04-27-2005, 02:48 AM
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Can we move beyond Nehruvianism, please? </b>
Prafull Goradia , KR Phanda
INDIA'S POLITICAL ECONOMY: 1947-2004 , BY FRANCINE R FRANKEL , OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, Rs 750
Erudition, whether in politics or in economics, is well reflected in this book. This would have been expected of a scholar of Dr Frankel's stature. The reviewers must however also criticise and point out the gaps that need to be bridged. A macro lacuna in the book is that the writer has taken for granted the political and economic assumptions of Nehruvianism as well as what followed. Whether the assumptions were right or not has been neither discussed nor even questioned.
India in 1947 was underdeveloped and over-populated with a great many of them very poor. Poverty, therefore, should have been the obvious first target of a Government that had declared its intention to soon hold a general election based on universal adult franchise. Employment was the obvious antidote of poverty. The scale of unemployment or under-employment was so colossal that the organised sector, however expanded, could not possibly have an answer.
Of the four sectors of the economy, a concern for the India of 1947 and for a long time thereafter, was the primary sector. Farming, mining and fishing evidently should have been the targets for generating employment. As former Prime Minister Charan Singh lucidly argued, agriculture is an activity which has unlimited potential for engaging more workers and increasing productivity as long as the particular crop has the potential to sell well in the market place, whether at home or abroad. Mechanised farming is good for cereals and allied grains but the more sophisticated the crop, whether flower or fruit, the more farmers it can help engage.
The tertiary sector had to be slow to develop in the early economy. Nevertheless, no great attempt was made. Instead, the Nehruvian concentration was on the secondary sector namely manufacture. Be it Nehru, Mahalanobis or any other economic planner, none was sufficiently conscious that manufacture was the employment of the machine and not of the man. Even for those years of the '50s and the '60s, at least Rs five lakh had to be invested in a machine to create one direct job. This is not to argue against the manufacture of goods or against the laying of an industrial infrastructure. It is only to point out that these were not the means to provide employment to large numbers and therefore not to alleviate poverty in the short run.
The fourth sector, like tourism, was not thought of. To this day India lays no stress on tourism. In fact, then Prime Minister Deve Gowda had gone to the extent of saying that India was too big a country to worry about tourism which, incidentally, can be a big employer of people. We have enumerated the points of diagnosis but the root of the disease also needs to be recorded. Jawaharlal Nehru had visited the Soviet Union and, over the years, built a mindset that what he saw in Russia was the best way to uplift the poor.
He overlooked that Russia was not over populated and therefore manufacture suited it. What is amazing is that most economists in India who assisted Nehru also fell for the Soviet model. To this day one question has not been raised: Which economy in the world has prospered with the help of a planning commission? No developed country has had either the Gosplan or the planning commission. Dr Frankel herself quoted how JRD Tata and GD Birla recommended the discontinuance of planning.
The other question we cannot help raising with Dr Frankel is a political one. Why has she not questioned that what might have been perceived as necessary for the first half of the 20th century India, was wholly irrelevant for the second half. Ever since Sir Sayyed Ahmad Khan of Aligarh and Dr Amir Ali of Calcutta talked about Hindus and Muslims as being separate nations, there was a lurking, although implicit, fear amongst many Hindus that society, not just the country, would be divided. Muslims therefore had to be placated so that they did not go their separate way. This at least was the widespread belief after the advent of Gandhi on the Indian scene in l916. At the root of Muslim appeasement was the fear, however subconscious, of Partition. Rahmat Ali's theory of Pakistan came later. So did MA Jinnah's Lahore resolution of 1940.
As it turned out, Muslim appeasement proved futile. The country was divided and over one fourth of its territory went its separate way.
Surely, political commonsense demanded that with Partition all hopes of Hindu-Muslim unity had been belied and that the curtain should be drawn on the drama of Muslim appeasement. Yet, this point does not emerge from this volume.
Dr Frankel has been uncritical in her acceptance of the Nehruvian assumption even on the subject of secularism. She assumes that the Constitution was secular whereas until 1976, there was no such mention. Indira Gandhi introduced the word by an amendment during Emergency.<b> The author also goes along with the common gossip in the media that a Hindutva mindset is a threat to national coherence.</b>
Nevertheless, coming from a distinguished scholar, the book fully deserves to be read. It helps catch up with India's eco-political history, especially for younger peopl
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Prafull Goradia , KR Phanda
INDIA'S POLITICAL ECONOMY: 1947-2004 , BY FRANCINE R FRANKEL , OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, Rs 750
Erudition, whether in politics or in economics, is well reflected in this book. This would have been expected of a scholar of Dr Frankel's stature. The reviewers must however also criticise and point out the gaps that need to be bridged. A macro lacuna in the book is that the writer has taken for granted the political and economic assumptions of Nehruvianism as well as what followed. Whether the assumptions were right or not has been neither discussed nor even questioned.
India in 1947 was underdeveloped and over-populated with a great many of them very poor. Poverty, therefore, should have been the obvious first target of a Government that had declared its intention to soon hold a general election based on universal adult franchise. Employment was the obvious antidote of poverty. The scale of unemployment or under-employment was so colossal that the organised sector, however expanded, could not possibly have an answer.
Of the four sectors of the economy, a concern for the India of 1947 and for a long time thereafter, was the primary sector. Farming, mining and fishing evidently should have been the targets for generating employment. As former Prime Minister Charan Singh lucidly argued, agriculture is an activity which has unlimited potential for engaging more workers and increasing productivity as long as the particular crop has the potential to sell well in the market place, whether at home or abroad. Mechanised farming is good for cereals and allied grains but the more sophisticated the crop, whether flower or fruit, the more farmers it can help engage.
The tertiary sector had to be slow to develop in the early economy. Nevertheless, no great attempt was made. Instead, the Nehruvian concentration was on the secondary sector namely manufacture. Be it Nehru, Mahalanobis or any other economic planner, none was sufficiently conscious that manufacture was the employment of the machine and not of the man. Even for those years of the '50s and the '60s, at least Rs five lakh had to be invested in a machine to create one direct job. This is not to argue against the manufacture of goods or against the laying of an industrial infrastructure. It is only to point out that these were not the means to provide employment to large numbers and therefore not to alleviate poverty in the short run.
The fourth sector, like tourism, was not thought of. To this day India lays no stress on tourism. In fact, then Prime Minister Deve Gowda had gone to the extent of saying that India was too big a country to worry about tourism which, incidentally, can be a big employer of people. We have enumerated the points of diagnosis but the root of the disease also needs to be recorded. Jawaharlal Nehru had visited the Soviet Union and, over the years, built a mindset that what he saw in Russia was the best way to uplift the poor.
He overlooked that Russia was not over populated and therefore manufacture suited it. What is amazing is that most economists in India who assisted Nehru also fell for the Soviet model. To this day one question has not been raised: Which economy in the world has prospered with the help of a planning commission? No developed country has had either the Gosplan or the planning commission. Dr Frankel herself quoted how JRD Tata and GD Birla recommended the discontinuance of planning.
The other question we cannot help raising with Dr Frankel is a political one. Why has she not questioned that what might have been perceived as necessary for the first half of the 20th century India, was wholly irrelevant for the second half. Ever since Sir Sayyed Ahmad Khan of Aligarh and Dr Amir Ali of Calcutta talked about Hindus and Muslims as being separate nations, there was a lurking, although implicit, fear amongst many Hindus that society, not just the country, would be divided. Muslims therefore had to be placated so that they did not go their separate way. This at least was the widespread belief after the advent of Gandhi on the Indian scene in l916. At the root of Muslim appeasement was the fear, however subconscious, of Partition. Rahmat Ali's theory of Pakistan came later. So did MA Jinnah's Lahore resolution of 1940.
As it turned out, Muslim appeasement proved futile. The country was divided and over one fourth of its territory went its separate way.
Surely, political commonsense demanded that with Partition all hopes of Hindu-Muslim unity had been belied and that the curtain should be drawn on the drama of Muslim appeasement. Yet, this point does not emerge from this volume.
Dr Frankel has been uncritical in her acceptance of the Nehruvian assumption even on the subject of secularism. She assumes that the Constitution was secular whereas until 1976, there was no such mention. Indira Gandhi introduced the word by an amendment during Emergency.<b> The author also goes along with the common gossip in the media that a Hindutva mindset is a threat to national coherence.</b>
Nevertheless, coming from a distinguished scholar, the book fully deserves to be read. It helps catch up with India's eco-political history, especially for younger peopl
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