A History of India, Third Edition

THE REPUBLIC

The energy crisis which hit India very badly after 1973 also severely
affected the prospects of Indira Gandhi’s government. The steep rise in the
oil price and the enormous inflation which it caused in India made
fertilisers much too expensive and also accentuated the industrial recession.
Both the ‘Green Revolution’ and industrial growth were jeopardised. As
cheap oil had been available in the world market in the years immediately
preceding, India had not pushed ahead the exploitation of its own
substantial oil resources; coal mining had also been neglected.
This tendency could not be immediately reversed and the government
was faced with a severe crisis which was made worse by a great railway
strike in 1974. A subterranean test explosion of an atomic device in the
Rajasthan desert, which signalled India’s claim to join the exclusive club of
atomic powers, could not detract public attention from domestic troubles
for more than a fleeting moment.
In the following year a political crisis was added to the economic one.
Indira Gandhi’s opponent in the 1971 elections had filed an election
petition against her, arguing that she had made inappropriate use of
government facilities in her campaign and demanding that her victory
should be declared invalid for this reason. In 1975 the Allahabad High
Court found against Indira Gandhi. Her immediate inclination was to
resign, but she was prevailed upon to remain in office. As she could not
constitutionally do this in any other way, she made the President declare a
national emergency. Instead of admitting that this was her own personal
emergency, she claimed that the economic situation demanded such an
extraordinary step and she soon backed this up with a twenty-point
programme of economic measures.

The ‘Emergency’ and the short-lived Janata Party regime

The emergency measures did lead to a certain improvement in the
economic situation: no strikes were allowed, inflation was curbed and
general discipline greatly improved. But all this was at the cost of the loss
of civil liberties which were, after all, the most cherished heritage of the
Indian freedom movement. In addition to all this, Indira Gandhi’s son
Sanjay increased the political power of his Youth Congress, an
organisation which contained many unscrupulous elements whose loyalty
and solidarity were mostly based on the lust for power. Sanjay also
sponsored a campaign of mass sterilisation in Northern India as a shortcut
to the solution of India’s population problem. Although there is no
fundamental opposition to birth control and family planning in India, the
radical infringement of individual liberty in the course of the sterilisation
campaign was deeply resented by the people. This campaign was not
pursued with equal vigour in Southern India and consequently there was
less resentment against it.