We Need to Sprint to Get Across the Steep Hill Ahead

We would need a second "Green Revolution" to become one of the three top grain producers

- SHASHI SHEKHAR

It was 12 May 1947. Clement Atlee, the newly elected prime minister of the United Kingdom then, was meeting with military commanders at his official residence, 10 Downing Street. WW-II hero Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery and some policy experts were also at the meeting, convened to discuss India's independence and its eventual partition.

These men believed India as a nation had socialistic impulses and, if given independence in an undivided form, could be influenced by communism, which they saw as a mortal threat to British colonialism. So they decided to create a "buffer state" between the Soviet Union and India that would do their bidding in the region. On 14 August 1947, Pakistan was given independence and turned into a Western puppet. India was given independence on 15 August 1947 but chose the path of non-alignment.

Today, 78 years later, the generals responsible for the partition of India stand defeated.