Mrs Gandhi is on trial – at the bar of history. It will be to her credit if she somehow keeps the system going so long as she is around. But that will not win for her the kind of place Jawaharlal Nehru occupies in Indian history. She will secure such a place only if she can ensure that when she finally leaves the scene, the Indian state is strong and vibrant and the Indian people reasonably well off.
On the present reckoning, the chances are that she will lead her party such as it is at the next general election in 1985 and that she will once again put her rag-tag band in power. For, it seems unlikely that any opposition party will be in a strong enough position by then to challenge her successfully at the hustings. But if she does not take steps to end the drift now, it will be pointless to expect her to do so in 1985. India has reached another turning point in its history.
If Mrs Gandhi does not act with grim determination without further loss of time, it is almost certain that the country will once again have taken the downhill path from which there may be no turning back for a long time. This is the inescapable lesson of Indian history. It is, for instance, inconceivable that without Akbar the Moghuls could have consolidated their empire and assured a fairly high degree of law and order and prosperity in the country for over a century. And see what happened when pleasure-loving and incompetent rulers succeeded one another after Aurangzeb.
These days modern states do not disappear as empires did in the past. In the post-war period only Pakistan has broken up into two. But modern states go into such decline that they no longer deserve to be called states. The third world is full of instances of cruel and venal men seizing power and establishing tyrannies which are efficient only in terrorising and massacring their own peoples.
Rise Of Corrupt
India has already witnessed the rise of corrupt men in public life who think nothing of undermining the future of the country so long as they can make their pile and salt it away in foreign banks. Mercifully, cruel tyrants are still not in evidence in and near the corridors of power. But like maggots they can materialise out of nowhere when the conditions are ripe as they would be if the democratic process is discredited and the elected rulers lose their legitimacy. These are not dire contingencies which one has to invent. The democratic system is already under great strain and not many politicians enjoy the respect of the people without which they cannot claim legitimacy.
India faces enormous problems – population explosion, deplorable educational standards, deforestation leading to worsening floods year after year, continued dependence on monsoon for good crops, stagnant technology, low investment, burgeoning trade deficits necessitating large-scale borrowings, inefficient use of available resources, growing caste conflicts leading, among other things, to mass conversions of Harijans to Islam, perpetuation of backwardness and poverty in large parts of the country and 40-45 per cent of the population below or at the poverty line (a euphemism for destitution in millions of cases).
Even a ruling group fully assured of its legitimacy cannot take sufficiently tough measures to tackle these urgent tasks. Imagine what will happen if the rulers come to depend largely on the coercive apparatus. Incidentally, that, too, is beginning to crack up. Witness the blinding episode in Bhagalpur, looting of buses, trains and banks and the near mutiny in various police and paramilitary forces in large parts of the country in 1979.
On top of it, we are now getting ministers and chief ministers who are almost wilfully undermining the state machinery. They take bribes for the postings and transfers of even poor school teachers; they humiliate senior officials in the presence of their subordinates; they make them dance attendance on them and collect funds for them; and they arbitrarily punish and reward officials. They have still not abolished the rules (thank the British for establishing the procedures so firmly) so that they can auction public offices as the rulers used to do in the olden days. But they have come fairly close to doing so. In several states there is a price for every transfer to a coveted place.
Deep Rot
If the rot has spread so far and so deep, what is the point of expecting Mrs Gandhi to stem it? Her all too numerous detractors go farther and contend that she herself is largely responsible for the decline in the standards of public morality and demoralisation of the administration. But when they overcome their dislike of her, they are forced to admit that India has no other leader capable of either replacing her through the democratic process or of trying to check the dangerous drift. At least she is in a position to try. Mr Morarji Desai, for instance, could not have even tried for want of authority in his own party.
On sober reflection we can also agree that the situation is by no means hopeless. Our present-day pindaris are not men of great daring. They can be made to see sense fairly quickly. Things can visibly improve if the impression spreads that Mrs Gandhi is keeping an eye on their activities, that she has a reliable machinery to keep her posted and that she will not put up with men who acquire a bad reputation. Men who shivered in their shoes at the very mention of Sanjay Gandhi’s name will not risk Mrs Gandhi’s displeasure if they were to know that the consequences would be serious. We have also a large body of fairly honest men and women in the administration, especially at the top levels, who can, given a proper atmosphere, make it difficult for ministers to engage in corruption openly.
To avoid misunderstanding I am not recommending a vigilance role for civil servants over politicians, though, to be candid, I am not critical of the Madhya Pradesh chief minister’s and Speaker’s decision to encourage district officials to write to them of the pressure legislators bring to bear on them. But what 1 am suggesting is that officials will be willing and able to stand up to ministers bent on amassing fortunes if they know that there is someone they can appeal to in case they are sought to be unjustly penalised. We need politicians to see to it that our bureaucrats do not go berserk. But we can no longer depend on our politicians to observe even the minimum norms of propriety. So we need a civil service which is capable of exercising the autonomy which in theory it has never ceased to enjoy in independent India. Judging by Mrs Gandhi’s own address to secretaries to the Union government recently she, too, seems to be thinking in these terms.
Woolly Puritans
The ‘’puritans” who have no touch with the political reality would have us believe that the rot started in the first years of independence under Mr Nehru himself. This is an unacceptable proposition, its implication being that parties can do without contributions which in the nature of things must come either from rich individuals and companies or from rich trade unions as in the case of the British Labour party.
The “puritans” must know that for some years we have been face to face with a phenomenon of altogether different proportions. Under Mr Nehru, ministers did not enter into deals with businessmen who contributed to party funds. They have been doing so for quite some time. Under Mr Nehru, they did not siphon off funds for their personal use. Of late they have been doing so. Under Mr Nehru, by and large only those authorised to collect funds for the party did so. Now almost every minister, especially in the states, is engaged in this enterprise. If the sums raised ran into lakhs then, they run into crores now. Only in this field has inflation been more than taken care of.
The rot in its present form started in 1969 when the Congress leadership decided to ban donations by companies. This opened the sluice gates for collections of black money. The rise of free enterprise in this field is relatively of even more recent origin. It began with the Janata rule when every minister was a law unto himself and it has continued under Mrs Gandhi, though only in the states. The formula is simple. Profess loyalty to Mrs Gandhi day in and day out, criticise the judiciary and the press in the wildest language and amass personal fortunes in the name of the party.
The nature of the malady itself suggests the prescription. Donations by companies must be allowed and only the treasurers of the ruling party in the capital and the states be authorised to approach them for contributions. And we should enact a legislation prohibiting men and women in office from setting up trusts and foundations under their own and their family members’ control. These measures will, of course, not produce a completely clean public life. But they can help contain the menace which has come to threaten the future of the Indian state.
No task, not even the alleviation of mass poverty, is more urgent than to protect the Indian state. India’s future hangs on it. We have suffered grievously in the past for want of a strong state. We shall so suffer again if the state goes into desuetude. The freedom and the civil liberties which we rightly prize cannot survive without a viable state. To vary Mr Nehru’s famous statement: The Indian state is in peril, defend it with all your might.
The Times of India, 16 September 1981