India attained freedom 75 years ago. Despite numerous constraints, the best minds in the country worked long hours for over two years to finalize the Constitution of India. We, “the people of India”, resolved to establish a Sovereign Socialist Secular Democratic Republic, which would secure Justice, Liberty, and Equality to all its citizens, promote Fraternity and safeguard the Unity and Integrity of India. It would be useful to cast a rapid look back to see whether we have remained on the envisioned track.
In 1947, the ghastly communal holocaust left more than a million killed and several million uprooted and homeless. Countless daunting challenges faced the nascent government: widespread lawlessness; millions of refugees to be settled; extreme scarcity of foodgrains; a grave financial crisis and a horde of other problems. The splintered administrative apparatus boldly took on all the challenges: dozens of refugee and relief camps and thousands of ration shops were established; law and order were restored and many other tasks were carried out.
The British had left behind poverty, illiteracy, large-scale unemployment, and an empty treasury. Sardar Patel, our first Home Minister, firmly believed that India’s unity and integrity could be best preserved by a federal administrative system run by all-India services which would maintain ob- jectivity and deliver efficient and incorruptible services to people living in all parts of the country. Thus, the IAS and the IPS were born. In the first about two decades, successive Union Governments pursued visionary policies to lay the foundations for nation-building and placing democracy on a firm footing. This period witnessed the rapid expansion of health, education, agriculture, and industry sectors; land reforms and consolidation of holdings; construction of large dams and irrigation systems; establishment of institutions for the advancement of medicine, science, and technology, space, atomic energy, management; construction of railways, roads, highways, bridges, tunnels; expansion of shipping and civil aviation; creation of large-scale capacities to meet the growing needs of power, coal, cement, steel, fertilizers, pharmaceuticals and other requirements.
The far-sighted policies followed in the earlier years were largely carried for- ward by the succeeding governments, along with their own new approaches. However, the achievements of the different regimes varied vastly, corresponding to their stability, commitment, and competence to carry the country forward. In the saga of nation-building, two outstanding achievements must be recalled: first, the phenomenal success of the Green Revolution which enabled India to overcome the recurring cycle of famines and become a food-exporting country; second, the Balance of Payment crisis in the early 1990s: this catastrophe led to liberalization of the economy, paving the way for a remarkable jump in the annual rates of growth in the succeeding years.
In the past 75 years, despite the varied factors which have been pulling us back, India has achieved huge successes on many fronts: life expectancy has increased from 31 years (1947) to 70 years (2020); literacy rate has risen from 12% (1947) to 77.7% (2018); the infant mortality rate has declined from 181 (1950) to 27 (2020); the total fertility rate has decreased from 5.9 (1950) to 2 (2020); per capita income has moved from Rs 265 (1950) to Rs 1,50,326 (2021- 22); GDP has grown from $0.04 trillion (1960) to $3.8 trillion (2021) and India is among the fastest growing major world economies, with comfortable foreign exchange reserves; a net importer of foodgrains till 1981, India is now exporting cereals; there has been a remarkable expansion in the provision of education, health, housing, potable water supply, sanitation, and rural electrification, and tremendous improvement in road connectivity.
We have 1.16 billion phone users and the second largest pool of scientific and technical manpower in the world; India is a global leader in space, nuclear, and information technologies and has the third largest armed forces in the world.
