In 1949, a very young India was trying to find its place in the world after attaining freedom at the stroke of midnight just a couple of years earlier. It was a India that was in a hurry to attain self-sufficiency, to claim its legitimate place in a new world order that was still emerging from the smouldering ashes of World War II and to become a moral force in a world that was getting increasingly polarised by the geo-political realities that emerged at the end of the war. To realise the dreams and aspirations of millions of free Indians, the wheels of the nation needed to be set in motion.