First term
Domestic Policy and the 1971 War
When Mrs. Gandhi became Prime Minister in 1966 the Congress was split in two factions, the socialists led by Mrs. Gandhi, and the conservatives led by Morarji Desai. Morarji Desai called her "Gungi Gudiya" which means 'Dumb Doll'. The internal problems showed in the 1967 election where the Congress lost nearly 60 seats winning 297 seats in the 545 seat Lok Sabha. She had to accommodate Desai as Deputy Prime Minister of India and Finance Minister of India. In 1969 after many disagreements with Desai, the Indian National Congress split. She ruled with support from Socialist and Communist Parties for the next two years. In the same year, in July 1969 she nationalised banks. In 1971, to solve the Bangladeshi refugee problem, she declared war, on Pakistan, on the side of the East Pakistanis, who were fighting for their independence. During the 1971 War, the US under President Richard Nixon sent its Seventh Fleet to the Bay of Bengal as a warning to India keep away from East Pakistan as a pretext to launch a wider attack against West Pakistan, especially over the territory of Kashmir. This move had further alienated India from the First World, and Prime Minister Gandhi now accelerated a previously cautious new direction in national security and foreign policy. India and the USSR had earlier signed the Treaty of Friendship and Mutual Cooperation, resulting in political and military support contributing substantially to India's victory in the 1971 war.

Foreign Policy
She invited the new Pakistani President Zulfikar Ali Bhutto to Shimla for a week-long summit. After the near-failure of the talks, the two heads of state eventually signed the Shimla Agreement, which bound the two countries to resolve the Kashmir dispute by negotiations and peaceful means. Due to her antipathy for Nixon, relations with the United States grew distant, while relations with the Soviet Union grew closer.
Indira Gandhi was criticized by some for not making the Line of Control a permanent border while a few critics even believed that Pakistan-administered Kashmir should have been extracted from Pakistan, whose 93,000 prisoners of war were under Indian control. But the agreement did remove immediate United Nations and third party interference, and greatly reduced the likelihood of Pakistan launching a major attack in the near future. By not demanding total capitulation on a sensitive issue from Bhutto, she had allowed Pakistan to stabilize and normalize. Trade relations were also normalized, though much contact remained frozen for years.

Devaluation of the Rupee
During the late 1960s, Indira's administration decreed a 40 per cent devaluation in the value of the Indian Rupee from 4 to 7 to the US Dollar to boost trade.

Nuclear Weapons Programme
A national nuclear programme, was started by Mrs. Gandhi, in 1967, which evolved from the nuclear threat from the People's Republic of China and the intrusive interest of the two major superpowers not conducive to India's stability and security. In 1974, India successfully conducted an underground nuclear test, unofficially code named as smiling Buddha, near the desert village of Pokhran in Rajasthan. Describing the test as for peaceful purposes, India became the world's youngest nuclear power.

Green Revolution
Special agricultural innovation programs and extra government support launched in the 1960s finally transformed India's chronic food shortages into surplus production of wheat, rice, cotton and milk. Rather than relying on food aid from the United States - headed by a President whom Mrs. Gandhi disliked considerably (the feeling was mutual: to Nixon, Indira was "the old witch"), the country became a food exporter. That achievement, along with the diversification of its commercial crop production, has become known as the Green Revolution. At the same time, the White Revolution was an expansion in milk production which helped to combat malnutrition, especially amidst young children. 'Food security', as the programme was called, was another source of support for Mrs. Gandhi in the years leading up to 1975.

Established in the early 1960s, the Green Revolution was the unofficial name given to the Intense Agricultural District Programme (IADP) which sought to insure abundant, inexpensive grain for urban dwellers upon whose support Gandhi -- as indeed all Indian politicians -- heavily depended. The program was based on four premises: 1) New varieties of seed(s), 2) Acceptance of the necessity of the chemicalization of Indian agriculture, i.e. fertilizers, pesticides, weed killers, etc., 3) A commitment to national and international cooperative research to develop new and improved existing seed varieties, 4) The concept of developing a scientific, agricultural institutions in the form of land grant colleges.[8] Lasting about ten years, the program was ultimately to bring about a tripling of wheat production, a lower but still impressive increase of rice; while there was little to no increase (depending on area, and adjusted for population growth) of such cereals as millet, gram and coarse grain, though these did, in fact, retain a relatively stable yield.

Second term (1971-1975)
1971 Poll Victory
Gandhi's government faced major problems after her tremendous mandate of 1971. The internal structure of the Congress Party had withered following its numerous splits, leaving it entirely dependent on her leadership for its election fortunes. Garibi Hatao (Stop Poverty) was the theme for Gandhi's 1971 bid. The slogan and the proposed anti-poverty programs that came with it were designed to give Gandhi an independent national support, based on rural and urban poor. This would allow her to bypass the dominant rural castes both in and of state and local government; likewise the urban commercial class. And, for their part, the previously voiceless poor would at last gain both political worth and political weight.

The programs created through Garibi Hatao, though carried out locally, were funded, developed, supervised, and staffed by New Delhi and the Indian National Congress party. "These programs also provided the central political leadership with new and vast patronage resources to be disbursed...throughout the country." In the end, Garibi Hatao did little to help the poor: Only about 4% of all funds allocated for economic development went to the three main anti-poverty programs, and almost none of it ever reached the 'poorest of the poor'. So although the program failed to stop poverty it achieved its goal of getting Gandhi elected.

Leaning Toward Totalitarianism
Gandhi had already been accused of authoritarianism. By using her strong parliamentary majority, her ruling Congress Party had amended the Constitution and altered the balance of power between the Centre and the States in favour of the Central Government. She had twice imposed President's Rule under Article 356 of the Constitution by declaring states ruled by opposition parties as "lawless and chaotic", and thus seizing control. In addition, elected officials and the administrative services resented the growing influence of Sanjay Gandhi, who had become Gandhi's close political adviser at the expense of men like P. N. Haksar, Gandhi's previous adviser during her rise to power. In response to her new tendency for authoritarian use of power, public figures and former freedom-fighters like Jaya Prakash Narayan, Satyendra Narayan Sinha and Acharya Jivatram Kripalani toured India, speaking actively against her and her government.

Charges
On June 12, 1975 the High Court of Allahabad declared Indira Gandhi's election to the Lok Sabha void on grounds of alleged malpractices in an election petition filed by Raj Narain (who had repeatedly contested her Parliamentary constituency of Rae Bareli without success). The court thus ordered her to be removed from her seat in Parliament and banned from running in elections for six years. The Prime Minister must be a member of either the Lok Sabha (lower house in the Parliament of India) or the Rajya Sabha (the upper house of the Parliament). Thus, this decision effectively removed her from office.

When Gandhi appealed the decision; the opposition parties and their supporters, eager to gain political capital from the situation, rallied en masse calling for her resignation. The sheer number of strikes by unions and protesters paralyzed life in many states. To strengthen this movement, J. P. Narayan called upon the police to disobey orders if asked to fire on unarmed crowds. Public disenchantment with her government combined with hard economic times and huge crowds of protestors surrounded the Parliament building and her residence in Delhi, demanding her resignation.

State of Emergency (1975-1977)
Gandhi moved to restore order by ordering the arrest of most of the opposition participating in the unrest. Her Cabinet and government then recommended that President Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed declare a state of emergency, because of the disorder and lawlessness following the Allahabad High Court decision. Accordingly, Ahmed declared a State of Emergency caused by internal disorder, based on the provisions of Article 352 of the Constitution, on June 26, 1975.

Rule by Decree
Within a few months, President's Rule was imposed on the two opposition party ruled states of Gujarat and Tamil Nadu thereby bringing the entire country under direct Central rule. Police were granted powers to impose curfews and indefinitely detain citizens and all publications were subjected to substantial censorship by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting.Inder Kumar Gujral, a future prime minister himself, resigned as Minister for Information and Broadcasting to protest Sanjay Gandhi's interference in his work. Finally, impending legislative assembly elections were indefinitely postponed, with all opposition-controlled state governments being removed by virtue of the constitutional provision allowing for a dismissal of a state government on recommendation of the state's governor.

Gandhi used the emergency provisions to grant herself extraordinary powers. It is alleged that she further moved President Ahmed to issue ordinances that did not need to be debated in Parliament, allowing her to rule by decree.

Simultaneously, Gandhi's government undertook a campaign to stamp out dissent including the arrest and detention of thousands of political activists; Sanjay was instrumental in initiating the clearing of slums around Delhi's Jama Masjid under the supervision of Jag Mohan, later Lt. Governor of Delhi, which allegedly left thousands of people homeless and hundreds killed, and led to communal embitterment in those parts of the nation's capital; and the family planning program which forcibly imposed vasectomy on thousands of fathers and was often poorly administered.

Third term
In 1977, Gandhi called elections. One factor was the economic gains, though there may have been political considerations at play. Gandhi may have grossly misjudged her popularity by reading what the heavily censored press wrote about her, or may have feared a military coup had she attempted to rule by decree any longer (There were reports that the Armed Forces would forcibly remove her from power and hold elections. See Tapishwar Narain Raina). In any case, she was soundly defeated by the Janata Party. Janata, led by her long-time rival, Desai and with Jai Prakash Narayan as its spiritual guide, claimed the elections were the last chance for India to choose between "democracy and dictatorship." Indira and Sanjay Gandhi both lost their seats, and Congress was cut down to 153 seats (compared with 350 in the previous Lok Sabha), 92 of which were in the south.

Removal, Arrest, and Return
Desai became Prime Minister and Neelam Sanjiva Reddy became the President, the establishment choice of 1969, became President of the Republic. Gandhi found herself without work, income or residence until winning a by-election in 1978. The Congress Party split during the election campaign of 1977 with veteran Gandhi supporters like Jagjivan Ram abandoning her for Janata. The Congress (Gandhi) Party was now a much smaller group in Parliament, although the official opposition.
Unable to govern owing to fractious coalition warfare, the Janata government's Home Minister, Choudhary Charan Singh, ordered the arrest of Indira and Sanjay Gandhi on several charges, none of which would be easy to prove in an Indian court. The arrest meant that Indira was automatically expelled from Parliament. However, this strategy backfired disastrously. Her arrest and long-running trial, however, gained her great sympathy from many people who had feared her as a tyrant just two years earlier.

The Janata coalition was only united by its hatred of Mrs. Gandhi (or "that woman" as some called her). With so little in common, the government was bogged down by infighting and Gandhi was able to use the situation to her advantage. She began giving speeches again, tacitly apologizing for "mistakes" made during the Emergency. Desai resigned in June 1979, and Charan Singh was appointed Prime Minister by Reddy after Mrs. Gandhi promised that Congress would support his government from outside.
After a short interval, she withdrew her initial support and President Reddy dissolved Parliament in the winter of 1979. In elections held the following January, Congress was returned to power with a landslide majority.
Indira Gandhi was awarded the Lenin Peace Prize (for 1983-84).

Currency crisis
During the early 1980s, Indira's administration failed to arrest the 40 per cent fall in the value of the Indian Rupee from 7 to 12 to the US Dollar.

Operation Blue Star
Gandhi's later years were bedeviled with problems in Punjab. In September 1981, Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale 's separatist Sikh militant group took up positions within the precincts of the Golden Temple, Sikhism's holiest shrine. Despite the presence of thousands of civilians in the Golden Temple complex at the time Gandhi ordered the Army into the shrine in an attempt to clear it of the militants. Accounts differ in the number of military and civilian casualties. Government estimates include four officers, seventy-nine soldiers, and 492 militants; other accounts are much higher, perhaps 500 or more troops and 3,000 others, including many pilgrims caught in the crossfire. While the exact figures related to civilian casualties are disputed, the timing and method of the attack remain controversial.

Political Career

Assasination