Despite Mrs Gandhi’s statement in Bhopal last Saturday that she did not propose to change any incumbent chief minister in any Congress (I)-ruled state, the Andhra chief minister, Mr. Anjiah, has announced that he is stepping down. It is not at all clear why she made the statement when it was well known at that time that she had decided to relieve him of that office. For, there is no evidence that she was having second thoughts in the matter.
Mr. Anjiah is the fourth Congress (I) chief [minister to go in the past 12 months, the other three being Dr. Chenna Reddy (Andhra), Mr. Jagannath Pahadia (Rajasthan) and Mr. AR Antulay (Maharashtra). The reasons in his case are different. Unlike them, he is not known to have been notoriously corrupt. But he has been a figure of fun in Hyderabad on account of his ineptitude and indecisiveness.
It speaks for Mrs. Gandhi’s dominance of the country’s political scene that she could, if she wished, have kept him in office and in all probability won the assembly elections in Andhra due early next year with him in charge. But she could not possibly have won for him the respect of the people, especially the intelligentsia, which, despite its numerical weakness, must occupy an important place in a modern society.
Mrs. Gandhi could have ignored this reality in Andhra but only at the cost of further alienation from her of the intelligentsia and the loss of what little respect there is left for the government among the people. It is to her credit that she has chosen not to do so. Perhaps she has realised that Mr. Antulay and Mr. Pahadia have greatly damaged her own image. Perhaps, as in Mr. Pahadia’s and Mr. Antulay’s cases, Mr. Rajiv Gandhi has played a key role in persuading her to ask Mr. Anjiah to step down. His recent outburst at the outgoing Andhra chief minister in Hyderabad would suggest this to have been the case. Be that as it may, this development raises the wider issue of the kind of chief ministers we should have.
Indian Reality
India’s founding fathers gave the country a federal constitution precisely because they knew that it was too large and diverse to be ruled effectively from one centre. They also armed the state governments with substantial powers because they recognised that the latter would be better placed to keep in touch with the people and attend to their problems than the Centre.
If it is acknowledged that there can be no escape from this perception of the Indian reality, it follows that chief ministers have to be selected with great care. Mrs. Gandhi cannot claim to have done so. That she has had to remove four of them in just one year is proof enough of that.
Her detractors have for years concentrated on the fact that she imposes chief ministers on the states ruled by her party. As a statement of fact, this is unexceptionable. But it will be naive to suggest as some of Mrs. Gandhi’s critics do, that more competent and honest chief ministers would have emerged automatically if the choice had been left to the state legislature parties. As it happens, these parties are not capable of functioning as coherent entities. They are too atomised and too deficient in moral idealism to serve the role of throwing up worthwhile leaders or even of throwing out thoroughly corrupt ones. The weakness of Indian democracy at the grassroots is a patent fact which only those divorced from reality can ignore. It is unfair to blame Mrs. Gandhi for this state of affairs when other parties, too, are known to suffer from the same deficiencies as the Congress (I).
The other criticism of Mrs. Gandhi is more pertinent. She has placed too heavy a premium on “loyalty”. As a rule she has preferred for office both at the Centre and in the states those of her partymen who stood by her in the period of her difficulties and disregarded the experience and standing of those who returned to her fold either on the eve of the 1980 poll or afterwards. In the process she has unnecessarily narrowed her field of choice which even otherwise is not particularly wide.
This attitude on her part could have been understandable if her personal position was vulnerable to a possible challenge from within her party. But it is not. She is the party. Even the prodigals recognise that her popularity alone keeps it in power. And if she ever becomes vulnerable to attacks by the opposition, it will be mainly because she has failed to give the people state governments they can respect.
Rag-tag Army
Mrs. Gandhi’s extraordinary solicitude for the original “faithfuls” could also have been justified if they had in fact gone through great suffering during the Janata rule. But, as is well known, the Janata government was too divided, incompetent and unsure of itself to put them through what can justly be called a great ordeal. Mrs. Gandhi survived and subsequently triumphed on the strength of her own personality and popular appeal. She owed little to her rag-tag army.
Even if she is inclined to disregard this fact, she cannot possibly ignore another which is that the nature of her struggle has changed. In 1978 and 1979, she was fighting for her political survival and therefore needed a “praetorian guard” of some kind. As Prime Minister she is engaged in the battle of ensuring the well-being of 680 million people and needs the best talent she can mobilise in order to win it. Imagine Mr. Nehru forming a government more or less exclusively of those who had all along agreed with him! What a fiasco it would have been at the very start of India’s journey as an independent nation!
There has, of course, to be a loyalty test but in a proper sense of the term. Sycophancy is not a sign of loyalty. It is an expression of lack of self-respect and self-confidence and more often than not of deviousness. Just as traders in human misery pay ritual homage to gods and goddesses in temples in order to propitiate them the better to carry on their nefarious activities, so do politicians on the make pay obeisance to Mrs. Gandhi and her son, first Sanjay and now Rajiv. Mr. Antulay swore by them and felt free to feather his own nest.
From this it would follow that the Indian political system is in great disarray. So it is. We are witnessing two significant phenomena. First, the rapidly growing politicisation of every section of society has been accompanied by the decline of the Congress, the country’s only truly national organisation, and the failure of other parties to make headway. Secondly, despite Mrs. Gandhi’s supremacy in her party and, indeed, the country, she is not in fact able to enforce her will on wilful Congress (1) chief ministers once she has appointed them. She can remove them, but only after they have inflicted a lot of damage on their states and the country.
No Escape
The first contradiction will clearly take a long time to resolve itself. It has to be a prolonged process from which there can be no escape. But the second can be tackled if Mrs. Gandhi has the necessary will. She has to choose as chief ministers men who are known for their integrity and competence. And she has to establish an effective monitoring system whereby wrong-doing by chief ministers can be detected at an early stage. In Mr. Antulay’s case, she remained in the dark for a whole year and she was misled for months, even after his activities had been exposed in the press.
Mrs. Gandhi also needs allies outside the political field. She appears to have drawn the right conclusion regarding the top bureaucracy. For some months now she has been trying to boost its morale and to encourage it to recover its autonomy and dignity. She must also show a similar recognition of the role the judiciary and the press can play in ensuring the survival of the system.
In Bhopal last Saturday, Mrs. Gandhi made a relatively favourable reference to the Indian press. Indian newspapers, she told a press conference, were less inclined to go in for the sensational than their counterparts in other democracies and some of them were trying to present a balanced picture of development in the country. Only a few days earlier, her information minister, Mr. Vasant Sathe, had disclosed that he had recommended the removal of import duty on newsprint to the finance minister. Together, these statements suggested a change in the government’s stance towards the press. But on Monday appeared an interview by Mrs. Gandhi to Swedish television in which she once again castigated the press.
In the country’s best interests, the wordy duals should cease. Mrs. Gandhi, the top bureaucracy, the judiciary and the press are natural allies in the common enterprise of seeing the country over the hump. They should not behave as if they are adversaries of one another.
The Times of India, 17 February 1982