The God Who Failed: An Assessment of Jawaharlal Nehru's Leadership

by Madhav Godbole

Nehru’s fascination with the Communist world in general and the USSR, in particular, was seen from his presidential address to the 49th session of the Indian National Congress in April 1936: I am convinced that the only key to the solution of the world’s problems and of India’s problems lies in socialism… It means a new civilization, radically different from the present capitalist order. Some glimpse we can have of this new civilization in the territories of the USSR… I look upon that great and fascinating unfolding of a new order and a new civilization as the most promising feature of our dismal age. If the future is full of hope it is largely because of Soviet Russia and what it has done, and I am convinced that…this new civilization will spread to other lands and put an end to the wars and conflicts which capitalism feeds… I do not know how or when this new order will come to India… Socialism is thus for me not merely an economic doctrine which I favour; it is a vital creed which I hold with all my head and heart… How does socialism fit in with the present ideology of the Congress? I do not think it does….

Introducing the Congress Party election manifesto at the AICC session in Bangalore on 14 July 1951, Nehru had said: Laissez faire is almost a dodo; you know dodo is an extinct bird. So he who thinks in terms of laissez faire, lives in the past which has no meaning today, certainly in India. Therefore, any private enterprise has to be co-ordinated very much to the plan. It must fit into the plan, it must be subjected to certain controls too… Some people talk about nationalisation as if that solves the problem… It is more important that the country’s resources, as they are today, should be employed in starting new enterprises, than in acquiring some odd and some rather out-of-date profits [sic]. (JNMF 1994; p.18)

R.C. Dutt, ICS, has stated: ‘Nehru will go down in history as the first statesman who sought to build socialism, in which he passionately believed, without violence and without expropriation, by a gradual expansion of the public sector.’ (Dikshit 1989; p.197)

Nehru reiterated that ‘Iron and steel as well as power are the foundations of all industrial progress. I do not think that we can have effective planning without fully controlling certain basic industries. We talk about a mixed economy and it seems to me quite inevitable, in existing circumstances, that we should have a mixed economy. But we also look forward to the progressive growth of the public sector.’

Nehru was keen that the public sector should not function as a government department. Nehru wrote in his letter to chief ministers dated 24 December 1954: A proposal was made the other day to have a statutory committee in Parliament to supervise the public sector. The proposal was rightly rejected. If the public sector is to function effectively, it has to be given freedom and initiative. Otherwise, it will become a routine government department… It is for this reason that we decided long ago to have our major state enterprises in the form of autonomous corporations so that there is no day to day interference with their work. (Parthasarathi 1988; p.113)

The Industrial Policy laid down in April 1956, bureaucratized the licensing of industries. The all powerful licensing committee composed of representatives of the various central government ministries and the Planning Commission. The representatives of state governments were also invited to these meetings. I had to attend the meetings of the licensing committee in 1964–65 and used to be shocked, every time, by the all-knowing stance and arrogance of the officers. The ‘license-permit raj’ began with this regime. Deservedly or otherwise, one could acquire a licence and sit on it for years together, precluding others from coming in. Long discussions used to take place even on small proposals for importing technology for packing and packaging.

1954, Nehru indicated the direction in which the Congress and its government was going to move at the forthcoming Avadi session of AICC: ‘The picture I have in mind is definitely and absolutely a socialistic picture of society. I am not using the word in a dogmatic sense at all. I mean largely that the means of production should be socially owned and controlled for the benefit of society as a whole. There is plenty of room for private enterprise provided the main aim is kept clear.’

Till 1919 the Congress was A.O. Hume’s party. Till January 1955 it was Gandhi’s party. After 1955 it became a Gandhi–Nehru party.

Ashok Mehta in A Study of Nehru (edited by Rafiq Zakaria, 1959): ‘In the case of leaders of men there is an angle of refraction between ideas and achievements. In Nehru the angle has grown with the unfolding of his ideas. In their very acceptance has disenchantment grown. That is at once the glory and tragedy of Jawaharlal Nehru.’

Nani A. Palkhivala, speaking at the fourteenth Nehru Memorial Lecture on 7 November 1990 had referred to what The Economist had remarked in January 1987 that ‘socialism as practiced in India had been a fraud. Our brand of socialism did not result in transfer of wealth from the rich to the poor, but only from the honest rich to the dishonest rich.

The most persistent tendency in India has been to have too much government and too little administration; too many laws and too little justice; too many public servants and too little public service; too many controls and too little welfare.” (Grigg 1992; p.236) One cannot agree with Palkhivala more. It is a parody of Nehruvian socialism.

Nehru was particularly keen that there should be fullest public participation and discussion in the preparation of five year plans, including in the village panchayats and schools. Nehru wrote to chief ministers in his fortnightly letter on 10 September 1952: The vast majority of our population know little about this [First] plan. It seems to me essential that the common people should have some knowledge of it, some understanding of its significance, some appreciation of how it affects them. I think that some very simple pamphlets in Hindi and provincial languages should be prepared and sent to all our village bodies and gram panchayats and the like, for them to read and discuss it… There may be three such pamphlets-one dealing with the five year plan as a whole, the second with the community development projects, and the third with river valley schemes. There is another approach which is even more important, that is through our schools. These simple pamphlets should be sent to every school and the teachers ought to be asked to read them to their classes, to explain them and even to encourage a discussion on them. (Parthasarathi 1987; p.105)

The plan envisaged a total outlay of ₹2,069 crore during 1951–56. It accorded the highest priority to agriculture, irrigation and power sectors.

Nehru had reviewed the progress achieved in the first two plans. Nehru said: When we began planning, India’s economy had been almost stagnant for a long time… During the first two plans, national income increased by 42 per cent. During the ten-year period the population increased by seventy-seven million, and yet there was an increase in per capita income from ₹284 to ₹330. In these ten years, agricultural production increased by 41 per cent, industrial production by 94 per cent and power by 148 per cent. Railways carried 70 per cent more goods traffic and the traffic on surface roads increased by nearly 50 per cent. In the field of education, twenty million more children went to school.

There has been considerable improvement in expectation of life at birth too. ‘In British India it was just twenty-four years. It was shocking. In 1941–51 the expectation of life at birth was thirty-two. During the Second Plan it rose to forty-two. It is 47.5 at present [1961].’

22 August 1963, Nehru had underlined: ‘I do not know of any country where an attempt has been made to achieve the ideal of social democracy through planning. Planning has, of course, been done in other countries; but not through democratic processes. Other countries which are democratic have not accepted planning. But the combination of these two concepts is rather unique.’ (GOI 1968; p.81)

26 March 1958 Nehru reiterated: Let us remember that a school is essentially the teacher, not the building. The teacher, without any apparatus or building, can function as a school. This is an obvious proposition and yet it is ignored. I think the time has come, indeed it came long ago, for us to decide, definitely and positively, to have schools in our village without buildings, and to spend more on the teacher and on equipment. I think we can do without buildings completely for the primary schools, though, of course, a building is desirable where possible. But let us compromise on this issue and have the smallest structure, just to keep books and equipment, the classes being held in the open… Our climate is such that, for the great part of the year, it is easy and indeed healthier to sit in the open or under some shady tree. Perhaps the monsoon period is the only time when it is difficult to sit in the open. Let us have our school holidays during the monsoons. The main thing is the teacher. Let us train him better and give him a higher salary and some amenities. The rest will follow. (JNMF 2010; pp.822–3)

It is important to note that the private sector investment increased from ₹1800 crore in the first plan (which was more than the public sector investment of ₹1560 crore) to ₹3100 crore in the second plan. This was quite substantial considering the rhetoric about [the] socialistic pattern of society which frightened outsiders so much.

Dey has observed that the third plan met with its Waterloo on the food front, its final target achievement on food being even lower than what it was at the beginning of the plan… A vicious circle ensued that bedevilled and threatened the planning process as a whole. Denigration of the Planning Commission began with a vengeance. Interested people began to plan against planning itself. (Dey 1969; p.93)

Nehru’s views on subsidies were very rational. He wrote to the chief ministers on 18 May 1952: ‘So far as the question of subsidy is concerned, we have to remember that every sum given as subsidy is that much less for development. We cannot have it both ways. It is a painful choice.’ (Parthasarathi 1986; p.617)

Speaking in the House of Commons in 1832, Sir Charles Metcalf had even called the Indian villages ‘little republics’. He had said: The village communities are little republics, having nearly everything they can want within themselves and almost independent of any foreign relations. They seem to last when nothing else lasts. Dynasty after dynasty tumbles down, revolution succeeds revolution but the village communities, each one forming a separate little state in itself has contributed more than any other cause to the preservation of the people of India.

Ambedkar called the village republics the ruination of India and the village a sink of localism, a den of ignorance, narrow-mindedness and communalism.

revenue, planning and statistical departments should act as a unified agency;

Nehru had lamented that in regard to community development projects, the states have been unable to spend the moneys sanctioned and there is quite a big gap in this respect. In his letter to chief ministers dated 26 April 1954, Nehru wrote: ‘Last year, ₹8 crore were sanctioned and somewhat less than ₹2 crore were spent, this too probably on overheads. This year, ₹22 crore have been sanctioned and I doubt very much if we will spend even a major part of that sum.’ (Parthasarathi 1987; p.482)

In his address at Columbia University, New York, in October 1949, Nehru had given a concise definition of the objectives of India’s foreign policy: The pursuit of peace, not through alignment with any major power or group of powers, but through an independent approach to each controversial or disputed issue; the liberation of subject peoples; the maintenance of freedom, both national and individual; the elimination of racial discrimination; and the elimination of want, disease and ignorance which afflict the greater part of the world’s population.

in 1950. Vallabhbhai Patel had, by his two letters (Annexure I) invited the attention of Nehru to the threat of expansionist policies of China and had warned against pursuing the case of China’s entry into the UNO, without quid-pro-quo. But Nehru seemed to be living in his own make-believe world, so far as China was concerned.

As far as I can see, there is neither breadth nor depth about the average American. There is technical knowledge in a special field which is certainly important. The United States is hardly a place where one could go at present in search of higher culture. Nehru’s dislike of the US helped to expose a prejudice against the US.

August 1963, Acharya Kripalani had derided Panchsheel as ‘Panch Nonsense’.

B.K. Nehru has written: ‘The [Chinese] war ended but in a short period of time it had altered the very fundamentals of our relationship with the United States. We continued to talk in terms of non-alignment but we had become in fact the allies of the United States in their confrontation at least against China.’

Jagmohan has rightly observed that the members of the ICS were a product of the intellectual climate of the times and the educational culture of the British public schools and the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, which injected in them norms and values of a ‘great gentleman’. Motilal Nehru had said in a letter published in the Hindustan Times of 23 March 1926: ‘Strange as it may seem to some, I have found the sun-dried bureaucrat to be the most charming fellow in the world once he has put off the bureaucratic mask which is so indispensable a part of his official kit.’ (Jagmohan 2005; pp.34–5, 41)

Speaking of the secretaries of departments and magistrates, Nehru had written in the Discovery of India: ‘They speak from a noble and unattainable height, secure not only in the conviction that what they say and do is right, but that it will have to be accepted as right whatever lesser mortals may imagine, for theirs is the power and glory.’ (Kashyap 1990; p.79) Nehru had written in his autobiography: ‘The spirit of authoritarianism is the ally of imperialism and it cannot co-exist with freedom. It will either succeed in crushing freedom or, will be swept itself. Only with one type of state it is likely to fit in and that is the Fascist type. Therefore, it seems quite essential that ICS and similar services must disappear completely as such before we can start real work on a new order.’ (Kashyap 1990; p.79) At the Meerut session of the Indian National Congress in 1946, Nehru lamented that ‘the civil services were fossilised in their mental outlook. They were wedded to bygone [era] and obsolete methods and refused to move with the times.’

Nehru. He was also very critical of the ‘caste system’ in services in terms of classification of civil servants. As seen from discussion hereafter, he made genuine efforts to address these problems but met with resistance and indifference on the part of senior officers and ministers.

26 October 1953, Nehru took the opportunity to share his thinking on administrative matters: New Delhi is a jungle, a jungle of able men, still a jungle. You are lost in this jungle of administrative maze and labyrinths because there are thousands of offices and roads…

I have objection to those who are specially qualified for a particular profession sitting in the office, quill-driving. I consider it a waste of their talents, knowledge and experience… Our services are steeped in a system of gradation or caste system which is probably the legacy of British rule… It is a wrong way to assess a man’s worth by the salary drawn by him or the designation attached to his post… The new age will dawn only when there are no chaparasis. But here the practice is entirely different. Nobody wants to walk even to the neighbouring room. Even in this age of telephones, everybody wants to send messages through peons. I have heard that before the [Second World] War there were only 3,200 peons here in Delhi but now this number has increased to 19,000… (JNMF 1999; pp.30–35)

In his note dated 20 March 1954 to the home minister, Nehru had expressed himself in favour of taking persons from outside the government for manning specialized posts. Nehru wrote: ‘My own approach to this question is somewhat different and I think it is always good to take competent men from outside the Services for specialised posts. That tones up the Services.’ Nehru said he had already done this in so far as the Foreign Service was concerned. Nehru had underlined once again the cabinet decision that promotion should be by merit and not by seniority. He wanted a special record to be kept of bright officers and also a special record of some particularly dull officers. Nehru wrote: ‘I think Service men should realise that security in the Service depends on continued competence and efficiency and that they will not get promotion and indeed they may not continue in the Service if they fail from even normal standards.’ (JNMF 1999; pp.251–2)

Appleby Report. Appleby had laid stress on the changing of administrative procedures and more especially on financial procedures.

two major initiatives taken by government at the instance of Appleby. One pertained to the setting up of an Organization and Methods (O&M) division to scrutinize the procedures and so on. I had an occasion to see its work in the Finance Ministry in Delhi and as principal finance secretary in Maharashtra. It has had no impact whatsoever and has become just a pointless appendage. The second was to set up the Indian Institute of Public Administration (IIPA) in Delhi as an apex institution to continuously review the working of the government and suggest reforms which need to be undertaken. This experiment too has not served any purpose.

14 September 1953 Nehru had emphasized: ‘The mere fact that our Services are divided into Class I, II, III and IV is an unhappy approach. Promotion must depend on merit and not on seniority, except perhaps in the lowest grades. That, I believe, is the rule in most modern states, certainly in the United Kingdom.’ (JNMF 1998; p.156)

9 June 1958 Nehru had invited attention to the observations of Gunnar Myrdal, a well-known economist: An eminent foreign economist was comparing the measure of work done in India to the quality and measure in Europe or America. He pointed out that ‘we compared very unfavourably’. First of all, we have too may holidays, secondly our hours of work are not adequate and thirdly, we do not work intensively, and so as a result we produce much less than is done in many Western countries. This applies, he said, not merely to plants and factories, but all along the line, including agriculture, our offices, our teachers, our students and our politicians.

The breed of civil servants wearing their loyalty to the Nehru–Gandhi family on their shirt sleeves have walked tall in the bureaucracy all these years. To have such a politicized civil service is a negation of the basic precepts of permanent civil service.

Nehru had said, ‘It is obviously necessary to protect public servants, but it is also necessary to protect the public from them.’

during the independence struggle, Nehru underwent imprisonment for as many as 3,262 days, that is, nine years, less twenty-three days.

[Nehru] says in his autobiography: ‘Personally I owe too much to England in my mental make-up ever to feel wholly alien to her, and do what I will, I cannot get rid of the habits of mind and the standards and the way of judging other countries as well as life generally, which I acquired at school and college in England…’

I see no logic or sense in this suppression of books… It is a dangerous power in the hands of a government: The right to determine what shall be read and what shall not. And it almost always fails to achieve its object. Those who wish to do so can usually get hold of the proscribed book. In India the power is likely to be misused and has been misused a hundred times. (Gopal 1980; p.506)

To my mind, the freedom of the press is not just a slogan…it is an essential attribute of the democratic process…even if the government dislikes the liberties taken by the press and considers them dangerous, it is wrong to interfere with the freedom of the press… I would rather have a completely free press with all the dangers involved in the wrong use of that freedom than a suppressed press or a regulated press. (Gill 1996; p.29)

when proclaiming the new creed at Avadi, he said and repeated that the socialism he was talking about was an Indian socialism, the socialism of co-existence not the socialism of conflict and class struggle.

the democratization of a traditional society with a low level of literacy required the raising of the political awareness of the people.

Nehru is often perceived as a person who did not remain firm and was hesitant in decision-making. This was mainly because he was a democrat to the core and wanted to carry everyone along, even if it meant being called indecisive.

In his letter to Ramdhari Sinha ‘Dinkar’ dated 10 September 1956, Nehru wrote: I am convinced that real mass progress in India can only be made through our languages and not through a foreign language. I am anxious to prevent a new caste system being perpetuated in India—an English-knowing caste separated from the mass of our people… I cannot conceive of English being the principal medium of education in India in the future. That medium has to be Hindi or some other regional language.

On Nehru’s death, C. Rajagopalachari wrote this peculiarly affecting obituary: Eleven years younger than me, eleven times more important to the nation, eleven hundred times more beloved of the nation, Sri Nehru has suddenly departed from our midst and I remain alive to hear the sad news from Delhi—and bear the shock… The old guardroom is completely empty now… I have been fighting Sri Nehru all these ten years over what I consider faults in public policies. But I knew all along that he alone could get them corrected. No one else would dare do it, and he is gone, leaving me weaker than before in my fight. But, fighting apart, a beloved friend is gone, the most civilized person among us all. Not many among us are civilized yet. God save our people. (Guha 2010; p.485)