26/01/2018 (7) Home - Quora

Balaji Viswanathan answered this

What mistakes did Nehru make during his tenure, that is costing India
now?
Balaji Viswanathan, the author of "Tryst to Tendulkar: A brief history of
independent India"
Answered 2h ago

I consider Nehru as India’s finest Prime Minister. However, Nehru didn’t adequately focus on primary
education, literacy or healthcare. Those are still India’s achilles heel.

Mahatma Gandhi wanted India’s new leaders to focus on rural India. He wanted them to first solve
problems plaguing rural India. Congress movement had crores of followers and there was a new
excitement when the British left. That euphoria and mass movement was never capitalised fully.

Had Nehru focused on the right priorities, his successors would have followed that pattern. Here are some
of his key failures.

Literacy

When he had just 40 crore citizens and 17 years to rule, he could have truly gone for 100% literacy. It was
easily within the reach of India given how much the Congress movement spread its wings into every
corner of India. He could have had the crores of Congress workers reach every home in the country and
teach literacy. It would have been done in a matter of 5 years. However, 100% literacy was never made a
national priority like it was in east Asia.

Rather he focused on vanity projects like building IITs. If we became a 100% literate nation in 1960, we
could have built the IITs anytime.

On a broader note, we never showed the urgency in primary education. Sure, Nehru loved the kids and
built some schools, but they were never the nation’s #1 priority. Other newly independent countries in
Asia, Africa and Europe became rapidly literate.

We are the last of the major nations to have illiteracy.

Healthcare

Mao might have screwed up a lot of things for China, but one of the things he really did well for them is in
healthcare - Barefoot doctor . He built an army of these primary care doctors who revolutionized rural
China. China’s infant mortality rates, life expectancy and other indicators became substantially better
than India’s.

India is among the sickest nations in the world and basic health never got the urgency it deserved. There
were no massive movements to push hygiene. Our first Prime Minister worried about less important
things happening elsewhere in the world. Who cares about what Marshall Tito does or what happens to
Palestine or Angola, when your own citizens were dying in the millions?

At a time when India was building AIIMS, the bigger priority should have been to bring Infant Mortality
to other developed country levels. It was possible. Cuba and many other countries have better health

https://www.quora.com/ 1/3
26/01/2018 (7) Home - Quora

record than developed countries.

Law reforms for all religions

Nehru boldly pushed the Hindu code bills - it was a little late [Ambedkar wanted it much sooner] but
was still done. Why didn’t he push as much emphasis on reforming other religious codes too? Why did we
have to wait until 2017 to render Triple Talaq invalid?

If the religious codes were reformed and laws made more equitable for the women, the economic growth
of Muslims would have at least been on par with the Hindus.

Bringing women into key positions

Here is Nehru’s first cabinet - First Nehru ministry . It had just one lady (Amrit Kaur ). Nehru could
have set the example by bringing a lot of key women into the cabinet who were a part of the independence
movement. He could have pushed for more women MPs given that Indians voted whomever Nehru stood.
It would have set an example that others would have followed. Even today, women participation in
government is less enough though we have more women cabinet ministers than in Nehru’s ministry.

Being more skeptical of China

Nehru had an extremely strong reliance on USA and USSR and believed them to be bulwarks against
China. It was partly true, until it was not. Nehru should have been building further insurance against
China by building key roads and airfields near the troubled border. China had roads all over Tibet, when
had very less near ours. When the war came our soldiers didnt’ even have proper shoes.

Building new cities

When the partition happened India lost a number of important cities - Lahore, Karachi, Rawalpindi,
Peshawar, Dakha, Hyderabad (Sindh) etc. And we needed a lot of new cities to house the population
flooding into Delhi, Bombay and Calcutta.

However, we never built a lot of new cities. We built Chandigarh to somewhat compensate for loss of
Lahore, but that was just 1 in the place of 10 cities that north Indians lost. Even today north India has only
one metropolis - New Delhi and the lack of cities has hampered the economic development of north India.

Imagine having 10 metropolis in the north rivalling Delhi and Lahore. North India would be far more
developed and India would be a middle income country with just that.

Overthrowing outdated laws and systems

Nehru had the opportunity to overthrow many of the British era laws and systems that made no sense to
India. Indians would have been quite ok to throw British laws. But, we were too slow and cautious to
remove many of them [including laws that criminalize homosexuality - that was never a crime in ancient
India].

One such system was Zamindari. Nehru didn’t push hard enough on it especially in places like Bengal.
That is why Congress was thrown out of Bengal and the Naxal movement was given birth. In interior

https://www.quora.com/ 2/3
26/01/2018 (7) Home - Quora

India, the landlords still called the shots. India’s most powerful Prime Minister didn’t take risks in
throwing those guys out.

Btw.. the one thing that he is blamed for, but should not be is the Kashmir issue. Without Nehru, there
was no Kashmir for India. India got Gurdaspur [the key gateway for J&K] with Nehru’s influence.
Mountbatten’s troops in Pakistan alerted us about the Pakistani aggression in time, because of Nehru’s
selection [to retain Mountbatten]. The Maharajah signed the Instrument of Accession because of Nehru
and Patel. And we got into the war because of Nehru’s insistence [Patel was not fully for it]. And we still
hold almost all of the valley and most of Ladakh & Jammu because of Nehru. Remember that before you
criticize Nehru for making the right decision to go to the UN - at a time when the war was see-sawing for
more than a year and India had an important war to fight in Hyderabad.

We can both be respectful of him and still analyze his mistakes. I’m not underplaying many of the key
things he did for India. But, what I’m saying is that he had the potential to do far, far more. The Congress
movement in his service had plenty of things it could have done.

So many miles we could have crossed instead of inches and feet we moved.

13.8k Views · View Upvoters · Answer requested by Saurabh Baranwal and Praveen Manupati

Upvote 892 Downvote

https://www.quora.com/ 3/3