Rajnikant Puranik - Reinforcing the Foundations of Misery: Part-II : India After Nehru

What is THE critical factor for assessing a country or apolitical party? Its economic philosophy, its economic vision and its economicpolicies.

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Are one or more of these the factors that make a country pooror prosperous: climate, geography, location, abundance of natural resources,race, history, type of people, character of people?

NO. None of these.

What matters is the economic system chosen. All thosecountries, irrespective of these factors (climate, geography, race,character, ...), who adopted competitive capitalism have prosperedand are part of the first-world, like the US, Canada, the UK, West Europe,Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand. China prosperedpost-Mao after it junked Maoism and adopted a form of Free EnterpriseEconomy. It is worth noting that not a single socialist or communistcountry has ever prospered.

Raja Vyapari tayaPraja Bhikhari.

Indian Proverb

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Mr Jawaharlal Nehru returned from Cambridge with notionsof how an all-governing interventionist state can force people into happinessand prosperity through socialism...He sticks to this bias in spite of thedemonstration of world experience against it...I hate the present folly andarrogance as much as I hated the foreign arrogance of those [British] days.

C Rajagopalachari (Rajaji)

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Sardar Patel, Rajagopalachari and Rajendra Prasad wereopposed to socialism. If only they had led India after Independence, ratherthan Nehru, India would have been a prosperous first-world country long ago,and it would hopefully have been saved from the debilitating feudal Dynasticdemocracy, that is at the root of all miseries.

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It was the mercantile-industrial capitalism that led todemocracy. Democracy did not evolve out of monarchy, oligarchy, feudalism,socialism or communism. The latter have only curbed freedom. CompetitiveCapitalism/Free Enterprise Economy and democracy go together.

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Its not as if there is a menu of systems, and one can choosewhich to adoptsocialism or communism or their different flavours, Gandhiism,capitalism, and so on.

Free enterprise and capitalism were not something that werefirst theorised, then planned, and then implemented or rammed down. Theyevolved as a sequence of civilisational growth, were taken cognizance of, andthen theorised after the fact. Facts and practice led to the theory, and thenthe theory enhanced the practice. Thereafter, it was a beneficial evolvingcycle, each helping enhance the other. Democracy, in turn, evolved out of freeenterprise and capitalism; and again there was a cyclical effect between thetwo, each helping enhance the other.

In comparison, there is nothing natural, organic orevolutionary about Socialism, Communism or Gandhiism. They are all highlydeficient artificial constructs incapable of practical success because thehuman civilisational evolution is just too complex, and there are far too manyvariables and too many unknowns for any artificial construct to contend with.

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The term Hindu rate of growth is highly inappropriate andunfair, besides being derogatory. Post-independence low rate of growth wasthanks to Nehru-Indira-Rajivs policies. It should rather be called the