The Disastrous Gandhi-Nehru Legacy

Once Cyrus Broacha put forth an interesting question in the CNN-IBN comedy show "The week that wasn't":Rahul or Priyanka?? Well, this has nothing to do with their look or sex appeal or even their political flair. The question is about the legacy the title they carry with them that is creating resonance among the illiterate and poverty-striken mass in the world's largest democracy.

Rahul Gandhi understandably has been exploiting the the resonant title "Gandhi" which upon closer look never happens to him(I will publish the Gandhi-Ghandy controversy sometime) and in turn defaming the father of the nation. But upon closer look, I found out that this Nehru-Gandhi family is nothing but disastrous for our country.

Jawaharlal Nehru was one of our foremost freedom fighters, but the freedom he fought for was restricted to the political domain. Once the British had been ousted, he replaced them with a new oppressor: the Indian government. He distrusted free trade, and once famously told JRD Tata that profit was a dirty word.He shackled private enterprise with a license-and-regulation raj and tried to build a command economy where the state was all-powerful.

One can be charitable and say that the well-intentioned Nehru was a creature of his times. It is hard to give his daughter similar benefit of the doubt. Indira Gandhi not only took Nehru’s policies forward at a time when it should have been obvious that they weren’t working, she systematically began to strip away the little economic freedom that existed in the country. In colleges it would make good material for a course titled "How To Savage An Economy".

She nationalised all our big banks. She stopped foreign exchange from kick-starting the country’s development, and thus creating employment and productive growth, with the Foreign Exchange Regulation act in 1973. The Urban Land Ceiling Act of 1976 distorted land markets, thus raising land prices and aggravating the problem of slums in cities. The Industrial Disputes act (1976 and 1982) distorted labour markets and acted as a disincentive to industrial expansion. And so on and on.

With our natural strengths, India should have dominated labour-intensive manufacture and become a manufacturing superpower decades before we started doing well in services, but Jawarharlal and Indira never let that happen. The consequences of Indira’s policies look dry in economic terms, but by perpetuating poverty and shackling growth, they unquestionably had an impact on millions of lives.

Indira attacked more than economic freedom, of course. The emergency was a period of shame for our country, and yet, quite what you’d expect from a leader who took ruling India as a birthright. Her son, Sanjay, had authoritarian instincts even more pernicious than hers, but we were thankfully spared his rule. Rajiv Gandhi, when he took over, seemed a good man, if an inexperienced one. But can naïvete during his prime ministership serve as a sufficient excuse for, say the foolish intervention in Sri Lanka?

Sonia Gandhi, while she had the character to refuse the prime ministership, also has all the wrong ideas. Her doubts about foreign investment and her support for well-intentioned but short-sighted programs such as the Rural Employment Guarantee Act demonstrate that the lessons of the past haven’t been learnt, and that the communists aren’t the only forces holding back India’s progress.

It would be unfair to hold this shameful legacy against Rahul Gandhi. Even if political leadership comes to him as inheritance, he may turn out to be his own man, and compensate for the sins of his forefathers. But the best we can do staying in elite houses, watching elite news channels and reading elite magazines is that hoping Rahul to be a good person. Isn't it worrisome? Can't we act against it?