India: A Neutral Attitude

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India's Prime Minister Lai Bahadur Shastri had gone to Moscow with high hopes of a major diplomatic achievement. He came home last week with a good deal less.

Russia's fence-straddling new bosses, Leonid Brezhnev and Aleksei Kosygin, provided no public backing for India against Pakistan in the bitter Rann of Kutch controversy; not a word of support against the Chinese Communists, who for years have been nibbling at India's Himalayan borders; not even a clear-cut promise of more aid and trade. In fact, the Russians chided India for failing to use fully the aid already pledged—$1 billion, or roughly one-fifth of what the U.S. has given—and for not developing full capacity at the woefully inefficient Ranchi heavy-machine plant, built by Russia for $46.3 million.

On the other hand, Shastri played neatly into Moscow's hands by signing a joint communiqué that demanded immediate cessation of American bombing in North Viet Nam. Explaining the vague communiqué to reporters, Shastri claimed that the Kutch dispute was not mentioned because Russia did not want to interfere with British diplomatic efforts at settling the squabble. The joint silence over Red China's latest atomic explosion, he said, reflected "a neutral attitude."