Indira's Walking Tour

"Tell me, what is distressing you?"

Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, dressed in a crisp sari, stood in the scorching early summer heat on the north Indian plain and asked that question dozens of times in Hillaur, a small village in her parliamentary constituency of Rae Bareli. The country around her told the answer: acre after acre of sere, treeless, wind-whipped fields, most of which are worked by harijans (untouchables) who sharecrop but do not own the land. Long miles of highway are untarred. Few people can afford the 300 rupees ($33) needed to wire their homes for minimum lighting provided by two light bulbs. Electric irrigation pumps are rare, and even wells fitted with immemorial Persian wheels are few and far between.

Mrs. Gandhi was in this bleak corner of impoverished Uttar Pradesh state for a padayatra, the journey on foot made famous 25 years ago by Vinobha Bhave, who for years walked the length and breadth of India asking people to give up one-tenth of their land to the landless. A padayatra has become the customary way for leaders to make contact with their people. In 1959 Mrs. Gandhi walked for four days through her father Jawaharlal Nehru's Allahabad constituency. This year Indira, 58, reduced her padayatra to a mile-long, 50-min. walk through the single village of Hillaur. There were other differences, reports TIME Correspondent James Shepherd, who was along for both walks.

In Touch. In 1959 Indira made the trip to Allahabad and back by train, traveling third-class; there were only three journalists along to watch her press on indefatigably for 16 hrs. a day through the villages, drinking innumerable glasses of sweet, milky tea and, in one village, sharing a simple meal of vegetable curry with the inhabitants. This year she arrived by special air force turboprop and helicopter; she carried her water with her from New Delhi and, as she marched briskly between the mud huts, ankle-deep in dust, she was preceded by a running dogfight between reporters and photographers on the one hand, and her cohort of security men on the other.

More a publicity gesture than a genuine effort to get in touch with the masses, last week's padayatra nonetheless brought Mrs. Gandhi face to face with India's circumstances. "Do you go to school?" she asked one girl. The answer: No, because there is no high school in Hillaur. Uttar Pradesh's education minister, who accompanied Mrs. Gandhi, announced that Hillaur will not only get a school but also a small hospital.

Most of the requests addressed to the Prime Minister concerned land. Surplus land in Hillaur was recently redistributed among the landless, with 77 families each getting about one-third of an acre. But one family, consisting of an old man, four women and three or four children, told her: "Most of our land has been taken away from us." How? "It was auctioned by the government, after getting a court order, ten days ago." The Prime Minister immediately ordered that the case be investigated.

Mrs. Gandhi finished the day in nearby Rae Bareli, to which she helicoptered from Hillaur. There she told local citizens: "Our main concern should be the poor." Another main concern was the state of emergency that Mrs. Gandhi imposed on the country last June, as she said, because of "those who preached violence and indiscipline." Democracy, Indira noted loftily, "does not mean that whoever has power can sweep away the opposition like a bulldozer." It was a strange comment, coming from a ruler who for ten months has kept much of her own political opposition in jail.

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