Jawaharlal Nehru, Neo‐Liberalism and Social Democracy

Abstract

Mixed economy and social democracy constituted the central philosophy of developmental state in India. Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of Independent India, wanted to combine the desired economic growth of the newly liberated country with the overdue overhauling of its society. The sole purpose of combining economic growth with social transformation, perhaps, was to build social democracy within. For such an ambitious project to realize, Nehru followed the middle path between the two most popular and contending modes of the then economic growth: capitalism and socialism. In order to truly follow the middle path within, he also preferred to tread the way of Non‐alignment in relation to the foreign policy of1ndia. The mixed economy model remained central to the policy of economic growth till 1991, though some deviations started surfacing stealthily from a decade before. How the neo-liberal market economy model engages with the Nehruvian objective⁄legacy of combining economic growth with social empowerment and in what ways it distinguishes itself from its predecessor is the central concern of this paper. Whether the project of social democracy is still relevant in India is another equally important concern of the paper.