Independent Economic thinking is nurtured by the Nehruvian Economics.

For Jawahar Lal Nehru, the first Prime Minister if India,m the development if heavy industry was synonymous with industrialization. He stated that the primary importance was to industrialize and to have heavy industry. Nehru was forthright in stating that industrialization meant development of heavy industry.

Thus the core of the strategy adopted by the Indian Planners was rapid industrialization through lumpy investment on heavy, basic and machine building industry. The planners justified their strategy in the following points.

1) Planners felt that diversification of the use of resources would be in the interest of the country from the point of view of production, employment and defence.

2) Heavy pressure was felt on land due to population pressure and productivity of labour was quiet low. One method of reducing the pressure was to set up industrial sector.

3) Rapid industrialization was an essential condition for the development of not only agriculture but also for other sectors too. Like, increase in the production and supply of fertilizers, pesticides, agricultural machinery etc. would inturn help agricultural sector. Expansion of markets would expand trade and commerce, transportation, banking, finance, etc.

The strategy of planning was essentially to achieve the objective of self sustained long term growth via investment in heavy sector.
Nehruvian model of development emerged as the driving force of the development. The model was based on long-run development strategy which accorded greater preference to the long term goals of development rather than succumbing to the immediate and short term goals:

1) a higher rate of saving so as to boost investment to a higher level.

2) it prefered a heavy industry bias to develop the industrial base of the economy.

3) It opted the perfectionist path so as to safegaurd infant industry.

4) It encouraged import-subsitution so as to achieve self-reliance.

5) It aimed at enlargement of opportunity for the less privileged sections of the society.
(growth with social justice)

However, model met with failures too. Massive investments were made in public sector enterprises, no serious efforts were made to run them on commercial lines. Serious mistakes were committed in administration. Top positions were given to general administrators rather than expert professionals. Thus bureaucracy of the country took charge of PSUs and acted in collusion with political bosses as their fiefs. Another major mistake was the failure to develop work-ethics among the employees. As a result, huge wage bill without commensurate increase in productivity. To satisfy certain lobbies - big farmers, urban consumers etc, irrigation, electricity and fertilizers charges were kept below costs and huge subsidies were paid as  a result huge losses were incurred.

Nehruvian model exhibited other weakness too. It failed to provide a national minimum level of living despite five plans. Nearly 40% of the population lived below poverty line. the number of unemployed and under-emplyed was high and continuously increasing. Inequality of income and wealth had worsened. Land reforms were not properly implemented,, resulting in much dissatisfaction.