Politics in India since Independence that the development of India should mean both economic growth and social and economic justice. It was also agreed that this matter cannot be left to businessmen, industrialists and farmers themselves, that the government should play a key role in this. There was disagreement, however, on the kind of role that the government must play in ensuring growth with justice. Was it necessary to have a centralised institution to plan for the entire country?
Should the government itself run some key industries and business? How much importance was to be attached to the needs of justice if it differed from the requirements of economic growth? Each of these questions involved contestation which has continued ever since. Each of the decision had political consequence.
Most of these issues involved political judgement and required consultations among political parties and approval of the public. That is why we need to study the process of development as a part of the history of politics in India. Ideas of development Very often this contestation involves the very idea of development. The example of Orissa shows us that it is not enough to say that everyone wants development.
For ‘development’ has different meanings for different sections of the people. Development would mean different things for example, to an industrialist who is planning to set up a steel plant, to an urban consumer of steel and to the Adivasi who lives in that region. Thus any discussion on development is bound to generate contradictions, conflicts and debates. The first decade after independence witnessed a lot of debate around this question.
It was common then, as it is even now, for people to refer to the ‘West’ as the standard for measuring development. ‘Development’ was about becoming more ‘modern’ and modern was about becoming more like the industrialised countries of the West. This is how common people as well as the experts thought. It was believed that every country would go through the process of modernisation as in the West, which involved the breakdown of traditional social structures and the rise of capitalism and liberalism.
Modernisation was also associated with the ideas of growth, material progress and scientific rationality. This kind of idea of development allowed What is Left and what is Right? In the politics of most countries, you will always come across references to parties and groups with a left or right ideology or leaning. These terms characterise the position of the concerned groups or parties regarding social change and role of the state in effecting economic redistribution.
Left often refers to those who are in favour of state control of the economy and prefers state regulation over free competition. The Right refers to those who believe that free competition and market economy alone ensure progress and that the government should not unnecessarily intervene in the economy. Can you tell which of the parties in the 1960s were Rightist and which were the Left parties? Where would you place the Congress party of that time?