User:Trupti 123

 Articles  =='' The rise of the Indian economy is one of the most important economic developments of our day. To put it in context, one needs to start by considering how India gained independence. The year was 1947, and it was the culmination of a long struggle between the British government and the Indian independence movement. That movement was led by Gandhi, but his most important lieutenant was Nehru. The two had very different views on a number of questions, and in particular on economic issues. Gandhi believed in a very simple life, while Nehru had absorbed the doctrines of British socialism. The British socialist movement at that time aimed to build up a modern economy as rapidly as possible.'' THE POST-INDEPENDENCE YEARS India in 1947 was characterized by very low per capita income. There were a lot of people, so there was always a big GDP, but per capita income was very low. In some ways India had a fully developed capitalist economy, and it had some of the oldest capitalist institutions in Asia, such as the Bombay Stock Exchange, founded in 1875. So there was a modern economy, but it was very thin. There was a manufacturing sector, but it didn't cover many industries. There was even a steel industry and a relatively strong textile industry, but these were limited. It was predominantly a subsistence economy. Most of the villages at the time didn't even have road connections. They were connected only by tracks to the outside world. They weren't part of the market economy. During the independence struggle in the final days of the war, Nehru was put in jail, along with a number of his Congress colleagues. In a matter of weeks, they drew up a consensus which has been called subsequently the Indian Congress Consensus. At that time the Indian Congress absolutely dominated India, so what the Indian Congress thought went. There was certainly a widespread agreement on the need to develop, to create an industrial revolution, to grow rapidly, and to build a modern economy. This would involve moving agricultural workers to the cities, which it was argued-this was a popular line of thought in the early days of development economics-wouldn't really cost anything, because the marginal products of those agricultural workers was negligible anyway. They really weren't contributing in the countryside. In any event, with a little agricultural modernization, it would be possible to increase output =='''