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Comment by pm90 | Hacker News Reader

> And, I find it so sad that the first independent government chose to double down on the control on the economy rather than just open it all up.

This is not accurate. The Indian economy was pretty open; the overwhelming bureucratic red-tape started after Indira Gandhi's nationalization program (and other such policies). India under Nehru wasn't laissez faire by any means, but neither was it Communist.

You also have to see the context under which the politicians operated then. Unbridled capitalism had lead to colonialism and the World Wars and led to much oppression for workers worldwide; the Indian leaders were trying to avoid that kind of wealth aggregation and income equality.

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I agree that the red tape hell started with Indira. But I can't agree with the bit about context. It's plain to see that inequality is considerably worse now. Only a small Elite were in any position to benefit from the liberalization and the rest have never been able to catch up. Overall, left leaning economic policies and communist influence have done enormous harm to this country.

The context is a historical fact. I think you mean the motivation. And that is a historical fact as well, actually.

The unfortunate fact is that the policies which India's leaders thought at the time would lead to better wealth distribution and economic growth didn't work as expected and economic growth was significantly impeded. India wasn't alone in this failure, China also suffered under the same problem, due to similar problems with a top-down command economy dominated by public sector.

> It's plain to see that inequality is considerably worse now.

Again, that's not an issue with the context, but with execution. And the inequality you see now is more because after the liberalization of 1990, while certain sectors and people working in them grew tremendously, others were left behind. And the tax system in India was broken, so wealth redistribution through taxation also did not happen as expected.

The whole point I was trying to make was, rather than learn from our own history and experience, the leaders chose to keep doing the same things the British did.

I look at Pre Independence India as a bunch of decentralised organizations/kingdoms/markets which were producing goods and maybe services that were sought after all over the globe. This is what made mercantilism and later colonialism attractive in the first place.

Then the British established controls which promptly destroyed Indian advantages in favor of their own.

These are the lessons which the post Independence governments should have carried forward. Gandhi understood these at a very deep level, and hence the satyagrahas. And the village economy model, which though unworkable, emphasized the central principle of decentralization. This understanding makes him stand out.

Whereas though Nehru has to be applauded for his efforts as prime minister, time has shown that he and his family never had the deep understanding about economics and history that Gandhi did.

> Unbridled capitalism had lead to colonialism

Most sources state that colonialism and the associated economic policy of mercantilism pre-date the widespread adoption of capitalism, which didn't occur until after the industrial revolution.

I'd argue that the rise of nationalism was more directly the cause of both colonialism and the World Wars.

Only if you ascribe to the notion that any system that isn't socialism is capitalist could you argue that capitalism led somehow to colonialism.

On a two-dimensional scale from socialism to capitalism, any move away from one is a move to another.

We've yet to see what "pure" capitalism even really looks like; Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations argues that competition is required for his "invisible hand" and that monopolies are bad because they reduce efficiency and choice, and impede progress, but our current strategy to prevent or break up a monopoly looks a whole lot like government regulation which is supposed to stifle innovation, not promote it!

A two dimensional scale is a false dichotomy. There were many economic systems in the past. Subsistence, Barter, Feudalism, Mercintalism. None of these were capitalist or socialist.

Eh, colonialism is because of imperialism. And imperialism is a result of unbridled capitalism.[0] Some people might not have called it capitalism back then, but that's what it was.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperialism,_the_Highest_Stage...

Colonialism predates the Marxist notion of imperialism by 400 years.

When the colonial powers started to conquer the world there was next to no capital.

Not only did no one call it capitalism back then (the word had yet to be coined), but no serious scholar of economics, politics or history would call any pre-industrial economic system predominantly capitalist.

And by arguing that “people didn’t call it capitalism back then”, you’re just proving my point. You’re just redefining capitalism to be the antonym of socialism.

> Colonialism predates the Marxist notion of imperialism by 400 years.

I don't disagree with that.

> When the colonial powers started to conquer the world there was next to no capital.

The whole point is the pursuit/accumulation of capital. Even if you start with next to no capital.

> no serious scholar of economics, politics or history would call any pre-industrial economic system predominantly capitalist.

In my own opinion I'd say it started around 1600 with the formation of the British and Dutch East India companies. It seems this is debated by many and largely depends on your definition of capitalism. [0]

So I'm happy to just agree to disagree.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_capitalism

Not sure why you're being down-voted. Colonialism isn't capitalist, it's like the opposite of capitalism.

Nations going to war and invading each other for "economic reasons" is almost always a symptom of a mercentalism. War isnt a form of economic competition, it's a mechanism to enforce protectionism.

Unless we're using the humanities defintion of capitalism by which we mean "anything bad the west has done, up to and including the death of Socrates".

>> the overwhelming bureucratic red-tape started after Indira Gandhi's nationalization program

Source?

You also have to see the context under which the politicians operated then. Unbridled capitalism had lead to colonialism and the World Wars ...

Well you might call that "context", but it looks more like socialist make-believe. I'll grant though that it does provide the narrative context (whether true or false) in which politicans were working at the time. And this can't be blamed on Indira.

> Well you might call that "context", but it looks more like socialist make-believe

You can call any narrative as make-believe... what's your point?

> I'll grant though that it does provide the narrative context (whether true or false) in which politicans were working at the time.

Again, not sure what you're disputing here. That World Wars weren't caused by unbridled capitalism?

> And this can't be blamed on Indira.

What can't be blamed on Indira? She nationalized most banks, airlines etc. basically snuffing out the nascent private sector and heavily regulating the scraps that were left.

What's "make-believe" is the idea that a nation which was brutalized by 300 years of unfettered crony capitalism would choose to align itself after Independence with the very forces that destroyed it and set 1/5th of humanity back by 200 years.

It tries to put the square peg of imperialism into the round-hole of 20th century left-right debates. The East India company and the later British rulers did bad things because they were conquerors, and that's what conquerors do.

You are right that the East India company was crony captilast* But it is no small thing that you changed the goalposts to go from the parent's "Unbridled capitalism" to "unfettered crony captialism". It was precisely the fetters that made it cronyist, since it was a state granted, privately owned monopoly.

After independence, India's did not break from those forces, embraced them (in less bad form) by granting new monopolies. They were only (partially) rolled back when the '90s reforms came (partially) embraced free market principles.

Unless there is no such thing as a state "Unbridled capitalism" and "unfettered crony capitalism" are in-distinguishable.

Capitalism as we use the term was defined/coined in the age of the East India Company and general European Colonialism. The European decimation of India/Asia, Africa, The Americas: these are the true realizations of capitalism.

Corporatism != capitalism.

While neither defending or attacking capitalism... Corporation is a polite term for sovereign granted monopolies like East India. Less polite are privateers, aka pirates.

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