50 years of socialism

The real reason that the banks had to go was political: the nature of Indira Gandhi's rivals in the Congress

It is perhaps easy for us today, in a country that has been socialist since independence — and which, in spite of a quarter century of liberalisation, seems to be growing more socialist every year — to imagine the alternative possibilities that existed 50 years ago, as we nationalised the banks. We know, in retrospect, that India was condemned to increasing statism, disruption, and authoritarianism in the years after 1969 — and that Indira Gandhi’s style of inner-party autocracy, her hawkishness, and her left-wing populism would eclipse her father’s social-democratic liberalism as the preferred archetype for Indian political leadership. 

But it