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theIr cavalIer has outwItted Mr V. K. Knshna Menon, Mrs GandhIand Mr Kamar~j over the constituency in Bombay, that stronghold oflndian capital. Mr S. K. Patil is bent on emerging as another strongmanon the national scene. Not for nothing did he boast that Mr Menonwould get his nomination only over his dead body. The country, thankGod, has been spared that sight, though railway tracks tend to be litteredwith other bodies because of the inefficiency of the department he mis-handles. He is, like most Congressmen, shifty in his loyalties-becausein the changing flux there is no still centre to which he can dedicatehimself. Didn't Mr Patil declare some time ago that he would shed hislast drop of blood for Mrs Gandhi? But when Mr Chavan, and not he,was rewarded with the Home Ministership, the blood of the Sadobabegan to boil. That he has been able to frustrate the Prime Minister,who is. always assured by her colleagues that they have never known ...a person who takes (wrong?) decisions so quickly, is not surprising afterher recent Cabinet bungling. But Mr Kamaraj? It seems that the firewhich almost engulfed his residence on November 7 has not left himuntouched and will continue to smoulder in the shrinking corridors ofhis power. He has gone off to Madras in a huff without trying topersuade Mr Menon to accept some seat somewhere in India. Thesubject is under cons~deration, as they say, !vir Nanda having been askedto look after it.

The Congress preparations for the coming elections are intricate andamusing. While the country is being urged to tackle the difficult· situa-tion on a war footing, in-fighting in the States and the Centre continuesunabated. The Syndicate is going about in a cocksure manner, makingit obvious that the future Prime Minister will have to list~n to thedictates of unscrupulous provincial satraps, and that the Congress Presi-dent is not even eager to fight his losing battle. Mrs Indira Gandhishould shed the illusions she is reported to have aired to President Nasserthat though she is at the moment hamstrung, a clear verdict for herin the elections will help her to act with much greater independence.She is too prone to compromise and depends too much on some knownTrojan horses for any independent course of action to emerge after theelections. In fact, there is no force \or group left in the Congress thatcan ensure a progressive policy now or after February 1967. Who cancure the Congress of the Kuomintang disease?

But the moron may yet live on and the prospects may be harsh foranother. five years in the larger part of the country. In one or twoStates the Congress may not emerge with absolute majority. In WestBengal, where a Congress defeat seemed a certainty until a few daysago, the picture at the moment is far from being encouraging, witheach party' issuing a lengthening list of candidates that has little relatiOnto reality. It is being taken for granted that hatred of the Congress isso universal that it need not be pinpointed, that all that matters nowis to be self-righteous. A partisan line may be hundred per cent legiti-mate in a way, but the trouble is, most people were fed on other hopes

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are reports that the united left fronin Uttar Pradesh is showing craeand a bout of mud-slinging hasgun with the Right Communisheartily participating. There is tiyet to retrace; otherwise a chanetwhich is not merely within the rangeof political but also statistical poss'bility will be lost.

DECEMBER 2, 1

The Other DroughtMan and nature have conspired t

make life in large parts of Bihar Vif

tually impossible. The extent of thdrought IS only slowly being realisby the country at large; and the cotrast between Mr J ayaprakash 1 rrayan's complaint that the responto appeals tor relief has been pooand Mrs Indira Gandhi's satisfactiothat she has since her birthday raisplenty is symptomatic of the coutry's deeper sickness. Foreign corrpondents have lately been Hockinin large numbers in the droughaffected areas of Bihar and EasterU.P.; and the tales they tell on rturn make it painfully clear thwhat is prevaIling is widespreafamine called by other and politnames. Migration is taking placmainly to West Bengal, itsell deficion a large scale; and this forobvious reason that men from Biharand Uttar Pradesh constitute alarpart of West Bengal's labour forFamilies left behind are now joinintheir breadwinners in the industriareas of West Bengal.

What has dried up is not merethe rivers and canals of Bihar anUttar Pradesh bu t also the hearts~en. It is impossible to rejoice ovthe response to the Prime MinisteDrought Relief Fund because similappeals by other agencies felI on deears and dead hearts. Mrs IndiGandhi may well ponder over th'Those who called at Teen MurMarg on November 19 with fat ehques a~d bags of wheat did so nbecause their hearts were bleedifor the stricken in Bihar but becauthey were trying to catch the PriMinister's eye for purposes totallunrelated to human misery. It is npurely incidental that this is an eltion year. That is precisely the reson why a famine cannot be callby its proper name. That is exaethe reason why the rich give to tPrime Minister's fund and not to aother's.

The cynicism of it all is cap

NOW

from 6.4 per cent to 15.3 per cent.The Swatantra made its debut in1962 and carried away 4.8 per cent ofthe votes and 15 seats. For some timethe Swatantra has not been very activein the State, and it seems it has leftthe field to the Jan Sangh, with whichit may have some understanding, toconcentrate in other States like Rajas-than and Gu jarat where its electIOnprospects are better. The Jan Sanghproposes to held candidates in mostof the assembly constituencies in Ut-tar Pradesh next year, and it expect,sto be returned in sufficient strengthto form a Ministry. Maybe the partyis pitching its hopes too high, but itis also a warning to the lett opposi-tion in Uttar Pradesh. The distancebetween Congress progressivism andJan Sangh obscurantism is not long,and accretion of strength to the JanSangh at the expense of the Congresscannot make for a change for thebetter.

But the Jan Sangh and the Swatan-tra are not the only parties to havegained· during the decade. The Com-munists, who started with no seats inthe assembly after the 1952 generalelection, have now 14 members, andtheir share of total votes has gone upfrom 0.9 to 5.4 per cent. The So-cialists have 24 members, who polled8.5 per cent of total votes, and theRepublicans eight members with 3.8per cent of votes to their credit. Allthese parties used to be counted outbefore the last general election. ThePSI', which seems to be in a suicidebid everywhere by remaining out ofleft alJiances, reduced its share ofvotes from 17.8 per cent in 1952 to11.9 per cent ten years later, thoug-hits strength in the assembly has in-creased from 20 to 38. Clearly, theCongress decline has not been to thebenefit of the Jan Sangh or the Swa-tantra alone; on the contrary, the lefthas gained more than the right. Asample survey conducted in the firstweek of November by the Indian In-stitute of Publi~ Opinion indicatesthat there is a two to one chance th'ltthe Congress will lose in Uttar Pra-desh. The party will lose its absolutemajority if it can be dislodged fromits 47 _marginal seats alone. In spiteof all efforts of the Congress to mendits broken fences, this may not be adifficult task. But the left partieshave also to ensure that their com-bined strength is superior to any al-liance that the Congress may forgewith parties of right reaction. There

till the other day. If the squabblegoes on in the leftist camp, what mayhappen is that many anti-Congressbut non-party voters will prefer tostay at home on polling day and theCongress will muster all its forces toscrape through.

A Chance To Seize

4

The Congress in Uttar Pradesh hasearned a notoriety for low factiousdisputes unequalled by any otherState unit of the party. This is norecent growth; ever since indepen-dence the inner party quarrels ofUttar Pradesh Congress are hauntingNew Delhi, not merely because it hasoffered a prime minister to Indiawhenever necessary but also becauseit is the heart of Hindiland, wherethe Congress may have to take its laststand, maybe jointly with the JanSangh, the Swatantra, and parties oftheir sort, against the challenge ofthe peripheral States which are fastturning non-Congress. Its impact onNew Delhi politics is growing withtime, with the steady accumulation ofweakness at the Centre. From thehabitual delinquency of Uttar Pra-desh Congress leaders it may appearthat they are confident of theirstrength, that the in-fighting notwith:standing, the roots of the Congresswill take long to wither in UttarPradesh. But it is doubtful if theCongress has so heavily lost groundin any other State as in Uttar Pradeshin the years of in.dependence, Kerala

• and West Bengal not excepted. Inthe latter States the Opposition hasalways been a force not to be ignor-ed; but in Uttar Pradesh the Con-gress was king. In the first generalelection in the State the Congresscaptured 390 out of 430 Assemblyseats and polled 47.9 per cent of thetotal votes cast. Since then its strengthhas wanted unremittingly, and in1962, despite China and all that, itcould secure only 249 assembly seatsand poll 34.9 per cent of total votes.

By itself, this decline of the Con-gress would not have been somethingto rejoice at, for unlike in Kerala orWest Begnal, the Jan Sangh and theSwatantra are forces to reckon within Uttar Pradesh. The Jan Sanghh'\5 improved its position consider-ably in the decade of Congress decayin Uttar Pradesh. The party's repre-sentation in the State Assembly hasincreased from two to 49 during theperiod and its share of total votes

NOW

~ft frontr cracksI has be:Imunists~ is time

chancele rangeal possi-

pired toIhar vir-it of therealisedthe COll-.ash Na-responseen poorisfactionlY raisedIe coun-n corres-flocking

drought-EasternI on re-:ar thatdespread

politerg place,t deficit,

for them Bihar~ a largeH force.r joiningadustrial

t merelyhar andh.earts of:)lce overrlinister'se similarr on deaf's Indira,ver this.1 Murti

fat che-1 so notbleeding: becausele Primes totallyIt is not

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•"

by the Congress party's attitude tothe ministerial crisis in Bihar. Hereis a Chief Minister thoroughly dis-credited; here is an administrationthoroughly lacking in popular confi-dence; and there in Delhi is the HighCommand counting not the starvingmen, women and children but onlythe votes the Congress mayor maynot win or lose by replacing or notreplacing Mr Krishna Ballabh Sahay.In one way and another, from thePrime Minister's fund and the trea-sury. a lot of money will flow intoBihar, even if water does not; butthere is no knowing how much of themoney will in fact be spent for therelief of the suffering, how much ofthe spending will be influenced byelectoral considerations. The peo-ple's democratic right to starve todeath will be impaired somewhat ifthe Centre imposes President's Rule,assuggested by some; it will certainlybe bad publicity for the Congress;but Bihar has reached a point atwhich sublime political prindplesmust be subordinated to the physicalneeds of the people. Does not MrKamaraj, who is believed to beopposed to President's Rule for partyreasons,know that dead men do notvote? Or, under Congress rule, dothey?

Jobs For BoysAfter long seventeen months of

labour the mouse of the N. R. Pillaicommittee has produced a mountainof a report on the External AffairsMinistry; and, now to remember theRamayana, the mountain containsjust about everything except Visalya-karani, the life-giving herb. As aformer Secretary-General at SouthBlock,Mr Pillai bears a formidablepart of the responsibility for whatmayor may not be wrong with theworking-of the Indian Foreign Ser-vice. Tog-ether with the late SirGirja Shankar Bajpai, Mr Pillaishaped the foreign service, gave it itscharacter and airs, framed its rulesand made certain that, whatever elsemight happen, the interests of themembers of the Indian Civil Servicewould be secure. He must knowbetter than most people that he andhisfraternitv wanted the foreign ser-viceto be a replica of the ICS; muta-tismutandis, the IFS was to be madein the image of the ICS. It wassurelytoo much to expect the pottertocall his pot black.

It is not surprising, therefore, thatMr Pillai concludes with supreme self-satisfaction that the foreign service hasserved the country "reasonably well".To go by the reported summary, thereport has very little to say about themechanical problems of the foreignservice. The cancer of almost allIndian missions abroad, is bad, some-times bitter relations between the re-gular IFS men, whose deficiencies arenot in the department of conceit, andthe rest; the latter include PressAttaches and information assistants,who frequently feel that they are atthe best of times only to be tolerated.A very lucky few have been foundberths in the regular foreign service;some others have the rank of first orsecond secretary; but most of themhave no sense of belonging to themission because they are very oftentreated as belonging to a lower castecompared to the IFS. Mr Pillaitends to dismiss their grievances bysaying that the committee is hesitantto "endorse" any generalisation sug-gesting that the External Affairs Min-istry is indifferent to the needs offoreign publicity. The failures ofInd;an publicity abroad are indeedvery often exaggerated by insufficient-ly informed MPs and others, who arereluctant to question policy itself;but inter-service rivalries have affect-ed not only information officers butalso the other ranks in the foreignservice. The caste system of thecivil service at home has been neat!yexported to the missions abroad, withresults very similar to those at home.

Instead of dealing with the tech-nical problems of execution of a sen-sible foreign' policy, the PiIlai com-mittee ventures into the field ofpolicy itself. There may be muchto be said for closer ties with Afro-Asia; but that is something the Gov-ernment has to decide and reviewfrom time to time. It is not for acommittee of officials to lay downpolicy. But all this is incidental.The committee speaks of expandingthe foreign service and reviving thepost of-Secretary General. We knowwhy.

A correspondent writes from NewDelhi:

What is precisely wrong with theIndian Foreign Service? It has be-come an assemblv of Eng-lish-Iangu-ag-e snohs and bigots who importtheir ideology from W'ashing-ton.Under their ~isdirection, our fo~eign

policy now has been pushed to thedanger point of having no choiceof manoeuvre between alternativecourses. As with the bulk of thepoliticians, members of the foreignservice too have to thrive onmelodrama. A border incident be-comes an 'invasion', a disagreementbecomes an act of treachery on thepart of the other party. With them,there can be no question of regard-ing today's adversary as being justthat: an enemy is an enemy forkeeps, and the assumption-oftenfortified by hope-is that he wouldbe considerate enough to continue asan enemy even around 2066 A.D.

What the foreign service needs isnot a Secretary-General in M r N. R.Pillai's very own image, but a tho-rough overhaul which would doaway with its existing class base. Co-ordination is the job of a glorifiedclerk. Once the essential elementsin foreign policy have been set right,any hack can do the coordination.But a coordinator is not the personwho can demolish the established cli-ches and attitudes. More than some·thing else, young men and women,who want to serve this country wellthrough diplomatic careers, lllllStlearn to be humble. If this nationis to survive and prosper, its couriersmllst then know how to get alongwith the neighbours in Asia andAfrica and the rest of the under-developed world. The foreign, ser-vice personnel must realise that theyrepresent a land which has the low-est per capita income in the world,and, despite their sophistication inthe use of the English language, theyare not any more important thanthe representative from Dahomev orSingapore. India, after all. is' nolonger the giant among equals. thegrandeur of Nehru is but a memorvof the dead past. Our foreign servicerecruits. in short, must learn how tobehave with the non-rich others.There is little sign that anyhody inthe Ministry of External Affairs wor-ries one bit ahout the long-term pers-pective of policy. The Nato vote se-cured the Security Council seat forIndia at the United Nations lastmonth; hut this election. at the ex-pense of Syria, is most likely to provean unmiti!!ated disaster. The N<!toworld will shrink, and one dav witheraway. Afro-Asia as a political en·tity, on the other hand, is boundto grow, whatever the short-termstresses and strains. Our foreign

5

Education, which is alsoproductive.

General Cariappa wasenough to think that Mrs Ind'Gandhi, the saviour of cricket,the same lady after November 7. Sknows when not to fight the seertaries. It will be, therefore, beufor sportsmen waiting to qualifor Bangkok to forget all aboAsian Games, and devote their eneto saving the nation-by donatiblood, investing in national certicates or better still, like the champiMihir Sen, trying for the Lok Sabh

Police UniversityLa~in American dictatorships d

not seem to be particularly oeworthy. Despotism is a routiaffair, yet this little story from Argetina may well be told for all iworth, as it has some relevance twhat is happening in the studenworld in this country.

The University of Argentina sin1957 had been perhaps the lone is-land of real democracy in the coutry. 1'he university's affairs webasically run by various faculty CoUl~cils which had an equal number ofstudents and teachers. The dean andrector of every faculty were appointed by the Faculty Council. The pro-fessors were elected by their fellowteachers. Despite the opposition 01some old professors, and the fascistand racialist elements in the studentbody (often in close contact withtheir fellow-travellers in the polictand administration), university lifewas unusually trouble-free. A wholenumber of b'rilliant young intellectuals emerged so that the average ageof professors came down to a mere 35In terms of the number of talentproduced or the "export" of its ownexperts. or the depth and extent 01scientific researches carried on in itslaboratories. the university faredmuch better than any of its rivals onthe continent.

No single political trend dominat,ed the campus life. Yet there wasnearly unanimous opposition to U.S.expansionism whether in San Do.mingo or in Vietnam. When thegenerals, including General Ong-ania,the present dictator, clamoured forarmed intervention along-side the U,S.in the Dominican Republic, thevigorous protest led by the universitypeonle thwarted the attempt.

Gen Ongania did not forget

Asian Games

try where the Communist Party isbanned and, the forces of reaction areallowed to operate with impunity,the future will continue to be un-certain and the boast of the NationalDemocratic leader about providinga Chancellor by 1969 may not behollow.

Another Fuehrer ?

NOW

policy experts might suddenly dis-cover to their consternation, perhaps,at the end of a decade, perhaps evenearlier, that nothing is forgotten orforgiven. It ~ay be too late then to .realise that opportunism does notpay. A re-building of the country'sforeign policy has therefore to pro-ceed alongside the re-building of theforeign service cadre, There can beno proper beginning of this task un-less the opportunists and the protocol- If it were a question of winningmongers are first shown the door. medals and making a mark, there isBut that is already too much to ex- no cause for sorrow in India's with-'pect from the present moribund re-l drawal from the Asian Games atgime. ~Bangkok. The Indian achievements

} i'i in international meets have been so":inglorious that winning the title

\ rSecond in Asia' (when the .laps areThe leader of the German Nation- : 'around, no chance of being the first)

,al Democratic Party brags that it will*cannot justify the loss of foreign ex-g-ive West Germany its Chancellor bY'ikhange. Even in hockey, India has1969. The party which stands for ,tof late received so many jolts that itGermany for the Germans, forcible ,4is in a way good that she can enjoyreunification of the two Germanys, 'jthe benefit of the doubt by abstainingpossession of nuclear bombs and anti- . from open competition. The line ofSemitism (are there many Jews left' argument of the Ministry of Financefor any future gas-chamber?) has had '-liS commendable. If the Djakartaunexpected success in the recent elec-; contingent could have done so welltions in Hesse and Bavaria, winning , with 81 members, why should theparliamentary representation for the. *t Bangkok games require more? Whyfirst time. It got about one million \ 0, ;hould 87 sportsmen require 17 offi-votes, mostly of young men. Of thel1cials, who are mere parasites? Why23 members of its national executive, . should camps and trials be held andsix are ex-Nazis, a fact which the expenditure incurred when anybodyparty flaunts. can sit in a swivel chair and with

According to analysts, the war in the help of files and dossiers tick offVietnam has created a situation in hopeless can'didates? The organiserswhich the USA has to withdraw part of Asian Games are not known toof its European commitments and, award prizes in cash, as some collegestherefore,. come to terms with the and school!) do in menials' events,Eastern bloc, most of all with the and therefore it is entirely right toKremlin. The bloc is not unrespon- cut the number of the participalltssive, despite the American savagery and keep the expenses to the mini-in Vietnam. This has placed the mum. The Ministry of Finance isrevanchist section of the Germans to be congratulated that it was notin a quandary. They can no seduced by all the phoney talk oflonger exploit the outmoded cold international goodwill and mutualwar to force reunion. Told' by understanding in which sports officialsMr Johnson that reunion depends.", indulge. It is not at all a questionon a general East·West detente, •., of money. Indja is not that bank-the extremist Germans are exploit, 'upt that she cannot afford to paying slo~ans similar to those that the expenses of 24 persons going towrecked the ~t\Teimer Republic and .:•..-l~angkok and staying there for onlybrought th~ lIttle. ~orporal to powe~. f,a week. If it were so, she would be~he. cycle .IS famIlI~r-defeat: reha~I' ~.hardly able to send, days in and daysIItatlOn. WIth maSSIve Amencan aId out, Ministers a,nd planners with theirand thust for war. There are, of secretariat to' far distant places. Itcourse, more moderate forces at work.. t" f . f t 'd'The Social Democrats do not want IS a ques IOn 0 111ruc uous expen 1-

the Bomb and want some sort of an ture.. Sports an~' games, as far asunderstanding with East Germany, the M·l1lst.ry of FI~ance can see, areand sections of the Christian Demo- unproductIve. ThIS gesture of aus-crats, after the ouster of Dr Erhard. teri'ty may well be a step towardsare a little wiser. But in a coun- the foldjng up of the Ministry of

6

FROM A POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT

Dividends On Death

tough line on the North Bombayticket and take any opposition fromthe Syndicate as a challenge to hisconsensus-making prowess.

7

ANew AlignmentBut the Syndicate could not care

less. At Thursday's meeting MrKamaraj tried his familiar gallle ofattrition by delay and wanted theissue put off to December. Mr Patilsaid he would not stand the nonsenseand wanted the matter clinched thenext day. Mr Kamaraj had his firstsetback and sensed that the Syndicatehad the backing of the Morarji Desaigroup. A new alignment was takingshape.

On Friday, the Prime Minister'scamp knew that for once it has play-ed its cards well but the game wasnot yet over. I~ is intriguing whyMr Sadiq, a supporter of the PrimeMinister, to get whom into the Cen-tral Election Committee Mr Kamarajhad ditched Mr Malaviya at the Bom-bay AICC, suddenly left for Kashmiron Thursday, knowing that theMenon issue was to come up the nextday.

The Prime Minister's followingknew the pitch had been sufficientlyqueered and it was time to back outon Mr Menon's ticket leaving it toMr Kamaraj to face the Syndicate-Morarji Desai consortium. Soon afterthe CEC took up the Bombay list,the Prime Minister walked out andtold reporters that she had conveyedher views rm Mr Menon's ticket tothe committee which was discussingthe matter. She had to go to keepanother appointment.

But the next day, at the Press Clubo India, she said that she was sur-prised at the CEe's decision and thatshe thought the issue would be post-poned. The story she expected 300Indian and foreign newsmen toswallow was an insult to their intel-ligence. What is worse, she said seve·ral CEC members had told her MrMenon should get the ticket. Certain-ly, it could not be Mr Morarji De-sai, Mr S. K. Patil, Mr Atulya Ghosh,~r Sanjiva Reddy, Mr Ram SubhagSmgh or Mr C. B. Gupta. Countingherself and Mr Kamaraj out, who

. remain other than Mr Ja~iivan Ram,Mr Chavan and Mr D. P. Mishra?Mr Fakhruddin Ahmed was ill andMr Sadiq Ali was not in town onFriday.

Mrs Gandhi tried to suggest thateverything took place in her aQsence

new alignment in the Congress lead·ership and won hands down. It wasnot as if he feared Mr Menon's re-turn to Parliament. That would nothave made any difference to the Con-gress or Mr Patil. All these days, MrKamaraj has been telling his courtiersof the Press that Mr Menon had toget the ticket from North Bombayand the gullible Mr Menon returnedthe compliment saying he had faithin Mr Kamaraj's integrity and leftthe issue to his integrity.

At the end of Friday's coup, manysaid Mrs Gandhi should not havesacked Mr N anda under the Syndi-cate's pressure. But that was assum-ing that she could take decisions onher own. Even if one were to giveher the benefit of the doubt andassume that Mr Nanda was still inthe Cabinet, there is little doubt thatMr Pati! would have struck on theNorth Bombay issue.

There is a lot more behind the in-nocuous headlines and innocuous des·patches. The Central Election Com-mittee took up the Bombay list onThursday but before that Mrs Gan.dhi's following of political tyros wereworking. qvertime to play Mr Kama·raj off against the Syndicate by cam-paigning that the Congress Presidentwas not very keen on doing justice toMr Krishna Menon. Mr Kamarajwas to be provoked into taking a

NOW

ed their professions while It few re-main unemployed.

The Government of Gen Onganiahas found a few lackeys who are now"running" the University on directorders from the Home Ministry. Butthe University gates were closed fortwo months. The 150,000-strong stu-dent community has been organizingone demonstration after another.The general population both atBuenos Aires and at Cardoba haveshown their solidarity. Numerousclashes with the police have takenplace, killing so far one student.Despite the draconian "preventive"measures the movement for universityautonomy and democracy is by nomeans over .•

Delhi Letter

forgive. Within It few weeh of hiscoup d'etat of June 20 he orderedthe faculty councils to be disbanded.When the latter refused, armed mili-tiamen were sent to the university.In the Faculty of Architecture theyentered the lecture halls and blud-geoned everyone present. Even morebrutal was the assault on the Facultyof Sciences in which some 200 stu-dents and professors (including theDean, Rolando Garcia, and a visitingAmerican lecturer from the MIT)were injured. Nearly 800/0 of thescience professors left their jobs with·in a week. All told, 1200 teachersor 300/0 of the total left the univer-sity; many got immediate invitationsfrom foreign universities, some chang-

DECEMBER 2, 1966

THERE was a lot of cant to thetense political drama on Thurs-

day when Mr Patil rode again to pulloff his second political coup in 18days. But the wide·eyed innocencethe Prime Minister pretended whenshe spoke at the Press Club of Indiathe next day about her alleged solici-tude for M1"' Krishna Menon wasamusing. Indeed, as amusing as theindignation of the Capital's LeftEstablishment over the clumsy trickthe Syndicate had played on the"progressive" Mr Kamaraj by settinghim off against a slightly more "pro-gressive" Mr Krishna Menon. The"progressives" have no place in theCongress any more, the Establishmentdecided. Amen.

But what could Mr Kamaraj havedone-except what he did? It is hisill-luck that not many in the CapitalkUGwof his political past. FQr over40 years he has survived by his sheerinstinct to spot the potential winnerand throw his lot with him. Hismuch-vaunted role as the consensus-maker is a cynical myth but he hasbeen trying hard to live up to whathas been imposed upon him.

What was really at stake over theNorth Bombay East ticket? Mr Patilhad said Mr Krishna Menon couldget the ticket only over his deadbody. The Tammanny Hall bossfrom Bombay was trying to force a

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P ANN ::- ,iI

•

• You decide when to have childr!n andhow many .

• You protect the health of your wlft\

• You are able to give better attention tothe health. education and bringing-up of

~I your children

• You learn to enjoy marrIed life without" feat or worry.

and she had no role in the decisioJlof the CEC to leave it to Mr Kama-raj. The implication of the decisionwas clear. The majority in the CEChad made its mind clear to Mr Kama-raj and if he still wanted to give tI:eticket to Mr Menon, he could do Itand face the consequences.

Mr Kamaraj might have stood upto the Syndicate's blackmail aided bythe Morarji Desai group if he hadnot been let down by Mrs Gandhi'ssupporters. Mr D. P. Mishra, ~ fo.rm-er RSS stalwart and now a prInCIpallieutenant of the Prime Minister whoseems to spend more time in NewDelhi than in Bhopal, was active try-in~ to drive home to M~ Kam~r~jthat morning that the PrIme MUllS-ter was no longer for Mr Menon andif Mr Kamaraj thought the partysupreme, he would have to fall inline with Mr Pati!o

The DinnerSo the strongman was cut to size

and, ~ymbolically, at the end of themeeting on Friday, Mr Atulya Ghoshand Mr Sanjiva Reddy accompaniedMr Kamaraj in the Con~ress Presi-dent's car and later, the trio went toMr Atulya Ghosh's Cannin~ Lane re-sidence to dinner and Mr Patil join-ed them.

The strongman who stagemanagedtwo successions since Nehru's deathcould not give a teeny-weeny partyticket to Mr Menon. The patternof the power struggle in 1967 wasclear. The Syndicate and the Morar-ji Desai group would stand togetherand Mr Kamaraj was free to backthem or the "Jndicate" because thatwould make little difference. ButMrs Gandhi seems to have come. toterms with the Syndicate, as reportedin this column two weeks ago. TheMenon episode lends credence to thestory.

Talking of the 1967 scramble, theinclusion of Gen Thorat in theMaharashtra list for the Lok Sabhashould strike one as something outof turn. By sheer accident, all the re-tired service chiefs have been sentpacking to one of the neighbouringcountries on diplomatic assignments.It has been so since Gen Cariappa'sretirement. Gen P. N. Thapar wasthe only exception. But Gen Thoratretired in protest and faded out forthe moment.

The entry, of a general into poli-tics is not something to be alarmed

. about, in itself. But the speculation

FROM A CORRESPONDENT

The Aftermath In Andhra

•

~. 1966

in the cocktail circuit is funny. MrChavan would retain Home if MrsGandhi is Prime Minister again. GenThorat might get Defence becausethe next Government would have torule with the help of the army andthe police. But wouldn't there beone Maharashtrian too many in sucha Cabinet?

Cen Chaudhuri's stint as the Mi-litary Correspondent of The Slales-man, revealed by him in the prefaceto his book, has made the Govern-ment sit up. The matter is beinglooked into. But a Lieutenant-Gene-ral \vho retired rather ingloriouslyis likely to be the centre of a newcontroversy. He is reported to havewritten his "memoirs" which are be-ing printed in a hush-hush mannerbecause he has not yet obtained per-mission for writing it. Whether thebook would hit the stands at all ishard to say now.

BiharWhat is more important in the

Congress party's political calculus-afew hundred thousand deaths inBihar or the power equation for thenext five years? Mrs Gandhi's per-son-to-person appeal (or politicaltruce was wrongly addressed to theparties while it should have beendirected to her own partymen inBihar.

Her following in ew Delhi hasbeen campaigning for President'sRule in the State not so much he-cause it wants effective drought reliefwhich the rickety State administra-tion cannot handle but because it isheld that Mr K. B. Sahay should nothandle it in an election year. MrSahay is one of the Chief Ministerswho has not lined up with the PrimeMinister and in any case he does notcommand the majority in the Pra-desh Election Committee. If MrsIndira Gandhi's return has to be en-sured in 1967, she must have a sizablefollowing of Congress MPs fromBihar.

There is a lot of Bihar politics inNew Delhi but little concern forBihar. The twenty million peoplein the grip of famine are mere digitsin a vast, inhuman statistical opera-tion, it would seem. The Bihar PECwants to hold its meeting in NewDelhi, away from the wails of thehungry. Mr Jaiprakash Narayan saidhere that by December 15, it wouldbe very critical and almost 90 percent of the people would have to be

DECEMBER 2, 1966

NOW

fed from outside ~upplies. But Con-gress prestige is more important thanrelief and an efficient administrationunder President's Rule. Group andfactional interests for the next fiveyears cannot be sacrificed to save amere few lakh liyes. There can bepolitical dividends On death.

From the distance of :Delhi all thatthe Government and we can do forpoor Bihar is our talk of austerityand belt-tightening. The quantumof rationing in the country variesfrom eight ounces in Kerala to 16ounces in SOme cities. In New Delhi,the Guest Control Order is a bigjoke. We have dinnerless Mondays

HYDERABAD: Much water hasflown under the bridge since

November 4. The death roll in thesteel plant agitation mounted to 32,a toll which not even the August1942 movement claimed in thispart of the country. Scores of in-jured or maimed persons are still un-der treatment in hospitals.

The movement has stopped but thearrests continue, particularly of t~eLeft Communists. Those who arereleased from .hospital after treat-ment, or released on bail are beingsent back to jail. There is inordi-nate delay in filing charge-sheetsagainst them and they are being keptunder police custody for days toge-ther, though the law says they cannotbe kept so for more than 24 hours.

The struggle assumed a differentform when the Assembly was con-vened. After exhausting the usualprocedures of adjournment and no-confidence motions and demands forresignation of the Ministry, the en-tire Opposition tendered resignationof their membership, signifying a newturn in the movement, though not anew stage.

The conspiracy behind the publi-cation of news from Delhi on Novem-ber 2 about the reported favourabledecision of the Cabinet sub-committeenow stands exposed. There arehints of the complicity of the StateGovernment with the Centre in put-ting across this "inspired news item"_Group politics in the Congress alsoplayed its part.

and riceless Thursdays and Saturdaysand of course liqourless Tuesdays andFridays. But the vulgarity and os-tentatiousness of official entertaininghardly suggests any food crisis in thecountry. If President Johnson be-lieves that the stories of food short-age in India are just propaganda, theExternal Publicity Division cannot beblamed. On the contrary, the Divi-sion has been doing rather too well,taking exception to stories the foreigncorrespondents have been filing fromIndia and frowning upon some of thestarvation stories.

N ovem bel' 27, 1966

When the news came in about thesub-committee's reported deci~ion,why did the Chief Minister, insteadof trying to ascertain the fact fromDelhi, rush to Visakhapatnam to per-suade Mr Amrut Rao to give up hisfast? Why did the Chief Ministeracquiesce in the announcement of thePrime Minister about the appoint-ment of a cabinet sub-committee,when so many committees appointedearlier had never announced their de-cisions ? If, as was revealed later, therewas no decision of the sub-committeeat all, nor did it ever meet, then,what for a sab-committee at all?

These questions were not only notanswered by the Chief Minister; onthe contrary he left a definite impres-sion when he replied to the debateon the no-confidenc motion that"certain people" at Delhi-he wasobviously referring to Mr SanjeevaReddi, his political rival-came inthe way of Andhra getting a steelplant, thus fully substantiating theOpposition charge that the steel plantbecame a victim of group rivalriesinside the Congress party.

The argument that the plant can-not be taken up during the FourthPlan owing to lack of resources wasdismissed as a flimsy excuse, sincelack of resources was not a factor thatwas discovered yesterday or the daybefore, it was there all these 18months during which Governmentleaders visited all world capitals witha begging bowl. Besides, what thepeople and the government asked for

PRASANTA SARKAR

What Price Rice Next Year?~~arcais!acinH01

aln'altltIt]otlt

"Only Logical Policy"In 1966, the deficit in the State

was estimated at 2.1 million tonnes(according to published figures avail·able with the West Bengal Govern-ment's Food Department) , even if therice production that year was statedto be 4.9 million tonnes. While the

DECEMBER 2, 1966

trative means, either present or insight, to sustain such a monopoly,nor to undertake the responsibility ofuniversal distribution entailed in it.It is too vast an uI}.dertaking".

If China can, however, enforce acountrywide statutory rationing, en·suring 2,000 calories of food a dayto each one of its 700 million popu·lation, it has developed a system ofcoercion which provides the Govern·ment an administrative machine tomatch the contrary forces. TheWoodhead Commission had foresightand envisaged that such admin·istrative means could not be de·veloped in India. If it was not pos-sible to achieve the means in theBritish days, there is no reason whyit should be possible today. India'stransition from colonialism underBritish democracy to its own sover·eign democracy should not necessa·rily mean an improvement adminis·tratively.

One of the basic causes of the 1943famine had been "shortage in thesupply of rice in 1943 .. It appearsprobable that the total supply during1943 was not sufficient for the reoquirements of the province and thatthere was an .absolute deficiency ofthe order of three weeks' require·ments".

According to figures available withthe We~t B~ngal Government, thetotal "absolute deficiency" in theState in 1967 can be many times"three weeks' requirements". At thepresent level of controlled consump-tion, the State requires about 125,000Wnnes a week (based on the calcula·tion that 40 million people consumeabout 6.5 million tonnes a year).Since the deficit in 1967, because ofshortfall in production, can be threemillion tonnes, the "absolute defi·ciency" in the State will be in res-pect of 24 weeks, against three in1943.

I

PLANNING for procurement ofa commodity and control over

its distributio\l are recognized by alleconomic systems, socialist or other-wise, as phenomena of scarcity.When Mr P. C. Sen, West BengalChief Minister-he says he has nofetish for socialism-recently an-nounced a revised food policy for1967, considerably relaxing the pre-vious year's control on prices, and onrice millers and jotedars, had he as-sumed that the food scarcity in theState would be less acute in 1967than in the previous year? Thereare suggestions in many quarters thatan election year in a democracy iscrucial and that it tends to distortthe ruling party's policies in favourof influential financial groups, evenat the cost of the State's interests.

A reference to the 1943 famine inBengal and the subsequent Wood-head Commission report seems rele-vant. Over three million peopledied from starvation and epidemics,and the Commission estimated: "Forevery human being who died in thefamine, a profit of at least Rs 1,000was made by those who held stocksof rice and paddy". The Commissionobserved: "Famine in the form inwhich it occurred, could have beenprevented by resolute action at theright time to ensure the .equitabledistribution of available supplies.The decision in favour of decontrolin March, 1943 was a mistake. Inthe conditions prevailing in Bengalat the time, it was essential to main-tain control: its abandonment meantdisaster".

The Commission had, therefore,advocated "a stronger and more wide-spread machinery of procurement; abetter 'monopoly' use of rice mills:a stricter enforcement of embargoes,where they still remained; and a farstricter general enforcement system".But considering the firm grip of peo-ple like Ispahanis, Shaw Wallaces,Rawatmulls and Raja Janaki NathRoys in the economy of Bengal andthe readiness of the administrationto submit to such grip, the Commis-sion mused: "We cannot advice theGovernment of Bengal to undertakea full State monopoly in rice andpaddy, since it has not the adminis-

10

wat a policy decision about the loca-tion of the plant on the basis of thetechnical experts' report and notimmediate establishment of it.

To those who looked at Andhrafrom the distance of Calcutta orDelhi, the whole thing might havelooked nothing but vandalism, vio-lence and thoughtless destruction of

.property. How can setting fire to amunicipal office or looting some pri-vate property secure a steel plant?A seemingly innocent question.These friends should remember whathappened in the August 1942 move-ment-what happened in Andhra wasalmost a re-enactment of 1942-andthe manner in which that movementwas maligned and what the then na-tional leaders said in reply. To thisshould be added a little more infor-mation about what happened inAndhra a few days ago. The GunturMunicipal Office was set on fire tohush up evidence in connexion withmisappropriation of Rs 1.5 lakhsspent at the time of the AICC sessionin Guntur. The commercial taxoffice in the same place was raidedwhile the food godowns were not,the jeeps outside were intact and allthat was set on fire was only records.Students were shot at in Warangal,said a police story, because they werefound removing fish-plates, butstrangely, the bullets were found onthe walls of an engineering collegesituated far away from the railway,and it was a student-a Bengali-reading a book in the common hallwho was killed. At ~akinada, theCollector himself could not but ad-mit that the valuables of students intheir hostel like radios, watches etc.were looted not by students but bythe police. At Vijayawada, a policestation was raided allegedly by LeftCommunists, but it is strange thatthe arms found in the station werenot c<:rried away by them but throwninto a canal running near by.Students were fired at in Visakha-patnam when they 'damaged' the post

• office, but the post office is intact,with not even a mark of a stone-throw, let alone damage. Instancesof this type can be multiplied. TheGovernment refused to hold a judi-cial enquiry, because it knows thatthe truth will out and it cannotblame the Communists any more.

The kind of agitation that Andhrawitnessed may not repeat itself, butthis issue is bound to figure promi-nently in the next few' months.

or inopoly,lityofin it.

/rce ag, ell-

a daypopu-~m ofovern-ne to

Theesightdmin-e de-t pos-1 theI whyndia'sundersover-;cessa-minis-

I 19431 the>pears,uring.e re-I that.cy ofquire-

! with/ theI thetimes

~t themmp-/5,000kula-Isumeyear) .lse ofthreedefi-

Cl res-'ee in

Stateonnesavail-~vern-if thestatedIe the

1966

State Government sought food assist-ance [rom the Centre, "the only logi-cal policy (to quote the Chief Min-ister) which the Government couldadopt in 1966 was to distribu te theinevitable under-consumption of ce-reals as equitably as possible through-out the State and the only means ofachieving this was to procure themaximum possible quantity of riceand paddy internally and distributethe same at reasonable prices underthe direct control of the Governmentthrough Statutory Rationing in areasof high purchasing power andthrough Modified Rationing in dis-tricts".

The West Bengal Government,thcrefore, introduced a system of levylor paddy procurement on producersand ricemillers. Following "the onlylogical policy", it practically tookover the entire wholesale trade inricc which, ft rightly thought, couldnot be done unless there was 100rolevy on ricemills' production. Thejotedars and ricemillers [rom thetart of the year resisted the Govern-

ment's policy and completely shatter-ed its hopes of procuring I.I milliontonnes. The Government could notprocure more than half the quantity,including 450,000 to 1I1es receivedfrol1l 746 rice mills as 100% levyfrom them. Since the procuremen twas far less than what was estimated,the entire scheme collapsed, despitethe fact that the Central assistancewas more than 1.7 million tonnes offood. Since September, the modifiedrationing system had to be withdrawnand statutory rationinR exists, thanks10 weekly supplies from the Centre.

It is not that food was scarce inthe State. Smuggling of rice fromsurplus to deficit districts became sorampant that the entire administra-tion had to beat a retreat. It with-drew the cordoning system, practi-cally. The price control systembroke down and the Governmentmachinery had to close its eyes to theblackmarket, on the plea that itwould at least make rice available,even if at a higher price.

Since the marketable surplus inWest Bengal is considered to be 1.5million tonnes of rice out of a pro-duction of five million tonnes, it isestimated that at least a million Jon-nes had passed into the blackmarketthrough petty smugglers who came[rom the rural community. But whoheld the stocks is now known toe ·erybody. The ricemillers and jote-

2, 1966

dars have the money and the storagefacilities to corner stocks.

For many years, the ricemills havebeen saying that they can process only700,000 tonnes. of rice, against theaverage production of five milliontonnes. The hoax is necessary pri-marily to evade income-tax. \!\Then100ro levy was fixed on rice mills in1966, they provided only 450,000tonnes, asking people to believe thatthey kept their machines idle. Theirfigures raise the question about theagency or agencies that might havebeen responsible for the processing ofthe remaining quantity of rice.

Three AgenciesIn \!\Test Bengal there are three

agencies for processing rice: the ricemills, the husking mills and the hand-pounding "dhenkis". According to"Vest Bengal Government figures, theState has 6,000 licensed husking millsand an equal number of unlicensedones. These 12,000 husking millsoperate for about 100 days a year,eac.h milling one tonne of rice a day.The total production in the year,therefore, comes to about 1.2 milliontonnes of rice. The 1961 CensusReport says that "dhenkis" are fastbecoming obsolete and their numbercannot exceed 2,000 i11 175,000 pea-sant households. Their prodl}ctiollfigure is negligible.

Assuming that 746 rice mills pro-cess about 700,000 tonnes of rice andhusking mills 1.2 million tonnes,there is a gap of three million Wnnesin the total production of 4.9 milliontonnes of rice available in 1966.There must be some agency which isengaged in the milling of this hugequantity and the West Bengal Gov-ernment, yery rightly, thought- tha ta system of control on rice millswould ease its procurement pro-gramme in 1966. BtH the rice millshad greater resources than the Gov-ernment and the administration hadto concede a defeat.

Therefore, while designing thefood policy for 1967, the Chief Min-ister has to bring down the levy onrice mills to 50% of their production,withdraw the price control system,restrictions on the movement of ricefrom one district to another and con-trol on the wholesale rice trade: andalso withdraw its promises of "dis-tributing forced under-consumption"throughout the State through modi-fied and statutory rationing.

Since the ruling party in the State

is too much im'olved in the aJfairsof the State, it causes irritationamong relevant sections of the com-munity. The State Government has,therefore, withdrawn itself [rom thefood procurement business and hasintroduced a new element, called theFood Corporation of India, a Centralbody, for the purpose. AU the FCImen who will procure in 1967 arelent by the \Vest Bengal Govern-ment's Food Department, whosemiserable bungling of procurementin !966 caused a stupendous failure.

\Vhat is the prospect before theFeI? It will procure 50ro of thericemills' produce, which in the yearof a heavy shortfall in productioncannot be by last year's examplemore than 350,000 tonnes. Thisyear there is also a levy on producerswhose exemption limits have beel~increased from three to seven acres incase of irrigated land and from fiveto 10 in case of non-irrigated land.From rice mills, therefore, the quan-tity expected is 175,000 tonnes andnot more than 100,000 tonnes by wayof levy from producers.

For the areas under statutory ra-.. tioning, which now covers 8.5 mill.ion

people in Greater Calcutta, the Asan-sol-Durgapur belt and Siliguri, thetotal food requirement in tpc year is1.1 million tonnes, half in rice. Ifrice procurement cannot exceed275,000 tonnes, the total rice deficitfor the statutory rationing areas willbe 225,000 tonnes, if the present levelof weekly per capita quota has to bemaintained. The question of modi-fied rationing does not arise, becauseof shortage of Government stocks.

After February, What?Suggestions have been inade in

many knowledgeable circles, includ-ing those in the Government's FoodDepartment, that the Chief Ministerhas deliberately designed an irra-tional food policy from his convic.:tion that the ruling party may notcome back to power in the F:ebruaryeJections. Or even if it does, he maynot become the Chief MiniSter, sothat the responsibility for food dis-tribution next year will not be his.But he has to be in politics and has,consequently, the need for support ofthe financial groups. By nature ofthings, the big industrialist is inter-ested in lobbying at the Centre- whichgives industrial licences and· importpermits etc. The State Governmentand the ruling party in the State have

11

DECEMBER 2. 1966.•.

conformist and always voting for theCongress.

I have little doubt that, so far asthe Congress party is concerned,learning is a dangerous thing, and intelligent teachers and alert st denllare potential sources of subversion.It is not thus the laudable principlesof socialism which have impelled theState Government in recent years tointerfere mOl1e and more with themanagement and working of educa,tional institutions. The motivation,I think, is more direct and crude: toassert the supremacy of the uninform·ed over the more enlightened seg·ments of society. What happens tothe Bengali community in the longrun if such people are given the res-ponsibility to formulate and executethe educational policy in the Statedoes not worry the Congress politi.cians in the least. All they are in·terested in is cutting down to sizethe cheeky intelligentsia. Just a.there is anI y one God and his nameis etc. etc., the Congress objective i.to have only one intellectual for theentire State and his name is not diffi·cu t to guess.

'*' •This provides the major clue to

the extraordi~ary happenings takingplace around the Presidency Collegeexpulsions. Let us begin at the be-ginning. The major point to keepin mind is that the students whohave been expelled had in the earlieryears been able to secure admissionto the college. To get into the Pre-sidency College is not an easy pro·cess: a student must obtain a goodfirst division in his Higher Secon·dary or Matriculation examinationbefore he can aspire for admission inBengal's premier college. He mustat least secure 65 per cent of the agogregate marks if he is to survive thefierce competition, and in such sub·jects as physics or economics, the com-petition is still more intense. It iinot thus the scum and the dreg of thestudent community which find theirway into the Presidency College. Ingeneral, the Presidency students reopresent the quintessence of Bengalitalent and intelligence. For example,one of the victimised students, whohas been refused admission to thepost-graduate course, secured firstclass honours in physics, and has fol·lowed it up by an extremely lauda·tory performance in the economicshonours course. The group of elevenwhom the Principal and tlie Govern.

The long Congress regime haschanged all that. Can you imagineany Minister browsing through thephilosophy of Baudelaire, or com-posing a haiku} or worrying aboutthe "bubble chamber" principle andits possil;>le repercussion on the deve-loping trends in nuclear physics?The Congress set-up consists of ordi-nary, mediocre men, ordinary not be-cause they are not themselves bril-liant, but because they are also sus-picious of brilliance in others. As agroup, they are scared of intelligence,They do not want smart peoplearound .them. They would like todeal with the world on their ownterms ; they would like it to be dull,

the leaders of the Left parties woulduse the long spells in prison to catchup on their reading. Many of themsprang from peasant stock; the acci-dent of birth and tbe circumstancesof upbringing however only accentua-ted their devotion to learning. Therewas always much that was vulgar inBengal politics, but, transcending all,was this respect for knowledge, adeference towards intellectual efforts,and a blurring of controversy whereit was a case of appreciation of gen-uine scholarship.

Diary

in the rural community and the ad-ministration degenerating into junglerule as the result of confrontation bythe powerful smugglers' rings.

Therefore, the prospect for 1967 isconsiderable difficulty in food, morepotential than in 1943. Internalproduction cannot be more than 3.5million tonnes of rice. Since most )fnorth India is drought-affected andas US food aid is uncertain, it is un-likely that the Centre will be ableto supply the same quantity of food(1.7 million tonnes) as last year. Asthere is no control on whOlesale tradeand no price control, food scarcitywill tend to cause cornering of stocksfor higher profits. With controls thisyear, the price went up as high asRs 2.50 a kg in some districts. With-out them, what the price will be isanybody's guess. '

12

THE present Con?ress Cabi~et in, West Bengal IS not partIcular-ly noted for its level of literacy. Onehas merely to look at the claque-:-and occasionally bring oneself to lts-ten to them-to realise this. MrAtulya Ghosh may have literary andscholastic pretensions, but no suchaccusation can be hurled at any ofthe loyal cronies he has installed inWriters' Building. It is not merelya question' of lack of urban polish.Dress-snobs and accent-snobs. are ontheir way out; at least in so far as{his State is concerned, they neveryielded much influence in the powerstructure. But vVest Bengal couldtake pride in the past for the intellec-tual sophistication of its politicalleadership. I will not refer to theinstances of the outstanding person-alities, for these will be taken forgranted. What is however astonish-ing is that even an H. S. Suhrawardycould quote T. S. Eliot; despite hisrough and rustic exterior, A. K.Faziul Huq was a lover of poetry andmusic, and, in early life, had culti-vated a passion for mathematicallogic. Dr B. C. Roy loved powerpolitics, but he too retained a respectfor the scholars and intellectuals whowere arrayed against him in theCommunist Party of India, Most of

CalcuttaCHARAN GUPTA

'to contend with such businesses a~the food processing industry, thetransport industry and fish trade.~ I, for myself, am not convinced bythe suggestions that the Chief Min-ister, Mr P. C. Sen, who has all thefood figures at his finger tips, hasany ulterior motive in framing thefood policy. If he has relaxed thesystem of controls, he has done itfrom pragmatism. He knows, as didthe Famine Inquiry Commission,that his Government has not the reosources to provide a corruption-free;tdministration required for planningand control in the food distributionsystem. After a decade of the Oppo-sition's persistent demands for ~ontrolover the food trade, he. might havebeen emotionally upset and decidedto practise the controls. He had topay heavily for this in the shape oflosing support of influential sections

for the

. ~

___ '-r-

E.ASTERN RAILWAY

d,·d realise,YOuis more, IWhot h. thought os,. enience t ISwhot mcon. d to your

Id have causeact wou

fellow-passengers.

happens everyRailway.

Much

• far asleerned,and in-tudentsversion.lneiplesled theears to~h theedueavation,Ide: tonform-d seg-.ens toe longhe res-:xecute

Statepol~ti-ire In-o sizelIst ab

nan.lCtive iior theIt diffi-

[ue totaking:ollegelIe be-

keepwho

~arlicj'lission~ Pre-I pro-good

;eeon-lationon inmust

ie ag-e theI sub-com-It ii)f thetheir

:. Ints re-:ngalimple,

whothe

firsts £01-mda-)mieslevenvern-

1966

ing Body of the college have thrownout are neith,er street urchins norragamuffins; they are smart and alertyoung men-careful outlay on theiracademic career ought to be 'VestBengal's best investment.

But certain things went sour. Thefirst of these developments was lastyear's elections to the College Stu·dents' Union; after a lapse of severalyears, the Students' Federation can-didates scored a thumping victory inthese elections. It was openly sug-ested that an overwhelming majorityof those elected had their politicalsympathies with the Left Communist

_ Party. There' are several other edu-cational institutions in Calcuttawhere students are under the influ-ence of the Left CPI, and therefore inordinary circumstan~es the .results ofthe Students' Union elections at Pre-sidency College should not have pro-voked any trouble. Unfortunately, thesecond event in the chain was theepisode of the resignation of theSuperintendent of the Eden HinduHostel following a mass hunger-strikeorganised by the boarders; some ofthe leading members of the Students'Union were reported to have takenan important part in this strike. Iam told that, with the exception ofonly four, the rest of the two hun-dred boarders had signed a letterpressing for the superintendent's re-moval. There were a large numberof grievances and complaints againstthe _ gentleman. Not all of thesegrievances might have been justified,but the fact remains that he was notfrightfully popular among his 'wards,who were more or less unanimousthat he must go.

And he did go. He resigned andmoved out of the hostel. But whatthe agitating students were not awareof is the fact that the wife of theoutgoing superintendent was somesort of a niece to the West BengaltonELess Czar, th~ same Czar who,only three weeks ago, got GulzarilalNanda out of the Union Cabinet andtould force Mrs Indira Gandhi intokeeping Mr Sachin Chaudhuri asFinance Minister. I understand theepisode was duly reported to him,and a retaliatory plan of action wasimmediately drawn up. In thisauthoritarian land of ours, certainthings are not permissible, one ofthem being annoying nieces of poliotical czars and their husbands.

14

The cynicism of the ruling party'sdecision-makers takes one's breathaway. Private and public issues havebeen brought together; the mixingof politics and individual vanity haveproduced the strongest of alchemieswhich now threaten to spoil the en-tire fabric of college and universityeducation in the State. No specificcharge has been levied against thevictimised students, and none of themhas been provided with the oppor-tunity to explain his cond.uct. Itis remarkable that even those hand-ful of students who are opposed tothe picketing and the enforced clo-sure of the college agree that theexpelled students must for the pre-sent be taken back pending a properenquiry into the entire episode. Theatmosphere in the college has beer.made still more murky bi: the report- .~d attempt to use on~ set of teachersagainst another set. Witch huntinghas taken over; accusations are theorder of the day. I was amused noend by the story that a fairly well-known economics professor of thecollege, whose reputation as a politi-cal conservative is built on solidfoundations, has been dubbed a

;

\ Peking-leaning Com.munist merelybecause he had the temerity to pro-test against the expulsion of his best

, stuc1en t.

*It c;ouldn't be othe,rwise. Water

finds its own level, and sex travelswhere it has to. After the prelimi-nary hoo-ha about her determinationto return immediately for comple-tion of studies, and her resolution notto fritter precious foreign exchangeon wasteful luxuries, when thingsare so bad back home, Miss RitaFaria, the "Miss 'Vorld", has retreat-ed to the predictable conventionaltrack. After all she wants to go ona world junket, and by Christmaswill end up in Saigon to entertainG.I.s. She will be our contributionto the great American endeavour tosave civilization from the peril of thepint-sized Asians who want to livetheir own lives on their own hnd,and according to their own code ofethics. They both serve, Miss RitaFaria as much as Mrs Gandhi. Afterthis, it would be crass ingratitude onthe part of Lyndon Johnson to holdback on those three million tons ofwheat.

The Press

Can Beggars BeChoosers?COMMENTATOR

THE friends of America are in aquandary. The planned procras-

tination of President .Johnson in tak-ing a decision on India's request fora new two-million tonne PL 480agreement has shattered the image ofa generous benefactor they have beenbusy puil.ding up since the PrimeMinister's visit to the USA. Thisfresh rebuff has come at a time whenthey were hoping that the U.S. Pre-sident's deliberate insult to the lateMr Lal Bahadur Shastri has been for-gotten and India has got over theshock of devaluation under Ameri-can pressure. With a tepid disap-proval of the U.S. attitude most pa-pers have tried to bring out the goodintentions that may have promptedPresident Jonnson to take to thiscourse. There has been no end ofattempts to superimpose on the imageof benevolence the look of a mentor

. worried at our delinquency on thefood front.

The Times of India readily con-cedes that the studied delay by Pre-sident Johnson in making up hismind is "perhaps well meant", Itmay be his way of bringing home tothis country how near it is to thebrink of a famine and to jolt it outof a comfortable f.eeling that it canalways count on outside aid if thingsget worse. Nor can he be blamed ifhe feels that India is not doing all itcan to ward off the spectre of hunger.But the paper is unable to acceptMr Dean Rusk's explanation that thedelay in taking a decision is due toAmerica's difficulty in mobilising re-sources to meet emergency needs, forthough U.S. stocks may have beendepleted in recent months, the John-son Administration can easily meetIndia's request. Warning that asudden interruption in U.S. suppliesin the difficult months of Februaryand March can make all the differ-ence between safety and disaster, thepaper hopes that President Johnsonwill relent and see to it that there isno such interruption. The long de-lay in negotiating a fresh PL 480

DECEMBER 2, 1966

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agreement is sufficient warning to In-dia not to take continuing food aidfor granted. During this year alonealmost two ships have been deliver-ing U.S. wheat at Indian ports everyday. The U.S. Administration wouldbe perfectly within its rights to con-clude that it cannot give aid on thisscale year after year and to warn thiscountry that if it does not take moreurgent steps to achieve self-sufficiency,a time may soon come when PL 480aid, even on the most generous scale,would not be able to ward off famine.

Mr Dean Rusk's denial that thereare political reasons behind Washing-ton's tardiness has not removed themisgivings of the Hindusthan Stand-ard. When competent observers main-tain that the USA is in a position tomake available to India the two mil-lion tonnes of foodgrains required fortiding over the immediate crisis onthe food front, there can be no otherexplanation for the procrastinationthan its desire to express its displea-sure at some of the things India hasdone at the political level. The paperrecognises America's right to disposeof the foodgrains India wants in themanner it thinks best. India cannotlegitimately complain if its request isturned down. "After all, it is In-dia's failure to recognise the urgencyof farm development that is at theroot of its current troubles stemming(rom food shortage". Yet such a cyni-cal approach would be scarcely ·con-sistent with the liberal professions atthe U.S. statesmen, The paper saysthat if the n.merican aim is to shockIndia into toeing the U.S.' line oncrucial world problems, no worsemeans of realising the objective canbe imagined than a food freeze. Itis a "great blunder" that the U.S. iscommitting in making food the hand-maiden of politics; Washington couldnot have chosen a better way of tar-nishing the image of America in Asiaand Africa than of using food as apolitical lever.

In spite of President Johnson's "re-putation for secretive and unpredic-table" behaviour, The Indian Expressis surprised by his attitude towardsIndia's request. The paper cannotsay 'how much truth there is in thebelief that the U.S. Government istrying to use India's desperate needas a lever for securing policy changesat home or abroad or both. MrJohnson's anger over New Delhi'sstand on American bombing of NorthVietnam may be real enough, and

DECEMBER 2, 1966

there is also evidence to show thatthe U.S. Government would like fur-ther changes in India's fertiliser po-licy and programme. "But it wouldbe premature to qmclude at thisstage that there is ;). direct link be-tween the American desire for policychanges in India and President John-son's tardiness in finalising action onthis country's food request". Thepaper has no doubt, however, thatPresident Johnson's attitude is put-ting an "unnecessary and deplorable"strain on Indo-American relations.In the past, the U.S. Gover~men~ ~asbeen extremely generous 111 glV1l1gfood assistance to this country-in-deed, generous to the point of induc-ing a vast complacency in New Delhion the agricultural problem. By de-laying assistance at a time when In-dia's need is more desperate than at.any time since independence t~e U.S.Government is surely endangenng allthe good will it has built up hereover a period of years.

'Starve Rather Than Beg'The only paper to take a different

line is Patriot which wants the Gov-ernment of India to tell Mr Johnsonthat if necessary Indians will starverather than ask America for any fur-ther supply of foodgrains. It alsoasks the Government to make imme-diate arrangements to supply theminimum needs of the drough t-stricken areas and implement agri-cultural programmes on the basis ofIn<iia's own capacity and "such helpas has been announced by the SovietAmbassador". According to the pa-per, the agricultural reforms Americawants India to introduce are facili-ties for American propaganda to takecontrol of agricultural education andorganisation in the country, encour-agement of Ameri,can private capitalin fertiliser industry, handing over oflarge-scale farming to joint stock com-panies, and a general reorientationof planning so that economic demo-cracy can be short-circuited and In-dian collaborators given the chanceto mortgage large sectors of the eco-nomy to American monopolists.'These objectives, the paper says, arenot new. They began to be statedby the American President and themandarins of the World Bank withincreasing darity as soon as .1awahar-lal Nehru died. The pressure exert-ed on the Government to agree tothem increased each day. Half-heart-

, ed denials by the Prime Minister

and th<K""Humpty-Dumpty twosome,Mr Subramaniam and Mr AsokaMehta", did not remove the impres-sion from the public mind that NewDelhi was being confronted at everypoint of economic contact withWashington with the demand forsurrender. The new threat will not,

, therefore, surprise anyone but Ame-rican stooges in this country. Thepri!,!ciples of "aid diplomacy" demandthat the screw be turned when re-sistance ~ppears the least. Recentevents in India, the awareness of thelarge secret funds that have beenspent on various groups of politicalopportunists by American patrons,and the nearness of the electionsmust have convinced the Ame'ricanPresident and his advisers that nobetter opportunity than the presentwill be available for the successfulapplication of the "Texan technique"in diplomacy.

On Dange's AccusationS.M. used Mr Dange's public accu-

sation against Mr S. K. Patil and MrAtulya Ghosh of a "conspiracy tokill Mr Kamara j" as a peg to hanghis weekly commentary on nationalaffairs in The Hindustan Times lastweek. He leaves to Mr Kamaraj histhoughts at be:ng cast in the role ofpatron saint of the gospel of the re-volution according to Mr Dange.But he is worried about another typeof conspiracy which Mr Dange andhis friends are openly waging. S.M.cannot for a moment believe that MrDange credits the story of a murderplot. "If he does, what he is obvi·ously in need of is not legal restraintbut a mental specialist's certification".Equally certainly, S.M. cannot fora moment believe that Mr Dangedoes not know what he hopes toachieve by his plot story. It is partof a campaign of wide-rangingcalumny to subvert democracy bybringing it into disrepute in theminds of the common people who arepredisposed to believe the worst, inthe present situation of shortages.high prices and the general air oflawlessness, of a Congress regime witha long record of incompetence and adiminishing attachment to the stand-ards of rectitude in public life.Quite a lot of this dirt sticks. MrManubhai Shah will be very muchmistaken if he thinks that he hasemerged in the public eye as a manof unchallengeable integrity as a re-sult of his "able and convincing re-

Ii

DE<:;EMBER2, 1966

quartet is bad; intrinsically bad, hedrinks, he is overwesternized, andoften he does not respect his parentsor religion. .

Style and tonality: it will be anidyll or a melodraIpa, usually oneafter the other, and if the conclusionmingles idyll and melodrama, allwill be for the· best in the best ofworlds, provided that everybody inthe film is happy (the good) or un·happy (the bad ones), or dead (thecareless). There should not be asingle drop of realism, of ambiguityin this cheap cocktail; no problemmust appear; problems are avoided.either by the idyllic or by the melo-dramatic sideway, so that a solutioncan always be found, because there isnever any problem.

Everything happens among privi.leged rich people. If the hero is poor,he was "well born". Marrying outof one's station is out of the question.Only tempers can be incompatible,promising nice rows around the mid-dle of the film.. Some precisions about the class:though nothing is openly stated-herelies the relative cleverness on thispoint-all those boys and girls, theirparents and friends belong to thehighest classes. One helps his fa-ther's business, another is a physicianand, "naturally", the physician's homeis more than comfortable-in fact itlooks like a palace which very few

party the Left Communists have beenthe worst victim of this hostile soli·citousness; they have not only beenheld responsible for the failure of theunity talks but also for trying togobble up the smaller parties. Therehave been reports that the party hasbeen totally isolated, and even amongits leaders there is a sharp differenceof opinion over what should be theright approach to the question of leftalliance. Whether the smaller leftparties will cluster under the jointbanner of the BangIa Congress andthe Right Communists will be knownbefore long. Should that happen fewwill be happier than those news-papers which are now lamenting overthe failure of the unity talk~and theintransigence of the Left Communists.

MelodramaIdyll AndJ. P. ETRANGER

to the Press, especially in Calcutta.The interest is sudden; it dates fromthe time when all hopes of an alliancewere abandoned by the negotiatingparties. Since then every minuteeffort, genuine or spurious, for arapprochement, mainly between thetwo Communist parties, is being re-ported as if the newspapers were asmuch interested in an alliance as theleft parties so that the Congress maybe defeated in the coming election.Such attitudinising cannot be with.out motive. The papers have beencareful enough to report the failureof all so-cal!ed mediation attempts, sothat disappointment and frustrationmay sink deep, and the voter may indisgust turn against all left parties.Naturally, as the principal opposition

A foreigner trying to give someadvice on some aspect of

contemporary Indian culture or civi-lisation is likely to be told, "Butyou don't understand our country 1India is so different, India is such abig country, our way of life, ourphilosophy, the approach is entirelydifferen t. ... " Nevertheless, I shall tryto give my impressions of the Indiancinema or, to be precise, the Hindi-speaking "works" manufactured bythe Bombay film industry.

It is difficult, in these "artistic"matters, to equate quantity withquality but it seems that the Bombaycinema is definitely and exclusivelyon the quantitative side. It is alsoa deliberate enterprise meant toseduce the spectators.

America contributes to this debas-ing enterprise-and business-as itsends the coarsest comedies. Indianspectators, not quite accustomed tosee bare-legged women, except theirwives, see these and express theirscandalized delight before leaving thecinema hall, con~inced that "East isEast and West is, West" ....

Important aspects of the Bombaycinema can be analysed as:.

Themes: compulsory love stories,with plenty of difficulties to keep thefilm going and simulate the develop-ment of a plot. The difficulties aremostly caused by Fate or because oneof the pawns from the basic trio or

Left UnityThe failure of the 13-party negotia-

tions for an overall left alliance inWest Bengal is providing good copy

ply" to the charges levelled againsthim by Mr Madhu Limaye. Mrs Gan-dhi may likewise be gratified thatMr Raj Narain was prevented frompursuing the mink coat affair veryfar at the last session. But it wouldshock her to hear some of the thingsbeing said against her in the whisperg.alleries of this very sick CapitalCity.

S.M. says that Mr Dange's accusa-tion is only the beginning. Hun-dreds of Danges with hundreds of"big lies" will be let loose at electiontime spreading the word in the coun-tryside of Congress chicanery and thefailure of democracy to deliver re-sults .. They will find ready listenersand ready believers. <;;ome answermust, therefore, be found to thequestion how far Indian democracycan allow its freedoms to be abusedfor the clear and declared purposeof its ultimate subversion. The sub-verters of democracy are being greatlyassisted by the obsolete libel law.So S.M.'s first suggestion is the pre-sent libel law, adopted from the Bri-tish anachronism of the early nine-teenth century, should be changedurgently. Anoher defence that canbe erected against subversion withoutdoing offence to the ideals of a freeand open society is a law making itcompulsory for every political partyto render an account of its financialposition and resources. Apart fromchecking the injection of foreignfunds and resultant influence in ourinternal policies, this may have thesalutary effect of keeping electoralexpenses by parties and individualswithin legal bounds, thus making itpossible for the honest man of smallmeans to enter the contest and helpin cleansing public life of the dirtand dross that has accumulated inthe last fifteen years and now domi-nates it. But the final test for thesurvival of democracy will always bewhether the Congress party will nowrecognise the nature of the threatwhich is being posed and how inade-quate its response in meeting it.Mr Patil, Mr Ghosh and companyhave undoubtedly not murdered MrKamaraj. But unless they wake up,theirs may be the responsibility forabetting in the murder of the Indiandemocracy.

NOW

-

R. P. G.

Antony Kavial

17J C

Wouldn't these ~olden streams endin the same muddy pond?

Naturally, there are other consi-derations. For example, the cinematradi tion in Europe and America isninety per cent grounded upon thestyle of the novel and this in hun-dred per cent literate countries,whereas there is no strong novel-tra-dition in India and readers still area minority, so that song and danceare still inore meaningful than writ-ten stories and chronicles. Thiswould account for the ballet-style.Anyway, it would be an explanationbut no excuse. If a bullock-cart isleft. stuck in the mud, isn't there any-thing else. to do to help it out thanspilI one rupee-a-litre perfume onthe mud?

BENVENUTO Cellini has saidthat no one should undertake

so fnne an enterprise as describinghis life with his own hand unless hehas done something of excellence.And James Thurber has added therider that one must attain the age offorty before one makes the attempt.Following these wise but unheededdictums, we offer another: no oneshould attempt to describe the life aman who had lived a hundred ormore years ago unless he has the re-quisite historical imagination. Noteven if he lives up to be ninety-five.

Antony Kavial, a play written byBidhayak Bhattacharya and now run-ning at Sree Kashi Viswanath Man-cha, shows what unfortunate conse-quences can result from a disregardof this. caution. The consequences

of dim remembrances of Americanmusical comedies. The result isrhythmed syrup, as stylish as Coca-cola: julep taste plus bubbles. Tobe fair, everything should be sungfrom beginning to end, thus m~kingit acceptable.

Servants are facetious and devotedlike they used to be in the seven-teenth or eighteenth century co-medies (before Beaumarchais' Figaro,of course), without the slightest ideaof any social contest. Their exist-ence justifies the masters who in theirturn justify them I The circle isclosed, and vicious. Rich peoplenurse their melancholy, the poor onesare gay and careless. Their sorrow,if any, is funny, they won't forget tosquinC if they weep.

So these films pretend to be anentity, a total show: tragedy, drama,comedy, song and dance. This tota-lising ambition is a basic one: specta-tors are invited to dig their indivi-dual holes in this big tasteless cheese-bowl. Who wants cheap dreams?Who wants an easy and sanctimoni-ous digestion? America has got LSD,India has got her Bombay cinema.

All these points should prove thatIndian society is aristocratic in itsrealities as well as in its ideal pro-jections. More precisely, it is a pre-revolutionary bourgeois society, anunhealthy mixture of "liberalism"resting on strong remnants of a feu-dal aristocratic mentality: classes canfight each other, meet and maybemix, orders cannot.

Now is not there a Government-somewhere in Southern Asia,' for .example-which never solves any pro-blem but falls from idyll to melo-drama (I: our crop will be quite suf-ficient, we shall stand on our feet ....2: HeIp, we are starving I)? Is therenot a ruling political party pretend-

. ing to embody the ideals of themasses though it is in fact a huge teamof privileged bourgeois standing overthe country like vultures on a dyinganimal?

Wouldn't this Government, thISparty, encourage by all means suchfilms? Why, as long as people goto these films, they won't think ofpolitics, and when they come back

.;home, the soothing influence of theshow will help them to mind theirbusiness till next week's programme.Wouldn't big trusts share their goodmoney with these film producers andthe s e political-show producers?

Indian physicians, except specialistsfrom Bombay, can afford. Thesepalace homes are seldom shown fromoutside: without any transition, weare shifted from idyllic hills to equal-ly paradisiacal rooms. A real streetmust not be shown, because it wouldinvolve the spectator for a few secondsin reality, in prosaism (not to men-tion poverty).

The actors: they must be very fair-skinned and fat. Women are strongor frankly heavy (though thinnerthan in the Tamil films), big bodieswith a small head and long hair.Obviously, they do not do anythingexcept wait for the male with a nicewell-to-do outlook; sometimes theywould be students at the university,but we too in Europe know what itmeans for that sort of girl: just awaiting post before marriage. The"jeune premier" must equally be fatin the body and fleshy in the face,symbolising a self-satisfied and un-occupied virility.

Idylls should-and will-preferab.Iy begin in the hills, in a cool para-dise hanging over the Gangetic fur-nace, the Simla region or Kashmir,in the green, among lakes, flowers, akind of virginal and altogether pro·mising Nature. These stations, aseverybody knows, are visited by ahandful of rich Indians and foreign-ers, in summer or for winter sports.By the way, without introducing intopolitical quarrels, isn't it rather ob-vious that Indian opinion, clingingto Kashmir, mainly clings to itsdreams?

LoveLove should be fatal and devas-

tating, meaning only feeIlngs: noth-ing but patting an~ necking musthappen before marnage, the rest canbe promised with the eyes and by thedance. So girl appeals with herbosom, her belly and her buttocks (allof them far from under-developed .. )provided daddy agrees. Naturally,kisses are forbidden, probably as"obscene" (not that I support theAmerican obsession and regret theone minute-fifteen kisses of the fa-mous so and so, but this ban in theIndian cinema is just another con-vention and just as dishonest).

The ballets and songs strengthenthe unrealistic effect and, paradoxi-cally, they often look more effectivethan the dialogues; music and choreo-graphy are a curious mixture of cheapThousand and One Nights style and

l)ECEMBER 2, 1966

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A Digest of interesting, stimulating andselected articles published in t~ Soviet presscontributed by 45 thousand Soviet journalistsworking for 11,000 newspapers and magazines.

You will feel the tempo of life in the USSR, learnabout vital subjects being discussed, get acquainted withthe scientific achievements, meet screen and stage per-sonalities, keep track of sports records and get recipes ofnational cuisine.

20

the cheek to deny thi~ stuff to theAmerican burlap bag manufacturen.Naturally, they lost thelr ihirti andgot theu lobby working on the Con-gressmen" to restrict aid to India.lndla's refusal to export monazite,essential to U.S. atomlC build-up, wasanother sin. India's recognition ofthe People's Republic of China andher reluctance to send troops toKorea to fight under the U.N. flagconstituted high treason as far asCapitol Hill was concerned. EmanuelCe11er, "a great friend of India"(never heard of him), to whom DrVyas has dedicated his little labourof love, spent much time trying topersuade Mrs Pandit that her bro-ther's Government ought to recog-nise Israel.. A study of Indo-American relations,whatever it is worth, would con-ceivably involve an appreciation ofthe major social forces operating onthe international scene since the Se-cond World War. Dr Vyas is aware ofthis. He is evidently anxious toheighten the validity of his thesis bydovetailing some curious generalisa·tions on recent history. He beginsplausibly enough. But in his hurryto establish the massive Americanpresence in Asia as an inevitable re-sult of the collapse of Europe afterthe war, he overlooks a number ofsignificant movements nearer home.He refers to the "Communist take-over in China" and the rise of theCPI. These two factors, it appears,made American presence a strategicnecessity in Asia, particularly India.And because of the undisputed emin-ence of India in international affairs,India alone could be an effectivedeterrent to Chinese expansionism.Dr Vyas has not a word of praise {orthe Indian national bourgeoisie whohave done so much to bring the Ame-ricans on these shores in order togive a black eye to British capitalism.He ignores the quiet, valuable workdone by the rightist elements whichis now paying off as far as Indo-American relations are concerned.The author overlooks the fact thatthe relative neutrality of the SovietUnion in Asia has contributed in nosmall measure to American success inthis part of the world.

Dr Vyas is anxious to imply thatthe U.S. will give us wheat only tobuy our conformity to the Americanway of life. I coulon't agree more.But God in heaven knows that Indiacould not possibly be more loyal to

NOW

the Capitol than she has been for all.these months. Even a lowly reporte!in Washington knows that India hasnowhere else to go to beg for wheatand milo. And yet the stuff is with·held-and a lot more of other things.Haven't we made the World Bankour guiding star? Haven't we sur-rendered the rupee? Haven't westopped nursing such nonsense asState Planning? We have doneeverything that the crowd on CapitolHill wish us to do in order to prosperby scrounging. We are all good ladsnow, hoping and praying. The Capi-tol has redeemed its pledge-in away. Only Dr Vyas is sadly outdat-ed. He could have trained his sear-ching mind on a more absorbingsubject, i.e., Dawning on Delhi.

NIRMAL GOSWAMI

Letters

Economic Nationalism

The title of a review published inNow, November 18, 1966, reads:"The Rise and Growth of National-ism in India rEconomic Policies ofIndian Leadership, 1880-1905]". DrBipan Chandra's book is actuallycalled "The Rise and Growth ofEconomic Nationalism in India.Economic Policies of Indian NationalLeadership, 1880-1901". This is nota minor error. It is gross inaccuracyon the part of a reviewer who hasmade a series of fanciful reflectionson what he considers to be economictheory, all of which adds up to themaligning of the early Indian na-tionalists; it also shows irresponsibi-lity on the part of your editorial staff.We take notice of the review whichfollows, only because it has receivedthe imprimatur of Now.

On page 165 Dr Chandra refers tothe well-known fact that in the 19thcentury excessive land tax, demandedin cash, forced the peasantry to selltheir grain cheap and that the combi·nation of the lack of profitable indi-genous markets with India's role inthe British metropolitan trade sys-tem, canalised Indian grain sales intomarkets outside India.

A.G. comments: "the confusionbetween micro-economic and macro-economic aspects is glaring". [Aspeople unaccustomed to the reviewer'slevel of sophistication, we are more

DECEMBER 2, 1966

convinced by Bipan Chandra's evi-dence than by the reviewer's sneer]."The point is that Indian merchantscontrolled the grain trade and theyfound it profitable to export foodgrains". [The point that merchantstrade for profit is a truism andmany Indian merchants in the grainsurplus provinces did not control thegrain trade which was in the handsof British agencies]. "There may beconHict between individual interestand national interest". [Surely thisis self-evident even to the mostobtuse]. "The conflict need not neces-sarily be between the nationalistapproach and the imperialistic ap-proach". [This is where we get atA.G.'s own bias; he prescribes a ton-ing down of the picture of imperialistexploitation and shies away from thegenuine confrontation of nationalism,even of the self-interested, againstimperialism]. "This inability to di-sentangle the two aspects very oftenmars whatever little analysis thebook contains". [If this is all thathe sees in Naoroji, or Ranade, orGokhale, then it is clear that heshares the new ideological bias againstnationalism, a sort of neo-colonialism,which is being sedulously propagatedin some universities abroad: and asfor analysis. Dr Chandra is ~tating hi~-torical facts, and does not purportto be an economist analyst]. 0

To the extent that A.G. is tellingthe truth, he reveals what the lastgeneration used to call "a slave men-tality". He is upset by Bipan Chan-dra pointing out a popular news-paper's evaluation of British rule inIndia as an unsuccessful attempt to .combine the role of herrenvolk andbenefactor. Even the standard Bri-tish textbooks nowadays make thesame point that Bipan Chandra hasmade. A.G. repeats the reactIOnaryproposition that "economists" wonderwhether 'poverty' is an economicproblem. It is indeed true that anyfactors of traditional habits and so-cial environment inhibit economicdevelopment. However, poverty, inthe context in which Dr Chandra-or for that matter, the early national-ists-uses the term is after all thecondition of a low level of nationalincome, and a slow rate of growthand we see nothing wrong with hisstatement that it was "a problem thatem braced the in terests of all sectionsof Indian society". Why does A.G.

o mask his lack of information by mak-ing "no comments" on the proposi-

tion that poverty, of varying scales,was a national problem in 19th cen-tury India?

It may be that he is ashamed to beclear about his own premises, thatsubjection to foreign capital was themain way to improve the Indian eco-nomy; that 19th cen tury railwaybuilding meant economic develop-ment and not merely that improve-ment of conditions for enhancingmetropolitan imperial control overthe import of finished goods and theexport of raw materials; and thateven if such a situation did come intobeing, "much fuss should not bemade over it" since it was profitablefor individual merchants to exportfoodgrains. Anyway, our economicalreviewer refers here to a phenomenonunknown to history or economic"analysis": "Nor can much fuss bemade over the export of foodgraimor agricultural produce, these beingthe only importable surPlus (Weshall say, No comments) that an agri-cultural country could guarantee".

A.G.'s premises read like a laissez-taire, private-enterprise, politicalparty's election mamfesto as draftedby an Indian Public Relations Officeror retained ghost writer of some com-pany, financed and incorporated in aforeign country, trying to retain astranglehold over the key industries inIndia. Of course, we do not ask yourreviewers to read the books that theyreview, or even the relevant litera-ture on the subject. R. C. Dutt orL. H. Jenks or Richard Pares or Da-niel Thorner have all written on thissubject with factual authority, andnot with the flippant and one-uppishtone of your reviewer. We wouldonly like your re.aders to know thatBipan Chandra's book is valuable be-cause it documents the theories thatthese writers put forward; and thatyour reviewer's theoretical sophistryis not matched by the facts that areavailable in historical writing.

Finally, we would point out thatthe fiTst principle of a review is totell readers what a book is about andonly then to take issue with its factsor interpretations. There is nothingin this review which shows that thereviewer is qualified to tell readersabout the origins of economic na-tionalism in India.

SABYASACHI BHATTACHARYABARUN DE

Calcutta

21

Steel AgitationWhat has been the attitude of the

centre towards our State since itsformation 13 years ago? It talks ofdoing away with the disparity b:-tween States in development, but Itnever cared to help Andhra. It hasnot one big industry worth its name.Even the giant Nagarjuna Sagar pro-ject is not ~etting suffici~nt. funds forits completIOn, though It IS one ofnational importance-if and when itis completed, nearly 20 lakh acres ofland will come under irrigation, re-ducing our dependence on importedfoodgrains. The per capita incom.ein our State is very low. Andhra ISpraised as the "grain ?epot" o~ India,yet it has many regIOns which a~ehard hit by drought and many dIefrom starvation. Electrification ofall villages, and free education up tohigh school level are still distantgoals, goals reached by several ofour neighbouring States. In all?ca-tion of big posts, Andhras ar~ gIVenthe least priority even in their own

tegion. In the newly formed SouthCentral Railway Zone, out of 125officers, there are only 2 Andhras.

The Anglo-American consortium's(eport favour~ng Visakhapatnam asthe place for the setting up of thefifth public sector steel plant came asa pleasant surprise. Our anger anddisappointment were all the greaterwhen the hopes were belied. Thoughthe recent agitation, suppressed ruth-lessly, looked strange at first sil?htto an outsider, any sane man canngto acquaint himself with the prob-lems of our backward State will agreethat it had justice behind it.

KANTH

Visakhapatnam

Student UnrestIn all the fuss about student indis-

cipline it is forgotten that studentsare the most sentimental members ofsociety, next perhaps to women.Moreover, as products of their socio-economic set-up it is quite natural

for them to act and react acconllnto the compulsions of it. It is sheernonsense to expect them to be J.Ileacademics. Gandhiji" himseH urgedthe students to give up their studiesand join the struggle for freedom.But now, it is said, we have ana·tlonal government, and the students,perhaps, should debate whether theywill read Hindi or Sanskrit, thoughthey may have to stand in queue theentire morning for rations, or lookfor a litre of kerosene so that theycan read at night.

It is a vain hope. No one has theright to stop a student from joiningpolitics if that student feels that the'national' Government has becomeforeign, in the sense that it attachesno importance at all to things thatmatter. Politics is not an evil ghost.That it is made so is the fault of all.It is wrong to condeml~ student u~.rest, because it is the unrest of dlf·ferent forces that make up society.

CHANDAN CHAKRABARTY

Berhamporc

DECEMBER 2, 1966

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