'I respect Nehru for many things but...': Mohandas Pai blames first PM for lost decades, Kashmir issue 

India's economic setbacks in the decades following independence were the result of flawed policies under Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, said Aarin Capital Chairman Mohandas Pai during his keynote speech at the Stanford India Conference 2025.

"There's been huge growth ever since India opened,” Pai said. "To my friend here I would say we suffered for the first 40 years of India's freedom because of wrong policies by his very revered leader Pandit Nehru. I respect Nehru for many things but the misery that he caused by his bad policies we are still paying for it — in Kashmir, China, and the economy."

Pai highlighted how India, which was the largest economy in Asia in 1947, fell behind due to the adoption of socialist policies. "China was destroyed in the war. Southeast Asia was destroyed in the war. And Japan was destroyed in the war. We had a manufacturing base intact. Two and a half million Indians fought in the Second World War. In Asia, we are responsible for defeating the Japanese and pushing them back," he said.

He pointed out that Britain owed India £1.5 billion for its war effort. "And then we brought in what is called socialism in the belief that a few set of people in Delhi knew how to rule the country of 330 million people. So at independence, white imperialists left and brown imperialists took over. The Indian people never felt any change."

Citing the economic drag from 1950 to 1980, Pai said, "India grew at 3.5% a year, while Asia grew at 6.5% and the world at 4.5%. We became poorer in 1980 compared to 1950." India opened up in 1991 when it was broke, and "that’s when the magic started because the Indian entrepreneurs were liberated," he said.

Pai detailed India's current scale across sectors: “We are a $4 trillion economy today. In PPP terms, we are $17.9 trillion—after China at $39 trillion and the U.S. at $32 trillion. From $275 billion in 1991, we've grown at 8.11% in dollar terms for 34 years."

He celebrated India's rise as a top industrial and tech power, noting, "We are the fifth-largest industrial power in the world. In another four to five years, we'll be the third — after China, the U.S., Germany, and Japan. We are second in steel and cement, and lead in two-wheelers and food grain production."

On digital infrastructure, Pai said, "We gave the world digital public infrastructure — Aadhaar, UPI. Last month alone, we saw 18.66 billion transactions and $39 billion transferred. Forty-five percent of global digital payments happen in India."

He stressed India's software sector has been a key driver: "We export $235 billion in software services. Of the top 10 software companies globally, five are Indian. Globally, of the one million tech hires last year, 500,000 were Indians."

On startups, Pai said India has 167,000 startups, 22,000 of them funded, with a valuation of $600 billion. Yet, he pointed out that the sector received only $160 billion in investment from 2014–24, far behind China's $845 billion and the US's $2.3 trillion.

He praised Prime Minister Narendra Modi for lifting people out of poverty: “Every PM promised to help the poor. Modi is the only one who executed it. What he has done, no PM has done — ensuring basic needs like housing, water, electricity, toilets, bank accounts, and food."