The Nehru Development Model

Title: The Nehru Development Model – History and its Lasting Impact
Author: Arvind Panagariya
Publisher: Penguin Viking, 2024 (First)
ISBN: 9780143466567
Pages: 519

At the time of her independence in 1947, India was ripe for an all-out change covering all sectors touching upon the lives of the people. It was like a lump of moistened clay waiting to be kneaded by a master sculptor into a masterpiece of art. Jawaharlal Nehru was bestowed that honour by destiny to craft a modern society. His efforts fell into two broad categories of political and the economic. He was immensely successful in the first in that the political model made by him stands unchallenged even now. Despite more than a hundred amendments to the Constitution, the essential foundations of Indian democracy have remained unshaken. This was not the case of his economic policy that proved to be an abject failure. In contrast to the political, Nehru’s economic policy framework has undergone a dramatic change in 1991. India turned away from an inward-looking and control-ridden economy into an outward-looking market economy. This book is a history of the development of Nehru’s policy and is divided into three parts. The first part establishes that the economic model India adopted was almost entirely due to Nehru. The next part explains in detail the policy regime, its implementation and the economic outcomes during the Nehru era. The final part develops the theme that by the time Nehru passed away, the socialist policy regime and thought had become sufficiently entrenched that a retreat from them in the foreseeable future was unlikely. Aravind Panagariya was the chairman of the Sixteenth Finance Commission holding the rank of a Union cabinet minister. He is also a professor of economics at the School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University and was the first vice chairman of NITI Aayog. He has authored over twenty books.

The book describes the pathways Nehruvian economics followed in its quest for ideological nirvana rather than building up the country’s economy on sound and practical financial policies. Nehru was enamoured by socialism and favoured heavy industries to be installed first, which he fancied would make the nation self-sufficient. He then wanted to meticulously plan everything and to restrict the private industry to certain fields. He regulated the private sector through extensive licensing to keep large manufacturers away from products the small-scale industry was mandated to manufacture. Political ideology permeated the top echelons of decision making and the obsequious professionals engaged by the government based on their political opinion competed among themselves to be more loyal than the king. The panel of economists who evaluated the draft framework of the Second Five-Year plan formulated by Mahalanobis came out fully in support of it. They had no faith in the concept of prices and markets which was a sine qua non of economists and firmly believed that the government had to control and regulate every aspect of economic activity. They were out to outdo the socialists in socialism and planners at planning. Several foreign statisticians and economists who were consulted to finalise the second five-year plan were predominantly left-leaning and often admirers of the Soviet model. This went well as long as India enjoyed healthy foreign exchange reserves which she had built up through trade surplus during World War II. The surplus in foreign exchange (sterling balance) ran out in 1957-58 and the government adopted strict foreign exchange control. Even then, it frowned upon devaluation of the rupee to bolster exports.

Panagariya clearly elucidates his argument that Nehru singlehandedly moulded India’s policies and shall bear the blame for its dismal performance on the economic front. In his writings, Nehru described international trade as an instrument of imperialism and sought self-sufficiency for India. In an instance of sheer folly, Nehru discouraged exports by imposing an export tax on many items. While India had export controls on jute, Pakistan subsidized it and captured a good share of the world market. Even after the sterling balance ran out, government efforts to boost exports were lukewarm for five more years. India’s share of total world exports in 1947 was 2.5%. It fell to 2.1% in 1951, 1.4% in 1956, 1.2% in 1961 and to a measly 0.9% in 1966. This was Nehru’s track record! The presence of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel ensured that the 1948 Industrial Policy Resolution (IPR) provided a larger space for domestic and foreign capital. Nehru’s dominance after Patel’s death in 1950 found expression in the 1956 IPR which expanded the areas of public sector monopoly. India was unique in placing the social revolution ahead of the economic revolution through its high protection of industrial labour in the organized sector. Furthermore, the government controlled distribution and fixed prices for several commodities such as cement and automobiles like scooters and cars. Only those few who obtained allocations could purchase them when stocks were replenished. This led to widespread corruption. A used scooter commanded a higher price than a new one because a new one could be obtained only after years of waiting. An entrepreneur needed to obtain a license to start an industry. Applications for such licenses were evaluated in terms of their technical feasibility but not economic efficiency. Aggressive applicants with superior knowledge of the system got their applications quickly approved while more efficient producers who were late in making their requests were denied a license.

The author shines a torch into the darkness surrounding Nehru’s policies and brings to light the shortcomings which are so glaring as to make us wonder why the top-notch economists and professionals of that time failed to notice them. Agriculture was subject to benign neglect during the Nehru era. Food grain production failed to keep pace with demand. Any unexpected increase in output may be attributed to an increase in the cultivated area. This curse was lifted only after the arrival of Lal Bahadur Shastri as the prime minister who initiated steps towards Green Revolution and Indira Gandhi sustained his efforts with equal vigour. The book provides a brief look at India’s import policies from the British period onwards and how Nehru continued to hold on to a war-time arrangement even long after the end of the war. India’s import policy was comparatively free and liberal from 1882 onwards with some protection for domestic industry allowed in tariffs during World War I. The Second World War brought with it foreign exchange control and systematic direct import controls for the first time. This was relaxed towards the end of the war, but the Balance of Payments crisis in 1957 made the regime to revert to more or less war-time severity for two more decades. Some piecemeal liberalization was seen in the 1980s, but the system was genuinely dismantled only in 1991. The 1957 crisis was also due to poor management of the economy. India had accumulated a decent foreign exchange reserve (sterling balance) due to trade surplus accumulated during World War II. In the early 1950s, higher inflation in India than abroad caused by huge deficit financing for infrastructure projects combined with a fixed nominal exchange rate rendered the domestic product progressively less competitive. This led to a steady rise in import demand and stagnation in export revenue. Sterling balance was near zero in 1957 and the government scurried to control imports. Devaluation of the currency was the best option but Nehru was dead against it. Even though the author does not mention it, this might have been because the measure would have adversely affected the British staying back in India after independence. In 1966, when Indira Gandhi devalued the rupee by 57 per cent in one stroke, all the British returned to their homeland.

The book also analyses the path India had chosen to move forward in economic planning after Nehru passed away. It is obvious from the discussion that greater damage to the national economy was inflicted during the time of Indira Gandhi. Nehru and Indira’s economic policies led them to nationalize partially or wholly several sectors and enterprises and subject private sector economic activity to strict government control. The result was low growth for many more decades that condemned India to continued high poverty levels for nearly half a century. The Nehru legacy was faithfully followed by Shastri and Indira. The years 1969 to 1976 saw India rapidly swerve to the political left. Banks were nationalized in 1969 and insurance in 1971. Corporations with Rs. 20 crore or more assets were categorized as monopoly and harassed through the MRTP Act of 1969. Foreign exchange transactions were tightened by FERA in 1973. Foreign equity share was capped at 40 per cent in enterprises. The modified Industrial Disputes Act made it impossible in 1976 to lay off workers in industries with a head count greater than 300. Urban land ceiling was enacted in 1976. Constitution itself was amended to include the new words ‘socialist’ and ‘secular’ in the same year during Emergency. Personal income tax brackets touched 90 per cent. Rajiv Gandhi was the first prime minister without a socialist baggage. He introduced a few piecemeal reforms but developed cold feet after two years. It was Narasimha Rao’s stellar achievement to scrap Nehru for good. Even after Rao liberalized the economy, the business community was not overly enthusiastic. They only wanted to be freed of the shackles of investment licensing but did not want the competition from abroad through liberalization of trade and foreign investment. Even the export-oriented enterprises from India did not care to support negotiations that led to greater scope for entry of foreign entities. Vajpayee carried forward the reform process at a brisk pace. The power behind the Manmohan Singh regime (2004-14) was Sonia Gandhi and she had none of the liberalizing instincts of her husband. The reform process came to a standstill in this period. Matters got much worse in the time of UPA 2. Modi continued the reforms steadily but his stress on import-substitution industrialization is a fall-back to the old ‘self-sufficient’ thinking.

When Modi scrapped the Planning Commission, its demise was little lamented because this institution had outlived its utility. The author argues that the Commission was riddled with short-sightedness and incompetence right from the early years because Nehru had stuffed the Planning Commission with academic stooges and only those economists who shared his political vision. The Commission earnestly believed that the root cause of food crisis ripping the country apart was hoarding by a few vendors and not the poor farm output. This made them suggest price controls and monopoly trading by the state. The food ministry was, however, right on their contrary finding. They stressed on the incentives for farmers to grow more food. Planning Commission again opposed this saying that this would increase the disparities between commercial farmers and the masses of subsistence cultivators and deprive the industry of much-needed investment. It was the stubbornness of the food ministry that led to the Green Revolution. After the 1991 reforms, entrepreneurial decisions rather than licensing authorities determined sectoral allocations and little rationale remained for formulating five-year plans. The Commission continued its purposeless existence for two more decades until Modi disbanded it in 2014. The 12th Five Year Plan was the final one India had and it ended in 2016-17. Panagariya affirms that Narasimha Rao spearheaded the 1991 liberalisation program by his own conviction that India needed to be guided to the right track of progress and not through any compulsion exerted by the IMF as claimed by some scholars. However, it's a fact that Rao never claimed credit for the 1991 reforms which were so profound in nature. The book also makes a crucial reference to the doubtful quality of economic thought being produced in our academic institutions. Left or left-leaning faculty in economics uniformly dominate Indian academia of higher education, whether they be public or private (p.381). Even though the academicians and the budding talents trained by them have been slower to shed socialist era economic thought, reform-minded economist-bureaucrats are overwhelmingly found in government.

Coming from an economist who had adorned the topmost positions in Indian macro finance, this book presents facts quite authentically and substantiated by immense research. It seems the author has perused all relevant reports of the period under consideration which were in any way connected with economic policy administration. Several charts and graphs are included and are very informative. However, they do not have the visual appeal in monochrome print because the lines and bars are created in different colours. The book provides the reasons for the 1957 BoP crisis in considerable detail, but the causes of the 1991 foreign exchange crisis which compelled Indian politicians to change course are not elucidated. This is a minor shortcoming of the book. In the final part, the book considers the hypothetical case of what would have happened had Sardar Patel became the prime minister and outlived Nehru, instead of the other way round. He concludes that in such a scenario, India would have followed the right path in the 1950s itself and would have eliminated poverty many decades earlier.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 4 Star

Nehru’s India

Title: Nehru’s India – A History in Seven Myths
Author: Taylor C. Sherman
Publisher: Princeton University Press, 2022 (First)
ISBN: 9780691245775
Pages: 284

When India became independent in 1947, her economy was in shambles brought on by a world war and two centuries of colonial loot. The new nation needed to show the direction in which to move forward, especially for its economy and international relations. Jawaharlal Nehru, being the first prime minister and a well-read man, sought to guide India during the first seventeen years of post-colonial India till his death in 1964. Even though the paths he trod were reversed later because of the great economic pitfalls along the way, it was critical for the new republic to stay united under a strong man. Although panegyrics of Nehru praising him as the architect of modern India and a visionary emanated from certain quarters – mostly patronized by his own party – the grave flaws in his socio-economic and political perspectives were starting to come into public scrutiny. Nehru’s premiership is associated with a set of ideas, policies and institutions related to non-alignment, secularism, socialism, the strong state, democracy and high modernism. This book argues that these supposed tenets of the Nehruvian period are nothing more than myths. Taylor C. Sherman teaches in the department of International History at the London School of Economics and Political Science. She has authored other books on India and its secularism.

Sherman claims that Nehru fulfilled the role of an educator, patron, mediator and symbol to the Indian people. He is often lauded as the architect of modern India on the basis of his image as the titan of post-colonial India. The author points out that this image was created by the Congress party to ‘persuade him to stay on in power’, especially after 1958 when he expressed the desire to retire or take a sabbatical. This book is a product of the left-liberal ecosystem pervading every nook and cranny of the Western academia. This book is a paean to Nehru depicting him as a great man who can do no wrong. Every shortfall or anomaly in his character is glossed over or ignored or alleged to be someone else’s fault. Even his political tricks like threatening to resign when confronted with stubborn opponents in the party are naively taken at face value and immense inferences are drawn from these false premises. Sherman criticizes everything in Nehru’s India – even the very idea of India – except the great man himself! She argues that Nehru was no architect of modern India because he had no blueprint in his head or articulated in five-year plans. Then comes the surprising but wrong conclusion that Nehru wasuncomfortable with blind devotion and consistently resisted the iconization that is central to a cult of personality (p.205). She conveniently does not mention that Nehru awarded himself the Bharat Ratna in 1955 – India’s highest civilian honour – or cause his own birthday to be celebrated as the national children’s day. Any way you look at it, these two acts cannot be taken to be an exemplar of humility! When a tunnel was opened in 1956 to connect Jammu with Kashmir Valley, Nehru ‘allowed’ it to be named after him as the Jawahar tunnel! Still, the author claims that this was not an attempt to develop a personality cult around carefully crafted imagery to maintain absolute power (p.16). Nehru personally chose the country’s first ambassadors to prominent nations on the basis of their ‘eminent’ status in the national movement as well as their wit, charm and intellectual abilities (p.23). But the author forgets to explain why he chose Vijayalakshmi Pandit – his own sister – as the ambassador to the US. The book is riddled with so many of these omissions.

Unashamedly reflecting an air of colonial haughtiness, the author hints that India was not doing enough to prop up secularism in the Nehru era and that it should have accommodated more Muslim demands. She claims that Indian secularism is largely figurative and was focussed on the celebration of exceptional individuals and reverence for great monuments. But this iconic approach did not tally with the everyday in practice. India introduced permits for controlling the re-entry of Muslims who had already migrated to Pakistan in 1948. Around 2000 Muslims were doing this each day. Nothing in this gesture was related to patriotism, but a clever ploy to prevent their real estate from being reassigned to Hindu and Sikh refugees who were forcibly evicted from their homes in Pakistan. The Hindus and Sikhs were not allowed to re-enter Pakistan. This just measure is portrayed as injuring secularism! After Hyderabad was annexed by military force, the government sought to reduce the number of Muslims in the state service from 85 per cent to 50 per cent. This is construed as another failure of secularism (p.64). What the author deftly conceals is that Muslims constituted only 13 per cent of Hyderabad’s population but the Nizam had exclusively stuffed them in his services. Moreover, the book employs the old imperialist ploy to drive a wedge between Dalits and other Hindus and to club the former along with Muslims as a minority community separate from Hindus. In her study of secularism in the 1950s, the author implies that Dalits and Muslims had a stake in secularism (p.59). The book further claims that India’s non-alignment was only a political trick to work with superpower competition to its advantage. India was enmeshed in the Anglo-American economic system which provided two-thirds of India’s imports in 1964 while the USSR provided only a tenth. Aid from the US was six times more than Russian aid in 1945.

The book makes a survey of India’s economic policies and concludes that everything smacked of failure. Nationalization was claimed to be only a relatively small feature of Indian economic life in the early period of Nehru’s tenure. The top rate of income tax was 80 per cent, which most people evaded by paying bribes. The author examines the land distribution reforms assisted by Vinoba Bhave’s Bhudan movement. In the end, this philanthropic exercise is portrayed as a hypocritical one in which the land donated is shown as non-productive and inaccessible. This is a recurring theme in the book. Reading these lines, one would feel wonder at the mere fact that India is still existing intact as a nation. Rather than challenging existing hierarchies, Indian socialism attempted to co-opt them and awaken in elites a sense of trusteeship and responsibility towards their fellow countrymen. Instead, the elites simply enlisted the new institutions and worked them for their own benefit (p.113). Sherman rightfully points out that India succumbed to political corruption at this point in time of license-quota-permit raj. A single mill in Mumbai had to fill out some 577 forms each year. A license was only a permit which entitles the holder to apply for numerous other sanctions and permissions. Within this tangled bureaucratic complex, corruption naturally reigned. The primary inconvenience to the industrialists lay in all the efforts to evade government control rather than in submitting to it. The ruling party nonchalantly extracted its pound of flesh from the industry. Tata Steel (TISCO then) obtained permission from court to allow them to donate to Congress party because the ‘stability, security, profits and future expansion of the company were linked up with the continuance of Congress government’ (p.160).

This book is a propaganda piece of the American left academia that thrives in developing countries through NGOs and seeks to displace the national spirit in those countries. The contribution of the Ford Foundation to the development of many social projects in the 1950s is extolled at every opportunity while wholly Indian experiments are deemed to be failures. Contributions of Indian pioneers are narrated only if they are educated overseas at some point in their career. Sherman frequently appears unduly concerned about inequality in society and accuses paternalistic local societies for all the problems they have to endure. After a brief charade of appearing to be objective, the political agenda slips into the open. She alleges that the Indian government ‘assaults on free press, universities and courts from 2015 onwards’ and that some international organisations (meaning the cabal that funds the NGOs) have downgraded India’s democratic rating, as if this act was a huge indictment on India for which every Indian has to hang his or her head in shame. Mind you, the author never mentions the Emergency years (1975-77) but implies that democracy in India is eclipsed only from the year 2015. The book provides an interesting portrayal of modernity which is said to be a group of processes set in train somewhere around the fifteenth century and gaining pace by the nineteenth. These concerned economic connectivity and technical innovation, as well as state-making practices, changing understandings of the self and new experiences of time (p.178).

It has been a long time since I encountered a book on India written by a westerner who still retains the imperial and condescending outlook on our country. Such books invariably talked about peeling plaster in government buildings, pot-holed roads, frequent power outages and omnipresent filth on streets. This colonial memsahib is flustered with Indian archives which are said to be kept in a most careless and inefficient way. She limits the coverage of the Bengal famine of 1943 to just one sentence because it was engendered by Churchill’s apathy to Indians but castigates the Indian government under Nehru for mishandling the ‘perilously close to famine conditions in 1950 and 51’ (p.104). The author has made extensive research for this book, but the experience appears to be marred by lack of insight and the knowledge of how Indian society works.

The book is just a piece of the Left narrative and not recommended for general readers.

Rating: 2 Star

India Unbound

Title: India Unbound – From Independence to the Global Information Age
Author: Gurcharan Das
Publisher: Penguin, 2015 (First published 2000)
ISBN: 9780143419259
Pages: 419

A big contradiction lies at the heart of the perception of Indian society regarding the growth of its economy in the last three decades, especially after the great Liberalization of 1991 put forward by Prime Minister P V Narasimha Rao. It emancipated the economy and unleashed its animal spirit which was kept in bondage for four decades by the debilitating chains of Nehruvian socialism. Truly, 1991 can be designated as the year of India’s economic independence. But the irony is that most Indians still believe that the market makes ‘the rich richer and the poor poorer’ which would lead to corruption and crony-capitalism. The 1991 reforms and its aftereffects catapulted India to the position of the fifth largest economy in the world and lifted 415 million people out of poverty in the last fifteen years. Despite the market having generated widespread prosperity over two decades, people still distrust it and the nation continues to reform by stealth. This book is a jewel of sorts; you would find hundreds of books criticizing liberalization churned out by political and academic factories of the Left but rarely a book of this kind appears. It is in its core a biography of the author, but examines the Indian economy also in parallel. Das explains why the 1991 reforms was essential, how it progressed, what were the areas which needed accelerated reform and the changes it has wrought in Indian society. Gurcharan Das graduated in philosophy from Harvard and was CEO of Procter & Gamble India. He was instrumental in setting up the market for Vicks Vaporub, which is an American product. After taking early retirement at 50, he became a writer and consultant who give time only to young and promising companies.

This book is a must-read for those who want to understand how India failed to get its objectives correct. The leaders of the freedom struggle – Gandhi and Nehru – used their influence over the masses in a way harmful for them as well as for the nation. Fallacious arguments captivated the public mind such as ‘small companies are better than big ones’ (Gandhi), ‘public enterprises are better than private ones’ (Nehru) and ‘local companies are better than foreign ones’ (both). They so mesmerized India that the succeeding generation whose job was to jettison these foolish ideas, failed to do so and did us incalculable harm. And what did they achieve after half a century of mixed economy? After 50 years, the failure was staggering: 40 per cent of Indians were still illiterate, half were miserably poor earning less than a dollar a day, one-third of the people did not have access to safe drinking water, and only a sixth of the villages had modern medical facilities. In the end, this meant two generations who missed the opportunities. Instead of socialism, this path led to a corrupt, domineering state. Narasimha Rao was also forced by the IMF to bring in meaningful reforms. The 1991 Liberalization opened the economy to foreign investment and trade. It dismantled import controls, lowered customs duties, devalued the currency and virtually abolished the licensing controls on private investment. The reforms drastically cut down the tax rates and broke public sector monopolies. Growth immediately picked up to 7.5 per cent and foreign exchange reserves shot up from 1 billion to 20 billion USD. The author however notes that though the license raj was done away with, the inspector raj is still intact. The reforms are only half complete. This book was written in 1999, but the observed shortcomings still exist in the system.

The author remarks that the immediate post-independence years were a time of centre-left ideology in many countries and in fact Nehru was in sync with Fabian socialists of the UK. During his college days at Harvard, Das noted that students were left-of-centre in thought and were concerned with redistribution of wealth and ignored the whole subject of wealth creation. Many of India’s intellectuals and policy makers were trained in the West and suffered the same blind spot. Most of the teachers also had an anti-business bias which reinforced the student prejudices. Developmental economists thought that growth would provide jobs, raise incomes and pull up people from poverty. However, East Asia realized the futility of this policy after a decade or so of experimentation. They quickly changed track and went back to market-oriented reforms. But in India, the failed policies were consolidated under Indira Gandhi. She further tightened the rules which were already taut. It was the period in which the author completed his education and joined Richardson Hindustan which produced the ubiquitous balm of India – Vicks Vaporub.

Gurcharan Das provides an excellent survey of the misfortune that is euphemistically called Nehruvian socialism or the mixed economy. The 1956 Industrial Policy Resolution was a great blunder of Nehru and his planning advisor Mahalanobis. It reserved seventeen sectors exclusively for state enterprises. When G D Birla requested for permission to start a steel plant, consent was denied! The Tatas made 119 proposals between 1960 and 1989 to start new businesses or expand old ones and all of them ended in the bureaucratic files. Nehru in his naivety dampened the competitive spirit of India’s entrepreneurs when he innocently enquired of the need for having ‘nineteen brands of toothpaste’ (p.153). Another ‘gem’ of stupidity came later when Nehru declared in parliament that ‘public sector’s aim is not to make profit but to meet social objectives’. He nationalized a number of industries without adequately compensating the owners. His public sector was marked by low return on capital, lack of autonomy and accountability of senior managers. The supreme leader’s callous attitude did not instill in them a concern for profit and efficiency. In fact, this complacency to profits continued until recently till the government linked the employees’ wage revision to the company’s profitability.

If Nehru’s economic policy was unfortunate, Indira Gandhi’s trajectory was nothing short of a disaster. Since the author was personally at the receiving end of some of her bad policies, he argues with spirit and conviction. Under her tenure, India withdrew further from world trade, raised tariffs and taxes even higher and became one of the worst performing economies. He estimates that Indira’s follies cost about 1.3 per cent lower in terms of GDP per year. The stringency of laws was in direct proportion to corruption. It could also be that the rules were hardened to thoroughly milk the industry in terms of kickbacks. The MRTP act brought in to curb monopolistic and restrictive trade practices in 1969 was so draconian that it crippled private industry for a generation. Under this law, any business group with combined assets worth rupees 20 crores or above was declared a monopoly and effectively debarred from expanding its business and placed under strict anti-monopolistic supervision and control. Rajiv Gandhi ‘graciously’ raised the limit to rupees 100 crores, but Narasimha Rao entirely scrapped this ridiculous law. Pranab Mukherji, who was the finance minister of Indira and later the nation’s president, was totally closed to any new idea and embarrassingly arrogant when he answered questions (p.197). The Janata party which replaced Indira continued to hoist Gandhian socialism and sacrificed growth. They reserved 863 industries for the small sector. Only entrepreneurs who invested less than rupees 60 lakhs could enter one of these industries. Competition from large and medium enterprises vanished and the sector moved into paralysis. A great irony of this period was that some of the future champions of the 1991 Liberalization were part of the government and responsible for some of its stringent regulations. There were many outstanding economists in government and academia such as I G Patel and Manmohan Singh who didn’t blow the whistle. They kept serving a morally bankrupt system for years, providing it with intellectual respectability and support.

The author joined Vicks very early and has contributed a great deal in making the product widely acceptable and used. It is amusing to learn that people thought it to be an original Ayurvedic remedy while in fact it was researched and developed in the US. It was only in the 1980s that it was marketed as Ayurvedic after ascertaining that its constituents were described in Ayurvedic textbooks. Their efforts to ensure customer satisfaction at every level of the employees are enlightening. Having partnered and worked with foreign and Indian professionals for many decades, Das feels that Indians are not good at working as a team. He claims that the poor teamwork of Indians is a festering, chronic disease. This divisive character is a national competitive disadvantage. A recurring refrain in the book is that intellectuals have not been able to sell the 1991 Reforms to the common public as a beneficial thing. Most of the people who really understand it remain mute while the politically motivated gang continuously point to the mindless jargon of ‘growing inequality’ as something that is going to seriously affect the lives of the less well-off. This book provides several arguments to decimate such propaganda of naysayers. The author comments in this regard that greater benefits owned by a few could be justified if the inequality improved the situation of the poor. A CEO earns many times more salary than the ordinary workers, but they consent to it as long as it motivated him to earn more profit to the company and the workers get higher wages as a result.

The book includes biographical sketches of Aditya Birla, Dhirubhai Ambani and Sam Pitroda as a kind of motivational story for young entrepreneurs. The latter parts of the volume deals with a review of the 1991 reforms and the areas which have not improved in the year 1999 when this book was written. A drawback is that it includes long sermons to the government, politicians, businessmen and the people which can be a bit tiring for the readers. This edition of the book is published in 2015 and includes a fresh Introduction and Afterword which brims with claims of vindication of the author’s original arguments. His viewpoints are very bold and are excellent examples of out-of-the-box thinking. Das presents data to show that the British rule was not so damaging to India on the economic front, particularly after the last decades of the nineteenth century. Running the empire was definitely not a hugely profitable enterprise. Several grave blunders of Nehru’s economic policy are listed in the book which can supplement Rajnikant Puranik’s famous book, ‘Nehru’s 97 Major Blunders’ and would help him complete a century and a few more points. You can find my review of that book here.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 4 Star

Goa, 1961

Title: Goa, 1961 – The Complete Story of Nationalism and Integration
Author: Valmiki Faleiro
Publisher: Vintage Penguin, 2023 (First)
ISBN: 9780670097920
Pages: 391

Great Britain was not the only colonial power that had possessions in India. Even after 1947, the French and the Portuguese continued to hold on to their colonies of Pondicherry and Goa respectively, along with its hinterlands. However, with the achievement of India’s freedom and strengthening of popular freedom movements in these provinces, the writing on the wall was very clear and distinct – colonialism has to go. France addressed this issue and gracefully left India with a treaty in 1956 and India looked eagerly to Portugal to follow suit. However, being less well developed on international etiquette and civilizational maturity, Portugal held on to its Goan estate with a fierceness that originated from stubbornness and autocracy at home. The Portuguese dictator Salazar reiterated his intention to keep Goa under Portuguese rule. Peaceful agitations continued but its prospects of success dwindled each day as Salazar ratcheted up the oppression machinery. Finally, on Dec 18, 1961, Indian armed forces rushed into Goa in a ‘police action’ and subjugated it within 36 hours. The demoralized and ill-equipped Portuguese forces didn’t even put up a decent fight before surrendering. The outcome was rather low key with 22 dead on the Indian side, 17 on the Portuguese side and over 3000 Portuguese prisoners of war. This book is a review of the situation in 1961, with events leading up to it and the consequences of India deliberately veering off its much professed ideal of peace and nonviolence. Valmiki Faleiro is a journalist and prolific writer. He was once the Mayor of Margao city.

The first part of the book describes how Portugal alienated ordinary Goans with its highhanded policies. The locally anointed Catholic priests were against the white clergy from the very beginning. To add to the discrimination, Goa was downgraded from a province of Portugal in 1930 to a mere colony. From the status of citizens of Portugal, Goans were overnight reduced into its ‘subjects’. Civil servants in Goa were replaced with whites to ‘renationalize Goa’. With Salazar’s dictatorial rule of 36 years in Portugal starting from 1932, all political parties in Goa were banned and public get-togethers of any sort discouraged. Even wedding invitations were mandated to carry the seal of the censor. Goans had to suffer racial slurs pronounced by white Portuguese administrators and politicians, such as the remark by one of them that ‘the Goans are for our race what the woodworm is to the wood’. Twentieth century Goa was of no economic or strategic significance to Portugal. Salazar declared in 1954 that maintaining Goa required an annual burden of 7 million escudos. But still, Goa was an emotion, a remnant of Portugal’s glorious nautical history. Portugal also entertained the Hyderabad Nizam’s interests to merge with Pakistan. He had requested one year’s time for accession to India after independence. In the meantime, he offered to buy Goa and thus have a seaport accessible to his landlocked state. His plan was to become a part of Pakistan as its third wing! Nizam’s hopes were dashed in 1948 in another police action staged by Sardar Patel and Hyderabad was annexed to India. This strengthened the apprehensions of Delhi that allowing the Portuguese to stay on in Goa would be a thorn in the nation’s flesh.

The book summarizes the confused and ambivalent attitude of the Congress party towards Goa. While the party was spearheading the freedom struggle against the British, the Goa National Congress (GNC) was doing the same against Portugal in Goa. There were numerous such organisations practicing both violent and nonviolent means. But in 1934, the Congress dissociated its links to GNC citing Goa as an alien land! The GNC then shifted its office from Goa to Mumbai, but the Congress was unimpressed. After independence too, the Nehru government was always reluctant to take the plunge in evicting the Portuguese. In 1954, freedom fighters liberated the Portuguese territories of Dadra and Nagar Haveli. This intensified the Goan agitation but Nehru still demurred to intervene because ‘it will be construed as India’s interference in the internal affairs of Portugal’ (p.40). Nehru was forever conscious of his personal reputation even at the cost of national interest. He extended the principle of nonviolence, which can at best be regarded as only an aspiration in foreign policy, to absurd limits. The repressive Goan police shot at unarmed satyagrahis on Aug 15, 1955, in which 22 were killed. Nehru came under immense pressure to intervene militarily, but he reiterated in various fora that India will not send in troops. The book indicates that the decision to send troops was also influenced by pressure from external agents. In the Non-Aligned Movement summit held in Sep 1961, Nehru was criticized by the newly created African states to act strong. Several delegates told to his face ‘to act and not just talk’. Besides, things were not going well in the internal politics and economic spheres and a general election was scheduled for Feb 1962. Nehru finally decided to attack and annex Goa in Dec 1961.

Faleiro discusses about how oppressive was the Portuguese regime, particularly after assumption of the prime minister’s office by Salazar. Goa was historically, geographically, ethnically, culturally, linguistically and legally one with India. During British rule, it was commercially integrated to India. Goans were granted free entry to India while Indians were restricted to enter Goa. Tens of thousands of Goans were employed and permanently domiciled in different parts of India. Numerous Goans worked in India’s military and some of them had reached its top positions too. The living standards of colonial Goa were dismal with no opportunities for higher education and decent employment locally. This lack of facilities prompted upwardly mobile Goans to emigrate out of it. As a result, the proportion of Christians in the total population plummeted. They were 64 per cent in 1850. This came down to 38 per cent in 1961 and further slid to 25 per cent in 2011.

As mentioned earlier, Nehru was dilly-dallying on the use of military to liberate Goa. This book explains the alternate actions which he took to bring Portugal to accept his claim of Goa. But as was his industrial, economic and military policies back home, this too was a disaster. India declared an economic blockade of Goa in 1953, preventing all material export from India. But Goa imported all commodities from overseas, including vegetables and cotton yarn from Pakistan. To meet the extra monetary demand due to increased freight, mining and export of the plentiful iron and manganese ores were boosted many fold. Nehru’s administration faced this unexpected challenge with dismay and indecision. Instead of crippling the Goan economy, the blockade resulted in an economic boom. Consumer goods were heavily controlled in Nehruvian socialist economy and as a result, large scale smuggling of these articles occurred across the porous borders of Goa. The ineffective blockade was finally lifted in April 1961, but smuggling continued unabated. India’s decision to take the so-called ‘police action’ was also affected by Portuguese weakness which was established by events in Africa. The French gave freedom to Dahomey (Benin) in 1960. There was a 4-acre micro-territory of Portugal called Sao Joao Batista de Ajuda inside this country which they refused to relinquish to Benin. Having run out of patience, Benin’s forces occupied the territory in July 1961 and served as a model for Nehru to imitate.

The book dedicates a considerable space for elaborating the military activities of Dec 18-19, 1961 in which the Portuguese forces sued for peace and surrendered within 36 hours after the first shot was fired. They were ill-equipped and demoralized. The Portuguese had estimated that even if they deployed its entire military, it would not have held on for more than five days! However, India’s intelligence units failed to make a realistic estimate of Portugal’s defence capability in Goa and as a result erred on the side of caution. The result was like using a sledgehammer to kill a fly. Portugal was hugely outmatched in infantry, artillery and navy. There were 17 Indian warships against Portugal’s single ship and they had no air power to defend Goa. One good thing was that the Portuguese surrendered without shedding much blood on both sides even though Salazar had ordered them to fight to the last man and destroy the magnificent buildings of Old Goa. The PoWs were court-martialed in Portugal after their release from India and awarded prison sentences. Some elements had portrayed the Goan Catholic community as pro-Portuguese, un-Indian and antinational. The author takes great pains to debunk this falsehood citing the active participation of the community in the struggle against Portugal. The elite of both Hindus and Christians and the business class supported the Portuguese rule but that was not extended to the ordinary people. The book also includes a note on the crimes committed by a few Indian soldiers on the civilians of Goa as if they were a conquered people. These were extremely isolated events which were quickly acted upon. In fact, the attack included the participation of several Goan officers to convince the locals that the invaders are actually one with them.

The book narrates several goof ups of Nehru but claims that India rose to become ‘a world leader against colonialism after 1947’. It also gives credit to defence minister V K Krishna Menon in planning the Goan offensive, sometimes compelling a reluctant Nehru to fall in line. It also hints that the Chinese attack on Ladakh and Arunachal Pradesh hardly a year later was an indirect consequence to India’s 1961 operation in Goa. What is noteworthy in the book is its repeated emphasis on the participation of Goan Christians in the liberation effort. Describing several incidents of protests involving and avoiding violence, the author establishes the truth that Goa’s liberation involved people of both Christian and Hindu faiths in substantial measure. The book also includes a list of 209 Catholic freedom fighters as an annexure. This book provides a good reading experience of a chapter in Indian history which is usually rolled up in one sentence or as a footnote in mainstream rendering of history as it is thought to be an aberration on India’s policy of peace, non-intervention and nonviolence. But Goa is the one episode in which India behaved – as John F Kennedy quipped – ‘like what a normal state would do, instead of sermonizing to the world lofty and impractical homilies’. The author is a Goan and he has included some anecdotes gleaned from local circles.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 3 Star

Nehru – A Troubled Legacy

Title: Nehru – A Troubled Legacy

Author: RNP Singh

Publisher: Wisdom Tree, 2015 (First)

ISBN: 9788183284424

Pages: 335

Mahatma Gandhi led the Indian struggle for freedom from the British yoke. The nation stood solidly behind him. Thousands sacrificed all that they had – their wealth, career and personal life – to heed Gandhi’s call for national action against the occupying foreigner. As time progressed, it became evident to shrewd political observers that Britain would eventually relinquish power. It was more a question of when than if. The Congress party suddenly became a stepping stone to power and riches. Motilal Nehru was a super-rich lawyer in Allahabad who had scant regard for the Satyagraha mode of nonviolent protest. However, sensing a good opportunity for his family, he joined Congress and persuaded Gandhi to make Jawaharlal Nehru, his son with a failed legal career, the Congress president in 1929. Motilal was the incumbent president of the party and his dynastic ambitions were clearly visible to all in his attempt to hand over the position to his son. This catapulted Jawaharlal into a high-profile career. But the ordinary party workers were not with him due to his elitist life style and company. The crucial moment came about in 1946. By influencing Gandhi once again, he wiggled himself into the party president’s chair once more, and assumed prime ministership once the country became independent. Most of the Congress stalwarts were much older than Nehru and in the first decade of freedom, all of them passed away, leaving the stage open for Nehru and his dynasty. They took control of the Congress party which is still laboring under the family’s thumb. This book is a logical assessment of Nehru’s performance and assigns his failure to his greed for autocratic hold on both the government and the party, his own ideas of implementation of socialism, lack of understanding and appreciation of the poor man’s requirements and of rural India. RNP Singh is a noted political writer who had served earlier in the Intelligence Bureau. He is currently a Senior Fellow at the Vivekananda International Foundation, a think tank, in New Delhi.

Singh provides a saddening narrative on how Nehru turned the Congress party into his personal fief. This should be an eye-opener for the naïve who are still taken in by the party and old Congress governments’ propaganda that Nehru laid the foundation stone of democracy. This book tells how Nehru emasculated a series of party presidents to ensure his unopposed dominance in the party machine. When Nehru became prime minister, J B Kripalani was the Congress president and he resigned in November 1947, frustrated at Nehru not consulting or even informing him about important government policy decisions. Nehru brought in Pattabhi Sitaramayya next, who did not assert or even ask for equality and confined the functions of the party president only to organizational matters. P D Tandon came next in 1950 with Patel’s support, but Patel died soon in December 1950. In the beginning, Tandon tried to function independently and did not pay enough regard to Nehru’s concerns in party affairs. But Nehru intervened wherever possible and threatened to withdraw from the Working Committee if it was not reconstituted to suit his taste. Tandon resigned in disgust in 1951 upon which Nehru himself assumed the party’s presidency. Three years later, he nominated his loyal crony U N Dhebar for the post who kept the chair warm for his daughter Indira to become president in 1959. He filled important positions with the second generation of Congressmen who were not distinguished enough to question him. The new line of Congress presidents readily accepted their subordinate position. At the same time, he was determined that none of the state chief ministers emulate his modus operandi and become powerful. He wanted to deny them the opportunity to build themselves up into powerful potentates who could challenge Nehru. Congress passed a resolution forbidding state chief ministers from holding office in the state Congress committees. Sanjiva Reddy, the Congress president from 1960 to 1963, publicly remarked that as the party president, he was treated as ‘Mrs. Gandhi’s chaprasi (office boy)’ (p.24). Singh claims that what Nehru was after was not personal supremacy, but dynastic dominance.

The book exhibits some of Nehru's personality traits, most notably hypocrisy. While deftly pulling the strings for Indira’s elevation, he expressed ‘surprise’ in a noting on his diary at the idea of her becoming the party leader as if he was totally alien to such a scenario. Whom was he trying to hoodwink? Noted historian K M Munshi puts it down succinctly. He remarked that ‘Nehru was justifiably proud of his heroic role in the struggle for freedom, pampered by his doting father, built up as his heir by Gandhi, spoiled by interested adulation, was intolerant to criticism and impatient of opposition’ (p.68). Nehru tolerated dissent only so long as it remained defused and articulated within the orbit of the Congress system. His democratic credentials are further slurred by the frequent dismissal of state governments on a whim. Between 1952 and 1964, he imposed President’s Rule five times to dislodge non-Congress chief ministers. Tired of his unwarranted intrusion in their departments, S P Mukherjee, K C Neogi, Ambedkar and John Mathai resigned from Nehru's cabinet.

Nehru's megalomania is fully exposed in this book. Nehru was a hero not only in the eyes of the people, but also in his own eyes. He believed that he was a man of destiny and that he had been cast for a historic role. Later in life, he developed a habit of making his own decisions on vital national and international issues and then presenting them as fait accompli to his cabinet and the parliamentary committees. Transfer of the enclave of Berubari to Pakistan was taken without consulting the West Bengal state which housed this patch of territory. Minority appeasement was begun by Nehru in national politics. Akalis were brought in as a group in Congress for the 1957 election. The Bishop of Kottayam issued an appeal to the Christians of Kerala which projected Nehru's image as the only leader who was a protector of minorities. He openly enticed the Muslim vote bank and made a political alliance with the Muslim league in Kerala.

The author presents enough evidence to prove his claim that Nehru kick started corruption in high places while keeping himself out of the cesspool. He exhibited an ostrich-like attitude to corruption, refusing to get convinced even when all the incriminating evidence lay before him. He believed that corruption is a result of the democratic process. His own private secretary, M O Mathai, was found to be corrupt, but Nehru defended him. He harboured politicians in administration on the plea that they are otherwise efficient! Congress badly needed the money as its sessions and other programs had become shows requiring extravagant expenditure. All this pomp and show required huge amounts of money. Raising election propaganda costs was another guzzler. When the pressure became irritatingly persistent, Nehru ordered commissions of enquiry but sat firmly upon their reports. These commissions were usually headed by serving judges of the judiciary and found many politicians guilty. However, no criminal charges were brought upon them. Nehru was satisfied by their resignations and they enjoyed the fruits of their felony in comfort. The notorious Jeep scandal occurred during Nehru's rule in which kickbacks were paid through V K Krishna Menon for purchasing Jeeps for the military. This was only a harbinger of the Bofors scam under his grandson’s rule.

Nehru's antipathy to men in uniform and his complacence in formulating a credible defence policy is widely known. Singh adds his two cents’ worth here. The military was downgraded and kept under bureaucratic control. During the British rule, a Secretary to the government of India was ranked lower than a Lieutenant General while Nehru made him on par with the General. He abolished the post of commander-in-chief and made the President of India the supreme commander-in-chief, but this was largely ceremonial. Pakistan feared Indian military, but Nehru feared it even more for their potential for staging a military coup. He starved them of equipment. One battalion of the Indian army went into the Battle for Goa in PT shoes due to lack of supplies. Only fifteen per cent of defence requirements were produced in India, but government opposed their import citing dearth of foreign exchange. Nehru's two-fold military doctrine was ridiculously childish. He held that wars were evil and that India had no enemy to fear. He had drugged not only the civil administration but also the armed services into supine inactivity.

Singh claims that he has provided an academic and unbiased analysis of the different facets of Nehru, rather than a biography. While the truth of his assertions is undisputed, his slight anti-Nehru bias is clearly discernible. The book has included a whole lot of letters and little known correspondences Nehru had had with various leaders. The letters between Nehru and Patel serve as a model for new leaders on how to make decent and dignified debate with their political opponents. We also see that cordial salutations like ‘My dear Jawaharlal ji’ and ‘My dear Rajendra Babu’ between Nehru and Rajendra Prasad slowly giving way for ‘My dear Prime Minister’ and ‘My dear President’ as the years went by. The book also includes some rare photographs. It is a credit to the author that he does not mention the personal vagaries of Nehru such as the Edwina affair.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 3 Star

Feroze: The Forgotten Gandhi

Title: Feroze: The Forgotten Gandhi – A Personal Narrative

Author: Bertil Falk

Publisher: Roli Books, 2016 (First)

ISBN: 9789351941767

Pages: 304

Feroze Jahangir Gandhi deserves a special place in Indian politics, not only for his personal work as a freedom fighter and parliamentarian, but for also being the close relative of three Prime Ministers – the son-in-law of one, the husband of another and the father of yet another. As is expected from a man who entered into matrimony with a lady much higher than his station in life, Gandhi played second fiddle to Jawaharlal Nehru, his father-in-law and later to Indira, his wife, after she took over as the party president. But he came out of the shell in the last five years of life, locking horns with Nehru by exposing the widespread corruption in his cabinet. His well targeted allegations proved to be a real pain in the neck for Nehru that he had to sack his own trusted finance minister when it was proved that there is substance in the accusations raised by Feroze. His legacy was not so honoured during the Congress rule as the relations between Feroze and Indira had become strained in the last years and there was serious talk of trying for a divorce. This book is a biography of Feroze Gandhi that tries to clarify the real person underneath the political figure he grew into due to his high connections. Bertil Falk is a retired Swedish newspaper and TV journalist who became interested in India at the age of nine after reading a captivating story about an ordinary boy becoming a maharaja. This book is his personal narrative from four decades of research and one-on-one travels and interviews through political India.

The author tries to stir up controversy when he puts up Feroze Gandhi as some kind of mysterious figure whose both parentages are disputed. This is somewhat crude and plain uncharitable. He was born as the son of Jahangir Faredoon Gandhi and Rattimai Commissariat on September 12, 1912 at the Parsi lying-in hospital in the Fort area of Mumbai. He was later adopted by his maternal aunt, Shirin Commissariat, who was an unmarried doctor practicing at Allahabad. Falk searched for old records at the hospital, but turned up empty-handed. He then suggests that Feroze was indeed the biological son of his foster mother, born out of an amorous relationship with a reputed lawyer of Allahabad named Kamla Prasad Kakar. It is also noted that Kakar had arranged for Nehru's early release from jail in 1941 so that Feroze’s marriage with Indira could be solemnized with Nehru's blessings. But the author’s suggestion to do a DNA test of Feroze’s descendants comparing with those of Kakar’s to prove it beyond doubt is simply outrageous and a horrible invasion of individual privacy. He also opens up on another rumour that Nawab Khan, a Muslim liquor supplier, was his real father. However, he categorically refutes this one.

Falk was drawn to Feroze by his work in the last five years of his life. Remember, he died of a heart attack at the relatively young age of 48. During the last five years of his life, Feroze Gandhi forcibly came out with his own personal work on the political scene in the Lok Sabha by introducing ‘investigative journalism’ as a tool of parliamentary work. If he had died at 43 instead of 48, the author declares that he would not have bothered to write this biography. When India became independent, the British found it expedient to hand over power to the Congress party in the divided India because it had truly assimilated the British administrative principles and who were quite willing to play by the rules set by them. In effect, Congress could project an image of itself as the party that won Independence for India. During the first decade of parliamentary debates after the country turned a republic, the opposition failed to rally behind a cohesive principle or movement. The main opposition was the Communist party which was a distant second to Congress. The other opposition party was rightist, which ruled out any alliance or understanding with the left. The venal politicians and bureaucrats in Nehru's administration exploited this lack of effective opposition and unquestioned prominence to their advantage by indulging in rampant corruption. Feroze Gandhi, finding this unpardonable void, stepped into the shoes of the opposition leader. This book even suggests that Feroze’s leadership traits were immense though dormant, and there is even a hint that he would have succeeded Nehru or Lal Bahadur Shastri as prime minister had he been alive. This line of thought probably underestimates the vaulting ambitions of Indira and the author too discounts this hypothesis after a saner scrutiny.

Feroze was a part of the fabric and pattern that political success in India was made of. In spite of his matrimonial credentials, he was a man of ability and action and an individual with great potential. He served four jail terms and was as good a freedom fighter as anyone else. He had that experience of working among the rural folk, which, in the Congress, elites like Nehru could not claim. Feroze was elected on a Congress ticket from the Rae Bareli constituency. The author rules out nepotism in this case. He deserved the selection and if it was not for Nehru, Rafi Ahmed Kidwai, a prominent Congress politician with whom Feroze was in close proximity, would have ensured a ticket for him nevertheless. Falk also highlights a streak of inconsistency in his character. Feroze had bitterly complained about the treatment meted out to him by the French police at Paris where he had gone to cover a labour strike as part of the journalistic team of the National Herald. His camera was confiscated and he was ill-treated. This book presents another instance when the same man turned the aggressor against a lady journalist for essentially repeating the same scenario. Margaret Bourke-White was an American photographer and journalist for the Life magazine. She surreptitiously took the photo of Mahatma Gandhi as his body was laid on the floor in preparation for lying in state. She did this in clear violation of instructions and Feroze Gandhi forcibly confiscated the camera and destroyed the film by exposing it to daylight.

The author follows parliamentary debates to offer details regarding the Mundhra Scam, which was one of the first corruption scandals that rocked Nehru’s boat. Feroze vehemently attacked the finance minister T T Krishnamachari’s involvement in instructing the Life Insurance Corporation of India to salvage Mundhra’s crumbling finances by buying large tranches of the shares of his companies at artificially inflated prices. Krishnamachari had to resign, but this shook Feroze’s confidence in the socialistic model as he was under the impression that capitalism alone fostered corruption.

The author has done a great deal of work in tracing the sources of information he shares with the readers. He has met all the personalities who were still alive and could contribute to the knowledge on Feroze Gandhi. Most of the ground work was done in the late 1980s and early 1990s, but he presumably then took nearly two decades to compile it and publish in book form. This delay is unexplainable though Falk claims that it was due to his desire to publish the biography on the occasion of the centenary of Feroze’s birth in 2012. This time gap eats away at the relevance of the book, especially after the year 2014 when the BJP- led government made it a policy not to let go of any opportunity to strike at the Nehru dynasty’s legacy. This book also includes a nice collection of photos.

The book is recommended.

Rating: 3 Star