ABSTRACT
In the middle 1960s a number of events combined to create a crisis and bring down the first dominant alliance. The 1965 rice crop was stricken by drought, recording a 21.6% decline over the previous year. Lal Bahadur Shastri's immediate economic priorities were to alleviate the shortage of food and to eliminate the humiliating foreign dependence for food supplies. His initial solution was to seek a middle ground between the conflicting imperatives. In the summer of 1964, Subramanian suggested to Shastri that an expert committee headed by his ally, L. K. Jha, be appointed to find a solution to the dispute over food policy. In June of 1964 Shastri appointed Jha to head a Prices Committee to study foodgrain price and distribution policy as a whole, and the question of support and procurement prices in particular. Shastri replaced him with Sachin Chaudhuri, who was regarded as likely to go along with the proagriculture policies.
