Nov 14 2014 : The Economic Times (Delhi)
Jawaharlal Nehru: Tribute or Elegy?
Champion of national, institutionalised modernity
A contest is on to claim the legacy of Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first prime minister, whose daughter and grandson also became prime ministers. The rival claimants are keen on appropriation, for the purpose of denying the other possession. But of real value is the substance of his legacy , which partisan distortion no less than outright ignorance has obfuscated. A rabid socialist-atheist who, apart from begetting a dynasty , smothered India's spiritual soul as well as the economy -this is how the opponents of the Nehruvian idea of India as a plural democracy where people of all faiths can live in harmony and dignity wish to portray him. Nothing could be farther from the truth.Nehru was a builder of institutions, in politics, administration, education, science and the economy . Don't spare me, he told Shankar, the cartoonist, setting a democratic standard for the attitude towards dissent that his epigones in the prime ministerial chair have not lived up to.
He set up the Planning Commission, where the finest economists of Euro pe and the US brainstormed, rather than determined sectoral allocations.
He initiated India's space and atomic programmes, set up the Indian Insti tutes of Technology (IITs) along with the state sector steel plants, dams and machine tool factories that many graduates of these IITs mock gratuitously , without appreciating that their time coordinates made these public enterprises the building blocks of India's economic muscle. He set up term-lending financial institutions -IFCI, ICICI and IDBI -to transfer the public's savings to Indian capitalists, who also were given the benefit of a protected market and demand from purchasing power generated by public investment in infrastructure. Capitalist is as capitalist does.
Nehru's own party men have focused on his milestones than on the direction of the journey the nation needed to undertake, to redeem its tryst with destiny in full. In adapting Nehru's vision to contemporary challenges, they have been timid. This has made space for the opponents of his idea of India to lay claim to his mantle.
He set up the Planning Commission, where the finest economists of Euro pe and the US brainstormed, rather than determined sectoral allocations.
He initiated India's space and atomic programmes, set up the Indian Insti tutes of Technology (IITs) along with the state sector steel plants, dams and machine tool factories that many graduates of these IITs mock gratuitously , without appreciating that their time coordinates made these public enterprises the building blocks of India's economic muscle. He set up term-lending financial institutions -IFCI, ICICI and IDBI -to transfer the public's savings to Indian capitalists, who also were given the benefit of a protected market and demand from purchasing power generated by public investment in infrastructure. Capitalist is as capitalist does.
Nehru's own party men have focused on his milestones than on the direction of the journey the nation needed to undertake, to redeem its tryst with destiny in full. In adapting Nehru's vision to contemporary challenges, they have been timid. This has made space for the opponents of his idea of India to lay claim to his mantle.
