Q1. Which among the following was the major challenge India faced while building a nation-state at the time of independence?
Explanation
At independence, India had to turn a deeply diverse society into a functioning democratic nation-state. Establishing democracy meant creating representative institutions, universal adult franchise, constitutional governance and peaceful transfer of power. Poverty was a serious developmental problem, but it was not the specific nation-state-building challenge asked here. Resource constraint and a low level of technology also affected economic development and administration, yet they did not define the political task of building a democratic state. Therefore, the official key rightly points to establishing democracy as the major challenge in this framing.