If it is difficult to welcome the manner and timing of the change of chief ministers in Maharashtra and UP, it is equally difficult not to welcome the changes. On a surface view, Maharashtra’s case is different from UP’s because Mr S.B. Chavan’s replacement is not related directly to the results of the recent by-elections which have shown the Congress party to be in poor health. But one has only to recall the results of the recent municipal elections in Aurangabad to underscore the point that the fortunes of the party have shrunk disastrously in Maharashtra as well – under Mr Chavan’s leadership. Indeed, the weaknesses of his leadership were patent long before the party was routed in Aurangabad. He was just not interested enough to maintain meaningful contacts with other Congress leaders, not to speak of the ordinary workers. The aged and ailing Vasantrao Patil came to pose a serious challenge to him precisely because Mr Chavan had virtually abdicated his responsibilities as chief minister. And as the Congress steadily lost ground, the Shiv Sena moved in to occupy it. Representing as it did a strange mix of Hindu communalism and Maharashtrian chauvinism, its growth constituted a threat to the political order in the country as a whole. That was why we found it truly surprising that Mr Rajiv Gandhi allowed things to drift, neither replacing Mr Chavan nor permitting him to expand and reconstitute his cabinet. There was another reason for the surprise over the Congress president’s inaction. Bombay, we need hardly point out, is the industrial-commercial capital of India, the loss of which the Congress party must find difficult to absorb. And as it happened, in Maharashtra, unlike in most other states, a capable leader waited in the wings ready to take over at any time. Mr Rajiv Gandhi has finally opted for Mr Sharad Pawar but after Mr Pawar’s stature and pull have suffered. Mr Pawar is skilful enough to recover his appeal. But the Congress president need not have so weakened one of his best bets. This is particularly so because Mr Rajiv Gandhi had himself persuaded Mr Pawar to return to the parent organisation.
In UP the change has not just followed the Congress party’s reverses in the recent by-elections, especially the one in Allahabad which has elected Mr VP Singh, one of Mr Gandhi’s principal challengers by a huge margin; it has been triggered by the reverses. Clearly Mr V.B. Singh has personally been held responsible for them. This is patently unfair. Mr V.B. Singh was not in charge of the by-election in Allahabad. He was there with many of his ministers because he was asked to be there. Others from Delhi called the shots. Mr Gandhi’s special emissary in Allahabad has criticized Mr V.B. Singh’s management of the state on a number of counts. Much of this criticism speaks of an armchair approach to politics. At a time when much of the intelligentsia is highly critical of the Prime Minister himself, in view of the widely accepted charge of corruption in high places and when much of north India, including UP, has experienced one of the severest droughts in decades, it is, for instance, plainly absurd for anyone to blame a chief minister for disaffection among government employees. In fact, more often than not, government employees are ill disposed towards the Congress, whoever the Prime Minister in New Delhi and chief minister in the state capital. After all, they come from the same larger intelligentsia. In UP the dependable Congress vote has hovered around 35 per cent, rising slightly in the event of a favourable wave and declining by a similar magnitude in an unfavourable atmosphere. This is not to suggest that Mr V.B. Singh was a good chief minister. Perhaps he was not. We on our part were critical on the ham-handed manner in which he dealt with Mr VP Singh last summer when the former had just left the Congress party and was wanting to exercise his constitutional right to explain his stand to the people in his home state. There can also be no doubt that UP is much too important for the Congress to neglect and that Mr Gandhi must place the best man he can find to head the government there. But he could have either done so before the by-elections or he could have waited for the dust raised by Allahabad to settle down. By making the change so soon after the verdict in Allahabad, he has shown signs of panic which is uncalled for and must reflect adversely on his style of leadership.
There is a general consensus that if anyone can raise the morale of Congressmen in UP, Mr ND Tiwari is the man to do it. But the task is Herculean and Mr Tiwari has yet to demonstrate that he is a Hercules. He is a man of consensus; he can take his colleagues along with him; he has wide contacts with Congress workers all over the state. But he will need something much more to be able to deliver the goods – dynamism and a capacity to fire the imagination of the people who have not known good and effective government for decades. He will also need freedom to function which the central leadership of the Congress has not allowed any party chief minister for 20 long years. This is in Mr Gandhi’s capacity to give him. Without it, Mr Tiwari cannot in any case deliver. As we said in our editorial ‘Reviving the Congress’ only yesterday, the country is too large and heterogeneous to be run from New Delhi. UP is the size of a large country, one part of which has little in common with the others.
Mr Tiwari’s transition to Lucknow also creates a vacuum in the capital. Mr Gandhi should fill it with care. The office of finance minister has once again become important. On its incumbent depend the morale of investors and the health of the capital market which remains a weakling in India. Mr Tiwari inspired confidence among investors. That is why even premature rumours regarding his impending departure depressed the market. This was largely unjustified. Many policy initiatives came from the Prime Minister and his official aides. But the image is important. The country needs a finance minister the investors have reason to trust, that is someone who is known to be well disposed towards the private sector. If he is also capable of taking and implementing decisions quickly, that would be an additional and valuable asset. Such a man is available and the Prime Minister knows it. While, as in the past, the direction has to come from Mr Gandhi himself, the man in charge of the finance ministry should be one who believes in the new orientation the Prime Minister has been trying to impart to the economy. Only last week the World Bank and members of the Aid India Consortium passed a vote of confidence in the government’s management of the economy. It is important that those in command of it live up to this confidence. On it depends the flow of aid as well as private investment. And whether we like it or not, even domestic investment is critically dependent on the availability of foreign aid and investment on a substantial scale.