INDIA: Uncertain Freedom

Two years ago, realizing its hot and violent dream of freedom, India formally broke away from the British Raj. More than once since then it had seemed as if the great subcontinent would consume itself in war; by this summer, India gave the greatest promise of stability in Red-flooded Asia. But that stability was far from secure. From New Delhi, TIME correspondent Robert Lubar cabled:

India celebrated the anniversary of independence by announcing new and stricter austerity measures. India is still basically a hungry land; the government has launched a drive to raise more food. To highlight the food drive, plows ripped through New Delhi's viceregal golf course. Governor General Chakravarti Rajagopalachari, no golfer himself, posed behind a team of bullocks.

Commander in chief of the food drive, as he is of the government's many other battles, was Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. Together with his deputy, Vallabhbhai Patel, Nehru pulled India through the first two years of independence. During Independence Week, Nehru was his usual supercharged self. He sat in every morning on the deliberations of the Indian constituent assembly, daily attended a dozen, cocktail parties, nightly put in long hours briefing himself on the affairs of his ministries. Beneath his exuberant activity, however, Nehru was a worried man coming face to face with ominous realities.

Demand for Work. India's cities teemed with unemployed, her factories were producing less steel, less cotton cloth and less jute than before independence. Prices were three times as high as in 1939. Last year India imported 2,200,000,000 rupees ($665 million) more than she exported ; she was deep in debt for the balance. Said Nehru in his Independence Day message: "Criticism and self-criticism are always welcome provided they do not take the place of work. Today, India demands work from her children."

But India's children were also demanding leadership from their paternalistic ruler. Nehru's Congress Party. That great instrument of India's will to independence, its mission accomplished, was declining into flabby politics and provincial corruption.

India, while probably more democratic than any other country in Asia, still has no effective parliamentary machinery through which a healthy opposition can work. The Congress Party has power without purpose; led by a laborite (Nehru) and a conservative (Patel), it has avoided charting a clear economic course for India toward either socialism or free enterprise. Nehru last week declared that there would be no nationalization of ker industries for at least ten years; businessmen were far from reassured.