Prime Minister Narendra Modi is a masterclass pacesetter. Without waiting for the next parliamentary election to be held in 2029, which may or may not return him to power, he has found an ingenious trick to beat Jawaharlal Nehru, his pathological obsession. This time his device is an elementary calculation, who spent exactly how many days as prime minister, Nehru or Modi, from the day they were sworn in after the election of 1951-52 and 2014, respectively. By that calculation, on June 9 Modi outpaced Nehru. In the process Modi cleverly expunged the most critical phase of the Nehruvian prime ministership, that is, the period between 1947 and 1952, when he served as the interim prime minister. It was in this period India had faced its worst challenge to its territorial and emotional integrity as a nation which was never replicated anytime later. Even the colossal Khalistani challenge of the seventies and eighties dwarfs in comparison.The unprecedented communal riots in large parts of India involving Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs had just torn the societal fabric of the nation when Nehru took the charge of India in 1947. In these riots about a million people perished or injured and about 15 million people got displaced. Besides, the number of ravaged women was in the thousands, which has been most poignantly narrated in the short stories of Saadat Hasan Manto.Also read: Modi’s 4,399 Days in Office: Less a Record, More About Conditions Apply*The massive Hindu-Sikh refugee arrivals in Delhi and its vicinities, and of Bengali Hindu refugee arrivals in Calcutta (now Kolkata) and its neighbourhoods, which continued for years, had not only put a huge burden on the state’s meagre resources but also stretched the nation’s fledgling administrative machinery to its limits of performance. With the help of industrious bureaucrats like Tarlochan Singh in Punjab and Chief Minister B.C. Roy in West Bengal he reasonably successfully weathered the storms.Alongside this firefighting Nehru for a moment did not fail to realise that his nation’s economic and industrial progress could not wait. It was as early as in 1948 the construction of the Bhakra Dam commenced. The first IIT was established in Kharagpur in 1951. The list goes on.In short, Nehru rose to the occasion to meet the challenges of a new nation which probably no other leader in a comparable situation could have done as the post-colonial history suggests. Remarkably they were through democratic means, not totalitarian dictation of the Chinese variety.Before enumerating his societal and developmental achievements we must recognise his monumental participation in the Constituent Assembly debates (1946-50) which will be remembered in golden letters. It is virtually unimaginable that in the teeth of an ongoing communal bloodbath all around, particularly in north India, some great brains of India, which prominently included Nehru, would be able to draft a secular constitution which none of India’s neighbours could. One must have a deep sense of history of the nationalist movement to appreciate this pleasant mystery.At societal level, Nehru’s contribution to reform the Hindu family laws through was far ahead of his time. On this the only eminent person who had stood by his side like a rock was B.R. Ambedkar, not a Congressman, but a member of the All India Scheduled Castes Federation (AISCF) which eventually evolved into the Republican Party of India (RPI) in 1957. Nehru had chosen him as his Law Minister.Nehru’s own colleagues in the Congress, leave alone the Hindu Right of all hues, were not only not supportive of his moves they were openly hostile. How Nehru succeeded to reform the Hindu law through a circuitous route is long story beyond the purview of this essay because they were in 1954-56 period.Notably, according to a school of opinion the reason why China has outpaced India by multiple times in economic development is because of its societal innovations in the early Maoist era that created a human capital which India could never match. At the centre of it was the New Marriage Law that China had enacted in 1950. It of course led to massive social turmoil which only a ruthless Maoist communism could afford, not a Nehruvian democratic India.Also read: First 2022, Then 2025, Modi Fails Again with His Deadline to Make India a ‘$ 5-Trillion’ EconomyIt is true that when the world economy entered into its globalised phase China was ready with its human capital, but India was not. It must, however, be quickly added that China had to pay a huge price for that in terms of lives and societal happinesses during its Cultural Revolution which was a blot India had its own societal handicaps, which still persist, that come in the way of India competing with the Chinese in equal terms.Our last point is about the peaceful conduct of India’s first general election in 1951-52 about which not many people talk. In their authoritative research study, Election Commission of India (2019), Ujjwal Kumar Singh and Anupama Roy have discussed the herculean task of conducting the exercise in October 1951.India’s first voter was Shyam Saran Negi of Kalpa village in Kinnaur district of Himachal Pradesh. This election was conducted four months ahead of rest of India because the routine snowfall would not have otherwise made that possible. It was a different India then and transportation of ballot boxes and other materials was extremely difficult.Nehru’s choice of Sukumar Sen, a senior ICS officer and chief secretary of West Bengal, as India’s first election commissioner in March 1950 was lauded by everyone irrespective of party affiliation. Sen’s impartial and successful conduct of the exercise were noticeable in his ‘narrative report,’ a practice he introduced which continued uninterrupted till 1983. Thereafter it was replaced by an ‘annual report’ presented by the Election Commission of India (ECI) to the parliament.Postscript:In his puny autobiography in Bengali called Jeevan Naiya, the legendary Bollywood actor Ashok Kumar tells an interesting story about Nehru. Ashok Kumar had persuaded the latter to watch his progressive flick Achhutkanya (1936). Nehru obliged the actor but he came with a good number of his supporters. During the screening Nehru would intermittently raise his hand and his supporters would shout in chorus: Pandit Nehru Zindabad (long live Nehru). Nehru knew his politics also.Partha Ghosh retired as professor at JNU.