Mrs. Gandhi's Gamble

India's imperious Prime Minister Indira Gandhi is a woman who listens carefully to advice--and then makes up her own mind. For months, many of her political aides have been urging her to wait until 1972, when her full five-year term expires, before calling new parliamentary elections. Last week, when she returned from a visit to Indian troops who guard the icy wastes of Ladakh in the Himalayas, Jawaharlal Nehru's strong-willed daughter announced that she was dissolving parliament immediately and scheduling elections for early March. The political campaign that promises to be the most fiercely fought in India's 25 years of independence will be decided by the largest electorate ever to participate in free elections anywhere--271 million eligible voters, an increase of about 21 million since the 1967 elections.

The move caught India's opposition parties by surprise, just as it was intended to do. In a sense, however, the election campaign has been brewing ever since November 1969, when Mrs. Gandhi split the ruling Congress Party in order to break the hammer lock of the "Syndicate," the aging, slow-moving bosses who ran the party. The fight cost Indira 65 parliamentary votes and reduced the strength of her wing of the party to 228 seats out of 523 in the Lok Sabha, the lower house. As a result, she was forced to rely on the support of three other small parties, including two branches of the Indian Communist Party.

Hindu Chauvinism. Despite her colleagues' counsels of caution, Indira was acutely aware of the efforts being made by three opposition parties to form a conservative alliance. These include the right wing of the old Congress Party, the free-enterprising pro-Western Swatantra, and the fast-growing Jana Sangh, which has a strong rural base in the northern Hindi-speaking states. Often accused of pro-Hindu chauvinism, the anti-Moslem Jana Sangh is particularly angry with Indira for having cooperated with the local branch of the Moslem League in last year's Kerala state elections. Mrs. Gandhi, in turn, has denounced the Jana Sangh's policies as "fascist."

In mounting a campaign, opposition groups will attack the government for the nation's rising prices, which have climbed 4.9% in the past year. Discounting the fact that India's foreign exchange reserves are holding near the alltime high of $1.1 billion that was reached last June, opposition Congress Party Leader Siddavanahalli Nijalingappa declared: "An increase in foreign exchange will not fill my stomach." Another issue will be the size of India's unemployed population --nearly 14 million, including 5,000,000 who are educated.

Mrs. Gandhi, on the other hand, will base her campaign on the fact that the economy is in far better shape than when she took over in 1967, following two years of severe drought. She will also note that her nationalization of India's 14 biggest banks has made it easier for small businessmen and farmers to get loans. "Nobody can say the situation is ideal," she says, "but we are emerging from a very dark period." In pursuing her own brand of moderate socialism, she will seek a constitutional amendment to abolish the maharajahs' privy purses; the Supreme Court last month struck down a presidential decree depriving the princes of this traditional privilege, which costs the treasury $6,000,000 a year.

Urban Terrorism. The government will probably decide to hold state elections in West Bengal to coincide with the national elections. The turbulent state has been administered directly from New Delhi since its Communist-led government resigned last March. Throughout West Bengal, and especially in its capital city, Calcutta, Naxalite terrorism is on the rise (TIME, Aug. 24), and so is the resultant police repression. The Naxalite movement, so named because it originated four years ago in the remote Naxalbari region near the Himalayas, has spread to several parts of India but is now concentrated among the embittered students and unemployed college degree holders of Calcutta.

One particularly vicious assassination, presumably perpetrated by Naxalites, occurred last week. Dr. Gopal Sen, 58-year-old vice chancellor of Calcutta's Jadavpur University, a center of Naxalite unrest, was pounced upon by a group of young men as he took his evening walk, bludgeoned with steel bars and stabbed four times. He was scheduled to have retired from his university post the following day.

Smiling Gods. Despite the risks to her government from an early election. Mrs. Gandhi may have chosen an opportune moment to seek a stronger mandate. Reports TIME Correspondent James Shepherd from New Delhi: "Much of the economy's forward thrust has been less the doing of Indira's government than a benevolent rain god who has given India four consecutive excellent harvests since the drought years. This year's food crop will be around 106 million metric tons, the best ever." From Mrs. Gandhi's point of view, that is good reason to hold elections now--before the rain god has a chance to turn malevolent.

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