The Sleepy Country

When the opposition in Parliament last week urged a vote of no confidence against him, Prime Minister Lai Bahadur Shastri took it calmly. He said, "If all the people around me talk highly of me, my feet will not remain on the ground, and I will not know my mistakes and rectify them." Flowing Night Soil. During his three months in office, punctuated by a heart attack, diminutive Shastri has grappled vainly with a serious food crisis. And now huge floods, unusual even for India's monsoon season, are surging over seven states, from Assam in the east to the Punjab in the west. More than 2,400,000 acres of standing crops have been damaged, and thousands of Indi ans are in flight from their drowned villages. For the first time in recent memory, flood waters have reached the suburbs of New Delhi. Five thousand troops labored to plug the gaps in the dikes, but they were too late to save Delhi's water system from pollution by night soil and garbage caught up in the torrent. Stomach ailments have jumped 30%, and doctors fear outbreaks of cholera and hepatitis.

The disaster week continued with a slowdown strike by pilots of India's domestic airlines and the sudden collapse of the state government of Kerala, where 15 Congress Party legislators joined the opposition Socialists and Communists in voting against Kerala's chief minister, who is accused of corruption. Shastri imposed direct presidential rule on Kerala, at least until elections can be held next year. When that happens there is a good chance that the Communists--though divided into pro-Peking and pro-Moscow wings --may again win control as they did in 1957.

Cupped Chin. The next blow fell at the home of a near neighbor of the Prime Minister--India's Solicitor General Hem Nath Sanyal. Late one night four men broke into Sanyal's bungalow and choked him to death with a dhoti, or loincloth. Since Sanyal had been pressing corruption charges against several ministers of Orissa state, members of Parliament cried that his murder must be connected with the investigation--though Delhi's police insisted it was only a robbery attempt.

Throughout the week, Shastri sat on a front bench in Parliament, a doll-like little man cupping his chin in his left hand. He listened impassively to the attacks of the opposition, one of whom defined Shastri's policy as "inefficiency at home and infirmity abroad." Even in his own Congress Party in Delhi there was a certain disarray, and Shastri spent much of last week patching up minor dissensions.

An outsider might have been forgiven for thinking that the sudden spate of problems constituted a severe blow to the new Prime Minister's prestige and a considerable test of his strength. They did, up to a point. But Shastri took the attacks with bland equanimity, explaining that there was no point in getting overexcited--or even in shouting back at his foes. "Democracy would break down if we started shouting from the benches," he shrugged.

His Congress Party supporters seemed equally complacent. One pointed out that the government has an overwhelming majority of Parliament on its side and added, "Shastri is not in trouble. You always have floods. Food prices rise every year, and food is always a little short, and someone is always striking. This is no crisis. India is a sleepy country, and things just go on."

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