Return To India - 1960
Plastrik, Stanley
In the summer of 1960 Stanley Plastrik, a member of the DISSENT editorial board, took an extended tour of India, as a guest of that country's Praja Socialist Party. The first part of his...
...Of the 83 families, 73 were landless...
...that is, the raising of the depressed castes, redistribution of .lands, changed status of the landless...
...a much more powerful figure than the governor of an American state) is heavy-set, swarthy, mustached, and much preoccupied by the burden of office...
...I jeep to the village of B., headquarters village for the Block, population approximately 4,000...
...The net result is that the farmer holding 25 to 30 acres of land has become the dominant citizen in the village hierarchy...
...The government relies upon these farmers...
...He feels that it lacks drive and momentum and candidly acknowledges its shortcomings...
...not an English soldier, official or policeman...
...I leave that day by plane for Calcutta...
...At the panchyat building, which also serves as the revenue collecting office, the village cooperative and the village school, the village head recites the benefits of the Community Development program: in agriculture, better arrangements for procuring seed and farm instruments...
...Under Gramdan, however, in its ideal form, all the people in the village owning land donate all their land into a pool which would then become the property of the community as a whole...
...irrigation—we are close to desert regions here— is employed, with widespread use of canals, and tanks for holding water...
...Accordingly, land reforms are under way, though methods vary and results are not easily assessed...
...This village is prosperous, the chief affirms it...
...Co-operation and equitable sharing together will be its guiding principles...
...In the school that has been built, primary education is offered to the children by day, to their parents at night...
...But one of the major projects is to reconstruct all the homes out of brick...
...They sing, dance and recite their lessons for us...
...When Jayaprakash Narayan came to their village some years back, it was in effect to offer them a new way of life...
...Socio-religious life, especially ceremonials and rituals connected with birth, puberty, marriage, and death, are so organized that they require participation by a number of castes at various stages...
...But once we turn inland, the true Indian countryside asserts itself...
...advice from experts...
...Before long, at the home of P., we are in our first discussion: questions, news, arrangements for my trip...
...It is his guru...
...men from the village are coming out to greet us and bring us in...
...We have seen that the government plans to build up the middle peasant before all others...
...the Rajput miniature paintings in the city museum are famous...
...In some countries, agrarian reform has been ruthless...
...facilities for irrigation under local control...
...Alive and alert in every part of her being, she scolds them, not to emphasize the past glories of nationalist India but to point out the magnitude of present problems...
...After two days of New Delhi, armed with a bedroll and food, I leave by train for Jaipur, main city of the newly formed state of Rajasthan made up by piecing together many backward princely and petty territories...
...In the words of Professor Desai, Our nation must realise that to fight starvation our first task will be to change the map of our unjust land distribution...
...N., speaking to the young socialist students who have come with me, puts her finger on the weakness of their movement: its loss of contact with people, particularly village people...
...in his area the land is far too fragmented for any kind of redistribution to include the landless...
...It is an attempt to stimulate food production through an elaborate system of incentives, including guaranteed minimum prices, and is, of course, aimed at the middle peasant...
...Later, when we are alone, he recites an English poem he has composed...
...worn off...
...In this country the duty of a leader is to sacrifice—this is the heritage of Gandhi...
...This is unfamiliar to him...
...All trains, we learn, have stopped...
...We must walk the remaining five miles...
...he stays there...
...But the real food shortage is many times more...
...Within two hours we are in the heart of village India: huts, poverty, nakedness, dirt, misery in every conceivable form, yet borne with dignity...
...The Development official admits that this deprives such village projects of their spontaneity and makes them appear in the eyes of the villagers as days given over to forced labor under government supervision...
...The first part of his report on India appears below...
...Yet, so low and bare is the starting point for such a gramdan village that for a time it cannot help but make important progress...
...The land must be worked hard...
...clearly, this is the major change that has taken place...
...But the same, one feels, cannot be said of Narayan...
...Only its fringes are unkempt and disorderly...
...This is reflected in its capital, Patna, an old, dirty provincial city that sprawls for miles in all directions...
...He expresses no easy, official optimism...
...Tentative conclusions: something has happened—the worst of the old Indian countryside (absentee landlordism, total untouchability, overpowering fear) has been swept away...
...THE HIGH SPOT of Lucknow is a lengthy visit to Dr...
...From an editorial in The Indian Express In summarizing a few observations of the Indian countryside, I do so not as an "expert...
...Example: Harijans and other low-caste groups are constitutionally and juridically represented in the network of village, block and district bodies...
...On both sides of the main street are homes, occasionally two-storied, in which people are eating...
...We are to look up Dr...
...A man who proposes to dedicate himself to the reconstruction of "village democracy" and to improving the life of the village poor must not only renounce his formal political ties...
...Despite uncontrolled movement into the cities, close to 80 per cent of the population still lives as agriculturists on the land or tied down to a village occupation...
...Most progressive Indians will say that caste is "breaking down," that it is less powerful than before...
...Besides the agricultural classes, the rest of the village population consists mainly of artisan and occupational castes whose economy and lives are largely integrated with the economic and socio-religious life of the peasant communities...
...always a bad strategic basis for strike action...
...on my part...
...In India, we have adopted the unique combination of lofty ideals, confused thinking, vague promises and a bias for spiritual force in plan ning and enforcing land reform...
...We walk through the village over a newly-built, winding road made of stones fitted together...
...The Nagpur resolution finally seemed to offer proposals of a farreaching nature...
...Thus, what could be a useful cooperative work experience appears as a corvee, forced upon the poor by the State government...
...It is calculated that 3 per cent per annum is the rate since 1952...
...In Gandhi were combined the saint and the politician, the two working together harmoniously...
...In the evening, S., an active organizer in the Bhoodan movement, comes to arrange our trip to the remote cooperative village we plan to see...
...But the true roots of caste, a highly complex and structured entity, lie in tile villages...
...In the early morning their women trot along the roadside, bearing bundles of firewood on their head for sale in the villages...
...They now have work for the entire year...
...R., a top administrator of the Community Development program...
...its loss of a sense of concrete issues, problems and projects to be undertaken...
...In Lucknow, thanks to the strike which has again upset my plans, there is time for a visit to Lucknow University, one of the most turbulent in India...
...Yet these people want no pity or sympathy...
...Narayan's general concern with political power applies as well to village political organization...
...But Narayan is more concerned with the landless and the village poor...
...most important of all, it was hard to find the necessary capital, credits, resources to develop properly the redistributed lands...
...As The Economist notes...
...Several women, it is worth noting, are at both meetings, sitting quietly, with heads bowed and partly covered...
...Within a short time we pass through the last village of any size, but here the jeep becomes hopelessly mired in mud...
...At the end of an exhausting two hours, we hear the sound of gongs and conch horns...
...We discuss in some detail a new aspect of this program, known as the "package program," which is about to be launched under Ford Foundation auspices...
...His booming voice attracts a crowd...
...Narayan seems incapable of such manipulation...
...For them, the only hope is to get away into the cities...
...in fact, bricks are being accumulated for this, much as a child hoards pennies...
...Thus far, what I have seen of North India's railroad, road and communication infrastructure is not encouraging...
...Their enthusiasm is matched only by their eagerness to show us everything...
...It brought about the failure of this movement, animated by noble intentions...
...The telephone constantly interrupts our vague conversation...
...There is a whole new generation that has known freedom since 1947...
...The Community Development Program was the government's answer to the problem of too many people and too little land...
...Friends, Indian socialists, have come to meet me with the warm welcome extended everywhere in this country...
...increase in crop production (almost double in winter wheat, 60 percent in other crops...
...The size of farms could be regulated by abolishing absentee landlordism and encouraging some redistribution while preventing undue fragmentation...
...Anything else would not be understood by the striking workers...
...And one's old friends...
...The gains to poorer agriculturists were considerably smaller...
...Some carry rifles, others have long, stout clubs tipped at both ends with lead—the lathi of British days...
...Their lessons and discussions deal with improved farming practices, the growing Jaipur market, profit-making and not the struggle for land...
...T. S., socialist leader in the legislative assembly of Uttar Pradesh...
...They have occupied the station and patrol the tracks...
...In this small, wooded area live a primitive, aboriginal people, among the most ancient of Indians...
...Its long-range aim is no less than a social and economic transformation of the villages...
...Yields were to be improved through irrigation, better farming techniques, seed, fertilizers, and equipment...
...this intelligent official is disturbed by the spottiness of the program, its lack of solid "impact" and its failure to upset old patterns in the countryside...
...The new Five Year Plan requires an additional 25 million tons of grain or a yearly increase of at least 5 per cent...
...They grow some wheat, but have mainly rice paddies...
...ON THIS VISIT I plan to spend as much time as possible in the countryside...
...a final installment will be printed in the Spring 1961 issue...
...They have built a. small school for children...
...It is a relief to reach the airport near Delhi...
...They seem to enjoy it...
...The bulk of the men present are clearly picked members of the better-off farm families, examples of the Indian "middle" farmer...
...The government's obstinacy has brought the conflict around to the question of "principles...
...THE STREETS, particularly in the railroad area, are heavily patrolled...
...The story I am told in this "show" village supports government claims for its program: the end of the zamindari system of absentee landlordism, the creation of an elective and functioning village pancleyat, a ban on public untoucha...
...by that lamp he can read...
...the others do the work...
...All words sound banal and inadequate here...
...The next day, we cross a hilly and lightly forested area before coming back to the plain on which is located the gramdan village...
...Reluctantly, I leave for the city of Patna, in Bihar state, where I shall see Jayaprakash Narayan and visit a gramdan village...
...It is the main occupation of these tribal people...
...While we are close to the Ganges there are many funeral processions—a stretcher borne aloft on which the body is carried, covered with a. red cloth, head uncovered...
...The latest "package program" technique recommended by the Ford Foundation is an effort to push the development of the capitalist-middle farmer forward by another notch...
...I learn all this from the leading men of the village who proudly pour out the story of their accomplishments...
...The result is that we have not even scratched the surface of the land Problem in the country...
...We talk about the building of the new road—it was accomplished through labor donated by the villages, but the rich again had bought their way out...
...In regard to relationships within and without the village, he explains how it had formerly "belonged" to a powerful, absentee landlord, the jagadir, a feudal agent of the Maharajah of Jaipur...
...the strike leaders patiently answer questions, but they are waiting for the latest radio news bulletin, apparently hoping for some gesture on the part of Nehru which will permit discussions to reopen...
...The Community Development Program, launched in 1952 under India's first Five Year Plan, is the government's chosen instrument of rural advance through self-help plus government aid and direction...
...Small groups of soldiers are idling about the platforms...
...BEFORE THE VILLAGE LEADER takes me on a tour of his village I question him about possible gramdan villages in the area, based upon one or another form of cooperative farming...
...They are not curious and only a few children follow along...
...The average per capita income has risen from 54 rupees per year to 77 rupees...
...dry and lumpy, it is not particularly friendly to agriculture...
...Several lower caste representatives are also present, sitting slightly apart...
...One of the most interesting developments is the beginning of independent work in sociology (as distinct from the earlier Indian obsession for training social workers...
...The chief's eyes shine as he tells his oft-repeated story...
...They worked for property-owning peasants when they were not busy thieving...
...On all sides are the endless paddy fields...
...The soldiers are handsome men, clean and in excellent shape, clearly still drawn from the so-called martial groups...
...At the end of our talk, Dr...
...donations had to be surveyed before redistribution could take place...
...On the following day, my first visit in the early morning is with the Congress party leader and head of state...
...The rains have stopped and the city is quiet, but little traffic is moving about...
...In the summer of 1960 Stanley Plastrik, a member of the DISSENT editorial board, took an extended tour of India, as a guest of that country's Praja Socialist Party...
...It is to be an all-night ride, reaching Jaipur at 6 A.M...
...it is planning the program of the following week, practical, constructive, aimed at the fulfillment of simple tasks...
...None comes and I leave them to their problems...
...Patna, Bihar State: The plane trip to Patna has been hot, humid, tiring...
...These people cultivate their lands in common and pool both resources and income...
...I am simply relying on these and other visits, and above all on the views of those knowledgeable Indians— there are many—with whom I spoke...
...Away from New Delhi and its Embassy Row only once do I come across a white foreigner—a sad and harmless official of the U. S. Information Service known to his Indian friends as the "awkward American...
...EDITORS New Delhi — early July: It isn't easy to return to India after a twenty-year absence...
...At seven we reach Lucknow station in the midst of a downpour...
...in return the agriculturist offers a share of his crop...
...Over All-India Radio the Prime Minister has delivered a violent, no-compromise speech against government employees who plan to strike...
...This is accompanied by efforts to create farmers' cooperatives (credit cooperatives, above all) which will drive out the middleman who, in India, is frequently also the bania or moneylender...
...We follow a road along the Ganges for some hours, an area still closely linked to the city of Patna—the towns even have electricity...
...This is the most striking and immediate evidence of independence...
...I will wait and see...
...The Indian Army is a carryover from the British trained forces of pre-independence: aloof, elitist, removed from the people...
...What will they have to say of this new India...
...In our country 5 percent of the landholders own 33 percent of total lands...
...Leave-takings from Indian stations were always dramatic events...
...They have been called down from the Himalayan frontiers to bolster the government's hard stand against a threatened strike of central government employees, mostly railroad personnel and workers...
...We quote the central passage: The future agrarian pattern should be that of cooperative joint farming, in which the land will be pooled for joint cultivation, the farmers continuing to retain their property rights, and getting a share from the net produce in proportion to their land...
...this is true throughout Rajasthan, once a center of absentee landlordism and feudal exploitation...
...Obviously a highly qualified administrator and agricultural expert, he seems little satisfied with the results achieved and uneasy over the program's prospects...
...There are riots, shootings and sabotage...
...Essentially, he feels, it is an attempt to impose an antiIndian concept of agriculture upon a weak village base...
...As is the practice throughout Asia the village women ranged in a row across the field are advancing the length of the paddy, pushing the rice seedlings into the mud as they move along...
...Yet, more often than not, this is due to some legal requirement and the representative sits in an isolated corner head down, eyes cast on the ground, a non-participant...
...In Jaipur district, maize, bajera (for the making of unleavened pancake bread), and winter wheat sown in October, are raised...
...Further, those who actually work on the land, whether they own the land or not, will get a share in proportion to the work put in by them on the joint farm...
...Clouds, mist and fog swirl about as we pass from plane to airport in the pitch blackness of the Indian night...
...a bullock cart takes us over the flooded roads to the jeep, then the long ride back...
...but much remains that limits the village's productive capacities and energies...
...Narayan cannot accept the operation of the Community Development Project...
...Thousands fill its platforms and crevices, sprawled on covers, preparing evening meals even on the railway tracks between platforms...
...Ah, but a guru is concerned only with spiritual and religious advice...
...Though there are few cars on the road we move slowly, blocked by the constant passage of cattle into the fields...
...we plow through the streets clinging to a motorcycle cab...
...When they accepted gramdan, it signified that those who owned land donated it to the entire village...
...Janata, August 21, 1960...
...Artisans and other occupational castes will offer to the agriculturist special services...
...Gramdan Village: The Bhoodan movement initiated in 1951 by Acharya Vinoba Bhave has grown into the Gramdan movement...
...On the last half mile we are transported on the sturdy back of a village peasant...
...it seems I am not only the first American to come, but the first white-skinned foreigner their children have ever seen...
...Thanks to the efforts of our friends, arrangements have been made to tour villages under the government's Community Development Project...
...A supporter of Albert Mayer, she feels strongly that his concept of self-motivation and participation by the village masses has now been largely abandoned, even in Etawah...
...Although, theoretically, a sharp rise was possible because of the low productivity of most Indian farms, the obstacles have proven formidable...
...it is necessary to struggle on over roads deep in mud and water and find our way across the paddy fields by balancing ourselves on the slippery embankments surrounding each field...
...Thus, Gramdan, today, is the voluntary surrender of individual ownership rights in land in favour of the community...
...These stops are hasty, permitting only an exchange of greetings and a few questions...
...He feels he has provided energetic leadership, and indeed he has...
...If there is a general shortage of food, the real sufferer will be that class which is most down-trodden in society—the class of landless and agricultural laborers many of whom live on leaves and roots some months in a year...
...The village rich pay in cash or material contributions...
...There is much singing, good-natured joking and staring at the white foreigner...
...nearly 70 percent of its benefits went to the elite group and to the more affluent and influential agriculturists...
...IN THE EARLY MORNING the atmosphere around the station at Delhi is ominous...
...No electricity, no village radio...
...he must renounce all forms of political action...
...This woman is a rebel in her every fiber...
...My appointment with Narayan is for the following day...
...Example: part of the Development program is the organization of village work for construction and repairs...
...Of the relations between the various committees and bodies set up by the program, of the relations within individual committees (caste, social, economic and political) I have had only some inklings...
...On the apartment balcony facing New Delhi's Connaught Circus I watch a breathtaking sight—Indians on the move, going constantly from place to place no matter what the hour—on foot, in buses, on bicycles or motorcycles, taxis and large motorcycledrawn carriages, or even ton gas pulled by horses...
...The principle behind this is that the farm unit must be of a certain size to achieve an economic productivity...
...His wish is to veer away from power, yet his strong concern with it indicates he has not resolved these problems within himself...
...In the several hours we spend together we cover a range of topics, but primarily those touching upon agricultural matters in general and the Bhooda:n movement in particular...
...It consists of 83 families (population, 429), most lower caste...
...I am placed in the hands of Dr...
...and by the end of October, 1963 the entire country will be covered, according to the just-adopted Third Five Year Plan...
...By Indian standards, it is a large and wellorganized village...
...He is completely sympathetic, his humor gentle but pointed...
...There are three to four thousand gramdan villages throughout India— sufficient in number for state governments to have passed legislation providing them some help—but compared to the total number of villages, they are insignificant...
...were to be organized within three years as a preliminary training ground...
...it is impossible to even see the village in the distance...
...a grim struggle between the strikers and the government as well as between political groups with varying interests in the strike...
...this is the first time we have seen collective plowing in India...
...There is no money, and home is usually the floor of the party headquarters where he happens to be...
...One is overwhelmed by the sheer sense of people...
...Agriculture in the country is mostly subsistence farming...
...On the following day we return to Patna...
...It also fought on the side of the social structure, the maintenance of the old forms of exploitation, especially usury and tenant-farming with payment in kind...
...Before taking the late night train back to Delhi I am to meet Dr...
...both state and central government subsidize them and they are to form the backbone of India's progressive, land-holding, market crop-producing peasantry...
...they talk of a "collective spirit...
...The vastly improved appearance of his village counts most for him...
...ing of the village gram sabha or council...
...the units of soldiers and railway police have been heavily reinforced and mount an active patrol...
...C. Dube, idem, page 30...
...This leads to a discussion of my visit to one of the gramdan cooperative villages Narayan himself has organized and sponsored...
...Given their previous economic and social degradation, it is easy to understand the powerful appeal gramdan has for them...
...As we roll over dirt roads in a rickshaw, he declaims Urdu poetry he has written...
...Krishna N., an expert in women's work in the villages, who is attached to the famous agricultural pilot project initiated by the American, Albert Mayer...
...In India a strike leader goes to jail as a matter of course...
...Has he consulted him on today's activities...
...But here, when asked to be specific, he hedges a little...
...evidently, there have been many visitors here...
...The strike is still on, many thousands more are under arrest...
...this, plus land they have been able to rent, constitute their pitifully small acreage under cultivation...
...at least 20 temples are scattered throughout the town—some substantial in size, others merely a corner for offerings and an altar...
...it is considered the ultimate in modernizing...
...We lack a clear-cut program based on accurate data and we have not evolved any practical line of action...
...bility and a limited improvement in farm productivity...
...If these sections are to be fed, the total requirements of food will increase and with it the food shortage:"** Has there then been so little progress in the annual growth in grain production...
...Both school and meeting appear to be effectively run by the Development officials, men of experience, special knowledge and training...
...The important leaders are in jail or flight, the atmosphere is gloomy...
...I spend the night trying not to fall asleep for fear of slipping off and crashing down on the heads below...
...Its formal aims are to increase substantially the country's agricultural production, particularly in foodstuffs, to improve rural communications, health and hygiene as well as village education...
...The village community, as a whole, treats itself as a big family...
...U., Deputy Development Commissioner, arrives...
...My own impression is that this claim is either cynical or mistaken...
...For the moment we refer to S. C. Dube's summary of the results of the agricultural extension program thus far...
...Musicians beating gongs lead the way...
...The station, no matter the hour, reflects the condition of the masses who live in the old city...
...But only the worst and most monstrous inequalities in land ownership have been abolished by government action...
...What will it be like...
...In others, the approach has been administrative...
...All the important universities have begun efforts along these lines...
...I must hastily revise my plans, complete my visits and talks in Delhi and move on that same night...
...The poet, I learn, left that very night on some difficult mission related to the strike...
...They are tall, intelligent in appearance, and energetic...
...About 15,000 strikers are arrested and thrown into jail, including a good proportion of the people I planned to see...
...It will take at least three days time and he will be with us constantly...
...They live in about 558,000 scattered village settlements...
...Although the movement had an astounding success in its early phase (asking for and receiving donations of land), its subsequent phase (organization and development of the donated land) has met with many difficulties: much of the land proved to be worthless...
...In other fields belonging to the village, teams of bullocks are plowing...
...From this moment on until the end of our trip, the general strike of about 250,000 government employees in railroad, communication and civil service is to take hold of everything...
...but then Indians are well known for their skeptical outlook on things in general...
...In him saint and politician struggle endlessly...
...Before gramdan, the people of this village were notorious thieves who lived by robbing neighboring villages...
...That within the space of a few days one can establish such firm and comradely relations with such a variety of people is the deepest pleasure of all...
...On either side are small shops...
...The Chief Minister of U.P...
...Capable, intelligent, with a touch of skepticism and sufficient doubting to make his opinions more valuable than those of the blindly convinced, his help is indispensable...
...83.5 per cent of all agricultural production being foodstuffs...
...For one thing, apart from redistribution of lands confiscated by the state—at goodly prices—from the landowners, no basic change in land relationships has come about...
...To break up the encrusted accumulation of ancient ways and customs and to release productive forces required a leadership not yet forthcoming in India...
...Third Five Year Plan, A Draft Outline, Planning Commission, June, 1960, page 153...
...Even if a village like Berain succeeds by dint of enormous effort in accumulating some means, how can it expect to compete in the open market place with the more efficient villages dominated by the middle peasant with his credits, superior technique, government support and—Ford Foundation...
...A widespread struggle over curriculum—classic, traditional and modern—is going on...
...Will the inevitable disappointments of 13 years of independence have left its mark upon them...
...Krishna N., attached to the Etawah Project...
...The old city of Delhi where the station is located is a packed shambles of humanity...
...Those who work the land receive wages from a common fund in the hands of the cooperative society which runs the village economic life...
...Summer is an off-tourist season, yet employees must be kept on for lack of work elsewhere...
...Love and non-violence will be the basis of all acts of the community...
...At the government tourist hotel I endure the awkwardness of breakfast alone in a dining room with five mustached and turbaned "bearers" serving...
...Here a special Block Development school is in progress...
...All of this is clear in his manner, his way of talking, his hesitations, his latest writings...
...Such men are unmarried or have cut their family ties...
...A landless peasant now able to purchase a kerosene lamp for his mud hut feels he has advanced into another world...
...Community Development Program...
...By 1956, the Community Development Program covered one-fourth of India...
...ON THE WAY TO THE VILLAGE I make several stops...
...So violent, however, was the reaction—organized and unorganized—to the Nagpur resolution that it has remained a dead letter...
...This is an important legal measure, but what 'lies behind it...
...And, most powerful force of all, the ever-present threat of ritual pollution by contact with those outside one's caste: a psychic mechanism quite different from our racial prejudice of the West...
...The warm, humid air of the monsoon evening is familiar...
...The Etawah Project has great importance because it gave birth to the Community Project program throughout India...
...As a result, not only has agricultural yield risen, but many typically village industries have been started...
...The Land Problem The land problem is recognized as the key to the new social and economic order now being evolved...
...In general, the village presents a picture of poverty, malnutrition, poor standards of public health, and illiteracy.* The train is two hours behind time, but the telegram arranging my visit has not yet arrived...
...Our village chief does not hesitate to admit that elections to these bodies take place along caste lines, that the villages of his area are caste-dominated villages, that divisions along political lines in conformity with the national parties is unknown.* In the schools, meetings, etc., that I attend there are always representatives of lower caste groups—or women—present...
...This exceptional woman, vital and peppery after long years in the nationalist struggle, would be rare enough in any country...
...the jagadir has gone, but an explosive inequality remains...
...The atmosphere is friendly, serious and good-humored...
...Food is still the most urgent problem...
...owned, family farm is the basic unit...
...Hundreds of villagers receive us...
...no women are permitted among the mourners as they move toward the burning ghats...
...So long as the village social structure remains basically intact (as it has), caste will retain its full potency...
...I go out to find the Praja Socialist headquarters, but it is hardly the time for visiting...
...I, in turn, am called upon to make a little speech...
...But for a man like Narayan, this is the most difficult of steps...
...From my observations and from other reports I conclude that, despite some successes, the results have been extremely uneven and spotty...
...Out of the city the roads become narrow, rutted, with the once metallic surfacing • India's Changing Villages, S. C. Dube, page 7, an excellent work on basic problems of Indian agriculture...
...I notice for the first time the complete absence of foreigners, Europeans, whites...
...There are two yearly crops...
...The program is still bogged down at all levels...
...Like villages in most peasant lands, B. has one main street which winds off into the distance...
...The westerner coming from the Iowest sector of European or American society lives in affluence as compared with these people...
...At the Lucknow socialist headquarters, where I meet the state party leader, C., and his colleagues of the PSP, all are deeply involved in the strike, and all expect momentary arrest...
...Jaipur, Rajasthan — Community Development Block In India 295,004,251 people, forming 82.7 per cent of the country's population, are village dwellers...
...We exchange a few remarks on the subject of American philosophy, but his manner is remote, brusque and even rude...
...The strike itself lasts only a week or so, but its effects are far-reaching...
...Jayaprakash Narayan Since abandoning active leadership in the Indian Socialist movement, Narayan has made his headquarters in Patna, in one of the buildings that belongs to the Bhoodan movement whose main center is close by...
...82-83) •• A report to the United Nations by a committee of agrarian experts—Caldwell, Read and Dumont, "Community Development Evaluation Mission in India," makes the same point in claiming that "Putting comfort before production was the major error of Community Development in India...
...Only when I point inquiringly to a photo on the wall does he come to life...
...In a larger village, such as the one visited here, the structure of the village will even cut across caste and kin, uniting unrelated families within an integrated multicaste (twelve or even up to twenty distinct castes) community...
...the seasonally and underemployed run into many millions more...
...his reward is both one of status—acknowledged leader of a well-to-do village—and personal affluence, both as a holder of land and a businessman.* Several hours later it is time to return to Jaipur for a brief round of sightseeing...
...Unsophisticated, provincial, utterly sincere, he is typical of many socialists in India...
...Receptive and shrewd, these men are far removed from the militant, revolutionary peasant leaders of 1940...
...I am advised to continue my trip by plane since strike action will affect the railroads first of all...
...this is no exception...
...Prior to instituting joint farming, service cooperatives (pooling credits, fertilizers, machinery etc...
...Bureaucratism and overcentralization are the twin evils she rails against...
...The roots of revolution in Asia lie hidden in the explosive situation created by the monstrous inequalities in land ownership...
...Flying all day over the enormous stretch of barren Iand extending from Turkey up to the western borders of India only adds to these apprehensions...
...From whispered instructions it seems clear he is ordering the arrest—among others—of those who had arranged my appointment with him on the day before...
...The train will leave on time, but certainly arrive hours late...
...We are still rn the midst of indecision and confusion...
...I have seen only the surface—and that a comparatively polished surface—of a section of the program...
...The appearance of the village is poor...
...He sketches the background of the Bhoodan movement, his relations with Vinoba Bhave, its founder, and frankly speaks of its declining prospects...
...robberies have stopped entirely...
...the improvement during the last 20 years seems negligible...
...The village leader, of course, is not concerned with this...
...By making the former collector of each district its chief development officer, by carrying the program to each village through the training of local workers, it was hoped that a vast number of rural communities would improve their techniques, create village leadership, foster cooperatives for services, mobilize local labor and, in general, revitalize village life...
...I attend a meet...
...But first it must be understood that this is still an open question and future patterns are by no means set...
...Fields surrounding the city and the station are flooded with four to six inches of water...
...That night, standing out alone in the humid darkness, listening to the sounds of the village and the surrounding fields, I grasp—insofar as a westerner can—what the meaning of impoverishment is to tens of millions...
...Since planes must fly under the monsoon clouds, we have had a close look at the spread of the Ganges plain and river valley, observing the endlessly fragmented fields and paddy lands extending miles in all directions, the network of canals, streams, irrigation ditches, tanks and wells, the thousands of villages that dot the plains...
...In the struggle over federal funds for state development projects, Bihar belongs to the group of states that come off second best...
...An hour before we leave the cars are packed...
...the road runs through the fields on a built-up embankment or bund...
...This is the season to transplant the rice plant into the paddies where it will remain immersed in water for some time...
...they offer their service to their party wherever it may be...
...Monsoon rains have come down all through the night and the morning is fairly cool...
...Nor does he expect to be bailed out...
...At socialist headquarters, where by chance I meet some of the leading officials of the employees unions, it seems apparent there will be a nationwide strike on the following day...
...As Professor Desai has said, "There are millions of have-nots in the country who have no means to produce or buy food...
...by the end of 1959, one-half...
...He belongs to the diminishing number of original Gandhians, close to the people, thoroughly familiar with the workings of village life, devoted to political and socialist activity...
...Like all such visits there is a sense of disappointment due partly to haste and insufficient preparation • Later we shall discuss in more detail the rise of this new, middle, capitalist farming class...
...So much has happened and so much changed...
...We move out to the fields which encircle the village on all sides...
...The atmosphere is tense and strained...
...on the contrary, gramdan has given them hope...
...Gunnar Myrdal, on a recent visit to India, wrote that India's basic infrastructure was still weak and far removed from that of a modern industrial state...
...Most of them are also untouchables, excluded from rising in the caste-ridden villages...
...During the next two months there will be barely a glimpse of the sun during the day...
...over 100 people of the village now can read and write...
...But India cannot forever evade the issue of what to do with its countryside...
...While breakfasting, shoeless and sockless, in the flooded restaurant of the railway station, I learn that the railroad and communications strike has begun that same night and that wholesale arrests of strike leaders are under way...
...The totally unemployed are said to still run close to the 40 million mark...
...I squeeze my way into a second-class car (one per train) . Later in the night someone will offer me his "berth," the baggage rack high above the seats...
...Hence, there are those who claim his withdrawal from active politics is largely strategic, to place himself in the best position at a critical moment...
...One of the young socialists—he is an Urdu village poet from the northern part of the state—accompanies me on a visit to the archeological sites and ruins of ancient Patna...
...This complex man, personally known to enormous numbers of people in every corner of India, whose life spans every important happening in the last 25 years of Indian history, is now engaged in an experiment that has taken him far from the road of traditional Ieftist politics: the Bhoodan land distribution movement which appeals to landowners to surrender their holdings voluntarily...
...They have been under gramdan for two years and consider it successful...
...in India there are no communes or forced labor brigades on communist lines to apply the stick—and it is not always easy at first to discern the carrot...
...Now this gentleman, along with his rajah, has been retired to the city...
...Remarks are dropped which indicate a certain air of disenchantment with both country and government...
...The annual expenditure to make up the food deficit through imports is entirely too great...
...Surely Narayan's argument that the Indian countryside can accept many forms of organization and many ways of life is borne out here...
...The Congress Party, still overwhelmingly the country's ruling party, adopted a resolution at its Nagpur session (January, 1959) proposing joint, cooperative farming...
...The unions involved are largely socialist-led and there is danger of my being stranded by the strike...
...The endurance test of train travel in India has not changed...
...The village I am to visit is theirs...
...The villagers have since begun to run their own affairs...
...Their rice production per acre—using Japanese ,juethods—has increased from 13 to 22 maunds (a maund = 82 lbs...
...Even after 13 years of freedom 45 percent of our agricultural population is landless or almost landless...
...drinking and smoking are prohibited...
...At the bottom of the peasant scale are more than 10 million families who have no land, agricultural laborers who work for one rupee a day...
...Mud huts, with walls almost a foot thick, thatched roofs, dark interiors...
...it sounds revolutionary and sentimental...
...It is a magnificently attractive city...
...From a report published by the Department of Community Development, Government of India, 1951 The gramdan village of Berain is 160 miles from Patna, and ten miles from the nearest railway station...
...But I plan also to visit villages developing independently under the cooperative bhoodan or gramdan program of Vinoba Bhave, disciple of Gandhi, and Jayaprakash Narayan, former socialist leader...
...Lucknow: — end of July: Another endless train ride, the third in a row without sleep...
...Ibid., pp...
...bhoodan and gramdan, joint cooperative farming, encouragement of the capitalist, farmer—all these have a place in the pluralistically-patterned society of agrarian India...
...most proudly of all, he shows us his new store, a kind of dry-goods store stocked with cloth, cottons, woolens...
...THE VILLAGE of Berain lies not far from an area inhabited by a primitive people...
...There is no choice but to ride a jeep supplied by the local Bhoodan organization and take off for the long drive...
...The Economist, March 26, 1960...
...fortunately, since the monsoon days range between 90 and 100 degrees even without sun...
...Out of a total population of 357 million, according to the 1951 census, 249 million fall into "agricultural classes," and of these, 240 million or 96 Per cent live in villages...
...Our food problem is basically a land problem...
...It seems terribly overcrowded, rundown and inadequate...
...Transportation is thoroughly interrupted, railway schedules become meaningless, telegrams and letters pointless...
...As throughout India, the privately...
...yet they are unable to point to more than an individual instance here and there in their circle of acquaintances (usually, city people...
...I watch a meeting of top representatives from village panchyats (councils...
...He claims significant progress in village integration...
...the train bumps slowly along over a wornout roadbed...
...The sun is out...
...We know of one case where a Women's Welfare worker (an upper caste girl with a university degree) won sympathy and support (and incidentally created a first-class sensation in the villages around her area) by accepting food from untouchablesl that might involve a pooling of resources, he is not interested...
...This was my first experience of the surprising, almost disarming, candor one comes across in talking to most high Indian officials).** On the night train back to Delhi there is time to think over this first arranged visit and to look through much of the published material describing the Development program...
...For him, the greatest successes of bhoodan and gramdan lie in intangibles—the new spirit of collective living and working it has engendered...
...The strike's effectiveness varies from place to place, but it is enough to force me to travel by plane, a non-struck government-run service...
...Narayan has wrestled long and passionately with the great problems: what road shall his country take, the decline of socialism and Marxism, the rise of nameless authoritarian power...
...Below him are the poorer farmers, some owners, some tenants, some with holdings split into scattered trips-50 per cent of all holdings in India are less than 5 acres, many less than one...
...Will one find the spirit of national sacrifice and struggle, so striking to a young socialist in 1940, still alive in the country...
...Under Bhoodan, People were requested to donate voluntarily some out of their land for being redistributed to the landless people of the village...
...But, separately and together, all will be ineffectual without the selfless and coherent leadership that is still lacking...
...As for cooperative farming • The problem of caste is far more complex than generally realized...
...He is visibly upset by my unresponsiveness and we never meet again...
...he is to take me to the outlying areas around the city of Jaipur...
...A coincidence, of course, but characteristic of how most things that are important in Indian political life take place within a rather small "family" circle...
Vol. 8 • January 1961 • No. 1
