India after independence

Independent India faced the simultaneous tasks of integrating princely states, writing a democratic constitution, resettling refugees and rebuilding an economy marked by poverty and illiteracy. The Constitution of 1950 answered the political task with universal adult franchise, fundamental rights and a federal structure, while the planning era answered the economic task with state-led industrialisation. A concrete example is the linguistic reorganisation of states, completed in principle by the States Reorganisation Act of 1956, which defused language agitation by redrawing internal boundaries. This chapter surveys those founding challenges.