In: Computer Science
Encapsulation can be defined as the mechanism which takes care of :
Inheritance is the mechanism by which an object acquires the some/all properties of another object. For example, a child inherits some properties of parents. Hence, this is an example of inheritance.
Polymorphism means objects have different meanings based on their data type.
In other words it means that one method with multiple implementation, for a certain class of action. And which implementation to be used is decided at runtime depending upon the situation (i.e., data type of the object).
They are important because we can relate to real work applications using these concepts. With the help of encapsulation, we can keep classes separated and prevent them from having tightly coupled with each other. Polymorphism allows us to have multiple methods with same signatures but with different functionalities. Inheritance provides reusability of code.
No, a program need not suffer if one or more of these items are absent.