Question

The first two decades of national congress economic nationalism ​

Answer 1

Answer:

Among the most politically momentous consequences of the post-Nehru era of violent consociational democracy is the rise of nationalism championing the rights of the Hindu majority, in the form of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). This article brings us up to date with these most recent developments, explosively accompanied in the months of early BJP incumbency by a renewal of nuclear and missile testing and backed by a new and quite different vision of the purpose of Indian politics. The BJP's economic platform, which receives pride of place in this article, rejects both communism and capitalism in favor of a revival of swadeshi (economic self-reliance), raising natural interest as to what Gandhi's old anti-colonial policy might look like in the current globalist context. From the BJP's contemporary perspective, swadeshi no longer means economic self-reliance. But it does entail at least taking preliminary steps to prepare Indian industry before opening the country to international competition and keeping foreign corporations out of priority areas, such as insurance and the export sector. At least that was the rhetoric. In the event, the BJP's economic policy has been characterized not by revolution or even alternation, but by linear evolution from the economic liberalism introduced by the Congress Party under the foregoing Rajiv Gandhi-Narasimha Rao dispensation. Finding itself squeezed between the pressures of the international market on the one hand (in which India must compete for capital and export markets) and by the need to form a coalition with an ungainly flock of small ethnic parties with diverse agendas on the other, nothing very distinctive has survived of the BJP's distinctive economic vision. Though it is perhaps premature to dismiss the party's distinctive vision after little more than a year, the early reviews suggest that if the contest is between nationalist appeals and the functional exigencies of economic prosperity there is really no contest.