Guha's India after Gandhi...The conquest of Nature.

The author quotes Mahatma Gandhi 'India lives in her villages'. while describing the situation in the 1940's. The Indian agriculture was largely empirical, based on knowledge and traditions passed down over the generations. In short it was very basic, levels of literacy very low. Everywhere, those who worked on the land lived cheek-by -jowl with those who didn't (the service and artisanal castes). Socially caste feelings were very strong.

Rural India was pervaded by an air of timelessness, another word for stagnation to the Indian Nationalist. They resolved that when power came to them, agrarian reform would be at the top of their agenda. It was a three pronged attack, abolition of land revenue, massive expansion of irrigation and the reform of the system of land tenure. They also realised that ''To enter the comity of Nations, India had to be educated, united, out-ward looking and, above all, industrialized'.

Again good to learn that National Planning Committee was formed in 1938. Goals of 'national self-sufficiency' and doubling the standards in ten years were set. The spirit of the times seemed to favour centralized planning. The era of five year plans started with a draft plan in 1951.


(While one can look back and pass judgement on the Five year plans, massive power and irrigation projects, education and research, it is certain that the country needed a kick start to pull it out of its backwardness all across. Whether the plans were too ambitious or focused only on big projects and spread resources thin on essential areas of education can be debated forever. While private industry was still nascent and finding its feet, is seems we had people capable of taking on big projects and establish them. It is another matter how they ran later.

Did we waste a lot of resources due to inexperience, corruption and unionism? I would say yes. I can vouch that the labour output in a private industry I worked was equivalent to about 3 hours of honest work. You could easily guess how it could be in general all over the country. Barring a few, quantity won over quality, in most of the industries.

The chapter begins with a quote from M.Visveswaraya in 1920. It sounds more a wishful thinking on his part as an engineer. He hopes that the Indian people will choose wisely and act. One hopes so too, it is always a work-in-progress, especially the conquest of [Human] Nature.)