In its brief history of independence, India has witnessed many turning points – 1964 when Mr Nehru died, 1967 when the Congress lost its monopoly of power, 1975 when Mrs Gandhi imposed the emergency, 1977 when a coalition of opposition was returned to office at the Centre and 1980 when the people gave Mrs Gandhi the mandate to rule again. It is facing another turning point. The next few years will determine whether we can cope with the irresistible process of change in an orderly fashion or, like many Third World countries, collapse into confusion.
Democracy is the most difficult form of government to manage even in the best of circumstances. It breaks down even in conditions of economic well-being and social stability. In our case, the conditions are extremely difficult – a rapidly rising population, growing expectations and the steady erosion of the old social order, to name just a few of the factors at work. But we have no option. India will be ruled with the consent of the people or not at all.
There is a broad consensus on this issue. The differences relate to the relative powers of the various organs of the State. The advocates of the presidential system, for instance, favour a stronger executive than those of the parliamentary system.
But despite the broad agreement that one form of democracy or another is a necessary condition for the survival of the Indian State, there is no attempt to end the politics of confrontation that began in 1970-71 and assumed its most acute form in 1974-75. We are as if bewitched by our small narrow worlds of selfishness and parochial loyalties. This must cease. The coming Republic Day is a good time to renew our commitment to basic values which alone can sustain the system.
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As we prepare to celebrate the 32nd Republic Day on January 26, we can derive comfort from one fact. Not only is the original constitution in place with some modifications but it is also apparently able to produce the desired results. Not many countries in the Third World can boast of such continuity and stability.
It will be idle for us to pretend that the system works as well in our country as it does in the land of its birth or in some others in northern Europe. The Antulay phenomenon for instance is just inconceivable in Britain or West Germany or Sweden. But how many other countries can claim that they could have got over the problem so smoothly as we have in the final analysis? Not even all members of Nato. Italy, for example, has made pushing scandals under the rug into a fine art.
The Indian system has, of course, demonstrated its resilience before. Even its detractors at home and abroad have been impressed by the smoothness of the succession to Mr. Nehru in 1964 and to Mr. Lal Bahadur Shastri in 1966, Mrs. Gandhi’s decision to hold a general election during the emergency when she was under no obvious compulsion to do so, the fairness of that poll, her defeat in 1977 and her return to office through the same electoral process less than three years later in 1980. Even so it is heartening to see the system assert itself once again in the Antulay affair.
On the previous occasions, the main actors were politicians and the people themselves. The organisational bosses in the Congress looked after the succession problem in 1964 and 1966 and the people threw out Mrs. Gandhi in 1977 and brought her back in 1980. This time the actors have been different – the press and the judiciary, with some opposition politicians playing a small, though a necessary and a useful role. They took the matter to the Bombay high court. All the same the system has delivered; Mr. Antulay is out of office. His grand design of ruling now the state of Maharashtra and one day the entire country on the strength of the money at his disposal lies in ruins. But the episode also brings into sharp focus the decline of the political process which is the heart of a healthy democracy.
Overbearing, Arrogant
Mr. Antulay’s cabinet colleagues were fully aware of his mendacity in converting what was to be a government trust into a privately-controlled one and in diverting Rs. two crores from the public exchequer to it. They cheerfully endorsed both these decisions. They could not but know that he was making ad hoc allotments of cement to certain builders in Bombay in return for “contributions” to his trusts. They acquiesced in this blatant and public abuse of office without a murmur of protest. Some of them expressed their unhappiness privately to their friends. But they, too, behaved as doormats in his overbearing and arrogant presence. And not a single Maharashtra MLA, including those belonging to the opposition, saw anything wrong in assuming powers which rightfully belonged to the administration – the powers to allot cement and recommend names for liquor licences.
At the national level, Mrs. Gandhi became vaguely apprehensive in June last year and asked for her name to be removed from one of Mr. Antulay’s trusts. But apparently she did not regard it necessary to order a detailed inquiry. Or was she fobbed off by those around her? We do not know. We also do not know whether those whom she requested to look into the matter after Mr. Antulay’s doings had been exposed by the press and referred to the Bombay high court through petitions, apprised her of the gravity of charges against him. In any case, she did not live up to her responsibility to ensure that her nominees in office observed the minimum standards of public morality. To his credit, Mr. Rajiv Gandhi refused to acquiesce in Mr Antulay’s open loot and put it on record that he for one regarded him as being guilty of misuse of office.
The opposition in Parliament and the Maharashtra state legislature fared no better than the Congress (I) ministers and legislators in the state. They failed to dig up a single new fact which had not been unearthed by the press and were unable to sustain their attack on him. Apparently they lacked the necessary will, perhaps because some of their own prominent members have a great deal to hide.
Public Uproar
In the absence of evidence that Mrs. Gandhi was properly informed, it will be unfair to suggest that despite an adverse judgment by Mr. Justice Lentin, she would not have acted with such alacrity as she displayed in asking for his resignation if almost all major newspapers had not aroused strong public opinion on the issue. But there cannot be the slightest doubt that if Mr. Antulay did not have to worry about her response and had taken the position that he was not obliged to resign pending a final disposal of his appeal, first to a larger bench of the Bombay high court and then to the supreme court, the state Congress (I) legislature would have gladly given him a fresh vote of confidence as they had done only recently. They have been supremely indifferent to the issue of morality in public life.
It has been argued that this near collapse of moral standards in our public life is symptomatic of a wider malaise of which the black money parallel economy is an eloquent and frightening expression. There is merit in this proposition. But it does not and cannot follow that the rest of us should throw up our hands in despair and begin to connive at the burgeoning rot in our public life. The stake is too high for us to do so with an easy conscience. The stake is the future of the Indian state, the sole guarantor of law and order, justice and national security and honour.
Hopefully, the political process should once again gain the capacity for self-correction. At the moment that appears unlikely. There is no opposition party or a viable and stable coalition of parties which can pose a sufficiently strong challenge to the Congress (I) to compel its leading lights, especially in the states, to respect norms and procedures. Within the party itself those who are concerned with standards are in a minority. The buccaneers are able to exploit the moral and political weakness of the non-descript majority.
This puts a special responsibility on Mrs. Gandhi. She is the unchallenged leader of the Congress, the party high command being a euphemism for her and the people vote for her and not for Congress (I) candidates. Without her the party can disappear without a trace. Needless to add, she cannot, with the best will in the world, discharge this obligation properly unless she builds an effective monitoring system which must include an evaluation cell. Perhaps Mr. Rajiv Gandhi can head such a cell. There can be no more important role for him provided, of course, he possesses the necessary capacity to perform it effectively.
Augean Stables
But that is a matter of detail. First Mrs. Gandhi has to demonstrate that she possesses the necessary will to clean the Augean stables in her own party and that the narrow consideration of loyalty to her in her difficult days will not dissuade her from doing her present duty of punishing the guilty. In all conscience, it cannot be said that she has so far demonstrated such a will in ample measure. Indeed, the indications are that the loyalty test still weighs most with her.
For years, Mrs. Gandhi has not had a kind word to say about the press and the judiciary. In a sense and to an extent this has been justified. Much of the Indian press is too weak in terms of material resources to be truly independent and to serve a significant purpose and some of its members tend to be unfair and carry things too far. Similarly, a large number of judges at the lower levels are inadequate and the entire process has become too costly and dilatory to serve the ends of justice for the common people. But for some strange reasons her attack has been concentrated on the better papers and the top judiciary.
It will be wrong to say that the top judiciary has retaliated. But some otherwise responsible newspapers and newspapermen have. They have become as critical of Mrs. Gandhi as she has been of them. Some commentators are perhaps too unrealistic. Uncognisant of the complexities of the Indian reality, they believe that India can be ruled in the same way as Britain is and they respond to developments accordingly. But this is not an insuperable problem. They need Mrs. Gandhi and she needs them. Apart from her, they have no one they can even appeal to. Without them, she has no one who can educate and stir up public opinion on critical issues. To be specific, without her to enforce Mr. Lentin’s judgment on Mr. Antulay, what would it have amounted to? Without her to heed it, what would the outpourings in the press have produced? Not even the proverbial mouse.
But even those who agree that the country will face peril without her are beginning to wonder whether it can continue to coast along with her at the helm. The answer depends on her. Unlike her critics, she cannot avoid responsibility for solving problems and avoiding crisis. The rest of us can at best assist her in her efforts.
Need for vigilance
India is a strange country m a variety of ways. It alone could have produced Gandhiji. It alone could have been ruled by so decent a leader as Mr Nehru. In India alone can a frail little woman enforce her will, if and when she chooses to do so, without resort to instruments of terror. In India alone in the Third World has the ruler been so concerned with legitimacy that she ordered elections during an emergency and stuck to them even when it became clear to her that she was facing a rout. In this land it should be possible to shame politicians into behaving. Only they must know that someone is watching and that their misdeeds will be exposed and punished. In turn those who expose and punish must not indulge in witch hunt and set impractical standards by which they themselves cannot live.
The Times of India, Sunday Magazine, Jan 24, 1982