ABSTRACT
India’s pre-eminence as a large booming economy and a political power to contend with, depends on its ability to make every Indian contribute fully to nation building. Social development and a pro-active State hold the key to economic progress, so ably demonstrated by a number of Far East Asian economies. Well-crafted community institutions and social capital are also the finest way of addressing the binary and artificial debate of public and private sectors. The democratic ‘one person-one vote’ process was expected to question and transform many inequalities, hierarchies, and social and gender deprivation. The objective condition of India in 1947 needs to be understood before assessing the efforts at ‘India for All’. The constitution of India is an effort to address the diversity of India with determination to carry everyone along. India’s social development journey has been different across different States, even though the ancestry of the Indian civil service influenced all of them.
