Could Any Man Do More?
INDIA From CHANCHAL SARKAR
DELHI
THE other day I rode a train a thousand miles down the sweltering Indo-Gangetic plain. And it came home to me that Mrs Indira Gandhi's real struggle is not so much with poli- ticians in her own party, or in the opposition, as with the forces of nature.
All across Uttar Pradesh and Bihar the peasants had hopefully ploughed their scorched fields in readiness for paddy or other obstinate coarse grains, but the sky was a harsh, sun- baked whitish blue. Even the sturdy mango trees were turning brown. The drought this year has been worse than in the bad year, 1965, and August is already showing itself a cruel month. When people cry out for food and the leftist parties latch on to the discontent, Mrs Gandhi can't pin everything on to the caprices of the south-west monsoon and get by.
In Delhi the Education Commission has just reported, asking the country to prepare for 200 million school and college students by 1986, more than the total population of the United States. Dr Jack Lippes wants 25 million contra- ceptive loops to be inserted by 1969. The rate of economic growth during the Third Plan (which ended in March) was 4.2 per cent a year instead of the 6 per cent which was hoped for. The Federal deficit, expected to be £78.5 million, is £221 million, almost three times as much.
People will remember the first summer of Mrs Gandhi's Prime Ministership as the time when the rupee was devalued. That decision brought to a head both the political and the economic situation. For the left, who had started off think- ing that Mrs Gandhi was one of them, devalua- tion has been a surrender to Western and World Bank pressure. March saw a powerful food agitation in Bengal, where Mrs Gandhi showed sympathy for the agitators. Shortly after came the suggestion that she was keen to have the emergency regulations lifted. In both things the left espied her kinship with them. Their com- ment first turned sour during the Madras fer- tiliser deal (by which the government agreed to let a private US corporation, the American International Oil Company, come into the pro- duction of fertilisers, with 49 per cent of the shares but with a decisive voice in technical and financial questions), and grew very acid during the controversy about the Indo-American Foundation (which the Americans had thought of as one way of using up the huge stock of rupees India has paid the US government for food imports).
Now the left (Socialists as well as Com- munists) seem to have ranged themselves against Mrs Gandhi, and are resolved to use every economic difficulty to harass her administration. Their greatest scorn is reserved for her Planning Minister, Mr Asoka Mehta, who has been a Socialist all his life. Mr Mehta is accused of grovelling for foreign aid. Next in brickbatting order comes, the Food Minister,. Mr C. Subramaniam. Against him the charge is that he has been painting a humiliating picture abroad of famine. It could be that part of the reason why Mrs Gandhi came out with her pro- posals for Vietnam was because she needed to re-establish herself with the left at home and to sweeten relations with the Soviet Union.
The truth is that no Indian Prime Minister can really afford to be fully committed to either left or right, East or West. The struggle for subsistence is much too insistent for that and a miscalculation now on economic policy could put the entire country disastrously on the skids.
At such a testing time the task before a leader is to stir the people, give them some faith in what Hugh Gaitskell once called the 'collective future,' and get the country moving again. Mrs Gandhi has been trying to reach the people, going above the heads of the administration and the Congress party. Hence her frequent trips out of Delhi, her well-rehearsed press con- ferences and broadcasts. She has sought to create an image of decisiveness. Devaluation was the most vital &vision of all, but the linguistic division of the Punjab, the Vietnam proposals, and the attempt to settle the boundary dispute between the states of Mysore and Maharashtra are other examples.
Commentators, the gremlins that they are, have beenereading a great deal into the alleged rift between her and the president of the Con- gress party, Mr Kamaraj. He is said to have been against devalution, and also to-have op- posed the Madras fertiliser deal. His logic is understandable. India's devaluation was a gamble. If exports don't rise spectacularly, if the price line can't be held, then the forces of 'disaffection can make mincemeat of any elec- tion strategy.
Mrs Gandhi has promised that the upswing in the economy will come by the end of the year. Being a sturdy realist, Mr Kamaraj may have been doubtful about the gamble, but his realism must also lead him to see that he has no trumps in his pack other than Mrs Gandhi. There is no 'shadow Prime Minister' in the Congress party; Mrs Gandhi alone can corral an audi- ence when she travels or speaks in the country.
Popular acclaim and sympathy are her greatest assets and, before an election in which the going in certain states, like Kerala, Bengal and Orissa, will be difficult, they are assets .the Congress party cannot do without. Mr Kamaraj is astute enough to know this, and so are the other veteran log-rollers in the party, the setters-up and pluckers-down who used to be known as 'the Syndicate.'
What the seemingly frail but wiry woman of forty-nine must achieve before the year runs out is enough to daunt anyone. Prices have risen by 80 per cent in the last ten years and 26 per cent in the last two. Despite the government's assurance and the subsidies for essentials, the prices of almost everything have continued to move up since devaluation. The government has promised co-operative supermarkets, the first of which opened its doors in Delhi on July 15. Shortages continue and the opposition is making to set off movements in every state and at every opportunity. The Fourth Plan has to be pared from its ambitious pre-devaluation target of £11,667 million to £10,314 million. In- tractable problems, like the Naga claims and the 'border skirmishes' between constituent states like Maharashtra and Mysore, are enough to test the strongest spirit. And, built into the frame- work of troubles, is the challenge from China and Pakistan.
Bakshi Ghulam Mohammed, who had re- placed Sheikh Abdullah as Prime Minister of Kashmir, and ruled for ten years before being thrown on to the scrap heap himself, has just revived Sheikh Abdullah's old party, the National Conference, and sung the praises- of the Sheikh. This spells more trouble for the government of India. The Tashkent spirit crumbles a little more every day. With devaluation, defence costs Will climb higher still. Problems and difficulties bristle on every side and the blazing Indian sun makes them seem grimly formidable. But Mrs Gandhi is a stayer and won't easily give up.
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