Explain the concept of asynchronous programming in .NET.

Asynchronous programming allows tasks to be executed independently, enhancing application responsiveness. In .NET, we use async and await keywords. Async methods return a Task or Task<TResult> and run asynchronously. Await is used within async methods to pause execution until the awaited task completes. This helps in preventing the UI from freezing while waiting for time-consuming operations like database calls.