ABSTRACT
Nehru was a modernist. He was a believer in science and progress, a rationalist who saw to it that, constitutionally at least, India came into independence as a secular state. Religion irritated him; superstition irritated him; he respected logic and cold reason. The word "judgment" takes the guiding hand of God sufficiently out of the picture to make room for calculation. Any leader - Nehru, Gandhi, Clinton, the Bisoi, Churchill - working out a decision must take into account the followers, both entourage and mass, who have to implement or accept the decision. Followers are already pre-programmed; they have a culture, which is their own distinctive way of making sense of the world and their experiences in it. When the political parties in Orissa selected a candidate for a constituency, they compared the profile of the candidate with the profile of a modal voter in that constituency.
