>>7963 Protectionism was something the Indian big bourgeoise itself sought in post-independence, it worked as intended:
https://qz.com/india/1464869/the-story-of-jrd-tata-gd-birlas-bombay-plan-for-india/ The land reform prevented the accumulation of large landowners until the 1990s (which is why the BJP now wants to roll that back to allow for that) but at the same time they lacked the collectivization of socialist countries which basically just froze agriculture in time, where it remained atomized and labor-intensive. The worst of both worlds so to speak, from a purely economic point of you, but it did prevent the farmers from becoming urbanized proletariat which would have led to famine like in China.
Basically India now faces a deadlock where the solution can either be barbarism or socialism. A land reform that centralizes land and transforms peasants into workers is highly necessary, but there can be two ways of such centralization - the neoliberal (BJP) way of just introducing a new landlord class, or socialist collectivization. With that in mind, I think Indian communists should stop clinging to the past when the INC was still a progressive force, this goes to the CPI in particular and the CPI (M) to a degree, but just wanting to preserve the ban on land ownership accumulation and fixed prices for produce is not gonna be a long-term solution.
The farms are already large. What they need is mechanization. The problem (within capitalism) however is:
>tractors arrive>now only 40% of the workers are needed>they are urbanized proletarians npw>massive unemployment and slumification ensuesSure, if India would just turn into Dengist Market-'Socialism', that all could be mitigated, but neither the BJP or the INC are willing to do this.
India, economically would be what Pakistan is, without the Nehruvian economic programs, however weak they were.