Modi needs to learn self-sufficiency won't put food on the table, jobs will

The more Modi tries to relegate Nehru to the back pages of history, the more the first prime minister leaps out

A critical component of the myth-making around Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is to minimize the contribution of the country’s foundational figures. None has suffered more than Jawaharlal Nehru, the man who laid down the rails on which the republic has run for 74 years. Which makes it surprising that Modi is emulating a signature Nehru policy and, paradoxically, one that failed: self-sufficiency. Why is a 21st-century leader borrowing a discredited 1940s idea that was given up in the 1990s?

The Harrow and Cambridge-educated Nehru, son of a wealthy lawyer, was an internationalist. But when it came to picking a