Where Is India Heading?
GABOR, ROBERT
Where Is India Heading? India Today. By Frank Moraes. Macmillan. 248 pp. $4.00. FRANK MORAES writes with the insight and experience of a trained journalist and his new book, India Today,...
...The Plan promises an 18 per cent rise in per capita income, which means from $56 a year in 1956 to $66 in 1961...
...In a country where 70 per cent of the people depend on farming, where five out of six live in villages, the most suitable measure would be a democratic land reform...
...Distinguished by careful analysis and beautiful writing, the book fills a gap in the literature about India, a work of fundamental importance for the general reader and for students of India alike...
...and "After Nehru, What...
...For the Second Five-Year Plan now in progress (1956-1961), $14.4 billion was earmarked...
...have particular urgency, though he does not regard the continuation of the Congress party in one group—in power—as a prerequisite of Indian survival as a democracy...
...The answer affects the free world as much as it does India...
...Moraes asks, justly, who is to be believed...
...By 1976, India's population will be around 500 million and there is great resistance against family planning from both conservative Hindus and Moslems...
...If Congress party rightists succeed in gaining control of the Reviewed by Robert Gabor Editor, International Feature Service Prime Minister's post, he considers the major contenders will be Rajendra Prasad, President of India, Pandit Govind Vallabh Pant, Home Minister, and Morarji Desai, Finance Minister...
...In this regard, he quotes Nehru: "The most stupid among the Communist parties of the world is the CPI...
...He sets up clear-cut criteria for differentiating these three strategies and shows that the neo-Maoist is really a flexible combination of "right" and "left...
...Nehru's so-called middle-of-the-road policies have left the Indian people wondering whether democracy can be equated with Communism and they keep asking, "Where is India heading...
...Moraes fears the Communists will infiltrate the farm co-ops as they have Bhave's bhoodan yagna (voluntary land renunciation) movement...
...Many new Plans will be needed before India is industrialized...
...As long as chances for Communist victories remain small and Nehru's neutralist policy remains useful to the USSR, CPI policy will remain unchanged...
...Moraes does not minimize India's tasks, now and before independence, nor does he think of Jawaharlal Nehru, or Mahatma Gandhi, or other Indian leaders in superhuman terms...
...Very few people believe in the ability of free enterprise to accomplish the tremendous job of economic transformation...
...The solution remains two-fold: to increase production and control population...
...In a country whose annual revenue is less than General Motors', and whose population is 400 million, democratic planning is not easy...
...Moraes also sees the dangers of Communism and holds that modern man must go beyond Communism to freedom through direct democracy...
...Moraes accepts John H. Kautsky's view of the Communist party of India (CPI) as having three basic strategies in India: "right," "left," and "neo-Maoist...
...he points out that Nehru has so dominated the Indian scene for so long that the questions, "After Nehru...
...If a majority of farmers in a given village does want joint farming, the minority must be compelled to such coercion, but these joint cooperatives are far from collective farms and communes, though Moraes believes they open the way to them...
...FRANK MORAES writes with the insight and experience of a trained journalist and his new book, India Today, presents the subcontinent in terms the Western world can understand...
...Moraes is most critical of Nehru on foreign policy...
...In February 1959, Nehru assured the Parliament that no legislation for compulsory joint farming would be introduced, but the following day the chief minister from Bombay, also a Congress party member, told a meeting the state would legislate cooperative farming into being...
...India is a country rich in natural resources: in iron, manganese, bauxite, coal, mica, titanium and thorium...
...Since Tibet and the Sino-Indian border dispute, CPI policy has been to press again for a united front for elections with the "Forward Bloc...
...But in a chapter called "Men and Politics...
...The choice is between mass, collective effort in the spirit of democratic planning or totalitarianism...
...More recent Sino-Indian developments have also caused some rethinking, but he blames Nehru for having "failed the free world" in decisive resistance to Communism...
...He says Nehru has been more critical more often of the West than of the Soviet bloc, though since Tibet and the Hungarian revolt he sees some changes...
...or as Nehru put it: "Just 80 days' military expenditure for a great power...
...however, if conditions change, a major switch in policy may be expected...
...India already knows this and that it may well hold the balance of the future for Asia—and perhaps for most of the world...
...Lenin once wrote: "The outcome of the Communist struggle depends in the last analysis on the fact that Russia, India and China comprise the gigantic majority of the population of the world...
...It is a realistic appraisal of contemporary India in all its complexity, backwardness of economy, popular ignorance and rigidity of social structure, which traces the 20th-century renaissance of Indian nationalism and the re-emergence of India as a free and independent state at grips with difficult problems of internal order, economic development and governmental administration...
...A 21 per cent increase in consumer goods is planned and new primary schools for eight million children...
...Though India is only 13 years old as a sovereign nation, its democratic traditions go back to the ancient village system of popular government through the panchayet, or council of five...
...Using its natural resources, India is concentrating in its Second Five Year Plan on heavy industry, particularly on steel...
...Moraes is opposed to a "cooperative" society and against extending the cooperative principle from agriculture to industry...
...Moraes believes Krishna Menon is a stranger in his own land and his strength lies only in his association with Nehru and will vanish when Nehru departs...
...according to Indian statisticians, to raise production two and a half times will take 20 years more...
...the Revolutionary Socialist party and in some places with the Praja Socialist party, which is a "form of struggle . . . best suited to the prevailing conditions...
...India is presently a mixed economy, combining public, private and cooperative enterprise...
...The private sector is presently shrinking from 50 per cent in the First Plan to 33 per cent in the Second...
...Its rivers are capable of hydroelectric exploitation, but, again as Nehru said, "India must run before she has learned to walk," and this is the basic theory behind the Five Year Plans...
...Moraes describes the CPI as an inexperienced party administratively and rent by internal friction, nor does he have a high opinion of its leaders...
...It seeks alliance with workers, peasants, petty-bourgeoisie and capitalists and, as Kautsky writes, "claims to be the true representative of the interests not only of the exploited class but also of the capitalists...
...Officially, the estimated unemployment in India is 15 million and growing every year...
...Moraes gives the new conservative party called Swatantra (Freedom) only a small chance if Congress splits into a left and right party, but thinks they will have a role as a right-wing opposition if Congress remains intact...
Vol. 43 • June 1960 • No. 26
