Nehru's Cabinet Shuffle

...But in the context of the perpetual disarray of the opposition parties, an important consideration, the party leaders believed, was that a progressive decline in the strength of the Congress might one day result in national political chaos...

...A second criticism is that what is desperately needed is correction of the government's policies and programs, which, it is argued, are mistaken or wrong...

...Minister of Transport and Communications Jagjivan Ram, leader of India's harijan (or "the children of God," as Gandhi named the former untouchables...

...It aims to achieve this by re-establishing an old Congress tradition: active contact with the people at the grass-roots level...

...The view of the Congress party leadership, though, is that Chinese expansionism, the factionalism of the Indian people, and the ineffectiveness of the opposition parties are all valid reasons to make sure that the Congress party stays in good enough trim to manage the nation's affairs...

...But the Congress is still well entrenched in power, both in New Delhi and in most of the states...

...But more changes are to come, and it appears likely that some fresh talent will be introduced...

...In addition, many party leaders have made a habit of airing their differences in public and the Congress national executive has been less than successful in enforcing discipline...

...True, it also suffered serious reverses in three important by-elections held earlier this year...

...The initial moves made under the Kamaraj Plan caught the public's imagination...

...Presumably, this program will also tackle the problem of corruption which, according to Nehru, is a "painful accompaniment" of the democratic process...

...Nehru had offered to resign, too, though of course his offer was rejected...

...There is in fact no immediate danger to Congress party rule...

...The Cabinet Ministers thus retired included: Home Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri, regarded by many as the man best suited to succeed Nehru...

...Since independence, diverse groups have left the Congress to form other parties...

...The overhaul of the Indian Cabinet is not yet complete...

...The elimination of intra-party feuding is another target of the Kamaraj Plan...

...With the retirement of V. K. Krishna Menon and Oil Minister K. D. Malaviya on the one hand, and the resignation of Morarji Desai and S. K. Patii on the other, the pendulum has swung from one end to the other only to return to the center again...

...Thus, the Congress party leaders' main task is to purify their government, eliminate waste and inefficiency, and stamp out corruption...

...Not everyone, however, agrees that the Kamaraj Plan is good or that it will work...

...Kamaraj's Plan is an attempt to recapture for the Congress its former image as a national movement...

...Indeed, the background to the Kamaraj Plan was hardly one of panic...

...And they held out the promise of a desirable change in the tired countenance of Prime Minister Nehru's Cabinet...

...In the eyes of the people it has slowly emerged as merely one—albeit the largest one —among several contending factions...

...They provided a welcome assurance that addiction to power had not completely extinguished the spark of self-sacrifice in the Congress leaders...

...But the big shake-up in the government was not an end in itself: It was not, as some have suggested, a diabolical ruse to get rid of those Cabinet members the Prime Minister allegedly did not like...

...The present Cabinet is not merely balanced but also more homogeneous and, to this extent, it promises to be more cohesive...

...In the course of the debate, the opposition leaders scored some telling points and in the process to some degree tarnished the government's image, but the Kamaraj Plan preceded the tabling of the censure move...

...In the largest state of Uttar Pradesh, in Punjab, in Kerala and elsewhere friction between the party's organizational and legislative wings has often exploded into prolonged factional fights...

...For another, the Prime Minister has, over the years, tried to maintain a balance in the Cabinet between persons of differing ideological orientations, reflecting somewhat the fact that the Congress party itself is heterogeneous and draws support from a membership of contrasting, and even conflicting, ideologies...

...For one thing, Nehru is so dominant a figure on the Indian scene that it is he who sets the tone of the Government, whatever be the number of his colleagues holding Right- or Left-wing views...

...It also was not a victory for the Communists, who had demanded the heads of Desai and Patii, or for members of the rightist Swatantra party, who had sought the dismissal of the Finance Minister for his severe tax measures...

...Similarly, the Cabinet shuffle was not mere window-dressing...

...and the United Nations for the Express Newspapers of India...

...One criticism is that in withdrawing key party leaders from ministerial posts, the AICC has placed the party above the nation, and that this is especially dangerous at a time when the Chinese are within the country's northern border...

...Most of the prominent opposition leaders were unseated from Parliament in the last general election, though some, like Acharya J. B. Kripalani (an independent) and Minoo Masani (of the Freedom party), have won by-elections and returned to the Lok Sabha...

...This directed top party leaders holding positions as Ministers in the Nehru government and as Chief Ministers in the states to relinquish office voluntarily and devote themselves full-time to rejuvenating the party organization...

...Finance Minister Morarji R. Desai, who would like to be Prime Minister himself...

...IN approving the Kamaraj Plan, the AICC indicated that the withdrawal of leading Congress members from government positions was only the prelude to a thoroughgoing program designed to remodel the party organization...

...The Chief Ministers initially selected for party work included not only Kamaraj, who had proffered his resignation along with his plan, but also Bakshi Gulam Mohammad of the State of Jammu and Kashmir...

...Such contact was the life-blood of the organization during the years of the freedom struggle—before its leaders became preoccupied with the pursuit of their own personal power...

...The favorite question of political commentators—Is the Cabinet as it is recast weighted more to the Right or to the Left than the previous one?—is a somewhat remote one in the case of India...

...What is more, the opposition is hopelessly divided...

...Two weeks later, the Prime Minister announced that he would let go six senior members of his Cabinet and that another six Chief Ministers might also resign their offices to take up party work...

...When this call was willingly met by offers of resignation from everyone concerned, the AICC entrusted Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru with the delicate and onerous task of deciding which leaders to discharge and which to retain in office...

...and Food Minister S. K. Patii, another contender for the Prime Ministership...

...The welcome that has been given the Kamaraj Plan by the Indian public stems from the expectation that its executors will use it to achieve these ends...

...N. Pattabhi Raman covers the U.S...

...It is made up of Communists, Socialists without a unified party or cause, religious fanatics and free enterprisers...

...The return of senior party leaders to organizational work, it is felt, will correct this situation...

...It had little, if any, direct relation to the fact that all the opposition parties in the Indian Parliament—except the Communists, who struck out separately against the government— joined together last month to sponsor the first no-confidence motion against the 16-year-old Nehru regime...

...The Prime Minister has reshuffled it to some extent, and assigned the portfolios of the retired Ministers among the rest...

...BEHIND THE KAMARAJ PLAN Nehru's Cabinet Shuffle By N. Pattabhi Raman Early last month the AllIndia Congress Committee, national policymaking body of the ruling Congress party, unanimously approved a startling plan put forward by K. Kamaraj, Chief Minister of the southern state of Madras...

...True, the Congress party polled a smaller percentage of the total votes cast in the 1962 parliamentary elections—45 per cent as against 47.8 per cent in 1957...

...What made Kamaraj advance his drastic Plan was his conviction that the Congress party had become too flabby and insensitive to the people and that it needed to be revitalized...