Mrs. Gandhi is known for her capacity to spring surprises. She has often confounded her supporters and detractors alike in the past. She has done so once again by selecting Mr. Babasaheb Anantrao Bhosale as chief minister for Maharashtra. No one in Bombay anticipated this move for the simple reason that hardly anyone in the city’s political circles takes him seriously. What commended him to Mrs. Gandhi is a mystery. He is a “blue-blooded” Maratha; he is incapable of reorganizing the once powerful Maratha lobby; he is not Mr. Antulay’s nominee; indeed, only recently Mr. Antulay deprived him of the transport portfolio; he is not anti-Antulay. On this kind of reasoning it can be argued that Mrs. Gandhi has picked up a non-controversial person. But Mr. Bhosale was not a consensus candidate. No one canvassed his name. And on the present reckoning at least, he does not appear to be capable of either effectively uniting the party behind him, or of re-burnishing its image which Mr. Antulay has wilfully besmirched, or of raising the administration’s morale which the former chief minister deliberately shattered to impose his personal rule on the state.
Mr. Bhosale has two other “distinctions”. First, he belongs to the so-called group of loyalists, that is Congressmen who crossed over to Mrs. Gandhi’s side at the time of the second party split in 1978 and stayed with her when she was in wilderness. Secondly, he is the son-in-law of Mr. Tulsidas Jadhav, a former MP. Neither of these have clinched the issue in his favour.
It is possible that Mr. Bhosale possesses qualities which hardly anyone in Maharashtra has so far suspected in him, and that he may be able to give a reasonably good account of himself. Some people do grow with responsibility. But unless Mr. Bhosale turns out to be a very different man from the one the people in the state have known, Mrs. Gandhi’s action will be judged harshly as much by her supporters as by her critics. There is near unanimity among the articulate sections of society in Bombay that she has been unfair to the state and in the process to the country. For Maharashtra is not just another state. It accounts for one-third of the country’s industrial production and Bombay is India’s commercial-financial capital. By her action, she has also further lowered the morale of her party and thrown away another opportunity to demonstrate that she is determined to give the country a government that works – honestly and efficiently, both at the Centre and in the states.
Good and competent men were available to her for the job. Mr. SB Chavan, for example, is known for his integrity as well as administrative ability. Other names can be cited. We use this only to illustrate the fact that Mrs. Gandhi’s choice was not all that narrow. We do not know what disqualified the others in Mrs. Gandhi’s eyes. All that we can say is that speculation is rife that they have been rejected because they do not belong to the original praetorian guard. If this is true, it is a pity. And from the recent selection of new members of the council of ministers in New Delhi, it does look as if she is still busy rewarding the “original faithful”.
The country is suffering as a result of the implicit discrimination against the “late-comers” because it is being denied their valuable experience. By continuing to divide her partymen into two classes and by creating the impression that loyalty alone matters to her, Mrs. Gandhi is not serving her own interests either. She is the Prime Minister of the whole country and not just of those who stood by her in 1977 or even in 1980. She can hope to build a new national consensus only if she ceases to function on the basis of such narrow considerations as loyalty to her at a particular stage and in extraordinary circumstances created by the emergency and the Congress party’s defeat. By dithering on the selection of a new chief minister for Maharashtra for a whole week, Mrs. Gandhi has also administered a shock to those who have in the past admired her for her decisiveness and capacity to anticipate events. Mr. Antulay’s exit had been on the cards since the petition against him in the cement case was admitted on September 23 last year. Mr. Justice SC Pratap had then made observations which suggested that in all probability Mr. Antulay would be held guilty of the charge of having allotted cement quotes to some favoured builders in return for “contributions” to his trusts. Thus Mrs. Gandhi had a long enough notice to make up her mind on his successor.