She said Nehru lived by his conviction that India belonged to all who had contributed to its history and civilisation and that the majority community had a special obligation to protect the rights and promote the well-being of the minorities in the country.
She rued that it has become “fashionable today to decry Nehruvian socialism as a corrupt and inefficient system” that condemned India to many years of modest growth levels. “We do not deny, as Rajiv Gandhi said three decades ago, that over time the socialist model as practised in India developed many flaws.
“But at the core of Nehru's socialism was the conviction that in a land of extreme poverty and inequality, the objective of government policy must be the welfare of the poorest, most deprived and most marginalised of our people. Today, we refer to this as inclusive development,” she said.
“Today, Congress welcomes... the involvement of the private sector in wealth generation and economic growth and in making possible so many new opportunities for the young to succeed in a globalising world.
