Test: Class 12 Politics In India Since Independence NCERT Based-2 - UPSC MCQ

The Green Revolution: In the face of the prevailing food-crisis, the country was clearly vulnerable to external pressures and dependent on food aid, mainly from the United States. The United States, in turn, pushed India to change its economic policies.

The government adopted a new strategy for agriculture in order to ensure food sufficiency. Instead of the earlier policy of giving more support to the areas and farmers that were lagging behind, now it was decided to put more resources into those areas which already had irrigation and those farmers who were already well-off.

The argument was that those who already had the capacity could help increase production rapidly in the short run. Thus the government offered high-yielding variety seeds, fertilizers, pesticides and better irrigation at highly subsidised prices.

The government also gave a guarantee to buy the produce of the farmers at a given price. This was the beginning of what was called the ‘green revolution’.

The first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru played a crucial role in setting the national agenda. He was his own foreign minister. Thus both the Prime Minister and the Foreign Minister, he exercised profound influence in the formulation and implementation of India’s foreign policy from 1946 to 1964.

The three major objectives of Nehru’s foreign policy were to preserve the hard-earned sovereignty, protect territorial integrity, and promote rapid economic development. Nehru wished to achieve these objectives through the strategy of non-alignment.

There were, of course, parties and groups in the country that believed that India should be friendlier with the bloc led by the US because that bloc claimed to be pro-democracy. Among those who thought on these lines were leaders like Dr Ambedkar.

The Chinese invasion, 1962: Two developments strained this relationship. China annexed Tibet in 1950 and thus removed a historical buffer between the two countries. Initially, the government of India did not oppose this openly.

But as more information came in about the suppression of Tibetan culture, the Indian government grew uneasy. The Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, sought and obtained political asylum in India in 1959. China alleged that the government of India was allowing anti-China activities to take place from within India.

The Kashmir conflict did not prevent cooperation between the governments of India and Pakistan. Both the governments worked together to restore the women abducted during partition to their original families.

A long-term dispute about the sharing of river waters was resolved through mediation by the World Bank. The India-Pakistan Indus Waters Treaty was signed by Nehru and General Ayub Khan in 1960. Despite all ups and downs in the Indo-Pak relations, this treaty has worked well.

India, with its limited resources, had initiated development planning. However, conflicts with neighbours derailed the five-year plans. The scarce resources were diverted to the defence sector especially after 1962, as India had to embark on a military modernisation drive.

The Department of Defence Production was established in November 1962 and the Department of Defence Supplies in November 1965. The Third Plan (1961-66) was affected and it was followed by three Annual Plans and the Fourth Plan could be initiated only in 1969. India’s defence expenditure increased enormously after the wars.

The movement began in two or three villages of Uttarakhand when the forest department refused permission to the villagers to fell ash trees for making agricultural tools. However, the forest department allotted the same patch of land to a sports manufacturer for commercial use.

This enraged the villagers and they protested against the move of the government. The struggle soon spread across many parts of the Uttarakhand region. Women’s active participation in the Chipko agitation was a very novel aspect of the movement. The forest contractors of the region usually doubled up as suppliers of alcohol to men.

Women held sustained agitations against the habit of alcoholism and broadened the agenda of the movement to cover other social issues. The movement achieved a victory when the government issued a ban on felling of trees in the Himalayan regions for fifteen years, until the green cover was fully restored.

Activities of Dalit Panthers mostly centred around fighting increasing atrocities on Dalits in various parts of the State. As a result of sustained agitations on the part of Dalit Panthers along with other like minded organisations over the issue of atrocities against Dalits, the government passed a comprehensive law in 1989 that provided for rigorous punishment for such acts.

The larger ideological agenda of the Panthers was to destroy the caste system and to build an organisation of all oppressed sections like the landless poor peasants and urban industrial workers along with Dalits.

In January 1988, around twenty thousand farmers had gathered in the city of Meerut, Uttar Pradesh. They were protesting against the government decision to increase electricity rates.

The farmers camped for about three weeks outside the district collector’s office until their demands were fulfilled. It was a very disciplined agitation of the farmers and all those days they received regular food supply from the nearby villages.

The Meerut agitation was seen as a great show of rural power – power of farmer cultivators. These agitating farmers were members of the Bharatiya Kisan Union (BKU), an organisation of farmers from western Uttar Pradesh and Haryana regions.