Acting on Nehru’s lofty ideals

Chandra Mohan

Born in a nationalist family, I had the privilege of staying with my aunt Saraswati, a BA topper of mathematics of Punjab University in the 1920s, for my early schooling. She was married to Dr Amrit Rai, the triple Cambridge Tripos son of renowned freedom fighter Lala Lajpat Rai. The marriage unfortunately did not last long and he returned to England. 

She thereafter joined the Sir Ganga Ram High School for Girls in Lahore, which allowed co-education up to class 8, as a teacher. Now the Women’s University of Pakistan, this fancy Belfry-towered school on a 60-acre campus was the first in the North to launch BEd for women in the North in the 1930s.  

Sarojini Naidu’s spinster sister  Mrinalini Chattopadhyay, an MA in English from Cambridge, was the principal of Sir Ganga Ram. Theatre artist Sheila Bhatia and painter Snehlata Nakra were some of the teachers whom I remember till today. Because of its heritage, Pandit Nehru, Maulana Azad, Harindranath and Kamla Chattopadhyay were frequent visitors. Nehru, with the rosebud in his button-hole, was the idol of every student. This early exposure and signboards like “Dogs & Indians not allowed” on some restaurants in Lahore deepened my nationalism. 

Nationalist zeal grew as I shifted to my parents in Ferozepur for class 9 and college in 1944.  Cycling 25 km to the Hussainiwala border to hear Nehru speak on a sizzling summer afternoon in the run-up to Partition was routine. I vividly recall one such  gathering of 5,000 where three of us friends in college were squatting on the floor in the first row. Nehru, who somehow lost his temper, got down from the stage and slapped one of us. This friend did not wash his face for three days and proudly showed that cheek to everyone.  Four of us friends travelled by overnight train to Delhi to see Nehru unfurl the National Flag on the Red Fort on August 15, 1947. We returned the same night only to wake up in Ferozepur where riots had broken out and curfew imposed. 

Let us never forget that it was Nehru’s vision and leadership alone which created the one and only free and vibrant democracy of the poor post-colonial world after World War II. And, to top it all, lay claim to equal status with the developed countries of the West. It was his personal knowledge of global icons in every field that led him to invite and give a carte blanche to Harvey Slocum,  the builder of Grand Coulee Dam, to create the giant Bhakra, and Le Corbusier to set up Chandigarh. He called them the temples of modern India. It was he who created the institutions which became hallmarks of a modern developed society in partnership with the best in the world. He structured them and handpicked the best to lead them, be it the Planning Commission, or RTRC, or CSIR, DRDO, AIIMS, PGIMER, IARI, PAU, IITs, ISRO, you name them.

It was he who gave the go-ahead to steel plants in technological partnership with major nations. They were all in the public sector because our private sector could not even think on that scale. 

It is Nehru’s nationalism and firm belief that Indians are second to none in the world that has driven me throughout my professional journey as an engineer, which began with the Railways in 1954 and continues till today. Basic R&D for today’s high-speed trains in the ’60s was led by me. I quit the Railways in 1965 only when I found that path-breaking research end as an office file. Implementation only came 30 years later and that too with technical knowhow from LHB of Germany.

 I thereafter joined CMERI, Durgapur, a CSIR lab, to begin a life-long tryst with R&D on a 100 per cent Indian Swaraj tractor and quit it again in 1970 to sell the technology to Punjab State Industrial Development  Corporation and then raise money to create Punjab Tractors Ltd (PTL). It was sheer coincidence that the first tractor from the PTL assembly-line rolled out on November 14, 1973, Nehru’s birthday.  

I led PTL for 28 years. It was the flagship of the Rs 1,500-crore Swaraj group. PTL led the creation of modern engineering industry in the region. It was also the first Indian company to export tractors in 1983, and to systematically adopt and propel Japanese TQM in 1986. On completing 65 in 1997, I called it a day with PTL and Swaraj, but I continue to pursue the greatest link we have missed in translating that grand vision of Pt Nehru: conversion of lofty ideals into action. The decade-old PTU Nalanda School of TQM & Entrepreneurship in Mohali is one such endeavour. 

If one looks back, among all the statesmen of the post-war world, Nehru alone had that unique vision of building institutions which build a democracy and the wisdom and humility to carry his colleagues along to build them. If we haven’t taken them forward, it has been our own failing.