Malaise in India
By L. F. RUSHBROOK WILLIAMS New Delhi
SINCE speech is still free—and very free—in India, it does not take anyone who knows the country long to discover that there is today a greater measure of discontent among almost all classes in the population than has manifested itself at any time since independence. This discontent for the most part arises from the austerity which is the necessary concomitant of the enormous economic task which the Central Government has set itself to accomplish in the Second Five-Year Plan. Many people, indeed, are wondering whether such objectives as large-scale hydro- electric schemes and self-sufficiency in steel are not being purchased at too high a price in addi- tional suffering and discomfort imposed on classes whose lot is, at best, none too happy.
The level of taxation on the rich has soared to a height which puts a premium on evasion, especi- ally in the case of the new 'fancy' levies, the Wealth Tax and the Expenditure Tax; but it is the rising prices, and the recurrent local shortages of essential commodities like food grains and kerosene, which hardest hit the really poor, the underpaid officials and the middle-class families on fixed incomes. Rationing of foodstuffs is still in force in many of the larger cities, particularly in the Punjab, Uttar Pradesh and Bombay; and drastic restrictions of imports to conserve foreign exchange are having serious effects upon an economy which is far from being self-sufficient in many of the necessities of modern existence. For example, many hospitals are in real difficulty because of the shortage of essential things like X-ray film and antibiotics, which the local phar- maceutical industry cannot yet supply. Nor is it only the hospitals which are affected. During a recent upsurge of influenza colds in Bombay, a popular proprietary brand of aspirin was in such short supply that each tablet fetched four annas in the black market—the only source from which it could be obtained. Pressures and shortages of this kind, which bear hardly upon the ordinary man, lead inevitably to a widespread conviction that they are the fruits of incompetence, graft and corruption on the part of those charged with the enforcement of the numerous restrictive regu- lations. To offset such criticism there is only one effective weapon—sustained and all-pervading propaganda to 'put across' government policy. This ought to be the task of the Congress Party.
The Central Government faces many difficulties in screwing the public up to the pitch of facing the continued sacrifices necessary to ensure the completion of the Second Five-Year Plan. Prominent among these difficulties are a general feeling of weariness; a sense that India has undertaken a long, uphill climb to which no end can be foreseen; an apathetic desire to be left alone. Unfortunately, there has grown up a marked loss of public confidence in the ability of the Congress Party to bring to a successful con- clusion the extensive programme of industrialisa- tion upon which the future of India is officially deemed to depend. This is exemplified not only in the growing tendency in statal legislatures and municipalities to elect independents, or even Com- munists, in preference to candidates who stand on the Congress ticket, but also in the lack of enthusiasm with which many Congressmen them- selves seem to view the present and future roles of their party in the national set-up. It is now often said that there is no one of all-India stature in the Congress ranks, no one who can assert party discipline over the rank and file of the State Congress Parties, which, in the present-day linguistic statal units, seem to be paying more and more attention to local issues and local interests, to the detriment of the 'national' role of the party as a whole. One consequence of this concentra- tion upon local affairs has been the emergence of acute differences of opinion inside many of the State Congress Parties. These dissensions have gone so far in certain States—witness Rajasthan and Andhra—that they have taken the form of revolts against the ruling party which threaten still further to weaken party discipline throughout the country as a whole. The bitter feud between Maharashtra and Gujarat, so far from being assuaged in the 'unified' Bombay State, has become more dangerous than ever : partisans of a separate 'Great Gujarat' are conducting a for- midable agitation, have organised satyagraha outside the Parliament building and have courted arrest. Bombay and Mysore are quarrelling bitterly over boundary adjustments. Such disputes as these explain why, by and large, the Congress Party is falling down on the job of rallying public confidence in the present policies of the Govern- ment of India.
Perhaps the main difficulty confronting the Congress Party today is the shortage of good men prepared to devote themselves wholeheartedly to party organisation. The party is the main recruit- ing ground for the higher appointments in the central and statal governments : naturally the cream of the party has been skimmed off. The fact is that the Five-Year Plan, and the steps necessary to implement it, are making heavier demands for trained personnel and for disin- terested public servants than the Congress Party can meet from its own ranks. Yet at the same time, the party is the main political support of the Government today : and upon its continued efficiency Mr. Nehru must depend if he is to carry his programmes through the central legis- lature and if he is to obtain a renewal of his mandate from the country when the next general elections come. Thus the present weakness of the party reflects upon the position of the Govern- ment as a whole by depriving it of what should be the main instrument for mobilising public opinion, for maintaining at a high pitch enthusi- asm for the Second Five-Year Plan and for stimulating determination to achieve national objectives.
In spite of all these disquieting symptoms, it would be a great mistake to imagine that there is anything very seriously wrong with India today. Much of the observable discontent is connected with a conscious striving to evolve an opposition which could supply a practicable alternative to Congress rule and could thus give effect to deep- seated traditional ideas of social and economic organisation which have been too little con- sidered in the haste to achieve a Socialist Wel- fare State. Communism will not do as an alterna- tive—that is plain. India does not care over- much for what she has learned about China; the recent report of the well-known Indian demo- grapher Dr. Chandrasekhara that China is a kind of scientific zoo catering for purely animal needs, and that in all the People's Communes which he visited he did not see one happy face, has con- firmed what many people here had previously suspected. But if the Communist Party cannot provide an alternative government, what is the answer? The Praja Socialist Party is at present too weak, although it may gain ground in the future. Is there another possibility? The transfer of power, if it is to take place, will take place inside, not outside, the constitution. Quite pos- sibly, the alternative to the Congress Party will be found to emerge from India's own social organisation. In many parts of the country there is now to be observed a new political conscious- ness growing up among the Kshattriyas—tradi- tional leaders, in former days, in warfare and administration, who are for the most part poorly represented both in the Congress Party and in the present governing class. Many of them have suffered severely because of the compulsory pur- chase of their lands for compensation which was never more than barely adequate and has often been unashamedly confiscatory—and this not only in the case of territorial magnates, but also in the case of ordinary country squires and gentle- men farmers. The backbone of this class is the Rajput gentry, few of whom are wealthy, although they possess a great tradition of public service, such as India badly needs today. Intensely patriotic, and with a deep pride in India's in- dependence, they hope to take advantage of the opportunities which the constitution affords them to organise, to unite, to gain power by degrees. It is a movement full of hope for the future, because it may eventually provide the possibility of the kind of alternative government for lack of which many Indians are now feeling frustrated and restless—in spite of their strong faith in the personality of Mr. Nehru himself. For not even he is immortal.
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