Sardar Patel's 150th birth anniversary: The Iron Man who pushed Aatmanirbhar Bharat when socialism ruled the day

As India marks the 150th birth anniversary of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel with nationwide celebrations — led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the iconic Statue of Unity in Kevadia — the spotlight isn’t just on the political architect of national integration. Patel, widely hailed as the Iron Man of India and the country’s first Deputy Prime Minister, also played a decisive yet often-overlooked role in shaping India’s economic foundations.

Unlike Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, whose socialist vision defined much of post-independence economic policy, Patel backed a more market-aligned approach rooted in pragmatism, fiscal discipline, and agricultural empowerment — sparking one of independent India’s earliest ideological debates on economic direction.

Nehru advocated for a socialist agenda driven by the desire of 'elimination of profit in society' and heavy restrictions on private enterprise. To further his socialist agenda, Nehru examined the Soviet model and replicated the Planning Commission and its Five-Year Plans at the Avadi Congress session in 1955.

Patel, on the other hand, believed that the nationalised industrial model was bound to fail because the state administration lacked sufficient capacity to manage industries.

Addressing the Chief Ministers of the States in April 1950, he said: “We run the administration of the country with one-fourth of the service which was in existence when we took over. Fifty percent of the people whose presence was enough to keep law and order and make subordinates work with efficiency, and even overtime, are gone.”

He advocated for rapid industrialisation as he believed that it was the only way to reduce India's dependence on external resources. Therefore, he proposed the path of higher production, savings, and investment cycle-based production.

As per Dr Roli Mishra's paper, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel's Ideology On The Indian Economy, Patel declared his intention of reviving the Indian economy at a meeting of the Indian National Trade Union Congress (INTUC) in May 1949.

He said: "Our long period of slavery and the years of the recent war has drained the lifeblood of our economy. Now that we have taken over power, the onus is on us to rejuvenate it; new blood has to be poured in drop by drop."

He also advocated for rapid industrialisation and emphasised cooperation between the government, the industrialist, and the workers to achieve this goal. On January 20, 1948, Patel took socialists to task for encouraging strikes.

While addressing a gathering of workers in Mumbai, he said: "The socialists threaten to break away from Congress. The doors are open. But I would urge them not to mar the progress of the young nation, which has, after all, got the rare opportunity to mould itself according to its dreams and desires after many hundreds of years.”

Even though Nehru thought of profit as a bad omen, Patel advocated it for even the non-capitalist classes, the middle classes, and even the agriculturists. He, however, did recognise the concentration of wealth as a social evil and as unethical.

The Iron Man of India thought that it was economically pragmatic to channelise hoarded wealth into economic undertakings with certain returns. He championed investment-led growth, urging people to spend less, save more and invest as much as possible.

Moreover, he believed that machinery could not solve the "great disease" of idleness in the country. "Millions of idle hands that have no work cannot find employment on machines," he said at the Chief Minister's meet in April 1950.

Before Modi, Patel was the first advocate of Aatmanirbhar Bharat (self-reliant India). He said at a public event in Delhi in January 1950: "If they cannot guarantee to implement agreements, we had better not depend on them. Let us grow the jute and cotton and the food grains we need."

Furthermore, agricultural revival was of utmost importance since India was primarily a farming nation at the time. In a radio broadcast on Pandit Nehru's birthday on November 14, 1950, his promise to the industry was no "impediments, bottle-necks or red-tape".

However, Patel also urged every segment of society to save every anna that could be saved and place it in the hands of the government for utilisation in nation-building enterprises. In the same broadcast, he said: “We must have capital, and that capital must come from our own country. We may be able to borrow from international markets here and there, but obviously, we cannot base our everyday economy on foreign borrowing.”