The Skulls! India - 75 Years of Independence: Skull #1 India - Celebrate 75 years of independence
India - Celebrate 75 years of independence
(The collector who owns the most Skulls from this collection will be entitled to claim a physical print of a skull of their choice)
India achieved independence in 1947 and is now celebrating the completion of 75 years of its independence. In 1947 the life expectancy in India was a little less than 32 years. Now it is 69.6 years.
Around 1947 the infant mortality rate of India was around 146 per 1000 live births. It has now reduced to around 27. This is a significant improvement. However the much lower rate in Sri Lanka—just 6—shows that India’s achievement has been much below the potential.
The maternal mortality rate in India during the 1940s was around 2000 per 100,000 live births. It is around 100 now. However the Sri Lanka MMR rate of 36 shows how India remains much short of the potential.
At the time of independence India’s literacy rate was 18.33 per cent while female literacy rate was 8.66 per cent. Now the literacy rate is much higher at 74 per cent overall and 65 per cent for females, but it is still much less than the overall literacy rate of 92 per cent in Sri Lanka.
During the 200 years of British rule, India was ravaged with many devastating famines each one of which claimed over a hundred thousand lives. This trend peaked in the last decade of colonial rule when over 3 million people died in the Bengal Famine of the 1940s.
After independence India was able to avoid mass famine deaths, even though some countries compared to experience mass famine deaths. Although post-partition population has increased by nearly four times, India has been able to increase food security. India has a reasonably well-functioning public distribution system for supplying subsidized basic cereals (and sometimes other food) to nearly two-thirds of its population, those who need this. During the pandemic even entirely free grain was supplied to millions. This year as the world food situation worsened, despite its wheat harvest being damaged at the last stage by a scorching heat wave, India was in a position to export food to some countries facing extreme shortage.
Despite all this, malnutrition and under-nutrition levels have remained exceptionally high in India. As this writer repeatedly found during several visits to remote villages, this could be very high particularly during the lean season months, during drought years and at the time of other disasters.
Environmental deterioration has been very rapid with the most number of polluted cities being now found in India and rapid worsening of soil and water conditions in vast rural areas. River pollution has been at high levels, and the lean season water flows often decline to alarmingly low levels. Many small rivers have almost dried up. The long coastal region faces many-sided threats.
There is a rush to provide water taps in all houses, but not adequate concern to save or enhance the water sources which will be needed to bring water to taps. There is a rush to declare that all houses have toilets, without ensuring how well these are used and maintained, or even these have been built properly. Many recent achievements are vastly exaggerated, and targets are declared to be achieved even though the ground situation is quite different.
During the last 8 years or so, India has been moving away from widely accepted or even essential precepts of the freedom movement including economic equality and social justice, secularism and inter-faith harmony, human rights and civil liberties. One sincerely hopes that essential corrective steps can be taken soon to strengthen India’s commitments to the core values of its freedom movement.
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(The collector who owns the most Skulls from this collection will be entitled to claim a physical print of a skull of their choice)
