Looking Back at the Nehru - Mahalanabis Strategy : A Discourse Analysis

Abstract

This paper discussed the constitutive relations between the Nehru-Mahalanabis strategy and the discourse of planning that had characterized Indian economic policy-making over 40 years after independence in their continuities and discontinuities of interaction. It understood and analyzed the theoretical underpinnings behind the heavy-scale industrialization policy through public investment (under export pessimism) in reflection of the predominant discourse of development that the third world subscribed to at that period — that of central-planning led capitalist accumulation. Rather than engaging in the multiple debates that had raged the political-economic policy-making of the post-reforms period, like that of agriculture vs. industry, state planning vs. market motive, growth vs. equity, etc., it cut through the analysis by the discourse method, which identified the particular way of knowing the reality – how the discourse produced and disseminated effects of truth, and brought players (e.g., the State) to act and intervene, thereby securing the legitimacy and power of the representation, or the regime of truth of the discourse.