Now largely forgotten, the Bombay Plan gives the lie to the claim that Jawaharlal Nehru imposed a model of centralized economic development on an unwilling capitalist class. One wonders what free-market pundits would make of it now. They would probably see it as a dirigiste tract, unworthy of capitalism and capitalists. In truth, it should be seen simply as symptomatic of the Zeitgeist, of the spirit of the times.12 That spirit was all in favour of centralized planning, of the state occupying what was called the ‘commanding heights’ of the economy.
