India and Brazil - Comparing Environmental Policies in 16 Countries - page 166

everybody's need, but not enough for everybody's greed.” 2 Gandhi modeled
his passive movement for independence, in part, on the American Henry
David Thoreau, and in turn was a model for Martin Luther King's civil
rights movement, which in turn inspired the environmental movement.
After India gained independence in 1947, the government moved in
exactly the opposite direction, embarking on an ambitious program of
industrialization based on state ownership. The model was the Soviet
Union. The first premier, Jawaharlal Nehru, who served for 17 years,
had fallen under the sway of Fabian Socialism during his student days in
England and had gained a positive impression of the economic success of
the Soviet Union during a visit in 1927. A series of Five Year Plans begin-
ning in 1951 promoted the steel industry, which proved an economic as
well as environmental failure. Massive dams were other favored projects.
Nehru called dams the “Temples of Modern India.” The largest was the
Bhakra Dam, which rises 170 meters above the river level and irrigates
40,000 square kilometers. Critics used the term gigantism to describe the
phenomenon. Although Nehru denied he was a socialist, the central gov-
ernment directed the major sectors of the economy, regulations covered
even small businesses and farmers, and taxes were high. Foreign invest-
ment was discouraged.
These policies are often blamed for the country's poor rate of economic
growth. Although many point to the Soviet Union as the model for Nehru's
policies, another influence was the British Labour Party that governed the
United Kingdom from 1945 to 1951, and was the impetus behind Indian
independence. Besides gigantic dams and heavy industry like steel and
cement, the Indian government discouraged imports, intervened in the
financial markets, subsidized cottage industries and regulated business.
The growth rate from independence to 1980 was only 3%, barely keep-
ing up with the growing population. By 1991 this economic policy was
reversed with the liberalization of markets, foreign investment, and the
end of central planning. Today, the growth rate is 7%.
When the British granted independence to its Indian Raj (Empire) in
1947 it partitioned the subcontinent into two (eventually becoming three)
countries. This was because the Muslims and Hindus could not reach
agreement on a unified government. The areas of most concentrated
Muslim population, now Pakistan and Bangladesh, became a single coun-
try known as Pakistan with an east and a west component. The negotiators
agreed that people who wanted to migrate to join their coreligionists could
do so. In fact, the migration was far greater than anticipated. Millions of