From 50 Years Ago: Focus on Social Change.

Man has broken into outer space. The splitting of atoms had enabled him to release boundless energy which was used forthwith to wreak terrific destruction but can also be used to change the face of the world, fight disease and bring forth the abundance. He is now well on his way to learn how to join atoms, in which lies the secret of sun’s heat, the discovery of which will give him command over another source of energy which may be in some ways more easily tractable than that released from atoms. Man’s mind, however, trails painfully behind and lags behind most in ordering human relations, in international as well as national spheres. We have jogged along in our way. India held her second general elections in the year of the Sputnik, the Congress resolved at the Indore session of the AICC early in the year to give an Indian orientation to Socialism which it has accepted as its creed, and economic development, symbolised in the Second Plan, ran into foreign exchange difficulties.

The forward projection of social change, advertised by the adoption by the Congress and the Government of a socialist pattern of society as their goal, it was complained in some quarters, had produced an unfavourable impact on prospects of economic development, the climate had become uncongenial for foreign investment and reduced the chances of India getting large scale external finance, without which economic progress could not but be slow. The situation has eased somewhat, but whether economic development will be, or is being sought at the cost of desirable and necessary social changes, is a question that cannot yet be answered conclusively