Jawaharlal Nehru, who expressed his bias succinctly in his autobiography: Right through history th eold Indian ideal did not glorify political and military triumph, and it looked down upon money and the professional money-making class. Today the older culture is fighting against a new and all powerful opposition form the bani civilization of the capitalist West."

In Nehru's case this prejudice was reinforced by his education at Harraow and Cambride, where he acquired the English upper-class bias against trade and learned socialism for the Fabians. hen he came to power in 1947, Nehru institutionalized the prejudice.
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The Japanese responded to the Western challenge in a vastly different way. After their humiliation by Commodore Matthew Perry in 1854, they recognized that their ancient civilization was like a paper thin shoji door, too flimzy to defend them against the superior technology of the West. Instead of tiresomely proclaiming their own superior past, they humbly went to scholl during the Meiji period, in the second half of the nienteenth century. THey vigorously began to acquire Western learn ing, skills, and ways.

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The Europeans had broughy yo India, China and Japan a virile new culture based on science, modern organization, and the ideas of the Enlightenment. (25)
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Indian won their economic independence only after 1991. THus India embraced democracy before capitalism. This makes its journey to modernity unique, and this sindular reversal explains a great deal about Indian society. (25)

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Why did India fail? It has little to do with our colonial past. Neither is it a problem of national character. Nor it is the fault of our " soft democracy". The chief reason for nonperformance is our wrong "mixed economy" model, which allowed our obstructive burocracy to kill our industrial revolution at birth.