Manubhai Shah

Manubhai Shah
Born Wadhwan, Surendranagar, Kathiawar, Gujarat, India
Died New Delhi, India
Occupation Former Cabinet Minister of Commerce, Industry, International Trade, Government of India
Spouse(s) Vidyaben Shah

Manubhai Shah (1915-2000) was an Indian politician who played an important political and developmental role in independent India for over half a century. He was a Member of Saurashtra Legislative Assembly from 1948 to 1956 and served as Minister of Finance, Planning and Industries, in the State Government, and was Union Cabinet Minister in the governments of Jawaharlal Nehru, Lal Bahadur Shastri and Indira Gandhi[1] having held portfolios such as industries, commerce and foreign trade. An active social and political worker, Manubhai was an institution builder and initiated a wide range of educational, social, infrastructure, research and industrial institutions in India.

National politics

Manubhai Shah was a Member of Second and Third Lok Sabha from 1957 to 1967 representing Madhya Saurashtra Parliamentary Constituency of erstwhile Bombay State and Jamnagar Parliamentary Constituency of Gujarat. He was also a Member of Rajya Sabha during 1956-57 and from 1970 to 1976.[2] During his tenure, he held various portfolios as Union Minister including Industries,[3] International Trade and Commerce.[4][5]

Jawaharlal Nehru Prime Minister of India was keen to invite Manubhai to join the central Government of India in Delhi as he had seen Manubhai’s work in Saurashtra. His activities as institution builder were ceaseless, including in the arts, higher education and the industrial sector. He was instrumental in the setting up of nearly 400 industrial estates in the country.[6] He was also responsible over five decades for promoting industrial and economic development and setting up of industries of all sizes in India, heavy, medium scale, small scale, cottage and village industries in private as well as public sectors. The 1974 Nobel Prize winner in Economics Gunnar Myrdal quotes Manubhai in his book Asian Drama: "The policy has always been pragmatic … [as] the prime consideration has always been rapid growth rather than doctrinaire division of spheres. There is so much to be done that whoever can do it always gets encouragement".[7] Myrdal again quotes Manubhai: "Long run growth of income will proceed fastest if instead of trying to do everything at the same time, we concentrate initially on basic and heavy industry".[8] Manubhai differed with his ministerial colleagues if he felt it necessary. On one occasion when he was Foreign Minister he had a disagreement with the Commerce Minister on Industrial Licensing Policy,[9] but there was also respect for one another and the matter was resolved with Prime Minister Nehru. Another time when Manubhai opposed the move on devaluation[10][11] of the rupee, there were differences with the Finance Minister and Manubhai resigned his portfolio as Industry Minister, later to be persuaded by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi to take back his resignation.

Manubhai was the pioneer of the first phase of liberalisation in independent India, having set up necessary institutional facilities and having made the process simple and easy to set up industry, to acquire licenses and permits, even for entrepreneurs with limited resources at hand who would otherwise have needed to meet many pecuniary and procedural challenges. He would invite small entrepreneurs as well as established industrialists personally to set up innovative and essential businesses and industrial plants, even if there was disapproval from institutions like the Reserve Bank of India. The Maruti small car project was his brainchild.[12] His most notable pioneering initiative was the setting up of the Small Industries Development Organisations and the Small Industries Service Institutes (SISI)[13] which he was determined to create in every State and District of the country (which are now also known as Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises & Development Institutes (MSME-DI)).[14] The first prototypes of these he had already set up as a Minister in the Saurashtra government, such as in Bhavnagar and Rajkot,[15] where facilities were provided for starting up small units, procuring loans, providing technical and product advice, skills training, exhibiting and selling of produce through creation of emporiums, bringing together interested potential small entrepreneurs and organising seminars, and even setting up of industrial townships, such as the Bhavnagar Small Industries Association and the Rajkot Bhaktinagar Udyognagar which became forerunners to the SISIs and the Industrial Estates Manubhai helped set up across the country when he became Union Minister for Industries. As such these ideas of economic and industrial development were already conceived by Manubhai when he was in Ferozepur jail.

Among the institutions that Manubhai was instrumental in creating are the Gujarat Industrial Development Corporation,[16] M P Shah Medical College Jamnagar,[17] Akhil Bharat Gujarati Samaj, Triveni Kala Sangam, Sardar Patel Vidyalaya School.[18]

Myrdal quotes Manubhai as saying: "Practically all of us can do in half the time what we are doing at the moment. This silver lining to the situation, if it could be so called, is that almost extraordinary increase in productivity could be achieved practically in no time at no cost, with almost everybody better off than before. We have only to turn our faces to the sun to see the light".[19]

Expanding the trade sector

Manubhai’s contribution to the world of trade was significant and which also set a trend for further development of exports and widening of foreign trade in India. Immediately upon taking over office as Union Minister in New Delhi in 1956, he began setting up trade bodies to increase exports and make easy the bringing into the country imports of essential goods. During the tenure in office of Premier Khrushchev from 1956 to 1964, Manubhai worked closely with Khrushchev to effect a massive augmentation in trade between India and the Soviet Union.[20] Manubhai's work with the Indian Institute of Foreign Trade[21] throughout the decades until his death is legendary. He was President of the Indian Council of Foreign Trade in the 1970s.[22] After he had left active politics, he continued to labour to expand trade with other countries. His most notable contribution to international trade is his setting up in 1986 of the INDIA CIS Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ICCCI) as Founder President. With his vast experience in the field of trade and his networking skills with leaders worldwide, the ICCCI flourished and businessmen from India and the independent States of the erstwhile USSR were brought together for augmenting trade between India and the CIS States.[23]

Books and publications

References and external links

  1. ↑ Ananth V Krishna, India Since Independence: Making Sense Of Indian Politics, New Delhi, 2011, p 73.
  2. ↑ "List of Former Members of Rajya Sabha (Term Wise)". Rajya Sabha Secretariat. Retrieved 4 October 2015.
  3. ↑ Virendra Kumar, Committees and Commissions in India 1947-73, Concept Publications, Delhi, 1978, p 408.
  4. ↑ Newsletter, Volumes 12-14, Bharat Chamber of Commerce, Calcutta, 1965.
  5. ↑ Foreign Affairs Record 1966, Vol. XII, January 1966, No.1
  6. ↑ Rediff News Report, December 2000.
  7. ↑ Gunnar Myrdal, Asian Drama – An Inquiry into the Poverty of Nations, Vol II, The Twentieth Century Fund Inc, 1968, p 825.
  8. ↑ The full quote from Myrdal is as follows: “When Shri Manubhai Shah was Union Minister for International Trade, he stated: "Long run growth of income will proceed fastest if instead of trying to do everything at the same time, we concentrate initially on basic and heavy industry."” Manubhai Shah is quoted from "Centralised Industries", A.I.C.C. Economic Review, 22 August 1962, p 10; cited in Myrdal, op. cit., 1968, p 821n.
  9. ↑ Manisha, Profiles of Indian Prime Ministers, Mittal Publication, New Delhi, 2004, p 37.
  10. ↑ R. J. Venkateswaran, Decision-making in Indian economy: role of central government, Himalaya Publishing House, 1986, p 128.
  11. ↑ B G Verghese, "Enter Mrs G: Madam, Prime Minister, Sir" in First Draft: Witness to the Making of Modern India, Tranquebar Press, New Delhi, 2010.
  12. ↑ India Today, 2 April 2012
  13. ↑ now SISI across India by the click of a button
  14. ↑ MSME Gujarat
  15. ↑ now Rajkot MSME-DI and SISI
  16. ↑ GIDC website Archived 6 April 2012 at the Wayback Machine
  17. ↑ M P Shah Medical College
  18. ↑ Sardar Patel Vidyalaya
  19. ↑ Manubhai Shah, "Importance of Industrial productivity," Productivity, Journal of National Productivity Council, Vol 1, No 4, Delhi, April–May, 1960, p 192, cited in Myrdal, op. cit., 1968, p 1140n.
  20. ↑ Sankar Ghose, Jawaharlal Nehru: A Biography, Allied Publishers, New Delhi, 1993, p 273.
  21. ↑ Indian Institute of Foreign Trade
  22. ↑ see The Times of India Group website for 1975 photo of Manubhai Shah as President of Indian Council of Foreign Trade
  23. ↑ India CIS Chamber of Commerce and Industry
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