The politically conscious intelligentsia in the country is divided on the question of the proposed amendments to the Constitution, which in a sense represent the fulfilment of the aspirations of most of its members.
For, excepting the Gandhians, who favour decentralisation of political power and industry and regional parties, politically articulate people here have always wanted a central state strong enough to be able to subordinate all other forms of authority to itself. And this is precisely what the proposed amendments are intended to achieve.
The intelligentsia in the country cherishes democratic values as well, and, indeed, cannot think in terms of a different framework. But it is equally committed to social reforms which in the national context only a strong state can carry out, if at all. It is not easy for a state reflecting accurately the social reality, for instance, to work unreservedly for the welfare of the scheduled castes and tribes. The intelligentsia has thus been pursuing two goals – a liberal state and a strong state. The two goals need not necessarily be divergent and contradictory. But they are not identical either.
SENSITIVE
The founding fathers were themselves sensitive to the need for a strong central authority capable of disposing of any form of threat to national unity and implementing socio-economic reforms. They had, therefore, provided ample provisions in the Constitution to enable New Delhi to dismiss state governments not amenable to its will, cope with secessionist movements like those that arose among the Nagas and the Mizos and intervene in the economy to the point of dominating its commanding heights.
But the Constitution makers were also deeply influenced by the British concept of the need for a balance between the executive, the legislature and the judiciary. Many of them were lawyers by training. They also assumed that India was too large and complex a country to be ruled from one centre in New Delhi. Thus they produced a Constitution which, while arming the central government with extraordinary powers for dealing with emergencies, placed restraints on the exercise of those powers in normal times. The Constitution also provided for a substantial measure of autonomy to the constituent units of the Union.
It is idle to pretend that the proposed amendments, when enacted into law by November, will not alter the power balance in favour of the central executive. The fact that it will be entitled under the new dispensation to supersede an elected state government for one year at one time instead of six months as under the present arrangement should suffice to clinch the issue.
The lack of consensus at present inevitably obscures the fact that the national political elite, as distinct from the provincial elites, has favoured a strong central state. But this has undoubtedly been the case. And there is no dearth of evidence to support this contention.
With the possible exception of the dismissal of the Namboodiripad Ministry in Kerala in 1959, it is, for example, difficult to recall an instance when the national political elite has not in the past welcomed the imposition of President’s rule in state after state. Indeed, it is possible to cite a number of cases in which this section of the intelligentsia has asked for central intervention in states on the plea that governments concerned have been too inefficient, corrupt, caste ridden, subject to factional pulls and so on.
Similarly, an overwhelming majority of the political elite has favoured not only the steady expansion of the public sector and nationalisation of insurance companies and major banks but also the imposition of extensive controls on private entrepreneurs even in areas where they are allowed to function. There may be difference of opinion on how far the advocates of this course have achieved their goals. But there can be no question that they have helped strengthen the authority of the central government.
This search for a strong central state has, of course, been opposed to Gandhiji’s personal outlook with its emphasis on more or less self-sufficient and self-governing village communities. But there can be little doubt that on this and related issues of the future organisation of the Indian state, Gandhiji was in a minority among the top Congress leadership even during the freedom struggle.
In the post-independence period only the small band of his personal followers have been loyal to his vision of India of village republics. The intelligentsia as a whole has had little sympathy with it.
EXPERIENCE
This development has neither been accidental nor the result of the personal preoccupations of Mr. Nehru and Mrs. Gandhi. Apart from the widespread feeling that India failed to resist foreign invasions primarily because it did not possess the necessary instrument in the form of a strong central state at the time, the country could not opt out of the modernisation process, whatever the cost for the weaker sections of the community. And implicit in the modernisation process is the rise of an extensive bureaucracy and a strong state. This has been the experience of almost all countries, developed as well as developing, communist as well as non-communist, and India could not be an exception to the rule. The issue of restraints on the exercise of its powers by the executive is a different proposition altogether.
A number of other factors have strengthened this trend in India – the heritage of viceregal government, the prestige of the national leadership symbolised by Mr. Nehru till 1964 and by Mrs. Gandhi since 1969, the weakness of the local leaders, particularly after the transfer of men like Pandit Govind Ballabh Pant and Mr. YB Chavan to New Delhi and the death of Mr. BC Roy, the inability of captains of industry and commerce to measure up to the expectation of the intelligentsia in respect of performance and adherence to certain ethical norms, the conflict with China in 1962, the wars with Pakistan in 1965 and 1971 and the debacle of the Congress Party in 1967, to name only the most notable.
Of these the last three deserve special attention. The conflict with China led to a sharp and continuous increase in the defence expenditure and subordination of the objectives of economic development and social justice to that of national security. The wars with Pakistan unavoidably strengthened the same trend. The public pronouncements of the leaders may not have fully reflected this reality. But budget allocations under different heads in 1962 and since confirm the validity of the assessment.
The Congress Party’s debacle in 1967 cannot, on a surface view, be said to have contributed towards the rise of a strong central state. But it and the subsequent misrule by coalition governments in various states set in motion a chain of developments of which the country is now witnessing the consummation in the shape of the sweeping constitutional changes.
MEDIATOR
It can be argued that the Congress Party’s landslide victory, first in the elections to the Lok Sabha in 1971 and then to state legislature in 1972, should have enabled it to resume its previous role as the mediator between the people and the state and thus of reconciling the twin aspirations towards a strong state and the growing assertion of rights by citizens. But it did not, partly because the party had become much more dependent on the central governmental leadership than during the Nehru era and partly because the widespread drought in 1972 and 1973 and other economic factors prevented the consolidation of its position as the single dominant party.
The developments in Gujarat and Bihar in 1974-75 can doubtless be explained in terms of the desire of the opposition parties, apart from the CPI, to exploit the discontent resulting from the sharp rise in prices on account of the drought in the previous two years and other economic factors to undermine the central government. But they also underscored the point that the Congress was no longer as unassailable as it had been in the first two decades of independence.
To say all this is not to ignore either the frame of reference of the politically active intelligentsia which is essentially liberal-democratic or the diversity of the populace and the size of the country, which make a considerable measure of autonomy for the states a necessity, or the risks inherent in concentration of power in the bureaucracy. The intention is to suggest that there is a logic behind the rise of a strong centre in the country and that the issues are too complex to be analysed in simplistic terms.
The Times of India, 8 September 1976