Troubled Vacation

High above India's plains, now sweltering in the 105DEG heat that comes before the summer monsoon, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru was taking his first vacation in three years. Nehru was bone-tired; black circles ringed his eyes. In the cool. British-built hill station of Chakrata, Nehru slept under blankets, went for long walks on the fir-clad slopes, drew loud cheers from local admirers when he rode a pony onto the local parade ground and neatly guided it through a perfect figure eight.

Though Nehru could escape his country's heat, he could not escape its mounting problems. His ambitious second five-year plan, intended to industrialize India, was running short of foreign exchange, and no nation seemed eager to put up the $1.6 billion needed to fill the gap. Internally, private capital was drying up; interest rates had risen to 8% and 10%.

The Hungry. But a bigger worry was one that India thought it had put behind it forever: food. Floods last fall and hailstorms in January and February had destroyed many crops. Across northern India, in state after state, black headlines announced creeping famine. The famine areas were still scattered. But in Bihar, more than a million people were down to one meal every two days; farmers scrabbled in the fields for roots, and rioting workers broke into granaries. In Uttar Pradesh, desperate men held up a train; ignoring money and jewels, they carried off five bags of rice.

While Food and Agriculture Minister Ajit Prasad Jain insisted valiantly that there was "absolutely no cause for alarm," planes airdropped rice to remote mountain villages. Grain shipments from the U.S. were stepped up to two shiploads every three days, and government officials announced that they hoped to get the U.S. to deliver all 3,500,000 tons of wheat in two years instead of three.

Answer: Co-Ops? Truth was that India's food production, increased about 18% by the dams, irrigation ditches and educational projects of the first five-year plan, has leveled off and even slightly declined in the past three years--while India's population inexorably rose by 15 million. Interrupting his vacation to drive over to Mussoorie for an All-India Development conference. Nehru listened gloomily to discussions which blamed the weather, poverty and religious scruples for the Indian farmer's lethargy. Abruptly, Nehru broke in with a pet solution of his own: farm cooperatives, partially based on the "Chinese system" but "instituted under democratic conditions."

Nobody knew exactly what this meant, but critics promptly pointed out that the Chinese system was collectives, not cooperatives ; they warned that the individualistic Indian farmer would join a cooperative only if forced, and they saw jeopardy to India's proud position as a democratic alternative to Red China's coerced economy. But Agricultural Minister Jain promptly echoed the boss. "There is no other alternative but cooperative farming!" he cried.

At week's end Nehru went back to New Delhi's heat and New Delhi's problems. First visible result of his reflection was an announcement that India will soon feel out the U.S. on a $1 billion long-term loan to help out the second five-year plan. Then government planners began talking of shifting major emphasis back to agricultural projects. A year ago, Nehru had proudly proclaimed that India "will soon become a food-exporting nation." There was still a long way to go.

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