One great merit of the Indian political system is that it is open-ended. This increases its capacity to absorb shocks. But it has to accommodate so many diverse and conflicting interests and groups that it has little thrust and dynamism. In other words it does not permit of quick or bold action.
This is not a new development. The split in the Congress Party which has deprived the Union Government of a majority in Parliament and broken up the only genuine all-India party may have aggravated the problem but it cannot be said to have produced it.
The same is, in a sense, true of the last General Election in 1967 when the undivided Congress Party lost its near monopoly of power. The system has in fact been under strain for almost a decade. Except in the field of agriculture where a limited and halting effort has been made in recent years, under the threat of a widespread famine, to push ahead along the path of modernisation it has shown little capacity for creative initiative.
The stark truth is that the system had almost lost its capacity to respond to new challenges by the end of the ’fifties when the second five-year Plan moved into its final stage. As it happened, this coincided with the beginning of the trouble with Peking which led to the Chinese attack in October 1962, a sharp rise in defence expenditure, and a decline in Mr. Nehru’s power and prestige.
Moot Point
It is a moot point whether a younger and more vigorous Nehru could have dealt with the new challenges more effectively and given the system a new dynamism. The more pertinent point is that towards the end of his political career it was not possible for him to do so and that his successors have failed to impart to the economy and the national polity a new vigour and sense of direction.
This is not altogether surprising. Few countries of the third world have been able to find answers to the problems of modernising an ancient and a highly fragmented society and of coping with the tensions it generates. Even China has not fared too well. Though it has several advantages over India in that it is broadly a homogenous society and has had long experience of statecraft, it too has been floundering for more or less a similar period. The great leap forward in 1958-59 and the proletarian cultural revolution in 1966-68 have been more in the nature of desperate remedies than attempts to implement well thought out plans of economic growth and social and political change.
Once it is conceded that the Indian political system lacks sufficient drive it is poor comfort to say that it has shown the capacity to survive two wars, two succession crises, two years of widespread drought, the resulting recession and inflation and a split in the ruling party. It is one thing to survive and quite another to match promise with performance.
It is extremely difficult to pinpoint the central problem and even more so to prescribe the remedy. One of the country’s leading political scientists, Mr. Rajni Kothari, has made a valiant attempt to do both in his very competent study Politics in India*. This book supersedes much that has been written on the subject in recent years and deserves the attention of all those who are interested in the subject.
It will not be quite fair to say that Mr. Kothari has been so taken up with what he calls the “incremental model”, and which for the sake of clarity may be called the Nehru model, that he does not pose the question about its continuing validity. But this question does not occupy the central place in the discussion which it clearly deserves.
Nehru Model
Briefly, the Nehru model depended for its success on a variety of factors – the low level of politicisation which made it possible for the Congress Party to continue to dominate the national scene, the presence of a charismatic leader who could keep the diverse elements in the ruling party united, the existence of “vote banks” in the countryside which could be tapped through the extension of patronage, the growth of the public sector with foreign loans which made it possible for Mr. Nehru to allow big business houses to become bigger and economic disparities to increase without inviting the charge of pursuing Rightist policies, international prestige which could be used to prevent the alienation of the intelligentsia, low defence expenditure and a rapid expansion of the bureaucracy to cope with the problems of educated unemployment.
Mr. Nehru made no serious effort to build the Congress Party as a vehicle of participatory democracy and orderly social change. It is difficult to say whether he came to the conclusion that it was just not possible to do so in a poor country or whether he felt that the tasks in hand could as well be performed through the use of the administrative machinery. But the fact remains that the Congress Party in the post-independence period steadily lost its idealism and dynamism, that it did not deepen and broaden its hold in the constituencies and that its best men preferred Governmental office to organisational work in the field. Mr. Nehru was aware of these problems and spoke about them from time to time. But there the matter rested and the party continued to languish.
Mr. Kothari takes the view that the level of effective politicisation in the country is still pretty low, that the revolution of rising expectation has affected only certain segments of the urban population and that the pressure on the system is therefore by no means unmanageable. Even if this is indeed the case, the erosion of other constituents of the Nehru model must surely imply that the system cannot repeat the successes of the ’fifties. Mr. Kothari does not quite say that it can without drastic changes and a more dynamic leadership from Mrs. Gandhi and her colleagues. But many of his recommendations merely beg the question. The ruling party should widen its base. But how? The education system should be overhauled. But who is to foot the bill and where are the men to do the job? The list can be expanded.
In reality almost everything points to two facts – old solutions no longer work and new ones are not in sight. The defence expenditure, for instance, cannot be reduced to release resources for economic growth. On the contrary, there is increasing pressure for the production of nuclear weapons. The public sector cannot be expanded because the necessary aid is not available, because domestic resources are limited and because the performance of the existing units is extremely poor. Big business houses cannot grow unnoticed and in the prevailing climate of public opinion they are not likely to grow even if it hits the country’s economy and retards its exports. Agriculture needs to be modernised but even the initial steps are said to have produced new disparities and created new tensions in the countryside. The recent land-grab movement is one off-shoot of the agricultural revolution which is still in its infancy.
Political Field
In the political field, the ruling party cannot hope to recapture its old dominating position. It is not even trying. But no party or coalition is ready to take its place. Mr. Kothari defines democracy as the politics of coalition-making. This is true. But in India no coalition has held except the one that the undivided Congress represented and the ruling party still represents. Though the ideological differences between these parties are not sharp, their tendency is to fragment rather than coalesce. The CPI, for example, regards the CPM as its principal enemy and the old Congress will do anything to disrupt the new Congress. The Congress socialists of the pre-independence era have split into so many factions that it is difficult to keep count of them. So the story goes on.
At the moment the Naxalites are the only group which is not interested in seeking accommodation within the system. But it is quite possible that more of such groups of young people may arise in coming years. Three factors are crucial in this context.
First, the standard of education in most schools, colleges and universities is woefully poor with the result that every year they turn out millions of unemployable young men and women. It is not quite relevant to talk of giving them technical training when the economy is not able to provide work to all the engineers and diploma holders who pass out of engineering colleges and polytechnics. In any case, where are the resources?
Secondly, there is not much scope for bureaucratic expansion. The Government will indeed find it increasingly hard to raise the necessary funds even to meet the demands of its present employees for better emoluments.
Lastly, the advances in technology are making it virtually impossible for a poor country to create enough jobs in industry even if other factors are favourable for its expansion which they are not in India’s case.
All in all, while democratic institutions may not be in danger, they have become anaemic. It is easy to say that they need to be energised; it is more difficult to suggest the precise means. But it is indisputable that the problem needs to be faced in all its starkness. Only a major national debate can throw up a solution. Mr. Kothari will have made a valuable contribution if he succeeds in provoking a wide-ranging discussion with his wide-ranging study. Some readers may be put off by the technical jargon and Americanisms that are unfortunately becoming too common in the writings of Indian political scientists. But that is a small fault in an effort of this kind.
* Politics in India by Rajni Kothari, Orient Longmans, Rs 30
The Times of India, 16 September 1970
