The Three Phases of The Indian Society of The 20th Century

• Phase One
  The Era of Mahatma Gandhi, Beginning of the century till 1948.
  
• Phase Two
  The Nehruvian Era, The period between 1948 till 1970. The time of Late Pt. Jawahar lal Nehru, our first Prime Minister, and the social & political ethos of those years.
  
• Phase Three
  Post Nehruvian Era, The Emergence of Late Mrs. Indira Gandhi, our Third prime Minister, and the ways of doing things from 1970 till date.

Phase One

The Era of Mahatma Gandhi:

• The Teaching of Non violence and Peace.
• The Transformation of Indian Social Psyche for the conviction of fighting the might of British rule. The Creation of belief for the same.
• The eradication of fear of physical pain from the masses. The importance of purity of soul.
• The emphasis of disobeying the authority and rule of law for reaching the goal of freedom by means of non co-operation.
• A United India for the first time in 1200 years… for a cause, forgetting all the barriers of caste, class, region, religion. The very roots of Divide & Rule.

Consequence on Today :

• Because of Mahatma's untimely death in 1948, he could not complete his imparting of education to the masses. Therefore the Indians still continue to take the pride in breaking the law of the land and getting away from it. No respect for the rule of law exists. Hence we jump red light or avoid paying taxes!
• Secondly, he wanted to dismantle the existing Congress Party and wanted Congress Workers to float another Political outfit for fighting the elections. As Congress was a Social Movement, a Movement for Freedom, he believed it was not meant to Govern. As he died, no one dismantled the Party and it kept coming back to Power on emotional values, making it complacent. Thus, the Governance lacked Delivery. A status which prevails today and is very much genesis for the rut

Phase Two

The Era of Pandit Nehru :

• Highest moral and ethical standard of conduct.
• Voice of dissent Respected and Honored.
• Intimate personal friendship irrespective of deep differences in opinion on issues.
• No political and personal victimization.
• Spirit of freedom movement still alive and the motivation to build India still burning.
• The Attitude of 'Country before Self'.

Note: Before independence, as the rulers were foreigners, the Govt. of India, never bothered for the needs & upliftment of Indian masses. Therefore the founding fathers of Indian democracy went on the other extreme by pledging to make Govt. do everything in order to satisfy every need and wants of its people.

Consequence on Today:

• The masses wait for the Govt. to fulfill its every want, which the system cannot deliver. Therefore, for lack of performance of public system, an individual becomes self centric & self obsessed, resulting in decaying values.

Phase Three

The Era of Late Mrs. Indira Gandhi and there after :

• Politics of Emotion and Vote.
• Emergence of selfishness and self-centeredness in the society.
• Attitude of pursuing personal interest of individual before the Country.
• Time of personal and political victimization.
• No ethical and moral standard in thought and approach.
• Acute personal hatred towards voice of dissent.
• Democracy at its nadir as the only priority for the Political Party is to work for coming into power. Power becomes an end and not a Mean.

Note: With the Emergence of this phase the merit gave way to personal liking and disliking.

Consequence on Today:

• No Political party wants to work with the masses. The easiest is to get votes on emotion and on the lines of caste, class, creed, religion etc. Delivering on promises is not an issue nor is making a sincere effort to resolve things.

Result: A group of people make society and groups of society make the country; because the leaders don't work at the roots, they have no idea about the cause of the problems resulting in non delivery. Because the cause is never resolved the problem persists. No long term cohesive, concrete perspective is applied, but for patchwork, for the country.