Word: gandhis
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Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi startled the world last month by relaxing the iron rule she had maintained under a state of emergency declared in mid-1975: she ended press censorship, freed political prisoners and scheduled parliamentary elections for next month. Whatever her political motives, her timing in one respect was sound. The Indian economy, described by a U.S. expert as "a great lumbering elephant," has turned so frisky that Mrs. Gandhi need have no fear of the economy becoming an issue in a free election. As she said in announcing the vote, "Anyone can see that today the nation...
...this prosperity is the government's doing. The rise in food production is primarily the result of sheer luck: two seasons in a row of magnificent monsoons. At least part of the gains can be attributed to draconian but pragmatic policies that Mrs. Gandhi adopted while democratic liberties were suspended. The state of emergency was indeed partly proclaimed because opponents would not let the Prime Minister forget that her 1971 election slogan-AN END TO POVERTY-had been turned into a mockery by the war with Pakistan, the absorption of 10 million refugees from Bangladesh, two successive drought years...
Freed from the necessity of wooing voters or answering opponents, Mrs. Gandhi was able to sidestep her socialistic promises of welfare programs and land reform. To contain inflation, the government in effect banned strikes and required employers to withhold and deposit in banks money awarded to workers in wage increases. Production quotas on private industry were lifted. (Businesses had not been allowed to produce as much as they could, out of socialistic concern that their owners might get too rich.) The dominant state-owned sector of industry, which deals in such key goods as steel, coal and iron...
Thus Mrs. Gandhi can argue that India never had it so good as when the nation was under the discipline of the emergency. In addition to economic progress, she can point to improved labor relations, abolition of rural debts and bonded labor, and a more efficient bureaucracy. Said she last week: "Anyone can see that today the nation is more healthy, efficient and dynamic than it has been for a long time...
...Party, the Socialist Party and the Old Congress Party-announced that they will form a united front and run a single slate of candidates to prevent fragmentation of the opposition vote. Said Desai: "We are interested only in getting a thumping majority." But the betting is that Indira Gandhi will once again do the thumping...