PRJCE 30 PAJSE MARCH 17, '967 ira Gandhi Again. If'hat Is Going To Be West gal's Food Policy? • The Svetlana Affair. Bold Step Tanzania • Delhi Letter: How P.M. iPas Elected Plight Of Bihar • China: 'Isolationism' And Vietn~m .. -. I. IAN-IND HAS THE EXPERTISE YOU NEED \","...... .'-"..":"0 '. .".~:~..• " •. " ." ····.······, m. ~. ~ ~.-~.' ...................•','." • $', ';' .•• -', ,~ .";. ", ~ • _f:·- .. ·.-,-_·····,~ "..: ~/ :~.. :- ..•. ; -." '. '.' . ~ -'.~ -:--~'-....•.~ -. Every I>hase of a Kuljian-engineered project-preliminary project planning and site location study through complete engineering and construotion-supervision-is determined by your produotion requirements. Industrial and process plants designed and built by Kuljian-India are distinctive ...each providing a solution to a speoific olient problem. Kuljian-India has hundreds of specially trained engineers in all branohes of project and prooess engineering. 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Mr CONGRESS SKULDUGGERY FROM A POLITICAL Kamaraj, who once introduced a clever plan to revitalise the Grand Old ~ORRESPONDENT 7 Part.y and help Nehru get rid of some dark horses, has seen to it that the most important of them is back. Others had got back earlier. What CALCUTTA DIARY effect their return had on the confidence of the people and on t.he strength CHARAN GUPTA 9 of the party was seen in the last elections. Let us hope that hist.ory will BIHAR'S ANGUISH be repeated sooner than expected. J. ELKAY 11 Not that Mrs Gandhi should have been allowed to have her way in the partv and the Government. Under her regime India has been INDIA'S FOOD CRISIS foJJowing t.he slippery path of capitulation to reaction at home and PHILIP' G. AL TBACH .. 12 abroad. But no chang-e in that policy will occur just because Mr Desai THE U.P, ELECTIONS is in, They will be in the same boat, rocked now and then bv mild R. P. MULLICK 13 tensions between the stern, puritan and the Westernised ladv. This mif!ht in turn revive hopes in the Left E~tablishment in New Delhi that Mrs CHINA AND OUR Gandhi, somewhat chastened after the elections, might twist to the left. MANDARINS . MONITOR 15 There may be another appeal to radical forces in the countrv to rally round the fair lady. Illusion-or political opportunism-dies hard. THE PRESS A theme of absorbinQ' interest is Centre-State relationship. Even some NOT WITH,OUT STINGS .. 19 peoole in the ministerial wing- of the Left cpr seem to have been t<lken in by assurances of comolete co-oneration by Mrs G::tndhi. Thev should ABHYUDAYA'S NAM NEI By A DRAMA CRITIC _. 20 beware--Or their partv should. The Centre is not likelv to be friendly to Kerala 'and West BenQ'al. Kerala, at the moment, is a hal'O c"shew BELOW AVERAGE nut t:n crack because of the p1i2'ht of the C0I1O'ress there. Wpst Ben2'a1 is By A FILM CRITIC 21 vulnerable bec<luse of the assorted n"ture of the nresent Ministrv. .lust LETERS 21 bec;l1Tse the Ministry is mu lticolnu.reo. the c'pntre is exof.cter1 tn' be more insidious in its approach. The Ministry will hold together if the people do so. EDITOR: SAMAR SEN. PRINTED BY HIM AT MODERN INDIA PRESS, To return to the Prime Minister. it doe~ not matter much who he::tds 7 RAJA SUIlODH MULLICK SQUARE, the Conp'ress Government in New Dplhi. The Conp'ress is onomed and CALCUTTA-13 AND PUBLISHED BY HIM FOR NATION TRUST FROM 54 GANESH perhans it is better to have the fa;r ladv preside over the disintel!ration CHUNDER AVENUE, CALCUTTA-13. of this corrupt body. Is there anvbody in that body who can 2'ive it a TELEPHONE: 24-5713. shot in the arm and save India from a further period of economic misery Subscription and international humili;ltion? If a modern Drauoadi had looked at (INLAND) the assembled Con2'ress MPs in Delhi last week. she would have walked Yearly .. Rs. 15.00 Half-Yearly Rs. 7.50 away into the deserts of Rajasthan in dis2'ust. The way they behaved over the election of their leader w,as comic in the extreme. Mr Desai, who FOREIGN MAIL RATES thought one' dav that the country needed a compet.ent man to rule it By Air Mail chan!!'ed his mind the next day after he had clinched his deal with Mrs Europe Rs. 104 or 13 dollars Gandhi, perhaps under the advice of his astrologer, and said: "All that Asia Rs. 72 or 9 dollars America Rs. 152 or 19 dollars is over. Yesterday was yesterday", So have been all our yesterdays. Tragic, for the country but not for By Surface Mail those who misrule it. All countries: Rs. 32 or 4 dollat's Food Policy by other measures, for example, there Glib Promises may be the need for occasional varia- At the time of our going to press, tion in the weekly quota of rice and The Chief Ministers of noncCon- the new Cabinet of West Bengal was wheat supplied through the ration gress States are reported to have re'J still discussing the contours of its shops. These minor interruptions ceived an assurance from the: Prime-- food policy. This is a most vital apart, the main policy must be strictly Minister-to which a reference has matter .. We hope that, whatever the adhered to. already been made-that they would pressure of circumstances, the Cabinet get all cooperation from the Centre wouldrhink several times before con- There is something else that this in tackling the special problems of templating any scheme to scuttle the journal would like to bring up. The their 'areas. But is she as free an gradually evolving system of public people of this State want a clean agent as she would have one believe? distribution of food. The prejudices break from the Congress past. No After all, she is a creature of the and predilections of individual minis- amount of shilly-shallying can con- Congress States, and they will exact ters should not be relevant here. The ceal the fact that this objective would their price for keeping her in office. United Front Government has ob- be beyond achievement if the per- In the inevitable clash of interests tained a clear mandate from the peo- sonnel, who for almost two decades between the Congress and the rton- pie; there can be no scope for dis- filled the key positions in adminis- Congress States the party will not puting that this mandate has been tration under the Congress, are kept allow her, even if she dares, to risk for an overt socialist orientation of where they are. The British adage its future in pockets of still uneroded the Government's policy and pro- of an impartial' civil service, loyally popularity to appease rebel States grammes. The verdict has been as (serving whichever party is in power, merely for the sake of a constitutiomil much against the evil doings of the is strictly for the British, who seem chImera. Consolidation of loyalists 'is rich growers and traders as against the to prefer muddling to social progress. of much greater urgency to the party Congress regime's- connivance with It is an irrelevance in our environ- than wooing the recalcitrant. It will such doings. The mass uprising about m nt, which is riven by social ten- certainly .be beyond the Prime Min- this time last year had taken place si ns and contradictions. Much of ister to keep her promise to Mr An- because people wanted more food at this nation's present undoing is be- nadurai if Congressmen in the Hindi- reasonable prices through public cause of the doings of the "objective- speaking States join the SSP and the channels, and not because they want- ly motivated" civil service whom Jan Sangh in a crusade against con- ed a laissez faire arrangement for Jawaharlal Nehru gloatingly took tinuance" oE-English las an official traders. Let there be no illusion over from' the British. Let not the language. As for assurance of sym- about it, a reversion to private trade United Front Government commit pa~hetic attention to Calcutta's spe- in the present situation, when supply the same mistake. The cronieS Mr cial problems, Mrs Gandhi's father is short, can only mean apportioning P. C. Sen and Mr Atulya Ghosh have had made a similar promise to the more food for the affluent, who have left behind in West Bengal's admi- then Government of West Bengal; superior purchasing power, at the ex- nistration and police are the last per- yet Central funds have been reluct- pense of the poor, and for a metro- sons on whom the new Government ant in coming;. It will be,.something polis lil<e Calcutta at the expense of should rely for ushering in the social of a miracle if the United Front Gov- the modest mofussil towns and cities.