Word: punjab
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...foreign military observers regard the Indian army as thoroughly professional, and well able to handle almost any task assigned it. The rank and file are northerners and mostly from that cradle of warriors, the Punjab. The Indian army officer sometimes appears to be the very, very model of the British tradition: he has probably attended Sandhurst, speaks with an Oxford accent, plays polo and cricket, wears a mustache and carries a swagger stick. The first-rate Indian air force uses British twin-jet Canberra bombers and French Mystere jet fighters -all obtained by purchase, since Nehru believes that military...
...side of the frontier the terrain is equally bad. In fact, the only satisfactory invasion route into India from the north is the one that has been trod since time immemorial by Aryans, Greeks, Huns, Mongols and Persians: from central Asia, through Afghanistan and Pakistan, and down onto the Punjab plain. But that would involve the consent of Russia, as well as war with Pakistan. At the moment the Soviet Union is insisting on its friendship to India and is urging restraint upon Red China...
...priority has been given to doing something about the country's 12 million refugees who fled India to end up jobless in wretched slums. Ayub ordered new housing projects; with a stroke of the pen his Rehabilitation Minister gave permanent title to 6,600,000 acres in the Punjab to 1,400,000 refugees. The new program cuts two ways. Under the law, the refugees can lay claim to land with the same value as that which they left behind. Now faced with the threat of prison for filing false claims, 5,500 refugees have decided to withdraw...
...Nehru. Then, before a vast crowd of officials, clerks, laborers, housewives and children, Nehru troweled mortar from a silver bowl and set the cornerstone for a gigantic, tower-topped legislative hall. The building will be the latest major edifice to get under way in the new capital of the Punjab, a site that only seven years ago was a cluster of mud hut villages on the grassy plain southwest of the Himalayas. Now one-third completed, Chandigarh (pop. 50,000) ranks as one of the century's boldest schemes for a new city...
...Buffalo. Some Indians of lesser status also disagree with the great architect. A public-opinion poll published by Punjab's leading English-language newspaper, the Tribune, favored postponement of the legislative building as an economy measure. (Retorted Le Corbusier: "What do grocers and peasants know of the work I am doing?") Chandigarhians protest that the plan of the city, built from the periphery inward, leaves too great distances between the buildings. While Le Corbusier is not personally designing the housing, residents complain that his plan results in a built-in caste system, with income groups divided block by block...