75 Years, Indian Dream

Born in the fire of religious discord, it committed itself to secularism. It committed itself to ending poverty. Those were some elements of our endeavor with destiny. How Far Have We Come?

A Mint special issue offers a look at this journey and what’s next. What was the path leading from Nehruvian economy to liberalization? (The Long Road to Breaking Free by Niranjan Rajadhyaksha; p. 5.) What about the unfinished struggle for the freedom of Indian women? (‘Private rebellion of Indian women’ by Shyana Bhattacharya; p. 11.)

These are some of the questions that this issue is trying to answer. This issue also includes findings from the latest round of the YouGov-Mint-CPR survey (p6-7), giving us a picture of the developing Indian. He is young, aspirational and unafraid to break the rules. The next 25 years are there for him. happy Independence Day!

• the long road to break free

A few days before that crucial midnight of August 1947, Vallabhbhai Patel addressed a public meeting. A newspaper report from that day tells us why partition was painful but necessary, and after explaining to the princely states to join the new federation, Patel told the audience that ‘the main task ahead of India’ There was economic uplift’.

Patel was expressing an idea that was embedded in Indian nationalism from its earliest days. From sharp criticisms of colonial economic policy to industrial conferences held parallel to the annual meetings of the Indian National Congress, to continued campaigns for the spread of technical education, to success in negotiating some element of financial autonomy. After 1919, until the establishment of the Reserve Bank of India in 1935 – Indian nationalists had invested a great deal of energy in economic issues. read more

• a portrait of a growing Indian

As independent India turns 75, its citizens are more aspirational than ever. They look forward to a prosperous future, and actively seek – and are becoming convinced of – it. But along the way lies a confusing melting pot of political, social and economic beliefs that he will have to contend with to lead India into the future. What kind of welfare will work? Which policies will click better? Who is the right leader? How should democracy itself be?

But before that, do we even agree on what are the biggest issues facing India? read more

• how to make denim in license raj

As a boy, Kasturbhai Lalbhai loved nothing more than to chase kites through the streets of his native Jhaveriwada neighborhood in the old walled city of Ahmedabad. But after his father’s death in 1912, the 17-year-old was dropped from school and called on to run his family’s fledgling textile factory. He became one of the most famous mill-owners of modern India.

The Lalbhai heritage traces back to Shantidas Jhaveri, a renowned merchant and chief jeweler of Mughal Emperor Jahangir and Shah Jahan. In the 18th century, the Gujarati family expanded into banking, providing loans to local chieftains seeking to control Ahmedabad. But after 1858, after the British cracked down on indigenous banking, Lalbhai switched to the cotton trade. read more

• A land of miracles and wrong steps

India at 75 is a wonder, which has defied the successive predictions of descent into a Malthusian dystopia of the collapse of its democracy, the disintegration of its politics, and rapid population growth and dwindling food supplies. There have been serious setbacks in this journey. Few crises threaten to break the threads that hold this incredibly diverse nation together. Many strings may be weak, ready to fight. Each strand can have its own specific color and shade. But the fabric woven by these innumerable threads has proved to be remarkably strong and resilient and the most pleasing blend of colors and textures. This is a nation that should be celebrated, nurtured because it is like no other. Its story began many centuries ago and continues to this day. It has been a journey full of wonders and I am sure that as we move towards 100 years of independence, there will be more surprises, pleasant experiences of hope. read more

• Personal rebellion of Indian women

How free are women in independent India? Are we able to steer the direction of our lives as freely and without weight as men? Have our aspirations and the freedom to turn them into reality have increased in the last 75 years? The answers to the questions are not as clear as the statistics or hot-tech on ‘Twitter region’ might make them think. How do we understand ‘freedom’ when our lives are fundamentally interdependent? Who is this Indian woman? Does she aspire to empowerment advertised by white Western feminists or measured by elite experts?

In a diverse country the size of a continent, our experiences of womanhood vary deeply depending on class, race, climate and where we live. Certainly, the urban readership of this letter is not representative of the nation. There is no monolithic ‘Indian woman’ and neither do I have the confidence to write on her behalf. Between women sipping gin-n-tonic in clubs and rural solidarity groups pushing for a statewide ban on alcohol, our social landscape is so complex that there is an easy one-dimensional look at how gender relations have evolved. to present the story. read more

• Big sums, visible and unseen

How do you make a film if you don’t have money?” asked the producer. He wasn’t drunk. Far from it, he was in a mood to tell the truth. “Like this. You start with an idea and you move that idea from star to star. Finally, someone says yes and his secretary gives you six days off after six months. You go to a financier and you tell him that you have six days with Shah Rukh Khan or Salman Khan or whatever, and on the basis of that he gives you some money. You go and write and compose a song. You get a star on the set and you get a dance shot, if you’re lucky, in six days. Then you take that song and you show it to another financier and he pays you to shoot an action sequence. You take that money and maybe even pay a writer to give you the story but it doesn’t matter. Have you seen Professor Pyarelal (1981)? They say Hrishikesh Mukherjee put it together on the editing table. That’s how it goes.” read more

• Sands of Time and the Missing Future Tense of Indian Languages

In an excerpt written a few decades ago, Hindi writer Agyeya explicitly stated, “Indians understand the flow of time, but not its urgency.” The person who memorized this line was not in the place where he read it. But without knowing those details one can read in it the contradictory life of Indian languages. Currents of time have washed them to the shores of the present, but we do not know how modern they really are.

What is the test of modernity for Indian languages? It cannot be measured by how they keep pace with the world of gadgetry and social media. In fact, the role of Indian languages ​​on digital platforms has remained confined to memories. They are of feelings, of relationships, of local, of kinship. On the contrary, the transactions of logic, science, business, diplomacy are done through English. read more

• From Streets to Phones: The Big Leap

Road transport, which accounts for about 87% of the country’s passenger traffic and 60% of freight traffic, has grown in the last two decades.

With no paved single-lane roads, two-lane highways and no expressways, India today has four- and six-lane express highways as part of the country’s Golden Quadrilateral built by the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI). read more

• And faster, higher, and stronger

After this Mirabai Chanu Saikhom came. Four feet 11 inches, and Focused. On 30 July, at the 2022 Commonwealth Games, contestants in the women’s 49kg weightlifting event took to the stage, putting on some of their best. None even close to Mirabai’s first attempt. Mirabai holds the Games record of 201 kg overall. The woman who achieved India’s record Olympic tally in Tokyo won India’s first gold medal at the 2022 CWG.

Athletes like Mirabai are the confident, victorious face of India, now a rising force in sports, whether cricket, wrestling and hockey, or fencing, gymnastics and boxing. India has won world titles and Grand Slams, and created several champions. Last year in Tokyo, India secured its highest position in the Olympics with seven medals. In a country ready to embrace the sport, Indian athletes are getting faster, higher, stronger. read more

• Tracking the story of India Inc., beyond domestic markets

From the days of limited ambition, Indian businesses and companies are increasingly looking to overseas markets for growth and opportunity. How will India’s growth story unfold in the coming years? What are the areas in which it will be able to outperform its global counterparts? Mint takes a long view. read more

• national language of desire

The story of aspirations in India is relatively fresh. For a long time, the idea that people could significantly change the course of their lives over the course of their lives was what mattered to no one but a handful of people born to lives of privilege. . Life was the state in which a person was born, the circumstances here that determined the course of his time; What was left for us to live what was laid down for us from birth.

Instead of looking to the future, I should have been afraid. The cultural mechanisms developed to deal with the fickleness of fate were many. At a time when unexpected success stories were few and sudden disasters were many, it was tempting to steer clear of any aspirations. read more

• For Some Entrepreneurs, Capital Outweighs Caste—Just Not Always I’m skeptical when I find something easily,” says Ricky Biswas, co-founder of Pointo, an electric vehicle services company in Kolkata. The entrepreneur has embraced the everyday struggles of running a startup: from smoking bidis to e-commerce. – Rickshaw pullers, to avoid disputes with local thugs and opt to form a property-lighting company, however, not all Biswas’s troubles are work-related. read more
• India waiting for welfare government

As a young graduate student at Delhi University in the mid-1990s, I was from the generation that had tasted the first fruits of economic liberalization. Freed from the shackles of the state, our lives and future improved dramatically. We filled the market with new consumer goods with excitement – ​​for example, queuing for four hours to taste a McDonald’s burger when the chain first opened in New Delhi. Our future prospects, as reflected in private sector recruitment drives on campus, looked attractive and bright. The state had fallen out of our everyday lives, and we celebrated our newly found economic independence.

A few years later, I joined a nonprofit. My work took me through dusty rural roads. Here, I encountered a different India. Far from celebrating the exit of the state, this India was waiting, in fact, yearning for the state. For this, schools, roads and hospitals are waiting to be built. read more

Ten things that have stayed with Indians in their ups and downs since independence. read more

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