BAD TIMES IN INDIA
Noorani, A. G.
Nothing reflects better the situation in India and the mood of its government than the speech Prime Minister Indira Gandhi delivered last March in Patiala. Mrs. Gandhi noted that there had...
...She simply blamed the opposition and its talk of poverty, corruption, and civil liberties...
...The other features of the Plan sound no less impressive: completion of land reforms in the states by the end of 1973...
...The Prime Minister did not attribute this to the poor performance of her government—nor CORRESPONDENCE FROM ABROAD to the lack of the rains which has led to severe drought in large parts of the country...
...Last September, Congress President Dr...
...John B. Connally had met her in July as President Nixon's special emissary...
...With this, the best of her domestic critics surely agree...
...The Indian press was quick to point out that the Opposition was not able to mount much of a challenge...
...It adopted "a concrete program of action .. . for effective implementation within the next 15 months...
...It helps little in bridging the credibility gap...
...A year ago, after the victory over Pakistan, India's stock was very high...
...The speech attracted wide attention...
...Who is hurt by it...
...Gandhi noted that there had been a sharp decline in India's image abroad...
...Gandhi, has 23 seats while its rival, the CPI (Marxist), has 25...
...Gandhi's writ runs in all the states bar one, Tamil Nadu, which is governed by the DMK, a party that once advocated the South's secession but whose plank today is a federation on the U.S...
...Nothing reflects better the situation in India and the mood of its government than the speech Prime Minister Indira Gandhi delivered last March in Patiala...
...extension of midday meal programs to feed an additional 3 million children of Harijans and those in tribal pockets and slums...
...India's foreign minister has hinted that India might take a new initiative to unfreeze relations...
...It is India, the image of India that is hurt...
...In December 1971, only 8.2 percent of the total bank credit went to agriculture...
...All in all, the Indian situation today does not appear to be bright, but there is no cause for the kind of vindictive pessimism in which foreign observers, infatuated with melodramatic authoritarian schemes, like to indulge...
...Soon, the crisis of Bangladesh was at hand, and it was tackled with great success— the liberation...
...Therefore, I have more vitality and experience to face the challenge of the Opposition...
...Socialist party General Secretary Prem Bhasin argues: The Plan approach not only makes a provision of Rs.280 crores for loans to government ser vants for the purchase of cars (while the total provision for public transport is only Rs.250 crores) but, also, while Rs.800 crores have been earmarked for urban housing only Rs.100 crores have been provided for rural housing...
...Once pro-Peking, the CPI(M) is now neutral on matters between Russia and China and is strongly opposed to the Congress government...
...model...
...Its most outstanding feature is the provision of jobs for 500,000 educated unemployed...
...the real causes of popular dis content are there for all to see...
...But, as critics have pointed out, the Fifth Plan, twice the size of the Fourth, is founded on an illusory estimate based on 1970-71 prices, which inflation has rendered hopelessly out-ofdate...
...The chief beneficiaries were the rich peasants, wholesalers, big business, and money-lenders...
...A Rs.50 crore program for creating new jobs in every district of India was introduced in 1970...
...The causes of frustration clearly lie elsewhere...
...The biggest question in foreign policy remains the relationship with Pakistan...
...Small and marginal farmers could make little claim on bank credits...
...Gandhi has made is that "We feel that we can and will achieve our goals through democracy...
...When the Opposition made much of her troubles, she accused them of being in league with foreign powers...
...distribution of surplus land to the landless and to small marginal farmers by December 1973...
...Inflation has played havoc and little has been done to check it...
...There was trouble over the choice of an official language in Assam...
...It is for the CIA to prove that it is not active in India," she told the members of her party on October CORRESPONDENCE FROM ABROAD 2. The next day the State Department characterized the accusation as being "without foundation...
...The state government has opened scarcity relief camps...
...The Planning Commission will prepare the draft of the Fifth Plan by the end of September...
...the rival Congress a mere 16...
...Meanwhile, Mrs...
...Certainly a normalization of relations with Pakistan and China could lead to a considerable saving in the defense budget and that would be no small gain, the other gains apart...
...The Fifth Plan is expected to commence in April 1974...
...Conditions of drought are not unprecedented in India, and they should be provided against in a country whose irrigated area comprises less than one-fourth of the total area under cultivation...
...No one outside Mrs...
...In July 1972 it was officially admitted that the allocation had not been fully spent...
...On the basis of current prices, the Plan will require an outlay of about Rs.60,000 crores...
...No proof was adduced...
...A few months later decline set in...
...provision of drinking-water facilities in 28,000 villages by April 1974...
...The drought was compounded by neglect and faulty planning...
...In Andhra Pradesh a movement for the state's breakup gained momentum...
...Gandhi's party accepts these charges...
...S. D. Sharma charged they had been infiltrated by CIA agents...
...In the March 1972 elections to the state legislatures, Mrs...
...The problem, however, is one of performance not promise...
...And she reverted to her favorite theme of "foreign danger"—the unnamed but not unidentifiable Big Powers whose pride had been wounded by Pakistan's defeat in the Bangladesh war and who were ready to seize every opportunity to humiliate India...
...Things must be in pretty bad shape for Mrs...
...The prices of food, for example, have recently gone up by 17 percent...
...288 An effort to deal with these problems was made at the last annual session of the ruling Congress party at Calcutta in December 1972...
...The opposition, she added, was helping them...
...Challenging as these problems are, there also exists a determination to tackle them within the democratic framework...
...Gandhi won the general election of 1971 on a "garibi hatao" (remove poverty) program...
...It is not for us to prove that this agency is working in our country...
...In the 514-member Lok Sabha (lower House of Parliament) Mrs...
...the pro-Hindu Jan Sangh 22...
...Gandhi's Congress has 350 seats...
...But she was anxious, also, to impress her audience with her toughness and went on to make the self-revealing comment that while her father, Jawaharlal Nehru, had been "a saint who came into politics by mistake," she herself was "born in the thick of politics...
...One of the better recent statements Mrs...
...Prices began to rise steeply, making nonsense of all economic calculations, and there was a rash of violent incidents...
...Gandhi to make such desperate remarks...
...Gandhi has been attacking the opposition parties in terms that seem to deny their legitimacy...
...The year 1972 has been described as a tragic year for India's agriculture, but it has also exposed the government's bungling...
...It was all reminiscent of 1967, except that Mrs...
...Last January the National Development Council endorsed the Planning Commission's document entitled "Approach to the Fifth Plan" (1974-79) . It calls for an overall annual growth rate of 5.5 percent, with the basic objective of economic self-reliance...
...permanent machinery to facilitate distribution of food and essential articles to the people within six months...
...the private-enterprise Swatanta party 8; the Socialists a mere 3. The pro-Moscow Communist party, which supports Mrs...
...Out of the state's 26 districts 21 now are suffering famine...
...Gandhi now was in full control...
...Gandhi again swept the polls...
...About 20 million people in this state alone have been uprooted...
...Gandhi was aiming at two birds with her stone, the Opposition and the U.S...
...But today India is nowhere in the world papers...
...Labor was restive and so were the students...
...Famine conditions prevail in parts of Maharashtra, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Mysore, Bihar, Orissa, Bengal, and Manipur...
...Small scale industry, which contributes about 40 per cent of industrial production, got 11.55 per cent in December 1971...
...The Rs.51,000 crores outlay has an uncovered gap of Rs.3,000 crores...
...It is no secret that the visit was not a success and that Connally was not the best person for such an assignment...
...What challenge can such an anaemic and disunited opposition pose to the government...
...Of the kharif crop, 70 percent is damaged, with a loss estimated at Rs 260 crores...
...a program for allotment of panchayat lands to the landless in 1973-74...
...In parts of Maharashtra this is the third time the monsoon has failed to come...
Vol. 20 • July 1973 • No. 3
