Editor’s Intro

It was a hot summer afternoon in 2009 as I landed in Shanghai’s Pudong Airport in China. Soon after landing, I was on my way to the central district in a cab. It was on a highway that I had gone through many times over the years. Yet there was always something wholly new that caught my eye.  

    I had been coming to China regularly since 1988. That was the year when the first western-style highway, a small 16-kilometer stretch, was built outside Shanghai. Approaching the well-known Bund area, I could see that it bore no resemblance whatsoever to the Bund I first saw back in 1988. “How can one city change so much, over a space of just two decades?”, I used to ask myself frequently. 

    Watching first-hand, all the changes taking place year after year, I have remained in awe, and in respectful admiration for the pace of economic progress in China. The reasons for the great transformation were, of course, plain and simple. The fastest economic transformation in human history is being powered by free enterprise, and a style of governance that carefully started permitting the free flow of commerce, individual enterprise and unshackling of the economy. The reform movement in China was driven by the pragmatist “ideology” crafted by Deng Xiaoping in the late 1970s.

    Around that time, back in India, someone had given me a set of articles written by the late Indian politician C. Rajagopalachari (Rajaji), way back in the 1950s and 1960s. Of course, I knew who Rajaji was. Almost all Indian school children know him to be the first Governor General of free India, and as a politician possessing considerable administrative abilities, incorruptible integrity, and a penchant for expressing bold and forthright opinions. Gandhiji had singled out Rajaji as his “conscience keeper”.

    Going through the articles of Rajaji, many from the journal he started, called the Swarajya a long time ago, was a real eye-opener for me. I was struck by the profound wisdom, and the far-sighted and prophetic opinions. Rajaji had been advocating, unceasingly, a free-market approach, and a private sector-led growth strategy for India, much like Deng Xiaoping in China. The futility and pitfalls of Socialism, as enunciated by Jawaharlal Nehru and the Congress party were articulated, time and again, with amazing simplicity and sharpness of intellect.

    I was also struck by the simplicity of Rajaji’s English. I soon realized that it was an effort to reach the common man through simple language, and share his approach to the complex political and social issues of the day. It was a deliberate strategy of shunning elitism in language, much like American English, striving for inclusiveness. Only a person with full command of a language can write with such lucid simplicity.

    I searched for more articles by Rajaji, but they were hard to come by. I had the distinct impression that they were dying out and getting quite forgotten. It was apparent that what I had with me was a treasure trove of wisdom that had to be shared with others. And that is the humble objective of this project.

    I have perused these 200 or so articles, and only liberty I have taken is to summarize the essential points of each article in highlighted boxes, for the sake of readability. I take full responsibility for the errors that remain after scanning them  and editing them into a web format.

    Thus, it is my privilege to share these forgotten articles which, in the current context of global competition with praiseworthy nations like China, should serve to reinforce and fine-tune the directions of our economic liberalization and free-market reforms.

    The highly discerning Indian public will judge the merits of these articles in a variety of ways, based on the mosaic of our pluralism. I am confident that these articles will serve as eye openers, just as they did for me, at this critical juncture in our history.

N. C. Suresh, PhD

January 21, 2018.