301. Memorandum for Record1
President’s meeting with Ambassador B.K. Nehru. The President’s Tuesday (March 22) appointment with B.K. Nehru was quite informal and largely social in character. The President first took Ambassador Nehru on a long tour of the White House grounds, during which he met several of Mrs. Johnson’s luncheon guests, and then had Ambassador Nehru to lunch with Secretaries Rusk and McNamara and members of the White House staff.
During this period the President made several points to Nehru along the following lines. First, he said that he was not asking India to go into the Dominican Republic or Vietnam; all we wanted was greater Indian understanding of our problems in such areas and such help as they could give in bringing peace. We did not want to command or direct the Indian Government, nor even to make a “trade” with it.
However, there were two things which we needed in order to be able to help India. After all, we needed the support of the U.S. Congress, especially on food. It was essential to get other countries to help meet India’s famine needs so that the Congress would not feel we were being called upon to do the whole job. We needed to be able to say to our people that we and the Indians had explored all other avenues. Moreover, we had to make an equitable proposal to the Congress—we could start out by saying that we would do half the remaining job if others would contribute half. If this didn’t work we could say we would do two-thirds. If this didn’t prove feasible, then we might have to do yet more.
The second essential prerequisite was self-help. Anyone we were working with must be able to demonstrate that they were doing the most that they could for themselves. Subramaniam had made a big impression here by describing what India intended to do for itself in agriculture. Now the President wanted to move at Mrs. Gandhi’s pace. But he had to be able to convince our people that Mrs. Gandhi was doing the best for her country first. Ambassador Nehru replied that India was doing more for itself than any other country in the free world. He offered to prove to the President that India was financing more of its own development effort than any other country, and was receiving far less per capita aid than most.
The President said that he had to prove three things to the Congress: first, that others were fully participating in help for India; second, [Page 586] that India was doing everything that she could do for herself; and third, that in providing aid for India and Pakistan, we were not fueling an arms race.
On the political side, the President said that he understood the Indian position on China and wanted India to understand ours. In order to support Mrs. Gandhi we wanted to throw all of her enemies off balance. To this end, we would do the opposite of what people were claiming we were going to do in terms of pressing India. Ambassador Nehru replied that India was prepared to accept the World Bank’s advice if the World Bank were prepared to put up the cost. He explained briefly how India would need a cushion of aid if it were to liberalize the economy.
The above were the highlights of a rather disjointed conversation. Later Ambassador Nehru left with Mr. Komer a set of charts which he had planned to give to the President to demonstrate that India’s own development effort was extensively self-financed; that India’s economic progress had indeed been substantial; and that India’s recent economic growth compared quite favorably to that of Pakistan. He also left a memo2 on Indian aid requirements for the Fourth Plan which called for gross consortium aid during the 5-year period of $8.65 billion; deducting debt service charges of $2.6 billion during the period left a net aid requirement of roughly $6 billion.