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Unit 11: India Independent to 1964

less than three times higher and, very importantly, admission capacity in technical education Notes
(engineering and technology) at the degree and diploma levels was higher by 6 and 8.5 times
respectively. The population had increased only by a little over one-third during the same period.
Jawaharlal Nehru and the early Indian planners were acutely aware of India’s backwardness in
science and technology (an area left consciously barren in the colonial period) and therefore made
massive efforts to overcome this shortcoming. Nehru’s ‘temples of modern (secular) India’ consisted
not only of steel and power
Table 11.3 Growth in Infrastructure, Health and Education
Item Unit 1950-51 1960-61 1965-66 Percentage
change between
1950-51 and 1965-66
Electricity: Million 2.3 5.6 10.2 393.5
Installed capacity KW.
Towns and ‘000 3.7 24.2 52.3 1,313.5
villages
electrified
Railways: Freight Million 93 156 205 120.4
carried tonnes
Surfaced roads ‘000 km 156 235 284 82.0
Hospital beds ‘000 113 186 300 165.5
Enrolment in Million 23.5 44.7 67.7 188.1
schools
Technical
Education:
Engineering and
technology
(admission
capacity)
(i) Degree level 1000 4.1 13.8 24.7 502.4
(ii) Diploma level 1000 5.9 25.8 49.9 745.8
Population Millions 357 430 490 37.3

Source: J. Bhagwati and P. Desai, India: Planning for Industrialisation, London, 1970, p. 74.
plants, irrigation dams, etc., but included institutions of higher learning, particularly in the scientific
field. During the First Plan itself, high-powered national laboratories and institutes were set up by
the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research for conducting fundamental and applied research
in each of the following areas: physics, chemistry, fuel, glass and ceramics, food technology,
drugs, electro-chemistry, roads, leather and building. In 1948 the Atomic Energy Commission was
set up, laying the foundations of the creditable advances India was to make in the sphere of
nuclear science and related areas. This was in addition to the unprecedented increase in the
educational opportunities in science and technology in the universities and institutes. National
expenditure on scientific research and development kept growing rapidly with each Plan. For
example, it increased from Rs. 10 million in 1949 to Rs 4.5 billion in 1977. Over roughly the same
period India’s scientific and technical manpower increased more than 12 times from 190, 000 to
2.32 million. A spectacular growth by any standards, placing India, after the dissolution of the
Soviet Union, as the second country in the world in terms of the absolute size of scientific and
technical manpower. This was a major achievement despite the fact that the quality of education

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