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Gandhi, who knew full Raj. Parallelly, it’s also
well that the party presi- the story of Jawaharlal CHINA’S TRANSFORMATION:
dent would automatically Nehru’s ascendency to the THE SUCCESS STORY & THE
be the first prime minster most powerful office of SUCCESS TRAP
of independent India. post-independence India Manoranjan Mohanty
In a detailed chapter with tragic consequences SAGE PUBLICATIONS
titled ‘Nehru’s Historic for two generations — and Rs.1,195
Blunder’, Akbar narrates counting — of free Indians Pages 376
how Nehru torpedoed the floundering in shallows
June 7 concordat. Ad- and misery.
dressing a press confer- DILIP THAKORE
ence on July 10, Nehru est groups started forming,
asserted that Congress had Compelling power balances (within Throughout the book
only agreed to the estab- and outside the Party) the author says that
lishment of a Constituent shifted and the character China will continue
Assembly. “What we do narrative of transformation began to to grow, but that its
there, we are entirely free shed its socialist origins. problems will mount
to determine. We have F YOU HAD TO PICK The consequences: in intensity
committed ourselves on no just one book to read regional and income
single matter to anybody,” Ion a desert island (or inequalities, urban pollu-
he said. This provided more realistically, during tion and environmental township, he studied in
Jinnah “confirmation of a Covid-19 lockdown) degradation, ‘democratic minute detail the various
Congress deceit… and the that would give you an centralism’ with increased agencies formulating and
loophole through which he authoritative and read- Party control, and less implementing the reforms
could backtrack on India’s able account of China’s responsiveness to public — from Party HQ right
unity,” writes Akbar. Ex- rise to global superpower sentiment. To use a medi- down to the village level —
actly a year later, Pakistan status and its current pre- cal analogy, Mohanty’s their organisation, work-
became a fully indepen- dicament, it should be this hypothesis is that the ‘diet’ ing methods, relationships
dent and sovereign state. book. The reasons will be prescribed by the reforms and responsiveness to
Although this book clear later in this review, produced biochemical challenges.
ends with the assassina- but first, let us consider changes in China’s body With a surgeon’s preci-
tion of Gandhi on January the crux of the argu- politic. The symptoms sion, Mohanty points to
30, 1948 and Jinnah’s ment of political scientist were described graphically the CPC’s (Communist
death nine months later and China scholar Prof. by former prime minis- Party of China) abandon-
(September 11, 1948), it Manoranjan Mohanty. ter Wen Jiabao (March ment of the early and in-
provides telling evidence The introductory chap- 2007) as “… growth (that) novative approach to rural
of the damage that Nehru ter presents the case that is unstable, unbalanced, industrialisation adopted
— who subsequently as Mohanty sets out to prove uncoordinated, and unsus- through the collectively-
prime minister led free, in the book. It goes as fol- tainable”. owned Township and
high-potential India down lows: China’s transforma- Any good physician Village Enterprises (TVE)
the disastrous socialist tion into a modern indus- would test this hypoth- model. Moreover, this was
road to national bank- trial powerhouse started esis by examining the followed by creeping bu-
ruptcy and nurtured the with Deng Xiaoping’s anatomy and physiology reaucratisation, changes in
unyielding tree of the Ne- policies of ‘reform and of the patients’ organs, to the Party’s class character
hru-Indira dynasty which opening up’ in 1979. As determine how cause is and the dilution of partici-
has reduced the Congress these policies were imple- linked to effect. And this pative public monitoring
party to a shadow of its mented, economic growth Mohanty duly proceeds to mechanisms. The first
greatness did. started accelerating; as the do in Part II — the heart word in the Party’s slogan
The title of this deeply plans evolved and changed of the book — which is a ‘Socialism with Chinese
researched and fluently with increasing contact masterpiece of longitudi- characteristics’ was begin-
written history suggests with the outside (capital- nal social science field- ning to sound distinctly
that it is all about Gandhi ist) world, so did the range work at the very grassroots dodgy.
and Jinnah, the domi- and impact of the result- of Chinese society. Over The symptoms of the
nant personalities of the ing economic and social three decades of work in resulting ailment are
last days of the British changes. Gradually, inter- Wuxi district and Hela described in Part III of

80 EDUCATIONWORLD OCTOBER 2020