Was Nehru's socialism that bad for India's economic growth till the 90s?

[Mirpuri Don]

I was reading an article and there's that quote, from an Indian historian called Kapil Komireddi in his book Malevolent Republic: A Short History of the New India, where he bashes Nehru's socialist ideology (regulated market, corrupt bureaucracy, License Raj, ...) and ends up with quite a picture of the everyday life for the average citizen in the capital (we're not talking of some rural town or something) :

Consider the view from Delhi in 1991. India was a nation of 843 million people and five million telephone lines. Two billion dollars separated the country from bankruptcy (…) the barren rhetoric of economic self-reliance and political non-alignment could no longer conceal the republic’s decaying reality. Here was a colossus of a country that compelled its enterprising middle-class citizens to make fifty trips to Delhi and wait three years to import a computer. Did you want a telephone connection? That could take anything from six months to three years. Did you want to buy a car? The waiting period for the Morris Oxford knock-off ran up to twenty-two months. Did you want to manufacture vacuum cleaners? You needed a license for that. In the mood for Coca-Cola? That Yankee beverage was as contraband in the ‘sovereign socialist secular democratic republic’ of India as liquor in the Islamic Republic next door.

It's crazy, in today's word what would be the closest comparison ? North Korea ? Even wartorn Afghanistan seems more "connected" to the world ?

How do pro-Nehru or even pro-Congress Indians justify this ?

How many tens of millions of Indian citizens had to remain in poverty because of the first PM's socialist ideology ?

Btw apparently the author isn't pro-BJP either, quite the opposite it seems.

 

[Cover Drive Six]

Nehru is one of the worst Indian PM.
His lack of contribution to India is acceptable but his poisonous decisions which has left India crippled at many fronts will take 100 of years to recover from.

All Nehru did was fooling the nation to establish the political foundation of his family.


14 committees were formed to decide who’d become the PM of the nation- Nehru or Patle? 11 answered in favor of sardarji and the rest 3 gave NOTA to the decision ,the why the hell was nehru made the PM? ))

Not a single PCC voted for Nehru. Gandhi was disappointed and asked Sardar Patel to step back and let Nehru be appointed.

He gave us great gift aka Italian Mafia Fake Gandhis

 

[JattMaula]

I was reading an article and there's that quote, from an Indian historian called Kapil Komireddi in his book Malevolent Republic: A Short History of the New India, where he bashes Nehru's socialist ideology (regulated market, corrupt bureaucracy, License Raj, ...) and ends up with quite a picture of the everyday life for the average citizen in the capital (we're not talking of some rural town or something) :


It's crazy, in today's word what would be the closest comparison ? North Korea ? Even wartorn Afghanistan seems more "connected" to the world ?

How do pro-Nehru or even pro-Congress Indians justify this ?

How many tens of millions of Indian citizens had to remain in poverty because of the first PM's socialist ideology ?

Btw apparently the author isn't pro-BJP either, quite the opposite it seems.

Yup. India lost decades to pseudo socialism. East Asia ran, South East Asia walked and India crawled. Sad stuff.

 

[RajBan]

I was reading an article and there's that quote, from an Indian historian called Kapil Komireddi in his book Malevolent Republic: A Short History of the New India, where he bashes Nehru's socialist ideology (regulated market, corrupt bureaucracy, License Raj, ...) and ends up with quite a picture of the everyday life for the average citizen in the capital (we're not talking of some rural town or something) :


It's crazy, in today's word what would be the closest comparison ? North Korea ? Even wartorn Afghanistan seems more "connected" to the world ?

How do pro-Nehru or even pro-Congress Indians justify this ?

How many tens of millions of Indian citizens had to remain in poverty because of the first PM's socialist ideology ?

Btw apparently the author isn't pro-BJP either, quite the opposite it seems.

The socialism was right in the spirit but governance around the model was poor and exploited heavily by rich and middle class as opposed to the benefits getting targetted to poor and working class.

Problem is just like Modi of today, Nehru Gandhi family had a complete cult status till Rajeev Gandhi and anything they did was sacrosanct and above critical analysis. Also Left constituting urban middle class was very strong back then , so instead of Indian political system rationalising the subsidies, they further piled up on it where benefits such as subsidized LPG cylinders were consumed by families who can actually pay for it with some sacrifice in their comfort zones.

 

[Champ_Pal]

Mr. Nehru was not a visionary. He was weak, short sighted and selfish. Everyone knows this by now. But at that time, he was considered as GOAT along with Gandhi by all Indians.

 

[RajBan]

Mr. Nehru was not a visionary. He was weak, short sighted and selfish. Everyone knows this by now. But at that time, he was considered as GOAT along with Gandhi by all Indians.

Unfortunately Nehru had Gandhi's blessings which was critical to get the top job.

Nehru was not necessarily a disaster, infact far from it and has been a mixed bad. But this country could have been on a different path with a leader like Bose who had the vision and leadership qualities to transform the country.

 

[NishanKonar]

Actually it was not Nehru but Indira Gandhi

Under Nehru manufacturing increased a annual rate of 7% - comparable to some of top performing economies

Problem was Indira Gandhi and her excessive socialism and more famously her decision to nationalize banks in 1969. The led to the so called Hindu Rate of Growth in the 60s and 70s

Poor Nehru gets all the blame for Indira's economic mismanagement !

 

[Mirpuri Don]

Actually it was not Nehru but Indira Gandhi

Under Nehru manufacturing increased a annual rate of 7% - comparable to some of top performing economies

Problem was Indira Gandhi and her excessive socialism and more famously her decision to nationalize banks in 1969. The led to the so called Hindu Rate of Growth in the 60s and 70s

Poor Nehru gets all the blame for Indira's economic mismanagement !

Why do people blame Nehru the father then ?

If I'm not wrong he was the one so adamant on imposing socialism (he was a product of the Fabian Society during his studies in the UK), perhaps you could argue that his daughter "radicalized" his ideology or "applied it more purely", but certainly Nehru isn't that innocent ?

 

[rvd]

Why do people blame Nehru the father then ?

If I'm not wrong he was the one so adamant on imposing socialism (he was a product of the Fabian Society during his studies in the UK), perhaps you could argue that his daughter "radicalized" his ideology or "applied it more purely", but certainly Nehru isn't that innocent ?

Nehru is a stand in for the Gandhi dynasty and he attracts a lot of criticism as a result.

Indira Gandhi can't be criticized much because she won the 1971 war and Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated.

There is also a ideological component to the criticism. The BJP hates Nehru because he was secular.

In reality it was Indira Gandhi who nationalized the banks and really pushed socialism.

People who blame Nehru for everything lack an understanding of history. Amost every decolonial and independence movement embraced socialist policies. Capitalism was seen as discredited following the Great Depression and was linked to imperialism.

Given how poor India was there really wasn't a choice for Nehru.

 

[NishanKonar]

Why do people blame Nehru the father then ?

If I'm not wrong he was the one so adamant on imposing socialism (he was a product of the Fabian Society during his studies in the UK), perhaps you could argue that his daughter "radicalized" his ideology or "applied it more purely", but certainly Nehru isn't that innocent ?

Its mostly the BJP guys who put all the blame on Nehru bcoz he was not a fan of the RSS

Nehru was not exactly perfect but he did set up top education institutes like IIT / IIM / AIIMS , set up space program , started the 5 year plans and set up many state owned enterprises which brought in manufacturing base for India

But Indira was just a power greedy politician who only cared about winning elections and her populist socialism ruined the economic growth

 

[Bhaijaan]

Nehru is without question the finest political leader and PM India has had. He laid the foundation of a self sufficient nation on the path to modernisation. One cannot see the India of 1947 with the hindsight bias of free markets era that exists today. Nehru invested in institutions. Many of the home grown corporate giants of today that Indians can’t stop thumping their chests about were allowed to flourish by the same conservative policies of Nehru that people tend to criticise now.

Where things went bad for India is the 70s and 80s. Those two decades, post Nehru, we were supposed to reform the economy but we did not. China, Singapore all flourished in the same time. Nehru played no part on this.

 

[Mirpuri Don]

I think the defense of Nehru the father has been good, but still how a pro-Indira individual then could justify this ?

What I want to understand is how an apologist could make sense of a leader keeping your country that passive/isolated for decades.

They have a rationale, certainly, but which one ?

 

[Local.Dada]

Nehru had 0 vision. India is what it is today because of the hard working Indian people.

Indian culture regardless of religion is lucky to have a strong emphasis on education and work ethic.

It just worked out itself for us along with some timely decisions by a lot of greater leaders that came after Nehru.

I think being non-aligned was Nehru’s greatest contribution. Had we gone with usa, given the corrupt and incompetent stooge type people we had at the helm at that time it could have gone seriously wrong for us as well.


That decision too worked out itself. No one saw USSR collapsing then. Irony is Congress was secretly always pro-soviet so it’s not like Nehru foresaw USSR’s collapse either.

So basically Nehru made a lot of foolish decisions, most hurt us badly, some by fluke worked themselves out and turned out alright and maybe 1-2 decent decisions. That’s his legacy and a poor one for someone ruled for so long. His descendants did their own share of damage. Even though Indira does deserve her credit for leading during 1971. Rest no different from the activities of Zardaris and Nawaz Sharifs in Pakistan.

 

[KB]

Nehru’s policies miscarried but I think in understanding his actions the context needs to be understood.

There is no denying the socialist intent of Nehru’s ideas. But it was socialism in a gradualist, fabian mould. As he stated in a letter to his Chief Minsters in 1956:

“Gradually the public sector will grow both absolutely and relatively, and the whole economy of the country will be controlled by it.”

If the intent was socialist, in practice a form of state capitalism - 1.0 - developed, where there was significant scope for participation of private sector. Indeed, this led to some criticism from the left. Jayaprakash Narayan bluntly told Nehru: “You want to go towards socialism but you want the capitalists to help you in that. You want to build socialism with the help of capitalism”

(As a side note, I saw a table that showed that even in 2015 six of the ten largest firms in India were owned by the state. But India has moved into a different form of state capitalism - 2.0. Now the State is not seeking to supplant the private sector but to stimulate private sector growth.)

In understanding Nehru’s economic thinking and why he favoured planned industrialisation, we need to understand both the global context and the specific Indian context.

After the first World War and the Great Depression, the mood was seemingly swinging in favour of a strong centralised state. In the inter-war period, capitalism seemed to be in a crisis. For those on the left the future seemed to lay in an alternative vision. As historian Mark Mazower writes in his brilliant book, Dark Continent:

“Today it is natural to castigate Westerners like H. G. Wells, Bernard Shaw or the Webbs for skating over the nastier and more brutal aspects of Stalinism, and for confusing Soviet propaganda and reality. Yet at a time when capitalism appeared to be committing suicide, Stalin’s Russia formed a striking contrast to the West – an image of energy, commitment, collective achievement and modernity – the more alluring for being so little understood.”

In terms of the specific Indian context, under British rule many had lived in abject poverty. Indian nationalists critiqued colonialism on the grounds that the British did little to work for the tangible advancement of Indians. In contrast, India nationalism was legitimised in terms of material uplift led by the state. Even big business had come to accept the need for a strong central government and state directed economic planning. The famous Bombay Plan - the work of leading Indian industrialists which was published in 1944/5 - envisaged extensive state involvement, with central government managing industrialisation. The plan was to serve as blueprint for economic policy after 1947.

In one letter between two businessmen, J.R.D. Tata wrote to Purshotamdas Thakurdas:

“The inevitability of change in the direction of a socialist economy even in a country like India must now be recognised and leaders of industry would be well advised to take this into account and be prepared to make such adjustments as may meet all reasonable demands before the socialist movement assumes the form of a full-fledged revolution.”

As a final point, the impact of Nehru’s economic beliefs on constitutionalism - and not just in relation to economic performance - should also be noted. Though Nehru’s socialism was far removed from the Soviet example, he nevertheless in pursuit of state led social transformation did display some authoritarian tendencies, manifested for instance in the passing of the First Amendment to the Indian constitution. It was an amendment that limited freedom of speech and right to property. Reading the debate between Nehru and S.P. Mookerjee (who would later found the precursor to the BJP - the Bharatiya Jana Singh) it is fascinating to see that the arguments in favour of liberalism were being articulated - and articulated with eloquence - by the man on the Hindu right and not by Nehru. Nehru in defending his position argued that the protection of individual liberty and freedom that constituted the Fundamental Rights was a nineteenth century idea emerging from the French Revolution. In the twentieth century, he asserted, the Directive Principles of State Policy represented another idea:

“which wants, according to your own Constitution, a gradual advance, or let us put it another way, not so gradual but more rapid advance, wherever possible to a State where there is less and less inequality and more and more equality. If any kind of an appeal to individual liberty and freedom is construed to mean as an appeal to the continuation of the existing inequality, then you get into difficulties. Then you become static, un-progressive and cannot change and you cannot realize that ideal of an egalitarian society which I hope most of us aim at.”

At one point Mookerjee, in his response, thundered to Nehru, “You are treating this Constitution as a scrap of paper.” Arguably Mookerjee was quite prescient:

“Maybe you will continue for eternity, in the next generation, for generations unborn; that is quite possible. But supposing some other party comes into authority? What is the precedent you are laying down?”

 

[JaDed]

Because @KB mentioned Jrd , from JRD himself

Nehru once told Tata that he hated the word profit. “Jawaharlal, I am talking about the need of the public sector making a profit,” Tata shot back. “Never talk to me about the word profit; it is a dirty word,”
———————————

-Nehru can’t be praised because he set a very bad precedent, India was lucky that we had Paris and other businesses communities to set a path forward esp after 1991 but before that it was only a hands few.

I can’t even imagine why someone as admired as JRD would spend years under first Nehru then Indira and then the despicable Moraji Desai and not just give up.

Absolute legend JRD.

 

[JaDed]

Nehru is the reason for my dislike of the impractical socialist Liberals that are so privileged they basically fail to see issues they cause with their actions in diverse societies.

 

[Ahmad-GERMANFC]

Didn’t Nehru set up IITs? If yes then that decision alone should wash any ills considering the role IT plays in indias economy today

 

[RajBan]

Didn’t Nehru set up IITs? If yes then that decision alone should wash any ills considering the role IT plays in indias economy today

That is a serious good job done by Nehru. His stress on education was undeniable.

 

[Mirpuri Don]

Nehru’s policies miscarried but I think in understanding his actions the context needs to be understood.
(...)

Very enlightening, thanks you for time.

Didn’t Nehru set up IITs? If yes then that decision alone should wash any ills considering the role IT plays in indias economy today

Isn't that attributed to Maulana Abul Kalam Azad instead ?

 

[Robert]

Nehru is the reason for my dislike of the impractical socialist Liberals that are so privileged they basically fail to see issues they cause with their actions in diverse societies.

Contradiction in terms, like saying Catholic Protestant.

 

[Mirpuri Don]

Contradiction in terms, like saying Catholic Protestant.

I think he refers to an ideology you find roots in J.S. Mill (unlike his mentor Bentham he took late 19th century syndicalist critiques in mind) and its best expression is probably found in the thought of John Rawls, who directly influenced India's greatest living intellectual (Amartya Sen), the idea to keep an unregulated market but instead of pushing ferocious competition to make society (if not a minimal State) something solidarist/welfare with the masses.

In fact the Fabian Society that influenced Nehru has been categorized like that, but Nehru himself gave a highly centralized State which I guess was due to the context of the day : after Independence the Indian nation needed to "feel" "united", so there was no better alternative than a strong State at the centre, whereas Gandhi's decentralization would have given the idea that regions are more important than Delhi in the everyday life, so your average Punjabi would have felt Punjabi before Indian, Tamil the same, etc after all if you don't "feel" the Indian State in the day to day life there's no idea of Indian "nation" (I guess).

 

[NishanKonar]

Problem is today everyone looks at things in binaeies

For BJP / RSS guys Nehru was the worst possible thing for India

For Congress guys Nehru as the 2nd coming of Christ

The realities were somewhere in the middle. As a Western intellectual once said if Jinnah ruled Pakistan as long as Nehru did - Pakistan wud have been a very different nation. That says it all. India was very fortunate to have a sensible enlightened leader in charge post 1947. I shudder to think how things wud have turned out if say a Indira or Modi ruled India immediately after 1947 !

 

[Robert]

I think he refers to an ideology you find roots in J.S. Mill (unlike his mentor Bentham he took late 19th century syndicalist critiques in mind) and its best expression is probably found in the thought of John Rawls, who directly influenced India's greatest living intellectual (Amartya Sen), the idea to keep an unregulated market but instead of pushing ferocious competition to make society (if not a minimal State) something solidarist/welfare with the masses.

In fact the Fabian Society that influenced Nehru has been categorized like that, but Nehru himself gave a highly centralized State which I guess was due to the context of the day : after Independence the Indian nation needed to "feel" "united", so there was no better alternative than a strong State at the centre, whereas Gandhi's decentralization would have given the idea that regions are more important than Delhi in the everyday life, so your average Punjabi would have felt Punjabi before Indian, Tamil the same, etc after all if you don't "feel" the Indian State in the day to day life there's no idea of Indian "nation" (I guess).

I’m impressed by your understanding of liberal philosophy development. The sort of liberalism I espouse includes Keynesian economics, the levelling of entrenched power structures to give everyone an equal opportunity, and devolution of power to the Nth degree.

Whereas the socialist will use big-state power as a battering ram to forcibly redistribute income from rich to poor.

Conversely, some liberals (or Paleo-liberal Whigs) have historically propounded laissez-faire as a cure-all, which resulted in horrors such as the Irish Famine. Had the Corn Laws been suspended then the price of potatoes could have been artificially deflated and famine relief.

 

[Varun]

Problem is today everyone looks at things in binaeies

For BJP / RSS guys Nehru was the worst possible thing for India

For Congress guys Nehru as the 2nd coming of Christ

The realities were somewhere in the middle. As a Western intellectual once said if Jinnah ruled Pakistan as long as Nehru did - Pakistan wud have been a very different nation. That says it all. India was very fortunate to have a sensible enlightened leader in charge post 1947. I shudder to think how things wud have turned out if say a Indira or Modi ruled India immediately after 1947 !

This. I don't think Nehru was as much part of the political discourse even when the Congress was recently in power (10 years between 2004 and 2014). But Bhakts will latch on to anything to make their lukewarm Modi/Shah regime look good, facts be damned.

 

[Romali_rotti]

Nehru created a lot of blunders, like; letting go of what is now POK, losing Aksai Chin to China and the worst would be taking the Kashmir issue to the UN, it is an internal matter but this clown decided to take it to the UN LOL.

Also, is Nehru actually a Pandit ? Or is he a fake like how the current Gandhis are, the name change was done decades ago by Feroz Gandhy to Gandhi for political gains.

Despite all this, Nehru redeemed the nation by giving India, the grandson, Raul Puppu. Puppu's birth pretty much sealed the current Gandhis and future Gandhis to come's fate. Oh and special mention here to Robert Fraud Vadra also lol ..

So there is bad and some good done by Nehru.

 

[Romali_rotti]

 

[Varun]

I would say any world leader today - that includes characters like Erdogan/Bolsonaro harping back to 50-60-70 years ago and saying they are better have many screws loose. Especially if the 50-60-70 year time period falls in the 20th and 21st centuries when the pace of change both technologically and geopolitically has been blistering.

 

[KB]

Because @KB mentioned Jrd , from JRD himself

Nehru once told Tata that he hated the word profit. “Jawaharlal, I am talking about the need of the public sector making a profit,” Tata shot back. “Never talk to me about the word profit; it is a dirty word,”
———————————
.

I guess many of Nehru’s ideas were formed in the inter-war period. In this period capitalism seemed to be in a crisis. Many were left cold by the individualism, materialism, hedonism, consumerism of the modern age.

The idea of moral decay and sickness was quite widespread. For the influential British socialist, R.H. Tawney, “Modern society” was “sick through the absence of a moral ideal.” The root or “the heart of the problem” was therefore “not economic,” but was “a question of moral relationships.”

At the other end of the spectrum, Katy Hull in her book - The Machine Has a Soul - has shown why some American sympathised with fascism in the inter-war period. Many regretted the “soulless aspects off their mechanised society.” She quotes one individual as writing, “We have invented and found nearly everything: about the only thing we have not found is ourselves.”

From within liberalism there was an effort to save capitalism from itself - FDR’s new deal took state intervention in the economy and society in the USA to new levels.

John Maynard Keynes was another liberal who looked to reform capitalism rather than overthrow it. For Keynes ethics and economics could not be separated. As his principal biographer, Robert Skidelsky wrote, “Briefly stated, his conclusion was that the pursuit of money – what he called ‘love of money’ – was justified only to the extent that it led to a ‘good life’. And a good life was not what made people better off: it was what made them good. To make the world ethically better was the only justifiable purpose of economic striving.”

In the case of India, Gandhi offered an alternative moral critique of modern industrial civilisation, which he described as “Satanic,” that “measures progress by the progress of matter - railways, conquest of disease, conquest of the air,” but “No one says, ‘Now the people are more truthful or more humble.’” There were also Islamic modernists thinkers in India who believed that Islam, as an ethical force, offered a third way between capitalism and communism.

 

[KB]

Nehru is the reason for my dislike of the impractical socialist Liberals that are so privileged they basically fail to see issues they cause with their actions in diverse societies.

Nehru certainly saw history evolving in a particular direction. Historian, Adeel Hussain, in an interview, when comparing Nehru and Modi, put it well:

“It’s really got to do with the utopian imagination that comes with both of these projects, be it the Hindutva project or the socialist project that Nehru had, which have a very distinct teleology, and they see history transforming in a very specific direction. For them, history has a purpose and a name, and every day we come a step closer to that history. Everybody who’s deviating from that path, who’s holding on to specific elements, cultural elements of their identity is stopping that progress and stopping the movement from reaching its aim in time.”

Nehru was very sure of his point of view and he did frequently adopt a superior tone. Part of this might have been down to his caste status, part to his privileged education, part to his seeing his role as an educator and part because he imbibed some of the colonial prejudices on Indians.

 

[Mirpuri Don]

In the case of India, Gandhi offered an alternative moral critique of modern industrial civilisation, which he described as “Satanic,” that “measures progress by the progress of matter - railways, conquest of disease, conquest of the air,” but “No one says, ‘Now the people are more truthful or more humble.’” There were also Islamic modernists thinkers in India who believed that Islam, as an ethical force, offered a third way between capitalism and communism.

It's during the 20s/30s as well that Mawdudi came up with the idea of "Islamic economics" as the middle ground, interesting comments from Indira but I guess it was the usual stuff you'd find in post-colonial socialist leaders, like Kwame Nkrumah in Ghana.

 

[KB]

It's during the 20s/30s as well that Mawdudi came up with the idea of "Islamic economics" as the middle ground, interesting comments from Indira but I guess it was the usual stuff you'd find in post-colonial socialist leaders, like Kwame Nkrumah in Ghana.

To clarify, I was quoting Mahatma Gandhi and not Indira Gandhi as I was focussing on the inter-war period.

Your reference to Maududi is a great example of what I was trying to suggest, that in the inter-war period many critiqued - from a moral and ethical point of view - laissez-faire capitalism and looked for alternatives.

In the case of Maududi, in a speech at Aligarh Muslim University in 1942, he said that if someone “finds himself possessing more of these means than his requirements justify, it only implies that a surplus which was really the portion of others reached him.” Those with the excess had moral obligation to give those in need. But communism was not the answer for it led to “soulless uniformity.” He said, “Man should be free to strive for his livelihood, that he should retain the right too ownership over whatever he earns by his labour, and that disparity must exist between various men due to their varying abilities and circumstances.” Islam in emphasising moral obligations and in shaping an ethical outlook provided a third way, which tempered the selfishness of capitalism and the soullessness of communism.

This was one of the many critiques, that ranged the full spectrum of left to right - of capitalism as it existed in the era. It was as if there was ‘something in the air’.

 

[Mirpuri Don]

I just read this, which I think fits in the thread :

"Back when BCCI didn't have enough funds to felicitate the WC Winning Indian Team in 1983, Lata Mangeshkar helped the board with a stage performance in Delhi which raised 20 Lakh Rs. Enough to reward each player with 1 Lakh Rs,
& Lata Mangeshkar didn't charge Anything."

I mean that was the India of the Gandhi dynasty ?

That the supreme authority of a sport as important as cricket for the country doesn’t have the funds for a WC winning team ?

 

[gani999]

Nehru is the reason for my dislike of the impractical socialist Liberals that are so privileged they basically fail to see issues they cause with their actions in diverse societies.

I think your statement is powered by the benefit of hindsight.

One needs to remember that when Nehru was the PM, the world was divided into two poles, capitalist and communist/extreme socialist.

The USSR, which practised and preached communism was a real super power that inspired many. So a lot of the leaders of newly de-colonised countries like India were attracted by it and felt that a communist economic model would be more beneficial. A lot of these countries, like India, were colonised and exploited by capitalist European powers. So the allergy towards capitalism (and all things western) was very understandable. Communism and socialism became bad words only after the fall of USSR in 1991.

However, Nehru also badly wanted India to be a multi-party democracy and not a one-party communist state. Hence the model of democratic socialism resulted.

Nehru's socialism possibly worked for India initially, but its continued practice right up to the 1980s is what killed our economy.

 

[RajBan]

I just read this, which I think fits in the thread :

"Back when BCCI didn't have enough funds to felicitate the WC Winning Indian Team in 1983, Lata Mangeshkar helped the board with a stage performance in Delhi which raised 20 Lakh Rs. Enough to reward each player with 1 Lakh Rs,
& Lata Mangeshkar didn't charge Anything."

I mean that was the India of the Gandhi dynasty ?

That the supreme authority of a sport as important as cricket for the country doesn’t have the funds for a WC winning team ?

Cricket was not a commercial sport back then as it is today