constrained to limit their basic needs. But self-control in terms of
consumption was useful to invoke in the education of urban and/or
higher income groups, especially when consumer goods were not widely
available. (The Indian developmental model has been seen by some as
indicative of a mixture of Fabianism, Gandhism and Soviet planning; how
far any of these were consistently present except implicitly and in passing
is questionable.)
The assumption made by the planners was of a nearly totally closed
economy. Trade, it was reasoned, could perhaps take off later, with the
development of industrialisation and of capital goods and consequently
of the diversification of manufactured goods available for export. There was
no strategy of focusing on textile exports, which might have been plausible
given that textiles were an established industry in India. The reasons for
this were, perhaps, political – the left-ish consensus among the planners
was that there was no need to further strengthen Indian industrialists;
textiles fell strongly in the category of established private sector industry,
and small numbers of large business houses had a disproportionate
share of them. (This consensus at times owed as much to the patrician
and somewhat Brahmanical disdain that the Nehruvians, who of course
regarded themselves as intellectuals, had for people who merely ‘made
money’ as to a commitment to social justice.)
Political responses to the Second Plan now opened up the basic pattern
of the politics of high Nehruvianism. Allegedly, many socialists now
wished to return to the Congress, but Nehru discouraged this, ostensibly
on the grounds that there was still a need for a proper opposition – a
different position from his having invited them back in after defeating
Tandon in the Congress’s internal struggle in 1951. The question of
whether he knew of shifting and strange alliances among people who still
called themselves socialists is worth raising. However, the ‘socialistic
pattern’ – which many simply shortened to ‘socialism’ – attracted signifi-
cant support for Nehru from outside his party. Ram Manohar Lohia’s
socialists at the time took a soft line on the Congress and even some in the
CPI advocated this. (As mentioned before, the ‘national’ work of planning
the economy was already something that had attracted CPI supporters and
members, some to Mahalanobis’ Indian Statistical Institute, some to other
fora for ‘experts’ where they could contribute something constructive.)
For those sceptical of the claims to ‘socialistic patterns’ or ‘socialism’
achievable through the Congress or through planning, the approach was226 HIGH NEHRUVIANISM AND ITS DECLINE, c. 1955–63