The proliferation of slums had begun, and small groups were already hogging up the larger part of the gains of development. No concerted attempt was made to close the loopholes in land laws and little was done to make school education relevant to the needs of a developing society. The language policy was left to flounder. That the people still look back to the Nehru era with a sense of nostalgia shows that even things which looked manageable in his days are now out of control. Perhaps this is the result of a deterioration in the quality of leadership, a distressing decline in the integrity of political life and an alarming build-up of populist pressure. But it also is the result of the way each government has been busy storing up trouble for future. Can one be sure after all this that the foundations on which the republic rests are durable enough?     What light does this throw on the Indian mind? The Indian mind delights in ambiguity in ambivalence, in trying to have the best of both worlds, in harboring a medley of conflicting ideas without much discomfort. Whatever the public rhetoric, the practice is always based on half-measures, of leaving things half done, of a refusal to anticipate trouble and a tendency to wake up when the crisis has already matured, this may be an exaggeration. But the slovenliness of approach to every problem is a fact of life which hits in the eye even the most sympathetic foreign observer.     It is not surprising that the Indian genius which excelled in production myths, which created works of sculpture which endow the spirit with a body and a music which enthralls the mind as well as the spirit, was often at a loss in facing up to the problems of state building. The Indian mind still falters as it tries to come to grips with these problems.