Which describes india after 1945

It was Britain's overseas assets that would help to defend it. In the s, British governments struggled to achieve this post-war imperial vision. They had already reinvented the Commonwealth in in order to let India remain a republic, overturning the old rule that the British monarch must be head of state in a Commonwealth country. They accepted the need to grant increasing self-government and then independence to some of their most valuable colonies - including Ghana and Malaya in - on the understanding that they remained in Britain's sphere of financial and strategic influence.

The British governments took up the challenge of anti-colonial revolts in Malaya, Kenya and Cyprus. They invested heavily in up-to-date weaponry and fretted over the slowness of the British economy to resume its old role as the great lender of capital.

By the end of the decade, things were not going well. Staying in the Middle East had led step-by-step to the confrontation with President Gamal Abdel Nasser in Egypt, and the disastrous decision to seek his overthrow by force in collusion with Israel. The Suez Crisis was a savage revelation of Britain's financial and military weakness and destroyed much of what remained of Britain's influence in the Middle East.

In the colonial territories, more active interference in social and economic matters, with a view to speeding the pace of development, had aroused wide opposition and strengthened nationalist movements. It was becoming much harder for Britain to control the rate of political change, especially where the presence of settlers as in Kenya and the Rhodesias sharpened conflicts over land. Britain's position as the third great power and 'deputy leader' of the Western Alliance was threatened by the resurgence of France and West Germany, who jointly presided over the new European Economic Community EEC.

Britain's claim on American support, the indispensable prop of imperial survival, could no longer be taken for granted. And Britain's own economy, far from accelerating, was stuck in a rut. With conditions as they stood, it was now becoming increasingly difficult to maintain even the semblance of British world power.

In the s, British governments attempted forlornly to make bricks without straw. Britain tried and failed twice to enter the EEC, hoping partly to galvanise its stagnant economy, partly to smash the Franco-German 'alliance'. To avoid being trapped in a costly struggle with local nationalist movements, Britain backed out of most of the remaining colonies with unseemly haste.

As late as , it had publicly scheduled a degree of self-government for Kenya, Uganda and Tanganyika. All became independent between and British leaders gamely insisted, and no doubt believed, that Britain would remain at the 'top table' of world power - a status guaranteed by its nuclear deterrent and its continuing influence in the ex-colonial world, and symbolised by the Commonwealth which the ex-colonies had joined.

The situation did not go as planned. Britain's failure to stop the white settler revolt in Southern Rhodesia in was a huge embarrassment and drew fierce condemnation from many new Commonwealth states. In South East Asia, protecting the new federation of Malaysia against Indonesian aggression became more and more costly. Meanwhile the British economy staggered from crisis to crisis and the burden became unsustainable. Devaluation of the pound in November was followed within weeks by the decision to withdraw Britain's military presence east of Suez.

When Britain finally entered the European Community in , the line had been drawn under Britain's imperial age. But the ending of an empire is rarely a tidy affair.

The Rhodesian rebellion was to last until the late s, Britain fought a war to retain the Falkland Islands in and Hong Kong continued, with tacit Chinese agreement, as a British dependency until The British at home had to come to terms with an unforeseen legacy of their imperial past - the large inflow of migrants, mostly from South Asia.

In the 21st century, old imperial links still survive, particularly those based on language and law, which may assume growing importance in a globalised world. Even the Commonwealth, bruised and battered in the s and s, has retained a surprising utility as a dense global network of informal connections, valued by its numerous small states. As the experience of the empire recedes more deeply into Britain's own past, it has become the focus of more attention than ever from British historians.

Gallagher Cambridge University Press, Brown and W. Louis eds Oxford University Press, esp. Moore Oxford University Press, Jalal Cambridge University Press, Hayek, B. Shenoy was an influential early advocate of free market liberalism. Government control over the economy would undermine a young democracy, he said. Shenoy was proved right when India faced an external payments crisis a year after the plan period began.

Launched in , it was based on the Mahalanobis model that advocated rapid industrialization with a focus on heavy industries and capital goods. Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis was perhaps the single most important individual in directing Indian development planning.

He was the chief adviser to the commission from , founded the Indian Statistical Institute, and is considered the father of modern statistics in India. The Mahalanobis plan was, in a way, an invocation of the spirit of swadeshi or self-reliance.

The second five-year Plan and the Industrial Policy Resolution long considered the economic constitution of India paved the way for the development of the public sector and ushered in the licence Raj. The resolution set out as national objective the establishment of a socialist pattern of society. It also categorized industries into three groups. Industries of basic and strategic importance were to be exclusively in the public sector.

The second group comprised industries that were to be incrementally state-owned. The third, comprising mostly consumer industries, was left for the private sector. The private sector, however, was kept on a tight leash through a system of licences. More than 60 years ago, a debate in the Lok Sabha exposed a nexus between the bureaucracy, stock market speculators, and small businessmen.

It led to the resignation of then finance minister T. Nehru identified power and steel as the key bases for planning. He described the ft Bhakra multi-purpose project on the Sutlej river in Himachal Pradesh as the new temple of a resurgent India. The politics of big dams aside, the huge Bhakra-Nangal dams are among several hydel projects India built to light up homes, run factories, and irrigate crops.

The second plan set a target to produce 6 million tonnes of steel. Germany was contracted to build a steel plant in Rourkela, while Russia and Britain would build one each in Bhilai and Durgapur, respectively.

The quest to quickly industrialize had caused a large reallocation of funds away from the farm sector. Food shortages worsened, and inflation spiked. Imports of foodgrains depleted precious foreign exchange reserves. He fell out with Nehru on the question of excessive state involvement in the economy. On 27 May , Nehru died, but, despite criticism then and in later years, he had cemented his legacy as a modernizer.

Chronic food shortages and price rise convinced him that India needed to move away from centralized planning and price controls. That was when geneticist M. Swaminathan, along with Norman Borlaug and other scientists, stepped in with high-yield variety seeds of wheat, setting off what came to be known as the Green Revolution. Swaminathan is now an advocate for moving India towards sustainable development. He champions environmentally sustainable agriculture, sustainable food security and the preservation of biodiversity.

Self-sufficiency in the dairy sector was achieved entirely through the cooperative movement, which has spread to more than 12 million dairy farmers across the country. Decades later, Amul, the brand started by cooperative farmers in Anand, remains a market leader. India suspended five-year plans briefly, drawing up annual plans between and instead.

This was done as the country was not in a position to commit resources over a longer period. The war with China, the below-par growth outcomes of the third Plan, and the diversion of capital to finance the war with Pakistan had left the economy severely weakened.

The vital monsoon rains had once again played truant during the season, worsening food shortages and causing a sharp spike in inflation. The s was a decade of multiple economic and political challenges for India. Two wars had caused hardships for the masses. The death of Nehru and Shastri in quick succession had caused political instability and triggered jockeying for power within the Congress.

The result? Congress returned to power with a truncated majority after the general elections and the party lost power in seven states. In response, Gandhi nationalized 14 private banks on 20 July The main aim of the move was to accelerate bank lending to agriculture at a time when big businesses cornered large chunks of the credit flow. Bank nationalization helped boost farm credit and lending to other priority sectors. Financial savings jumped as banks were made to open branches in rural areas.

Without competition, however, the lenders became complacent. Further, politically-influenced lending decisions led to crony capitalism. These banks competed to please their political bosses, instead of focusing on project appraisals.

The rupee fell to 7. The devaluation aimed to boost exports amid limited access to foreign exchange. Instead, it accelerated inflation and drew wide criticism. The main vehicle for nationalist activity was the Indian National Congress, whose best-known leaders included Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru. Under imperial rule, they had grown accustomed to having their minority status protected by a system of reserved legislative seats and separate electorates.

The prospect of losing this protection as independence drew closer worried more and more Muslims, first in parts of northern India, and then, after World War II, in the influential Muslim-majority provinces of Bengal and Punjab. When Britain took India into the war without consultation in , Congress opposed it; large nationalist protests ensued, culminating in the Quit India movement, a mass movement against British rule.

For their part in it, Gandhi and Nehru and thousands of Congress workers were imprisoned until Meanwhile, the British wartime need for local allies gave the Muslim League an opening to offer its cooperation in exchange for future political safeguards.

Historians are still divided on whether this rather vague demand was purely a bargaining counter or a firm objective. But while it may have been intended to solve the minority issue, it ended up aggravating it instead. A Cabinet Mission was dispatched to India in early , and Attlee described its mission in ambitious terms:. My colleagues are going to India with the intention of using their utmost endeavours to help her to attain her freedom as speedily and fully as possible.

What form of government is to replace the present regime is for India to decide; but our desire is to help her to set up forthwith the machinery for making that decision. An act of parliament proposed June as the deadline for the transfer of power.

All the while, communal violence was escalating. In August , the Great Calcutta Killing left some 4, people dead and a further , homeless.