The Nehru Development Model

When India became independent, Jawaharlal Nehru took on two projects at once. The political one, setting the country on a democratic path, succeeded decisively. The economic one did not. It rested on heavy industry, a growing public sector and a degree of isolation from world markets, and it failed to deliver the growth India needed to end poverty.

In The Nehru Development Model, economist and policymaker Arvind Panagariya argues that the legacy went beyond poor results. The thinking behind the model left a lasting mindset that made it hard for the country to move toward an outward-looking, pro-market economy after Nehru. He contends that this mindset still holds ground among India's politicians, intellectuals, bureaucrats and business community.

The book sets out to document the economic history of the Nehru years in a systematic way. It asks how the system evolved, how much Nehru's own ideas shaped it, and how the economic thought of that period influenced policymaking in the decades that followed.