NEW DELHI, Dec. 13—“That woman“—as the Pakistani President, Agha Mohammad Yahya Khan, has several times described Prime Minister Indira Gandhi—seems assured and comfortable in the role of national wartime leader.

There is a consensus here that Mrs. Gandhi is definitely in charge and in control of the Indian war effort against Pakistan.

So far as is known, the 54‐year‐old Prime Minister does not interfere in purely tactical and professional military decisions by the Indian generals conducting the war.

But, as one source said, “She sets the goals and is making all the major decisions—there is no question about it. Then she lets the army carry them out.”

Although she has been Prime Minister since early 1966, it was only this year that she reached the zenith of personal power and popularity that makes possible her present degree of unquestioned authority.

From 1966 to 1969 there was a relentless ideological and personal struggle between Mrs. Gandhi and the conservative wing of the ruling Congress party.

In 1969 she forced the resignation of the Deputy Prince Minister, Morarji R. Desai, and the Congress party split, leaving her with a minority in Parliament. During 1970 she governed with the help of Communist and other minority groups.

In the general election of March this year, she won a sweeping and decisive victory for her “new” Congress party. Her election victory came only 15 days before Pakistani leaders suddenly began to use force to crush the Bengali autonomy movement in East Pakistan. As the resulting crisis between India and Pakistan grew, she thus was able to act from a secure domestic political base.

Since general war began on Dec. 3, Mrs. Gandhi has continued to work about 14 hours a day, as she did in the past.

Each morning Mrs. Gandhi has a long meeting of the Political Affairs Committee, which is attended by Defense Minister Jagjivan Ram, Finance Minister Y. B. Chavan, the Food Minister, Fakhruddin Ali, and Foreign Minister Swaran Singh—who is now temporarily absent in New York. The armed service chiefs also attend this important meeting.

India technically has a Cabinet form of government modeled on that of Britain, but in practice it has not had genuine Cabinet government.

Mrs. Gandhi's father, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, who died in 1964, hardly ever consulted the Cabinet. He took key steps that led India into disastrous war with China on the northern border in 1962, without consulting the Cabinet. He did not even inform the Cabinet of his actual plan to invade Goa in 1961.

The Political Affairs Committee has, perhaps, more in fluence than it would have had under Mr. Nehru. One source doubts that Mrs. Gandhi would defy a unanimous recommendation by its members, but they seem to be more advisers than co‐makers of policy.

Because real Cabinet government does not exist, senior civil servants have much more influence than they would have in a country such as Britain. Like British civil servants, Indian civil servants refer to the politicians as “our masters.” But in fact, the Prime Minister tends to confer with some of them directly and to use them as part of her personal staff.

Kashmiri Brahmins, who as a class are proud, intelligent and self‐confident, are prominent among her advisers. The Nehru family is Kashmiri Brahmin, although it migrated to what is now Uttar Pradesh, a state in North India, several generations ago.

The civil servants closest to Mrs. Gandhi—all of them Kashmiri Brahmins—are said to be P. N. Haksar, her principal secretary; T. N. Kaul, the Foreign Secretary, and Durga P. Dhar, head of policy planning in the Foreign Ministry.

However, one source remarks: “These men are advisers. They give her the technical expertise she needs. She draws on all of them, but she makes up her own mind.”

Partly as a result of the military debacle of 1962 against China, the Indian Army was greatly strengthened and professionalism—as personified by the present Chief of Staff, Gen. S. F. H. J. Manekshaw—accorded greater, status. In the Nehru days General Manekshaw, then a major general, was tried by a board of inquiry for allegedly making disrespectful remarks about V. K. Krishna Menon, then the Defense Minister, and narrowly escaped being dismissed. Civil-military relations in India today seem to be on a very good footing.

As a result, Mrs. Gandhi had a strong and effective military force—more powerful than most of the world realized‐at hand when the crisis with Pakistan grew.