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Bookmarked , Have to read it. Brilliant work @PARIKRAMA keep it up.
The Indian Economy 1947 - Present Day, 2016 ---------- Part 1
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PARIKRAMA
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From the archive
World without Nehru
May 30th 1964
WHEN a great man dies in office, there is often a tendency to measure his greatness by the scale of the ensuing alarm and uncertainty. This is a fallacious measure. Indeed, it is a mark of weakness, not of strength, if a national leader fails to bequeath a smoothly working structure of leadership to a clearly designated successor. Mr Nehru failed to do this. If he had succeeded in doing it, both India and the world could have received the news of his death with a calmer grief; and his greatness would have been not diminished but enhanced. As it is, the hasty induction of Mr Gulzarilal Nanda, the home minister, as head of a caretaker government, was taken as signifying the beginning, not the outcome, of the battle of the succession.
There can, of course, be no successor to Mr Nehru in the full sense. His position was already unique when, 17 years ago, he brought India across the threshold of independence. A quarter-century of brilliant and tireless service in the cause of Congress had made him not only Gandhi's chief lieutenant and unchallenged heir but, in a sense, also the secular arm of the Mahatma. Throughout the long years of his premiership he retained his almost magical grip on the great masses of the people. The Congress party might forfeit much of its original authority; hopes of swift economic advance might fade; the Chinese invasion in 1962 might shatter the illusions of the panch shila policy; yet, while less than half of the electorate gave their votes to Congress, the ordinary Indian's reverence for " Panditji" was still one of the main factors in the political equation.
The consequent stability went to make it possible for this vastest of the "new nations", whose population equals that of the 55 states of Africa and Latin America put together, to operate a genuinely democratic constitution, to uphold civil liberties, freedom of the press and the independence of the judiciary. While credit may be given to those Britons who had helped India to equip itself for freedom, the fact remains that similar equipment did not save Ceylon from recurrent shocks, or Pakistan and Burma from relapse into military rule.
It will soon become clear to what extent Mr Nehru's long tenure has had the effect of easing India through the turbulence that has afflicted so many other newly independent countries, and to what extent it may merely have postponed that kind of trouble. During the larger part of his premiership, his readiness to take far too much work on to his own shoulders bad inevitably damaging effects. More recently—and particularly since his stroke in January—authority had been more widely shared. Something like a triumvirate had emerged, comprising Mr Nanda; Mr T. T. Krishnamachari, now resurgent at the finance ministry; and Mr Lal Bahadur Shastri, also resurgent after only a few months' eclipse last year.
Behind the question of personalities, however, loom more ominous questions: whether the Congress party may before long disintegrate; whether this would make India unsafe for democracy; whether India itself, a huge sprawling medley of peoples still beset by unresolved conflicts, may disintegrate to a degree that would change the shape of things throughout Asia—and beyond.
Mr Nehru, in his last months of life, had released the long imprisoned Kashmiri leader, Sheikh Abdullah, allowed him to go to Pakistan for discussions, and at least wedged open the door to some fresh attempt to break the Kashmir dead-lock. He had inched nearer to a solution of the Naga problem. The fate of such initiatives is now more obscure than ever. But there is a larger consideration bearing on the prospects for Indian unity. The world has tended to see Mr Nehru as the stubborn man-in-possession in Kashmir; it is apt to miss the critically important fact that, as the dedicated advocate of a secular state, he has been the prop and stay of India's fifty million Muslims. One of the ugliest portents in recent Indian elections has been the success of candidates who appealed more or less openly to Hindu communal passions. A new leader will need great tenacity and skill if a rolling growth of communal tension is to be prevented from having dire effects.
It was one of the shining paradoxes that surrounded this great man that the deeply conservative and religious masses of rural. India accorded such reverence to an avowed agnostic determined to break through ancient obstructions to modernisation. In the drive to modernise, as in other ways, Nehru's India gave a lead to the states that followed it on the road to independence. India's starring role in the new "third world" was frequently resented; but India's influence, in countless forms, made its mark almost everywhere in that world. No doubt it was inevitable that the new nations would base their international policy mainly on anti-colonialism and non-alignment; and logical that to Nehru's India should fall the leading part as their spokesman on the world's platforms. Yet here, too, Mr Nehru's individual contribution was historic. Happily, the time is now some way past since western ears were so often irritated by the sound of his pronouncements on the virtues of coexistence and non-alignment. In those days he tended to dispute with Mr Dulles the moralising inheritance of Gladstone and Woodrow Wilson; mutual incomprehension was deepened by the "holier than thou" claims made on each side. It is one of the encouraging trends of recent years that more realism and understanding on both sides have replaced those sterile exchanges.
Mr Nehru may be said to have done more than any other man to make possible, if not sure, the transformation and survival of the Commonwealth. And it is difficult to imagine how the United Nations could have developed to its present stage without the contribution made by India under his leadership. He did much to make the non-alignment of the new nations not only respected, but in its way constructive. At their Belgrade conference in 1961 he stood out boldly against cant, and lifted their eyes from obsessive concern with decolonisation towards their duty to world peace. In the same year he took considerable political risks when he responded to Mr Hammarskjold's plea for Indian troops to fill out the UN force in the Congo. General Gyani's appointment to command the present UN force in Cyprus is symbolic of the way the world has come to look for an Indian element in the thankless, dusty business of practical peacekeeping.
It can be argued that, while winning respect and admiration in both Washington and Moscow, Mr Nehru let India's relations with its nearer neighbours deteriorate so phenomenally as to give rise to an unlooked-for rapprochement between China and Pakistan on the basis of a shared antagonism to India. And many African nationalists today feel less gratitude to India for its part in promoting independence than impatience with its relatively cautious tactics in their anti-colonial campaign. His occupation of Goa was a shock to many idealists who had overly identified him with the total non-violence that he had, in fact, long ago rejected in a historic dispute with Mahatma Gandhi.
Yet it is only the lunatic fringe in the West that still pictures Mr Nehru as the arch-hypocrite who, having presided over the dissolution of the British empire, then devoted himself to an unscrupulous balancing act intended simply to gouge all possible favours from the great powers. And it is only in Peking that he is still depicted as a wicked agent of imperialism. The world generally, while accepting the fact that he made mistakes and left much undone, has no difficulty in recognising his outstanding service to his own people, to the Afro-Asian third world, and to so much else beyond. He was due in London in July for the meeting of Commonwealth heads of government; a few weeks later, in Cairo for the second conference of non-aligned states. One measure of his stature on the world stage will be the sense of diminution of both those gatherings without him. Another would appear if a world crisis should burst upon us (perhaps from south-east Asia) and reveal that no constructive help can now be found in New Delhi. But if, in such an event, the India he did so much to shape proves able to play a worthy part, that will not reduce his historical stature. It will enhance it.
From the print edition
http://www.economist.com/news/asia/21632856-world-without-nehru
@nair @ranjeet @JanjaWeed
Request you all to read from post #1
@Levina @AUSTERLITZ
Economist wrote few very strong points. Check the blue highlighted portion
World without Nehru
May 30th 1964
WHEN a great man dies in office, there is often a tendency to measure his greatness by the scale of the ensuing alarm and uncertainty. This is a fallacious measure. Indeed, it is a mark of weakness, not of strength, if a national leader fails to bequeath a smoothly working structure of leadership to a clearly designated successor. Mr Nehru failed to do this. If he had succeeded in doing it, both India and the world could have received the news of his death with a calmer grief; and his greatness would have been not diminished but enhanced. As it is, the hasty induction of Mr Gulzarilal Nanda, the home minister, as head of a caretaker government, was taken as signifying the beginning, not the outcome, of the battle of the succession.
There can, of course, be no successor to Mr Nehru in the full sense. His position was already unique when, 17 years ago, he brought India across the threshold of independence. A quarter-century of brilliant and tireless service in the cause of Congress had made him not only Gandhi's chief lieutenant and unchallenged heir but, in a sense, also the secular arm of the Mahatma. Throughout the long years of his premiership he retained his almost magical grip on the great masses of the people. The Congress party might forfeit much of its original authority; hopes of swift economic advance might fade; the Chinese invasion in 1962 might shatter the illusions of the panch shila policy; yet, while less than half of the electorate gave their votes to Congress, the ordinary Indian's reverence for " Panditji" was still one of the main factors in the political equation.
The consequent stability went to make it possible for this vastest of the "new nations", whose population equals that of the 55 states of Africa and Latin America put together, to operate a genuinely democratic constitution, to uphold civil liberties, freedom of the press and the independence of the judiciary. While credit may be given to those Britons who had helped India to equip itself for freedom, the fact remains that similar equipment did not save Ceylon from recurrent shocks, or Pakistan and Burma from relapse into military rule.
It will soon become clear to what extent Mr Nehru's long tenure has had the effect of easing India through the turbulence that has afflicted so many other newly independent countries, and to what extent it may merely have postponed that kind of trouble. During the larger part of his premiership, his readiness to take far too much work on to his own shoulders bad inevitably damaging effects. More recently—and particularly since his stroke in January—authority had been more widely shared. Something like a triumvirate had emerged, comprising Mr Nanda; Mr T. T. Krishnamachari, now resurgent at the finance ministry; and Mr Lal Bahadur Shastri, also resurgent after only a few months' eclipse last year.
Behind the question of personalities, however, loom more ominous questions: whether the Congress party may before long disintegrate; whether this would make India unsafe for democracy; whether India itself, a huge sprawling medley of peoples still beset by unresolved conflicts, may disintegrate to a degree that would change the shape of things throughout Asia—and beyond.
Mr Nehru, in his last months of life, had released the long imprisoned Kashmiri leader, Sheikh Abdullah, allowed him to go to Pakistan for discussions, and at least wedged open the door to some fresh attempt to break the Kashmir dead-lock. He had inched nearer to a solution of the Naga problem. The fate of such initiatives is now more obscure than ever. But there is a larger consideration bearing on the prospects for Indian unity. The world has tended to see Mr Nehru as the stubborn man-in-possession in Kashmir; it is apt to miss the critically important fact that, as the dedicated advocate of a secular state, he has been the prop and stay of India's fifty million Muslims. One of the ugliest portents in recent Indian elections has been the success of candidates who appealed more or less openly to Hindu communal passions. A new leader will need great tenacity and skill if a rolling growth of communal tension is to be prevented from having dire effects.
It was one of the shining paradoxes that surrounded this great man that the deeply conservative and religious masses of rural. India accorded such reverence to an avowed agnostic determined to break through ancient obstructions to modernisation. In the drive to modernise, as in other ways, Nehru's India gave a lead to the states that followed it on the road to independence. India's starring role in the new "third world" was frequently resented; but India's influence, in countless forms, made its mark almost everywhere in that world. No doubt it was inevitable that the new nations would base their international policy mainly on anti-colonialism and non-alignment; and logical that to Nehru's India should fall the leading part as their spokesman on the world's platforms. Yet here, too, Mr Nehru's individual contribution was historic. Happily, the time is now some way past since western ears were so often irritated by the sound of his pronouncements on the virtues of coexistence and non-alignment. In those days he tended to dispute with Mr Dulles the moralising inheritance of Gladstone and Woodrow Wilson; mutual incomprehension was deepened by the "holier than thou" claims made on each side. It is one of the encouraging trends of recent years that more realism and understanding on both sides have replaced those sterile exchanges.
Mr Nehru may be said to have done more than any other man to make possible, if not sure, the transformation and survival of the Commonwealth. And it is difficult to imagine how the United Nations could have developed to its present stage without the contribution made by India under his leadership. He did much to make the non-alignment of the new nations not only respected, but in its way constructive. At their Belgrade conference in 1961 he stood out boldly against cant, and lifted their eyes from obsessive concern with decolonisation towards their duty to world peace. In the same year he took considerable political risks when he responded to Mr Hammarskjold's plea for Indian troops to fill out the UN force in the Congo. General Gyani's appointment to command the present UN force in Cyprus is symbolic of the way the world has come to look for an Indian element in the thankless, dusty business of practical peacekeeping.
It can be argued that, while winning respect and admiration in both Washington and Moscow, Mr Nehru let India's relations with its nearer neighbours deteriorate so phenomenally as to give rise to an unlooked-for rapprochement between China and Pakistan on the basis of a shared antagonism to India. And many African nationalists today feel less gratitude to India for its part in promoting independence than impatience with its relatively cautious tactics in their anti-colonial campaign. His occupation of Goa was a shock to many idealists who had overly identified him with the total non-violence that he had, in fact, long ago rejected in a historic dispute with Mahatma Gandhi.
Yet it is only the lunatic fringe in the West that still pictures Mr Nehru as the arch-hypocrite who, having presided over the dissolution of the British empire, then devoted himself to an unscrupulous balancing act intended simply to gouge all possible favours from the great powers. And it is only in Peking that he is still depicted as a wicked agent of imperialism. The world generally, while accepting the fact that he made mistakes and left much undone, has no difficulty in recognising his outstanding service to his own people, to the Afro-Asian third world, and to so much else beyond. He was due in London in July for the meeting of Commonwealth heads of government; a few weeks later, in Cairo for the second conference of non-aligned states. One measure of his stature on the world stage will be the sense of diminution of both those gatherings without him. Another would appear if a world crisis should burst upon us (perhaps from south-east Asia) and reveal that no constructive help can now be found in New Delhi. But if, in such an event, the India he did so much to shape proves able to play a worthy part, that will not reduce his historical stature. It will enhance it.
From the print edition
http://www.economist.com/news/asia/21632856-world-without-nehru
@nair @ranjeet @JanjaWeed
Request you all to read from post #1
@Levina @AUSTERLITZ
Economist wrote few very strong points. Check the blue highlighted portion
Picdelamirand-oil
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Indian castes are hard to understand for me and I don't know what has been done in India in this field. Does it still exist?
PARIKRAMA
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The original system in pre British Raj times was like this
The incoming of Britishers changed this rudimentary system from a social pyramidal structure to more of caste, tribes and native trades based on religion based system. They did a census in 1891 and divided all the people into 60 sub-groups each subdivided into six occupational and racial categories, and the number increased in subsequent censuses. After that they kept repeating the census to add more data points and sub groups under main heads.
Post 1947, the government of India has created a caste based reservations system comprising of General Caste, Schedule Caste , Schedule Tribes and Other Backward Caste. Each of these classes has sub groups defined by race, tribes and native trades and other details. in short its an extension of British Indian policies.
Article 15 of the Constitution of India prohibits discrimination based on caste and Article 17 declared the practice of untouchability to be illegal.In 1955, India enacted the Untouchability (Offences) Act (renamed in 1976, as the Protection of Civil Rights Act). It extended the reach of law, from intent to mandatory enforcement. The Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act was passed in India in 1989
See here some quick links
Caste system in India - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Reservation in India - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
As of now, government uses this caste/category for reservation based system facilitating a person in education, scholarship, jobs, and in promotion in all government aided organisations.
At present the % break up for reservation based system is like this
General 50.5%
Schedule Caste 15%
Schedule Tribes 7.5%
Other Backward Caste 27%
This is in order to ensure that economically deprived folks are given an equal opportunity to uplift themselves and bring them at par with national average or in future at par with general caste.
As much as the idea is noble, the caste based politics and continuous segregation is used by vested interest to ensure that this system continues forever. Inspite of some progress that has been made in SC, ST and OBC segment, the caste based politics and people who are used to it have left the idea of meritocracy and are more comfortable for easier route of reservation/quota based approach and benefits in every field.
India IMHO should move away from the original caste based system to a more of economic based system where the whole population should get divided based on the annual income the person (male/female) generates and people associated dependent on him/her gets classified accordingly. The idea of any reservation based benefit is upliftment of the economically backward class to bring them to the average mainstream level. Unfortunately present system fails to do so and thus a more change or rather a new radical system needs to replace it.. But any change as i said earlier will be resisted by Political parties for vested interest..
PARIKRAMA
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Some more pictures of this timeline
1. FIRST PM OF INDIA – JAWAHARLAL NEHRU IN 1947, SWORN IN BY LORD MOUNTBATTEN
2. JAWAHARLAL NEHRU AGAIN, BEING SWORN IN AS PRIME MINISTER AFTER FIRST ELECTION ON JANUARY 26, 1950 BY DR RAJENDRA PRASAD
3. RAJENDRA PRASAD SWEARING-IN JAWAHARLAL NEHRU AS PM ON APRIL 10, 1962
4.GULZARILAL NANDA WAS THE PRIME MINISTER OF INDIA FOR TWO SHORT PERIODS
After Jawaharlal Nehru’s death and after Lal Bahadur Shastri’s death. On both occasions he served terms for 13 days each.
5. DR S.RADHAKRISHNAN SWEARING IN LALBAHADUR SHASTRI AS 3RD PRIME MINISTER ON JUNE 9TH 1964.
1. FIRST PM OF INDIA – JAWAHARLAL NEHRU IN 1947, SWORN IN BY LORD MOUNTBATTEN
2. JAWAHARLAL NEHRU AGAIN, BEING SWORN IN AS PRIME MINISTER AFTER FIRST ELECTION ON JANUARY 26, 1950 BY DR RAJENDRA PRASAD
3. RAJENDRA PRASAD SWEARING-IN JAWAHARLAL NEHRU AS PM ON APRIL 10, 1962
4.GULZARILAL NANDA WAS THE PRIME MINISTER OF INDIA FOR TWO SHORT PERIODS
After Jawaharlal Nehru’s death and after Lal Bahadur Shastri’s death. On both occasions he served terms for 13 days each.
5. DR S.RADHAKRISHNAN SWEARING IN LALBAHADUR SHASTRI AS 3RD PRIME MINISTER ON JUNE 9TH 1964.
Levina
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Thanks.
A good article indeed.
I found the approach very neutral. It will be unfair to expect somebody to run a country as huge as India without fair share of errors. To err is human. Isn't it???
So yes I will not crucify Nehru, but I do think Nehru had a habit of getting obsessed with things. His incapacity to take decisions in time, his inability to work with colleagues like Patel, and his friendship with individuals such as the Mounbattens or Abdullah( who had their own selfish interests) blinded him so much that he did not further India's national interests on certain occasions.
On October 26,1947, when the raiders had reached the outskirts of Srinagar, then during the historic meeting at Delhi Nehru once again displayed his habit of being disillusioned.
Quoting Sam Manekshaw..
'As usual Nehru talked about the United Nations, Russia, Africa, God Almighty, everybody, until Sardar Patel lost his temper. He said, 'Jawaharlal, do you want Kashmir, or do you want to give it away?' He [Nehru] said, 'Of course, I want Kashmir.' Then he [Patel] said: 'Please give your orders.'
And rest is history...
Good,bad or ugly, Nehru remained our longest serving Prime Minister, he was repeatedly elected to the post because people trusted him.
RIP Nehru!
