July, Stalin, and Five-Year Plans: How Reality Upstaged Nehru's Economic Utopia

In hindsight, Nehru's obsession with planning and five-year plans caused irretrievable damage to the Indian economy.

(This is part four of a four-part 'July' series that revisits significant historical events or policies and how the lessons learned from them continue to be of relevance in present-day politics and society. Read part one here, part two here, and part three here.)

The following is an excerpt from Jawaharlal Nehru's speech from 1937, when he was the Congress party president.

“I am convinced that the only key to the solution of the world’s problems and of India’s problems lies in socialism, and when I use this word, I do so not in a vague humanitarian way but in the scientific, economic sense. Socialism is, however, something even more than an economic doctrine; it is a philosophy of life and as such also appeals to me. I see no way of ending the poverty, the vast unemployment, the degradation, and the subjection of the Indian people except through socialism. That involves vast and revolutionary changes in our political and social structure, the ending of vested interests in land and industry, as well as the feudal and autocratic Indian States system. That means the ending of private property, except in a restricted sense, and the replacement of the present profit system by a higher ideal of cooperative service. It means ultimately a change in our instincts and habits and desires. In short, it means a new civilisation, radically different from the present capitalist order.”