Nation Builder
Nehru understood well the need for India to develop technologically and to be able to build its own weaponry, basic infrastructure and machinery.
It was in the 1950s that some of the greatest dams and hydroelectric projects were built, and public sector-led industrial development proceeded, by many accounts, almost like clockwork.
It was in the 1950s and 1960s that India first built its own fighter aircraft, the supersonic HF-Marut. This was a pioneering effort by any nation outside the great powers, but was not followed through by later prime ministers until Indira Gandhi approved the Light Combat Aircraft project in 1983.
Nehru also understood the need to keep India's doors open for economic and technological development. After all, it was he who took India into the British Commonwealth, which by nature was a preferential trade arrangement. It ensured the stability and value of the Indian Rupee by tying it to the Pound.
An astounding intellectual, Nehru trusted and surrounded himself with men, both Indian and foreign, of great vision and calibre and charged them with leading his many projects -- among them, Homi Bhabha, Vikram Sarabhai, P M S Blackett, Kurt Tank.
Unlike today's globalisation idealogues, Nehru also understood that in the final analysis a nation had to be largely self-sufficient if it was to be a significant, autonomous power on the world stage.
That such internal build-up is, in fact, the only sure and dependable way to world power is a crucial bit of common sense that an increasingly consumerist India seems to have lost.
Nehru and Minister for Mines K D Malviya inaugurate a oil refinery in Ankleswar, Gujarat. Inset: Homi Bhabha and Vikram Sarabhai
Nehru, 40 years on
Tomorrow: One quest above all