Dawn Disasters DD 1

Sharad Joshi says some history about the care, the congress, cement ….and is worth reading.

• “One of the early disasters of Nehruvian socialist planning with emphasis on heavy industry was an over-production of cement. S. K. Patil, in his autobiography, gave a hilarious account of how the States and the local authorities were persuaded to go in for cement concrete roads in preference to tar roads.
  
• In the early decades after Independence, India had only two or three models of cars, which were manufactured by families that were close to the Congress leadership. India became a country of poorly maintained cement concrete roads and ramshackle cars.
  
• Since the interests of the car manufacturers and car owners were close to the heart of the rulers, the government followed, for long years, a policy of subsidising petrol and diesel. For the same reasons, cooking gas was also subsidised. The subsidies would have been politically expensive for the socialist pretensions of the rulers if kerosene, recognised as the poor man’s fuel, had been left to the free market forces”.