THE REAWAKENING OF INDIA
Plastrik, Stanley
She had planned a sort of plebiscite, a "yes" or "no" vote on her rule, and was positive of the outcome. Whoever heard of a dictator losing a plebiscite election, since Louis Bonaparte...
...Gandhi's 20-point program was supposedly oriented toward aiding the rural poor, the largest and poorest group in the population...
...some, like me, were crying with joy...
...P. THE MYTH of the success of Mrs...
...But what empowered her to turn elections on or off, postpone them, and then suddenly call them...
...By this time huge crowds had collected and every announcement that a leading Congress figure was trailing would be greeted with a tremendous roar...
...Proof...
...Gandhi's party): 65 million votes = approx...
...P.S...
...Everything remained under Mrs...
...How to explain the results...
...Finally, Mrs...
...a lid on trade-union activities including prohibition of strikes, wage increases, and cost-of-living allowances for the workers...
...Indira's emergency powers had little or no effect on the state of the economy...
...It should be, instead, the poverty of its masses, the maldistribution of its wealth and resources, the waste and corruption of its bureaucracy, the limited success of its many programs—economic India and Intellectuals • There is a village peasant in India who understands more about modern politics than a good many professors of political science in the United States...
...Over two years' time, the bureaucracy of the Emergency regime took on a life of its own, exacting money beyond the usual amounts...
...The tragedy is that the only hope 500 million Indians have of improving their lives under the existing political-economic system is to bargain away their rights as citizens and to grant their leader carte blanche to cripple opposition and prepare her son Sanjay to succeed her in the Nehru monarchy...
...The upper house of parliament (the Rajya Sabha)—whose members are largely appointed by state legislative assemblies and hence not representative of the popular vote—is still dominated by Congress-party members ready to block any democratic legislation...
...Probably, by the end of this century, regardless of regime or orientation, India is bound to be one of the world's great powers—a superpower in the Chinese sense...
...she would show the Opposition what Emergency rule really meant...
...Whether the new Janata government does well or poorly, gratifies our hopes or disappoints them, remains to be seen...
...The point is that the people of India have shown a wonderful political understanding and human assertion...
...Now it turns out that the unnamed Indian peasant understands that without democratic rights he has no opportunity to fight for his social betterment...
...Retail prices show a similar upward trend during the first few months of the new Janata administration, indicating that the problem of inflation transcends political events...
...Whoever heard of a dictator losing a plebiscite election, since Louis Bonaparte invented the technique...
...THERE is bound to be a fresh approach to the model of India itself and the image it wishes to present, particularly to the so-called Third World...
...Whether it is true that Mrs...
...The image of family-planning workers in the rural areas was that of persons using coercion and pressure, offering bribes to entice people to accept vasectomy and tubectomy...
...Since 40 percent of the Indian population lives below the poverty line (a poverty line adjusted to Indian standards, which includes two meals a day), Janata has its task cut out...
...The Congress government has tried to shut my mouth and therefore the Congress loses my vote...
...Its first proposed national budget, drastically reordering priorities in favor of jobs and rural development, is a major step toward fulfillment of its commitment...
...The original objective of India's national population policy, which dates back to independence days, was to build a mass movement in favor of the small-family norm...
...Raiding parties—they cannot be described otherwise—concentrated on the weaker and poorer villagers...
...4) NONPARTY INDEPENDENTS (unaffiliated, independent candidates): 11 million votes...
...What relation between popular vigilance committees, as advocated by J. P. Narayan, and official institutions and structures...
...Didn't Sanjay Gandhi propose to end caste and the dowry system...
...and, in a sense, is hardly the point...
...Here, again, is the stifling weed of "left authoritarianism" that corrupts the thought of so many Western intellectuals...
...National planning for heavy industry and completion of the infrastructure...
...The consequence: instant dissolution of the Emergency regime—the jails opened up, press censorship was lifted, habeas corpus was restored—putting an end to the climate of fear...
...How much, how far...
...She relaxed her almost two-year-old Emergency, but let her closest advisers know that once the election was won she would crack down hard...
...Mahatma Gandhi's goal for India was "to feed the hungry and clothe the naked...
...Containment of inflation, increase in grain production, sterilization of millions to sharply reduce the birth rate, major social reforms...
...Family planning in India has been set back by years, thanks to the storm of opposition aroused by the force and fraud employed...
...227 (3) REGIONAL (state and local parties): 17 million votes...
...the initial problem is to reorient the economy in a radically different direction from the one it has taken since independence in 1947...
...Once the vestiges of the Emergency have been completely dismantled, the new leadership will turn to a consideration of these thorny yet fundamental issues...
...It will be a matter of decades...
...Gandhi's Emergency rule was welcomed by the country's ruling classes—industrialists, businessmen, prosperous farmers, bureaucrats, and upper-middle-class intelligentsia...
...The Indian Express, March 11, 1977 231 providing substitutes from the poorer class...
...In order to undo the worst aspects of Emergency legislation (passed by Mrs...
...Words cannot express the kind of involvement that swept through this country...
...45 percent of the total...
...2) CONGRESS (Mrs...
...A recent study, for example, indicates that there are no less than 10,000 young Indian doctors, recent graduates, without posts or work...
...The top parties represent almost 80 percent of the vote...
...The masses received the "reward" of the banning of all strikes and union activities, the freeze of workers' wages, a token trickle-down transfer of arable land to the landless, slumclearance by bulldozer without rehousing, and the onslaught of the now notorious family-planning program that more than any other single factor led to the election outcome...
...There was singing, dancing, fireworks, and throwing of colored "holi" powder...
...Thus, in the lower house of parliament, Janata now will have a twothirds majority...
...People who had not registered in time made it their business to see that some registered voter went to cast his vote for the Janata party...
...229 planning, population control, education, and A Victory Letter from Bombay housing...
...people hid in the fields for weeks on end...
...But they took the Congress bribe and went in to vote Janata...
...The fixing of minimum wages for agricultural labor, housing for landless workers in the villages, a moratorium on recovery of private debts by court action, land ceiling laws leading to land distribution, new rural banks to reach the poor—these were among the proposals...
...It may become statistically provable that, over the next few years, more births are accounted for than if the Emergency's program had not been put into effect...
...When the news of Gokhale's defeat [Minister of Law in Mrs...
...We quote him in a box on the adjacent page, but it's worth repeating what he says: Just because a man is poor and maybe cannot read does not mean that he cares nothing about his human rights...
...But there was another side to this picture...
...in Haryana, 70 percent...
...A speech delivered by Deputy Governor of the Reserve Bank of India K. S. Krishnaswamy at the 59th Annual Conference of the Indian Economic Association (reported in the Economic and Political Weekly, January 15, 1977) is particularly 230 revealing...
...Even quantitatively, if we accept the Indira government's figures, the peak of 3.8 million sterilizations during six months of 1975-76 is not impressive if we consider that there were 3.1 million during the same period in 1972-73 without any coercion whatever...
...How all this will affect the prospect for peace negotiations, what needs to be done to revitalize the Israeli labor movement, such questions we will turn to in the next issue...
...The poorest of the poor, the most ignorant of the illiterate exercised their vote...
...Village peasant, interviewed by William Borders, New York Times often referred to as the Kashmiri or Punjabi Mafia, consisting largely of English-educated elitists with a deep contempt for the Indian masses—is now vanquished and dispersed...
...You should have seen the slum voters...
...5) COMMUNIST PARTY (MARXIST)—("Left" Communists): 8 million votes...
...If the government fails to begin this vast reorientation of its energies within, say, the next year, the momentum of the election victory will fade and turn into disillusion...
...Gandhi and her son were trailing badly in their constituencies, but of course the Indian media did not announce this news...
...By now the most overt digressions and forms of the Emergency regime have vanished...
...Gandhi's obedient Congress-party members), the Janata party must take hold of all this political machinery—not an easy task...
...BEYOND a few ritualistic phrases, the Carter administration's response to the elections is one of indifference...
...It is an enormous task that faces the new government...
...But her and her son's staggering defeats in their own carefully chosen electoral districts set the pace for the country in an election marked by a minimum of fraud (thanks to the vigilance of the Opposition) and no noticeable communal tensions...
...On this issue we cite a seasoned political observer, Romesh Thapar, one of the intellectuals in the sphere of Jayprakash Narayan, the moral leader of the Opposition movement...
...The two Communist parties polled under 10 percent-3 percent less than their combined 1971 results...
...In rural areas, the Congress party and government machinery is under control of the landed gentry that, thanks to incentive prices for agricultural surplus paid to large farmers under the Emergency, is wealthier than ever...
...This is why it is no exaggeration to claim that the great election of 1977 marks India's reawakening and, one hopes, the beginning of a renaissance...
...Gandhi at the last moment attempted to draw the police and armed forces into a coup d'etat is a matter for investigation by juridical bodies now at work...
...The point now is to keep the political momentum going, to stay close to the people, to act...
...The rich, the poor, the big, the small, the activist, and the indifferent...
...Although 5 million ballots cast were invalid, there were 188.5 million to be counted...
...Gandhi's political clique and regime...
...Personnel from health and family-planning units, revenue and development departments, with police protection, raided villages and rounded up people, even emptying public buses...
...I am not a dictator," she proclaimed...
...From the World Bank to former liberal American ambassadors, the tale spread that, despite everything, there was a causal link between the Emergency and India's resurgent economy...
...Total strangers hugged each other...
...34 percent of the total...
...Both groups oppose those favoring the government sector as the leading entity in economic growth...
...Krishnaswamy pointed out that organized lobbies come forward to act on behalf of additional government expenditures as well as reduced taxation...
...American intellectuals, and all other Americans, who care about freedom and social change, the two linked inextricably together, have every reason to rejoice...
...Over 60 percent of the eligible electorate cast their votes—some 194 million people...
...The Janata party's results, examined more closely, are astonishing...
...All this amidst a peaceful transfer of power to new hands, yesterday's cellmates...
...In some respects, the Emergency of June 1975 was declared in order to consolidate this coterie's power...
...Further, the demographic profile of those sterilized under duress reveals that many belonged to demographically doubtful groups: old and sickly men, people previously sterilized, etc...
...It will be hard for India's birth-control program to regain its lost credibility...
...The identification of her Congress party and government could not have been more thorough than it was during that election campaign...
...price-fixing...
...It is still not certain whether the right-wing Likud will be able to form a government—though it is clear enough that the Labor Alignment, which had ruled Israel since its formation, has suffered a significant defeat...
...There is a community of views embracing both the private sector of India's mixed economy and the expenditure-controllers within the government who want grants to the public sector reduced in order to lower the impact of inflation...
...She made the decisions to suit herself, monopolizing television and radio...
...You felt that democracy was real, alive, and infinitely precious...
...A group of Sikhs broke into an impromptu bhanga...
...My very dear — "Yes, it was a glorious victory...
...At about 8 PM, as the results started coming in, we went out to the local Janata party office...
...Gandhi): 5 million votes...
...Such people then saw little cause to complain about government policies...
...These people are usually bought en bloc by the Congress party...
...students were jumping up and down with glee...
...The elections...
...Thapar writes 228 in the Economic and Political Weekly (April 9, 1977): The suspension of democratic functioning did not occur on a fateful day in June 1975...
...The Janata party got the news over the B.B.C...
...How can I describe the atmosphere on the night the results came out...
...Here now, Mr...
...Private enterprise and the great industrial empires of the Birlas and the Tatas were awarded with a preferential carte-blanche policy, as were private multinational enterprises...
...And most of the state governments too, elected five years ago, are still controlled by the Congress party...
...properly financed programs in housing, education, health, family planning, etc.— above all, cutting down on rural and urban mass unemployment and underemployment...
...The intellectual community too was not shaken out of its anti-Indian sentiments...
...THE FAMILY-PLANNING program will go down as the Emergency regime's single most shameful action...
...Despite that, the crowd came out, the streets were packed with men, women, children...
...In India, 200 million people listen to radio, in remote villages often their sole source of the news...
...More prosperous villagers were let off...
...In reality, between 1972 and 1975 prices increased by approximately 50 percent, cutting in half the real income of the peasants and workers...
...This objective has not been achieved, and resort to force to impose sterilization has created the contrary condition—a mass movement against family planning...
...often, the entire adult population of a village fled to the fields or forests at the sight of any approching vehicle...
...Each formerly independent party (Jan Sangh, Socialists, etc...
...At first, Mrs...
...With such threats as income-tax evasion charges, blackmarketeering raids, government attachment procedures for recovery of land, charge of misuse of industrial and import licences, the Emergency government's bureaucracy demanded total servility to its whims and to all efforts that strengthened its authoritarian hold on the state apparatus...
...THE COTERIE that surrounded Indira Gandhi— The Voice of Truth • "Just because a man is poor and maybe cannot read does not mean that he cares nothing about his human rights...
...but much remains to be done to complete the restoration of democracy...
...And all the deep thinkers, so smug in their assurance that economic progress in countries like India can come only through the massacre of human rights—might they not take a second look, try a second thought...
...A sea of people who parted just enough to allow his car to pass...
...Israeli Election Distressing as the result of the Israeli election seems, we cannot, as we close this issue of Dissent in late May, offer any useful commentary...
...If its purged leadership can hold the party together, it will be a formidable opposition for Janata...
...matters concerning India continue at a low level of priority in American eyes...
...Krishnaswamy: When these interests collide, the outcome depends on the distribution of political power within the government . . . . When it appears politically expedient to press ahead with certain programs of investment or mass welfare, the expenditure-controllers' first gambit will usually be to try to impose cuts on non-priority or non-productive items of expenditure in the government budget, or to seek a transfer of resources from the non-governmental sector to the budget...
...It was the culmination of a process of manipulative politics set in motion many years earlier, and very often the handiwork of supposedly democratic men...
...The Congress government has tried to shut my mouth and therefore the Congress loses my vote...
...6) COMMUNIST PARTY OF INDIA (pro-Russian, pro-Mrs...
...We democratic socialists have always resisted this sophistical notion, which often also contains a measure of contempt for "backward" peoples...
...Besides, there is the issue of how far to investigate the Emergency itself...
...And so, in the end, the disenchantment of the business community was to contribute to the defeat of Mrs...
...Most of the elected independents now support Janata...
...Its rival, the CPM (roughly comparable to the [West European] Eurocommunist movements), declined from 5.12 percent in 1971 to 4.3 percent, losing 3 seats...
...Some bought their release by Traitors • "Mr...
...And he goes on to the deadly notion that a democratic society and economic progress are incompatible: The true tragedy of the Emergency is not the suspension of habeas corpus, or the convenient postponing of elections...
...Ghandi's cabinet], from our constituency, was announced, it was past 2:30 AM in the morning...
...Above all, we must probe the most dastardly crime committed against the Harijans (Untouchables) and the Muslim minority—in the name of family planning...
...This reorientation must begin with distribution or, rather, redistribution of the nation's products...
...government food shops...
...The hand of government will be felt at all levels: procurement of grain for stockpiling to meet drought years...
...Krishnaswamy continues: . . . as budget deficits become large and prices rise, the development lobby finds itself weakened by the onslaughts of the middle-nand higher-income groups which have vested interests in the status quo and in limiting public-sector involvement in investment and trading activities . . . . Projects or programs yielding benefits over a period, as well as those that contribute to an improvement in the quality of life—such as education, health, and environmental improvements—are postponed if not abandoned . . . . It protects the prevailing power structure in society from having to yield place or accept unpalatable adjustments...
...Writing in the New Republic (January 15, 1977) before the election, Nick Eberstadt of the Harvard Center for Population Studies reaffirmed the time-worn wisdom that .. India is not really a nation: it is art ontology, a set of beliefs and perceptions which barely hold together a people who have as little in common as the population of a single nation formed out of Ireland, Hungary, Mexico, and the Philippines...
...Sanjay Gandhi described all those who support the Janata party as "traitors...
...It was an upheaval, a political explosion, one of the great elections in the history of democracy...
...When his victorious opponent, Ram Jethmalani, finally came out, the crowd was more than ten abreast...
...I.H...
...The advance of its technology and its nuclear development point in this direction...
...The reality was a failure of implementation...
...in the Delhi Federal District, 68 percent...
...This peasant—and millions of Indians like him—took a historic step in the recent Indian election...
...The voting results, by parties, went as follows: (1) JANATA (People's party), including the Congress for Democracy (CFD or Ram) that split from Congress: 81.5 million votes = approx...
...The voting indeed cut across community—Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, etc.—and caste lines...
...and started broadcasting it at their booths...
...Gandhi's control during the campaign—police, army, state apparatus, election machinery...
...It was exhilarating...
...EDS...
...The Janata party has proclaimed this to be its social policy...
...Since March 1976, with the Emergency still very much intact, there has been an uninterrupted rise in prices that wiped out whatever decline in inflation had previously taken place...
...They are now reluctant to go into the village areas, but improved conditions and incentives could place each one of these trained men and women in a network of villages or in the slum areas of the cities...
...has accepted the two principles of decentralization of political power and devolution of economic power...
...in Uttar Pradesh, 68 percent...
...Gandhi's 20-point program for the Emergency dies a hard death...
...Ideologically, the disparate components of the Janata party drew closer together during the harsh experience of the Emergency...
...that democracy, far from being a luxury for the wealthy, is a necessity foitthe poor...
...But this ought not to be our concern at the moment...
...Gandhi's Emergency, those who favored development through government initiative were losing out to those who wanted to cut back such activities...
...And so Communism, in whatever form, was decisively repudiated in these Indian elections...
...Janata took 9 percent more of the vote than Congress, with Northern India more than making up for the poor showing in the South: in the state of Bihar, 65 percent...
...At first, when he asked how many such traitors there were in the crowd, only three hands were raised...
...In reality, as an Indian economist in a high government position proved (New York Times, January 15), the changes they instituted further tilted income distribution in favor of the wealthier sectors of the population, the top 10 percent...
...At 3:30 AM, Ram made an impromptu victory speech, and it was past 4 AM when, exhausted but deliriously happy, we staggered home...
...Under Mrs...
...We played a very, very minuscule part in it, but I can still stand up and say with pride that it was my victory, our victory, the victory of all those people who had the courage to stand up when one had a lot to lose by doing so...
...The pro-Russian CPI lost significantly, receiving less than 3 percent of the vote, compared to 5 percent in 1971, and so will have merely a few seats in parliament...
...With these "lazy, undisciplined Indians" (to quote de Gaulle's sneering comment, "this dust of people"), only the stick can be effective...
...in Himachal Pradesh, 58 percent...
...The Emergency guaranteed high prices for agricultural produce...
...People who had never bothered to vote turned up at the polls...
...A commission should record this sorry tale so that each sector is made aware of its guilt . . . . Press censorship, the subversion of the media, the blackmail of the judiciary, the harassment of individuals and companies via the taxation authorities and public undertakings handling electric and water connections, and the use of the police and intelligence organizations to establish conformism have to be carefully surveyed to understand the mechanics of authoritarianism...
...Index figures for wholesale prices for the last week of February 1977 stood at 182.9 (1970-71 = 100), surpassing the highest level reached in September 1974...
...But, when he persisted with them and again asked the "traitors" to identify themselves, almost the entire crowd raised their hands and kept them raised till he left in a huff...
...All felt that for the first time since Independence the fate of the nation depended on the way they exercised their judgment...
...June 15: The Janata party's sweep of the June state elections places that party in effective control of the country's political structure...
...Women who normally professed themselves indifferent to politics went through endless inconvenience to exercise their franchise...
...They showed how false, or simpleminded, is the notion advanced by Realpolitik intellectuals in the West, symmetrically spread across "right" and "left," who argue that yes, democracy is all very well in advanced countries, but in such places as India (or China) where people are poor, you can hardly expect, etc...
...Janata now is responsible for the nation...
...for private industrialists, there was liberal issuance of import licenses proliferating various subsidies and tax cuts...
...Revision of the national budget to channel increased funds into village planning and cottage industries...
...A shifting of the balance of relations between the center of power in Delhi and the 22 states and districts, so that national unity is maintained but local centers of power are strengthened...
...111 232...
...The Congress party, however, still remains a major force in the country, having polled 3 out of 4 votes in Southern India...
Vol. 24 • July 1977 • No. 3
