No Nehru

WI, instead of Nehru becoming the first PM, it's Patel? We'll see a free-market economy, instead of five-year Soviet-style plans, India will become prosperous earlier. Nehru can go as Foreign Minister, and keep him out of the PMO after 1950. And perhaps Desai later on. India would be much better with a conservative rather than a populist like Indira.
 
Any Prime Minister of India is going to struggle to carry out any major economic or social reforms. The reason for this is that post-independence India is highly devolved. The state legislatures are quite powerful and tend to decide their own fiscal and social policy. Dehli just doesn't have the muscle to force any drastic reforms on these state governments. Nehru's premiership was actually very successful in spite of India's restrictive democratic federal system.
By comparison, a significant factor in China's 'economic miracle' is a powerful, authoritarian central government which can put Party policy into action quickly and effectively.
Also, a major feature of Nehru's premiership was India's non-alignment policy which kept India out of the Cold War. An alternative PM may have taken India into an open alliance with the West by joining SEATO. This could have seriously tipped the delicate balance of the Cold War and drastically increased the possiblity of open confrontation.
 

ninebucks

Banned
WI, instead of Nehru becoming the first PM, it's Patel? We'll see a free-market economy, instead of five-year Soviet-style plans, India will become prosperous earlier. Nehru can go as Foreign Minister, and keep him out of the PMO after 1950. And perhaps Desai later on. India would be much better with a conservative rather than a populist like Indira.

Wrong. Developing countries need socialist, centrally-planned economics. 'Free markets' would allow Westerns business élites to seize control of all of India's production, the Indian people would permanently lose any chance to control their own development, and would be damned to live a life of exploitative post-colonial poverty. This poverty would increase societal strife, and the moneyed interests would support any government brutal enough to suppress dissent. Insurrections would rise and the country would split. Before long, the Indian subcontinent would be a mirror image of OTL Africa.
 
OK, maybe that's not a great idea, but I still want Desai instead of Indira. Someone who respects the Constitution and won't maintain socialist statism longer than necessary. And who doesn't let their 25 year old not-so-smart :rolleyes: son have a say in running martial law and picking provincial slates.
 
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