On Growth Two

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On Growth II

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1. Indira Gandhi

Indira Gandhi was born November 19, 1917, Jawaharlal Nehru's only daughter. She had a lonely youth, for both her parents and grandparents were continuously being dragged to jail by the British. In 1941 she married Feroze Gandhi (no relation to the father of the Indian nation, Mahatma Gandhi). Indira was arrested the year of her marriage and locked up in a prison cell with twenty-two other people, some common criminals. Besides studying in India, she went to Oxford and also to a school in Switzerland. In 1955 she entered active politics. On January 24, 1966, she assumed the Premiership of her country. Madame Gandhi has two sons, Rajiv and Sanjay. Her husband died in 1960. The author was received for this interview by the Indian Prime Minister in her office near the Presidential Palace in New Delhi.

India is celebrating the twenty-fifth anniversary as the world's most populous democracy. How would you summarize India's failures and achievements during this first quarter century of independence after British imperialism? Where has the ‘rich club’ of nations truly helped and assisted India, and in what areas did they fall short of expectations or obligations?

This is a good question to start with. When speaking of achievements and failures, the tendency is to think only of the economic balance-sheet and forget the political aspect. To me our most important achievement is the fact that a country which has greater diversity of religion, language, and race than perhaps any other has achieved such remarkable political cohesion and has succeeded in evoking the active involvement of the people in the political process. We have always been a nation of individualists. Our

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people have jealously guarded their right to think as they please. Today this freedom flourishes more vigorously than ever before.

Now for the economic aspect. Many affluent nations do have genuine sympathy for developing countries, but the majority do not seem to care, or have only derision for our efforts. By and large affluence breeds self-absorption and even a kind of forgetfulness. Many who take us to task for not having overcome poverty (in spite of achieving freedom) forget that it took several decades after the beginning of the Industrial Revolution for the prosperous countries to overcome poverty. And even today pockets of poverty and deprivation exist there and, according to expert groups set up to examine the question, will continue to do so.

The Indian Industrial Revolution could begin only after we attained freedom. In these twenty-five years we have laid the secure foundations of economic development - building the infrastructure of agricultural as well as industrial development. The success of our public health program in curbing epidemics and the vast expansion of school facilities are other positive achievements.

You have raised the question of development assistance from affluent countries. Eighty percent of our expenditure on development comes from our own people's savings and sacrifices. Something like a fifth has come from ‘aid.’ But this fifth is important, for much of it represents the import of new technology and skills and we are grateful for this assistance. However, it must be understood that this aid is not a simple transfer of resources. It is not a gift. In our case most of it is in the form of credits. Only a few nations have followed enlightened policies in regard to economic aid. To the others, giving has also been good business - it certainly blesseth him that gives! Also, there has been a tendency to push certain points of view along with aid. I am not referring only to political pressure. ‘Experts,’ whether economists or technologists, often forget that what works in a particular social milieu may not be ideal in another. Many theories of development and economic management which ignore the large historical urges of a people have been constructed. Some of these mechanistic theories have attached too little importance to social justice. We have found that growth and social justice have to be reconciled at every stage and jointly pursued.

Appreciation by affluent countries of the importance of social justice will be as helpful to the balanced development of poorer societies as suggestions for raising the aid proportion to one percent of their national product will be.

If poverty and need are Asia's foremost polluters, as you warned in your

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Stockholm speech in 1972, would the growth of population remain India's principal and most urgent problem in the future?

Efforts to control the growth of population must obviously be - and are - some of our prime concerns. In many countries of Europe, smaller families have been the consequence of urbanization and industrial development.

We cannot afford to wait for such a process, for we realize that family planning can also be the means to improve living conditions. Our birthrate did not go up after the British left! But the death rate fell rather spectacularly first of all because independence puts a greater responsibility on a government to save its people's lives (We cannot think of the kind of starvation deaths - nearly three million - that were allowed to take place in Bengal in the last years of British rule), and secondly because of the new lifesaving drugs which came into use all over the world about the time we became free. The rise in our population is the direct consequence of the control of epidemics and the spread of modern public health programs. It dramatically illustrates the truth that every gain extracts a price.

Can we for that reason say that we would have fared better had we allowed epidemics to continue? Research on new methods of birth control and more widespread propaganda and the creation of greater facilities for family planning are essential.

The Swedish sociologist Gunnar Myrdal told me that if radical birth control measures were adopted now, results would only show in twenty or thirty years. Although different methods were used, both in China and Japan birthrates have fallen sharply. Recognizing the unique and strenuous efforts made by the Indian government in this area, does the government envisage a need to adopt more radical measures of birth control in the near future?

Those who are critical of us and those, like Dr. Myrdal, who are basically sympathetic toward us but would like to see greater efficiency, keep urging us to use more radical measures. But what are these measures? Can we have compulsory sterilization of men and women?

I do not know whether motherhood or fatherhood is a fundamental right, but as head of a government I know that we cannot use compulsion in such matters. Results can be obtained only through persuasion - when young parents are convinced of the advantages of small families to them and their children and that this is a matter not of destiny but of will.

The New Congress Party adopted the banner, ‘Garibi Hatao.’ If mankind does not mend its way by the year 2000 there will be three times more poor

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people than affluent ones, or the poor will be using twenty to thirty times less resources of this earth than the rich nations. Obviously more loans or donations from the wealthy nations to the poor are not the answer. Where do we begin to change these trends?

Garibi Hatao, or removal of poverty, is a process. It cannot be a time-bound program, so to speak. Our poverty is so widespread and deep-seated that we cannot proclaim its eradication by a particular date. People's ideas of basic needs also keep changing. The measure of poverty is not a static one. Modern communications project new notions of needs. However, we should not and cannot promote an attitude of ‘catching up.’ The dynamics of technology are such that ‘catching up’ will be very hard to achieve. Our concept of Garibi Hatao is to provide minimum needs, the basic constituents of a livable life - sufficient nutrition, health and housing facilities, and equitable opportunities of education.

The removal of poverty cannot be equated with the acquisition of durable consumer goods which are the products of consumer-oriented industry. When glossy magazines are tempting them with such a variety of goods and gadgets, how can we persuade our educated people to keep to the path of austerity? Too many of them are even now lured by the glitter of life in America or Europe.

Ultimately, as you have rightly hinted, the ‘remove poverty’ movement of the poorer countries has somewhere to meet a ‘reduce waste’ movement on the part of the rich countries. Loans or transfer of resources from the rich to the poor are certainly of importance. But the greater urgency is to cultivate an outlook in countries, rich and poor, which regards nature not as an enemy to loot but an ally to protect and preserve. The earlier industrial revolutions indulged in the exploitation of people and of nature, ignoring the social costs. Technology must now be given a new direction keeping in mind the concept of long-term social benefits.

U Thant assured me that in his view unless the world would take most decisive steps to alter its course, man was heading to his doom. The Club of Rome initiated a computer study of the planet as a whole, called Limits to Growth. Various nations have set up computer studies on their own and models to further study what must be done and can be done to curb the present most unfavorable trends. Is the Indian Government in favor of this method of calculation and prediction and do Indian scientists take part in these types of studies?

Obviously, serious thought has to be given to these questions. Studies such as Limits to Growth are useful not so much for their quantitative

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predictions, which largely depend on the assumptions made and the data used, as for the qualitative danger signals that they flash. The study also reveals the important fact that averting the global crisis toward which we seem to be heading calls for a redistribution of resources of all kinds, particularly between the highly industrialized countries and the developing countries.

Statistics and computer modeling of dynamic processes of change are of value in making immediate functional decisions but I have a feeling that extrapolation is not always an unfailing guide where basic human emotions and the play of human will are concerned. Reliance on known or ascertainable facts cannot prophesy the major turns which new political and scientific ideas or the evolution of new social and economic institutions can give to human civilization.

Far greater attention has to be paid to identify the structural changes needed to avert the present crisis in global institutions and processes. These seem to be among the major weaknesses of the Limits to Growth study. At the more functional level, we do use statistics in our planning, hoping to avoid many of the ill-effects which less well planned industrial progress caused in other countries.

In 1968, India introduced during the fourteenth General Conference of UNESCO a new major program called A Design for Living. Could you tell us about this and whether at present some of these ideals have been accepted and effectively put into action?

The idea of a new Design for Living came at an UNESCO seminar on Jawaharlal Nehru in September, 1966, in New Delhi. The Indian delegation took the initiative to move a resolution at the fourteenth UNESCO general conference in 1966, entitled Man and His Environment: A Design for Living. [Among the cosponsors were Japan, Mexico, Yugoslavia, Poland, and Czechoslovakia.] Possibly this sparked off the Stockholm Conference on Environment.

We have to act internationally rather than nationally since standards of wasteful affluence are infectious. We have tried to persuade UNESCO to inject new ideas and norms of human satisfaction into its program. If affluent nations do not choose a simpler life, it will hardly be possible to persuade the poorer nations to put up with what they might consider second-class citizenship.

Within India the Indian Council of Social Science Research has formed several expert panels on the specifics of planning for a new design for living. These studies should enable us to evolve new patterns of education and to

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shape new attitudes. At the level of environmental improvement we have a work has already had some impact on our technologists and entrepreneurs.

At the Belgrade Conference of 1961, it was decided that your father, Jawaharlal Nehru, and Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana would travel to Moscow, and Sukarno of Indonesia and Modibo Keita of Mali to Washington, to urge Nikita Khrushchev and John F. Kennedy to consult and meet at the summit to settle the issues of the Cold War. Now, Richard Nixon did shake hands with Mao Tse-tung, and the leaders of America and the Soviet Union are exchanging yearly summit talks. You yourself met with President Zulfikar Ali Bhutto at the summit almost immediately after the Bangladesh war. Do you plan similar talks with Chinese leaders, and how do you personally view these developments in personal summit diplomacy in relation to peace and a more hopeful future?

Personal diplomacy has come into vogue because the rigidity of governmental functioning is too slow to keep pace with the changes which are taking place on the international scene. You have referred to the Belgrade Conference of 1961. At that time the task was one of arousing the world's conscience and impressing upon leaders of the large nations the importance of giving up the inflexible attitudes of the Cold War. Now, fortunately, there has been a wide realization that the Cold War approach has not worked. Direct negotiation between heads of two governments to solve bilateral problems is a slightly different proposition.

We have welcomed the bold initiatives taken by President Nixon in trying to normalize US-China relations. In fact some of his remarks on China, and the statement recently made by the US Secretary of State, Dr. Kissinger, in the UN General Assembly regarding the universality of UN membership and the importance of not ignoring large masses of humanity, contain echoes of what many nations, including ourselves, have been saying in the UN for twenty-five years.

You have referred to my meeting with Mr. Bhutto. A couple of months ago, we had another Indo-Pakistan meeting in Delhi at a nonsummit level, which also led to an important move forward. Summit meetings succeed only when careful preparations have been made. We certainly want to improve our relations with China but so far there have been no preparations for a summit.

But in spite of a détente on political fronts, perhaps, after pressures of population, the problem of food in India and Asia remains a most serious

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and alarming one. Would you still maintain, in spite of indications to the contrary, that the so-called Green Revolution offers a part answer to offset chronic famine in developing nations?

The problem of cereals is not merely an Indian or Asian problem; it has become a worldwide problem. In India our attempt has been to extend irrigation, since we know that if more water is provided, every piece of land can yield more. But even irrigation has to be done with great care so as to avoid waterlogging and salination. We have also undertaken the propagation of newer methods of agriculture and the use of small tools. We have set up an extension service and enlarged credit facilities for farmers. In spite of all these, we were still importing large quantities of grain from abroad to maintain our distribution system. The traumatic experience of the famine of 1966-1967 in the States of Bihar and UP compelled us to look for quick remedies. By that time our agricultural scientists had evolved some new varieties of wheat, adapted to Indian conditions from work done elsewhere. The attainment of self-sufficiency became important politically and as a practical necessity. We approached the better-placed farmers to produce more - and helped them with credits and other inputs. They showed remarkable results.

This is generally referred to as the Green Revolution, although I myself do not care for the word and rarely use it. The approach itself has had some socioeconomic consequences, in that it aggravated inequalities in the rural areas. Certain ecological consequences are also now beginning to be felt. Our scientists and administrators are aware of these dangers and also the need to extend these experiments and programs to other grains and other areas. We are trying to improve agricultural practices and per-acre yields in the rain-fed areas where millets are grown, more through soil conservation than through any great increase in fertilizer application. We are attempting a combination of many reinforcing approaches which should solve our food problem without generating ecological problems.

Would you say that Mahatma Gandhi's spirit and influence or his famous plea that a future India make the village the center of reform and development, are now, a quarter of a century later, forgotten and dead?

This charge is often made but this is somewhat superficial. It is obvious that our society cannot have a stable future unless village India is regenerated. Urbanization is not the answer for us as indeed it is not for most other countries. Neither should Mahatma Gandhi's basic message of building self-reliant individuals and self-reliant communities be confined to India. It is of universal application. Mahatma Gandhi was one of the most

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eloquent critics of modern technological civilization, but in Western countries also there have been such critics such as Tolstoy, Ruskin, and Thoreau. Now we have persons like Illich.

We could not improve our villages or introduce better farming methods without building up the necessary industrial infrastructure. Our emphasis now is on rural improvement as well as the development of the more backward regions.

You once said that it was your experience that ‘People who are at cross-purposes with nature are cynical about mankind and are ill-at-ease with themselves.’ Modern man, you felt, must reestablish an unbroken link with nature and with life. But what do we tell the children of India and Asia, in concrete terms, that they might be inspired to fresh courage and new hopes to tackle the frightening trends of today and the long-range projects of tomorrow and after tomorrow? Children of erstwhile low castes or untouchables now indeed complete a college education in modern India, but many students are unable to find work for years.

How do you, as Prime Minister of India, approach the seemingly insurmountable problem of instilling positive thinking among the millions of young, with so much sad and negative information around them?

The question combines two different problems. One is specifically Indian but the other is part of a global problem. The educational systems of other countries are also groping for a solution. Assuming that we were able to provide jobs for all those who came out of colleges and schools, the question of the educational system which alienates man from nature still remains. Historically, one of India's troubles has been a kind of specialization many centuries ago which built up a rigid caste system. Our task now is to break down the rigidity of this hereditary vocational specialization which emphasized conformity rather than innovation. When millions of people have virtually had no educational opportunity until very recently, it is natural that they should seek to prove themselves the equals of others. So there is a clamor for admission to colleges on the part of young people belonging to the backward classes. We cannot deny them these opportunities. Employment chances are slightly better for them than for others. We want to change the entire purpose and methods of education so that people do not just ask for jobs but create jobs for themselves by being manually and intellectually involved with national life. There are several worthwhile experiments but I do not think any country has found a really satisfactory answer yet. To change a long-established system in a country as vast as India is no easy task, but we are making a beginning.

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We have a number of ‘basic’ education schools which work around some craft. They have not been too successful and need to be more modern in idea and application. Education cannot be confined to the classroom. It must be a lifelong process which I should like to see continuing after school and college, in the home, the field, the factory, or the office.

What do we tell the children of India or Asia as the leading generation of our time? What can we give them?

I am not at all pessimistic about the future, either of this country or of mankind, because there have been prophets of doom all through history and all have said the world will come to an end or something disastrous will happen, that the human race will finish. Somehow we have managed to continue. The darkest periods have produced some of the brightest lights among the human race. I expect a lot from the children.

We expect from the children today that they will look to the future. The entire situation on earth is changing so fast that only they can really keep up with the future that they want to see. I don't know what the children can achieve, but certainly, the young people of today, if they could divert their attention from all the glitter that's around society today, whether it's in the shape of consumer goods or the many other distractions which fill their minds, could look at the sort of future they want. Many young people, thinking young people, instead of trying to do something about the future, are trying to escape. They say, Let us find a quiet place and sit there. I personally prefer a quiet place myself, but I don't think it's fair to the future, to the young people's future, for this generation to be seeking peace and quiet. It's a struggle and it's a tremendous challenge. For them it's a very big examination and an opportunity.