But Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first prime minister, believed in industrialization and urbanization, famously calling the new mega-dam projects his government underwrote the “temples of modern India.” In his famous speech on India’s “tryst with destiny,” Nehru promised Indians that his government would seek to “bring freedom and opportunity to the common man, to the peasants and workers of India; to fight and end poverty and ignorance and disease;… to ensure justice and fullness of life to every man and woman.”