Home truths for India .sx THERE are so many lessons to be learnt from sorrowing India , and most are being muttered too politely .sx The over-huge federation of almost 900m people spreads across too many languages , cultures , religions and castes .sx It has three times as many often incompatible and thus resentful people as the Soviet Union , which now faces the same bloody strains and ignored solutions as India .sx It has twice as many people as the federal West Europe that some misguided souls want to create .sx At independence in 1947 , left-wing enthusiasts trilled that India's size would allow its industries access to a great single market in which to attain huge economies of scale .sx Pity the poorer and more war-ravaged tiddlers such as South Korea , Taiwan , Singapore and Hong Kong , these collectivist minds said .sx Today average recorded incomes in those four are 10 to 25 times higher than in India .sx As with other socialist countries , with their centralised planning , controls and ownership , much of India's production is 1950s-style protected junk that nobody , given choice , would buy .sx It is sometimes said by friends and apologists that Indian politicians have had a more difficult population than other countries to deal with .sx In economic terms , that is rubbish .sx Abroad , Indians are marvellously entrepreneurial ( think of all those British millionaires called Patel ) , frighteningly hard-working , thrifty and academically bright .sx Indian children in British schools struggle through their sometimes foreign English language to better exam results than most native-born Britons .sx At home , India's trouble has not been its people but the wrong ideology and bad government , and both came from one main source :sx for all but six of its 44 independent years , it has been ruled by a charming , brave , English-educated , upperclass , utterly incompetent ( especially when it comes to economics ) , Fabian-socialist family called the Nehrus and Gandhis .sx Jawaharlal Nehru , a darling of Britain's intellectual left who included a viceroy's wife among his mistresses , had been told by the Hampstead set that central planning had made Stalin's famine-breeding Russia a dramatically rich and happy country between 1917 and 1947 .sx He thought similar planning would transform India between 1947 and 1977 .sx Because he was an anti-colonial socialist , Nehru also harboured a protectionist obsession even more paranoically than does the troubling new woman prime minister of France .sx He thought progressive statesmen should keep out foreign imports and avoid 'exploitation' by foreign multinationals , through all manner of controls .sx That paranoia impoverishes almost 900m Indians to this day .sx Bans -not just the world's highest tariffs -are imposed on the import of any goods some bureaucrat thinks Indian firms might conceivably soon produce , no matter at what cost .sx Limits are set on the fees Indian forms can pay for imported technology .sx Because the government seeks to avoid 'wasteful capacity' , anybody wanting to create , expand or move a private firm ( or sometimes even develop a new product from it ) has to ask a bureaucrat's permission .sx This is refused if the bureaucrat rules that India has sufficient capacity already .sx The licences to expand are often corruptly bought by existing producers , not for use but to keep out competition .sx When a firm ( including India's unbelievable inefficient nationalised industries ) loses money , it may not sack workers without a bureaucrat's permission .sx As a recent survey in The Economist ( May 4 ) concludes :sx India's system virtually " forbids successful firms to grow , encourages them instead to become unsuccessful and , when they fail , forbids them to close .sx " .sx This system is kept in being solely because it feeds the world's biggest network of corruption .sx So many at each stage of India's bureaucratic and political process ( except at the very top ) profit from the graft , which is the only way such a system of 'socialist' controls can operate .sx State jobs are openly bought and sold , with the price varying according to the graft that job makes available .sx It is bright to buy the job of a hospital superintendent , because you can then levy bribes from the sick who are desperate for hospital beds , and you can sell drugs on the black market .sx It is even better to buy the job of telling rich industrialists what products you will not allow their competitors to produce .sx At the very top , the Indian establishment prefers jobs to be inherited within particular famous families , because they are rich and public-spirited and well-bred enough not to seek to be bribed , especially by the manipulators' rivals .sx When brave Indira Gandhi inherited her father Nehru's job , she still bossily believed in some of his Fabian socialism .sx When brave Rajiv Gandhi was virtually conscripted into his murdered mother's job , he did attempt some reforms , including cutting the top marginal tax rate from Nehru's ( negotiated ) 98.7% to 50% ( sometimes actually paid) .sx He did not , however , dare to attack most of the graft and licences .sx His heroic but politically inexperienced Italian-born widow would be even worse-placed to bring in reforms , which is why she has rightly resisted being conscripted .sx After next month's delayed election , a prime minister should emerge who is no longer under the influence of the Nehru family .sx They new broom would be wisest to brush away all India's 'socialist' licensing restrictions with one sweep .sx If he does , he may be murdered by the corrupt groups feeding on them .sx If he does not , he and many more Indians will sadly be murdered by somebody else .sx The political parties are now disintegrating into ethnic or other groups that rightly demand they no longer be mulcted by graft from the centre , but appallingly suggest they might murder members of any other ethnic group that displeases them .sx The way forward for India , as for the Soviet Union , will be to say a great prize can go to any states and sub-states that maintain order without murders and riots .sx They should be allowed to disregard Delhi's corrupt licensing restrictions , run their own economic policies and bring in as much foreign investment and as many free-market principles as they like .sx Maybe India's richest course from the beginning would have been to split into 100 Hong Kongs .sx The blooding of Mr Major .sx JOHN MAJOR faced a puzzled world when he succeeded Margaret Thatcher as prime minister and leader of the Conservative party last November .sx Margaret Thatcher , the most celebrated British leader since Winston Churchill , was deposed and British politics was convulsed .sx In her place came a man about whom hardly anything was known abroad and little more at home .sx He had presented one budget as chancellor of the exchequer and briefly been foreign secretary .sx Otherwise he had no experience of the commanding heights of power .sx What was known was not necessarily to his advantage .sx He had been a loyal lieutenant to her and she a generous patron to him .sx But he had not impressed himself upon the national consciousness as other cabinet ministers had .sx Michael Heseltine was much better known than the man who prevented him reaching 10 Downing Street .sx It was natural , therefore , that questions abounded and judgment sic !sx was reserved .sx Opposition leaders could not conceal their glee .sx They believed he would be no more than a pale shadow of his benefactress , a derisory Son of Thatcher .sx All of that seemed long ago last week , as Mr Major proved to the country and the world that he has his own style , his own sense of Britain's role in international affairs and his own quiet determination to run the government in his own way .sx Swift reassessments of his capabilities came last week as the result of his initiative at the European summit in Luxembourg in presenting a four-point plan to save the Kurds from Saddam Hussein .sx The plan , calling for a safe Kurdish haven inside Iraq and continuing United Nations sanctions against Iraq while Saddam's tyranny continues , provided conclusive evidence of the prime minister's intention to make Britain an active player in the European Community once again .sx After a decade in which Britain's reputation for carping criticism had earned diminishing rewards , Mr Major's message that Britain was back in the team was well received .sx It capped his efforts to achieve better Anglo-German relations .sx It also showed that Britain is capable of making a major diplomatic move without prior American support .sx For a day or so it seemed Mr Major might pay a penalty for his independence .sx Washington's reaction lacked enthusiasm .sx Some observers wondered if the prime minister had blundered by not consulting the White House before putting his plan to the EC .sx By Wednesday , it was clear he had not .sx The American order to Saddam to cease all air activity north of the 36th parallel opens the way to helping the Kurds without hindrance across a large Kurdish area north and east of Mosul .sx " Europe is back on track , " said a German official .sx The possibilities of a closer political dimension , long a pipedream , have finally taken concrete form -thanks to British willingness to use the EC as a political forum in the way it should be used .sx Mrs Thatcher , whose priorities were always Anglo-American , is unlikely to have done that .sx But Mr Major need not worry on that score .sx She urged action to help the Kurds and he , in his own way , provided it .sx Mrs Thatcher had no choice but to disassociate herself from the frenzied antics of the Bruges Group of her dispossessed followers , whose paranoia against Germany is as absurd as their pretensions to censure Mr Major's Kurdish policy are ridiculous .sx With critics like them , Mr Major's credentials can only improve in the eyes of people of good sense .sx Unwittingly , they may have done him a favour .sx If there was any doubt about him being his own man , there is none now .sx It is much to the government's advantage that this is so .sx Mr Major has shown on other fronts that he is prepared to make his own agenda and take the Tory party on to fresh ground from which to mount its campaign for a fourth successive general election victory .sx His decision to diminish the unpopularity of the poll tax by increasing the yield of central government taxation from Vat was a bold move , which Labour ignores but dare not repudiate .sx It is now Labour policy too .sx So much for Mr Major's alleged dithering .sx Replacing the poll tax altogether with a new , as yet undecided .sx local tax calls for even greater skill .sx Our own preference , for the abolition of local taxation altogether , remains undimmed .sx If there is to be a replacement for the poll tax , however , it should be as simple , as easy to collect and as low as possible .sx The imperative now is to kick local government finance into touch as a contentious issue and let local councils and government alike work together for more efficient services and a return of civic pride .sx The Major-Heseltine reforms now in the final making should signify a new era in local government in which results count for more than ructions .sx Mr Major's economic policy remains too constrained for our liking , but the latest cut in interest rates is a welcome and prudent move , its lack of risk underlined by sterling's undiminished strength .sx Norman Lamont showed un-Thatcherite tendencies in his first budget by tackling mortgage and company car perks for the better-off and increasing child benefit .sx He should now cut free from past errors by cutting interest rates again as soon as possible .sx Monetary policy is still too tight , as Tim Congdon , an eminent monetarist himself , points out .sx New mortgage lending is down by some 30% on a year ago and the money supply , allowing for inflation , stuck in the doldrums .sx Bringing inflation under control is an urgent need ; stifling the economy as part of the cure is overkill .sx At least the trend , however slow , is in the right direction , and Labour leaders are right to be worried .sx They recognise the danger Mr Major poses as a man who has reunited the Tory party to a much greater degree than small-fry agitation from the likes of the Bruges Group and the Young Tories allow .sx Crucially for the government , the Tories remain the most trusted to run the economy in the latest opinion polls , a finding that points to a large but temporary Tory infusion into the ranks of would-be Liberal Democratic voters that will return whence it came as the election draws near .sx