Our two main problems

We need to grow our own food and make our own textiles. It will take commitment, discipline and unity to pull this off, says Lal Bahadur Shastri, writing a mere three years after Independence. But how many of us have first-hand knowledge of the work being carried on in the villages and fields,’ he asks

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During the three years of our independence, the country has made progress in many directions and things have been done which, in the pre-independence days, were outside even the realm of schemes or plans.

The expansion of education and medical facilities, building new plants, dams, irrigation canals and roads, the opening of scientific laboratories and virgin soil brought under cultivation, these are some of the achievements of this period, besides radical social legislation by the central and the state governments giving equal rights to all citizens with no distinction between men and women, high and low, rich and poor.

The Constitution has further set before the nation an ideal of civil liberty and of equal opportunity to all. The achievement of these objectives is the most difficult task that has ever devolved on any country in the very early stages of its freedom, but we are struggling on in pursuit of a great ideal for which we have lived and fought for so long. Gandhiji, through the Congress organization under whose auspices we have grown up, set that ideal before us.

We are yet very far indeed from realizing it; we have made only a humble beginning. We might, as is only natural, make mistakes and have to retrace our steps if the conditions so demand in order to serve better.

Even if we fail or falter, the laudable ideal will ever remain before us as a beacon light to lead us to individual, social, politicaland may I also add-spiritual progress.

The problem of food

But independence has brought in its wake several problems which weigh heavily upon us. These are many, and they deserve our consideration but, in this article, I shall deal with only two-food and cloth. Their production, if tackled properly, may well pave the way for further progress.