Nehru - Worst disaster to hit India
Sunday, October 7, 2007
James W. Michaels was one of the senior most journalists in the business. After a US Army stint in the second world war, he set up the New Delhi bureau of United Press Intl. Following which he moved on to Forbes, where he stayed on for 45 years.
He was the first to report on the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi. This is ranked among the top 100 greatest news reports of all time. He passed away on the eve of Gandhi Jayanti.
In this interview with Outlook(2001) he spoke on India.
About the growth of India so far, which by what he says, was unexpected for many. -
"...I think most of us who were observing it then thought the country would break up, and that parts of it might revert to some kind of totalitarian rule. But out of that has developed a functioning democracy, a country that has had good economic growth—though not as good as one would have liked—and it takes its place among the leading nations of the world. So that's not bad, considering the inauspicious beginnings."
What is to be noted, though, is what he says about Nehruvian Socialism, which pretty much defined the way our economy behaved until recent times. Only after the 1991 reforms did things even begin to look up.
"...Nehru, though we loved him and admired him at the time, was probably the worst disaster to ever hit India, at least in economic terms. (In India Unbound, by Gurcharan Das), it's said that Nehru was basically a Brahmin snob, and he did not like business people. Instead of the government getting out of the way and letting the market allocate business resources, the government did it. And the result was an incredible waste of resources.The way to fight poverty is not by chopping the pie in smaller pieces but figuring out how to make a bigger pie." [Emphasis mine]
The government still gets in the way and the bigger pie many times never makes it to the oven. Thanks to the regulations.
"...what would've happened if Nehru hadn't been affected with this socialism. Rajagopalachari didn't want the government to get involved (with the economy), he thought the American model was right for India. And Sardar Patel also did not want all this socialism. But south India got marginalised in the early days. So Nehru did whatever he wanted."
After all these years, we still haven't learned enough.
