Mostly Economics

Western, and especially American, observers nervously watched these growing connections which bolstered their view of Mahalanobis as the eminence grise—perhaps the eminence rouge—of Indian economic policy. Starting in the early 1950s, United States (US) State Department records amassed an impressive catalogue of Mahalanobis’s supposed political trespasses: he was “extremely sympathetic to Communist Doctrine,” “far along the road to Communist theory,” “emotionally and intellectually very close to Moscow,” and hewed close to the Soviet line on matters both economic and political.¹⁷

Yet, for all the opponents Mahalanobis managed to attract, and for the criticism that he faced at home and in Washington, Soviet officials remained wary. Even as the Soviet Academy of Sciences agreed to send a delegation to consult with the ISI for formulating the Second Five Year Plan in 1955, Soviet bureaucrats issued clear warnings. “The task of Soviet economists,” Central Committee apparatchiks demanded, “should be limited to consultations, [and to] communicating our experience. We should not take responsibility for the formulation of a perspective ‘plan’ or become official advisors and experts working out this ‘plan.’” This order suggests a real determination to distance visiting Soviet economists from Mahalanobis’s activities in shaping the Second Plan.¹⁸ They likewise expressed their doubts about working with Mahalanobis; for all of his Soviet enthusiasms, one Soviet report noted, Mahalanobis exhibited “bourgeois limitations” in his “approach to socio-economic problems.”¹⁹

By the 1960s, as the Soviet economy slowed down and the excitement of India’s Second Five-Year Plan (1956–61) gave way to a troubled Third Plan (1961–66), Soviet observers evinced even more concerns about Indian planning, highlighting the differences between the Soviet version and what was happening in India. Purists in the Academy of Sciences denounced Indian planning as a crutch keeping Indian capitalism alive; others distanced themselves from the Indian Planning Commission by employing phrases like “so-called planning” (Clarkson 1978: 72–74; Lozovaia 1966: 104). Soviet observers, in sum, recognised that Mahalanobis’s aspirations (and his claims of Soviet inspiration) did not in and of themselves create central planning along Soviet lines; later on, it would come to be termed as the “administrative-command economy.”

Thus, even as Mahalanobis sought closer economic ties with the Soviet Union, his entreaties fell upon sceptical ears. While Soviet officials hoped to use Mahalanobis to expand their influence in Indian intellectual life, and expressed guarded hopes for Indian economic policy, they steered clear of any deeper connection with Mahalanobis. Their reasoning may have had as much to do with Mahalalanobis’s personality as his economic ideas or his politics; one official at the Soviet Academy of Sciences praised The Professor’s intellect but cast doubt on his motives: “Mahalanobis gave the impression of a very intelligent and cunning (khitrogo) person, his external frankness and good nature hiding his true intentions.”²⁰

Energetic and ambitious, Mahalanobis sought Soviet support of all kinds to promote his vision of rapid industrialisation and central planning, willing to provoke fierce denunciations along the way. His fervent efforts, however, prompted a cautious Soviet response, both in the policy realm and in their dealings with him at a personal level. Ultimately, then, the more Mahalanobis invoked the Soviet Union (and provoked his critics), the less likely he was to win lasting Soviet support.