HVK Archives: The canard of indu Rate of Growth debunked slur on the Indian People
The canard of indu Rate of Growth debunked slur on the Indian People - The Organiser
The Economist
()
March 22, 1998
Title: The canard of indu Rate of Growth debunked slur on the Indian People
Author: The Economist
Publication: The Organiser
Date: March 22, 1998
Free India will have to settle its scores with the London School
of Economics one day, said the inimitable Nirad C. Chaudhuri in
his Passage to England. The reason of this urge to 'settle the
scores', which in effect means repudiation of the Left-Libber
hegemony imposed on us Indians by the Marxist-oriented LSE may be
many. The chief of them of course is that the Indian products of
this British alma mater have dominated the Indian intellectual
scene, particularly the economic establishment, for too long'
For, independent India was a target of leftist brainwashing
through the alumni of fashionable procommunist centres like the
Cambridge University in the thirties. The LSE was more so,
presided over as it was by the famous professor Harold Laski, an
extreme Left wing' ideologue who could "well be regarded as a
fellow traveller" of Communist-Russia, according to one of its
exscholars- B.K. Nehru-As he says, the real India that he saw at
the grassroot level as a bureaucrat posted in the districts was
far removed from that visualised in the Anand Bhawan or the LSE
of Prof Larki.
Honourable exceptions apart, the elitist upper class Indian
scholars joining the LSE came out as committed Marxists who
imposed an alien model and Soviet-style planning on this country.
They put the economic engine on the wrong track in a bid to
impose a politically motivated socialist control on the economy
in the Nehruvian era. However, when things went awry and India's
planned economy produced a pitiably low 3.5 per cent rate of
growth per year, relegating it to the poorest ten on the world,
they found a convenient alibi. Inventing an obnoxious slogan,
they labelled this Marxist rate of growth as 'the Hindu rate of
growth.', meaning that the consistently low growth was due to
regessive Hindu cultural values. This was an atrocious travesty
of world-famous economic acumen of the Hindus who had dominated
and controlled the economy even during the worst days of the
British and Islamic imperialist regimes.
For, Hindus were universally known as producers and hoarders of
weath, being worshippers of Lakshmi and Ganesha, They had made
India famous as Golden Sparrow. It became target of foreign
looters, invaders and imperial colonist simply because of
fabulous hordes of wealth.
Predictably, this leftist invented refrain of 'Hindu rate of
growth' invented by the failed secularists as the villain of the
piece of India's tardy economic progress, was taken up by foreign
economists and journals as well. These included the prestigious
Economist of London, in its reports from its India correspondent,
a former Indian editor still connected with The Times of India
group. There were of course others as well who used it with gay
abandon as if they were conferring a Bharat Ratna on somebody.
The chief of such Hindu bashers perhaps was a socialist economist
put at the helm of the Planning Commission during the Janata
Party's chaotic Raj of 1977-79. This arrogant secularist put the
canard of Hindu Rate of Growth even in the 5th Plan draft. That
gave a new respectability and currency to it, so that it
continues to be repeated mechanically till today by the left-
libber gangs. See, for example, how Shri Dilip Cherian, the
Business columnist of The Asian Age used it in his latest column
(March 7, 1998). While discussing the 7 per cent growth target
envisaged by the Ninth Plan's draft document released recently by
Prof Madhu Dandavate even when the lame duck Gujral Government
was on its last legs, Shri Cherian says that 7 per cent growth
target is a leap forward as "It used to be inconceivable a few
plans ago that a lumbering economy that's as large as India would
break out of the dreaded Hindu growth rate (3.5 per cent) to
touch a figure that is pretty respectable, even by global
standards."
However, buffeted by the Hindutva wave this malicious subterfuge
aimed at covering cover up the leftist-secularist bankruptcy has
collapsed abroad at least. For, in a special 30-page special
supplement entitled 'Survey of Indian Economy' the same London
Economist has described it as an outrageous slur on the Indian
people'. This Special Survey (February 2, 1997) by the paper's
own British Correspondent, Clive Crook, points out how the
Indians abroad, released from the Nehruvian 'prison-house' have
prospered in competition with others, while India itself had
become a failed state, economically speaking. Its lead article
held the socialist straitjacket of Nehruism as the real culprit
in this context. It says that even the reluctant reforms of 1991,
dictated by compulsion of a failing economy rather than
conviction were not a mere mid-course correction, but a radical
departure from the model pursued since 1947. it was only by
shedding the baggage of semi-Soviet Nehruvian model that India is
now coming out of an era of stagnation. Taken together, the
changes were- nothing less than a repudiation of India's
distinctive approach to development- repudiation, that is, of
Nehru's vision of socialist self-reliance" which only brought
ppalling misery" by strenuous strangulation of even local
Indian enterprise and industry, as if it was done on purpose to
suppress it. The whole system, it says, was Soviet-inspired which
had a miraculous escape from going the Soviet way obviously
because of, its private sector.
Some extracts from Clive Crook's opening article in the
Economist's Survey of India are as follows:
"The notion of 'Hindu rate of growth' Implied that India was
doomed by its very culture to lag behind other countries; but
once you reflect on the diligence and ingenuity with which
India's governments for decades rewarded failure and punished
success, you see what an outrageous slur on India's people that
was. There is no need to look abroad and see Indians, released
>from their economic prison, thriving in competition with others.
The policies that- India began to abandon in 1991 were so
outlandish that they provided a full explanation for India's slow
growth, and hence for its ubiquitous poverty; indeed given those
policies, the country's annual 4 per cent growth in 1960-90 was
little short of miraculous."
As The Economist points out, the Nehruvian system was harsh not
only on foreign participation, but also on domestic (swadeshi)
enterprise and industry. It clearly demarcates two sides of
liberalisation, the domestic one being more important than
globalisation.
Taking note of the socialist criticism that too much emphasis on
GDP is misleading and balanced urban-rural growth is the real
measure, The Economist draws a lurid picture of India's
backwardness despite eight five year plans.
Thus India's claim of balanced growth is nsustainable'.
Anniversaries, such as 50th anniversary of Indian independence,
generate ,complacency it says, but "India cannot afford any".
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