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I was at the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta, commissioned to head a team studying the domestic and export prospects of Indian machine tools. These were real machine tools not the abstract sector of the Mahalanobis K sector model. I was working with the famous Indian industrial designing company, M N Dastur.

The Dastur engineers went to some countries. I went to Czechoslovakia and later joined a Dastur engineer in Africa, where they were buying HMT tools. Czechoslovakia prided itself on being an advanced European country. Bata was their best-known brand, but there were many other firms, especially in the machine tools section. Following Marshal Titos Yugoslavia, which had moved out of the sphere of influence of the Soviet Union earlier, it had overthrown the Bear and was going to be an independent socialist state. Meanwhile, it had an interim government. This was the Prague Spring of 1968.

In the late spring of 1968, everybody and his uncle had landed up in Prague. The Czech capital had around 10,000 hotel rooms but 1,500 people were arriving there daily. My hosts said no rooms were available. But do you have a driving licence, they asked me. I said, yes: My American driving licence was still valid. They were happy with the American licence. A room was arranged for me at Horovice, near Plzen from where Pilsner beer comes, and I was given a Skoda car on daily rent. I was to drive down to Prague every day.

The inn at Horovice was actually a bar with two nicely furnished rooms on the first floor. I was given one. I would go to the bar at around 7 pm and start with a Pilsner. The locals were there a very friendly lot to the visiting Indian. I found it difficult to pay for a round. After eating sausages and goulash, at around 11pm, I would climb up to my room, yearning for some well-earned sleep. When I came down for breakfast early the next morning, looking forward to my toast and black coffee, to get over my hangover, my friends were back for more beer and sausages, before going to work. I would then drive my Skoda through the beautiful Bohemian countryside in lovely weather to Prague, stopping on the way for some fresh strawberries. Everything was fine and the Lord was in his heaven.

In Prague, the men and women I worked with were very proud Czechs. They took great pleasure in explaining to me the countrys industrial and economic history and that their economists, who had migrated to the US, like Paul Rosenstein-Rodan, were referring to the Baltics for examples of backwardness, for the Big Push and Balanced Growth theories, and not Czechoslovakia. They showed me Czech art forms, both in galleries and in public places like parks, railway stations and in their cathedrals, and got passes for tables at overbooked restaurants for gorgeous meals with me.

Their machine tools were still some of the best in the world. I admired the advanced material used, the flexibility built in the design to incorporate additional auxiliaries to take care of what would now be called multi-tasking. They knew HMT and were quite keen to cooperate in joint ventures. They had the confidence to share and prosper, rather than be secretive in IPR tyranny. Again, a characteristic that the teacher in me liked.

I left the country with the cockles of my heart warmed by Horovice, the beauty and warmth of the Prague Spring, and my admiration for good mechanics. When I landed in Calcutta, visualising another visit to the Howrah, the newspapers had headlines, Soviet tanks in Prague. The Prague Spring was over.

One evening with the breeze flowing in, my friend, the economist K N Raj, sitting in his lovely home on a hill in Thiruvananthapuram, built by Laurie Baker with local material, told me how difficult it was to convince our socialist friends of the need to combine freedom and social institutions. Prague then, Kyiv now, another beautiful city where I have stayed. The problems of democratic socialism remain. Also in the Homeland. Everything changes, but nothing really does.

This column first appeared in the print edition on March 16, 2022 under the title Prague spring, Kyiv winter. The writer is an economist and a former Union minister

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Prague then, Kyiv now: Problems of democratic socialism - The Indian Express