393. Editorial Note
On November 27, 1966, Secretary of Agriculture Orville Freeman called President Johnson to discuss the report of the experts Freeman had sent to India to assess agricultural developments. Freeman said he was preparing a memorandum for the President summarizing the report. Johnson observed that such a memorandum would be politically sensitive, and he was concerned about leaks to the press in the Department of Agriculture. He told Freeman to give him an oral summary of the report and not to submit the memorandum. Freeman noted that his experts had gone to India with instructions to determine how well India was living up to the agreement Freeman and Subramaniam had signed in Rome. The experts concluded that “their batting average was about 80 per cent. That on the things they said they’d do, they pretty [Page 764] well delivered on.” On balance, the experts gave the Indian Government an “A” for effort.
Freeman went on to assess the new food crisis that was complicating the Indian Government’s efforts to live up to the agreement. “This monsoon failure took place in central India. It came on very quickly with an almost complete failure of rainfall in the last six weeks.” In some ways, he noted, the new crisis posed a more difficult problem than the subcontinent-wide crisis of the previous year: “this time the shortfall is concentrated in a very limited area that involves about 150 million people which is a long way from the seacoast and which, unfortunately, is in an area in India which has the worst government in terms of the state government. And they seem to be having just a hell of a time getting the local leadership in that area—the chief ministers, as they call them—to move.” Freeman observed that without food supplies from abroad there was a serious danger of starvation.
In response to a question from Johnson, Freeman stated that the anticipated grain harvest in India would produce some 85 million tons, approximately 10 million tons less than expected before the failure of the monsoons. Johnson asked how the projected 85 million ton total compared with the amount of grain produced in India the previous year. Freeman responded that India had produced 74 million tons during the previous famine year. Johnson asked how much grain had been supplied to India from abroad during the previous year, and Freeman indicated that India had received approximately 11 million tons, of which the United States had supplied 8.5 million. Johnson found it difficult to understand why India needed grain from abroad if it was going to produce as much as it had gotten by on during the previous year:
“I just don’t see why they ought to call Uncle Sam. They got eleven million more tons of production this year than they had last year when we gave them ten. Themselves. Now, they haven’t had a goddamn big failure. They’ve just produced eleven million more than they had last year. But they’re just on that tit and they want ten million free tons, and we want it for our farmers and so nobody here is stopping.”
Freeman explained that the problem in India was one of uneven distribution. Some of the Indian states would enjoy grain surpluses, but in the wake of the famine it was difficult to persuade people to part with that surplus. One of the options being considered by the Gandhi government, if grain from abroad could not be found to meet the new crisis, was to use the army to compel a redistribution of grain. Freeman noted that with a general election pending in India, the experts in the Department of Agriculture felt that such a move would probably lead to the fall of the government. Another option would be to use the limited foreign exchange reserves India had to buy grain on the international market. To do so, however, would impact heavily on the [Page 765] economic development program the United States was supporting in India. Johnson was skeptical about how India was spending its foreign exchange reserves: “I’d bear in mind that they got two hundred million of currency that they can buy all the damn wheat they need, instead of airplanes.” He also had difficulty sympathizing with the distribution problem Freeman had described:
“It’s just a hell of a note for me to say to India that I’ve got a big surplus in Texas but I haven’t in Maine so you got to ship it up to us for Maine, India, because I won’t take it from Texas. That don’t make sense. The only reason I got to ship it is because they won’t use their own.”
Johnson was also dubious about the advice he was getting on India: “I’ve got more damn people that are working for the Indians and fewer working for the Americans than anybody I ever saw.” With that reservation, he asked Freeman to outline the immediate problem. Freeman noted that significant quantities of wheat were scheduled to be shipped from the United States to India in December and January. Between 800,000 and 900,000 tons were to be shipped in December and some 200,000 more in January. From the middle of January until the beginning of April, however, Freeman stated “they are going to be naked.” Except for the United States, Canada was the only other country contemplating emergency grain supplies for India, and Canada was hampered by frozen ports. In light of the serious nature of the crisis, Freeman suggested that Johnson authorize an additional 2 million tons of grain to bridge the shortfall until the new crop was harvested in India in April.
Johnson was not prepared to make the kind of commitment proposed by Freeman without authorization from Congress. He was concerned over the prospect of a $20 billion budget deficit, and he felt he had to give priority to financing the war in Vietnam. “Now, goddamn it, I’ve just got to stop something. And I don’t know anything easier to stop than the Indian wheat.” He was prepared to contemplate an additional 500,000 tons, at a cost of approximately $35 million, to supplement the more than 1 million tons already scheduled for shipment, but beyond that he wanted Congress to be consulted. His concluding instruction to Freeman was to arrange for a draft resolution bearing on the food crisis for Congress to consider when it came back into session in January:
“I think if you just tell Rusk on this, or Nick, or whoever you are dealing with in the morning that we want to get a resolution ready and, as soon as they do, why, Congress gets back, we’ll have one of the first meetings, like we did last time. We’ll follow the same procedures. Unless there is something that I’m not aware of, I don’t want to go up into the dozens of millions of dollars on commitments unless I got these Congressmen and other folks behind me.” (Johnson Library, [Page 766] Recordings and Transcripts, Recording of Telephone Conversation Between President Johnson and Secretary of Agriculture Freeman, November 27, 1966, 7:30 p.m., Tape F66.32, Sides A and B (entire tape))