The Tirupati session of the Congress next week will be a ritualistic affair. It can only formally endorse Mr. P.V. Narasimha Rao’s leadership of the party which has been his since Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination last May. A challenge to him could possibly have risen then, if Mrs. Sonia Gandhi was either anxious to step into her deceased husband’s place or willing be pushed by some members of the family’s “praetorian guard”. It out of the question now.
Some obviously desperate individual Congressmen continue to create the impression that Mrs. Gandhi is about to break her silence and enter the fray. But that appears highly unlikely. For all we know, Mrs. Gandhi remains as averse to politics as she is said to have been in the past. Even if this is not so, she cannot ignore the shadow of the Bofors gun that continues to hover behind her as if ready to go off any moment. The Solanki affair has only highlighted the danger.
The End of an Era
Mrs Gandhi cannot also be such a political innocent as not to realize that the Nehru-Gandhi “dynasty” has outlived its role and that the scene has changed dramatically. Not to speak of Indira Gandhi, Nehru’s own unchallenged leadership was possible primarily in the context of the Cold War and the appeal of various varieties of socialism even in Western Europe. That era, with its populist politics, has ended with a whimper. The Soviet Union itself having collapsed, there is no room for imitations.
The print media has, of late, been busy casting the minister for human resources, Mr Arjun Singh, in the role of a potential challenger to Mr. Narasimha Rao. His studious cultivation of the Left on bitterly anti-BJP platform does lend a measure of credence to this projection. For one thing, it is far from clear whether Mr. Singh is trying mainly to win back control of Madhya Pradesh from the BJP, or whether he has set his sights higher on the office of Prime Minister. For another, the Left lacks coherence and is itself adrift in an ocean of uncertainty and confusion.
In any event, this issue is not going to figure at Tirupati. Mr. Arjun Singh may well succeed in claiming credit for an anti-BJP resolution which is likely to be adopted in view of the sudden resurgence of the Ramjanambhoomi controversy. But that would not settle anything just as the BJP’s condemnation of the government’s economic policy at Sarnath last month did not.
The Tirupati congress can earn a place in history if the leadership can bring itself to acknowledge that the Nehruvian approach, however valid in the era of the Cold War and appeal of socialism, has become outdated. But such a possibility can be discounted in advance. That is not the Congress style. Indeed, “I” for Indira will continue to be attached to the name of the grand old party.
Nehru ruled for 17 long years at least partly in the name of Gandhi, though he followed a strategy of economic development which had precious little to do with the Gandhian approach. Judging by apparently inspired reports that a resolution endorsing adherence to the Nehruvian framework will be adopted in Tirupati, it seems Mr. Narasimha Rao proposes to follow suit. He will continue to swear by Nehru while he distances himself from the latter’s policies.
Perhaps Mr. Narasimha Rao cherishes the same kind of admiration for Nehru’s memory that Nehru did for Gandhiji’s. But that apart, he shares another point with Nehru. Nehru inaugurated a new era in the history of India; the “dynasty” was not an essential part of it. Mr Rao is launching India on a course which represents an even more radical departure from what has happened since independence than independence did from the Raj.
The change can be summed up in one sentence. It can legitimately be said to represent a transition from the primacy of politics to the primacy of economics. But this one sentence cannot by itself tell us much about the revolution in the making.
The first point that needs to be grasped in this connection is that politics has been in command in our country from time immemorial. Power flowed from the edge of the sword in the pre-Moghul period and from the barrel of the gun under the Moghuls and the British.
The rise of a powerful nonviolent freedom movement under Gandhiji’s leadership brought the gun into disrepute only to emphasise the primacy of politics as such. Nehru’s economics was politics “by other means” and so was Indira Gandhi’s, the differences in the two personalities, their approaches and the situations they had to cope with notwithstanding.
Fundamental Break
On this count alone, the transition towards the primacy of economics represents a fundamental break with the past. And then there is another which has to be taken into consideration. The rise of economics as an independent discipline and pursuit, to begin with in northern Europe, followed and accelerated the decline in the influence of the Christian clergy. It is going to be same story in India.
The economic man is neither apolitical nor unethical. Indeed, it is wrong go think of economics, politics and ethics as wholly distinct entities. But they throw up and sustain three different types of human beings with different drives and motivations, as the Hindu theory of Varnashrama recognizes.
The ideal types do not exist in real life. Only the mixes are different. But the differences of mixes are important. The economic man subordinates ethics and politics to the creation and accumulation of wealth which cannot be the dominant value for the other two.
The new economic policy has aroused a great deal of criticism on the ground that it has been imposed on us by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. There is some merit in this proposition. But it ignores the reality of the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the failure of centrally-planned economies all over the world, and India’s own lacklustre performance in the last 40 years.
Significant Point
The more significant point to note in this regard, however, is the weakness of the resistance to the new economic policy in the ruling Congress and the inability of opposition parties either to offer a viable alternative or to mobilise public opinion. In 1969 Indira Gandhi had only to nationalize leading banks not only to be able to outmanoeuvre her opponents in the party but also to become supreme leader in the country. In 1992, if it were not for the threat of a prolonged strike by bank employees, moves to privatize those very banks would have been initiated to the acclaim of millions of those who use their services.
There are and there shall be other instances of bureaucrats slowing down change in other spheres. But the tide is clearly running against them.
Inevitably not only the entrenched bureaucracy but also the political community is in disarray. This applies as much to the BJP as to others. Unlike the Left, the BJP has not believed in “social engineering” with the help of the state apparatus. But it has survived, and in recent years prospered, on the strength of the reaction to the Congress party’s “dynasticism”, irresponsible populism and the corruption that must accompany populism. It too is groping for a viable policy. It cannot even decide whether to back the new economic policy or to oppose it.
Most Congressmen were not convinced socialists when Nehru made them adopt the “socialist pattern” of development. Most of them are not for a market-friendly economy now that Mr. Narasimha Rao is pushing the country in that direction. They follow the leader so long as he or she can keep them on the gravy train. Mr. Rao should be able to do that for quite some time. Beyond that lies an unknown land.
The Times of India, 9 April 1992