Page 54 - EW November 2023

Cover Story

perous and innovative, while China
and the tiger economies of South-
east Asia which threw off the yoke
of foreign rule and/or domination
at the same time as India, are racing
ahead in terms of per capita incomes,
education, health and material well-
being of their citizens. And if this is
the reason why increasing numbers of
India’s HNWI and best professionals
— it’s disputable whether their num-
ber is small — are attracted to foreign
shores, the causes of this swelling ex- Nehru-Gandhi dynasty prime ministers: disastrous Left lurch
odus need to be squarely confronted
and discussed under several heads lons of Bloomsbury Square, London, mandated to produce steel, coal, pro-
— political, economic, sociology and frequented by trendy upper class Left cure and store food grains (Food Cor-
education — at some length. wing intellectuals — including Nobel poration of India), run railways and
laureate Lord Bertrand Russell, the shipping corporations, and airlines.
POLITICS & ECONOMY author of several books including Unsurprisingly, these capital-inten-
sive PSEs proposed to be funded by
A S ALLUDED ABOVE, A — who were enamoured with Stalin- Soviet-style five-year plans and man-
The Conquest of Happiness (1930)
mistake
ist Russia (later the Soviet Union of
aged by file-pushing bureaucrats and
monumental
made by free India’s first
a disaster. The return on investment
recanted and became a strident critic
Congress party govern- Socialist Republics). Although Russell over-promoted clerks, proved to be
ment was to abandon our millennia- of communism after he learned about of over 350 major PSEs averaged 1-3
old tradition of private enterprise Stalin’s mass executions and starva- percent for almost three decades even
in which there was clear division tion deaths of millions of peasants in as tax revenue from private sector
between government and business. the USSR, because of canalisation of companies denied growth opportuni-
Governments focused on governance, rural savings into forced heavy indus- ties, stagnated.
while business and industry were free trialisation, Nehru did not experience Jawaharlal Nehru’s Left lurch was
to grow and prosper without let and any such epiphany. aggravated by his daughter Indira
hindrance to enable them to contrib- After the passing of Mahatma Nehru-Gandhi — an Oxford Univer-
ute revenue to government treasuries. Gandhi and Patel shortly after inde- sity drop out — who nationalised 28
Unfortunately in the years imme- pendence, unmindful of the country’s major banks, general insurance com-
diately after independence, and espe- private enterprise tradition, Nehru panies and for a while the foodgrains
cially after the assassination of Mahat- set about transforming India into a trade. As a result for three decades
ma Gandhi in 1948 and the death of “socialist pattern of society”. India’s India’s GDP growth rate averaged 3.5
Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel in 1950, both pioneer industrialists who had estab- percent per year, even as population
of whom were sympathetic to private lished large and successful conglom- growth averaged 2.5 percent, plunging
enterprise and acknowledged the role erates despite the best efforts of the per capita income to among the low-
of private industry leaders in funding British Raj, were tied up in red tape est worldwide. Indira Gandhi who also
the freedom movement, the Harrow and denied all-important licences and has the dubious distinction of having
and Cambridge-educated Jawaharlal permits to grow their businesses. imposed the first and only internal
Nehru became undisputed leader of Instead, faith was reposed in mas- Emergency during which fundamen-
the Congress party. sive public sector enterprises (PSEs) tal rights were suspended and the
An over-indulged son of rich and press was gagged, was assassinated in
famous lawyer Motilal Nehru, presi- A monumental mistake of 1984 and succeeded by her son Rajiv,
dent of the Congress party in 1929 who made some feeble attempts to de-
who ensured that his son Jawahar- free India's first Congress regulate the dirigiste Indian economy
lal (29) succeeded him as president government was to bound up in shackles and red tape.
of the party, the younger Nehru was In 1989, Rajiv Gandhi, who was on
a natural sciences Cambridge gradu- abandon the old tradition the comeback trail after having been
ate who knew precious little about of clear division between voted out of office following the huge
economics. What he did know was government & business Bofors gun imports scandal, was also
picked up from the fashionable sa- assassinated and succeeded by P.V.

54 EDUCATIONWORLD NOVEMBER 2023