The Nehru Development Model: History and Its Lasting Impact

The Nehru Development Model: History and Its Lasting Impact by Arvind Panagariya 

At Independence, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first prime minister, embarked upon a political and an economic project. His political project―to put India on the democratic path―was a resounding success.

This success, though, was marred by an equally resounding failure of Nehru’s economic project, built on the development of heavy industry, an expanding public sector, and relative isolation from world markets. It failed to produce the growth necessary to rid India of poverty and bequeathed an ethos that made a switch to an outward-oriented, pro-market economy a real challenge in the post-Nehru era. This line of thinking remains entrenched in the Indian political, intellectual, bureaucratic, and business constituencies.