How far the intellectual scene had shifted since independence is not generally realised. While in the forties and fifties it was fashionable to be a Marxist of some variety, in the seventies and early eighties, contempt for politics and acceptance of some form of Americanism became fashionable, opposition to U.S. military aid to Pakistan notwithstanding. A number of factors accounted for this change. To mention some of them, the Soviet Union and China had lost their shine; the European, in our case British, influence, which tended to emphasise ideology and politics, had given way to the American influence with its accent on the so-called non-doctrinaire pragmatism, so-called because America is one of the most ideological societies in the world. This “pragmatism” emphasised the role of technology and successfully promoted the belief that all social and economic problems could yield to managerial-technological solutions. There cannot be the slightest doubt that Rajiv Gandhi bought this belief lock, stock and barrel.
Shock Waves
It is hardly necessary to recall that Indira Gandhi’s assassination sent shock waves throughout the length and breadth of India and that this fact determined Rajiv Gandhi’s election platform. Thus he spoke of internal and external threats to the unity and territorial integrity of the country, equated the Akali Dal’s Anandpur Sahib resolution with secession and even invented the theory that opposition parties had endorsed it. He persisted in this propaganda despite their convincing denials. But all this was not the result of conviction, as became evident some months after his landslide victory in the elections to the Lok Sabha. Rajiv Gandhi did not reveal his hand till the elections to the various state legislatures were out of the way in March 1985. As soon as his compulsion was over, his convictions (or more appropriately prejudices) began to unfold themselves. But of that a little later.
Two propositions are made about Rajiv Gandhi, more often in private discussions than in public statements. First, that he took no interest at all in politics before Sanjay Gandhi’s sudden death in June 1980. Second, that he nursed a sense of resentment against his mother on account of her alleged preference for Sanjay as her political heir. Assuming both these statements are true, what conclusions are we to draw from them?
Aversion To Politics
The point needs to be grasped that aversion to politics is also a political position. Contempt for politicians – power brokers as Rajiv Gandhi has called them – means preference for politics of manipulation from above. The British officials under the Raj, it may be recalled, had contempt for politics and politicians and saw themselves as the guardians of the interest of the common people, especially those in the countryside.
Also, a studied aversion to political discussions must leave the mind open to invasion by prejudices which happen to be prevalent among the group one moves in. It requires extensive studies to be aware of the limitations of free enterprise in a backward society groaning under the weight of population explosion and of the weaknesses of western economies. In the absence of such studies, the glitter of the West and its economic success must prove irresistible.
Having grown up in the social milieu he did – Doon School, Cambridge, Imperial College, and career as a pilot – Rajiv Gandhi’s political predisposition would have been very different from Indira Gandhi’s even if he were her favourite son. One need not try to delve into the family secrets to establish this point.
Two additional points may be made here. First, while Indira Gandhi grew up in a period when socialism appeared to be the wave of the future and the Soviet Union the land of hope, Rajiv Gandhi grew up in an era when socialism looked exhausted and the Soviet Union became synonymous with tyranny. Secondly, while Indira Gandhi matured first as Nehru’s confidante and then in the struggle she had to wage from 1967 till her death, Rajiv Gandhi took no interest in politics and has still to taste unpopularity and opposition.
Rajiv Gandhi made his break with his mother on the very morrow of his victory in the Lok Sabha poll. He dropped Pranab Mukherjee who was Indira Gandhi’s most trusted minister, RK Dhawan, her personal private secretary who was not too wrongly described as the second most powerful individual in the country when she was alive, and even her personal valet. All this came as a surprise to most Indians who had not cared to study Rajiv Gandhi. Assisted by individuals with similar social and personal background, he was laying the ground for politics of a different kind. He retained most of Indira Gandhi’s ministers but they were to play second fiddle to their juniors who were the new Prime Minister’s nominees.
Rajiv Gandhi’s Swatantra sympathies found their first eloquent expression in the budget Raja Vishwanath Pratap Singh presented in March 1985. No Indian businessman had expected the kind and range of concessions he offered to the private sector. It was an exercise in Reagonomics without the rhetoric of President Reagan’s aides. This was to be followed by other measures which have gladdened the hearts of multinationals and Western bankers.
Pertinent Issue
A pretty strong case can be made in support of these measures, though of late the adverse consequences of import liberalisation in the shape of a sharp increase in the trade deficit and a sharp drop in the output of capital goods industries have become manifest. But that is not the relevant issue in the present context. The pertinent issue in this discussion is that Rajiv Gandhi’s government has made a radical break with the Nehru-Indira approach to economic development, that this departure is not popular with Congressmen who have grown up in a very different political climate (this fact became evident at the AICC meeting in Delhi in the summer of 1985 when the economic policy resolution drafted by Rajiv Gandhi’s whiz kids had to be jettisoned and a new one affirming “commitment” to socialism had to be hurriedly prepared), and that the new approach has deprived the ruling party of its main plank which had enabled it to win support among the people since independence. Only a group of political novices could have sought to implement Reagonomics in an India where over 40 per cent of the people live below the poverty line.
Raja Vishwanath Pratap Singh has tried to solve this “little difficulty” by unleashing a reign of terror against industrialists and businessmen of all shapes and sizes. This behaviour is another expression of lack of understanding of the Indian reality, though it is also a recrudescence of the prejudices which the feudal elite has entertained against Indian businessmen in the past.
The damage Mr Super Clean has done to the morale of the business community and its prestige both at home and abroad cannot be computed on the computers Rajiv Gandhi has installed in ministerial offices as part of his march into the 21st century. If Mahatma Gandhi made men out of clay, as Jawaharlal Nehru once said, and if Nehru sought to straighten the backs of all Indians which had bent under the weight of foreign rule and the humiliation it involved, the present government can claim “credit” for making pulp of whoever has had the temerity to do well. In its eyes every rich Indian is a criminal.
By reducing taxes and liberalising rules and regulations, Rajiv Gandhi and his aides have acknowledged that the taxes have been unjustly high and constraints on industry unduly restrictive. Implicit in it is the admission that no business house could have prospered and thereby served the country without cutting corners and bribing their way through and around the controls. Yet they must punish and discredit the business community.
This marked deviation from the Swatantra model calls for an explanation. One has already been indicated. The Raja, whether of the new or the old variety, must wage war on the bania, also whether of the old (unstarched dhoti and pugree) or the new (safari suit) variety. The caste-conflicts in India take many forms and this is one of them. As any student of Indian history would know, whenever order has broken down in our country, the bania has been looted. Even today in communal riots we first burn shops belonging to members of the other community. Raja Vishwanath Pratap Singh is tapping a psychological source of destruction that runs very, very deep, perhaps deeper than communal hate.
Another Aspect
There is yet another aspect to this fierce attack on business which would bear statement. The same mind which believes that we can have as good cars as the Japanese and run them on our roads amidst our kind of traffic is evident in this case. Our business must be as honest as the British. Never mind the constraints under which it works! Never mind the demands politicians and bureaucrats themselves make on it! It is an outsider’s approach, the same approach which persuades Rajiv Gandhi to condemn the Congress on the occasion of its centenary celebrations.
I see the same outsider’s approach having been at work in the Punjab and Assam “accords” and attempts at reshaping India’s foreign policy. To the outsider, history with its complexities and social heterogeneities are at best a nuisance which is best ignored, and every problem must admit of a solution. Remember the ease with which the British and the Americans offered solutions to the Kashmir problem till they got finally bored with Indian “intransigence”.
Some Exceptions
Finally one more point might be made if only in passing in this regard. In Asia, laissez-faire and democracy have by and large not proved complementary to each other; they have turned out to be antithetical to each other. There are, of course, some exceptions – Malaysia and Sri Lanka. But these exceptions are not as impressive as they might appear. The aggravation of the ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka might not be unrelated to the “end of ideology” there. In such an assessment, US support for dictatorial regimes would not look as accidental as it would otherwise.
Not long ago one veteran commentator described Rajiv Gandhi as a master of accords. This must have flattered the youthful Prime Minister and the select band of his advisers. Indeed, they even expected to perform the biggest miracle of all – to conclude a treaty with Pakistan and thus dispose of a problem that is in some ways older than the country’s independence. If they have been frustrated by General Zia’s refusal to provide them a face-saver (this is what the demand that Pakistan will not concede bases to a foreign power essentially amounts to in the context of continuing US military aid to that country), they are not to blame. And mind you, the treaty with Pakistan was only to be the proverbial tip of the iceberg. For it was to involve a virtual reversal of India’s 30-year-old friendship with the Soviet Union and a coordination of foreign policy with the United States which would have virtually placed India in the American sphere of influence.
This is a bud’s eye view of the content of the politics of Rajiv Gandhi and his team. And I 1 have not even touched on his style of functioning. That must wait for another occasion.
(Concluded)
The Times of India, 20 February 1986