India and China: Two Paths in Politics
Plastrik, Stanley
Both countries groan under the weight of the problems connected with modernization. But they take sharply different paths, and the contrast is instructive. India is not a happy land...
...Let them take a hard look at China, whose "firm and remarkable" economic development (under totalitarian constraints, to be sure) has often been favorably contrasted with the stumbling of India...
...Economic growth came to a halt in 1966, and the base of modern technology inherited from the British is frail...
...When one considers the terrible handicaps under which the Indian people are laboring, does not their political achievement warrant a certain admiration...
...Yet India has made economic progress in recent decades— as the article by Asoka Mehta in the current issue makes clear...
...The masses "participate," but almost entirely along the path of manipulation...
...neither convulsed the nation...
...India is not a happy land today— far from it...
...Other probIems— the cow slaughter issue, the Hindu-Moslem conflicts — show how agonizingly difficult it is to try to modernize a backward economy while retaining democratic norms...
...It has been conducted in an atmosphere of passionate debate, with a multitude of parties freely challenging the ruling party...
...Well, India answered that question...
...Yet no one has been banned or purged...
...The Congress party and the government also share responsibility insofar as their agricultural planning program has by and large been unsuccessful and they have not managed to build up sufficient reserves of food...
...But for people like ourselves there ought be a value far more important than that of drama —the value of liberty which, almost alone among the peoples of Asia, India is determined to preserve...
...The Congress party, which has ruled free India since 1947, shows signs of inner division and weariness...
...Both took place in tranquility...
...At least 1-0 million of its people live on the edge of starvation...
...Rational criticism, free discussion, tolerated opposition are all impossible...
...The continuity of democratic government in India seems assured...
...It has experienced two transfers of office since Nehru (first to Lal Bahadur Shastri and then to Mrs...
...Nor has anyone been paraded through the streets with a dunce cap on his head...
...and for that Maoist China provides a vivid stage...
...And even as the government struggles with the food problem, it continues to respect the processes of democratic life, the right of its domestic opposition to criticize...
...Both countries groan under the weight of the problems connected with modernization...
...Yet those who have scorned the Indian path ought to pause for a moment...
...Those who sneered at Indian democracy used to say: after Nehru, who...
...To be sure, intellectuals and some kinds of leftists are fascinated by scenes of drama, sometimes violence...
...In China a terrible ordeal has been set in motion by the will of the top cadres of the party-state, and perhaps by one man alone...
...Charges of corruption fill the land...
...In China the immediate political struggle rages in part over the succession of leadership: after Mao, who...
...But they take sharply different paths, and the contrast is instructive...
...Gandhi...
...India's fourth general election will have occurred by the time this comment appears...
...India's immediate troubles come as a result of natural catastrophe: the fail• (Continued on page 246) INDIA AND CHINA (continued from page 132) ure of the monsoon...
Vol. 14 • March 1967 • No. 2
