India - Decline Into Police State

...A ceiling on personal expenditure would also be imposed...

...Since all through the years of independence, since 1947, except for a few months after a 1969 split in the Congress party, this party had an overwhelming majority in parliament, it is impossible to believe or even argue that parliament has at any time actually obstructed implementation of any of the government's measures...

...The Constitution states that "no member of Parliament shall be liable to any proceedings in any court in respect of anything said by him in Parliament or any committee thereof...

...There are always some people ready to believe that economic progress and democratic liberties are incompatible— who does not recall how Mussolini's trains ran on time...

...An additional ordinance withdraws immunity hitherto enjoyed by the press...

...If the overall strategy is to proceed step-by-step and restructure the Indian government,, basic changes in the Constitution will come at a later stage...

...Gandhi, president of the opposition Congress movement...

...hoarders, black marketeers, common criminals are lumped together with political activists and party leaders...

...And, if the U.N...

...Gross and net profits have increased substantially over the year...

...Food, work, education, health care, recreation— these are the real answers to the runaway population increase...

...This painful experience has revalidated Gandhism...

...As we in India have found out today, the end of this modernization approach is not different from what Gandhi feared...

...Only by adopting labor-intensive techniques can we expect to improve them...

...on the other side, one of Mahatma Gandhi...

...The multinational corporations, more interested in Indian investment than in previous years, may well prove more of a disadvantage than a blessing if the internal economy is too weak to stand up to their demands...

...Capital-intensive and labor-intensive technologies are divergent...

...on one side, a portrait of her father, Nehru...

...Still, this has not prevented a flood of rumors, informal proposals etc...

...The present agencies, says this bill, project India as a "backward country of endemic food shortages, economic crises, strikes, disease, and religious bigotry...

...Everything is politicized and everything directed...

...But Mrs...

...The opposition's proposals for change have been fundamental—proposals along Gandhian lines, such as less emphasis on heavy industry and a shift to village and agricultural development...

...A detailed account in the Economic and Political Weekly (December 20, 1975), based on reports of the Reserve Bank of India bulletins, indicates that the "(private) corporate sector never had it so good...

...This is the kind of "discipline" brought about by Mrs...

...IS INDIA, then, a police state...

...It is not as though, for example, there will 132 COMMENTS AND OPINIONS never again be general elections in India...

...Those who call for "drastic changes in the Constitution to fulfill the people's aspirations" have more in mind than the hope of curbing Parliament...

...Her program operates entirely within the framework of existing relations, reinforcing the gulf between rich and poor...

...There is need for an international committee to investigate these conditions...

...With some differences in detail, such a police state system has now been imposed on India...

...Already there now exist two kinds of police--one to protect the citizen and another (Central Reserve Police, directly under Mrs...

...to prepare a fundamental revision of the Constitution so as to institutionalize the current "emergency" that, in turn, was indefinitely extended...

...Amnesty International has proposed such a committee several times, only to be harshly rejected by Mrs...

...could send a committee to investigate jail conditions in Chile, why not propose one for India...

...and a section of professionals who depend on the government for career advancement—in sum, what is usually thought of as the ruling class of the country...

...This ordinance also empowers the government to specifically prohibit newspapers from publishing "any matter relating to a particular subject or class of subjects," for specified periods up to a maximum of two months...

...It ignores the real problem of the peasant masses who want children and consider them an economic asset, but would cooperate and forgo extra children voluntarily if their general standard of living were on the rise...

...aimed at reviving the villages...

...Of course, it has yet to be polished and refined, and the tradition of democratic liberties still evokes the spirit of resistance...

...Liberty of the press can be said to be truly respected when the press can comment in the severest term upon, and even misrepresent, matters...

...to prolong the life of the present Parliament for another year...

...it is created to beat back challenges...

...Its principal backers are part of India's business community (the private corporate sector, particularly those branches tending to hold 134 COMMENTS AND OPINIONS monopolies in textiles, chemicals, etc...

...Richard Pipes, in his excellent account of the Czarist police state, Russia under the Old Regime, writes: Since 1845...it has been a crime in Russia not only to seek changes in the existing system of government or administration, but even to raise questions about such issues...

...Ashoka Mehta, a founder of the Socialist party, Deputy Planning Minister under Nehru, Minister of Planning under Mrs...

...To begin with, curbs would be imposed on luxury production and consumption...

...The "even more sinister realm of totalitarianism" does not yet exist...

...Jayaprakash Narayan (J.P...

...Under a police regime [as Pipes explains the difference], political activity is outlawed and security organs are given practically unlimited powers to make sure the proscription is observed...

...An Indian citizen, no matter who, can now vanish in the dark of night, without a word or accusation, without being allowed recourse to his lawyer or the courts—and for an indefinite period of time...

...The image evoked was that of Catherine the Great, haughty and contemptuous...

...Gandhi's own party, and a member of its top Working Committee until his recent expulsion)—men such as these are bundled in and out of jail according to the personal instructions of Mrs...

...This dogma has operated over many years and helped bring the nation to its present condition...

...Gandhi's government is so clear that even her most voluble supporter, the official Indian Communist party, has recently protested the banning of strikes, the ending of workers' annual bonuses and cost-of-living raises, and the freezing of the wage structure of civil-service employees...

...let it meet less frequently, let further restrictions on the reporting of its proceedings be enacted, let all or the greater part of legislative work be transferred to parliamentary committees...

...the drift is apparent...

...Top political leaders (men like Moraji Desai, former Deputy Prime Minister under Nehru, a leading figure in the old Congress movement...

...Either employment or unemployment relief would be provided...

...What is our goal...

...Once we create the necessary conditions for the emergence of labor-based technology, we can very well expect the development of the required type of technology...

...It is not a discipline that comes from within, the strength of a nation united in its goals, based on a people's voluntary association in a common effort...

...Gandhi has shown no inclination to participate in such a discussion...

...G. G. Parikh was arrested on October 23, 1975...

...But there are two kinds of discipline...

...When an independent judiFrom the Indian Underground The following is taken from a document issued by an underground group in India, which reached us a few weeks ago...

...The opposition, proposing a great national debate over priorities in the economy, has challenged this conventional doctrine of development...

...Opposition spokesman Erasmo de Sequeria has summed up the situation: "Step by step the structures and the organs of our free society are being first muzzled and then destroyed...

...concerning constitutional changes...

...Some people say that such drastic measures cannot be afforded in a poor country like India, but that luxury production and consumption can be afforded...

...Gandhi's control) to protect the state, a classic political police...

...Our aim is to establish a Gandhian system, based on equality, austerity, and justice...

...The great mass of small farmers, agricultural laborers, and unemployed continues to live as before...

...When one considers the respect with which Nehru as prime minister treated Parliament and particularly the opposition in his day, one becomes aware of the degradation of Indian democracy under the rule of Madame Gandhi...

...In the January session of the Lok Sabha (lower house), attended on occasion by opposition spokesmen and COMMENTS AND OPINIONS 131 MPs not yet jailed, one witnessed the spectacle of the Prime Minister orchestrating, by waves of her hand, glances over her shoulder, and nods of her head, the chorus of derision to which the dissenters were subjected...

...But we shall overcome...

...the shift toward greater export trade, which has had some considerable success, not only increases the country's dependence on the world market, always a danger, but underscores the fact that the internal, domestic market is not developing properly...

...A labor-abundant and capital-scarce country like India has only poverty to distribute...

...Under Indian conditions he found the answer in production by the masses, as against mass production in urban-based modern factories...

...On the other hand, the possibilities of labor-based technical change have hardly been explored...

...the patrimonial spirit...

...The sustained increases in production levels in these industries are essential to strengthen our economic base, to build up our defense potential, and to ensure self-reliance...

...THE ECONOMIC MEASURES that have been taken are both superficial and unrelated to the fundamental problems of the country: poverty and gross inequity...

...Meanwhile, the government's basic approach remains what it has been over the past 28 years of independence, or, in the words of the resolution adopted at the latest Congress party conference: We continue our emphasis on basic sectors such as iron and steel, coal, power, cement, and machinery...

...If the answer were to depend on what we know about the treatment of tens of thousands of political prisoners in Indian jails, it would be an unqualified yes...

...If the word "socialist" still retains a moral value, it is because of people like Dr...

...the Indian landlord class of large commercial farmers in wheat, rice, grain...

...We are dedicated to the cause of the millions of semi-fed and semi-clothed souls whom Mahatma Gandhi, father of the Indian nation, called the dumb millions...

...that, at least in part, is the purpose of the continuing emergency...

...The opposition—active and stronger than it is given credit for in the American press—is alive and functioning both above-ground and underground...

...He clearly envisaged the cost of industrialization based on labor-saving techniques of production...

...Directly behind her was a huge portrait of herself...

...Realizing that the Gandhian wave cannot be prevented under a democracy, they have tried to suppress it by bringing democracy itself to an end...

...Parliament is untidy and often ineffective...

...His approach has not only been negated but practically ridiculed by his "followers" in the government...

...Politics has been declared by law a monopoly of those in power...

...It has been suggested that enforced sterilization is the only way to halt India's still explosive birth rate (14 million additional people each year...

...Particularly innovative in these provisions is the failure to distinguish deed from intent— a blurring of guilt characteristic of modem police states...

...Totalitarianism is characterized by a more positive approach: while it includes also all the elements of police statehood, it goes beyond them, trying to reorganize society in such a manner that all public institutions and expressions of social life, even those with no political connotation, fall under the management of the bureaucracy, or, more specifically, its security apparatus...

...The middle category of local and regional political activists in jail, who number in the thousands, are reported to be receiving acceptable treatment...

...G. G. Parikh is one of the most admirable human beings in the socialist movement today...

...The freedom of the press laid down by Gandhi has been destroyed: Liberty of speech means that it is unassailed, even when the speech hurts...

...Gandhian economic philosophy...

...It has also served an order on the Editor, the Printer, and Publisher, prohibiting them from using the Mouj Printing Bureau, the press, for the making or publishing any document coming from us...

...As for the Indian press, after passing through a confused transition in which large blank spaces often spoke out eloquently against the censorship, it is now reorganized, restructured, tamed...

...Gandhi was realistic enough to see the impracticality of the Western approach to the Indian situation...

...The stagnation of industrial development continues...

...Gandhi's police measures...

...Technological progress in capital-rich nations has resulted in the accumulation of technical know-how along capital-intensive lines...

...The increase in grain production (estimated at about 115 million tons this year) is admittedly the result of the first favorable monsoon in five years, which, welcome though it is, lays stress on the fact that Indian agriculture, far from having attained an autonomy based on irrigation, the building of dams and canals, etc., is still at the mercy of nature...

...It is impossible to ascertain the precise number of people being held—estimates range from 40-45,000 to more than 100,000...

...The treatment of prisoners varies considerably...

...Gandhism is based upon equality...

...symbolic leader of the unified opposition...

...Although only less than one year has gone by, India has already gone a long ways down the slope of authoritarianism...

...India's agricultural production simply is not keeping up with population increase—the true criterion of success or failure...

...But first the proper "climate" must be created for such fundamental measures...

...Most demographers insist it simply won't work...

...As India's population is about to reach 600 million, some 40 percent of the population, according to official government statistics, stands below the poverty level...

...Desai and Chandrasekhar are kept in solitary confinement, without access to newspapers or visitors...

...According to its terms, the President will nominate the agency's chairman and 15-member governing council...

...Yours sincerely, N. G. Goray, Editor Bombay, November 15, 1975 Dr...

...EDS...

...We are challenging the Order in the Bombay High Court and also seeking a stay order...

...Thus, poverty based upon self-sacrifice becomes the Gandhian ideal...

...The system is essentially defensive...

...Apart from his editorial work and political activity, he has, for many years, conducted a clinic in Bombay where he has treated poor people without charge...

...Amending the Maintenance of Internal Security Act (MISA) under which persons can be imprisoned for up to a year without bail, without trial, and without formal charges, the Indian parliament gave the government power to detain political prisoners without having to disclose reasons to anyone, including the judiciary and, also, to permit the rearrest of persons whose detention orders have expired or been revoked...

...matters of internal security the courts must accept the principle that the state knows best...

...The judiciary, as an independent branch of government, would be the principal target of such a change, just as it has been the target of the emergency ordinances...

...The projected agricultural gain under the fifth Five Year Plan had been 125 million tons, a mark nowhere near attainment...

...q COMMENTS AND OPINIONS 133 ciary comes to an end, indeed, when the state becomes the administrator of "justice," then freedom is on its deathbed...

...In a labor-abundant economy such as India, labor-saving technology would render millions of laborers unemployed...

...As for other aspects of the economy, the Economic Times of India (January 13, 1976) reports: "Production in as many as 50 industries in the first eight months of the current financial year lagged behind last year's, according to the latest available data...

...He considered the latter approach iniquitous...

...If India is not fully totalitarian, certainly the hopes of those who believed that economic development and a lessening of gross inequities could take place within a democratic framework have been dashed...

...The interest of the state was the prime consideration during "emergencies," he said, and this was not the time to go into details of legality...

...And the definition of "objectionable matter" is all-encompassing...

...The free press of India is dead...

...A "discipline" based on fear and intimidation lasts only as long as external repression...

...When the Constitution is changed (by revision or complete scrapping), it will be only after "the people at large have been consulted...

...However, the adoption of the Gandhian approach imposes certain sacrifices on the affluent elite for which they are least prepared...

...Here is a government that consists of a gigantic bureaucracy, operating a party and governmental machine of corruption and bribery that sucks graft out of the peasant poor while dispensing patronage and contracts to its supporters...

...q COMMENTS AND OPINIONS 135...

...Clearly on the defensive, it has a long struggle ahead as it works out its message to the Indian people—that the existence of a developing economy moving in the direction of greater equality for the people can be achieved, indeed, can only be achieved, with a revival of democratic rights and institutions...

...India's Attorney General Niren De argued recently before the Supreme Court that in Bad News from India We have received the following communication from Janata, the newspaper of the Socialist party of India: Dear Subscriber, The Government of Maharashtra has banned the Janata issues of October 12, 19 and 26, 1975...

...Our Managing Editor Dr...

...He was not against science and technology...

...has here at long last been given flesh in neatly composed chapters, articles and paragraphs...

...This immunity no longer exists...

...The orientation of Mrs...

...The Congress party, with two-thirds of the lower house, had made a number of decisions that were then ratified by the subservient Parliament: to postpone elections scheduled this year to the following year (this can be repeated again in 1977...

...MAHATMA GANDHI The Prevention of Publication of Objectionable Matter Ordinance of 1975 bans the publication of matter that will "excite disaffection toward the state or central government, and prohibits the publication of any words, signs, or any visual representation which are defamatory of the President, the VicePresident, the Prime Minister or any other member of the Council of Ministers of India...

...Gandhi's 20-point economic program does not touch upon the basic inequities from which the country suffers...

...All this may not make India a full-blown police state, but certainly we have here a forerunner of such a regime...

...A bill introduced into Parliament, and sure of passage, merges India's four news agencies into one whose goal is to "project a correct image of India at home and abroad...

...Such a measure would fit into the repressive atmosphere of the nation, even if it is of doubtful morality and practicality...

...He was against its indiscriminate use...

...But the large group of young people, militant youth accused of painting slogans on the walls or distributing leaflets denouncing the emergency, are harshly treated—poor food, crowded cells, lack of medical care, beatings, and there have even been instances of torture with burning candles...

...That is why Gandhi favored labor-intensive techniques, regardless of their current economic productivity...

...They would favor a presidential system of government, drawing upon the American and French models, with the executive power clearly in the saddle...

...Parikh...

...Till the ban is lifted there will be no Janata...

...Unlike under the British during the days of empire, there is no specific category of political prisoners...

...Such elections will take place, perhaps two or three years hence, when the leadership is convinced there can be only one outcome—an overwhelming victory for the Congress party...

...Luxuries at the expense of basic necessities for the weaker sections of the population are criminal...

...Chandrasekhar, leader of the "Young Turks" opposition within Mrs...

...No authoritarian system can afford a "government of law...

...One hears, of course, the argument that the emergency has brought discipline, order, work, an end to strikes, stabilization of prices, a slowing down of inflation and other economic blessings...