Prime Minister Narendra Modi recently mentioned independent India’s first prime minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru in a debate in Parliament. This stung the Congress and it hit back flaunting Nehru’s legacy. The Congress has done this before as well. That brings us to this question: Is the Nehru model of governance a legacy or a burden for which Indians have paid a huge price?
While there have often been detailed discussions and debates on Nehru’s policies on foreign affairs, Muslim appeasement and mishandling of Kashmir, there hasn’t been much talk about Nehru’s track record on the governance front. It wouldn’t be wrong to say that the roots of three main malaises of our governance mechanism — corruption, nepotism and inefficiency — can be traced back to the Nehru era.
Walter Crocker, an Australian diplomat who spent around 10 years in India during Nehru’s regime as the Australian High Commissioner has given a detailed account of this misgovernance in Nehru: A Contemporary’s Estimate. This widely-acclaimed first-hand account was first published in 1966. It was republished in 2008 with some updates. Crocker keenly observed the functioning of the Nehru government as that was his job. He himself said, “Over two periods between 1952 and 1962, it was my job to watch Nehru day by day. Had my job in Delhi been anything else, I would have still watched him, out of interest, almost helpless interest. He was interesting because of his political importance but still more interesting because of himself.”
Crocker began with an assessment of the five-year plans. What is often touted as the biggest achievement of Nehruvian economics — the five-year plans — bred inefficiency and corruption providing no respite to the common people.
Crocker observed, “As for what the plans will achieve, they will no doubt achieve — they are already achieving — some industrialisation and some increase in irrigation. This fact remains though, some of the industrialisation will be expensive for what it returns, an inefficient as well as jerry-built. Industry in India is high cost; reports have recently been published showing average factory costs at 40 percent above British and still more above American costs. What the plans will assuredly achieve is to bring about still bigger cities and with bigger slums; Calcutta, for instance conceivably growing from 6 million to 15 million. Planners never seem to think about planning cities.” (Nehru: A contemporary’s estimate, Pp41)
As far as the state of the economy under Nehru was concerned, inflation had skyrocketed, prices nearly doubled during Crocker’s time in India and taxation went up even higher. “The classes which have benefited most have been the speculators (and) urban developers,” observed Crocker. (Pp42)
The biggest challenge immediately after Independence was to revive Indian agriculture and provide adequate food to the millions of Indians who had to go hungry. “Agriculture and the whole process of producing food for the millions, showed little advance. The parlous food position in India, including the low, and still falling, yield per acre was concealed purposely but dangerously concealed for years by some ministers concerned through the millions of tons of free or dumped food from the United States. Though an urgent need, and obvious from the Bengal famine in the 1940s, there was still no proper granary or storage system in Nehru’s time. Famine thus followed glut, and the grain speculators and hoarders flourished.” (Crocker, Pp42)
In fact, Nehru’s urban mindset and his disconnect with rural India proved to be the biggest stumbling block in setting up an efficient governance model. “For the five-year plans reflect the urban mind. Nehru, like most Indian politicians, was urban. Outside of their towns the politicians are like fish without water. This is why agriculture, though given thousands of pages, millions of words, and various huge schemes, such as community development or the Grow More Food campaigns, was not given enough effective action… As for the Nehru plans considered specifically, and apart from the general strategy, they run into hundreds of different projects ranging from small technical schools to big hydroelectric schemes but they have tended to be too imprecise in their priorities or aims; too lacking in a groundwork of intellectual and then solid technical preparation… too much defectiveness in execution so that there has been a shortfall as regards many, perhaps, most targets, and virtual failures.”
Nehru cut a sorry figure as far as governance was concerned, especially since late 1950s. He showed no sign of innovation and governance was a big casualty. “…more and more his… drive… was lost in the routine job of keeping a very large and complicated machine in action, of keeping his party in control, and of keeping himself in control of his party. He could not do much more than get from one crisis to another,” says Crocker.
He further points out the rot that had set in the Congress as well as in the government: “This politician work made ever heavier demand on his (Nehru’s) time; and it also had a good deal to do with his supporting or conniving at, ministers who were notoriously corrupt and at times got near to gangsterism.”
Corruption and misgovernance
There were some major instances of corruption and misgovernance by Nehru’s colleagues in states that Nehru appears to have knowingly ignored. One was related to Chief Minister of Punjab Pratap Singh Kairon, the other two were related to Rajasthan and Jammu and Kashmir.
About Punjab, Crocker observed, “...in the Punjab, the state which adjoins Delhi, a regime flourished for as long as eight years(1956-64), the last eight years of Nehru’s life which was vitiated with corruption and abuse of power… Nehru, apparently convinced that the Chief Minister was indispensable for maintaining political stability in the state... resisted demands for an inquiry.”
Ultimately, former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Justice SR Das held an inquiry into various allegations. Kairon resigned from the post of chief minister after Justice Das’ report was released. This report was released three weeks after Nehru’s death on 27 May 1964.
Punjab was not alone in this context during the Nehru era. “In another state adjoining Delhi, important persons in its government and in the local Congress party were involved in large scale smuggling across the Pakistan-Rajasthan border. The Bakshi regime in Kashmir was another example of misuse of office and it lasted longest of all. There were some other states with Congress governments which also carried corruption far. And there were some ministers in Nehru’s cabinet who could not have survived a proper investigation…This is to say Nehru found himself with a degree of power which has rarely been precedented, yet in practice he made relatively little use of it. Why?,” (Crocker, Pp145-146).
Crocker aptly sums it up, “There can be little doubt that by 1963 the people of India as whole were not better fed or clad, or housed, and were worse, and more corruptly, governed, and subject to a worse situation of law and order, with higher taxes, ever-rising prices, ever-acute foreign exchange difficulties, and more unemployment, than in 1946, the year he became head of the government.”
Those who often tout the Nehru era as the golden years of Indian democracy probably need to understand that unfortunately, Nehru’s legacy has been proving to be a more of a burden as the rot that was set up during his prime ministerial tenure was further institutionalised by the successive Congress governments. Nehru’s model of development or governance that has been proudly carried forward by Congress for several decades at the Centre and states’ level needs to be probed more deeply and responsibility needs to be fixed as the citizens of India have paid a huge price for corruption, inefficiency and nepotism — the hallmarks of Nehru model of governance.
The writer, an author and columnist, has written several books. Views expressed are personal.
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February 12, 2022 at 11:42AM
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