|
In Defence of Nehru Ankit Mathur (IV Year ME) and Neha Juneja (IV Year PE) When your house is on fire you don’t go about painting it. In a country where majority is underfed, millions are below the poverty line and most of the population has no access to basic amenities it was not required to have a setup in place to provide impetus to the desires and aspirations of the chosen few, rather a cohesive set of policies to take the nation forward as a whole. It was under these circumstances that we embarked on a process to strengthen the pillars on which the very idea of India rested. The average Indian who happened to be living in abject poverty and had no access to even rudimentary social security could not be expected to embark go on a path of entrepreneurship. How do you expect a person who has been weaving baskets all his life for a master who has been exploiting him all along to set up a venture to compete even within the country let alone outside it? For all the sympathizers of the free market who think a free for all at the time would have done us good it is imperative to think again in the context of those times. The economic policies of Jawaharlal Nehru have to judged in these times and conditions. Ripped out of context any evaluation is meaningless. There is no such thing as benevolent capitalism. In the countries whose success we set as a benchmark for ourselves capitalism has succeeded because everyone is well aware of his/her rights and is equipped well enough to fight for them. Such a model would have created a wide rift between the rich and the poor in India as the latter were reeling under abominable conditions and were exploited to the limit by heartless middlemen. At the time India had just become independent the existing social order had to be changed. An 8% GDP growth is not all that economic policies are required for. Socio-economic policies of that era were based on a far more rational basis than given credit for. They were not confined to the village economy as Mahatma Gandhi had dreamt or exposed the people to cut throat competition. The basic tenet was to elevate India to agriculturally sufficient industrial powerhouse. Hence the first and the second five year plans were dedicated to agriculture and industry respectively. As far as the heavy industries were concerned the technical know-how and the investment required was beyond what an average entrepreneur or even a big industrial house could put in. Taking control of the heavy industries was hence necessary to ensure that they did not lag behind for the want of resources. To make sure that the absence of technical wherewithal would not stifle growth in the future a revolutionary step of setting up the IITs was taken. This did not amuse a lot of policy makers back then but the IITs have done us proud the world over and today we are the best in the field of IT and allied services. Today if we are capable of putting up satellites in the space and compete with America and the west in the multitrillion dollar telecommunication business it is because the seed of ISRO was sown with a vision back then. All this would not have been possible in a capitalistic setup where the focus is on maximizing profits and not on social responsibility. What Corporate Social Responsibility talks of doing today was done in that era by setting up a mixed economy on socialistic lines. The underlying idea was to let everyone live in dignity-something that poor cannot even dream: penury robs an individual of even self-respect. |
