India After Independence: 1947-2000 by Bipan Chandra Read Free Book Online Page A

intervention. Economic planning by the government and the massive development of the public sector were widely accepted in the thirties. The state was to develop large-scale and key industries apart from infrastructure, such as power, irrigation, roads and water-supply, where large resources were needed, and which were beyond the capacity of Indian capital. As early as 1931, the Resolution on Fundamental Rights and Economic Programme, adopted at the Karachi session of the Indian National Congress declared that in independent India ‘the State shall own or control key industries and services, mineral resources, railways, waterways, shipping and other means of public transport.’ 5 Interestingly, the session was presided over by Sardar Patel, the Resolution drafted by Jawaharlal Nehru and moved in the open session by Gandhiji. To promote planning as an instrument ofintegrated and comprehensive development Congress sponsored in 1938 the National Planning Committee while the Indian capitalists formulated the Bombay Plan in 1943.
    Gandhiji was the only major nationalist leader who disagreed with the emphasis on modern industry. But, in time, even he met the dominant view half way. In the thirties, he repeatedly asserted that he was not opposed to all machine industries but only to those which displaced human labour. He added that he would ‘prize every invention of science made for the benefit of all.’ But this was subject to one condition: all large-scale industries should be owned and controlled by the state and not by private capitalists. Nevertheless, Gandhiji did not insist that the national movement should accept his economic approach or agenda, as he did in the case of non-violence, Hindu-Muslim unity and opposition to untouchability. He also did not counterpose his views to those of the other nationalists as witnessed by his moving the resolution at the Karachi session of the Congress in 1931 which favoured development of large-scale industry under state ownership or control. It is also significant that in 1942 he made Jawaharlal Nehru his heir despite the latter’s total commitment to the development of industry and agriculture on the basis of modern science and technology. At the same time, the nationalist movement accepted the Gandhian perspective on cottage and small-scale industries. This perspective was to find full reflection in the Nehruvian Second Five Year Plan.
    The Indian national movement was quite radical by contemporary standards. From the beginning it had a pro-poor orientation. For example, the poverty of the masses and the role of colonialism as its source was the starting point of Dadabhai Naoroji’s economic critique of colonialism. With Gandhi and the rise of a socialist current this orientation was further strengthened. The removal of poverty became the most important objective next to the overthrow of colonialism.
    From the late twenties, Jawaharlal Nehru, Subhas Chandra Bose, the Congress Socialists, the Communists, the Revolutionary Terrorists and various other socialist groups strove to give the national movement a socialist orientation and to popularize the vision of a socialist India after independence. Socialist ideas assumed prominence within the movement, attracting the younger nationalist cadre and large sections of the nationalist intelligentsia, but they did not become the dominant current. Jawaharlal Nehru, the major ideologue of socialism in pre-1947 India, readily conceded that Congress had not in any way accepted socialism as its ideal. Rather the goal it sought was the creation of an egalitarian society in which all citizens would have equal opportunities and ‘a civilized standard of life . . . so as to make the attainment of this equal opportunity a reality.’ 6
    Nevertheless, even while the question of the basic economic structure of free India remained open and undecided, the socialists did succeed in giving the national movement a leftist tilt. It was committed to