Hitherto dispossessed groups, led by newly-emerging leaders, inevitably came face to face with the threatened vested interests, who generally exhibit remarkable capacity to survive by adapting to changing contingencies. Although India seemed well on the way to achieving an economic take-off by the end of the third five-year plan (1965), the momentum of growth was broken within a couple of years. According to some commentators, the decisive cause of economic stagnation after 1966 was political. The stratum consisting of small manufacturers, traders, market-oriented proprietors and similar self-employed groups, which benefited from economic stagnation and therefore had a vested interest in its perpetuation, had risen to dominance.[5] Instead of the “parasitic nature”” of these intermediate groups, which held back the “wheel of history”, the rise of the middle class would involve a break with the pattern of industrialization. In spite of economic growth, motivated by the “invisible hand” of the free market system balanced with rational central planning, the expected fair distribution did not generate. The nation, getting more and more populous, was still divided into the majority poor primarily consisting of the destitute, unemployed, lower service men, poor tillers of the soil, and the urban workers on the one hand, and the few rich encompassing the leading capital owners, rural landlords, middle bourgeoisie, well-to-do commercial people and the highest professionals, on the other. In spite of some mobility, the misery of the bulk of the poor still seemed to be an unalterable destiny (karma). The removal of poverty, amidst rising population, remains as the number one item on the country’s agenda. Rating perhaps sixth in the global count for overall industrial production but figuring well over 100^th in terms of per capita income, the contradiction of growth and poverty continued to coexist. Although this fact may be party due to population explosion, socio-economic inequality in India has a long heritage, sanctified by the rigid caste structure distributing professions by the accident of birth. All responsible Indian leaders revolted against this side of the heritage. While an ancient society is being transformed into a modern polity, the contradiction is nevertheless visible. Every upsurge in national standards continues to offer unequal benefits to the entrenched haves at the expense of the lower castes and classes.

The precarious steering of the political course between the dominant classes, whose support many politicians need for survival, and the promises made to the needy electorate, without whose vote no government can last, has so far failed to bring the socio-economic transformation drive to the level envisaged in the early independence decade. The off-and-on alliances of parts of the upper half of society with the odds and ends of groups such as the communalists only depreciate efforts of nation-building.

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