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1947-2008-India-Roundup
India seemed on the point of peril. With failed monsoon for two successive years 1965 and 1966, India saw a severe drop in food production, and an unprecedented increase in food grain supply from the US.US President Lyndon Johnson put wheat supplies on a short tether. He refused to commit food aid until an agreement to adopt the green revolution package was signed between the two countries. On the fiscal front, foreign aid, which was hitherto a key factor in preventing devaluation of the rupee, was finally cut off and India was told that it had to liberalise its restrictions on trade before foreign aid would again materialize. India had never looked so vulnerable and Indira Gandhi, who was made the prime minister at 48 by the Congress syndicate led by K. Kamaraj (described once as a cross between Sonny Liston and The Walrus), appeared unequal to the task her father and Lal Bahadur Shastri had handled so well.
FIRST CUT
Rita Faria (right) became the first Indian to win the Miss World title. By winning the crown, she led the way for her successors. After her year-long tenure, she turned down modeling and film assignments and instead concentrated on medical studies in Ireland, where she still, lives with husband David Powell.
Homi Jehangir Bhabha, considered the father of India’s nuclear weapons programme, died when Air India’s Boeing 707 Kanchenjunga crashed in a snowstorm at Mont Blanc on January 24.
“AN INNOCUOUS PERSON FOR PRIME MINISTER.”
So said a Delhi journal Thought, in 1966. When the Congress Parliamentary Party voted to choose a prime minister, this “mere chokri” (chit of a girl), as Morarji Desai called Indira Gandhi, defeated him by 255 votes to 169. The new prime minister was faced not just with an economy dependent on the US’s “ship-to-mouth” approach but vicious personal attacks in Parliament and a lack of confidence within the party. Even an Alabama newspaper did not spare her when she met US President Johnson during her world tour in 1966. its headline? ‘New Indian Leader Comes Begging’.
MIZO FRONT MAN Laldenga
Mizoram had been dissatisfied with its lot in the Indian Union since a famine hit the state in 1959. A Mizo National Famine Front was formed, which then became Mizo National Front. It asked for a separate state and then a country. Laldenga, an accountant by training, launched a movement in 1966 to claim independence. After years of violence, in 1986, there was an accord. Mizoram became a full Indian state and Laldenga its interim chief minister.
OF STARS AND STORIES
Bengali superstar Uttam Kumar played an insecure version of himself on a day’s journey from Calcutta to Delhi by train, as a charming Sharmila Tagore (despite the glasses) quizzed him about his life in Satyajit Ray’s Nayak. He was shown to be in a foul mood as the morning papers were filled with his being involved in an altercation and his latest film was slated to become his first flop. The film explored the psychology of the star and his first flop. Destroyed her notes because she felt journalists—yes, even they—should respect the privacy of stars.
ELSEWHERE…
- The Indonesian and Malayan governments declared that the war over the future of the island of Borneo was over.
- Temples of Abu Simble moved to make way for Aswan Dam.
- Mao Zedong’s (below) Cultural Revolution began in China which witnessed a revolutionary upsurge by Chinese students and workers against the bureaucrats of the Chinese Communist Party. The revolution continued until Mao died in 1976.
Rs 7.50 the exchange rate of Indian rupee. Earlier pegged at Rs. 4.76 to the US dollar, it was devalued for the first time in 1966.
117 people died when a Bombay-to-New York Air India flight crashed at Mont Blanc.
Courtesy By India Today
