India

on the World Today

THE Indian elections put Nehru’s Congress Party into power not only at New Delhi but in all the twenty-six states of the Union; and although in one or two of the provincial governments —in Madras for instance — its hold has been somewhat precarious, it can be said that for the immediate future the Congress Party has the responsibility for the development and well-being of the country. This concentration of power can be a great asset. With the Congress Party in control in New Delhi and in the provinces, the chances of avoiding friction and pressing forward with a positive program are at their maximum. Moreover, political leadership within Congress is also at its highest point of influence.

Nehru is the unchallenged ruler of the country. With him are other provincial Congress leaders — Pandit Pant in the United Provinces, Dr. Roy in West Bengal, and Mr. Rajagopalachari at Madras who have all fought the good fight for independence and enjoy the almost mythical authority that fight has conferred. But they are all old or elderly men. A new generation of Congress leaders has not yet emerged. The next few years, while the influence of the original leaders is still undisturbed, will be a “honeymoon” in Indian politics.

The Communist opposition

The present predominance of the Congress Party is especially significant in a country where the opposition, so far, is either doctrinaire Socialist or outright Communist. By concentrating its candidates in particularly favorable fields, the Communists contrived to elect a score of deputies with only a very small percentage of the votes. But the first year in Parliament has also shown that they are not yet a very formidable group of men. They have been outmaneuvered and outdebated and have made on the whole a sorry showing.

It may be, however, that the Communists attach little importance at this stage to federal politics, where they are certain to be voted down. Rather their strategy is to draw to themselves the various linguistic minorities, and to attempt to exploit the ambitions of these minorities for separate statehood. In Madras, the Andhras, a Telugu-speaking minority, have sent a majority of Communists to the Madras Assembly. One of the Andhra leaders, Sriramulu, fasted to death last December to secure a separate Andhra state; and when he succumbed, organized rioting broke out which significantly concentrated upon the centers of communication.

The moderates fear that an Andhra state would be Communist-dominated. Moreover, they see the same process at work in other states — for instance, in Bombay. Communism is also active in Travancore-Cochin. The aim of detaching the south by a series of well-planned linguistic campaigns is certainly part of long-term Communist strategy, and Parliament is aware of the danger.

The fight against poverty

Whether or not these fissures will widen depends on the energy with which Congress can use its power to benefit the Indian community. The fundamental fact now, as it has been for centuries, is the poverty of ordinary men and women. The national per capita income is less than $50 a year. And this poverty is constantly growing worse since most available land is already under cultivation and the population — at present 356 millions —increases by more than 4 millions each year. Unless a stronger economy can be created, deepening poverty and its abundant frustration may yet give the Communists their chance.

The Government’s answer is the Five-Year Plan, officially agreed upon last December after a year of preparation and careful discussion with every responsible group in the nation. Its aim is a capital expenditure of approximately $4.2 billion to be made between 1951 and 1956, the bulk of it on agriculture. This first investment will not do much more than keep balance with growing population, but it should raise the national income about 10 per cent and lay the foundations for more ambitious investment after 1956.

Community projects

About 80 percent of India lives on the land. The hope is to increase food-grain production by over 7 million tons and irrigated acreage by some 19 million. But these aims are unlikely to be achieved without radical changes in village life, and these can best be summarized as the transfer of ownership to the cultivator, the consolidation of India’s pitifully fragmented holdings, the building up of coöperatives for credit, production, and marketing, and the linking of cottage and smallscale industry with the villages.

All these aims are included within the general program of “community projects,” These projects each cover groups of 300 villages, and in the course of the next five years it is hoped to extend the transformation they represent by a snowballing effort to cover a large part of the country. Even the small 8 per cent of the Plan which is to be spent on industry is subsidiary to this program for the villages, for industry cannot expand without increased purchasing power in the villages.

Can such a plan succeed? It is modest financially but ambitious in an administrative sense. The key to success is the village, and it must be said that there are hopeful signs. Some large areas — notably Bombay and most of Madras — have no handlord system to abolish. In other states, the United Provinces for instance, the abolition of feudal rights in the land has gone forward.

The idea of coöperatives is not new. A highly successful network of credit coöperatives flourishes in Bombay. Above all, India has inherited from the period of British control a tradition of administration which was at its strongest at the district level. Many of the Indians trained in the old Indian Civil Service — a supremely efficient service — now occupy key positions not only in the civil service but in the Government and the Cabinet itself. They are aware that no plan can he driven through to the level of the villager without strong and effective administration.

American aid

Another great asset is that American aid has with real vision been concentrated on the agricultural aspect of the Plan. American Point Four advisers are working with Indian agriculturalists at the village level, and the specialized assistance given by the Ford Foundation is also being used with excellent effect in setting up experimental areas for community development and in training the village workers who are to carry the new methods and new ideas to the local farmers.

But the difficulties must not be minimized. The federal structure complicates the problem, for many of the states are the successors to the old princely states where administration at the village level was virtually unknown, and a feudal structure has to be replaced within a year or two. Moreover, by adopting the welfare state as its aim, Congress has increased immeasurably the number of things the state is supposed to do.

Talk of nationalizing industry is persistent. Steps are being taken to nationalize air transport and to set up a nationalized steel enterprise. The desire to nationalize springs from a widespread distrust of the Indian business class — the Marwaris — whose tradition of speculation and moneymaking at all cost has revolted many men who would not otherwise argue for a public sector in industry.

The greatest handicap which India has to overcome is, however, stark poverty. This poverty is grimly reflected in the Plan itself. It represents less than 5 per cent of national income, whereas really rapid advance of the type needed by India would entail an investment of 15 to 20 per cent at the very least. But capital means saving, and saving means not consuming, and how can you cut consumption on an annual income of under $50 a head?

The few very wealthy men could contribute only a drop in the ocean of need. The middle class is heavily, frustratingly taxed. The poor can do no more. It follows that financially the Plan must remain too small unless India can call upon foreign resources to make up the gap.

Distrust of the West

The question of Western aid to India is inseparable from the problem of India’s attitude in its foreign relations. In this field, Nehru’s outlook is decisive. A fundamental strain in his thinking is distrust of all imperialism— a natural reaction to the lifelong struggle against British rule. His deepest sympathies are with the ideal of Asian independence. Added to this, he accepts in some measure the Marxist dogma that capitalism and imperialism are inseparable, and that an advanced capitalist country such as America must therefore be imperialist.

This combination of reactions and beliefs makes him suspicious of the West and sympathetic to all Asian nations, including Communist China, which has appeared to him as an independent government that has thrown off all trace of Western influence.

But at this point the opposing points of view gather force. Britain, the old imperialist, has granted India independence and now loyally backs and supports it. This change drew from India in return the decision to stay within the Commonwealth. The American Ambassador, Chester Bowles, achieved a close working partnership with Nehru and was able to demonstrate effectively that America is neither imperialist nor aggressive. American Point Four aid “without strings,” the interest and support of the Ford Foundation, and especially the American wheat loan reinforced Mr. Bowles’s efforts.

Communist pressures

At the same time, Russia has succeeded in disturbing the Indian Government by the flood of Russianfinanced Communist propaganda that pours into the country, and by its backing of the Indian Communists (Nehru objected to Stalin’s speech to the Communist Party Congress in Moscow as an “interference in India’s internal affairs”).

Above all, Communist China’s outright annexation of Tibet and the military preparations in process there have raised in Indian minds the question whether Communists may not be the now-style imperialists of the twentieth century. The Chinese rejection of India’s compromise solution of the Korean deadlock also suggested to New Delhi that Russia exercises what can only be called “imperialist” control on the government at Peking.

Indian neutrality

There is a zone of uncertainty and hesitation in Indian foreign policy, and its outward expression is a desire “not to take sides” — in other words, to preserve Indian neutrality. The question of receiving assistance from outside—and this in practicej can only mean from the West is overshadowed by the tear that such help could be used to deflect India from “neutrality” and draw it into one or the other of the world blocs.

The need for aid is not questioned. Indeed, the Five-Year Plan depends for part of its financing upon the receipt of capital from abroad. But it remains a point over which Indian fears and susceptibilities remain acute. Much depends upon the tact and wisdom of Western diplomacy in its dealings with India, and this in turn depends upon the judgment Washington and London pass upon the importance of India to them and to the free world. Superficially they will not receive much help from India. A reassertion of Indian “neutrality is the most probable answer to any request for a definition of India’s position.

India is determined to preserve her independence at all costs against the only powers likely to encroach upon it — and those powers are Russia and China, not any Western state. The facts of the world situation entail the consequence that so long as India is what it is — a genuine, administratively sound and independent democracy— it is in effect, aligned with the West. This fact, and not any diplomatic disclaimers or protestations, should guide the Western powers in their assessment of India.

Indian “neutrality,” since it is democratic, independent, and necessarily non-Comimmist, is worth backing now while the Congress Party is effectively in power and while a dramatic effort is being initiated to raise Indian living standards and to give an element of hope to India’s millions.

The Five-Year Plan provides a careful, considered framework for any outside assistance, and it is a sobering thought that the injection into the Indian economy of only 1 per cent of the Western power’ current expenditure on rearmament —say $900 million out of over $90 billion — would permit India’s Plan to be more than doubled over the five years, and bring it up to the minimum percentage of investment needed for any noticeable economic advance. Since India is democracy’s bastion in Asia, this price for Indian independence would seem to be relatively slight.