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While facing hardly any challenge at the centre from opposition parties, from the beginning of her second prime ministership Indira Gandhi faced certain intractable problems arising out of communal, linguistic and caste conflicts; none of these was dealt with firmness and insight and all of them were to drag on for years. Similarly, atrocities on the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes continued as they began to assert their social and constitutional rights. However, administrative and judicial action, which included long terms of imprisonment, was taken in some cases against the perpetrators of the atrocities. In the economic front the government also took note of the changes in world economy and their impact on India and, while making efforts to strengthen the public sector, initiated measures for what has come to be known as economic liberalization. But, the government proceeded very gradually and hesitatingly because Indira Gandhi was worried about the role of multinational corporations in eroding India’s self-reliance. The government, however, succeeded in raising the rate of economic growth to over 4 per cent per year, with a large increase in agricultural and petroleum crude production. Although Indira Gandhi’s foreign policy was not as spectacular as that of Vajpayee’s yet there was some stubbornness in it. When on 26 December 1979 the Soviet Union sent its troops info Afghanistan to help its beleaguered government, Mrs. Gandhi refused to condemn the action but, at the same time, she advised the Soviet Union to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan as speedily as possible. Finally, on the morning of 31 October 1984, Indira Gandhi’s long tenure of 14 years, as prime minister was brought to an end by her assassination by two Sikh members of her security guard. The Congress Parliamentary Board immediately nominated her forty-year-old son, Rajiv Gandhi, as prime minister. |
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