Nehruvian Development
Nehurvian Development and Planning
Germinated from India’s colonial-capitalist experience and anti-colonial struggle, Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first prime minister, created a model of development with the intention of India being master of its own fate. India, newly independent and with a economy drained from colonialism, Nehru was determined to implement several economic policies that would preserve and strengthen India’s sovereignty and freedom, both in the form of economics and politics. Jawaharlal had envisioned India to be economic self-sufficient and independent from foreign capitals. By having India economically independent, he argued, there could be more growth in the economy, and thereby an improvement in the overall living standard and productivity. Additionally, this would include more choices in political decision-making, security, and legitimacy to India as a new nation-state. From the model of development, a Nehruvian India would emerge as a country well equipped with a modern army, an infrastructure (made up of the latest 20th century technology) that defies the capricious changes in nature, and a perpetually self-sustaining industrial sector. Looking with admiration towards the communist economic-planning of the Soviet Union and socialist theorist at the time, Nehru sought towards socialist pattern of society. Under a socialist construct, not only would there be an equal improvement and distribution in wealth, but also erosion to the traditional caste-class discrimination. For Jawaharlal, socialist economic-planning would consist of radical centralization and state planning that worked towards “scientific” and “rational means of creating social prosperity and ensuring its equitable distribution”. Consequently, reforming India’s heterogenic socio-economic classes into an egalitarian society. Beyond economic and political incentives, the economic planning has a heart-felt, symbolic component to it. Nehru had romanticized the industrial sector,
Germinated from India’s colonial-capitalist experience and anti-colonial struggle, Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first prime minister, created a model of development with the intention of India being master of its own fate. India, newly independent and with a economy drained from colonialism, Nehru was determined to implement several economic policies that would preserve and strengthen India’s sovereignty and freedom, both in the form of economics and politics. Jawaharlal had envisioned India to be economic self-sufficient and independent from foreign capitals. By having India economically independent, he argued, there could be more growth in the economy, and thereby an improvement in the overall living standard and productivity. Additionally, this would include more choices in political decision-making, security, and legitimacy to India as a new nation-state. From the model of development, a Nehruvian India would emerge as a country well equipped with a modern army, an infrastructure (made up of the latest 20th century technology) that defies the capricious changes in nature, and a perpetually self-sustaining industrial sector. Looking with admiration towards the communist economic-planning of the Soviet Union and socialist theorist at the time, Nehru sought towards socialist pattern of society. Under a socialist construct, not only would there be an equal improvement and distribution in wealth, but also erosion to the traditional caste-class discrimination. For Jawaharlal, socialist economic-planning would consist of radical centralization and state planning that worked towards “scientific” and “rational means of creating social prosperity and ensuring its equitable distribution”. Consequently, reforming India’s heterogenic socio-economic classes into an egalitarian society. Beyond economic and political incentives, the economic planning has a heart-felt, symbolic component to it. Nehru had romanticized the industrial sector,