84 



whenever something like the assassination of Mrs. Gandhi 

 takes place, basically because of poverty and hopelessness. 

 And why the hell shouldn ' t you riot? 



Sharp: There's nothing else. 



Revelle: Nothing else to do. 



I wish I could think of the name of that man who was 

 the secretary. He died a couple of years ago. But I loved 

 him. Although I didn't think much of his report. The 

 problem with his report was that it had something in it for 

 everybody. It was so mushy that you really couldn't make 

 out what the recommendations were. 



Sharp: Did you see any of your own recommendations in it? 



Revelle: Oh yes, sure. But there were lots of others that worked in 

 the opposite direction! You might look at the report 

 sometime. I'm pretty sure you could find it in the Berkeley 

 library. 



Sharp: I will. 



Revelle: Let me just say one other thing. This was a great 



educational experience for me. I learned more about India 

 then than I could ever have in any other way, because I was 

 traveling around the country and being on the inside. 



One of the things that I remember very well was that 

 at every university we would have a meeting of the students, 

 without the faculty being present. 



I would always ask them one question. "How many of 

 you want to be university professors?" None of them wanted 

 to be university professors. In the United States at that 

 time, half the students would have wanted to be university 

 professors because it was a very happy, prestigious, good 

 thing to be, but not in India. 



Sharp: Did they say what they did want to be? 



Revelle: They wanted to work for the government, for the civil 



service, particularly the administrative service, the higher 

 civil service. There were only 2,000 members of the whole 

 group, I guess, and it only took maybe twenty applicants a 

 year. 



If you went through all the government services, which 

 were more specialized than the old ICS — . The ICS was the 

 original name of this high-level civil service. Those 

 people are all very well educated, speak beautiful English. 

 They are the cream of the cream of the Indian society. They 

 get paid plenty too. But there were very few of them. 

 That's what all these kids wanted to be, and only one out of 

 a hundred could be in, or one out of a thousand. 



Sharp: So most of them were looking to be very disappointed in what 

 they were going to do. 



