Nehruvian policies often come under fire from those with laissez faire leanings and observing the state of the country today it is easy to find fault with Jawaharlal Nehru's socialist leanings.
Reading about Uzbekistan or Tajikistan or Belarus on one hand and Haiti or Nigeria on the other, one cannot but admire the wisdom displayed by the leaders of our country in 1947.
We should count our blessings that we did not end up a communist nation with all power devolved into the hands of a few. This was not an impossibility at the time. No nation has successfully made the move from Communism, with complete state ownership of all means of production to any society that provides a freedom of will to its people.
At the other end of the spectrum complete capitalism, with an illiterate population and a few Oxford educated capitalists might have seen this country end up an oligarchy.
Capitalism polarizes wealth and unbridled capitalism does so with a degree of unfairness that is deplorable.
Admittedly, India's slow progress from a planned economy to a free-er market has been plagued by inefficiencies and corruption. But so has it been the case in most of today's developed economies. England wasn't exactly a fair society especially for the landless serfs. And it has them perhaps three centuries to move from an aristocracy to a meritocracy.
Today, India's middle class, by some reckoning, numbers almost 300 million and is slated to grow to 600 million by 2020. That is almost half the population. More importantly, this middle class is all literate and unwilling to be exploited. This strong middle class is likely to be the bane of the oligarchs and the corrupt. Indians tend to be a tolerant lot, too tolerant for our own good, but once a tipping point is reached, our people are willing to face up to the powers that be and topple them.
Another generation. Another 30 years. That should be when India will take its place of pride in the world.
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