India Awakes

At midnight on August 14th 1947, Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first Prime Minister, made a speech: "At this midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India awakes to life and freedom." There was a heavy price to pay for freedom - partition. The country was divided. The north became Pakistan, a separate state for Muslims. There was a period of extreme violence, with fighting between the Hindu and Muslim communities and over half a million people died. India and Pakistan went to war over the territory of Kashmir, which is still disputed between them. Despite partition, a large number of Muslims stayed in India, which now has the world's second largest Muslim population.

While the British ruled India, the country did not produce enough to feed its 360 million people. Starvation was common. Nehru started a series of five-year plans; the first included land reform and building dams, so that farmers did not have to rely on the weather to irrigate their crops. In the 1960s and 70s Indian farming went through a Green Revolution; better seeds, fertilisers and farm machinery greatly increased the production of grain. The White Revolution that followed improved the amount of milk the country produced. India's first woman Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi, became very popular in the 1970s. Her slogan was Garibi hatao (Remove poverty). She nationalised the banks, which then opened branches in villages.

The result of this rapid development is that the World Bank now reckons that less than 40 per cent of Indians are below the poverty line, which means they are unable to afford two meals a day. There has not been a serious famine since independence. Although the population has grown to about 1,000 million people, India today exports wheat to China.

However, a lot remains to be done. There" are still areas of India where there is great rural poverty. Almost half of India's population is still illiterate. The middle classes are becoming richer and richer, while the slums of the poor multiply. The government is bureaucratic and slow, inefficient and sometimes corrupt, but India is a genuine democracy, with a free press.

Relic of the Raj

There are 15 official languages in India and thousands of different dialects. People from different parts of the country often do not speak each other's language. English may be a relic of the British Raj, but it is the only solution to this communication problem. English is taught at primary and secondary school, as well as at university. It is the language of the federal government and it generally functions as the link language in this multilingual country.