Word: indias
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Hail of Complaints. As a result of the Congress Party's vacillation, India's Socialist Party, though still small, is gradually gaining members, many from disillusioned Congress ranks. A typical recent convert was Sarangdhar Das, an engineer, who summed up much of India's present resentments when he described a visit to his native province: "The villagers were no longer exulting in freedom. Instead, they came at me with a hail of complaints -where is our cloth, where is our food, where is our fuel? I urged them to plant trees for fuel. They pointed...
Commander in chief of the food drive, as he is of the government's many other battles, was Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. Together with his deputy, Vallabhbhai Patel, Nehru pulled India through the first two years of independence. During Independence Week, Nehru was his usual supercharged self. He sat in every morning on the deliberations of the Indian constituent assembly, daily attended a dozen, cocktail parties, nightly put in long hours briefing himself on the affairs of his ministries. Beneath his exuberant activity, however, Nehru was a worried man coming face to face with ominous realities...
Demand for Work. India's cities teemed with unemployed, her factories were producing less steel, less cotton cloth and less jute than before independence. Prices were three times as high as in 1939. Last year India imported 2,200,000,000 rupees ($665 million) more than she exported ; she was deep in debt for the balance. Said Nehru in his Independence Day message: "Criticism and self-criticism are always welcome provided they do not take the place of work. Today, India demands work from her children...
...India's children were also demanding leadership from their paternalistic ruler. Nehru's Congress Party. That great instrument of India's will to independence, its mission accomplished, was declining into flabby politics and provincial corruption...
...India, while probably more democratic than any other country in Asia, still has no effective parliamentary machinery through which a healthy opposition can work. The Congress Party has power without purpose; led by a laborite (Nehru) and a conservative (Patel), it has avoided charting a clear economic course for India toward either socialism or free enterprise. Nehru last week declared that there would be no nationalization of ker industries for at least ten years; businessmen were far from reassured...