Word: swatantra
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...months after its founding last summer, C.R.'s Swatantra (Freedom) Party had little influence and no prospects. But Rajagopalachari's tour had had an impact which startled and impressed even India's most cynical observers. At one meeting, at which party officials prepared for 15,000, more than 100,000 turned up. In the last two months, Swatantra has grown so fast that some party leaders now talk expansively of capturing two or three state governments in 1962, increasing their ten seats in the Lower House in New Delhi...
...Swatantra's chief asset is clearly the growing dissatisfaction of India's masses with Congress Party maladministration and corruption, and the growing disenchantment of India's intellectuals with Nehru. The party's chief liability was shrewdly emphasized by Nehru himself, who during a 20-minute courtesy call on C.R. last week ironically remarked: "I've come to see how young you are looking." So frail that he moves about leaning on stout young lieutenants, for all the world like a resurrected Gandhi, C.R. admittedly has a limited political future...