THE JOURNEY OF SEVENTY-FIVE YEARS

We all know that we are going to celebrate the 75th year of Independence and on this occasion, I am going to tell you about a journey of seventy-five years. The journey of seventy-five years started with the partition. It caused millions of lives. Many were displaced and became refugees in their own countries. More than seventy-five thousand women were raped. Trains full of dead bodies traveled across the border in both countries.  It was a devastating incident where one side there was communal violence and another side was human displacement.

     

 The next journey started with the constitution-making and vision of democracy. On 26 January 1950, the Constitution came into effect, and India was declared a " Sovereign Democratic Republic". India became democratic with the first general election(1951-1952) held successfully in which Jawaharlal Nehru was chosen as the first prime minister of India with 45 percent of the total votes polled. From then, the 17th Lok sabha was elected in May 2019. Decentralization of power in the hands of local people through panchayat elections shows the true nature and spirit of democracy in India.

India gained independence from British rule on August 15, 1947. Having attained political freedom, India‘s founding fathers had a path before them full of challenges both on social and economic fronts. The political leadership started the journey with hopes of making the country self-reliant in economic and political terms.

Initially, famines and hunger would push India to take external help many times for its food security. Illiteracy was another big laggard for the economy. At the time of independence, India‘s population was about 34 crore and the literacy rate was just 12 percent or about 4 crores. Among other challenges were low economic capacity due to stagnant agriculture growth and a poor industrial base.

Decades after independence, India’s former prime minister Manmohan Singh once famously said: “The brightest jewel in the British Crown” was the poorest country in the world in terms of per capita income at the beginning of the 20th century.

Since the country got freedom in 1947, it has gone through many ups and downs in its economy like an agrarian crisis, three wars, the 1991 privatization move, demonetization, and the introduction of Goods and Service Tax (GST), etc.

 

the journey of the Indian economy:

1951: Former Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru presented the First Five-Year Plan to Parliament. It was based on the Harrod–Domar model with few modifications. Its main focus was to develop the core industrial sector of the country.

1969: India went through its worst droughts in the 1960s, and it had to depend on the outside world for food and grain supplies. But the crisis came as a blessing in disguise and the country understood the importance of developing self-sufficiency in food grains hence, the Green Revolution became a reality.

1991: The golden phase of India’s economic journey began that year. With the devaluation of the currency, and the rising fiscal deficit of the government, India’s external debt nearly doubled from some $35 billion at the end of 1984-85 to $69 billion by the end of 1990-91. Foreign exchange reserves had dried up to the point that India could barely finance three weeks' worth of imports.

The government of PV Narsimha Rao as prime minister and Manmohan Singh as finance minister announced a series of policies that changed the face of the Indian economy – liberalization, privatization, and globalization in 1991.

2008: An epic financial and economic collapse was seen after the largest bankruptcy in US history – the meltdown of Lehman Brothers. While the other countries were facing the worst, economic growth in India during FY2008-09 stood at 6.7 percent. Reportedly, India was less impacted as its exports accounted for just 15 percent of the GDP.

2016: The word “demonetization” was introduced in the annals of India’s economic history. Prime Minister Narendra Modi on November 8 of that year declared that Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes would not be legal tender. Just months after demonetization, Parliament passed a crucial bill on Goods and Services Tax (GST).

2020: The country witnessed another jolt in the form of the coronavirus pandemic. According to a report, the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic pushed 23 crore people below the poverty line. The report said there has been a rise of 15 percent in poverty in rural India and a rise of 20 percent in urban India during the last pandemic year. According to reports, India's economy, currently at $3.17 trillion, is expected to become the fifth largest in the world in 2022. 

In 75 years of independence, India has achieved good progress in economic, social, cultural,  space and technology, medicine, and sports. We became self-sufficient in foodgrain production.  The total food production, which stood at 54.92 million tonnes in 1950, rose to 305.44 million tonnes in 2020-21. It has built a modern economy (second fastest growing economy), remained a democracy, lifted millions out of poverty, has become a space and nuclear power, and developed a robust foreign policy. In its 75 years of independence, India has several achievements to its credit. India's literacy rate rose from a mere 18.3 percent in 1951 to 77.7 percent in 2017-18. The substantial rise in female literacy rate is worth noting - from just 8.9 percent in 1951 to 70.3 percent in 2017-18. India's sex ratio -- the total female population per 1,000 males -- stood at 946 in the 1951 census. In 2021, the sex ratio read 1,020 females for every 1,000 males, which put India on par with several developed nations. India's dreams of a 5 trillion economy, self-reliance, and superpower will become real only when we Indians do our duty with integrity, love, and devotion.