“Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny, and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge, not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially. At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom.” Famous words spoken by Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of sovereign India just before the stroke of midnight, August 15, 1947. Since then, India has been the world’s largest democracy. Today on the 73rd anniversary of our Independence Day, a day of national pride and celebration, we look at some of India’s crowning achievements and contributions to the world as a sovereign state in the last 73 years.
India is a developing nation that has come a long way, and still has a long way to go. However, India’s contributions to science and technology, sports and literature is irrefutable.
- Narinder Singh Kapany, an American-Indian physicist, is known as the “Father of Fibre Optics”. He coined the term “fibre optics” in the year 1956. Born in Punjab in 1926, his contributions to the field of opto-electronics and optical communication are revolutionary. In the present day, fibre optic cables are used to set up high speed internet connections.
- Next, once again in the field of science and technology, we have Vinod Dham. Known as the “Father of the Pentium Chip”, he led the development of the Pentium microprocessor chip at Intel. When he joined Intel in 1979, the company had a gross revenue of about $1 million. When he left the company in 1995, this number had increased to almost $16.2 million. The Pentium chip paved the way for the next generations of microprocessors that we are familiar with now.
- Ajay V. Bhatt, a prodigious computer architect from India, designed and developed the technology behind USB, PCI and AGP, among others. His work has changed the shape and future of high-speed robust data storage and transfer throughout the world. USB technology is used in flash drives, hard drives and charging ports.
- Moving on to literature and arts, we have exceptionally talented people like Satyajit Ray. Awarded an honorary Academy Award for his contribution to cinema, he was the author of Feluda, the quintessential Bengali sleuth and the Apu trilogy, which follows the life of a boy named Apu from rural Bengal. Satyajit Ray has been praised by legendary filmmakers of the era like Francis Ford Coppola (of The Godfather and Dracula fame) and Akira Kurosawa (of Seven Samurai and Rashomon fame).
- In more recent times, we have A.R. Rahman, musical composer extraordinaire and the recipient of 2 Academy Awards, 2 Grammy Awards as well as numerous other awards. He lost his father at the age of 9, but did everything to realize his passion of pursuing a career in music, while managing the financial burden of taking care of his family at the same time.
- India has excelled in the world of sports in the last few decades several times. In 1968, Mihir Sen became the first Indian man to swim across the English Channel. He also made history as the only man to swim the 5 seas in 1 calendar year.
- In 1960, Milkha Singh, also known as the Flying Sikh, broke the 400m world record. He also won Gold medals in the 1958 and 1962 Asian Games.
- The Indian cricket team won the ICC world tournament twice – in 1983 and then again 2011. The Indian cricket team has always been one of the best teams in the world, over the years even as older cricket stars retired and new talented players joined the fray.
The list of achievements by Indians could go on and on. It is virtually to impossible list the accomplishments of our great nation. Apart from the ones mentioned above, India has also excelled in the field of economics, defense and medicine. Amartya Sen won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1998. In 2019, Abhijit Banerjee and his wife Esther Duflo shared the same prize. India has the second largest standing army in the world. We are leading the battle against the Covid-19 pandemic that is sweeping through the world right now. Covaxin, a potential vaccine against this virus is being developed by the Indian company Bharat Biotech, in collaboration with the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR). One has to but look, in order to see India’s amazing contributions to the world. On this joyous occasion, let us celebrate all that our country has done for the world and all that we can do for our country.
