Free Asia’s problems are more complicated, and demand less simple solutions, than most right-minded people in this country and Western Europe seem to think. As Herbert Luethy indicated in our June issue (“What Western Colonialism Gave to Asia”), the after-effects of colonialism are by no means to be characterized in the standard black and white terms of “anti-imperialist” liberalism.

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By the beginning of September it will be ten years since the Japanese surrender signalized the failure of Japan’s attempt to build an empire in Southern and Eastern Asia. The subsequent more or less rapid liquidation of almost all British, Dutch, and French territorial holdings in that vast region, and the establishment of national states in the wake of this twofold upheaval, constitute a change as great as the parallel rise of Communism in China. It is therefore not unnatural that Western spokesmen should feel bewildered when told by Asian nationalists that the struggle against “colonial imperialism” is still high on the Asian agenda. It is even less surprising that concern over this kind of reasoning should be greatest in the United States, where it has long been an article of faith that Americanism and imperialism are incompatible, and that any suggestion to the contrary is imputable either to ignorance or to malevolence. The indignation with which most American commentators greeted the display of Communist tactics at the recent Bandung Conference (April 18-24) of Asian and African states is proof that a certain innocence continues to prevail in regard to what Asians mean by “colonialism.” It seems to be accepted that this term refers to something of which Americans have been guilty, if at all, only in the Philippines, and then only for a relatively short time. At most it is conceded that Asian intellectuals may have a certain case on the score of racial arrogance—now rapidly disappearing in the new climate created by the UN (where nevertheless, it might seem to an Asian that China, India, and Japan are scarcely given their due weight).

Political and intellectual traditions combine to render difficult a preliminary agreement as to what is intended when Asian nationalists (who are not in all cases repeating Communist slogans) assert that the main fight is still against the legacy of colonialism. The moralistic strain in our culture inclines us to believe that people who talk in this fashion must be suffering from an inherited sense of grievance. Certainly Asian intellectuals have not forgotten such things as the “Indians not allowed” notices in clubs, the “No dogs or Chinese” notices in the parks of the treaty ports, or even President Wilson’s veto on a Japanese-sponsored clause prescribing racial equality in the League of Nations. But when Communist and non-Communist delegates at a gathering of twenty-nine Asian, Middle Eastern, and African states are able to agree on a formula, however watered down, which implicitly declares “colonialism” to be the overriding issue, there must be something more behind it than memories of Anglo-Saxon arrogance in the bad old days now happily gone. Reporters who found comfort in the thought that Chou En-lai did not quite dominate the proceedings, that Nehru was frequently ill at ease, and that a bloc of delegates led by Turkey clung to their NATO lifebelt, were quite evidently prepared for the worst. That it did not happen is no reason for disregarding the danger signs, of which there are several.

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One of the difficulties about colonialism is that it tends to be made an excuse for Asia’s own failings. There are Filipino politicians (though they were kept away from Bandung) who maintain that the troubles of their country arise from imperialist exploitation on the part of the United States. On the face of it this charge seems not merely unfounded but patently absurd. It can easily be demonstrated that the United States has sunk immense sums of money in the Philippines, and that the islands have benefited immeasurably. It is likewise evident that Spain never did anything for the country, at any rate in the economic field. Yet it is probable that in the end Spain will be found to have left deeper traces—religious, cultural, social. True, the Spanish legacy included landlordism, peonage, and other forms of social inequality. But these were not removed by the Americans, who contented themselves with bringing more land under cultivation to feed an expanding population. The wretched condition of the peasantry, which underlay the postwar Hukbalahap risings under Communist leadership, was not the fault of the American administration. American policy in those dim, distant, pre-MacArthur days, merely did nothing to change the old pattern. There is thus material for endless argument over the role of the United States in creating, or failing to prevent, a condition of affairs which eventually led to something like civil war, and which is only now being slowly and painfully corrected by the Magsaysay government (with some belated American backing). Whether one chooses to call this laissez-faire policy “colonialism” or not is a terminological question. What matters is that the new generation of Asian nationalists are intent on a democratic revolution against the old regime under which landlord and moneylender controlled an impoverished peasantry: a regime which flourished under foreign rule. The same nationalists are quite happy to welcome Western support in their present task or, failing that, Russian. It was therefore a little naive on the part of some American observers at Bandung to expend so much energy on the subject of Russian territorial encroachments in Asia. Most of these encroachments have been at the expense of China, and the Chinese are quite capable of taking care of themselves. For the rest, one may be sure that no amount of Russian (or American) intervention will ever be stigmatized as “colonialism” or “imperialism,” provided it is not directed towards sustaining the old social order that allowed foreigners to share the spoils of an operation in which the lion’s share went to the native ruling classes. These latter currently subsidize a certain degree of shallow “anti-Communism” that is about as dangerous to Moscow and Peking as flypaper to a rhinoceros. The real opponents of Communism have to be sought elsewhere.

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If the Philippines are a doubtful case, Indonesia by contrast exemplifies most clearly what can happen to an Asian country under the paternal rule of a benevolent imperial power. On this subject it may be well to let an expert speak:

Java is an extremely interesting example of how dangerous European ideas and techniques can be to a non-European society if the government is concerned to preserve the values and the way of life of the society whose balance the very existence of a Western government is all the time subverting. Dutch law and order, and Dutch medical services, were mostly responsible for the phenomenal increase in the population of Java after 1815. The Dutch concern for the happiness the Javanese found in their traditional culture, and the Dutch failure to provide Java with institutions by which the Javanese might have adapted themselves to the new ways of thought and action of the Western world, are almost equally responsible for the failure of the Javanese community to find new ways of employing the extra people who were so constantly coming into the labor market. The result has been that after 150 years of the most paternal and, in some ways, the most understanding government in Asia, the Javanese have the lowest income per head in Asia, with the possible exception of China.

The lesson which Javanese history has to teach is enforced by a comparison with Japan. The men who governed Japan between 1868 and Pearl Harbor were frequently aggressive and usually ruthless, yet the standard of living or the Japanese common man improved steadily. The men who governed Java in the same period were mostly imbued with the idea that the function of government is the promotion of the welfare of its citizens. Yet the standard of life of the average Javanese declined steadily. It is not enough for a government to be well-intentioned. It has also got to understand that increases in population are bound to mean decreases in well-being, unless the new hands can find new jobs to do, and in Asia it has to realize that the jobs will not be created spontaneously by the peasant community itself.¹

Overpopulation is of course only one aspect of a process which by now has disrupted the old stability of village life all over Asia. In principle, the growth of population could have been at least partly met by a rapid expansion of farm output. The noteworthy point in this context is that such an expansion did indeed take place—in Japan, which happened to be the only major Asian country to escape foreign domination! To cite again from the same writer: “The difference between, say, Japanese and Indian outputs is the difference between an agriculture which has been transformed by the impact of Western science and one which continues unchanged in the old peasant ways.” This point should be of special interest to Americans, for there is no question that the Philippine peasant economy remained unchanged after 1900, so that impoverishment, overcrowding, and the relentless pressure of the landlords finally brought about conditions which enabled the Communist-led Hukbalahaps to mount their insurrection. As for Indonesia, every day brings fresh news of political turmoil in Holland’s ancient colony, which now boasts one of the largest and most active Communist movements in the world—a movement so powerful that the reigning Nationalist government has found it expedient to conclude an uneasy alliance with it. At Bandung the Indonesian delegates not surprisingly were in the forefront of all attempts to establish a Communist-neutralist alliance against “Western colonial imperialism.” Thus are the sins of the fathers visited upon their luckless descendants.

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II

Bandung, however, was no more than a skirmish in the cold war. By common consent the battle will be won or lost in the silent tug between China and India—specifically, in the contest for the minds and hearts of people all over Southern Asia. Whatever Nehru and Chou En-lai may think of each other, the Indian and the Chinese example are not merely different but incompatible. If India can show the rest of Asia a way to modernization that is manifestly superior to the Sino-Soviet model, the West will have won the cold war in Southern Asia. If China wins the allegiance of a majority of Asian nationalists, the “positions of strength” so patiently accumulated by the West may have to be evacuated without a shot. It is thus no great exaggeration to say that the outcome of the struggle for Asia hinges on the success or failure of the current experiment in bringing industrialism and democracy to India simultaneously. If India were lost, the Western powers might still hope to keep Japan on their side, though for how long no one can tell; but they would have to admit defeat in respect of the land mass of Asia. For in such an event, the case against the democratic modernization of any “backward” country would begin to look conclusive to thinking people in the remaining Asian and Middle Western countries. This is now fairly well understood in West and East alike. It was certainly the biggest issue at Bandung, though from the way it was handled by all concerned one might have thought Nehru’s foreign policy was the only thing that mattered either to the Communist delegates or to the neutralist bloc. In reality, the stakes were bigger than that.

Nehru, it will be remembered, came to Bandung fresh from his quasi-successful intervention in the Andhra election, a contest whose outcome was represented, in India and abroad, as a triumph for his Congress party and a severe setback for the Communists. Consideration of the voting results suggests that in fact the Communists made surprising gains, while Congress barely maintained control of the situation. Compared with the 1951 election, both parties apparently doubled their vote, but the important point is that the total vote for Congress and its allies (other than the Socialists), who this time fought under a joint banner, increased only slightly, while the Communists made heavy gains and the Socialists lost significant ground.²

The net outcome was such as to suggest the possibility that in a few years’ time the Communist party may be strong enough to win control of at least one of the federated states of the Indian Union. It could then drive the Federal government into a choice between unconstitutional violence against a state government (an excellent ground for starting civil war) or virtual acceptance of something like a Popular Front. The mere fact that such perspectives are beginning to open before India must have weakened Nehru’s position at Bandung, and may have accounted in part for his extreme nervousness which was obvious to those present. Certainly his paper victory in Andhra cannot have impressed the Chinese Communists.³

If Andhra was not exactly a triumph, the result could be attributed to the special economic difficulties of this South Indian state (though the Communists also made gains in its most prosperous parts). Congress politicians are apt to console themselves with the thought that, after all, their party polled 47,839,000 votes in the 1951 general election all over India, against 11,009,000 for the Socialists and a beggarly 5,892,000 for the Communists. They tend to overlook the fact that the decline of the Socialist demagogy throws a much heavier responsibility upon themselves and the government they control. There will soon be nothing left standing between Congress and the Communists, and considering the ease with which a huge semi-literate peasant electorate can be stampeded by threats and promises, future landslides in the Communist direction must be reckoned with. This perspective is beginning to look less fantastic against a background of unfavorable news from the economic front.

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To grasp what has been happening in this sphere, let it be recalled that, in the words of a cautious semi-official document published by the International Monetary Fund last year, “the standard of living of the people of India is among the lowest in the world. There is evidence that this standard of living has deteriorated somewhat since the pre-war period. . . . The information that is available seems to suggest that the per capita consumption of food grains and cloth is lower now than in the 1930’s.”⁴ It was indeed to remedy that decline that the Congress party government in April 1951 introduced its five-year investment program, concerning which an admirer of Nehru wrote in the March issue of the London Royal Institute of International Affairs’ monthly, The World Today: “The internal condition of India—military weakness, combined with dire peasant poverty—obliges Mr. Nehru to be eclectic. He would be more than human, for instance, if he refrained from calling his new industrial projects a ‘Five Year Plan.’” Nehru’s critics, on the other hand, would be less than honest if they failed to point out that, by its own standards, the “Five Year Plan” is a failure. It is true that one does not get this impression from official Indian government publications, which tend to harp on the brighter side of things, e.g., the increase in food production, the progress with big irrigation schemes, and the growth of industrial output.⁵

When it comes to the long perspective, admirers are apt to indulge in flights such as the following:

The elimination of poverty is a religious [sic] and technical rather than a political problem, State action being agreed on by all parties. In technology, moreover, the free world is advancing far more rapidly than the Communist bloc. A second and more stupendous industrial revolution has already begun in the USA and Western Europe, and the Special Agencies of the United Nations are a political vehicle by which its benefits may be passed on to the underdeveloped countries of the East, without offense to minds suspicious of a new imperialism. The Food and Agriculture Organization, for example, by introducing the Japanese method of growing rice in India, has brought about such an enormous increase in crops that the fear of rice shortage bids fair to be completely banished. The Colombo Plan, by which the USA and Commonwealth countries cooperate technically and financially to help the peoples of South-East Asia to help themselves, will also act as a solvent of old hatreds and old fears (The World. Today, March 1955).

As against these raptures, one may note the following simple facts, which are now the commonplaces of discussion among professional economists familiar with “the situation.”

1. The Five Year Plan aimed at a gross investment rate of about 7 per cent of the national income, which is considerably less than some undeveloped countries, in Latin America and elsewhere, have achieved without much external aid. Communist China is known to have reached a rate of 12 per cent, and to be aiming at 20.
2. Industrial progress has so far not prevented a steady growth in urban unemployment. According to the latest figures, about one-fifth of the employable urban working class is without work. For the salaried and professional middle class (the chief reservoir of Communism) the proportion is one-half.
3. The recent rise in food output is two-thirds due to a succession of unusually good harvests, which in a monsoon climate cannot be expected to be a regular occurrence.
4. Population is still rising faster than national income. Almost nothing has been done to stem the flood of new babies.
5. Religious conservatism is proving an insurmountable obstacle to the rationalization of agriculture. India’s 200 million head of cattle (three-fifths of the world total) are now safer and more useless than ever—a recent law forbids their slaughter. Even the monkeys are still sacred, although they destroy or damage an estimated one and a half million tons of food grain a year!

“It has in the past been customary,” writes the gentleman already quoted in The World Today, “to sneer at the conservatism with which religion has imbued Indian agriculture. It is now possible that religion itself may bring about changes more profound and far-reaching than the crude confiscation and collectivization of Communism. Bhoodan, or voluntary land-giving, is already a great force in India.” The trouble with this kind of argument is that it neatly sidesteps the real issue: even assuming a more equitable distribution of land were brought about peacefully (though not altogether by voluntary means: even the Nehru government has enough sense not to rely on that), it would still be necessary to equip the peasant with better tools and a different outlook. The Five Year Plan promises to provide the tools; the new outlook will have to emerge from some kind of cultural revolution. Meanwhile the much touted “religious revival,” so far from being spontaneous, is being actively financed by the Birlas and other conservative multi-millionaires as a safeguard against “dangerous thoughts.” And “religion” in India implies a way of life in which “cow protection” ranks much higher than improvements in the cow-owner’s standard of living.

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How inadequate the Plan has proved even on the financial side is evident from every line of the 1954 Report of the International Monetary Fund study group—a document which does not err on the side of radicalism. For every economy there is a critical level which must be reached before investment can begin to pay off in the form of higher productivity per individual, i.e. greater efficiency. For India, that level certainly lies above the present investment level of 7 per cent of the gross national income. The Report recognizes this when it says that “. . . progress has been slow, too slow, and must now be accelerated. The minimum objective of the Five Year Plan is to restore the economy of India to its pre-war position. In fact it is necessary to go much further and provide the means by which production can be substantially increased, and with it the level of consumption.” Yet the Report warns that an attempt to go markedly beyond the present investment level may result in inflation, further impoverishment of the salaried middle class, and financial collapse.

The fact is that India’s domestic resources have proved inadequate to the modest goals of the Plan, while external aid has not been forthcoming on the requisite scale. Not that the necessary sums would be large by current standards—six or seven hundred million dollars annually, pumped in via American grants and British sterling releases, would probably be enough to close the gap (in the view of responsible British economists now busy with this problem). This is no more than about treble what India is getting, under various forms of aid, at present. It is a remarkable thought that so small an increase could mean the difference between success and failure in the economic program of What is now the most important country of Asia.

But even such an increase could promise success only if the Indian government itself were to help by reducing luxury consumption, increasing taxation, and diverting resources (through moderate and controlled price rises) into those sectors of the economy where they are needed, while avoiding general inflation of the kind now ravaging Indonesia. This is a big “if.” On present evidence, Delhi will require some very energetic prodding from Washington if the job is to be done even on the modest scale envisaged by the Planning Commission. Whether such prodding can be expected from the present American administration, with its hankering after balanced budgets and a quiet life all around, is a question that it would be impertinent for a non-American to try to answer. What can be said is this: if present trends are not checked, if investment continues to hover just below the minimum required to lift the economy to a new level, if nothing is done to stem population growth, if religious conservatism thereby obtains a grip on the Congress party, and the radical intelligentsia is thereby driven into a Popular Front mood, engulfing the already split and weakened Socialist party—then one may write India off. It could happen within a decade.

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III

What is true of India is substantially true of Pakistan, of Indonesia (except that there the reigning Nationalist clique has already opted for inflation and the Popular Front—with the results that are clearly disastrous, but may yet be copied in India), and of Southern Asia generally, with the exception of Japan—a country that had the unusual fortune of being modernized in the last century under the iron control of an entrenched oligarchy. Elsewhere, democracy and industrialism give rise to tensions from which the Communists expect to profit. It is indeed the conviction of present-day Communist parties that they have an infallible recipe for industrializing backward countries faster than their opponents. They have yet to be proved wrong.

Of the several factors entering into the typical Stalinist plan, one—the high rate of capital investment—requires no particular discussion. It is, fortunately, a factor which democratic regimes are quite capable of matching, given a little external help and a resolute policy of austerity and high taxation. The system of totalitarian control over the working class is after all familiar, especially to Asians. Indian Socialists, at least, have no illusions on this subject. Brajkishore Shastri, a leader of the Praja Socialist party, who visited China in the spring of 1953, said in an article reprinted in Socialist International Information (January 30, 1954):

In no circumstances can Chinese workers resort to strike action. Any demand for a reduction in working hours or an increase in wages is regarded as high treason in this workers’ state. In India a worker cannot be forced to work more than an eight-hour day. Out of these hours he must have at least half an hour’s recess. But in China a twelve-hour day is the rule, and there is of course no recess. . . . The way I saw the Chinese laborers being driven to work (on the Yangtse River valley project) evoked in me a stronger emotion than a desire for emulation or pity. I was horrified. After all, a human being is not a beast. Even for reconstructing his country he should not be used as a tool of convenience.

The reverse side of these admirable sentiments is the Indian Socialist party’s failure to work out a democratic alternative to Communist planning and impose it on the Congress high command. Instead we have Asoka Mehta’s philosophical reflections (in. his pamphlet Socialism and Peasantry) on the problem of industrialism in general—reflections whose spirit bears an uncanny resemblance to that of the old Russian Narodniki. This is not necessarily a criticism of what Mr, Mehta and his friends are after: a balanced development with priority given to the needs of the countryside. One merely suspects that, like most democratic socialists, they are not profoundly interested in the problem of political power. For the rest they are of course quite right in pointing out that the Chinese leaders, like their Russian friends and tutors, are chiefly interested in building an economy that can serve as the base of a big arms establishment.

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In another vital sphere, that of culture, socialists and other anti-Communists in Asia share a certain sentimental refusal to face realities. The problem of reorienting the population of a backward country towards better ways of living is primarily a cultural one. The totalitarians solve it by stamping out religion. The democrats prefer to avert their gaze from the issue, when they do not actually help to confuse it. In November 1954 the Hindustan Times, Nehru’s organ, published a letter pointing out that the philosophy of Communism, which was the guiding light of the Chinese leaders, was a negation of Buddhist principles: under the impact of the vast brain-washing process now going on in China, the Buddhist elements in Chinese culture were fast vanishing. Since 1950, some ten million copies of works by Stalin had been published in China, but nothing on Buddhism. . . . Such sentiment is echoed among the intellectual leaders of Indian and Burmese socialism. Now it is probable that Buddhism, for all its philosophical other-worldliness, does not seriously interfere with the mundane tasks that Asian statesmen, like other men, have to shoulder in this vale of tears. It has at any rate not prevented the Buddhist premier of Burma from translating Marx’s Capital into Burmese!

The case of orthodox Hinduism is quite different, and it is not the least use trying to ignore the terrible relevance of this problem. When one considers that India’s “untouchables” still number some 60 million out of a population nearing 400 million, that virtually nothing has been done for them—except on paper—since India received independence, and that they are the chief reservoir of the new proletariat living under indescribable conditions in the slums of Bombay and Calcutta; when one further considers that the Congress party is still dominated by the Brahmin element, and that the Communists bend every effort to win over the “untouchables,” one glimpses the terrifying forces lying dormant beneath the surface of independent India. One would be wrong to think that the Indian government is unaware of these problems. It has merely shown itself incapable so far of solving them.

The extreme difficulty of touching upon these issues without lapsing into a shallow anti-religious “enlightenment” rationalism can be illustrated by considering, on the other hand, the integrative character of Eastern religion in its social aspect—that aspect which the British in India, like other Westerners elsewhere, so little understood and did so much to weaken. The old Asian religions, which are now losing their hold over men’s minds, provided inter alia the moral sanction for social arrangements that were a great deal saner than, for example, the utterly destructive and ridiculous system of sham-landlordism introduced by the British in India under the name of Zemindarism: a veritable plague which the Indian government is only now feebly (and none too successfully) trying to get rid of. Under the old dispensation the peasant might be poor, but at least he was in secure possession of his land. There was no nonsense about dispossessing a man for failing to pay the local moneylender. The sacred law was perfectly clear on this point. Manu had said: “The sages who know former times pronounce cultivated land to be the property of him who cut away the wood, or who cleared and tilled it.” And the Prophet Mohammed had said: “Whoever gives life to dead land, it is his.” Hinduism and Islam, like the Law of Moses, protected the debtor, not the creditor; the peasant, not the moneylender. The impact of the West changed all that. Just as it substituted for the old despots (who might kill a man unjustly, but who certainly did not consider it their business to help the moneylender fleece the peasant) the impersonal authority of law courts empowered to enforce contracts (which the peasant did not understand even if he had signed them), so it replaced the old sacred law by modern Western notions based on the sanctity of legal claims to the peasant’s ancestral land. This, not racial arrogance, has been the real curse of “colonialism.” By destroying the village community and letting loose all the forces of the market economy, it has impoverished the cultivator just when improved sanitation caused his numbers to multiply. The outcome is written in large letters all over the face of monsoon Asia, and now that “colonialism” has at last collapsed (at any rate in its more obvious aspects) the successor governments are left to struggle with problems no Western country, not even Spain, has ever had to face.

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What can be done about it? One thing is certain: “private enterprise” will not help. In fact it may complete the ruin. In India alone, some 50 per cent of profits in private industry are exported, and this sector of the economy is actually expanding faster than the native Indian component. Any aggravation of this unhealthy trend, by way of a massive influx of American and other foreign private capital, such as the ideologists of laissez-faire never cease to urge, would in all likelihood produce a socio-political explosion. When one considers that even from Australia, not exactly a backward country by any definition, some American automobile-makers extract profits of up to 700 per cent, one shudders to think what Western, especially American, “know-how” might do to India if let loose on the private economy. The net result would probably be the collapse of entire branches of Indian-owned industry—just about the last straw needed to break the Congress camel’s back.

Nor will international aid, no matter how large, by itself get these countries over the hump, though it is certainly an essential prerequisite. Such aid will have to be channeled into investment programs which, to be effective, must become one element of a genuine social reformation. This is not a task that outsiders can hope to direct. They can, however, promote it indirectly by supporting whatever native forces seem strong enough to take the lead. In the Philippines a small beginning has recently been made; in Turkey it was made long ago, in the teeth of Western resistance, by the Kemalists. These two countries led the pro-Western bloc at Bandung, while India tried to organize the “neutrals.” There is a lesson here, if the policy-makers can grasp it.

In the end, mere force by itself decides nothing. Force will prove effective only if it serves to hasten the transition to a higher social level. The main job must be done by the Asians themselves; but not by all Asians. Political conflict is inevitable. The classes which benefited from the old regime will obstruct the emergence of the new order, and they will find allies in the West. The reformers themselves will be torn between undue timidity and frantic improvisation. Inadequate plans will be hurriedly jettisoned and replaced by over-ambitious programs leading to inflation and collapse. Communists will try to ride the wave of nationalist passion, turning the fight against the remnants of colonialism into an instrument of aggression against the democratic West. It is no use complaining because things are going to be rough for a while. People who want a quiet life have chosen the wrong century to be born in. At least there is hope that if the cold war is won, there may never again be a hot one.

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¹ Maurice Zinkin, Asia and the West (Institute of Pacific Relations, 1951). This book is still by far the best general introduction to the whole subject.

² In absolute figures the Communists polled 2.7 million votes out of a total 8.6 million against 1.4 million in 1951-2, when a total of 7.2 million voted. The United Congress Front, comprising all democratic groups except the Socialists, received 4.3 million against 3.9 million cast separately for Congress and its allies in the previous election. The fact that the Communists lost seats under the very complicated voting procedure is immaterial; under proportional representation they would have gained 59 members in a House of 196, and Congress only 96 instead of 146. The reporting of this election was scandalous, to put it mildly. Most people were left with the impression that Congress had triumphed, whereas in fact it had merely prevented the Communists from capturing a state government. The fact that this outcome was universally hailed as a great victory shows how modest we have become.

³ They are even less likely to have been awed by the ridiculous claim that his speeches on foreign policy, plus Pravda’s friendly reference to his person, were instrumental in swaying the votes of a largely illiterate peasant electorate. Social pressure on the “untouchables” in the villages to back the government and refrain from helping the Communists is more likely to have been effective in holding the Communist vote down. But the reporting of Indian affairs is altogether below even the primitive level otherwise considered normal in most newspaper offices. Witness the grotesque story, solemnly reprinted in dozens of papers, that the peasants in Andhra were shocked by the fall of Malenkov!

⁴ Economic Development with Stability. A Report to the Government of India by a Mission of the International Monetary Fund (Washington, D. C., 1954).

⁵ See also the Reserve Bank of India’s Bulletin for March 1955, where it is stated that the industrial index for November 1954 stood almost 60 per cent above the 1946 base figure, with the upward trend continuing since that date.

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