UPSC Mains 2014 GS Paper 1 Q10: model answer

Lenin's New Economic Policy (1921) replaced War Communism in Soviet Russia with a mixed economy.

The NEP

• The state kept control of the 'commanding heights': heavy industry, banking and foreign trade.
• Private trade, small industry and peasant farming were permitted; a tax in kind replaced grain requisition.

Parallels with Indian policy

• India adopted a mixed economy: the Industrial Policy Resolutions of 1948 and 1956 reserved key sectors for the state while allowing private enterprise elsewhere.
• Public sector in steel, power, heavy machinery: the 'commanding heights' idea, voiced by Nehru.
• Small-scale and cottage industries and private farming retained.

Differences

• India's planning, especially the Second Plan (Mahalanobis model), drew more on later Soviet five-year plans than on the NEP.
• India was a democracy with a constitution, unlike the one-party Soviet state; land remained private.

Verdict

• The influence was indirect: the idea of a mixed economy with state control of key sectors resembles the NEP, but Indian policy was shaped by many sources, including Fabian socialism, the Bombay Plan and Gandhian ideas.

The statement is partly valid. The NEP's mixed-economy logic echoes in early Indian policy, though India's model was its own democratic synthesis.