The Third Fundamental: Strategy for Economic Reform in a Globalised World continues...

The author of this strategy, namely Nehru, wanted the Soviet model adopted for reasons not known to many, and paradoxically it suited the interests of two powerful vested groups within our country: one, the feudal compradors whose progeny during British rule received English education and then entered the bureaucracy through Civil Service examinations. The other group was Left-inspired Indian intellectuals educated in the thirties and forties in Oxford and Cambridge (the “Kim Philby” group). The latter group gave Nehru the necessary intellectual baggage, and used their friendship with Nehru, to secure posts in key points in government, press, academic and diplomatic service after India achieved independence in 1947.

The Soviet model was easily accepted in India largely because the 19th Century feudal class had graduated to the elite bureaucracy, and with the populist ideological cover provided by the Left entrenched at key points in the bureaucracy, politics, press, and academia, this feudal class found that under this model it continued to enjoy continued patronage power in the Indian economy. It was this firm grip on decision-making centres of the state apparatus that subsequently after independence, made the ideology of Mahatma Gandhi and Sardar Patel irrelevant at the political level, and relegated a personality like C. Rajagopalachari to the status of an American-inspired crank. There was little challenge elsewhere. Amongst political leaders, only Charan Singh had dared to question the appropriateness of the Soviet model. But he too could not make much headway because of the intellectual hostility of the Left-feudal combine. In fact, despite Charan Singh being one of the most well-read political stalwarts and a prolific writer on economics, he was dismissed in the media as a semi-literate kulak whose ideas were a mere re-hash of Adam Smith.

The grafting of this model on Indian planning was done by a physicist turned-statistician, who had little or no formal education in economics: Professor P.C. Mahalanobis, founder of the Indian Statistical Institute, Calcutta.

to be continued...

( This account is maintained by Har Anand Publication)