Mains Practice Questions

Approach

• Start the answer by briefly mentioning the independence of India.
• Discuss the various Challenges faced by India post independence
• Conclude Suitably.

Introduction

After a long struggle for freedom, India became independent from colonial rule on 15th August 1947. However, independence brought with itself a slew of social, economic and political problems.

Body

Various Challenges faced by India post independence

• Partition: Partition was marked with large-scale communal violence. Apart from it, the legacy of Partition is responsible for the origin of the Kashmir problem and consequent war with Pakistan.
  
  • Also, India needed to provide rehabilitation of a large number of refugees.
• Mass Poverty & Illiteracy: At the time of Independence, the incidence of poverty in India was about 80% or about 250 million. Famines and hunger pushed India to take external help for its food security.
• Ensuring Unity In Diversity: A newly independent India, needed to maintain the unity and sovereignty of the country, majorly on account of challenges emanating from assimilation of princely states.
  
  • The boundaries of the British Indian provinces had been drawn and redrawn in a haphazard manner without any thought to cultural and linguistic cohesion.
• Low Economic Capacity: Stagnant agriculture and poor industrial base. In 1947, agriculture accounted for 54% of India’s GDP. At the time of independence, 60% of India’s population depended on agriculture for a living.
• Cold-War Tensions: Most of the developing countries were band-wagoning either of the two superpowers USA or the Soviet Union.
  
  • India followed a policy of Non-Alignment to stay away from cold-war politics and focus on its internal development.

Conclusion

Owing to the socio-economic and political challenges, on the eve of independence, many british scholars predicted that India as a nation will not survive.

However, it was due to India’s strong commitment to its constitutional principles that led India to not only survive as a nation but also to emerge as the leader of the newly independent countries.