerations, so they produced losses that drained government resources rather than—as the planners had hoped—augmenting them. The SOEs could also not be counted on to generate mass employment due to their capital and skill rather than labor-intensive character. Several enterprises were overstaffed and faced insufficient demand for what they produced, forcing them to render idle some of their capacity. The case of the Haldia fertilizer plant is an extreme but illustrative example. The plant was set up in the 1970s and employed 1,500 people. The workers and managers showed up regularly, kept the machine facilities clean and in working condition, and often received annual bonuses and overtime. They lived in a nearby spanking-new township built specially for them, one that had excellent roads, schools, and homes. There was only one thing missing. Because of numerous problems, the plant never produced even an ounce of fertilizer. Yet the government kept Haldia’s lights on for twenty-one years. 6

One government method for financing expenditures was the creation of new money, which resulted in significant inflation.

The plans for the reform of agrarian institutions did not pan out. The push for land redistribution ran into political opposition and clashed with the requirements of due process, so as little as 5 percent of the land was actually redistributed. The creation of agricultural cooperatives also did not materialize due to difficulties of organization and lack of enthusiasm on the ground. Agricultural production barely kept pace with population growth, and the country’s food security remained precarious. The drawback of prioritizing industry over agriculture for public investments became glaringly apparent when the country experienced a food crisis in the mid-1960s, necessitating urgent large-scale imports of subsidized grain from the United States. The crisis undermined the government’s claim that its strategy of prioritizing industry over agriculture for public investment would increase national self-reliance.

The drawback of prioritizing industry over agriculture for public investments became glaringly apparent when the country experienced a food crisis in the mid-1960s, necessitating urgent large-scale imports of subsidized grain from the United States.

Under the fixed exchange rate regime that existed in the country, high inflation in the 1960s reduced the country’s exports while increasing its imports, resulting in a shortage of foreign exchange. The shortage was exacerbated by the food imports made necessary by a drought and a war with Pakistan. Foreign exchange became one of the items the government had to resort to rationing. The reverberations were felt throughout the economy. Several new factories lay idle for want of foreign exchange to import some necessary inputs, while others hoarded foreign exchange to starve their competitors or earn a premium in the black market. Holding foreign exchange without a license became an offense punishable by jail time. Ultimately, the rupee had to be devalued, which generated further disruptions in the economic lives of most people.

Meanwhile, the industrial licensing system, designed to ensure that the private sector operated according to the five-year plans, became a source of much inefficiency and corruption. The micromanagement of the private sector called for much more knowledge and technical ability than government bureaucrats possessed. The system descended into a mechanism for rewarding political supporters of the rulers, which undermined the confidence of the people in the integrity of their governmental institutions.

Perhaps the most unfortunate legacy of prioritizing industry at the expense of other alternatives for investment was that scarce public resources were diverted away from health and education. The meager resources expended on these in India stand in marked contrast to the plentiful attention paid to them in China and other Asian countries. Seventy years after independence, India has still to catch up on these fronts; one-half of its children are malnourished, one-half of women are illiterate, and twothirds of its people lack basic sanitation. As a result, a large fraction of Indians today are unable to directly take advantage of the opportunities opened up by the country’s recent tilt toward a market economy and globalization.

The Change in Strategies

In response to the food crisis of the mid-1960s, the government changed its agricultural strategy. Rather than holding out for the reform of agrarian institutions, it began to guarantee higher crop prices to farmers and utilize subsidies to promote use of modern inputs such as chemical fertilizers and high-yielding varieties of grain developed in other parts of the world. The resulting surge of production—the so-called “green revolution” of the late 1960s—made the country self-sufficient in food grains. The strategy was controversial because it increased economic disparities among the farmers. For the greatest chance of success, the government had to focus its strategy on the irrigated sections—the very parts of the country that were already doing relatively well. The uptake of subsidized inputs was also the highest among large landowners, owing to their greater education, creditworthiness, and the ability to bear the risk posed by adopting new methods. The strategy did not do much to alleviate the economic condition of the agrarian poor, other than providing the indirect benefit of living in a country with better overall food security that has not since experienced famine. Micronutrient deficiencies (not caloric) such as anemia are today a bigger problem among the poor, and the country’s health indicators lag behind those of other countries with comparable levels of income.

The strategy toward industry, however, turned more interventionist after 1965. Elaboration of all the reasons for this need not detain us here; there is a strong case that the interventionist turn was a cynical ploy by new Prime Minister Indira Gandhi for consolidating her power in response to certain political developments. The new policy stance displayed a suspicion of large firms and a preference for the small. The licensing system imposed additional restrictions on the activities of large firms, curtailing their growth. Under a policy that was one of a kind, consumer goods such as apparel, footwear, furniture, sporting goods, office supplies, leather goods, and kitchen appliances were reserved by law for production by small firms. Foreign firms were asked to dilute their ownership stake in their Indian subsidiaries and in response, multinationals such as IBM and Coca-Cola closed their operations and left the country.

To the extent that the success of the large firms was due to their superior technical or organizational capacity, the curtailment of their growth meant that such capacity remained underutilized. Delays and arbitrariness in the issuing of industrial licenses resulted in supply bottlenecks and shortages of many consumer goods. For example, in the 1970s, there was an eight-year waiting list for people wanting to buy a scooter, the preferred vehicle for middle-class Indians.

Thirty-five years after independence, India’s leadership had yet to achieve, to any significant degree, its pledge of lifting living standards.

The reservation of consumer goods for small enterprises meant that the benefits of economies of scale were forgone, resulting in the production of poor-quality and high-priced goods that foreigners shunned and domestic consumers had no choice but to accept. Meanwhile, countries such as South Korea and Taiwan were growing rich by exporting this very category of goods. It was during this time that Indians developed a craze for foreign products, the imports of which were restricted, and the term “imported” became synonymous with “high-quality.” The result of such policies was economic stagnation. The country’s per capita income grew by an average of less than 1 percent a year between 1966 and 1980, a rate that was too low to make a dent in the country’s massive poverty. Thirty-five years after independence, India’s leadership had yet to achieve, to any significant degree, its pledge of lifting living standards.

Also, years of rhetoric about creating rapid development had heightened people’s expectations for their quality of living. Economic stagnation, combined with high inflation caused by the government’s printing of massive amounts of money, bred political unrest and popular agitation, to which Indira Gandhi responded by declaring a national emergency in 1975. Taking advantage of the suspension of democratic procedures and requirements of due process brought on by the emergency, the Prime Minister attempted strict interventions that included rapid land redistribution and forced sterilization as a part of population control. The programs were poorly administered, contributed to incidents of human rights violations, failed to improve the economic situation, and caused a number of unintended consequences. For example, the government’s attempts to liquidate debts of poor farmers led to the virtual drying up of informal sources of credit and the banks were not up to the task of picking up the slack. The chaos generated by the haphazard and poorly administered interventions generated a popular backlash and tainted in many minds the whole interventionist approach to economic development.

By the 1980s, a substantial number of influential people had come around to the conclusion that the government did not have the political and administrative capacity to successfully run a controlled economy that delivered on economic growth. Gandhi, chastened by the political defeats that followed her earlier attempts to impose strict controls, acquiesced to relaxing some of them. Her Cambridge-educated son, Rajiv Gandhi, who succeeded her as Prime Minister, enacted further liberalization. Certain industries and business activities were exempted from licensing requirements. Such measures helped to cause robust industrial growth in the late 1980s.

The About Turn

When a foreign exchange shortage threatened a crisis again in 1991, the government made a clear break with past policies. By then, the intellectual consensus in favor of state-led, import-substituting development strategies had greatly weakened. The breakup of the Soviet Union had substantially discredited central planning, and the export-led success of East Asian countries had thrown into light the drawbacks of an inward-looking model of development. Also, cultural changes in India, consisting of a deemphasis of asceticism and a greater acceptance of the pursuit of material gain, had made extensive economic controls untenable. 7 At the behest of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which provided rescue during the foreign exchange crisis, but also of its own accord, the government announced major economic reforms. It dismantled the license Raj almost overnight, slashed tax rates and import duties, removed controls on prices and entry of new firms, put up several SOEs for sale, and rolled out the welcome mat for foreign investors. Rather than socialism, the guiding principles of policy now were liberalization, privatization, and globalization.

The country’s share in world trade increased from 0.4 percent on the eve of the reforms to 1.5 percent in 2006, and foreign exchange shortages, once a chronic headache for policymakers, have now been replaced by reserves upward of US $350 billion . . .

The economy responded with a surge in growth, which averaged 6.3 percent annually in the 1990s and the early 2000s, a rate double that of earlier time frames. Shortages disappeared. On the eve of the reforms, the public telecom monopoly had installed five million landlines in the entire country and there was a seven-year waiting list to get a new line. In 2004, private cellular companies were signing up new customers at the rate of five million per month. The number of people who lived below the poverty line decreased between 1993 and 2009 from 50 percent of total population to 34 percent. The exact estimates vary depending on the poverty line used, but even alternative estimates indicate a post-1991 decline of poverty that is more rapid than at any other time since independence. The country’s share in world trade increased from 0.4 percent on the eve of the reforms to 1.5 percent in 2006, and foreign exchange shortages, once a chronic headache for policymakers, have now been replaced by reserves upward of US $350 billion—prompting debates about what to do with the “excess reserves.” 8

Several significant economic challenges remain for India. The economy has polarized into a highly productive, modern, and globally integrated formal sector, employing about 10 percent of the labor force, and a low-productivity sector consisting of agriculture and urban informal activities, engaging 90 percent of the labor force. The sectors that have experienced the most growth are services and capital-intensive manufacturing. It is illustrative that IT and pharmaceuticals are the two sectors of the economy with international renown. Such industries tend to be urban and employ mainly skilled workers. Yet to come India’s way are millions of lowskill manufacturing jobs that have allowed the poor in East Asian countries to climb into the middle class. Companies are loath to set up labor-intensive manufacturing because Indian labor laws are some of the most restrictive in the world. For example, a manufacturing unit hiring more than 100 workers cannot lay off any of them without seeking government permission, which is rarely granted. 9 Liberalization of labor laws tends to run into fierce political opposition. The second reason for the dearth of manufacturing jobs is that the country’s infrastructure is relatively deficient, and so companies increasingly practicing just-in-time inventory management do not find it cost-effective to include India in their global supply chains. 10

The provision of public services in India is appallingly poor. Government schools and clinics are underfunded and inadequately supervised, and their workers display low morale and high absenteeism. Yet such public institutions are rarely held accountable for their performance. 11 The middle class has largely opted out of the system in favor of private health care, schools, and transportation so there is little political pressure from them to improve the system. Most middle-class Indians now even own a power generator to cope with everyday power cuts. The poor take the brunt of the derelict public services. Two million children die in India every year from easily preventable diseases, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), and immunization rates in India are amongst the lowest in the world. Air pollution levels in urban areas pose a severe public health crisis. According to a survey by the World Health Organization (WHO), thirteen out of the twenty most polluted cities in the world are Indian. 12 The country still relies heavily on inexpensive coal to generate power and has shown very little willingness to move toward alternative energy sources.

Given the current policies and state of governance in India, it is hard to see an obvious path into the middle class for the multitudes still remaining in poverty. Global demand for low-wage, low-skill labor to sew T-shirts or assemble TVs is not what it used to be, because production is now becoming increasingly mechanized and some of it is being “reshored” back to the rich countries. For several hundred million poor people in delicate health and with little education, the country will have to find a way to overcome the technical, institutional, and economic barriers to developing the capabilities necessary for functioning in a twenty-first-century economy. It is not a task for the faint-hearted.

Article contents

The indian economy after independence.

Tirthankar Roy Tirthankar Roy Department of Economic History, London School of Economics and Political Science
https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190625979.013.563
Published online: 31 March 2020

The Indian Union, from the time of independence from British colonial rule, 1947, until now, has undergone shifts in the trajectory of economic change and the political context of economic change. One of these transitions was a ‘green revolution’ in farming that occurred in the 1970s. In the same decade, Indian migration to the Persian Gulf states began to increase. In the 1980s, the government of India seemed to abandon a strategy of economic development that had relied on public investment in heavy industries and encouraged private enterprise in most fields. These shifts did not always follow announced policy, produced deep impact on economic growth and standards of living, and generated new forms of inequality. Therefore, their causes and consequences are matters of discussion and debate. Most discussions and debates form around three larger questions. First, why was there a turnaround in the pace of economic change in the 1980s? The answer lies in a fortuitous rebalancing of the role of openness and private investment in the economy. Second, why did human development lag achievements in income growth after the turnaround? A preoccupation with state-aided industrialization, the essay answers, entailed neglect of infrastructure and human development, and some of that legacy persisted. If the quality of life failed to improve enough, then a third question follows, why did the democratic political system survive at all if it did not equitably distribute the benefits from growth? In answer, the essay discusses studies that question the extent of the failure.

economic development
import-substituting industrialization
land reform
green revolution
liberalization
colonialism
nationalism
public goods

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Essay on “India after Independence” Complete Essay for Class 10, Class 12 and Graduation and other classes.

India after Independence

Essay No. 01

There is no doubt that India has made tremendous progress after Independence.

At the time of Independence, most of the Indian people led a miserable life. They lived in huts, slums and shanties. They had no facilities and comforts of life. There was widespread illiteracy and child mortality was high. There was shortage of food grains and famines were common and many people died of starvation.

After independence, the whole scenario has changed. Still a vast majority of people lives in villages. But now the lot of villages has greatly changed. Most of the villages are electrified. They are connected to big cities with pucka roads. The farmers get bumper crops, thanks to the new agricultural and irrigational methods and the fair use of new seeds, fertilizers, pesticides, etc.

There has been a revolution in the medical science. Child mortality has greatly been reduced and life-span has been greatly increased. Nov, there are cures even for those diseases which were previously thought to be incurable such as T.B, cholera, heart trouble, etc.

New education, new machines, skills and courses have made India prosperous and an economic power to be reckoned with in the international arena.

Democracy has taken firm roots in India and a number of elections, by and large free and fair, have been held here over the years.

Heavy industry such as steel, cement, etc. which is so vital for infrastructure has been started on a large-scale.

Means of information and communication and entertainment have been revolutionized and India has become a giant in the fields of information technology and telecommunications.

India has also become a nuclear and space power and envisions to become a developed country by 2020. India has shown her military power a number of times by inflicting crushing defeats on Pakistan in 1948, 1965, 1971 and 1999.

In spite of this, there have been certain setbacks and certain intractable problems. The burgeoning population has nullified much of the progress. Rich-poor disparity in incomes is abnormal. Still there are some acute problems such as poverty, illiteracy, unemployment, corruption, female foieticide , etc. Let us hope all these will be solved sooner rather than later.

( 370 Words )

Essay No. 02

Fifty Years of Indian Independence

August 15, 1997 marked India completing its 50th Year of Independence. This is not a long time in the life of a nation, but it has been long enough to see the dramatic changes in all areas. In 1947, we threw out the British after a unique freedom struggle which gave the world the philosophy of non-violence. Over the years, there have been many things to be proud of, but perhaps as many things to feel let down.

When our independence was in its infancy, it had to face many hard and complex problems. The country was partitioned and millions of people were uprooted. Our Government had to rehabilitate them. At the same time, Pakistan unleased tribals to attack Kashmir, which had acceded to and become a part of India. Razakaars in Hyderabad rebelled against our Government. Other Maharajas tried to form independent States. But, thank God, all these difficulties were overcome with the help of our great leaders like Sardar Patel.

The first goal achieved by free India was to consolidate the various units of the country and to absorb six hundred and odd princely States. This unified the country and its people.

On January 26, 1950, India was declared a ‘Republic’ after adopting a new Constitution. It guaranteed to secure for all its citizens justice, liberty, equality and fraternity. It declared Hindi as the National Language and 18 others as recognised regional languages. It also declared India a secular state and there is no discrimination against any person on grounds of religion, race, caste or creed.

General elections, based on universal adult franchise, have been held thirteen times during the last five decades. As a result of the elections held in 1989, National Front Government came to power at the Centre and in many States. However, in 1991, Congress again captured the power at Centre by virtue of its being the largest single party. But in 1996, the United Front again came to power with the help of Congress. In 1999, BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) came to power at the Centre. The fact in this process lies in the peaceful transfer of power every time which indeed symbolises the true democratic character of polity.

During these years, we have successfully completed eight Five-Year Plans. These have imparted a measure of strength and stability to our economy. Per capita income has been increased from Rs. 466 in 1950-51 to Rs. 9,377 in 1996-97. Both agricultural and industrial productions have increased considerably. The production of food grains increased from 52.2 million tones in 1951-52 to 199.32 million tons in 1996-97.

Encouraged by the success of eight Plans, India has now launched the Ninth Five-Year Plan. The Plan, which covers the period 1997-2002, envisages a total outlay of Rs. 8,59,200 crore. The Plan aims at the growth rate of 6.5 per cent per annum for the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). It assumes the Incremental Capital Output Ratio (ICOR) of 4.3, saving rate of 26.1 per cent, Current Account Deficit of 2.1 per cent. This growth is to be achieved by 3.9 per cent growth in agriculture, 8.2 per cent in industry and 11.8 per cent in exports.

On Economic front, the Liberalised Economic Policy was introduced in 1991. At that time Indian economy was undergoing a serious crisis. Industry and agriculture were stagnant; the financial sector was in doldrums; a huge fiscal deficit was mounting with a massive foreign debt, eating into a major chunk of our resources. The masses had been facing a double-digit rate of inflation. The new policy aimed at the dismantling of controls over the economy with the state yielding to market economy. As a result of new liberalised policy, growth rate during the Eighth Plan was 6.8 per cent. Foreign exchange reserves increased to $ 29.435 billion in Sept. 1997 and rate of inflation fell to all-time lower of about 4 per cent in 1997.

On scientific front, India since Independence has continued to march ahead, pursuing a programme of using modern science and technology for national development. At present, we spend about 0.83 per cent of our GNP on S & T development. We have made laudable achievements in water management, healthcare system, and nuclear power capacity. The space programme has envisaged and achieved the objectives of space-based services in areas of communications, meteorology, resource survey and management and development of Satellite Launch Vehicles (SLV and PSLV) and associated ground system, the GRAM SAT and Remote Sensing Satellites (IRS Series) are testimony to the Indian excellence and endeavours.

However, the impact of scientific and technological endeavour is more obvious in some areas than others. Industrial advancement, noteworthy achievements in space applications, defence, advance materials and nuclear research do not quite mitigate the misery of a large sections of our population having to exist in unsanitary conditions, without safe drinking water, with little or no medical facilities to help them overcome health hazards. A large number of our villages are steeped in poverty, still unlit, lacking in schools and easy means of communication.

On the diplomatic front, India has obdurately maintained its commitment since Independence, to genuine disarmament, and has continued its work for attaining on a time-bound basis, a nuclear weapon-free world. India has never accepted discriminating regimes like NPT (Non-Proliferation Treaty) and is always happy to participate in non-discriminatory and fair global treaties like the chemical weapons convention. India feels committed to non-alignment but recognises that certain ennui has developed about it in several of old faithful member-states, and apathy in certain others. India is now experiencing a difficult phase in its relations with the West as they strive to effect fundamental economic, social, and political changes within our own societies. In the broad areas relating to India’s foreign policy, defence and strategic concerns, there is little, if any, disagreement, or difference of perception between and amongst our political parties, regions or states.

However, during the last five decades our failures have been much more than our achievements. Our greatest failure is in the eradication of corruption, which is a bigger threat than even external aggression. It is a fact that India has been listed as the seventh most corrupt country in the world. Corruption has grown because the culprits, especially those in high offices, have discovered that the arm of the law is never long enough to rope them.

If there is one gaping hole in our roster of achievements, 50 years after Independence, it is the number of citizens who continue to be ground down by poverty. By Planning Commission’s own reckoning, nearly 30 per cent of Indians live below poverty line. Poverty not only affects its victims but also acts as a fetter on the overall development and progress of society. It limits the size of the domestic market and hampers economy’s growth prospects in much the same way as deficiencies in physical infrastructure do.

As far as education is concerned, in India about 105 million children in the 6-10 age-group do not go to school. Despite various pronouncements by all the governments and various programmes attempted for this purpose one cannot deny that the situation is grim. India has the dubious record of having half the illiterates of the world by the end of the 20th century. We have failed to implement what has already been laid down in the Constitution. What we need is to ensure our major social and economic changes. The causes of illiteracy are not going to leave us. If a substantial section of population is illiterate, it is because we have continued the colonial system more or less unchanged. Though, some additional inputs have been made and some marginal progress has taken place, yet it will not solve the problem. What we need today is a mass movement, a mass awareness against this malady to better the record apart from some Herculean efforts on the part of the Government.

Child Labour assumes the character of a social problem as it hinders, arrests or distorts the national growth process and prevents the child from attaining manhood. The estimates of working children in India vary from 50 million to a number much higher. The various reasons for the child labour in the country are cited such as poverty, wage structure, employment, illiteracy and so on. To abolish or eliminate this menace from our Indian society, integrated efforts are required. For this attitudinal change and sensitisation of employers, health and welfare personnel’s efforts to encourage small family norms are called for. Also, we will have to improve the economic condition of the adult workers.

An explosive situation is developing on the employment front in the wake of massive backlog in the creation of new jobs. Official figures concede that the country has entered the Ninth Five-Year Plan with a backlog of 7 million jobs that should have been created during the last five years.

Presently we have crossed the one hundred-crore mark of population, which is about three times that of USA and thus acquired the dubious distinction of being the second most populous country in the world. Compared to natural human resources of the country, India is definitely over-populated. Over-population is also due to increase of birth rate. Our annual growth is about 2.11 per cent. Closely related with population is poverty. So long an effective control is not exercised on the population increase, the nation will not get rid of poverty. According to UN projections, India’s population certainly neutralises much of the fruits of development.

At present, India has taken upon itself one of the biggest challenges of modern times, namely, economic independence through peaceful and non-violent methods. The aim set is to conquer hunger and unemployment by the process of bold liberalisation of economic policy. The success of democracy in India depends upon the successful working of new economic policy and removal of poverty.

( 1645 Words )

Essay No. 03

Indian Villages after Independence

India is a country of villages. Nearly five lakh villages exist in India. While only about 28 per cent of the population lives in the cities. 72 per cent of the population lives in the villages. The villages thus occupy a place of great importance in the country. They are the base of India’s development in every sphere of life.

There were many problems in the villages before Independence. The Government was quite aware of the backwardness of the people in the villages. The people in the villages were poor, backward, ignorant and superstitious. Their methods of agricultural operations were primitive. There were no schools, hospitals, banks, etc., for the facilities of the villagers. There were no proper roads, electricity and tube wells. As a matter of fact their life was a hell. The conditions in the villages were so bad that there could not be any social and cultural development of the people. But now the Government is seized of this problem and had drawn many plans and projects to help them and improve the conditions of the rural community.

Since the dawn of Independence, the conditions in the Indian villages are changing very fast. These have changed the face of the Indian villages. There are several types of changes taking place in the whole of the country.

To improve the conditions of Indian villages, our Government has implemented the scheme of Community Development Programme, which was introduced in 1952. These programmes have manifold activities. The activities have made a tremendous change in the socio-economic set up of our villages. There are various changes brought about in our villages. These changes cover all aspects of the community life.

The greatest problem in our villages was that of illiteracy. Due to illiteracy the poor farmers were the victims of superstitions and were also exploited by the money-lenders. The Government has opened night schools for the adults and primary schools for boys and girls. Now every village has its own primary school. High schools and Inter colleges are established at every twenty kilometer of distance. The result is that they are now educated, illiteracy and ignorance are thus fast disappearing.

Another change brought about in the villages is in the field of agricultural methodology. Till recently, most of the farmers were using the old methods of ploughing in their fields, or sowing seed and harvesting. However, the farmers are now using new techniques. They plough their fields with tractors, and irrigate their fields with water from tube-wells. For harvesting also, they use new machines. Now they have switched over to mechanised farming with the help of electricity. Electricity has now illuminated their huts. With the abolition of zamindari, the person who ploughs the fields, is now the real owner of the land. Cooperative societies and banks are the substitute for the money-lenders. These societies and banks lend the money on lower rate of interest and the farmers are now free from the cruel clutches of the money-lenders.

A great change has taken place in the political and social life of the villagers also. Before Independence, they had no say in the affairs of the village. Now Gram Sabha, Gram Panchayat and Panchayati Adalat are there. They are their own bodies manned by their own representatives. Due to the functioning of these bodies, the villagers have now begun to understand their rights and duties. They now take more interest in politics, the transformation being complete with even the ills of politics infesting the village elections. Another great change which occurred in village community is that the outlook towards social problems has become broad. They are now no more superstitious. Litigation has been reduced. There is less thought for untouchability and other social evils. They are now not particular about purdah system. Joint family system is crumbling down here also. Bonded labour has been freed and the recovery of loans given by money-lenders has been waived off. They are not slaves now, but free.

More and more facilities are being given to the villagers in the field of cottage industry. To promote the village industries loans are given to them liberally by the rural banks. The poor farmers can now start their own village industries or such cottage industries as basket-making, the mustard and rape-seed oil, soap and rope-making, poultry, fisheries, piggeries and many other industries to improve their economic conditions.

There are changes in others fields also. Roads are constructed by the villagers. Now every village is linked by roads to other parts of the country. Similarly, sanitary conditions have been improved. Hospitals and government dispensaries have been established to remove the illness and diseases which usually become a curse on community.

In brief, the fact is that the development of villages is in a transitional stage. The villages are changing very rapidly and the main structure of the rural society is in the process of change. The economic programme of the Government has proved a boon to them and thereby an attempt is being made by the Government to convert every village into a heaven provided the village community cooperates with it sincerely.

( 856 Words )

Essay No. 04

Political slogans often overrun reality. When Rajiv Gandhi coined the slogan “Mera Bharat Mahan” (My India is great), people appreciated the sentiment, but very few actually believed in it. Then came along the BJP with its new slogan “India shining” riding tall over the feeling of economic optimism which was backed by the plentiful rains in 2003 and the success of the Indian IT boom. Although the BJP failed miserably at the polls, the truth was and is that India continues to shine on. Sixty years after independence, India has emerged from the shadow of colonialism to position itself as the world’s biggest and rowdiest democracy matching its political freedoms with financial ones, unleashing a surge of growth and wealth creation that is altering the lives of its millions.

Twenty years ago the world equated India with snake charmers, elephants, half—naked fakirs, the rope trick, the holy cow, crowds and pollution. Now it is just as famous for its educated person power, its Bollywood movie stars, literary giants and its steel magnates among other things. Poverty remains, but there is renewed hope. There is a palpable feeling of excitement and promise everywhere. The new slogan is “Mera Bharat Jawan” (My India is young). It is incredible that despite India’s, ‘current’ third world status, she has guarded herself from dictators, military rule, civil war or foreign invasion and she continues to shine as the world’s largest democracy. It is no small achievement that India is now considered amongthe top ten industrial world powers, reflective of the country’s self-sufficiency. It is a matter of great pride that Indians have made it to the Forbes list of richest men in the world. The private health care infrastructure in India is comparable to any of the developed countries in the world. This has led to a boom in medical tourism with patients the world over arriving in India for medical treatments. Yet the challenges faced by young India in healthcare and medicine are many and enormous. Although, the infant mortality rate has been cut down by half the female infanticide rates still loom large. Although increasing numbers of children are receiving vaccination, many Indian infantsstill succumb to malnutrition. Infrastructure strains hard to keep up with the economic boom while corruption, discrimination, religious violence, child labour and female dowry deaths still prevail. Severe disparity is shown by its various states. While states like Kerala, boast of 100 % literacy and health indicators similar to those of developed countries, other states like Bihar and Madhya Pradesh show appalling statistics. One third of the married women and 45% of children under the age ten have nutrition deficiency problems. However, despite this, it remains that India’s massive shift in global perception is not a mere illusion.

India has achieved a lot in the sixty yearspost-independence however; a lot still needs to be done. Population was and remains one of our largest concerns. It also remains the number one reason why our infrastructure is compromised, why corruption is rampant and why our children die due to malnutrition. The emphasis has to be on education of the populace and sincere efforts need to be made towards providing better health care services in the public sector. Nevertheless, six decades after her independence, the world’s eyes are focused on India and it is only a matter of time before we evolve from a developing country into a developed country.

( 571 Words )

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India before Independence

As we all know that we got independence in 1947, after long sacrifices. These English guys not only tortured us mentally, but also physically. They used us as slaves and enjoyed their life to the fullest. whether we faced famine or earthquake, they never thought about us. And at the point of independence, they were forced to do so because they lost at the war and it was difficult for them to control us, so they decided to deliver the power to us. And to make this process hassle-free, they used their most deserving candidate was called Mountbatten. He smartly divided the two nations and then drawn the boundary, without thinking about those whose families rely upon another state. As they left us, we weren’t stable enough to handle everything, so we tried everything just as they went. But still today, the remains of their hatred remain in society. We are still divided upon religion. Rabindranath Tagore in his poem “Where the mind is without fear” had compared that if the world is broken into narrow fragments of religion, then this world will never be able to unite and can become as heaven. If we will try to change our mindset from today, then I am sure that visons of our ancestors will come true. At last, I would like to quote few lines from famous speech ” Tryst with Destiny” :

The ambition of the greatest man of our generation has been to wipe every tear from every eye. That may be beyond us, but so long as there are tears and suffering, so long our work will not be over. And so we have to labor and to work, and work hard, to give reality to our dreams. Those dreams are for India, but they are also for the world.

how you submitted your,i am not able to submit through website can i know plss

it was so difficult i suppose

bro when was we got before independence in1947

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Completed my schooling from Seth M.R. Jaipuria in 2019 and now pursuing Btech in Chemical Engineering from UPES, Dehradun. I love to write on new and interesting topics.

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Development in India After Independence

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India, which has now turned into a significant nation internationally has grown a ton since it got its freedom from the British East India Company rule. Yet, very much like all the other things, various individuals have various sentiments about it. While some think that it has seen huge development, others are of the view that the development is delayed when contrasted with what it ought to be. Regardless of these differentiating sees, the way that remains is that the India we see today is unique in relation to what it was during autonomy.

It has created regarding the foundation, schooling, medical care, science and innovation, and in practically any remaining areas. Yet, it is viewed as a non-industrial country. This infers that the nation is requiring some investment to find the created world. Allow us now to take a gander at the improvements that India has made in various areas in the beyond seventy years.

Indian Development After Independence

Table of Content

India after independence- achievements, significant developments in india after independence, two phases of economy, administration sector growth, development of the agriculture sector, foundation development, the first independence day of india, logical achievements.

After independence, Indian citizens have the right to vote for choosing the government into power. Important leaders who helped to secure independence was Mahatma Gandhi, who began the fight for independence since 1914. Mangal Pandey was the first freedom fighter from India who fought against British in 1857.

Some important developments in India after independence have been as follows:

Indian Railways operate with about 7000 stations and was formed in 1951.
First general elections in India was held in 1951 with Congress winning over majority.
India developed Asia’s first nuclear reactor. Apsara nuclear reactor was developed in 1956.
Chandrayan 1 came to be launched in 2008 to the moon.

A free India was granted a broke economy, broad ignorance, and stunning destitution. Contemporary financial specialists partition the historical backdrop of India’s monetary development into two stages – the initial 45 years after autonomy and very nearly thirty years of the unrestricted economy. The years going before the financial progression were predominantly set apart by cases wherein monetary improvement got deteriorated because of an absence of significant strategies.

The financial changes acted as the hero with the start of a strategy of progression and privatization. An adaptable modern permitting strategy and a casual FDI strategy began getting positive reactions from worldwide financial backers. Among the main considerations that drove India’s economic development following the financial changes of 1991 were expanded FDI, reception of data innovation, and expanded homegrown utilization.

A significant improvement in the country’s administration area has been noticeable in the telecom and data innovation areas. A pattern that began exactly twenty years back is currently well thriving. A few worldwide firms keep on re-appropriating their tele administrations and IT administrations to India, bringing about the development of ITES, BPO, and KPO organizations. The securing of mastery in data innovation has prompted the age of thousands of new positions, which thus expanded homegrown utilization, and normally, more unfamiliar direct speculations ended up satisfying the needs.

As of now, the administration area utilizes over 30% of the Indian labor force and this course of improvement began, thinking back in the 1980s. During the 60s, the area utilized just 4.5% of the functioning populace. As per the Economic Survey 2021-22, the administration area represented over half of the Indian GDP, and the figures are supposed to fill from now on.

Since the 1950s, the advancement in agribusiness has been fairly consistent. The area developed at around 1% per annum in the main portion of the twentieth hundred years. During the post-Independence time, the development rate bumped around 2.6 percent per annum. The central point of development in agrarian creation was the extension of cultivating regions and the presentation of high-yielding assortments of harvests. The area could figure out how to end its reliance on imported food grains. It has advanced both concerning yield and underlying changes.

Reliable interest in research, land changes, development of degrees for credit offices, and improvement in the provincial foundation were some other deciding variables that achieved an agrarian upset in the country. The nation has likewise developed further in the agri-biotech area. The Rabobank report uncovers that the agri-biotech area has been developing at 30% in a couple of years. The nation is likewise liable to turn into a significant maker of hereditarily changed/designed crops.

The Indian street network has become one of the biggest on the planet with the all-out street length expanding from 0.399 million km in 1951 to 4.70 million km starting around 2015. Also, the complete length of the country’s public thruways has expanded from 24,000 km (1947-69) to 1,37,625 km (2021). Legislative endeavors have prompted the extension of the organization of State parkways and significant local streets, which thus has straightforwardly added to modern development.

As India needs the ability to drive its development motor, it has set off a critical improvement in the accessibility of energy by embracing a multi-pronged methodology. After just about seventy years of Independence, India has arisen as the third biggest maker of power in Asia. It has expanded its power age limit from 1,362 MW in 1947 to 3,95,600 MW starting around 2022. By and large, the power age in India has expanded from 301 billion units (BUs) during 1992-93 to 400990.23 MW in 2022. With regards to provincial jolt, the Indian government has figured out how to carry lights to each of the 18,452 towns by April 28, 2018, when contrasted with 3061 every 1950.

Progress in Education Sector

Hauling itself out from far and wide ignorance, India has figured out how to carry its school system at standard with the worldwide norm. The number of schools saw a sensational increment during the post-freedom period. The Parliament made rudimentary training a major ideal for youngsters in the age gathering of 6-14 years by passing the 86th amendment to the Constitution in 2002. At freedom, India’s education rate was a miserable 12.2 % which expanded to 74.04% according to the 2011 evaluation.

Accomplishments in the Field of Healthcare

A reduction in death rates is viewed as one of the significant accomplishments that came in India’s direction in this area. While the future was close to 37 years in 1951, it nearly multiplied to 65 years by 2011. In 2022, it was expanded to 70.19 years. Comparative improvement was seen in the maternal death rate too. India’s maternal death rate likewise declined from 212 passings for every 100,000 live births in 2007 to 103 passings in 2017-19, according to a report by The Hindu.

First Independence Day in India took place in 1947. Jawahar Lal Nehru, the Prime Minister of India, unfurled the tri-colour flag of India. Prime Minister of India hoists the tri-colour flag in Red Fort and first Independence Day of India is dedicated to brave men and women who laid their lives to free their motherland.

Autonomous India has taken certain steps on its street to logical turn of events. Its ability is being appeared in a steady increase of aggressive ventures. India invests wholeheartedly in its space programs, which started with the send-off of its most memorable satellite Aryabhatta in 1975. From that point forward, India has arisen as a space power that has effectively sent off unfamiliar satellites. Through Chandrayaan-1, India turned into the fourth country on the planet to establish its banner on the lunar surface in 2008. Its most memorable mission to Mars was sent off in November 2013 which effectively arrived at the planet’s circle on 24 September 2014. In June 2015, ISRO sent off 104 satellites (most noteworthy on the planet) from a solitary rocket through PSLV-C37.

India is additionally forcefully seeking both atomic and rocket programs. That has all the while expanded the country’s safeguard strength also. BrahMos drafted into the safeguarding framework is the world’s quickest voyage rocket that has been together evolved by India and Russia. After over sixty years of autonomy, India has now drawn nearer to being a free power to deal with in the field of atomic and rocket innovation.

A significant contribution to the economy and technological advancements and Indians are known for their hard work, dedication, and resilience in their contribution to the country. Indians have excelled in different fields since independence. In different fields like technology, sports, and others Indians have excelled.

Frequently Asked Questions

How india has developed in 75 years.

Infrastructural development drastically improved in 75 years. There was advancement in the road network, rail lines, airports, and many other important types of developments in various other sectors, contributing to the economy of India.

What are the major developments in India?

The major developments in India are as follows: Historic Tax Reform Digitization Drive Institutional Reforms

How has India developed in the last 10 years?

India’s GDP Growth rate has increased in the last 10 years by an average growth rate of 6-7 percent.

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Essay on Achievements of India After Independence

Students are often asked to write an essay on Achievements of India After Independence in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

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100 Words Essay on Achievements of India After Independence

Introduction.

India has made significant strides since gaining independence in 1947. These achievements span various fields, including technology, agriculture, and space exploration.

India is now a global IT hub, with companies like Infosys and Wipro gaining international recognition. The nation has also developed its own supercomputer, Param.

Agriculture

India’s Green Revolution in the 1960s led to a major increase in crop production, making the country self-sufficient in food grains.

Space Exploration

India’s space program has made remarkable progress. ISRO’s Mars Orbiter Mission made India the first Asian country to reach Mars’ orbit.

India’s post-independence achievements are a testament to its resilience and determination.

250 Words Essay on Achievements of India After Independence

Post-independence, India has made significant strides on various fronts. From a largely agrarian economy, it has transformed into a global IT hub, showcasing a paradigm shift in economic growth and development.

Economic Growth

India’s economic progress is noteworthy. It’s one of the world’s fastest-growing major economies, with an average annual GDP growth rate of 7.5% over the past decade. The liberalization of the economy in 1991 played a pivotal role in this economic surge, attracting foreign investments and boosting the service sector.

Technological Advancements

India’s technological advancements, particularly in the field of space and IT, are remarkable. Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) has achieved several milestones, including the successful Mars Orbiter Mission. The IT sector has put India on the global map, contributing significantly to the economy and job creation.

Healthcare and Education

India has made substantial progress in healthcare and education. The eradication of polio and smallpox, the decrease in maternal and child mortality rates, and the increase in literacy rates are commendable achievements. The Right to Education Act is a significant step towards universalizing elementary education.

Social Reforms

India has undertaken numerous social reforms, such as abolishing untouchability and dowry, and promoting gender equality. The implementation of reservations for marginalized sections is a step towards social justice.

Despite numerous challenges, India’s achievements post-independence are impressive. The journey from a struggling nation to a global player is a testament to India’s resilience and potential. However, the road ahead requires addressing persistent issues like poverty, corruption, and socio-economic disparities for sustainable growth.

500 Words Essay on Achievements of India After Independence

Post-independence, India has made significant strides in various spheres. The journey from a colonized nation to a global player is replete with numerous achievements. This essay aims to highlight some of the notable accomplishments of India since it gained independence in 1947.

Democratic Governance

India’s most significant achievement is the establishment and nurturing of a democratic system. Despite the multitude of ethnic, linguistic, and religious groups, India has managed to maintain a democratic system of governance. The Indian Constitution, adopted in 1950, is the world’s longest written constitution, providing a balanced framework for political governance, social justice, and individual rights.

India has made impressive strides in the field of science and technology. The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has launched a number of satellites, including the Mars Orbiter Mission, making India the first Asian nation to reach Mars orbit. Furthermore, India’s nuclear program has made significant progress, with the country being recognized as a nuclear weapons state.

India’s economy has seen substantial growth since independence. From being a primarily agrarian economy, it has diversified into a mixed economy with a strong services sector. The liberalization of the economy in the 1990s led to a surge in foreign investments and a significant increase in GDP. Today, India is the world’s fifth-largest economy by nominal GDP.

Social Progress

India has made considerable progress in social indicators such as literacy rate, life expectancy, and poverty reduction. The government’s various schemes and initiatives have helped improve the quality of life for millions of Indians. However, challenges such as gender inequality and caste-based discrimination persist, and efforts to address these issues continue.

Global Influence

India’s influence on the global stage has increased considerably. It is a founding member of several international organizations like the United Nations, Non-Aligned Movement, and South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation. India’s soft power, through its culture, democracy, and diplomacy, has also contributed to its global stature.

India’s journey since independence has been marked by notable achievements in various fields. From establishing a robust democratic system to making significant strides in technology, economy, and social indicators, India has indeed come a long way. Yet, challenges persist, and the journey towards a more inclusive, equitable, and prosperous nation continues. The achievements of the past provide a strong foundation for the future, and the potential for further progress is immense. The spirit of resilience, innovation, and unity in diversity that characterizes India is a testament to its potential for further growth and development.

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The Supreme Court Has Already Botched the Trump Immunity Case

A photo illustration of the front of the U.S. Supreme Court building, but the columns in front are rearranged as an optical illusion, where the tops and bottoms of the columns fade into nothingness before reaching the other side.

By Melissa Murray and Andrew Weissmann

Ms. Murray and Mr. Weissmann are co-authors of “The Trump Indictments: The Historic Charging Documents With Commentary.”

The Supreme Court’s decision to hear oral arguments in Donald Trump’s immunity-appeal case on Thursday may appear to advance the rule of law. After all, few, if anyone, think that a majority of the court will conclude that a former president is completely immune from federal criminal liability.

But the court’s decision to review the immunity case actually undermines core democratic values.

The Supreme Court often has an institutional interest in cases of presidential power. But the court’s insistence on putting its own stamp on this case — despite the widespread assumption that it will not change the application of immunity to this case and the sluggish pace chosen to hear it — means that it will have needlessly delayed legal accountability for no justifiable reason. Even if the Supreme Court eventually does affirm that no person, not even a president, is above the law and immune from criminal liability, its actions will not amount to a victory for the rule of law and may be corrosive to the democratic values for which the United States should be known.

That is because the court’s delay may have stripped citizens of the criminal justice system’s most effective mechanism for determining disputed facts: a trial before a judge and a jury, where the law and the facts can be weighed and resolved.

It is this forum — and the resolution it provides — that Mr. Trump seeks, at all costs, to avoid. It is not surprising that he loudly proclaims his innocence in the court of public opinion. What is surprising is that the nation’s highest court has interjected itself in a way that facilitates his efforts to avoid a legal reckoning.

Looking at the experience of other countries is instructive. In Brazil, the former president Jair Bolsonaro, after baselessly claiming fraud before an election, was successfully prosecuted in a court and barred from running for office for years. In France, the former president Jacques Chirac was successfully prosecuted for illegal diversion of public funds during his time as mayor of Paris. Likewise, Argentina, Italy, Japan and South Korea have relied on the courts to hold corrupt leaders to account for their misconduct.

Because the courts have been such crucial scaffolding for democracy, leaders with authoritarian impulses often seek to undermine judicial authority and defang the courts to advance their interests. As the national-security and governance writer Rachel Kleinfeld has pointed out : “democracies have been falling all over the world in recent years. The decline has largely occurred at the hands of elected leaders who use their popularity to ride roughshod over their countries’ institutions, destroying oversight by a thousand cuts.”

Consider India, Bolivia, Hungary and Venezuela, where the erosion of judicial independence of the courts has been accompanied by a rise in all-consuming power for an individual leader.

Within our constitutional system, the U.S. Supreme Court can still act effectively and quickly to preserve the judiciary’s role in a constitutional democracy. If the court is truly concerned about the rule of law and ensuring that these disputed facts are resolved in a trial, it could issue a ruling quickly after the oral argument.

It would then fall to the special counsel Jack Smith and Judge Chutkan to ensure that this case gets to a jury. Obviously, fidelity to due process and careful attention to the rights of the accused are critical. To get to a trial and avoid any further potential delay, Mr. Smith may decide to limit the government’s case to its bare essentials — what is often called the “slim to win” strategy. And Judge Chutkan has already warned Mr. Trump that his pretrial unruly statements with respect to witnesses and others may result in her moving up the start of the trial to protect the judicial process.

Before Election Day 2024, if at all possible, voters should know if the facts of a case establish that one of the candidates engaged in an elaborate election-interference scheme in 2020.

Justice Juan Merchan, who is overseeing the Manhattan criminal trial, and the New York appellate courts offer an instructive model of fair and expeditious case management. In less than a week, Justice Merchan has seated a jury, and he and many appellate judges have quickly ruled on Mr. Trump’s efforts to thwart the start of the trial.

If the Supreme Court resolves the immunity question quickly, allowing the federal election interference case to proceed, Judge Chutkan’s case management likewise will be pivotal in dealing with the intricacies of jury selection in a high-profile case and effectively distinguishing between frivolous and meritorious defense arguments that would prolong the trial timeline. These options may seem like a long shot, but they are the ones that remain.

Courts are supposed to serve as a neutral forum for the determination of facts and the adjudication of law. And, as examples in other countries illustrate, they can be a crucial bulwark for the rule of law in precarious times.

Politics and law are often seen as separate institutions, but in fact they regularly interact within our constitutional system as checks and balances — unless, as is the case here, the court takes on an overbearing role.

The Supreme Court’s review of the immunity issue delays indefinitely a jury trial of Mr. Trump’s role in obstructing the peaceful transfer of power — and therefore risks transforming our nation into a Potemkin village of democracy that bears the surface trappings of legal institutions but without actual checks on the executive branch of government.

Melissa Murray and Andrew Weissmann teach at the N.Y.U. School of Law and are co-authors of “The Trump Indictments: The Historic Charging Documents With Commentary.” They are co-hosts, respectively, of the podcasts Strict Scrutiny and Prosecuting Donald Trump .

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips . And here’s our email: [email protected] .

Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook , Instagram , TikTok , WhatsApp , X and Threads .

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