Mrs Gandhi’s political style is so different from that of other political leaders in the country that it is difficult to say what her policy decisions will be in coming months. But it is becoming increasingly clear that the country will be in for some hard knocks unless she uses her enormous authority and power to stem the tide of populism and give a more realistic orientation to foreign policy.
It is no longer necessary to labour the point that a competition in sham radicalism can prove disastrous to the country. At least some of the men in authority, who did not take too dim a view of the abysmally low rate of industrial growth in recent years, have been compelled by the widespread drought and the sharp rise in prices to face up to the fact that the margin of safety in the economic field remains dangerously small despite the green revolution.
This has, of course, not dulled the ardour of leftist parties for further heavy doses of nationalisation. On the contrary, the rise in the prices of foodgrains has revived the demand for a takeover of the trade in cereals and the government has just produced a bill which has dashed the corporate sector’s hopes of a more realistic approach towards it. The more discerning and far-sighted even among the leftist commentators have, however, begun to realise that increased production alone holds the key to stable prices and a fairer deal for the weaker sections of the community. One of them has gone so far as to express the fear that a substantial part of the wheat stock with the Food Corporation may turn out to be unfit for human consumption.
Disastrous
Even so, not one of them has yet shown any signs of recognising that populism will in the long run prove disastrous to the left movement and democratic institutions in the country. Apparently they have not paid much heed to the developments in Indonesia, Ghana, Burma and a number of other developing countries in the ’sixties. Thus their plea for moderation does not amount to anything more than a temporary retreat. This makes the Prime Minister’s task doubly difficult.
But she has to grapple with it in order to prevent a slide back to the position of 1967 or worse. The prevailing confusion in the field of foreign policy is even greater. The justified resentment over the roles of China and the US in the Bangladesh crisis last year, and the sense of gratitude for the Soviet support during the war with Pakistan last winter, have so obscured the country’s view of the new realities of the international scene that very few men in the government or elsewhere are fully sensitive to the remarkable changes that have taken place since July 1971 when Mr. Kissinger first visited Peking to begin a comprehensive dialogue with Mr Chou En-lai.
New Delhi apparently feels that since it has not harmed the vital national interests of either America or China and repeatedly affirmed its desire to improve relations with them, it is now up to Peking and Washington to take the initiative. But this is a passive approach which ignores the emerging world power balance as well as the fears that sway Chinese and American policies.
As for the new power balance in the world, Indian policy-makers will do well to take note of Milovan Djilas’s assessment as outlined in his articles on the crisis of communism (The Times of India, August 8/9) and an interview to Mr CL Sulzberger, of The New York Times (International Herald Tribune August 18). He has said that the United States has won the cold war because of the “internal disintegration of communism” and that America’s strength has helped accelerate the “inevitable process.”
Critical
Like most other people, Mr Djilas is thoroughly opposed to the war in Viet Nam and is extremely critical of the US role there. But this does not prevent him from recognising that Washington has reasserted its primacy in the world, and that this is not likely to be shaken in the foreseeable future in view of the intensity of the Sino-Soviet conflict, Russia’s obvious inability to bridge the technological gap with the west and push its plans of economic reforms, the inefficiency of Soviet agriculture as illustrated by its present compulsion to buy 10 million tonnes of wheat from the United States at the cost of $one billion, its desire for extensive credits from America, Japan and Western Europe and a variety of other social and political factors.
In a sense the Soviet Union itself is beginning to adjust to the new situation. That explains its refusal to withdraw the invitation to Mr Nixon last May despite his decision to mine North Vietnamese ports and to comply with President Sadat’s request for what he calls offensive weapons. In other words, it attaches so much importance to its relations with the United States that rather than risk a deterioration there, it has preferred to accept a loss of face in Viet Nam and an erosion of influence in Egypt. It continues to talk, rather surprisingly, in terms of an Asian collective system under its auspices. But this looks more like a hangover from the past than a well-thought-out plan for the future.
Moreover, both Washington and Peking share the Iranian fears regarding the likely course of developments on what the Shah calls the “crumbling eastern front.”
The Iranian viewpoint is summed up by Mr David Hirst in a despatch to The Guardian. He writes: “The fear is that the Russians might press home the gains they have already acquired – a treaty relationship with an outwardly triumphant, but internally none too cohesive India, a gravely weakened Pakistan, a long-established hold over Afghanistan – to establish a much more menacing presence, involving direct access to the Indian Ocean. Is it not possible, if the worst came to the worst and Pakistan disintegrated, that the Russians would seize a golden opportunity to fulfil their age-old urge for access to warm water ports? Is it not possible, asked one diplomat, that the 400 miles between Afghanistan and the Pakistani coast is another Danzig corridor?”
These fears cannot be reconciled with the view that the US has won the cold war and that the Soviet Union has begun to adjust itself to the new realities. In fact, these may well be rooted in the cold war psychology. For all that we know, the Soviet Union will prove as reluctant to confront the United States in the Persian Gulf as it has been in the Israeli-Egyptian conflict. In the present case, there is no good reason to believe that Moscow will jettison its good relations and economic co-operation with Teheran for the sake of problematic strategic gains. But the point is not that this adverse interpretation of Soviet intentions is justified but that it is entertained in Teheran, Washington and Peking.
As far as the Chinese are concerned, this is not all. They have convinced themselves that the Soviet Union is determined to encircle their country and they see all Moscow’s moves – its treaties with India and Iraq, its talk of a collective security in Asia and its overtures to Japan – in that light. This partly explains China’s solicitude for the Shah and Mr Bhutto and its refusal to reciprocate Mrs Gandhi’s desire for normalisation of relations.
In plain terms, all this means that if Indian policy-makers want an improvement in the country’s ties with the USA and China as they should in pursuance of their objective of persuading the great powers not to interfere too much in the affairs of the subcontinent, they need to take steps to reassure Mr Nixon and Mr Chou En-lai that they do not propose either to hurt Pakistan in any way or to facilitate the achievement of any grand design the Russians may still be nursing.
Alacrity
The Indian view of Soviet policy in this part of the world is obviously very different from that of America or China. The alacrity with which Moscow has withdrawn its military personnel from Egypt will in fact confirm New Delhi in the correctness of its assessment. But that is not the pertinent issue in the context of the present discussion. The relevant point is that India should take some steps to convince President Nixon and Mr Chou En-lai that it has no intention of ganging up with Moscow against them.
On the face of it, there is no connection between the need to contain the tide of populism and the need to convince the country’s detractors that it remains truly and fully non-aligned. But a closer scrutiny will show that the two objectives are inter-linked. Though progress is possible in one field without a marked advance in the other, it will be difficult to sustain it for any length of time for the simple reason that the advocates of very special relations with the Soviet Union have by now so thoroughly distorted the doctrine as to equate Marxism- Leninism with its very antithesis, populism. The supreme irony of it is that while top Soviet policymakers are trying to steer clear of this confusion, their propagandists at home and supporters abroad are busy making the confusion worse confounded.
The Times of India, 23 August 1972