India After 70 Years of Socialism

This new Indian political party is all about the free market.

This is a story of how one man, Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first Prime Minister, set back the people of India for many generations—despite his good intentions. And it is the story about the herculean challenge even today to undo the colossal harm done by him.

Nehru was a giant among men. But his flaw was that he was a socialist. The harm he caused India as a result was proportionate to his stature; it was comprehensive and universal.

In his official biography JRD Tata (one of India’s greatest industrialists) reported that “Nehru once told me ‘I hate the mention of the very word word profit’. I replied: ‘Jawaharlal, I am talking about the need of the public sector making a profit.’ Jawaharlal came back: ‘Never talk to me about the word profit; it is a dirty word.'”

At around the same time, Lee Kuan Yew in Singapore was telling his people that “You make profit into a dirty word and Singapore dies.”