India

on the World Today

INDEPENDENCE from British rule has given India an exhilarating freedom of the spirit. I here are men who delight in such tokens as national flags, new postage stamps, and a national anthem in place of “God Save the King.”But pleasure in the superficial marks of independence does not blind Indians to their serious problems. Here are the plain facts: in 1941 India had a birth rate of 35 and a death rate of 22 per thousand, and an expectation of life of 27 years as against 65 in the United States. There are only 47,400 doctors and 7000 nurses for 337 million people.

In a country of unreliable rainfall, only 25 per cent of the cultivated land is protected by irrigation. So backward is agriculture that acre yields are miserable. Reports of flood or drought make newspaper headlines, and harrowing details of famine follow. The food situation is so grim that Government rations in the towns can guarantee only 8 ounces of cereal per adult per day — half the minimum required for efficiency.

The people of India are poor, but the country is rich in natural resources. Two thirds of her wealth is estimated to be still untapped. She has heavydeposits of iron, coal, manganese, bauxite, mica, and numerous other minerals — even a fissionable substance, thorium. Her farms, though starved of fertilizers and in cultivation for centuries, are still able to give not one but two, and sometimes three, crops a year.

In the Himalayan snow and the water of her rivers she possesses hydroelectric power of several million kilowatts and irrigation for millions of acres. And she has an industrious population, unskilled in modern industry but capable of being swiftly trained in highly complicated operations. This was shown during the war when India became the arsenal of democracy in the East.

India expands her industry

Such resources are being put to work since independence. The Geological Survey of India has located new coal fields and deposits of iron, bauxite, and other ores. The Government has built a fertilizer factory for 300,000 tons of ammonium sulphate and has signed agreements for a telephone factory, a factory for the manufacture of radio and radar apparatus, two million-ton steel mills to treble the million-ton output of the Tata Steel Works, one of the biggest of its kind in the world, and blueprints for the production of oil from coal.

Two shipbuilding yards have been at work since the war, turning out 10,000-ton ships. Indian airlines carry mail and passengers on 22 routes, flying 25,000 miles daily, and even operate a weekly service to London. A newsprint mill is being laid down for a 30,000-ton output. Assembly of radios, bicycles, automobiles, and aeroplanes is alreadyestablished and part manufacture has started. There are of course older industries like cotton textiles, aluminum, sugar, cement, paper, and jute which are expanding to meet India’s needs as well as the needs of her neighbors.

The biggest step towards industrialization is the Government’s plan for hydroelectric development. Some fourteen projects, on the model of the TVA, are in hand. They will raise 9 million kilowatts of electricity and irrigate 27 million acres of land. A number of United States firms, such as Westinghouse, General Electric, and Koppers, are collaborating with the Government of India on the construction of hydroelectric projects, iron and steel mills, fertilizer factories, and with Indian firms on the assembly and manufacture of radios, refrigerators, automobiles, and aeroplanes.

There are nearly 2000 Indian students undergoing advanced training in technology in the United States to lead the coming industrial revolution. Its object is to double the purchasing power of India’s 337 million citizens in fifteen years or less. It is a modest ambition, for the present purchasing power is only $50 per head.

India’s food deficit, partly as the result of partition, is estimated to be 5.3 million tons of cereals. The most fertile areas in the Punjab and Bengal virtually her breadbasket —went to Pakistan. While India has 78 per cent of the population, she has only 71 per cent of the wheat and 72 per cent of the rice area.

Part of the deficit is met by importing wheat from the United States, Canada, and Australia, and rice from Siam and Burma. India’s bill for food imports was 390 million dollars for 2.8 million tons in 1948. The need to pay hard dollars for food hinders her economic program.

While waiting for the hydroelectric projects to fructify in ten or fifteen years, India hastens to bring waste land under the plow. Out of 6 million acres of such land with food possibilities, 23,000 acres have been brought into cultivation with tractors, 418 of which were imported in 1948. In the United Provinces, a portion oi 200,000 acres of land formerly set aside for an annual pigsticking tournament for Indian maharajas and British Army officers has been sown with crops.

For irrigation, tube wells discharging 33,000 gallons per hour are being dug at the rate of 3000 per year. To supplement India’s present output of farmyard manure and of 10,000 tons of fertilizers, the manufact the of compost from town waste was organized to yield about 1.75 million tons in 1948. These steps will shorten the gap between the production and consumption of food.

THE “super-colossal” in India

India makes about 200 feature films a year, mostly in Hindustani, the language spoken or understood by the majority. There are 50 motion picture studios — located chiefly in Bombay, but Madras and Calcutta have a few too. The capital invested in production is 33 million dollars. There are 1700 theaters, a small number because of lack of electricity. The first movie was made in 1913, the first talkie in 1930, the first technicolor in 1948. The first “super-colossal” film, Chandralekh a, involving 2500 artists, 1000 extras, hundreds of elaborate sets, 2000 lavish costumes, and 725 twelve-hour shooting days at a cost of $1,050,000, was recently released by Gemini Studios at Madras,

Indians like song and spectacle, pretty girls, moving drama, ballet, thrilling mystery, some “stunts,”a lot of comedy. Mythological and historical pictures become favorites, with year-long runs.

The wage bill is not high, as competition for the stars is not excessive. A popular star attracts fans not once or twice but six, eight, ten. a dozen times, for familiarity in India breeds affection. Stars do not need to draw attention to their private lives, and often live modestly without lavish display of their wealth or charms. Their mail is heavy with admiration, often spiced with criticism.

Indian movies have done one signal service: they have helped the spread of Hindustani, the national language, to Bengal and Madras, where it is not the mother tongue.

Equal rights for women

Hindu law regarded woman as property and denied her equality with men. The lack of a national government and the reluctance of the British to interfere with Indian custom blocked legal reform. Independent India has produced a Draft Hindu Code which abolishes polygamy, introduces divorce, and gives equal shares to girls and boys in the family inheritance. Hitherto polygamy has been legal, though economic factors have greatly restricted it. The Code will become law after full discussion in and outside Parliament.

In society the Indian woman takes her position according to her own inclinations and ability, the views of her family, and the enlightenment of her group. India’s Mrs. Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, former Ambassador to Russia, is now Ambassador to the United States. Mrs, Sarojini Naidu, poet and politician, was once President of the Indian National Congress, and died in March as Governor of the 1 nited Provinces. Rajkumari Amrit Kaur is Minister of Health at New Delhi.

There are 53 elected women in India’s legislatures, the youngest one being only twenty-five years old. Women are serving as magistrates and members of municipalities and district and village councils; they have entered practically all the professions. Under the Draft Constitution, women are not barred from public office, even in the highest grades of the administrative service.

Thirty million school children

Educution is administered by the provinces and states, and except in progressive cities like Bombay has never been compulsory. In March, 1949, however, compulsory education in the mother tongue was established by law throughout India. The provincia1 governments have made great sacrifices to provide money for the tremendous expansion of the rudimentary educational system which maintained literacy at about 15 per cent. Today thousands of primary schools are being put up in the rural areas. There is a proposal before several legislatures for the conscription of high school boys and girls, before they go to the university or take up jobs, for a year’s service as teachers of India’s 30 million school children.

India has twenty-four universities teaching the arts and sciences, and a dozen institutions for advanced research, including atomic research. Adult education is making rapid progress. In the Central Provinces about 400,000 adults, including 100,000 women, learned to read and write in 1948. Movies and the radio are regularly used to spread information about progress in all lands.

The untouchabies

After centuries of social discrimination, the untouchables are now coming into their own, mainly because of Mahatma Gandhi’s struggle for their rights. These pitiable people, the original inhabitants of India, became victims of the prejudice of the Aryan folk who migrated into the country four thousand years ago through the northwestern passes in the Himalayas. While the Aryans settled down as conquerors, priests, soldiers, merchants, and manual workers, they kept the conquered outside the pale as untouchables.

To the ranks of these unfortunates were consigned from time to time people of Aryan stock who had offended against the social code. All these untouchables were supposed to undergo punishment in this life for sins committed in a previous birth. The period of expiation was spent in hard and lowly occupations, in the direst poverty, and under permanent deprivation of the means of social advance such as education.

Independent India has struck a blow at this ancient fabric of prejudice and superstition by making the practice of untouchabilily a punishable offense. The public schools are open to untouchables, and if a private school refuses one of them, it loses its subsidy from the Government. Scholarships are given to untouchables, as well as positions in the public service. Two ministers of the Government of India, Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, Minister for Law, and Mr. Jagjivan Ram, Minister for Labor, are untouchables. The enforcement of the law — for instance, against hotels and barber shops — is already having salutary effect.

Mahatma Gandhi sowed the seed of social equality on the ground prepared by hard economic necessity. The 44 million untouchables of India are part of the labor force employed in industry. Refusal of caste Hindus to work or travel with untouchables in public conveyances would mean loss of their own opportunities to earn a living.

In the countryside, however, prejudice is deeply rooted, but there are already signs of a change. In the United Provinces, where for the first time elections were held during March in all villages, to choose Milage executive councils and courts, 27 million adult voters in 7000 villages elected, among others, 95,000 untouchables to village councils and over 2000 to village courts. Of these, 155 became presidents and 455 vicepresidents. The setting up of village courts and councils is, incidentally, a return to the democracy practiced in ancient India. The result of the first election fully justifies faith in the unlettered Indian villagers’ sound common sense.

The princes retire

When the British withdrew, they renounced their “paramountry” over the princes of India and advised them to “accede” either to India or to Pakistan according to their geographical location or the wishes of their subjects. A dozen princes within Pakistan’s orbit acceded to that Dominion; the rest acceded to India, with the exception of the Nizam of Hyderabad, the world’s wealthiest man.

Nearly 500 princes, big and small, have abdicated. Their slates, formerly a romantic patchwork on the map of India, have been “inlegrated ” with the provinces or with one another to make a united, democratic India under the one central authority at New Delhi.

There are six unions of states, like Rajasthan in the north, and there are five states, like Mysore in the south, enjoying internal autonomy under their own maharajas. In the unions the Rajpramukh or president is a maharaja elected by a college of maharajas whose territories form the union. His authority is subject to the advice of a cabinet of ministers responsible to the union legislature. But both the Rajpramukhs of the six unions and the five autonomous maharajas, who practice a kind of limited monarchy, are under the direction of the Government of India.

Incomes of princes having been fixed at reasonable levels for their lifetime, their subjects have been saved a bill of 7 million dollars in taxes. Their armies are being absorbed into the Indian Army under the Commander-in-Chief at New Delhi. The efficiency of administration is being leveled up with the help of New Delhi officials.

The final result is a unity of India such as has not been seen for a thousand years. Gone are the days when a maharaja could do what he liked with his own — whether it was his subjects, his revenue, his palaces, or his elephants. Today the people of India are sovereign.