Nehru's Scientific temper tantrums

In a democracy, it is inevitable and unavoidable that leaders will speak and write vacuously. They bombard the realm they are seeking power over with 'cheap talk' of a promiscuous and self-contradictory sort so as to solder together as large a constituency as possible. Sadly, in so far as politicking affects socio-economic outcomes, there will be a Tardean mimetics of an elected leader who has entrenched hegemony. It is his temperament- as expressed in temper tantrums- which ambitious people will exhibit. Thus, Gandhian India displayed Gandhian stupidity while Nehruvian Indian exhibited both Nehruvian vacuity and Gandhian stupidity. The Indian temperament- as incarnated in Amartya Sen- was to be an argumentative ignoramus whose moral high horse was an imaginary elephant which had plunged into a bottomless abyss of mendicancy and the mendacity that condition imposes.

Consider the following from Nehru's 'discovery of India'- 

The applications of science are inevitable and unavoidable...

This was clearly false. Applications of science were costly. That is why the Indian peasant was so poor. He was using an Iron Age technology- except where iron was too expensive and thus Stone Age technology had to suffice.

But something more than its application is necessary.

Money. That depends on productivity, which in turn depends on the division of labor and the gains from trade. Where there is 'zero sum' competition- military or commercial- existential threats can drive bureaucracies to fund entrepreneurial Science more cheaply and copiously than would otherwise be possible. However a country or organization which says 'we won't compete with the best or even the quite good coz we are shit', won't apply Science though it may talk stupid shit about the Scientific temperament. 

Nehru's India chose not to compete in either trade ( export pessimism- i.e. India couldn't do what every low wage country which developed had done coz Hindus be shit) or military might (the notion that India should only fight Pakistan and simply surrender if anybody else fucked it over- coz Hindus be shit even if they had converted to Islam) and thus India sank in relative terms with respect to Science and Technology.

 It is the scientific approach, 

which is only useful if you actually are a scientist. It is harmful if you are a statesman or a scrap metal merchant or a species of rent boy. 

the adventurous yet critical temper of science,

is entrepreneurial, not bureaucratic or admonitory

 the search for truth and new knowledge,

which can't involve the experimental method in the social, managerial, or political realms

 the refusal to accept anything without testing and trial, 

solutions to coordination problems must be based on Schelling focality, not experiments- otherwise millions may perish- e.g the bungled partition of India

the capacity to change previous conclusions in the face of new evidence,

this is merely the concept of 'defeasibility' upon which the Law is based. Nehru may have been a shit student of Science, but, by profession, he was a barrister- a bad one. 

By contrast with a Judge who changes his conclusions on the basis of new evidence, a good Scientist develops a more sophisticated Structural Causal Model and better observational instruments so as to advance his Research Program. 

the reliance on observed fact and not pre-conceived theory..

Nehru didn't realize that the great physicists of his day were elaborating very sophisticated 'pre-conceived' theories which would have to wait for decades before receiving experimental confirmation. 

[This] should be, a way of life, a process of thinking, a method of acting and associating with our fellowmen...

Nehru is being more stupid than Gandhi who wanted everybody to give up sex and go eat grass. This is because you can give up sex just by chopping your dick off or plugging up your vag with cement. However very few of us are fitted to make Science a way of life. 

It is the temper of a free man. 

A free man can have any fucking temper he likes. It is a mark of Hindu India's aversion to freedom that it hasn't lost its temper with a dynasty which, almost immediately, began dying nasty. The fish rots from the head.

We live in the scientific age, so we are told, 

Nehru is expressing his resentment at the British nanny who was always telling her retarded charges that we are living in Scientific Age not age of smearing shit all over yourself! Chee Chee! 

but there is little evidence of this temper in the people anywhere or even in their leaders.

Churchill is secretly smearing shit all over himself. Perfidious Albion is pretending otherwise. Anyway, India will get plenty Scientific once I'm in charge. 

Jawaharlal Nehru was tutored by a British Theosophist, Ferdinand T Brooks, for three years before entering Harrow at the age of 16. It has been suggested that Brooks- widely believed to be a pederast- kindled his interest in Science. Nehru did the Science Tripos at Cambridge though, being weak in maths, he had to substitute botany for physics. The mystical side to him made him an acolyte of Gandhi but his father was more sensible and thus Jawaharlal harbored no great hostility to modern Science or Technology. Sadly, Nehru's hostility was reserved for the thing which makes Science and Technology possible- viz. Commerce. 

Consider the following-

“For a hungry man or hungry woman, truth has little meaning. 

This is nonsense. When you are hungry, you get angry when people lie to you about how soon you can sit down to dine. You may beat them till they tell the truth. After that, you may threaten to kill them if they don't get you something to eat very quickly. 

He wants food. For a hungry man, God has no meaning.

This too is false. If you are really hungry, you start bawling 'For God's sake give me something to eat!' Interestingly, the holy Scriptures of the Brahmins- and Nehru was one by birth- consider food to be the highest God- Annam Parabrahma Swaroopam.

And India is starving and to talk of truth and God and many of the finer things is mockery. 

So Nehru had been indulging in play-acting or mockery when he followed Mahatma Gandhi

We have to find food for them, clothing, housing, education and health are absolute necessities that every person should possess. 

Nehru did find food for starving India- in Canada and the USA. He didn't get that giving India's farmers incentives to grow more food would turn the country into a big food exporter. Sadly, this would enrich those involved in growing and distributing food. Science must prevent such naughtiness.

When we have done that we can philosophise and think of God. So, science must think in those terms and work along those lines on the wider scale of coordinated planning.”

Planning had caused famines in the Soviet Union and would cause an even bigger famine in Mao's China. Free enterprise had the opposite effect. Science should not think in stupid terms. It should recognize that Science is about Wealth creating more and more Wealth. If people are hungry and naked- that is a market opportunity. Why? Because hungry people will work for food, naked people will do tedious jobs so as to buy clothes. Exploiting the labor power of the hungry and naked will cause them to be well-fed and well-clothed. This raises their productivity which raises profits. The same thing happens when well-fed people become better educated. This is a virtuous circle which only a Nehru could object to on the grounds that 'profits are vulgar'. 

Oddly, a pal of Nehru, who had a great passion for planning- Nobel laureate Patrick Blackett- came to see that Nehru's 'Scientific temperament' arose out of his being out of temper with Commerce and Wealth Creation, on the one hand, and gibbering Gandhian lunacy on the other. 

Blackett said about Nehru- he had a bit too much intellectualism to solve the problem. He spent, from one point of view; too much time talking... He liked intellectual company. (And he did not get it except in Homi Bhabha and people like that.) He had extreme informality and charm; his physical presence was extremely attractive; he was very engaging, with a shy sort of smile. He was sort of lighthearted. I liked this about him. But he spent too much time, I think, on science anyway. Considering the amount he had to do, running a country of that size, the amount of time he did spend with us was indeed surprising. On the whole, he liked me and others more as companions than as consultants

Blackett does not understand that Nehru- as the tool of the bureaucracy- wanted to centralize Scientific research. This meant weakening the 'Presidency' Universities (located in maritime Cities which might resist Delhi's Imperialism) which were already doing such research as well as co-opting and taking control of the Institutes set up by Industrialists. 

Blackett got the Nobel in Physics in 1948. Apart from being a Leftist- the Americans would deny him a visa- he was close to the British military establishment. Thus Blackett was useful to the Indian bureaucrats both politically as well as in keeping the Army out of defense procurement. Being a Cambridge man, Blackett got on well with upper class Indians, like General Chaudhuri. 

Nehru did make a half hearted effort to create a Technocratic cadre within the Civil Service. Predictably, the IAS strangled the thing at birth. Blackett poured scorn on the Oxford educated civil servants who were running factories which produced things about which they knew absolutely nothing. He did not realize that he himself- because of his frequent trips to India during which he'd often stay with Nehru- was enabling those cretins to increase their power. 

Blackett was candid about Nehru in 1967, saying: He was a superb leader. But he did not know how to get things done very well. He believed in science in a rather naive way. We all did at the time. He was not more naive than other people. 

Exactly! The guy wasn't naive at all! Neither was Gandhi when he'd claim to be able to deliver Independence or to rid India of Untouchability or Poverty or Illiteracy in return for absolute power. Both Nehru and Gandhi were lying. They may not have acknowledged they were lying to themselves but that is what they were doing so as to increase their own power. That's how come they were so successful in Indian politics but so utterly shit when dealing with non-Hindus. 

Gandhi managed to sideline all the other Religion based opponents of British rule- though the price was increased British power in deciding the political evolution of the country- and that is why he is considered a Religious man. Nehru fucked over India's burgeoning Scientific and Military power by pretending to do the reverse- at least as far as Science was concerned. But the upshot was increased dependence- at least while Nehru himself was alive.  Blackett's big idea was that India should only think in terms of fighting Pakistan- which was smaller and weaker. Thanks to Nehru, Pakistan got to a point where they thought they could beat their much bigger neighbor. First, Gandhi took down India's pants in the name of Ahimsa and then Nehru lubed it up in the name of Scientific Planning. Sadly, his daughter took a dim view of such goings on. She defeated and dismembered Pakistan and insisted India pull its pants back on and stop offering its backside to all and sundry. Her own husband had decried this 'Fascist' tendency of hers. The fact is bleating about Ahimsa or Scientific Socialism is no fun if people are too scared to fuck you in the ass. But this also means you must dispense with the Gandhian hole in Ind's begging bowl which is the immortal Nehruvian soul of gobshittery. If a country wins wars, then it can feed and clothe its people. Once you get used to the idea that soldiers don't have to suffer sodomy then you have to accept that not every industry needs to be 'sick'. Some people can make money by making useful stuff while others can show valor on the battlefield. 

In 1893, Swami Vivekananda and Jamsetji Tata agreed that India needed an indigenous Institute of Science. Religion and Commerce recognized that both could only burgeon only through the rational pursuit of profit. Thanks to Gandhi and Nehru, both were disintermediated from an independent India where only bureaucrats made out like bandits- till actual bandits got elected to Parliament and buggered the Babus. 

Blackett- ridiculed in England for his association with Harold Wilson's 'white heat of technology' bullshit- was able to see that talk of Science isn't actually Science- at least when it comes to India. Still, maybe Indians- like the British working class whom Wilson hoped would doff their cloth caps for white lab coats so as to be less gormlessly proletarian- needed to stop being so fucking Indian. Perhaps they could pretend to be doing Science instead. In this sense-

It was enormously valuable that he should put science first in making Indians scientifically minded. But science is only part of a game and the real effect of science comes from producing wealth... Now India is finding out that the problem of turning science into wealth ... is very much more difficult than just doing science. It is not his fault that he did not fully understand this... We were all scientifically naive. We thought science was the solution to everything. I do not think I was very conscious of it explicitly earlier in this period...

Science is the solution to everything iff the solver of the problem has 'control rights' and gains by it. Free enterprise can achieve this but so can Research Institutes competing for funds on the basis of objective, goal directed, criteria. These could be 'shadow prices', where markets are missing, or just money prices on open markets.

 Blackett's deepest critique was about implementation and action: Nehru did an enormous amount to get non-scientists to understand what was scientific. But his regime did not do nearly as well in implementation. What he lacked were hard-headed industrial-minded Ministers who could push on the agricultural program, the industrial program.

Hard-headed, industrial-minded Ministers develop their own constituency. Big Money flows towards them. They may become less and less willing to kowtow to some stupid scion or sycophant of the Dynasty. The descendants of Motilal Nehru may have decreased in I.Q with each passing generation, but fucking over India so they might prevail was as second nature to them. One way of doing this is by claiming to have a 'Scientific temperament' when, it is clear, they are simply too stupid to have anything of the sort. Which is why we tolerate them. The only thing worse than a stupid Pundit is a smart Pundit. Rahul Baba's big mistake was getting an M. Phil from Cambridge. True, it was in 'Development Studies' but, back in the Nineties, that field was not widely known to be crap. If only Rahul had failed his degree exams, or not taken them- like his Dad and Granny- he'd have had a term as P.M by now.