The ”Nehru Development Model” inevitably produced a Nehru foreign policy and the government is seeking to correct that abroad, just as it is trying to reform the consequences of the model at home, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said on Sunday.

”In fact, the resistance to one is based on an attachment to the other. In my view, the two need to be tackled as an integral whole. The paradox is, that for more than three decades now, there is actually a national consensus, that this development model eventually failed the country,” he observed at the launch of “The Nehru Development Model” book by former NITI Aayog vice chairman Prof Arvind Panagariya.

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However, he said there is still a reluctance to confidently explore alternatives. ”As a result, we usually end up doing the reforms we must, rarely the reforms we should,” he added.

The minister said there was a strong ideological drive in India to advance a particular economic model for the country after it attained freedom. The belief which propelled it was modulated from time to time, but never fundamentally changed. Its root cause was an analysis that the only counter to imperialism lay in socialism, he said.

”Not just in general terms, but one particular paradigm that was centered around heavy industry. For that reason, the author (Prof Panagariya) actually characterised it as a Nehru Development Model. Now, this may have worked for the USSR; or at least it appeared to do so then. The problem was that India was not the USSR,” the minister said.

Mr Jaishankar noted that Prof Panagariya has suggested in his book that Nehru’s choices set India on a deterministic path. ”The model and its accompanying narratives permeated our politics, the bureaucracy, of course the planning system, the judiciary, the public space including media, and most of all, teaching. Think about it: both Russia and China today, reject unambiguously, the economic assumptions of that period, which they did more than anyone else, to propagate. Yet, these beliefs appear to live-on with influential sections of our country even today. Certainly, after 2014, there has been a vigorous effort towards course correction. But the author does suggest – with good reason – that it still remains an uphill task,” he added.

He said there is no question that India has benefited from greater openness in the last 33 years. But the situation today is much more complex than before. ”We live in an era of weaponised economics, one that throws up questions as to what exactly we are exposing abroad, and to whom. This is aggravated by increasingly technology-centric growth and high data sensitivity. The key concepts, therefore, today are less of openness, and more of resiliency, reliability, redundancy and trust. In the debates that understandably take place in this domain, perhaps ‘openness with caution’ is a better approach,” he added.

He was of the view that ”Atma nirbharta” (self-reliance) should not be taken as a synonym for protectionism. ”It is actually a call to think and act for ourselves, as much as it is to ensure national security,” he added.