IN the wake of the Congress (I) rout in Andhra and Karnataka, Mrs. Gandhi faces two apparently contradictory demands. She has to demonstrate, on the one hand, that she is not too rattled by it and, on the other, that she is sensitive to the message the people in the two states have sought to convey to her and is willing, indeed anxious, to heed it.
On the face of it, to reconcile these demands is like squaring the circle. In reality, they are not only compatible with each other but complementary to each other. For only a self-confident Indira can try to do what the Indian people expect her to do – to give them a political order which is moral enough to command their respect; a rattled Mrs. Gandhi would in all probability resort to some gimmicks which in the present context would almost certainly further complicate things for her and the country.
Where then is she to begin? The answer naturally depends on one’s analysis of the nature of the challenge. The challenge is clearly multi-faceted. The Congress (I) is, for example, a shambles, as the Prime Minister herself has acknowledged, even if indirectly, in the first observation she made last week on the party’s defeat in the two southern states. The record of the Congress (I) governments there as elsewhere has been miserable. The upsurge of dissidence in the ruling party in Maharashtra and Rajasthan on the eve of the crucial poll could not but have detracted from its appeal.
Mrs. Gandhi will need to attend to all these problems. But these are essentially manifestations of one main malady – the moral decay of the party. It is not dying because, like every living organism, it is subject to the natural process of decay. It is being devoured by the cancer of indifference to all norms of public morality. This view will be disputed by the so-called hard-headed realists who have brought the party to the present pass. But even they will not be able to produce another explanation for the debacle in the erstwhile southern citadels. For there is not much room for doubt that the Congress (I) will meet a similar fate if it were to go to the polls in any Hindi-speaking state. There is just no question that the disenchantment with it has spread to all parts of the country.
The moral issue is extremely important in India from another angle. Not only the Congress (I) but the country is critically dependent on Mrs. Gandhi’s ability to continue to command the necessary authority and this authority is, in the final analysis, dependent not so much on her political skills, however useful these may be for the management of the affairs of the Indian state, as on her image as the guardian of a moral order, To disregard this reality is to write off the 5,000-year-old history of this land and insult its people.
Stress On Morality
I emphasised this point in a two-part article last week and I return to it today because I am convinced that Mrs Gandhi’s authority cannot otherwise be restored and that such a restoration is essential if the country is not to drift into confusion and chaos internally and face a threat to its security externally. Foreign governments are already busy reassessing their politics towards India.
If Mrs Gandhi accepts this assessment, then her course of action will define itself. She has to establish first a moral order around her. Correction in India must begin at the top. It is not for nothing that while the westerners have believed that “the people get the government they deserve”, our people have for millennia believed in the adage Yatha Raja Tatha Praja! The literal translation would be “as the ruler so the people”. That would, however, miss the spirit of this famous saying. Its proper implication is that only a good (read just and effective) king can provide a good government because the others in the administration will take their cue from him and his court.
We almost wilfully opened the floodgate of immorality in our public life when in 1969 parliament at the instance of the government dominated by pseudo-radicals banned donations to political parties by business houses. Since then, all parties have depended on black money for financing their activities. This has been especially true of the Congress. As the largest party, it has needed more money than other political organisations; and being in office most of the time at the Centre and in the states, it has been in a position to confer favours on those who have been willing to establish such a nexus with it. The number of business houses of varying sizes which have not been so willing can be counted on one’s finger-tips. Indeed, it is a common belief among the country’s industrial-commercial circles that after 1969 some Congress fund collectors established close contacts with leading smugglers with disastrous consequences for the country’s political system and economy. Since no one without access to the official machinery can prove the charge, it is neither proper nor indeed necessary to name individuals who so disgraced themselves and their party. Everyone knows the names of the “innovators” and their successors.
We face the same difficulty in respect of the goings-on in New Delhi today. No one outside the government can possibly prove, save in some exceptionally bad cases, the charges against the brokers who abound in the capital. But one must be very innocent indeed if one has not heard of these brokers and their activities.
Keep Away Brokers
It is not pertinent to establish that the brokers are as brazen in their ways, as ambitious in terms of the pay-offs and as powerful in terms of influence as they are said to be or claim to be. The pertinent point is that such men operate in New Delhi apparently without let or hindrance and bring discredit to both Mrs. Gandhi and Mr. Rajiv Gandhi. They will have to be packed off if she is to convince the people that she in fact means business.
Bombay and Delhi have become vast whispering galleries. One would be out of one’s mind to believe all that one hears. It is, for example, incredible that projects involving several hundred million dollars can be given away in an arbitrary manner without any consideration of competence and reputation or that their cost is willfully raised in order that the enormous sums involved can be siphoned off into some private accounts in foreign banks, or that potential domestic supplies are deliberately shut out even when they are fully competitive. By in view of disclosures regarding the Kuo oil deal, Mr AR Antulay’s infamous trusts, his and other chief ministers’ even more dangerous misdoings and the private testimony of established businessmen, how does one reject all these stories as malicious fiction spun out by the government’s opponents with a view to discrediting it? The stories may be fiction. One hopes they are. But how is one to convince others that they are monstrous lies. And, unlike during the emergency when Mrs Gandhi’s political opponents manufactured the rumours and spread them, this time the sources are mostly non-political.
I for one have never believed that Mrs. Gandhi wants to found a dynasty. I have felt that it is an insult to her intelligence to believe that she thinks that she can ensure Mr. Rajiv Gandhi’s succession to her. I have taken the view that as a child of the Indian revolution, she must know that she cannot force her son or anyone else on the people, especially in view of the magnitude and pace of change in the country. So I have inferred that if she had persuaded him to enter politics, she had done so under the compulsion of circumstances arising out of Mrs. Maneka Gandhi’s inordinate ambitions; and that if she was “promoting” him, she was doing so in order to give the people a possible rallying point amidst confusion that might follow her inevitable disappearance from the scene one day.
Restoring Authority?
In such a perspective Mr. Rajiv Gandhi should have functioned in the given institutional framework of parliament and the party such as it is. He could have assisted his mother in a limited way, though in the act of getting elected to parliament, he had closed that option for himself. For he had staked his claim to be regarded as a political figure in his own right. In any case, from whatever angle one looks at him, there could be no place for the kind of set-up that has emerged around him.
In the nature of things, it has a come to be regarded as an extra-constitutional centre of authority and as such it has become a liability rather than an asset for him. Mr. Rajiv Gandhi does not provoke the kind of reaction that his younger brother did. But he will be sadly mistaken if he thinks that his establishment does not provoke criticism among the articulate sections of the community and bitterness and caustic comments among ministers and senior bureaucrats. In private, they take care to let it be known that they are not responsible for the decisions which attract adverse attention. They quite readily name individuals under whose “orders” they claim to have acted.
This does not reflect well on the ministers and bureaucrats. On their own admission, they are bending the rules to please certain individuals even at the cost of the nation. But the fact remains that once again the legitimate decision-making agencies of the government have come to be devalued. As a result they have been demoralised and deprived of the sense of responsibility which is necessary to enable them to function with a degree of commitment, honesty and efficiency. Men who are denied the respect due to their office are likely to become cynical, irresponsible and corrupt.
Even the Union cabinet, as we have said in an earlier piece, is not a model of integrity and efficiency. Some of the ministers would be a disgrace to a well-run municipality. Mrs Gandhi will need to undertake a major reshuffle of her own cabinet if she is to win the confidence of the people. But it is far more important and urgent to restore the authority of the institution of the cabinet. It will take a great deal of doing, in view of the extent of the damage that has already been done and the weak and dependent character of many of the ministers. It is quite a task lending authority to men willing to abase themselves without even a whimper of protest. But they are there and they should be encouraged and enabled to behave as ministers. At least they have gone through the grueling school of politics and they are accountable to their peers in parliament.
The Times of India, 19 January 1983