In course of an online debate with my good friend Avinash (debate via mails), i realised i actually came up with substantial reference matter for my blog. So here i post my response on the blog.
But before that, this is what Avinash had written to me...
I will not blame Nehru, Inidira and Rajiv for what they have done.
I am poor in statistics and knowledge, but have studied some economics
during my college time and remember our professor telling us that the
best growth rate ever achived by India was by Rajiv Gandhi and that was
8% of the GDP. Whatever computers, television etc..we are talking about
today is all because of Rajiv Gandhi..
We are self sufficuent when it comes to food..is all because of the
Green Reveloution..Thanks to Indira Gandhi..(The need of the hour was
Green revolution/Population control etc..and not opening up our
economy.).
Nationalisatin of banks and taking away the wealth from the so called
King's of various provinces and abolishing the Kingdom system..all was
essential to protect interest of the poor and middle class...Indira
gandhi did exactly that. If we had opened up economy at this stage the
difference between poor and rich would have grown..which is not the case
today....
If we had opened up our economy immediately after Independence our own
Business Tycoons would not have got enough opputunities to grow..as they
would have died to the competition with the MNCs ....we invaribly would
have been ruled by just outsiders.
What we have done in those 40 years is ..we have built our own
capability and now we are in a position to export more than that we
import..thus being able to maintain the Balance of Payment.
Today our Law and order is in place, our system, processes ,
constitution etc..etc.. All is in place thus we do not really have any
threat from outsiders....
Remember Britishers also came to do business and then ruled us for 200
years...we were not matured enough then..but immediately after getting
independence there was no margin for us to make the same mistake..i.e.
allowing any other country to come and do business...so I think Nehru
made the right decision to not to open up the economy immediately...
Though it was not possible to cover each & every point of his mail i did try to reason with most...
The Follies of Nehru-Gandhi family & it's cost to the Nation
In a world where everything is subjective & specially media news, it is difficult for me to put things in correct perpective. But i will try &
back up my claims with available data. It might not be possible to get links to everything though. But i am convinced of my view point & feel
i have developed over the period of time an informed opinion about India's past politicians.
I may add that i intend to respect your opinion & point of view too, as you too have got it from the sources that you beilived were authentic.
So let me start with the very root of most sources of information. After reading your response of Nehru-Gandhi family & their contribution, i recall a small unofficial debate in my hostel room with one of my room-mates. He was quoting extensively from Times Of India & Indian Express. He was a big Rajiv Gandhi fan & would not listen anything negative against him. I figured out during the course of debate that it is very hard to argue against a 'conventional wisdom'. Convetional wisdom; something that majority feel is right.
Really speaking, how do you think a person forms an opinion about a subject. Most of us believe what was written in our history books as divine truth.
We never question the official wisdom. Similarly we take on face value the other source of information i.e newspapers & Electronic media. May be even radio.We never try to analyse if the newpaper which is reporting this news item has applied it's own spin to the facts.
For our generation we were exposed to Doordarshan for as late as 1989.There were no private news channels then. DD was totally government controlled. Even the Times Of India newspaper which most of us read was & is till date a Congress run newspaper. (Dilip Padgaonkar, the Editor-in-chief of TOI is a known Congress supporter & a Rajiv Gandhi crooni). Similarly Indian Express after Arun Shourie's exit, has been more or less treading the Congress-Line, though it is not as blantant as TOI in it's congress support. So i am not suprised when i see most of our generation who were exposed to these mediums feel enamoured by Rajiv,Indira & Nehru.
Point being, over the period of 40 years or so Gandhi-Nehru family has been packaged & branded in a manner so as to suit the successive Congress (I) governments. We were never exposed to the other side of the story. Over the years of reading India-Today regularly & now rediff.com i came across a whole lot of articles which , if i may say, atleast tried to challenge the conventional wisdom regarding Nehru-Gandhi family. It is practically impossible for me to list down all those well written articles, but i will try & put some links which in some ways are an eye opener.
I off course do feel that all the 3, viz Nehru , Indira & Rajiv Gandhi did contribute somethings positive. But their negatives far outweigh their positives.
And in my opinion it does not hurt to see the other side & than form an opinion. Even at the cost of challenging the conventional wisdom.
Point 1: Whatever computers, television etc..we are talking about
today is all because of Rajiv Gandhi..
-I beg to disagree...This is over-simplification & giving away too much of credit to Rajiv Gandhi for something that was going to happen even if somebody else was a PM. It's like saying that whatever fly-overs & roads we are seeing in Bombay today is b'cos of Shive Sena government.
This is a trivia i found of Rajiv Gandhi from an online encyclopedia
Trivia
Rajiv Gandhi remains the only prime minister of India to be photographed in Jeans with Lacoste T-shirt. Rajiv Gandhi studied at Imperial College London and Cambridge University, but did not complete any degrees.
http://www.answers.com/topic/rajiv-gandhi
So essentially this blue-eyed boy of Indian politics was a non-serious, fun loving, non-graduate P.M who somehow had little or no grips on technology & science. He's made out to be a techno-savy guy by our Indian media, but i refuse to buy this. All he did to incorporate modernism in India was to rope in people like Sam Pitroda from UK & bring home the telecom advantage. But i would say that was a minimum that was to be done during the first half of 1980's. There was an electronic boom in the region. Every country worth it's salt was joining the telecom revolution sweeping the world.
In fact the World of electronics was going through a mini-revolution in East Asia, specially Japan & Taiwan..
http://www.wtec.org/loyola/em/05_03.htm
We actually missed the bus of Computer Hardware to lesser countries like Taiwan & China. Thanks to Rajiv Gandhi all he did was to glamourize the telecom industry using his Crooni Sam Pitroda to study the telecom revolution. We should have been the outsourcing capital of world in Hardware as well. That would have needed foresight. Something that Rajiv Gandhi lacked with his half baked education.
If i remember correctly we were still getting smuggled electronic goods from Singapore & Dubai as recently as 1990s , when in fact we should have been the producers of those very electronics items. What china & taiwan did was just learnt the art of making chips & micro-processors & owing to their cheap labour produced hardware. We would have been a better work force than them. If not better atleast a formidable work force. I do not buy this fiction that Rajiv Gandhi went out of the way to bring about what most people call Telecom revolution. Yes he did ask Sam Pitroda to come up with a white paper on potential for telecom in India, but i say any PM in his place would have done that. Telecom was a happening thing & sunrise industry of 1980s. Every leader of every country was investing in that. It was not a biggie, and Rajiv Gandhi was not the cause but just the coincindence of being a PM at that point of time.
Point 2 : We are self sufficuent when it comes to food..is all because of the
Green Reveloution
Sometimes we make Heroes & Champions out of undeserving people. And forget the real force behind a success. Check this article
written by a person of some standing & belonging to the agriculture field itself
http://www.hindu.com/mag/2001/11/04/stories/2001110400220400.htm
Before i dig further, also read this article on 'Green Revolution'
However, the term "Green Revolution" is applied to the period from 1967 to 1978. Between 1947 and 1967, efforts at achieving food self-sufficiency were not entirely successful. Efforts until 1967 largely concentrated on expanding the farming areas. But starvation deaths were still being reported in the newspapers. In a perfect case of Malthusian economics, population was growing at a much faster rate than food production. This called for drastic action to increase yield. The action came in the form of the Green Revolution.
The term "Green Revolution" is a general one that is applied to successful agricultural experiments in many Third World countries. It is NOT specific to India.
Complete article here...
http://www.indiaonestop.com/Greenrevolution.htm
- Green revolution helped farmers of Rajasthan,Haryana & Punjab produce more. But even today we have hunger deaths in Maharahshtra (latest Melghat), AP & Orrissa, Rajasthan.
http://www.peoplesmarch.com/archives/2001/july2k1/millions.htm
We do not have the required infrastructure & network to make excess food grains available to poor.
Indira Gandhi did help promote green revolution, but if you ask me that was long over due. In fact if we did not have our economy closed, we could
have developed the skill & techical know-how of producing more food in less land long back...This technology was later exported from Israel few years back. Growth needs technology. Our farmers are even today using older methods to produce. Had we inherited some technical know-how 30-40 years back, we would have been far more economically healthier. Why do you think most farmers left farming & migrated to bigger cities like Bombay & stayed in sub-human conditions in slums ? We should have allowed technology to freely flow in India & bargained that for something else. Instead of closing down ourselves from the world, we should have encouraged private investments in every fields. That would have increased GDP, more jobs, lesser dependencies & burden on bigger cities. May be we would have seen class difference. May be we would have seen many people becoming rich at cost ofworking class. But that's still better than utter poverty which we saw for 3 decades. And talking of class difference even today the class difference is same as it was 3 decades ago. Visit a remote village of Vidharba & you'll figure out what i am saying. If we have added rich to our population so have we added poor equally. Nehru's socialism as you say was to remove the class difference , failed even on that front.
Point 3 :Nationalisatin of banks and taking away the wealth from the so called
King's of various provinces and abolishing the Kingdom system..all was
essential to protect interest of the poor and middle class...Indira
gandhi did exactly that
Trivia on Indira Gandhi:
She received her college education at Somerville College, Oxford but did not receive a degree. (This academic trend was carried over to the next generation when her son Rajiv did not receive a degree from Cambridge University and grandson Rahul who left Harvard without a degree!)
Did you know that Indira Gandhi won a landslide election victory after the Bank Nationalisation ? It was a move more out of political compulsion rather than any love for poor or the middle class. During the early 70's there was a period of economic deppression. The Left-wing (communist parties) were going very strong. Even in places like Mumbai , the factory strikes were becoming routine with leaders like Datta Samant & George Fernandes leading.
Indira Gandhi's nationalization of banks was a politically correct move at that point. It was to take the wind away from her opposition.
A "move severely derided by economists at the time, but for which she received immediate approval from the masses."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indira_Gandhi
Off course as i said earlier, convetional wisdom tells us that she was a great women who did all this for love of masses.
Point 4 :Today our Law and order is in place, our system, processes ,
constitution etc..etc..
Some articles on riots in India
http://us.rediff.com/news/2005/mar/10kanch.htm
http://www.rediff.com/news/2001/may/09sikh.htm
And a list of riots in India
http://www.hindunet.org/alt_hindu/1994_2/msg00096.html
- Law & Order is so bad that we do not even consider news of rape or mass genocide or riots as "news" at all. We think it is a routine.
Before Gujarat riots was made an international news by our so called social workers & media... There were far far worse riots which never got so much of media focus. 1)Bhiwandi -1970 more than 3000 deaths 2) Sikhs'1984 - officially more than 5000 deaths 3)Bhagalpur,Bihar 1989- more than 2000 deaths in 2 days.
We do not consider murder,riots & killing of IAS officials in Bihar,UP,Bengal as front page news any more. We think that's normal. That's routine. Such is the bad state of law & order.
point 5 :All is in place thus we do not really have any
threat from outsiders....
Our borders are not safe.
We have had 3 major wars so far. We have conceded millions of acres of land to China & Pakistan. Even a small & insignificant nation like
Bangladesh treats us with scant respect. Just recently our Army office Jeevan Kumar was trapped into Bangladesh border & killed
http://us.rediff.com/news/2005/apr/19kanch.htm
We are looked upon as a soft nation & almost as Swapan Das Gupta says - "mere pushovers".
We have more than a crore of Bangladeshi immigrants staying illegally in country who hamper nation's economy. Assam has the highest growth rate
of population in the country thanks to millions of banglas
http://www.asthabharati.org/Dia_Oct01/Bangla.htm
From 1990 - Pakistan's policy of "Bleeding India" through low-voltage war & high voltage terrorism has left India spending major amount of money in defending our country. There's threat from outsider from all the fronts. East,West,North.
Is terrorism not a threat ? Is the never ending immigration from Bangladesh not a threat ? Is China making Pakistan a nuclear neighbour not a threat?
Is Sri Lanka deporting millions of tamils inside Indian borders not a threat ? We are constantly under threat from every side ? Contact a BSF Jawan on our border to know what i say. If we come out of our cushy jobs & life we will realise how many mother's loose their sons every day fighting an external threat. How many young girls are widowed every day on the LOC.
I think one of the Nehru's legacy is making India a soft nation. In lust to remain in power the successive congress governments have created vote banks & now it seems even bangladeshis are being made citizens for votes.
Such is the poor state of affairs that we may soon find Bangladeshis & Pakistanis as our Members of Parliament.
Coming back to Nehru-Gandhi family
When you want to analyse a persons contribution I would assume it's good to see in totality what his or her actions led to. What were the consequences of his or her policies. Let's start with Nehru.
Nehru - Born & Bred in a high society with a barrister father & an english education in Oxford (or was it Cambridge); this guy did not have a pulse on poverty. He was idealist who was neither an economist nor a technologically oriented person. he was essentially a master of english literature who
was a day dreamer. He wanted to become a hero in international media & always wore a facade of being moderate & modern. Even at the cost of nation's interest he went ahead & gave a nod for having Plebiscite in Kashmir in the UNO in 1948, when our veer jawans had almost gone till Lahore & defeated pakistan under trying conditions. He bargained India's gain to look great in front of International audience.
We are still paying for his mistakes. I can write an entire book on his follies. But i do not need to as much more learned persons than me like Arun Shourie,Swapan Das Gupta & several others have already written. Today we talk with our big mouths about "scams" reported in Kargil war over the coffins & blame an honest defense minister like George Fernandes for this. Did you know that during China war our Jawans did not have enough winter clothers to combat the Chinese in the himalayas in freezing winter?
As i said to list down Nehru's grand follies will require pages & pages to write.. So to be fair i will list down his positives & negatives.
+ve
1. Was a good politician.
2. Was honest.
3. Gave a good start to Indian Science with BARC & IITs.
-Ve:
1. Very Very poor foriegn policy.
2. China war. (First Hindi-Chini Bhai Bhai & than war)
3. Going to UNO over Kashmir issue & making it bring in world focus & giving Pakistan the much needed stick to beat India (we are still paying for it)
4. The creater of the license-quota-raj & Father of "Socialism" which failed miserably.
5. Followed the Russian Economic Model rather than European & American model.
6. Was a leftist.
7. Appeased Muslims & created a Muslim vote bank.(Very dangerous for Democracy)
8. Article 370 (Sp.Status to Kashmir) & not implementing Common Civil Code.(Huge Blunder)
Indira Gandhi
+ve:
1. Was a strong & shrewed politician.
2. Green Revolution (Let's give her that)
3. Bangladesh War (she was strong)
-ve:
1. Imposed Emergency
2. Gave scant respect to Judiciary system in India & in turn weakened the Institution.(She over-ruled High courts order on more than one occassion)
3. Institutionalised Corruption by giving sweeping powers to Babus & Government authorities. This weakened the parallel economy & made the license-quota-raj stronger. Created a huge Black money market, owing to license-quota-raj.
4. Introduced worse form of political corruption.(She misused Central governments to impose presidents rule in Kerela,AP even Bengal).
5. Did not introduce any new plans for making the economy stronger, instead blindly followed Nehru's model of economy.
6. Created the Punjab Problem (was actually backing Bindrawale till 1983) , which cost India both economically & socially.
7. Allowed chamchas & coterie to run day to day govt functioning which gave rise to politics of Sycophancy, still seen in India.
8. Bull-Dosed the Indian media & suffocated the freedom of press. (Famous Goenka story)
Rajiv Gandhi
+ve:
Telecom Revolution (whatever that is)
liberalised economy to an extent
-ve:
1.Bofors : - Playing with India's Defence
2.Indo-Srilanka Accord: - A huge cost to Indian army & Indian economy. Fighting our own tamil brothers with our own army & resources was the studpidest idea anyone can come up with. Rajiv Gandhi fell flat on his face for this stunt.
3.Shah Bano : - Over-ruled the Supreme Court Judgement (like mother like son) which gave rise to Hindu & Muslim fundamentalism. He took Muslim-Appeasement to new heights.
4.Looked the other way, when his Congress men were butchering innocent Sikhs in Delhi & elsewhere in India.
5. Was weak on foreign affairs (a quality inherited from his grand father).
6. Could have brought a revolution in the country with such a huge mandate. Instead was more involved in polishing & packaging himself in the media which was always lapping on his "hamein dekhna" hai statements. Could have & Should have done much more.
In retrospect these 3 i feel blundered more than made any positive contributions.
A nation's growth largely depends on the kind of leadership it gets. If you see a failed company & a successfull one , 9 out 10 times the difference
was because a successful company had a good leader. Leadership matters a lot.
USA,China, England,France have been always led by very strong leaders who were true nationalists.
Ronald Reagan, took the entire nation behind him during the Cold War with Russia even when the American economy was in depression.
This is the quality of a great leader. A fighter. A hard-core nationalist. Not an idealist who wants praise from English Media & press (like Nehru)
Today we are seeing economic growth. We are understandably happy about it. But i still maintain. It is not because of Nehru or Rajiv.
It is inspite of them.
As much as i hate China, i believe that one thing that seperates china from india is it's totally patriotic leadership. A leadership who is nationalist at heart. A leadership that never compromises nation's interest to look good in front of the world.
According to me India was unlucky to loose Lal Bahadur Shastri. A true nationalist.
Also thanks to Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (lot of people call him Mahatma) we started on the wrong foot. Sardar Patel was elected as our first PM by Congress Party, but Gandhi intervened at last moment & made the sulking Jawahar as the PM of our unfortunate nation. In one stroke he weakened the nation's foundation which was later built on fickle day-dreams of Nehru's idealism.
The dynasty continues to run & ruin the nation. Our next P.M is most likely to be Rahul Gandhi , if off course he finds time off from his girl friends.
I end with a famous quote of Winston Churchill : " The inherent vice of Capitalism is uneven distribution of wealth. The inherent vice of Socialism is even distribution of miseries"
- Amrish
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