ABSTRACT
When India became independent in 1947, the Western countries recognized it as the most promising developing country for future economic development. Independent India was based on parliamentary democracy; it had a large economy; it had a reservoir of intellectuals such as higher-ranking officials, lawyers, researchers and journalists; and it produced entrepreneurs with funds and technology who had developed national industries to a certain level since the late nineteenth century. A representative development economist of this time, W. W. Rostow, highly appreciated India as a country on the eve of the ‘take-off ’, along with China (1960).
