Biggest achievements of India that you are probably unaware of!

In a few days, India will be celebrating its 70th Republic Day. After being under the British rule for some 200 odd years, when India finally got independence, it was struggling with all sorts of problems. We had no food, healthcare was poor, all sorts of crimes were on the rise and what not. But a lot has been achieved and a lot of our problems have been solved since our independence which makes us a proud nation. Let us have a look on the positive side today. In this article we will read some of the biggest achievements of India that you probably do not know.

Agriculture

• After independence, India was not producing too much of its own food and was largely dependent on foreign supplies. But since 1960s, we are self dependent on food and we also export a lot of different agricultural products all over the world.
• India is the second largest producer of sugar, potatoes, wheat and rice which are the most commonly consumed food items in the world.
• India is the largest producer of milk in the world, the second largest producer of cow milk and the largest producer of buffalo milk and goat milk. In the year 2016-17, India produced 165.4 million metric tonnes milk of which around 60 million metric tonnes was just cow milk and 70 million metric tonnes was just buffalo milk.
• India is also the largest producer of millet, jute, ginger, cottonseed, mango, papaya, banana, castor oil seeds and safflower oil seeds, pulses, chickpeas, dry beans.
• India is also the second largest producer of silk, garlic, onions and tea.
• Other than these, India produces a variety of vegetables, fruits and other crops and India is among the top 10 producers in the world of many such crops.

Nuclear Power

• India has a total of 22 operational nuclear reactors in 7 nuclear power plants in the country which are responsible for producing 3.2% of the total electricity produced in India.
• As of 2017, India is capable of producing 6780 MW of nuclear energy which ranks us 13th in the world in terms of Net Total Capacity. 6 more operational reactors are under construction which will take our net capacity to around 11000 MW.
• In terms of nuclear weapons, India is a nuclear-triad which means we have land based, sea based and air based nukes. India has 110-120 total nukes and 12 of them are already deployed.
• India is the only known country with nuclear weapons which is not a party to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) but is still allowed to carry out nuclear commerce with the rest of the world.

Society and Culture

• Right to Education became a law in 2009. This law guarantees free education to every child between the age of 6-14 years of age and requires private schools to reserve 25% seats for poor children.
• Right to Information Act was passed in 2005 which enabled the citizens to acquire any information they want from the government officials. This was a great step for the spirit of democracy.
• We do the most hours of reading per week in the world. According to a 2014 data by NOP World Culture Score Index, we Indians spend an average of 10 hours and 42 minutes every week reading.
• As of June 2018, India has 37 UNESCO World Heritage sites, the sixth most in the world. 
• The Western Ghats are considered as one of the eight “hottest hotspots” of biological diversity in the world.

Sports

• In 1928, the Indian men's hockey team won its first Olympic gold medal and remained unbeaten until 1960, winning six gold medals in a row.
• India put on a decent show in 2008 Beijing Olympics. Abhinav Bindra became the first Indian individual to win a Gold and Vijendra Singh became the first Indian boxer to win an Olympic medal by winning the bronze.
• Pankaj Advani, the only Indian who has dominated the world billiards for several years now and has won 16 world titles.
• In 2010 CWG, India won a total of 101 medals and it was the first time India won more than 100 medals in Commonwealth Games and we stood second in the world.
• At 2016 Rio Olympics, PV Sindhu became the first Indian woman to win a silver medal in the Olympics.
• India has been part of 5 men’s Kabaddi World Cups held till now and have won all them. The Indian women’s team has also won all Kabaddi World Cups held till date.
• India has hosted Asian Games twice in 1951 and 1982, Commonwealth Games in 2010 and ICC Cricket World Cup in 2011.

Healthcare

• In March 2014, the World Health Organisation officially certified India as a polio-free country. The last case of polio that was recorded was in 2011 in West Bengal.
• Life expectancy has doubled since since independence. It has become 68 years now which was just 32 years in the year 1947.

Space Research

• ISRO's Chandrayaan-1 was the first to discover water on moon.
• In 2014, ISRO's Mangalyaan-1 created history as India became the first country in the world to reach the orbit of Mars in the first attempt. The mission cost was just 450 crores and it is the cheapest Mars mission in the word.
• In 2017, ISRO set a record by launching 104 satellites with just one rocket. This was a major achievement in the field of commercially efficient and low cost satellite launch.
• ISRO also runs a web application Bhuvan which is similar to Google Earth. We can use it to explore 2D and 3D representation of the eart's surface.
• Despite budget constraints, ISRO is in the top 5 best space agencies of the world leaving behind countries like France, Germany, Japan and Italy and private agency SpaceX which have a lot more budget dedicated for space research than India does.

Hi, I am Pranjay Varshney. I am pursuing my B.Sc. (Hons) in Electronic Science from University of Delhi. My dream is to join the Indian Army as an officer and I am very passionate about it. I like to write articles about Indian Armed Forces and various political and economic affairs. I spend my free time doing gymnastics, listening to music or watching movies.