INDIA
Balancing act
Kuldip Nayar New Delki Outside Mrs Indira Gandhi's residence, a traffic island has been barricaded to make room for the people's rallies. These rallies have sustained her determination, and she also has used them to implement her resolutions. Through these rallies, she established her supremacy in the Congress party, which has ruled India since the British left in August 1947: the party bosses who challenged her two years ago and 'turned her out' of the organisation are now only a rump. And again in March 1971 she relied on the rallies here and all over the country to sweep the polls in the mid-term election to the Lok Sabha, the Lower House of the Indian Parliament.
" My position among the people is 1.00. contested," the fifty-four-year-old Mrs Gandhi told me once. This is true in everY sense of the word, not because she is the daughter of Jawaharlal Nehru, but because she has her fingers on the pulse of the nation. A country with a per capita income of less than a shilling per day has a natural leaning towards a leftist Pr°gramme, and she knows it. When she nationalised banks on July 21, 1969, the People danced in the streets to welcome the step, and ordinary farmers and small businessmen, who were out in the cold, saw in it their chance to improve their lot. And when early this year she raised the slogan of Garibi Hatao (Banish Poverty) at the hustings the people backed her up because they believed she would cast off their centuries-old miseries.
Her populistic style of politics has frightened some people, and they see in her actions a persistent encroachment on democratic practices. They suspect that the series of amendments to the Indian Constitution which she has introduced recently will extinguish such fundamental rights as private property and freedom of expression. But Mrs Gandhi's argument is that the proposed amendments will make the Constitution 'more responsive' to the people's long-felt needs and lessen the chances of India going extreme left.
She is a pragmatist, and what ultimately Sways her is not a particular dogma but the national good. That explains why a few Months ago she allowed the installation Ill the private sector of six mini steel Plants even though the field had been reserved exclusively for the public sector. In the same way, she has overlooked the tardy pace of land reforms in an effort to garner more produce. and the result is that India has this year grown 108 million tons Of food grains, 22 million more than three Years ago.
Similarly, national interest, not ideology, has led her to seek friends abroad. Within SIX months of her becoming Prime Minister, she devalued the rupee (June 6, 106b) to placate Washington which had Promised a big helping of aid as a reward -she needed funds to build up the country. When America did not honour its Side of the bargain Mrs Gandhi went to Moscow and signed with it a twenty-year security pact on August 9, 1971.
It is not that she has renounced her faith in non-alignment, rather that she has given a new orientation to the foreign Policy, keeping the national interest uppermost. It is to explain that India is still non-aligned that Mrs Gandhi has been taking a three-week tour of the western countries, including Britain and America.
What the West should appreciate more in Mrs Gandhi is her courage. Despite the Pressure to go to war against Pakistan Which has pushed out from its eastern Wing nine million of the autonomy-seeking Bengalis to the Indian side, Mrs Gandhi has remained calm and has fought stoically the ensuing problems. economic, social and Political.
The magnitude of the events which Mrs Gandhi has directed is beyond compare. She is determined to improve the lot of the 550 million people and might have done so if the burden of the refugees from East Pakistan had not brought her economic Programme to a standstill. Her way does PUt more burdens on the nation; develnPment with defence demands more and More sacrifices from the people. But since her rapport with them is intimate and since they have implicit faith in her, they are willing to undergo more and more hardships to carry out her wishes. In her they see their saviour.
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