All India Radio
Hello Friends,
Every one keeps talking of doing ‘smart work’ instead of ‘hard work’. But no one has ever defined what “smart work” is. Here we are making an attempt which makes you understand and define for yourself what ‘smart work’ is.
- Reading books for 6-8 hours a day is a traditional way of working hard for Civil Services Exam.
- At the end of every day how much you remember and how much you can reproduce out of that in a 200 word answer is always doubtful and varying.
Remember, what matters in UPSC Civil Services Exam is this second point, and not the first point.
Let us explore new ways to remember effectively and reproduce efficiently. We have “All India Radio” broadcasting important programs every day which are useful for UPSC Civil Services Exam. One such important program is “Spotlight”. In this program, which runs for 15 mins daily, one topic will be taken up for discussion with an expert on the respective subjective matter. If you can spend 15 mins on listening those discussions daily, your memory will be sharpened and thinking process will be enhanced.
Here at IAS Baba, we are presenting you a summary on those discussions daily. This will be helpful for quick revision also. After listening, if you go through the summary text here, that topic will be reinforced in your memory. The discussions will give you a refreshing understanding of the topic. If this process becomes a habit, you can reach a stage where you will be able to talk/discuss about the topic in question, which is useful for interview also.
Hence, we request all the aspirants to make use of All India Radio discussions whenever possible. If that is not possible, we are here for you to fall back upon. We will try to provide you the summary of Spotlight discussions daily. Going forward, we will also try to extend our coverage on other programmes like “Weekly Current Affairs” in All India Radio.
Here is the first Article to charge you all 🙂
CONTRIBUTIONS OF SARDAR VALLABH BHAI PATEL IN NATION BUILDING
31st October 2015
India is celebrating the 140th birth anniversary of Sardar Vallabhai Patel. Vallabhai Patel was given the title “Sardar” by the women of the Bardoli taluqa of Surat District in Gujarat, during the “Bardoli Satyagraha” of 1926-28. He was a disciple of Gandhiji. He was attracted to the Gandhian methods of struggle during the Champaran Satyagraha in 1917-18. He was called “The Iron Man of India” for his contribution to the integration of princely states into India immediately after Independence.
He was the Deputy Prime Minister and Home Minister of post partition India. He also took the charge of the States Department which was newly created to look after the issue of integration of post-partition India. V P Menon was its secretary.
With the partition, the British Paramountcy ended and the Princely States were free to join either India or Pakistan or remain independent. Sardar undertook the daunting task of integrating these princely states into the Indian Union. There were over 625 princely states in the British India. The Princes of most of these states aspired autonomy and independence. However, the people wanted a democratic form of govt and merger with the Indian Union. The States’ Peoples’ Conference was spearheading the people’s movement against the princely states’ authority. Sardar Patel had gone about the process of integrating these princely states into Indian Union in two phases.
In the first phase, he appealed to all the princes to sign the Standstill Agreement with the Indian Union. As per this agreement, the Defence, External Affairs and Communications were surrendered to the Indian Govt. By 15 August 1947, all the princely states joined the Indian Union, except Hyderabad, Junagarh and Jammu and Kashmir. In return for signing the agreement, the states were offered Privy Purses and additional privileges. Lord Mountbatten also played a crucial role in this regard helping Sardar Patel. Military action had to be taken to integrate Hyderabad under Operation Polo. A Plebiscite was conducted in Junagarh which favoured integration with India. With Kashmir, however, the matters were deadlocked due to bringing the UN into the picture after military occupation of Kashmir by Pakistani militants. Sardar Patel favoured military action against Pakistan. However, Nehru wanted the UN to intervene and settle the matter, which never happened.
In the second phase, the acceded small princely states, which were hundreds in number, were integrated with the neighbouring states. Thus, Sardar Patel had laid the structure of political map of post-independent India. For these contributions he was also called the “Bismarck of India”
He also played a crucial role in the Constituent Assembly for supporting the fundamental rights to minorities (Articles 29 and 30). He dedicated his life for achieving the vision of Unity in Diversity.
PIB Article on Sardar Patel: Click Here
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