At Independence, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first prime minister, embarked upon a political and an economic project. His political project—to put India on the democratic path—was a resounding success.

This success, though, was marred by an equally resounding failure of Nehru’s economic project, built on the development of heavy industry, an expanding public sector, and relative isolation from world markets. It failed to produce the growth necessary to rid India of poverty and bequeathed an ethos that made a switch to an outward-oriented, pro-market economy a real challenge in the post-Nehru era. This line of thinking remains entrenched in the Indian political, intellectual, bureaucratic, and business constituencies.

This book by renowned economist and policymaker Arvind Panagariya is an attempt to systematically document the economic history of the Nehru era and its impact on contemporary economic thought and post-Nehru economic policymaking.

How did this system evolve? What was the influence of Nehru’s thinking on it? Above all, how did the economic history and thought of this era affect subsequent policymaking in India? These are the big questions that this volume attempts to answer.

1. Economic Thought: Nehru and Others
2. Nehru: Radical to Fabian Socialist
3. Nehru Development Model
4. Other Contemporary Influential Voices
5. Industrial and Labour Policies
6. Implementation : Target Setting and Industrial Licensing
7. Liberal Import Regime: 1882-1956
8. Highly Restrictive Import Regime : 1957-1964
9. Export and Foreign Investment Polices
10. Growth, Industrialization and Poverty
11. Political Leadership I:1950-84
12. Political Leadership II:1955-2023
13. Institutions and Business Community
14. Economists and Other Policy Analysis
15. Afterthought
16. Statement of Industrial Policy, April 1945
17. Government of India Resolution on Industrial Policy, 6 April 1948
18. Industrial Policy Resolution, 30 April 1956
19. Statement Made By Prime Minister in the Constituent Assembly of India (Legislative), 6 April 1949