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INDIRA GANDHI TERRELL tion. India has accepted this path because she feels that there is no other way of eradicating poverty. Democracy is the base of all of India's economic planning. "Democracy confers many rights on the individual. These rights have corresponding duties. Our greatest duty is to help the nation achieve progress." India has launched many development programs. The purpose of these programs is the removal of poverty. However there is still a great deal of disparity in India among all augments of the population. There are approximately 500,000 villages with no electricity. Ricksha-wallas, stone-breakers, etc., undergo the worst hardships of the big cities. No matter which aspect is considered India is confronted with the problem of poverty. It is a threat to the political stability of India for it gives reinforcement to such divisive forces as communalism, casteism, linguism and regionalism because there is a tendency for the people in the face of such conditions to look to those groups which have historically attempted to solve these problems on the local level rather than to the national government which is attempting to solve them for all the people through a united effort. Indira believes that the answer to poverty lies in development and "it is to insure orderly and rapid growth that we like others have embarked on planning." Thus India started economic planning in 1950; that is, to use science and technology to solve the problems of poverty and inequality. In India development is a process of moving from a primitive or traditional technology to a scientific modern technology and in doing so India has achieved tremendous progress in education and health, in development of transport and communication, in irrigation, in the production of food and in the growth of the diversification of industry. Yet every step forward, even though intended to end inequality, leads to a phase where inequality becomes more obvious or new inequalities come into existence. For example I quote from a speech given by Indira Gandhi in New Delhi:* "We have introduced universal primary education and expanded higher education. We have done so because education is the key to the ending of existing disparities; because it is the greatest influence for modernization and because it gives full scope to the flowering of the human personality. However certain groups and regions which are already comparatively better off are able to take greater advantage of the new facilities: for example, the urban areas more than the rural, the rich farmer more than the poor peasant." ---- *Speech at the presentation to U Thant of the first Nehru Award for International Understanding, New Delhi, April 12, 1967. 231
