An estimated 3.5 million[18] Hindus and Sikhs living in West Punjab, North-West Frontier Province, Baluchistan, East Bengal and Sind migrated to India in fear of domination and suppression in Muslim Pakistan.

Communal violence killed an estimated one million Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs, and gravely destabilised both dominions along their Punjab and Bengal boundaries, and the cities of Calcutta, Delhi and Lahore.

Steadily, hundreds of thousands of Hindus returned to East Pakistan, but the thaw in relations did not last long, primarily owing to the Kashmir dispute.In July 1946, Jawaharlal Nehru pointedly observed that no princely state could prevail militarily against the army of independent India.

Village common lands were seized, and an extensive public works and industrialisation campaign resulted in the construction of major dams, irrigation canals, roads, thermal and hydroelectric power stations, and many more.

On 4 June 1959, shortly after the Nagpur session of the Indian National Congress, C. Rajagopalachari,[54] along with Murari Vaidya of the newly established Forum of Free Enterprise (FFE)[55] and Minoo Masani, a classical liberal and critic of socialist leaning Nehru, announced the formation of the new Swatantra Party at a meeting in Madras.

[61][62] Rajagopalachari sharply criticised the bureaucracy and coined the term "licence-permit Raj" to describe Nehru's elaborate system of permissions and licences required for an individual to set up a private enterprise.

Indira Gandhi had started on a rocky note after agreeing to a devaluation of the rupee, which created much hardship for Indian businesses and consumers, and the import of wheat from the United States fell through due to political disputes.

[76]India's population passed the 500 million mark in the early 1970s, but its long-standing food crisis was resolved with greatly improved agricultural productivity due to the Green Revolution.

The crisis started with Punjabi dominated Pakistani army refusing to surrender power to the newly elected but mainly Bengali Awami League led by Shaikh Mujibur Rehman.

On 25 June 1975, Gandhi advised President Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed to declare a state of emergency under the constitution, which allowed the central government to assume sweeping powers to defend law and order in the nation.

Indira's then twentynine year old son, and unofficial political advisor, Sanjay Gandhi, was accused of committing gross excesses—Sanjay was blamed for the Health Ministry carrying out forced vasectomies of men and sterilisation of women as a part of the initiative to control population growth, and for the demolition of slums in Delhi near the Turkmen Gate, which left hundreds of people dead or injured, and many more displaced.

But his youth and inexperience were an asset in the eyes of citizens tired of the inefficacy and corruption of career politicians, and looking for newer policies and a fresh start to resolve the country's long-standing problems.

This allowed private businesses to use resources and produce commercial goods without government bureaucracy interfering, and the influx of foreign investment increased India's national reserves.

Rajiv Gandhi's image as an honest politician (he was nicknamed "Mr. Clean" by the press) was shattered when the Bofors scandal broke, revealing that senior government officials had taken bribes over defence contracts by a Swedish guns producer.

This Congress-led government, which served a full five-year term, initiated a gradual process of economic liberalisation and reform, which has opened the Indian economy to global trade and investment.

But India was rocked by communal violence (see Bombay riots) between Hindus and Muslims that killed over 10,000 people, following the Babri Mosque demolition by Hindu extremists in the course of the Ram Janmabhoomi dispute in Ayodhya in December 1992.

The Vajpayee administration continued with privatisation, reduction of taxes, a sound fiscal policy aimed at reducing deficits and debts, and increased initiatives for public works.

While serious challenges remain, India is enjoying a period of economic expansion that has propelled it to the forefront of the world economy, and has correspondingly increased its influence in political and diplomatic terms.

In May and June 1999, India discovered an elaborate campaign of terrorist infiltration that resulted in the Kargil War in Kashmir, derailing a promising peace process that had begun only three months earlier when Prime Minister Vajpayee visited Pakistan, inaugurating the Delhi-Lahore bus service.

Soaring on popularity earned following the successful conclusion of the Kargil conflict, the National Democratic Alliance—a new coalition led by the BJP—gained a majority to form a government with Vajpayee as prime minister in October 1999.

India and Pakistan agreed to resume direct air links and to allow overflights, and a groundbreaking meeting was held between the Indian government and moderate Kashmir separatists.

[142][143] The concerns and controversies over the 2010 Commonwealth Games rocked the country in 2010, raising questions about the credibility of the government followed by the 2G spectrum case and Adarsh Housing Society scam.

In mid-2011, Anna Hazare, a prominent social activist, staged a 12-day hunger strike in Delhi in protest at state corruption, after government proposals to tighten up anti-graft legislation fell short of his demands.

[174][175][170][176][177][172][178][179] The 16th national general election, held in early 2014, saw a huge victory for the BJP led NDA; the alliance gained an absolute majority and formed a government under the premiership of Modi.

A vehicle-borne suicide bomber assaulted a convoy of cars carrying Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) troops on the Jammu-Srinagar National Highway in the Pulwama area of Jammu and Kashmir.

[195] According to Christopher Clary, assistant professor of political science at the State University of New York, technocratic competence had been entirely missing from government's response to the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in India.

[99][210] Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime minister of India, along with the statistician Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis, formulated and oversaw economic policy during the initial years of the country's independence.

They expected favourable outcomes from their strategy, involving the rapid development of heavy industry by both public and private sectors, and based on direct and indirect state intervention, rather than the more extreme Soviet-style central command system.

The reforms did away with the Licence Raj, reduced tariffs and interest rates and ended many public monopolies, allowing automatic approval of foreign direct investment in many sectors.

[221] Since then, the overall thrust of liberalisation has remained unchanged since 1991, although no government had tried taking on powerful lobbies such as trade unions and farmers and on contentious issues such as reforming labour laws and reducing agricultural subsidies.