describe the challenges before India at the time of independence
Answers
The first and the most important task was to preserve, consolidate and strengthen India’s unity, to push forward the process of the making of the Indian nation, and to build up and protect the national state as an instrument of development and social transformation.
Political Challenges:
One of the major political tasks facing the leadership was to further develop the democratic consciousness among the people initiated during the period of the freedom struggle. The leadership completely rejected the different versions of the ‘rice-bowl theory’, that the poor in an underdeveloped country were more interested in a bowl of rice than in democracy, and that, in any case, democracy was useless to them if it could not guarantee them adequate food, clothing and shelter.
Indian unity, it was realized, was not to be taken for granted. It had to be strengthened by recognizing and accepting India’s immense regional, linguistic, ethnic and religious diversity. Indianness was to be further developed by acknowledging and accommodating the Indians’ multiple identities and by giving
different parts of the country and various sections of the people adequate space in the Indian Union.
It was also clear that India’s revolution had to be taken beyond the merely political to include economic and social transformation.
Economic Challenges:
Independent India had to begin its upward economic climb from an abysmally low level.
The technological and productivity levels of Indian agriculture and industry were to be constantly and rapidly raised.
Moreover, the Indian economy, was to be based on self-reliance, free of subordination to the metropolitan interests or domination by foreign capital. This could not be accomplished through the unhampered working of market forces and private enterprise. It would require planning and a large public sector.
While socialism was also set out as an objective, the essence of India’s effort was towards the structural transformation of her economy, leading to its becoming an independent, national economy. The social scene also called for rapid transformation.
Social Challenges:
Despite lower-caste movements in several parts of the country and Gandhiji’s campaign against untouchability, the caste system still dominated rural society and untouchability was the prevailing mode—the lower castes had still not ‘stood-up’.
Male domination was still nearly total, and women suffered immense social
oppression in the family. Polygamy prevailed among both Hindus and Muslims. Women had no right of inheritance, nor the right of divorce, and were still by and large denied access to education.
For Indians, illiteracy and ignorance were the norm in 1951; only 25 per cent of males
and 7.9 per cent of females were literate.
Initial Success of the State:
The founders of the Indian Republic had the farsightedness and the courage to commit themselves to two major innovations of historical significance in nation-building and social engineering:
to build a democratic and civil libertarian society among an illiterate people
and,
to undertake economic development within a democratic political structure.
Hitherto, in all societies in which an economic take-off or an early industrial and agricultural breakthrough had occurred, effective democracy, especially for the working people, had been extremely limited. On the other hand, from the beginning, India was committed to a democratic and civil libertarian political order and a representative system of government based on free and fair elections to be conducted on the basis of universal adult franchise. Moreover, the state was to encroach as little as possible on rival civil sources of power such as universities, the Press, trade unions, peasant organizations and professional associations. The many social, economic and political challenges that the country was to face were to be dealt with in a democratic manner, under democratic conditions.
Challenges faced by India at the period of independence:
• At the time of independence, India faced numerous challenges such as partition and refugee problems, problem of economic underdevelopment, and the problem of integration of princely state.
• At the time of independence, India faced the challenges of religious violence, casteism, naxalism, terrorism and regional separatist insurgencies.
• The most imperative and difficult challenge faced by the government of independent India is poverty