Look, I'm not a fan of Nehru bashing or indeed of most leaders . Hindsight is always 20/20. With the exception of Rahul Gandhi, not all Congress leaders can be tarnished completely. Sure, there are many mistakes and almost definitely, their push to socialism messed up a lot of things but this was not an easy change to be made when they did it. It's not like Modi's economic policies are anything to Tom Tom out, he's as big a fan of big government as any socialist. We have had two stretches where economic plans were different, during PVN and ABV. That's it.
China grew post the mid 1980's and that kind of change was not politically acceptable in india. For heavens sake even now Modi's government struggles with labour laws that are made for the last century.
It's easy to criticize and easier to blame it on people you dislike but the reason for our situation is complex and must be understood that way.
Nehru started this clusterfuck called socialism that has crippled innovation and wealth creation in this country. Sucking big government's teat to survive has become a habit/addiction of the general Indian economic mindset. Indira then nationalised all the big banks and taxed & regulated businesses at unsustainable rates thus resulting in the creation of black money in India and babudom.
By taking advantage of the government apparatus Sanjay and then Rajiv made scams which were an occasional occurrence due to Gandhian stewardship hangover from independence days in Congress turn into a regular occurence of impossibly large sums. Sonia just followed in her husband's footsteps and Pappu held onto his mama's pallu.
China opened up to the West after Nixon turned them into a neutral partner. In the 1980s - 90s they were where India was in the 2000s in the global food chain thanks primarily to their nukes and size. After Clinton came to power, they were admitted into the WTC and then the outsourcing chutiyapa started thanks to NAFTA.
Lobbying for outsourcing by big businesses was used as a means to escape from unions that emerged in the 40s and cultural shift in the 60s and using Reagan's policy of free market deregulation. The original intent was to transition to a services market with consumer manufacturing relegated to asian markets. Japan died out due to deflation but China persisted and thrived because US did not factor rare earth magnet production used in semiconductors into their calculations.
Modi is trying to modernise the economy via GST, Demo and digitisation to allow ease of business and by allowing and encouraging FII/FDI to startups and JVs to allow private sector to compete with PSUs. Rejigging PSUs will allow them to keep existing base and also provide a state sponsored solution to consumer. The free market will then find it's own equilibrium as degree of entropy stabilizes.
