Only the politically innocent can be surprised over the controversy that has broken out in the Congress(I) over the question of election to the Working Committee at Tirupati. The plain truth is that Mr Arjun Singh and Mr Sharad Pawar have challenged, even if indirectly, the authority of the party president and Prime Minister, Mr Narasimha Rao, leaving him little option but to respond.
Mr Rao did not lose any time. He sought to discredit the result of the election, which Mr Singh and Mr Pawar had pushed through, at Tirupati itself. He not only pointed out that no member of scheduled castes and tribes and woman had been elected, but also added that if he had been so elected, he would have resigned.
This was a thinly disguised call for resignation by those who claimed to enjoy his confidence. At Tirupati, Mr Jitendra Prasada alone deciphered the message and acted on it. He was followed by Mr Ahmed Patel from Ahmedabad. In all probability, he too did not need to be goaded. The others have perhaps acted under some kind of pressure.
It would be ridiculous to suggest that some “busybodies” have misused Mr Rao’s name. Those who have acted in his name have acted on his behalf. Indeed, he has not had much choice in the matter. He could possibly have held his hand and bided his time, but only at the risk of having to make a far more dramatic and drastic assertion of his authority vis-a-vis either Mr Singh or Mr Pawar or both.
In 1969, Mrs Indira Gandhi stripped Mr Morarji Desai of the finance portfolio, though she was far more furious with Mr YB Chavan (incidentally, Mr Pawar’s mentor). She had expected him to side with her on the issue of the selection of the party’s nominee for Rashtrapati Bhavan at Bangalore and he had gone over to the other side. Later he tried to make amends, but without success.
Mr Rao is, of course, not another Nehru-Gandhi in the making. He is differently constituted and he has to operate in an altogether different milieu. But he cannot avoid the obligations of the office of Prime Minister. He cannot function effectively if the impression spreads that his writ does not run in the ruling party, and that a rival centre of power exists in it. This is not to say for sure that the Singh-Pawar compact would have held and gained support and strength. Since both are candidates for the office of Prime Minister, the chances are that they would have fallen out among themselves. Indeed, some of Mr Pawar’s supporters have already accused Mr Singh’s side of bad faith since there was a gap of 26 votes between the two, to the Maratha ‘chieftain’s’ disadvantage. But the more pertinent point immediately was that the two had come together. That was a warning too loud and clear for Mr Rao to ignore.
Loud and clear warning
It might be somewhat of an exaggeration to suggest that Mr Arjun Singh had been planning to challenge Mr Rao well in advance of Tirupati. But his relentless campaign against the BJP and his courtship of the Left does admit of such an interpretation. He could not possibly be unaware that the Prime Minister needed a measure of understanding with the BJP in view of his lack of majority in the Lok Sabha, and the Left’s total opposition to the new economic policy and resolve to embarrass the Government, if not to bring it down.
Mr Rao had, at least partly, seen Mr Singh’s moves in such a light and in his quiet, discreet way made it known what he felt. His statement on the eve of Tirupati that the BJP Government in Mr Singh’s home state of Madhya Pradesh was entitled to its full five-year term and to the Union Government’s cooperation in fighting scarcity conditions has to be read in that light.
Despite this public (though indirect and mild) hint, Mr Singh continued to press forward with his plan of action. On the eve of Tirupati, he insisted that the BJP be named as a communal organisation in the political resolution be adopted at the plenary session of the AICC, even when it was pointed out to him that identification was not in the Congress(I) tradition.
Again, it may not be accurate to suggest that he was out to embarrass Mr Rao, or that he was wilfully set on a collision course. But the Prime Minister would have been embarrassed if, mercifully for him, a precedent for such identification in an earlier party resolution had not been discovered and Mr Rao enabled along with Mr Singh’s line without loss of face.
Mr Singh clinched the issue when he insisted on an open contest for half the seats in the Working Committee despite repeated hints by Mr Rao that he favoured adherence to the party’s traditional and time-tested consensus approach. And he also entered into a deal with Mr Pawar as if to make the obvious clear. Many other aspirants to the top body failed to recognise the significance of the Singh-Pawar compact and pressed for elections as opposed to consensus. Mr Rao had been outmanoeuvred.
Striking a balance
The issue is, in a sense, personal. It will be ridiculous for anyone to try and cast Mr Singh in the role of a crusader for democratisation of the Congress(I). As always, he is guided above all by considerations of power, regardless of whether his sight is set on Bhopal as a mid-way station or straight on New Delhi. But the issue is also larger.
It is not recognised widely enough that if, after the assassination of Mr Rajiv Gandhi last May, inner-party democracy needed to be restored in the Congress(I) to give it a chance for self-renewal and for widening its appeal, it was equally necessary for it to acquire a new leader with sufficient authority. To ignore the need for a coherent centre of authority in the party (and the Government) is as risky for the future of the party as it is to sidestep the question of inner-party democracy.
The two needs are not inconsistent. To the contrary, they are interdependent. In the absence of a new dynasty of the Nehru-Gandhi family to head the party, the leader can come up and acquire authority only by allowing the democratic process to work in the organisation. The reverse is, however, equally true. Only in the presence of a pre-eminent leader capable of reconciling differences and mediating conflicts is meaningful democratisation, as distinct from disorderly confusion or manipulation by dadas, feasible.
Since the Congress(I) has had a pre-eminent leader ever since the bracket got added to the name of the grand old party in 1978, this linkage between authority and democracy is not generally appreciated either by party activists or observers and commentators. Indeed, authority is often confused with authoritarianism and, therefore, desired. In realistic term’s, a balance has to be struck. Mr Rao, to his credit, has been trying to strike a balance.
The Pioneer, 24 April 1992