Word: nehru
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Some of India's difficulties can be laid at Nehru's door. He has tried, on occasion, to translate into action his vague and intensely personal theories about socialism, e.g., his plan to spread farm cooperatives across the land. Snapped the Indian Express: "This is not economic realism; this is economic rubbish." Even socialist leaders such as Asoka Mehta complain that for ten years India has been plagued by socialist slogans, "and what have we got? Nothing." Seemingly, the only purpose the slogans and all the patronizing remarks about "the private sector" have served is to frighten away...
...Asset. As a result of these and other troubles, Nehru's petulance and quick temper flared more and more frequently. He railed against the ingrained Indian habits of inefficiency, tardiness and cheerful anarchy. He stormed at the prevalence of holidays, cows and fraudulent holy men, yet did nothing about them. He pleaded with his colleagues in the governing Congress Party to abandon red tape, corruption and nepotism; they listened, and went back to their old ways...
...Nehru grew increasingly waspish to reporters and his own subordinates, and could not stand being contradicted. He angrily insisted that he had to do everything himself or it would not be done, and he spent as much time on unimportant household details as on national problems. He suddenly began to look older...
Worriedly, Indians began asking themselves: After Nehru, who? It was and is the favorite New Delhi dinner topic. Food Minister S. K. Patil put the matter bluntly: "Nehru is the greatest asset we have because he is just like a banyan tree under whose shade millions take shelter." He added that Nehru is also a liability, "because in the shade of that banyan tree, biologically, nothing grows...
...likeliest candidates to succeed Nehru are Patil himself, a tough, able administrator who is India's closest approximation of an anything-goes U.S. politician, and Finance Minister Morarji Desai, 63, an eccentric but capable mixture of far-out ideas on sex and alcohol (he is against both). Gandhian attitudes, and administrative talent. Both .men are strongly pro-Western, anti-Communist and holders of pragmatic economic views. But when Nehru last year announced that he wanted to step down as Prime Minister, Congress Party stalwarts, swept by panic, cried: "Pandit ji, you are leaving us orphans...