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A long march since freedom

October 1952 Foreign Affairs magazine: “In its [Partition’s] wake came the immense task of organising, within a few weeks, the movement of no less than 6,000,000 refugees, of improvising arrangements for their immediate relief, and devising plans for their permanent resettlement and rehabilitation. When was a ‘refugee problem’ of this magnitude set before an untried government in the very first days of its existence and solved with equal expedition and success?”
There was no significant foreign assistance to deal with a refugee crisis that was second in scale only to that generated by World War II.
While presenting the first Budget of independent India on November 26, 1947, Finance Minister R.K. Shanmukham Chetty noted that the immediate impact of the Partition’s “tragic developments has been to divert the attention of the Government almost completely from normal activities”.
Most of India’s 350 million people then lived in staggering poverty.
Bengal famine of 1943: claimed three million lives
John Kenneth Galbraith (economist): India’s villages, where over 80% of Indians lived, were “preoccupied, with the production of food”.
Chester Bowles (American diplomat): India embarked on creating three large dam systems (Damodar, Hirakud and Bhakra-Nangal) that had an irrigation capacity 70% more than that of the Grand Coulee (in the U.S. state of Washington), which was at that time the largest irrigation system in the world.
While today we keenly observe the ups and downs of the Index of Industrial Production (IIP), India imported 90% of industrial goods around the time of Independence.
The Five-Year Plans that many mock today helped India’s industrial sector grow by an average of 7% over the 1950-65 period.
In the 50 years before Independence, India’s GDP growth averaged about 0.9% per annum. During the first three FiveYear Plans, it averaged 4%.
In those 15 years (1950-1965), India’s average GDP per capita growth rate was almost 20 times that achieved during the 1900-47 time period.
When independent India was born, only 0.2% were electrifie

Consensus-maker

- If one word could best describe a man, then for Atal Bihari Vajpayee that would have to be compromise.
- A brilliant parliamentarian and a shrewd politician who could demolish political opponents with his acerbic wit, Vajpayee was also the elder statesman who was never afraid to reach out and make peace with India’s neighbours.
- If the Jana Sangh came to power as part of the Janata Party in 1977, it was in no small measure due to his readiness to mend fences and build bridges with former political opponents.
- His image as a moderate trying to rein in extremist elements in his party made it easier for others such as the Telugu Desam, the Trinamool Congress and the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam to join the NDA.
- On May 11, 1998, India began a two-stage series of nuclear tests that changed the way the world perceived decisionmaking in New Delhi.
- To top it off, de facto nuclearisation was claimed as a policy, giving nightmares to economists and policymakers.
- Vajpayee had factored it all in, including the likely course of Pakistan’s reactive tests and the effect of sanctions on both countries, before giving the green signal.
- From that moment, the global attitude towards India began to change, and it defined India’s rise.
- Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana (PMGSY): completely altered the lives of farmers in India’s far-flung villages and hamlets.
- ‘Golden Quadrilateral’

The humiliation at the end of the year in 1999, with the hijack of an Indian Airlines plane to Kandahar, was followed by another attempt to forge peace with Pakistan at the Agra Summit in July 2001.

Relentless rain savages Kerala; claims 91 more lives

With 91 persons killed in rain-related incidents on Thursday, the toll in the recent rain- and floodrelated incidents across Kerala rose to 156.
More than 1.5 lakh people have been shifted to 1,200 relief camps.
Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, who spoke to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Rajnath Singh earlier in the day seeking more Central assistance, said the flood situation was “extremely grave.”
The India Meteorological Department has warned of heavy rain for the next 48 hours in the State.

Mumbai gives India its first baby penguin

The first Humboldt penguin to be born in India, or as someone put it, ‘the freedom baby’, born on August 15.
The Humboldt penguin is a South American penguin that breeds in coastal Chile and Peru.

No creamy layer norm for SCs/STs’

The government on Thursday told the Supreme Court that the “creamy layer” concept could not be applied to the Scheduled Castes/Scheduled Tribes, who have suffered for centuries.
The government wants a larger Bench of the Supreme Court to set aside its 2006 judgment in the Nagaraj case. This verdict mandates that the government cannot introduce quota in promotion for SC/ST persons in public employment unless they prove that the particular Dalit community is backward, is inadequately represented and such a reservation in promotion would not affect the overall efficiency of public administration. The opinion of the government should be based on quantifiable data, too, it said.
The government has argued that the judgment was a roadblock to its authority to introduce quota in promotions in favour of SC/ST communities as per Article 16 (4A) of the Constitution.

‘Will honour ceasefire if Pak. curbs infiltration’

The Indian Army will “abide by its commitment” to uphold the ceasefire understanding of 2003 if the Pakistan Army “initiates positive steps to control infiltration and abetment of terrorism” in J&K, Pakistan was told on Thursday.
This was conveyed during a conversation between the Directors General of Military Operations (DGMOs) over the established hotline, which was held on Pakistan’s request.

“The Pakistan DGMO made an assurance that Pakistan Army would take prompt action against move of inimical elements in proximity to the Line of Control and respond to information shared by the Indian side, thereby facilitating conduct of anti-terrorist operations,” the Army said in a statement.