Page 195 - DHIS204_DHIS205_INDIAN_FREEDOM_STRUGGLE_HINDI

Indian Freedom Struggle (1707–1947 A.D.)

Notes • Civil liberties were put on a firm footing with the Press having free play, even when it
criticized the government severely. The independence of the courts was carefully nurtured,
even when they turned down an important piece of popular legislation, namely, agrarian
reform.
• He tried to make it a major forum for expression of public opinion, and made it a point to sit
through the Question Hour and to attend parliamentary debates. The Opposition too played
its part by respecting parliament and irs procedures, functioning without fear in its portals,
and keeping the standard of parliamentary debates at a high level.
• Federalism, provided for in the constitution, also was established as a firm feature of Indian
polity during the Nehru years, with a genuine devolution of power to the states. Respecting
the states’ autonomy, Nehru would not impose decisions on the state governments or interfere
with their policies, though he took care to inform them of his own thinking and occasionally
advise or even insist on their acceptance of a particular policy.
• A major reason that led to the development of harmonious relations between the Centre and
the states and which kept in check centrifugal forces was the fact that the same party ruled
in both places. The leading role of the Centre was also facilitated by the fact that some of the
tallest men and women in Indian politics held office in the cabinet as well as the Congress
Working Committee.
• Nehru and other leaders were also keen to ensure that Indian social organization underwent
change, leading to the social liberation of the hitherto socially backward and suppressed
sections of society. As Nehru put it in 1956: ‘We have not only striven for and achieved a
political revolution, not only are we striving hard for an economic revolution but . . . we are
equally intent on social revolution; only by way of advance on these three separate lines and
their integration into one great whole, will the people of India progress.’
• The founding fathers were fully aware of the need for better and wider education as an
instrument of social and economic progress, equalization of opportunity and the building up
of a democratic society. This was all the more urgent because in 1951 only 16.6 per cent of the
total population was literate and the percentage was much lower, being only 6 per cent, in
the case of rural families.
• The Nehru years witnessed rapid expansion of education, especially in the case of girls.
Between 1951 and 1961 school enrolment doubled for boys and tripled for girls. From 1950-
51 to 1965-66 the number of boys enrolled in classes I to V increased from 13.77 million to
32.18 million.
• At the time of independence there were eighteen universities with a total student enrolment
of nearly 300,000. By 1964, the number of universities had increased to fifty-four, the number
of colleges to about 2,500 and the number of undergraduate and postgraduate students,
excluding intermediate students, to 613,000. The number of girls students increased six-fold
and constituted 22 per cent of the total.
• Two major programmes for rural uplift, namely, the Community Development programme
and Panchayati Raj, were introduced in 1952 and 1959. They were to lay the foundations of
the welfare state in the villages. Though designed for the sake of agricultural development,
they had more of a welfare content; their basic purpose was to change the face of rural India,
to improve the quality of life of the people.
• The Community Development programme was instituted on a limited scale in 1952 covering
55 development blocks, each block consisting of about 100 villages with a population of
60,000 to 70,000.
• The weaknesses of the programme had come to be known as early as 1957 when the Balwantrai
Mehta Committee, asked to evaluate it, had strongly criticized its bureaucratization and its
lack of popular involvement. As a remedy, the Committee recommended the democratic
decentralization of the rural and district development administration.

190 LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY