The New Bombay Plan places a burden on govt
June 09, 2000
Ever heard of the Bombay Plan? No, it was neither a Bollywood movie nor a Mumbai gangland stratagem. For those of you who associate the word "plan" with Soviets, commies and "sarkari babus", and who think 'planning' is what Jawaharlal Nehru did to India in Yojana Bhavan, think again.
The Bombay Plan was written in 1944 by five of India's top businessmen in Bombay. It was a missive for the Raj -- now that the war is coming to an end, if India must catch up with the rest of the world in the next decade, this is what the "mai-bap sarkar" must do. It was all about public sector and the "role of the state" and other such borrowed Bolshevism of the Mumbai "lalas," later dubbed the Bombay Club!
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"The Bombay Plan - This businessman's view of what the government ought to do to ensure "doubling of per capita income" in 15 years' time "
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Titled "A Plan for the Economic Development of India," the Bombay Plan was written by G D Birla, J R D Tata, Purushothamdas Thakurdas, Ardeshir Dalal and John Mathai (later finance minister of free India). This businessman's view of what the government ought to do to ensure "doubling of per capita income" in 15 years' time informed much of Nehru's official Fabianism after independence.
So why am I talking about the Bombay Plan of 1944 in
June 2000? Check out the Prime Minister's websites in cyberspace and you'll know why. The latest addition, flashing "NEW", is a set of papers put together by India's top businessmen of today on what the government should do to make India a great nation.
It is a 20th century Bombay Plan, ooops, sorry, "Mumbai Yojana" from some of the descendents of the original five and others who have joined their ranks over the half century gone by. Kumaramangalam Birla, Ratan Tata, Rahul Bajaj, Nusli Wadia and G P Goenka from the old world families, are joined by
Mukesh Ambani, A C Muthiah, N Srinivasan and the self-made M R Narayanamurthy of Infosys.
These are all the members of the Prime Minister's Advisory Council on Trade and Industry. Together they have collected a set of papers, which may have been actually written by ghost writers and anonymous experts, which offer the PM the businessman's view of what ought to be done to make India a better place to live, work and do business in.
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