India: The New Manifesto

In the best of times, unity is a problem for India’s huge Congress Party. The party is a conglomerate of factions that range from wild splinter leftists to extremists of the right. Since Indira Gandhi came to power nine months ago, holding the party together has become a major task as one crisis, be it food, currency or industrial stagnation, has followed another.

The problem takes on added importance with the approach of next February’s general elections. The present forecast is for a significant loss for the Congress Party. Thus, as they met last week in the Kerala coastal city of Ernakulam to draw up an election manifesto, party figures of every stripe recognized the urgent need for harmony.

First draft of the manifesto was purposely vague, endorsing such policies as “social control of the banks”—a phrase that might or might not mean nationalization. At any rate, the platform contained enough of the doctrinaire socialism of Indira’s father, Jawaharlal Nehru, to please the leftists without alienating the free-enterprisers. In the interest of unity, even fiery old Krishna Menon, leader of the left wing, who normally might be expected to be quarrelsome, went along with the leadership, cooed happily over the document: “This is a socialist manifesto.”

It was hardly that, but it afforded Indira Gandhi ample scope within which to woo the electorate. Her critics accuse Indira of having wobbled over the years from left to right and back again. If she recently seemed to be trending leftward, the reason probably sprang more from vote-catching considerations than from shifting convictions. For she knows that if the party fares poorly in the elections, her leadership will be challenged. Waiting for his chance is former

Finance Minister Morarji Desai, 70, an unbending rightist. Also in the wings: Kumaraswami Kamaraj Nadar, 63, the kingmaker of the party, who some say is so unhappy with Indira that he is considering taking the job himself.

Indira appeared confident at last week’s conference. Even though her speeches in Parliament may strike politicians as lackluster, she nevertheless remains the most effective campaigner on India’s hustings. And that, after all, is where the votes are.