Nationalist Planning for Autarky and State Hegemony: Development Strategy Under Nehru

In a revisionist interpretation, this article finds the position of mainstream economists to be in error in relation to the impact of economic theory on the economic strategy incorporated in the Second Five Year Plan. In place of "the power of (economic) theory", it suggests a "theory of power" as a more appropriate explanation for the strategy. Similarly, it finds the position of Marxist scholars and activists also to be mistaken in maintaining that the economic strategy had been designed on behalf of the capitalist class in order to build capitalism. Instead it suggests that the origins of the strategy were ideological, intended to build socialism; the strategy was contingently facilitated by a ruling coalition usually associated with an "intermediate regime".