It is a measure of the continuing hold of 19th century rationalism on educated Indians that they have by and large taken it for granted that Mr Nehru opted for a mixed economy, with a steadily expanding public sector, only because he was convinced that this approach was best suited to meet the country’s need for rapid growth and some measure of social justice. It has not even occurred to most of them to ask whether instead of being a personal choice this course was dictated by the existing configuration of political forces in the country.
This observation is doubtless open to one important qualification. A sizeable number of self-styled Marxists have regarded Mr Nehru as the leading representative of what they call the big bourgeoisie and feudal landlords and have held the view that he went in for a fairly substantial public sector not with a view to hurting the growth of capitalism but with that of promoting it. To begin with, the entire communist movement took up this position. Subsequently when a section of the CPI began to discover some merits in Mr Nehru’s foreign policy, following the decision by the Soviet Union and China to befriend India, its militant members, who later broke away to form the CPI (M), continued to denounce him as a reactionary. This has, however, been more an exercise in partisan polemics than a serious attempt at analysing the interplay of political forces in the country.
Indeed, it is enough to point to the failure of Indian Marxists to discuss the crucial role of the educated middle classes in the nation’s political life to underscore their incapacity to do anything better than repeat parrot-like the phraseology they have borrowed either from their counterparts in highly developed countries of Western Europe and the United States or the Soviet Union and China. This is a tragedy of the first order not only because it has condemned thousands of idealistic young men to empty rhetoric and worse as in the case of the Naxalites, but also because it has warped the understanding of many outside the communist or leftist movements. There are, of course, some exceptions. But these only prove the rule as any discerning reader of the recent issue of Seminar on Indian Marxism would testify.
In Tune
This is not to suggest that the existing balance of forces made the rise of the Nehru model of development inevitable, but that it has been in tune with the balance of forces in Indian society. This much should be evident from the fact that the Congress has retained its hold on power ever since.
The Congress party under the leadership of Sardar Patel would in all probability have opted for a different approach to development – something close to 19th century style laissez faire capitalism – and could have perhaps even produced better results not just in terms of production but also in those of popular well-being in the long run. But in the process it could have polarised the intelligentsia and possibly endangered the Congress party’s dominance.
That might well have been a healthy development provided, of course, democracy had survived the tension in the first decade. In fact it can legitimately be argued that the Nehru model has frozen the country’s evolution. But that only establishes the point that it has been in accord with the existing reality.
It is immaterial for the purpose of this discussion to say whether Mr Nehru’s approach was primarily the result of the influence of Fabianism or whether on a careful calculation he came to the conclusion that a mixed economy would ensure social peace by assuaging the politically powerful educated youth on the one hand, and the rapidly growing financial, commercial and industrial interests on the other. In all probability both these factors operated in his case because if it is indisputable that he had been influenced by Fabianism, it is equally beyond question that he was deeply concerned with the need for social peace. In today’s jargon, he functioned on the basis of a consensus. He regarded himself as a radical but not a revolutionary and in that lies the clue to understanding of post-independence developments in India.
Distinction
In all developing countries of Asia and Africa, radicals as well as revolutionaries are the products of the impact of western education, culture, science and technology on relatively stagnant societies. But there is a vital distinction which is not just a matter of conscious choice between gradual progress towards a modern society and a total and complete break with the existing social order. The choice itself is largely predetermined because the entire socio-economic and political ethos is involved in it.
Broadly speaking, educated youth opt for the revolutionary path in societies facing disintegration as in Russia and China in the latter part of the last century but not permitting dissent. Their counterparts in societies which, though in ferment, provide for sufficient outlets for discontent, are more often than not content with gradual progress.
This initial difference leads to another which is even more critical. As educated young men form themselves into secret societies, as they did in Czarist Russia or move into mountainous and barren areas inaccessible to central authority as in China in the ‘thirties,’ they acquire independence of the larger social forces. It follows that if they succeed in seizing power as they did in Moscow and Peking, they can turn their societies upside down if they so choose. They cannot divorce themselves completely from their countries’ past which in a distilled form influences their policies and practices. What is more, new institutions and interests grow in course of time and these have to be accommodated. But for quite some time – under Lenin and Stalin in the Soviet Union and till now in China – the new regimes exercise a measure of independence of society which has never been known in history ever before.
The situation is very different in India for a variety of reasons. Under the British rule it was possible to organise protest openly, and as such there was no great need for secret societies run on military lines. Such terrorist societies as were formed in the first decade were quickly taken care of by the relatively efficient British administration. It is notable that, instead of being motivated by the passion to tear Indian society apart and rebuild it, many of these revolutionaries were revivalists in their outlook – a tribute to the inherent strength of conservatism of Indian society. Gandhiji was a social revolutionary compared with Sri Aurobindo who never concerned himself with the plight of the Harijans and the tribals.
In plain terms when the Congress party came into power in 1947, it could not, unlike the Bolsheviks and the Chinese communists, consider itself a force above and apart from Indian society. In the circumstances, it was only natural that it should have adopted a democratic constitution and in the process maintained and extended the old organic link between itself and the larger community over which it had come to rule.
Mr Nehru chafed at the resulting situation which made it impossible for him either to implement land reforms beyond the initial elimination of the absentee landlords or to discipline business. But by and large he reconciled himself to it and sought escape in foreign policy.
The general view has been that he was inhibited by the fact that his party depended on the rural elite for votes and the business elite for money for fighting elections and that he was handicapped by the absence of a cadre party. There is merit in both these propositions. But a cadre party in power rapidly degenerates into another bureaucracy. In a democracy like India, it would inevitably be corrupt. And who would pay for the cadres?
Inescapable
Be that as it may, the conclusion is inescapable that in the very process of establishing a consensus first on foreign policy and then on economic policy and preventing a crystallisation and polarisation of opinion among the educated elite, Mr Nehru made it extremely difficult for himself to modify the status quo in any significant sense. He doubtless placed himself in this position unwittingly. But that is a different matter.
Two other points deserve to be made. Businessmen have resented controls which have truly become Byzantine in their complexity. But they have never had it so good in terms of personal fortunes, legal as well as illegal. The bureaucracy which implements the controls has proliferated and become venal. The mixed economy has, in short, led to hybridisation of value systems. The result is there for anyone to see.
The Times of India, 3 July 1974