Pandit Nehru's 50 th anniversary has gone unnoticed. Not because Congress is not in power but our sense of history is fading, being over written by aspirations of the day.In the decades of the 1940's and ' 50s, large number of nations either gained independence or went through great politico-economic changes.India , large and socially diverse and given the global politics of the time, perhaps rightly chose under Nehru's stewardship, to hold on to the twin strands of growth and socialism as did other megaliths Russia and China. The smaller nations like Japan and S Korea that were more fortunate and better placed with two broad classes in terms of earning power, could opt and manage to go in for enlightened capitalism.
For two decades and more we did well to pursue the Nehruvian doctrine of Public sectors with its 'Commanding heights " mantra .We ought to have started tapering down this sector and rapidly moved over to the Private sector led economy much earlier and might well have done so but for the 1962 war with China that put us on the defensive,politically and economically, for as long as three decades. By the time we picked up the strands of growth in the 1990's through a liberalised economy,we had a large and languishing Public Sector that even today is a millstone.The last three years of UPA-II in analysis, might well be an updated version of the three long decades we lost prior to the ' 90s.Nehru perhaps pursued a politico-economic line best suited to those times ,but the lesson for a progressive nation is that it matters less as to where it happens to start but more on where it intends to go and how quickly.
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