I n d ia

Mrs Gandhi keeps them waiting

Amit Roy

°nee Mrs Gandhi had decided not to lift the sixmonth-old state of emergency. she really had no alternative but to postpone the general election which was due in March. The appropriate resolution was duly adopted last week at the annual conference of the Congress

Party near Chandigarh, where Mrs Gandhi stressed that the emergency would continue so long as she felt that the unity and stability of the country were at risk. In fact, there has been nO visible challenge to her in the last six months. With the exception of Jayaprakash Narayan (known commonly as JP), released Presumably because the Government did not

Want him to die in detention, the opposition leaders have stayed in prison.

Technically, an election could still have been held under the emergency, but with the current restrictions such a poll' would not have been either free or fair. Even if the emergency had b, een lifted, the opposition parties would not have regarded three months as adequate Preparation for an election, and the hot Weather rendered a later poll impracticable. ,.,Last month's local elections in Gujarat, where 'engress did badly at the municipal level but ereditably in the village panchayats, confirmed that the party's rural appeal had been unaffected by the emergency, Considering that 80 Per cent of India consists of villages, there is little reason to doubt that Congress would win a general election. But a victory in such circumstances would leave Mrs Gandhi vulnerable to the charge that the election was

unfair, and do nothing to pacify her international critics.

She had the Americans in mind when she claimed last week that "there is one country Which specialises in sending intelligence men out as journalists." She also hinted that JP's anti-Congress movement had received "exter

nal assistance" from the CIA. But it is British criticism that has stung her most, especially

the exhortations to emulate Mahatma Gandhi 4.nd Nehru, who were frequently locked up cawing the independence struggle. One explanation for the behaviour of the uritish could be that they have taken the attacks on the legal and parliamentary systems as an affront to what were regarded as hallowed legacies of the Raj. That Mrs Gandhi Should now want to amend the constitution and even move towards a presidential system — a French one at that — must seem like treachery, There is a widespread feeling in India now that the gains from the emergency should not be lost, and that 1976 should be a year for enensolidation. There has been a steady drift of torrner jp "supporters" to the Congress ranks. _ Even the pro-Moscow Communist Party of idia (CPI), which backs Mrs Gandhi's policies, has discovered that its membership nearly doubled last year from 355,000 to 600,000. This caused largely by defections from the r"keCommunist Party of India (Marxist), which away from the CPI in 1964 because of id eological differences and which remains uPPosed to Congress.

To clinch matters, Vinoba Bhave, the 81-year-old disciple of Mahatma Gandhi and revered leader of the Bhoodan movement to obtain more land for the poor, broke a year's silence on December 26 to urge Indians not to

oppose the Government. Only once did he speak last year when he tried unsuccessfully to persuade Jayaprakash Narayan, one of his closest followers, to renounce his anti-Congress campaign. Despite Mr Narayan's, towering stature, he would not have been able to weld parties with

such differing philosophies as the Marxist, Jan Sangh, Bharatiya Lok Dal and the Swatantra Party into a "people's movement" had it not been for India's chronic economic difficulties.

Few outsiders realise that the oil crisis hit India harder than almost any other country. The

"green revolution", heavily dependent on oil-based fertilisers, 40 per cent of them imported, received a major setback. Tractor

fuel became prohibitively expensive. Lack of

investment led to under-utilisation of industry and rising unemployment. A series of bad

harvests pushed up inflation to more than 30

per cent in a country where people spend most of their money on food. Smugglers and hoarders, the vultures of Indian society,

maintained a parallel economy in "black" money. It is against this background that the JP movement sought to eradicate Congress corruption, of which there was plenty, and topple Mrs Gandhi. The campaign had "peaked" by June last year, when it was suddenly brought back to life by Mrs Gandhi's conviction in the Allahabad High Court.

The post-emergency economic situation is distinctly healthier, with a Reserve Bank of India forecast of six per cent growth this year.

The harvest has been so heavy that the Food Corporation of India is having storage prob lems. In Haryana, for example, 550,000 tonnes

of rice hayebeen produced, compared with 343,000 last year, and in Tamil Nadu 240,000

tonnes, against 147,000 in 1974. On the industrial front, the number of days lost through strikes has been slashed by at least 75 per cent. Prodtktion of a wide range of goods — vegetable oil, nitrogenous fertiliser, aluminium, copper, lead, scooters, diesel engines, coal,

cement and petroleum products — increased by 10-20 per cent between July and September, 1975. Exports are up 14.3 per cent. Foreign exchange earnings have risen sharply; remittances from Indians abroad now travel through legal channels and account for the 62 per cent increase from £21m to £34 million a month.

The claim by Mr Subramanium, Finance Minister, that inflation has been cut from 32 per cent to 5 per cent suggests he has got his sums wrong, but anyway the trend is clear and explains his optimism that India "is poised for a great leap forward". Mrs Gandhi meanwhile thinks that progress should not be held up in the name of the constitution. There are consequently proposals to speed up the functioning of parliament, for example by holding two instead of three sessions, getting the bulk of legislative work

cleared by committees, and restricting the speeches of opposition members. The Prime Minister maintains that fundamental changes will not be made to the constitution without a comprehensive national debate, although the promise has a holl?w ring in view of the draconian measures that she has inflicted on the press.

By presidential ordinance, she has abolished the press council, repealed the law protecting coverage of parliamentary proceedings (ironically, this law was passed on the initiative of her late journalist-husband, Feroze Gandhi), and assumed powers to deal with "objectionable" writings in the press. Anything defamatory of the President, Vice-President, Prime Minister, the Speaker of the Lok Sabha, State Governors and indeed any member of the council of Ministers, is prohibited. Newspapers can be fined or closed down, and journalists imprisoned for publishing anything "likely to excite disaffection against the established Government." They can also be prosecuted for any activity prejudicial to "friendly relations with a foreign country". (Could a newspaper be closed down then for reporting, say, the shooting of the Indian High Commissioner in Bangladesh? And, if the shooting had been followed by anti-Bangladesh marches in India, could the report then be construed as incitement to cause public disorder?) Appeals against the Government or its agents are to be directed in the first instance to (as you might guess) the Central Government, and thereafter to a special bench of the High Court.

There is also a planned merger of the nation's two news agencies, the Press Trust of India and United News of India, which should make government control easier and render their service at least as dull as that of All India Radio. Newspapers will in future be supervised by a council of editors, but editorial policy will be laid down by a board of directors whose members will probably be nominated by the Government.

In short, she could not have gone about castrating the press more effectively.

The present crisis was many years in the making, and for that the Indian people, and not Mrs Gandhi or the opposition parties, are to blame. She has administered the rude shock that the country so badly needed, and the result has been a discipline of sorts, barn out of fear. The Government has. argued that there can be no economic growth without political stability, and for that a certain price will have to be paid in individual liberty. But equally, it is economic growth that leads to political stability. A nation Which is built on coercion and a Government Which rules by presidential ordinance and feeds on a system of informers has no future. Fortunately, the centre of gravity of Indian politics is lower than people think. The middle class intelligentsia, who have the most reason to be unhappy with the emergency, are not devoid of common sense. They have not risen up in revolt because they dare not contemplate the alternative to Mrs Gandhi. The murder of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman in neighbouring Bangladesh no doubt woke her to the inherent dangers of authoritarian rule, but also gave the country a vision of what could happen if she were toppled.

Nevertheless, India would be building its future on a weak foundation if the long-term strategy depended solelron the survival of Mrs Gandhi. Only time will tell whether Jayaprakash Narayan's movement was the catalyst that touched off a chain reaction that in turn —Teda seventh of the human race to disaster or salvation.