EVERY story in TIME is written and edited in New York by staff members whose experience and knowledge is intensely applied to weighing facts obtained from a wide variety of sources. To write this week's cover story, Associate Editor Robert F. Jones had, along with many facets of research from other places, the reporting of an unusual team of correspondents in India.

It can be said that reporting for the story actually began well over a year ago when Louis Kraar, then our bureau chief in New Delhi, made the accurate assumption that Lai Bahadur Shastri would be the successor to Jawaharlal Nehru as Prime Minister of India. Shastri, working unobtrusively in a little office next to Nehru's, at first evaded Kraar's request for an extended interview, but finally agreed on the condition that what he said would not be used until, as he delicately put it, "events had taken their course." By last week, when the cover story was going to press, Kraar had finished a two-year stint in India and was on his way to a new assignment in Southeast Asia. Our new bureau chief in New Delhi, bringing the on-the-scene aspects of the story up to date, is Marvin Zim, who, as a Washington correspondent, had worked on that end of the story before he left for India.

When a change of this kind occurs in one of our bureaus, there is almost always a steady-as-she-goes man on deck who provides continuity as well as expertise. In New Delhi this is James Shepherd, an Indian by birth, upbringing and education, fluent in Hindi and Bengali, a working newsman since 1946 who has been reporting Indian affairs for TIME since 1953. With the reporting of Kraar, Zim and Shepherd (as well as some colorful asides from Indian Photographer T. S. Satyan, who spent two hours on the sacred waters of the Ganges to take one of the pictures for the color pages), Writer Jones had a clear and complete on-the-spot picture. This, added to his other store of information, formed the basis for the analysis, assessment and judgment that he and the editors had to make to produce the definitive story on India's Prime Minister.-

THE biggest news in the U.S. last week was the final enactment of the new voting rights law and the steps President Johnson announced to put it to work immediately in the registration of Negro voters (see THE NATION). There were, however, at least three other stories that attested to the Negro's progress toward full participation in U.S. life. While they didn't make such big headlines, they have a considerable significance and can be read with a measure of pride by anyone who approaches the civil rights question with good will. Don't miss The Ace (in SPORT), Tenor in Whiteface (Music), and More Than Color (PRESS).

AFTER reading this week's ESSAY, one of TIME'S editors abruptly abandoned his intention of having another try at Plato's Dialogues on his summer vacation, decided instead to take along The Cuckoo Line Affair, the love poems of John Donne, and Walbaum's Life History of the Striped Bass (Roccus saxatilis). TIME'S readers may also profit from the Essay, which suggests some rules for vacation reading, warns of the commoner pitfalls, and supplies tips for point scorers, Experience Maximizers and those who simply feel that they are being sealed off from the world by an ever-rising wall of unread tomes.

-For the background of the cover painting, Robert Vickrey used the flag of India.

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