INDIA: The Flabby Giant

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India's Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru is not used to heckling. But the audience he faced day after day in New Delhi's Parliament House was the most critical he had faced for years. For India's vaunted $10.8 billion second five-year plan, launched with high hopes last year as an answer to India's ancient poverty, was in desperate trouble, and every legislator was demanding: "What do we do now?" Nehru had no answer, except to insist that "the basic structure" of the five-year plan would be carried out. Demanded the M.P.s: "How? How?" Last week, after ten days of rambling debate, Nehru at last admitted: "Nothing definite can be said . . . since the extent of our external resources still is not known."

In short, everything depends on foreign aid. India, with the world's second-largest population (380 million, v. 600 million in China) and seventh-biggest area (1,300,000 sq. mi.), is an international giant. In a vast belt running across four of its northeastern states lie an estimated 20.8 billion tons of iron ore and 26 billion tons of coal. Indian steel production last year was 1,900,000 tons (v. Red China's 4,000,000 tons). Indian exports—manganese, tea from Assam, jute from Bengal and cotton cloth from Bombay and Madras—will earn about $1.3 billion this year.

But India is a flabby giant. Only one Indian in six is literate, and in the nation's 500,000 villages there are only 300,000 schools. Per capita income is $59 a year (v. $237 in Japan, $2,013 in the U.S.). Nehru remarked not long ago that nearly 75% of the electric power generated in India is produced by burning cow dung.

The Muscle Builders. Ever since the dawn of independence in 1947, Nehru and his government have been working to strengthen India's economic muscles. Between 1951 and 1956, India's $5 billion first five-year plan increased the country's total agricultural output 18%. With the second five-year plan, New Delhi's economists hoped to raise per capita income to $69 a year, and double electric power output. Above all, they planned to treble steel production, thereby give India the heavy industry that all the world's underdeveloped nations yearn for as the badge of true economic independence.

In the light of India's needs, these goals were none too ambitious. If every development scheme now on the drawing board could be carried out, the Indian peasant would still be eating 500 fewer calories a day than the average American man.

The Assumptions. From the outset, the plan was based on assumptions that were more hopeful than realistic. One assumption was that the Indian peasant would somehow produce more than he has in the past. He has not.

Another was that India's exports would prosper and earn more foreign exchange. They have not. In London last week there were whole warehouses full of unsold Indian tea. Increasing competition from Japan has prevented any significant increase in foreign sales of Indian cotton goods. The jute industry, faced with competition from Indonesia and Pakistan, is so deep in the doldrums that more than 10% of India's looms are being held idle in an attempt to maintain world jute prices.