Transforming India's Mental Landscape

TCS Daily : "Indeed, economic freedom wasn't fashionable when India became independent. It was perfectly natural for Jawaharlal Nehru to opt for Fabian Socialism as the guiding philosophy for the new-born India. But while Nehru did a noteworthy job of building the institutions that safeguarded India's secular democracy, his economic policies, framed with the best intentions, ensured that India remained a third-world country. 'Profit is a dirty word,' he once said, as he strengthened a state apparatus that throttled private enterprise and created a vast bureaucracy. The License and Regulation Raj that Nehru put in place became worse under his daughter Indira Gandhi, who became prime minister in 1966. She nationalized the big banks, suffocated industry with Draconian labor laws, clamped down on foreign investment, and imposed currency controls."