Why is Indira Gandhi called the Iron Lady of India?

This extremely powerful branch of the Congress, under the guidance of Congress veteran K. Kamaraj, helped secure a massive win for Gandhi, who assumed the Prime Minister’s Office in 1966.

Although the upper sections of the Indian society welcomed her accession, there were many who were not ready to see a woman calling the shots for the country.

Thus, in the first few years, Gandhi had quite a task winning over the masses.

She also started some re-constructions inside the government, endorsing new trends and values, and expelling many older officials from the Parliament.

Some of them were her father’s closest friends. For these ‘radical’ measures, she was expelled from the party by the Congress old guard, for gross “indiscipline”.

Undeterred, she launched a new branch of the Congress called Congress (I) and managed to recruit most of the senior MPs to her divide. Simultaneously, she worked towards changing the face of agriculture in the country and spent some years structuring and implementing new programmes.

These included increasing crop diversification and food exports, which worked towards making the country self-sufficient in food grains and also helped in the creation of more job opportunities. This marked the beginning of the revolutionary ‘Green Revolution’.

Amid her soaring popularity due to a rapid improvement in the agricultural sector following her measures, Gandhi was faced with an international conflict.

Several thousand refugees were clamouring into India from East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) to escape a deadly fate at the hands of the West Pakistani forces.

At this point, Gandhi was faced with the diplomatic challenge of not offending the major powers of the UN, but at the same time providing support to the East Pakistanis.

Their prolonged stay in India was an unsustainable option for the country.

She thus declared war on the West Pakistani forces, and after an overwhelming Indian victory, she managed to negotiate the creation of Bangladesh as we know it today.

However, Gandhi had made her fair share of blunders, the devaluation of the rupee being one of them.

The economy had suffered greatly and she was also accused of “illegal handling” in the 1975 elections, thus resulting in her opponents calling for her immediate resignation.

However, Gandhi refused to be subdued into resignation. Instead of stepping down, she persuaded the then President, Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed, to declare a state of National Emergency on 25 June, 1975.

Although Gandhi has been largely criticised for declaring the Emergency, one cannot deny that the country witnessed some major improvements under it.

The elite Central Reserve Police Force was ordered to arrest Morarji Desai and the ailing and aged Jayaprakash Narayan, while she introduced press censorship and curtailed several civic liberties.

To alleviate a growing agitation across the country in response to the Emergency, she introduced her famous Twenty-Point Program, with its primary goals aimed at reducing inflation and energising the economy by punishing tax evaders, black marketers, smugglers, and other criminals. Surprisingly, prices reduced, production indexes rose dramatically, and even the monsoon proved cooperative by bringing abundant rains on time for two years in a row.

However, the repressive theme of the Emergency did not sit well with majority of the masses.

When she called it off and started preparing for the next General Elections, sure enough her party lost by a considerably wide margin.

Morarji Desai was quick to secure the seat of Prime Minister for himself. However, under his reign, India witnessed laissez-faire capitalism in all its worst forms, causing a rapid rise in inflation.

Smuggling, black-marketing, and every form of corruption endemic to any poor country with underpaid bureaucrats and undereducated police also reared its ugly head.

It wasn’t too long before the public began to grow in dissent against him.

At the same time, he made the mistake of placing all blame on Gandhi and briefly imprisoning her, making her a martyr in the eyes of the public and gaining her sympathy for the same.

Desai resigned mid-term, and soon after, the President dissolved the Parliament.