From 50 Years Ago: Foundations Shaken.

When the Congress accepted office for the first time, more than two decades ago, Gan-dhiji had said that parliamentary government had come to stay. Events of the last few weeks and the tenor of the debate in Parliament this week, on the Central intervention in Kerala, failure of the sugar policy of the Government, and the mounting attack on the Government’s food policy, which was still gathering mo-mentum as we go to press, have raised serious doubts about what Gandhiji must have given out as a testament of his faith rather than a statement of facts.

It is not Kerala alone which has been the scene of direct action. When a crowd stopped the Bombay bound express train at Cudap-pah station, broke open wagons, looted their contents and generally raised hell, to express its support for the fast undertaken by a hotel worker in protest against high prices of foodgrains, it was also direct action of a sort. Bombay had witnessed direct action of a third type a couple of times in the last few weeks, when suburban trains were stopped and train services were brought to a stand-still for hours, and an undertaking wrested from the railway authorities that suburban trains would not be stopped to pass mail or express trains when they were running late.