During the 1947 riots a man once stopped his car when he saw a person being attacked in Chandni Chowk, he personally charged-in to save him. He was courageous and a very popular leader Jawaharlal Nehru. In MO Mathai’s book “Reminiscences of the Nehru Age”, Nehru’s PA Mathai says that he suggested to Nehru that he could deduct expenses for typing and other such incidentals from his income from sale of his books while filing income-tax returns to get deduction that was legally permissible. Nehru answered in the negative saying that when he had not incurred the expenses how he could seek deduction, even if legally allowed. He says that Nehru was personally a very honest person.

But, it won’t be wrong if I am to say Nehru’s era laid the foundations of India’s poverty and misery, condemning it to be a forever a developing, third-rate, third-world country. It won’t be wrong to say that this third-world developing country did not lose its tag even after Nehru’s death. Quoting Confucius “Study the past, if you would divine the future” for bringing those historical facts that was often been distorted or suppressed and must be known widely so that this mistake shall not be repeated for a glorifying brighter India.

It is said that Economy was growing during Nehru regime but indebt reading of this economy systematically searched for industrialization. Nehru never learned the impact with which Japan and others were creating, who had at a strikingly large rate proposed with their outward looking, export-led growth, India under Nehru went in for inward-looking, import-substitution model, denying itself a world class and consequent prosperity. Gurucharan Das mentioned in ‘India Unbound’ of Kasturbhai Lalbhai establishing Atul Chemical plant in collaboration with American Cynamid in Gujarat, building a whole township, and provided jobs to many tribals. When invited to inaugurate it in 1952, Nehru agreed after considerable reluctance. Why? Was it because it was in the private sector?

At the same time, S. Nijalingappa writes in My Life and Politics that he has quarreled with Nehru regarding his neglect of the village economy, especially agriculture, and protested to him about his almost total neglect of irrigation which was the key to Indian agriculture….Nehru even told him that ‘You are a villager, you know nothing’. S. Naijalingappa retorted, ‘ If you had one-tenth of my regard for the village, the Indian economy would have been different.’ He says, he was not sure if Nehru had convictions, except for aping the Russian model. This way of neglect of agriculture resulted in families, and it had turned India into a nation of hungry millions during the Nehru regime.

When Nehru died in 1964, the New York Times plainly referred to him as the “maker of modern India”; the Economist ran a cover story titled “World without Nehru”. What these reporters missed out was at the time when India got Independence many countries including those in South East Asia were much behind but they flounced and marched much ahead after Independent India. When we look at their city cleanliness, airports, roads, metros, city-buses, everything I wonder why we have remained a country of crumbling roads and bridges, overcrowded locals, overhanging electrical mess, downtrodden with vote bank politics, ugly mess of  tangled TV and Internet cables, country which lacked basic toilet facilities in many villages, country which did not provide free education for over 67 years and intolerable tolerance of why the ground work was never right and the roots by itself was distorted. Beholding all this for over 67 years we termed our country as ‘Modern India’ and Nehru as ‘Builder of Modern India’.

Poverty was at its peak. Various data states that we have the largest number of poor – a third of the world’s poor! As per the World Bank’s estimate for 2011, while 69% Indians live on less than US$2 per day, 33% fall below the international poverty line of US$ 1.25 per day. In terms of GDP per capita, India stands at 129 among 183 countries as per IMF tabulations for 2011. Per capita income is little more than half that of Sri Lanka, about a sixth that of Malaysia, and a third that of Jamaica. Things have been improving, in 2018 the government revised down its estimate for FY 2018/2019 (April 2018 to March 2019) growth to 7 percent from 7.2 percent earlier projected. The Indian economy advanced 7.1 percent year-on-year in the third quarter of 2018, well below 8.2 percent in the previous period and market expectations of 7.4 percent. There has been a drastic change but precious decades were lost in poverty perpetuating many Nehruvian economic policies.

It is known that India, which was far better placed with respect to many countries in Southeast Asia when Nehru took over the charge of India, was left far behind all of them by the end of the Nehru’s tenure. After its separation from Malaysia in 1965, Singapore was left as an independent country that was not only poor and backward and with meagre defensive capabilities, it had NO natural resources – not even water!  Singapore had to import water from Malaysia. Lee Kuan Yew who became the Prime Minister of Singapore, lead it through its traumatic separation. Thanks to his enlightened grasp on “what makes a nation strong and prosperous”, sound and far-sighted diplomacy and foreign policy, innovative ideas, wise strategy and unmatched competence in governance, he lifted Singapore from a poor, backward, “Third World” nation in 1965 to a “First World” Asian Tiger by 1980 – in mere 15 years!

And, I ask this question to myself what has India done after Independence?

The Communal vote bank politics is a deep rooted theory of dynasty politics. Massive Muslim migration from East-Bengal were ignored to get Muslim votes to win elections in Assam. When asked, Nehru had advised even person of stature of Maulana Azad to contest elections from a predominantly Muslim area, despite Zakir Hussain’s hang-ups, keeping in mind the secular faith of the Congress-vote bank politics took precedence. Since the Nehruvian times, Congress played on the insecurity of dalits and Muslims to get their votes, without really doing anything concrete to make them feel secure and equal citizens of independent India. Neither the exploitation and ill-treatment of dalits was stopped, nor the communal riots halted, nor were they offered better economic opportunities.

Durga Das in India from Curzon to Nehru & After writes “ …But Azad revised his opinion if Nehru in the last two years of his life. Indeed, he went to the extent of expressing regret for being unfair to Patel and asserting that he was sure that the country would have been better off if Patel had been Prime Minister. What motivated this change? Towards the end of his life, Azad realized that the best protection for the Muslims was goodwill of the Hindus and a strong government. He told me he had come to the conclusion that Nehru’s policies had weakened the administration and that his economic theories had failed to improve the living conditions of the people, especially the Muslims.

Today India is moving ahead perhaps despite the vote bank politics.  Often when we talk of greatness of a political leader in India, it is primarily the greatness by definition and not greatness evaluated by factual, material achievements. It is very difficult to separate one or the other of the towering individuals who fought for India’s freedom. But there are specific issues in which the personality of the leader played a distinct role. And so it is with Nehru. Despite all this, Nehru continues to be remembered by many for his contribution to the institutionalization of democracy, establishing institutions of excellence, and his conviction that poverty and inequality in India cannot be tackled by the market. There is, however, more to a good society overlooking for the future India.

References:

• Rajnikant Puranik, Nehru’s 97 Major Blunders, November 2016 Pustak Mahal publishers, Delhi
• Durga Das, India from Curzon to Nehru & After, page 337-27