(9 of 10)
Under tight planning, the Indian economy has indeed made progress. Since 1951 two successive five-year plans have pumped $24 billion into the economy. Industrial production nearly doubled, farm production rose by one-third, national income fattened by more than 42%. The life span of the average Indian was stretched by five years (to 42), and 100,000 new homes were built. As the number of universities leaped from 27 to 46, enrollment rose from 360,000 to 900,000. Production of electric power jumped from 2,300,000 to 5,700,000 kilowatts. India has entered the bicycle age, says Nehru, and he predicts that it will be quicker and easier to progress from the bicycle to the automobile than it was to get from the bullock cart to the bicycle.
The 89 Desks. Swatantra critics are not so sure. The government-run industries are running poorly. Most of the plants in the public sector operate far below capacity and show a pitiful return on capital. Reason: bumbling management. Top personnel is drawn from the ranks of civil service bureaucrats. Although elaborate measures have been taken to promote autonomy, most plant managers still consider themselves responsible to Cabinet ministries and Parliament, will let an entire plant grind to a halt rather than make a sensible emergency expenditure. One factory requested two stop watches to improve efficiency. The request went through 89 different desks, by which time the watch had gone out of stock and watch prices had doubled; the plant still does not have the watches.
Hampered though it is by the "permit raj," the private sector accounts for 90% of India's G.N.P. and has been tabbed for 40% of the costs of the third five-year plan. Nevertheless, Nehru hopes to put heavy and basic industry in the public sector, and redistribute India's wealth among the people. Able Finance Minister Moraji Desai, warns that such socialism only tends to "redistribute poverty." Nehru has also advocated government-controlled cooperative farms to improve agricultural productivity, but the program has run into trouble from the conservative Indian peasant, who is relatively serene about his poverty and thinks that land reform is immoral if it involves taking away another man's property.
Priests & Prostitutes. Despite its vacillating foreign policy, despite its anachronistic socialism, despite the dizzying variety of India's languages, races and religions, the Congress Party cannot lose the election. In this land of holy men and agitators, of corner prophets and half-educated clerks, of beauty, mysticism, filth and poverty, of a thousand gods and languages, the Congress Party does represent, if not a national consensus, at least an operating system. Like the Hindu religion, the party has no heresies; almost anyone can find a home in it. Beyond this, the party has a genuine national hero in Nehru and a Tammany-style political organization that extends into every village. On election day. party workers can turn out every kind of voter from temple priests to prostitutes in Bombay's red-light district.