From: sanjay@socs.uts.edu.au (Sanjay Jha)
Subject: NEHRU'S UTOPIA TUMBLES
Organization: Computing Sciences, Uni of Technology, Sydney.
Date:  4 Sep 92 05:19:45 GMT


I am reproducing an excerpt from a leading local news paper The Sydney Morning Herald. I hope that you will find it interesting.
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NEHRU'S UTOPIA TUMBLES
India is undergoing a quiet - for the moment - revolution, writes TIM McGIRK.
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In India, past and present, myth and reality, flow into one. The lord Krishna is emblazoned  on bottles of hair tonic, Kama Sutra is a brand name for condoms of a most vile colour and the Brahmin priests now accept donations by credit card.
For once, India is trying to break with its immediate past. A revolutionagainst 40 years of State economic control has begun. That same fate that overtook Lenin and Mao in other lands is now befalling one of this century's other great leaders, Jawahar Lal Nehru, the founder of modern India. His interventionist ideals have guided this teeming, complex country for the past 45 years. No statues of Nehru were toppled, no coins were melted down. And in Bombay, New Delhi and Madras slow white oxen still drag mow





ers across parks that still bear his name.But Nehru's influence over India is now vanishing.
Increasingly his philosphy and the often dynastic manner in which it was interpreted by his daughter, Indira, and his grandson Rajiv, are becoming targets of harsh revisionism. The mutiny against Nehru broke out in his own Congress party, led by an unlikely rebel:the Prime Minister, Narsimha Rao, a wan, ailing scholar with all charisma of a boiled potato.
Yet, in his 1992 budget, Mr Rao boldly removed many of the chains binding India's economy. He devalued the Rupee by more than 20%, cut many State subsidies and lifted the Kafkaesque licensing laws. Import and Export restrictions were eased and the economy was opened up to once hated multinationals such as IBM, Ford and Coca Cola. 
Seven months on, there are signs that Mr. Rao's nerve might have failed. He needs to close down State's many useless factories, but he has baulked at doing so, fearing a revolt by trade unions and Opposition parties. So far, his measures have failed to reduce India's 11% inflation or stir the near stagnant 1.5%growth rate.Foriegn companies also remain wary. 
But these reforms go deeper than allowing Indians to drink real Coke. India has long been ready for Nehruism's finale. The question is whether it comes too late and whether the upheavals of this revolution will snap India into shape or speed its decline. To meet the challenge, Mr Rao must break Nehru's long and dozy spell over India.
Since independence, India has been following what is called Nehruvian socialism, which sounds as homespun as Gandhi's cotton cloth, but is really a weave of Fabianism and anti-colonialism. The idea was to uplift India's starving millions by distributing the wealth more evenly. But, according to Nehru's detractors, India could have developed into a Japan or at least South Korea if it had embraced the free market capitalism in which the Indians of Britain and US excel.
A Bombay textile manufacturer, Naozer Aga, said bluntly:"What we've had is not distribution of wealth. It was distribution of poverty except for a protected few." Indian socialism, in many ways, was a perfect capitalist State for a few billionaire family dynasties. More than 40 % of the gross domestic product remains in hands of the top 5% of the earners.
"Nobody ever believed in Gandhi's utopia except Gandhi. Nehru never did,", said Dipankar Gupta, a Delhi sociology professor."Gandhi exalted manual labour but Nehru's people wanted to sit at desks and control things from the centre."And control the bureaucrats they did.
The bureaucracy proved an unscalable wall for foriegn competitors trying to slip into the huge home market.But not all aspects of Nehruvian socialism were a disaster. India is no longer starving and 240 million strong middle class has burgeoned, fed largely by the Government's whopping payrolls. It is their payrolls that Mr Rao must dare to cut.
When Mr Rao took office in June 1991, the compromise choice in the Congress Party after Rajiv Gandhi's assasination, India had reached a dead end. The country was on the verge of defaulting on its foriegn debts and the World bank and the IMF were in no mood to provide emergency standby loans unless India liberalised its economy. The huge trade deficit had nearly cleaned the foriegn exchange reserves. It was then that Mr Rao and his finance Minister began the mosr radical reforms that India has seen since i





ndependence.
The promise of a better life is also shaking up the cast divisions that have bound Indian society together for over a thousand years. But having promised the country's 600 million impoverished people a better life, Mr Rao must deliver the goods, swiftly. For now, the poor don't seethe with envy of the rich, as they do in more socially aware countries. 
Recently a wealthy princess invited 70 friends for a three day rail jaunt through  Rajasthan. Their first class coaches were harnessed to a dingy, crammed passenger train. The princess's coaches were with jasmine. Waiters rushed champagne and platters of hors d'oeuvres along the platform, weaving between the beggars , porters and thousand of people who suddenly appeared, gaping at their fairytale wealth. In a country where so many go hungry, one would imagine that this brazen display of afflunce would spar





k a riot, but not in India. At least not yet.
		 The Independent
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  Sanjay Kumar Jha          E-mail: sanjay@socs.uts.edu.au
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