India: Radicalism on the Cheap

INDIA Radicalism on the Cheap India's Western-educated intellectuals have long paid homage, but little genuine heed, to socialism. Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru believed that it offered solutions to India's enormous problems, but neither got very far in applying its precepts. Nehru's daughter. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, is no less convinced—and no less bewildered about how to make socialism work.

Last year, attempting to rally popular support for her struggle to control the ruling Congress Party, Indira nationalized the country's 14 largest private banks. So heartening was the response from the masses that from that point onward, she...