60 years of freedom is a long time. When the Nehru govt took over India it was up to its neck in poverty and the resulting misery with the majority living in the most appalling poverty. To Nehru’s credit he bravely resolved to change the conditions of the wretched of the earth and took the necessary steps to do so. He espoused, practised and implemented socialist policies. He declared that the commanding heights of the economy – steel, coal, the railways, electricity and other major resources should be in state hands. At the same time he allowed a large amount of freedom for the private sector. This was one of the most disciplined and productive eras in Indian history. Despite the anti-Nehru tirades from the apologists for the now burgeoning free market, the fact remains that without Nehru’s socialism, they would not be where they are today. The situation has not changed much since Nehru’s day - poverty, illiteracy, malnutrition, slums and disease continue to claim millions of lives but at least Nehru was driven by the humanistic concern to rid our country of these unacceptable evils. Manmohan Singh, to his credit, also pointed out the contradictions of Indian society - the powerful economy and the most appalling poverty. But unlike Nehru who devised some revolutionary policies to attack poverty all that Manmohan Singh could say in his address to the Indian nation was to remind them of the shame of the Indian poverty without giving the nation a concrete programme to make poverty in India history. He just appealed to Indians to do something about this corrosive cancer. It is no secret that Manmohan Singh owes his position to Sonia Gandhi who seems blissfully unaware that her grand father-in-law Jawaharlal Nehru, laid the foundations for Indian progress with his enlightened socialist policies. To a great extent Indira Gandhi too espoused socialist policies to attack the scourge of poverty. In fact one of her famous election slogans was “out with poverty”. Nehru and his daughter would be turning in their graves as India mindlessly embraces the unscrupulous and the greedy free market with its message that the important thing is to get rich at all costs and not worry about the poor. India boasts a 300 million middle class, one of the largest in the world. But the fact remains that India is a corrupt country where the rich either evade taxes or pay only a fraction of what they owe to the state. If the rich paid their taxes our country would be in a strong position to advance to a more just economic, social and political society – a significant step to the eradication of the terrible, degrading and humiliating poverty that makes a mockery of the much trumpeted free market economy. But Manmohan Singh’s empty rhetoric without concrete action to redistribute wealth appears to be a naked invitation to the ‘robber barons’ of Big Business and Big Politics to continue the rape and plunder of the Indian economy and thereby ensure that poverty will continue to rain over the Indian people for centuries to come.