Toxic Economics.

• Author: Rees, M.

India's first post-independence prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, was emblematic of a political class enamored with the Soviet Union and scarred by the colonial experience. The policies that came out of this toxic environment were previewed by Nehru in a book he wrote the year before India achieved freedom. The goal, he said, was "the attainment, as far as possible, of national self-sufficiency." Closing the borders to trade was the one (admittedly blunt) way to ensure that India's...