It is perhaps unrealistic to expect that the Solanki phenomenon, involving as it did a virtual civil war, indeed two civil wars, in Gujarat will persuade passionate advocates of a decentralized political order to take a pause and ponder the possible consequences of his continuance in office. Even so the question needs to be asked.
The answer is, of course, obvious. Gujarat would have continued to drift into anarchy. The administrative machinery, already beginning to be divided along caste and communal lines, would have disintegrated. The police force, such as it is, would have been reduced to an armed rabble. The economy of the state would have declined which in turn would have adversely affected the economy of the whole country. Several thousand citizens have already been rendered homeless by instigated mobs; the number of such helpless individuals would have gone into lakhs.
Lest those who live far from Gujarat entertain the illusion that the army could have restored order, they would be well advised to give it up. The army could have killed thousands of people if it was so ordered and inclined. It could not have created conditions of stability and peace in the state. In fact, it is about time that we face up to the fact that the army’s prestige has suffered a great deal in Gujarat and young army officers posted there for police duties are quite unhappy that they should have been exposed to this unpleasant task for so long.
Two points implicit in this assessment need to be made explicit. First, Mr. Solanki would not have resigned, however bitter and prolonged the civil conflicts might have become. On the contrary, he would have used his considerable skills and resources to perpetuate his rule. Secondly, a majority of Congress legislators would have stayed loyal to him. For one thing, he had brought them from nowhere into the Vidhan Sabha and, for another, their own future depended on his. In plain terms, the state Congress Legislature Party could not have produced a solution to the crisis on its own.
Security Curtain
It is, of course, true that when at long last Mr. Rajiv Gandhi acted and advised Mr. Solanki to resign last week, he did so in his capacity as Congress president. But he derived his authority from the fact of his being Prime Minister armed with the power to dismiss a chief minister and impose President’s Rule on the concerned state. It is seriously open to doubt whether a Solanki (any Congress chief minister in a similar situation) would heed the party president if the party is not in power in New Delhi and the party chief is not Prime Minister.
I am by no means suggesting that Mr. Gandhi should continue to combine the two offices of Prime Minster and Congress president: he can certainly give up the latter if he can find a proper surrogate and is so inclined. Only that would not make any difference to anyone. It would not restore to the Congress organisation any degree of autonomy and if it did, that is if Mr. Gandhi was inept enough to choose a headstrong person as party chief and if that person successfully asserted himself, a headlong conflict of the type we witnessed in 1969 when Mrs. Gandhi was Prime Minster and Mr. Kamaraj Nadar was Congress president would become unavoidable. Surely no one interested in a stable order would wish such a confrontation to develop again.
I am also not suggesting that the system of concentration of power in one person which Mrs. Indira Gandhi established and Mr. Rajiv Gandhi is continuing is a desirable one. It is not. Mrs. Gandhi herself became its victim. She came to be surrounded either by sycophants and morons or by time-servers who could certainly not help her to fulfil her ambitions for the country and she knew it. In her case, there were two saving features even if these did not prove effective enough. She had enormous experience in dealing with issues, dating back to the late forties when she came to live with her father and became his principal confidante; and she met a large number of people every day and listened to them carefully. Mr. Rajiv Gandhi does not possess the first advantage; up to 1981 he did not show the slightest interest in politics; and he is denying himself the second. He has shut himself up behind a security curtain which is strongly reinforced by a small group of trusted advisers.
Mr. Rajiv Gandhi’s leadership style which is said to make it difficult for even ministers and party MPs to meet him leaves much to be desired. This is a pertinent issue which cannot be evaded. I have no desire to evade it. But if it is accepted, as it should be, that politics is the art of the possible, a couple of points would be in order.
Strong Ruler Needed
First, the Indian social structure does not admit of the transplantation of the Westminster model in its supposedly ideal form; India, if it is to enjoy a measure of stability, needs a strong ruler in New Delhi; a strong ruler must by definition be essentially a just ruler; arbitrariness and injustice would, especially in this age of rapid and growing communication, alienate the better educated sections of society and pose the question of legitimacy which, as we know from Mrs. Indira Gandhi’s example, cannot be resolved once it arises. Secondly, not to speak of a Nehru, an Indira Gandhi or a Rajiv Gandhi in New Delhi can be more easily trusted than a Kairon or a Bakshi, or a Patnaik, a Mishra or a Patil or Solanki in a state capital.
As it happens, no Prime Minister in India has been guided by caste, or communal, or regional considerations. That is a highly pertinent fact which has to be kept in view when we discuss the question of division of power between the Centre and the states. But there is another fact which too deserves attention. The national intelligentsia committed to liberty, observance of certain norms in public life, secularism and the country’s economic development in a manner consistent with the objective of increasing social equality is best able to make itself felt vis-à-vis the Union government.
Witness the effectiveness of the national intelligentsia in compelling Mrs. Indira Gandhi to restore Mr. NT Rama Rao to the office of chief minister in Hyderabad and the helplessness of the local intelligentsia to force him to observe proper norms. Examples of such ineffectiveness are numerous. Indeed, it is difficult to think of an exception where the intelligentsia at the state level has successfully enforced norms on a chief minister. Gujaratis have got rid of chief ministers but through violent upheavals.
The existence of distinct linguistic regions has led many intellectuals into believing that the states, even such misshapen ones as UP, Bihar and Madhya Pradesh, can throw up reasonably viable, honest and efficient political orders of their own if only the Centre lets them. But there is not much evidence to support this proposition. I for one find it difficult to think of a single Congress chief minister even in 1952 who could have won a clear majority for his party in the state legislature without Mr. Nehru’s help and among other parties, men such as Mr. Jyoti Basu and Mr. Ramakrishna Hegde are rare exceptions. The leaders of both the DMK and AIADMK have been far from efficient and exceptionally corrupt.
Maintaining Balance
The choice in India is not between a centralized political order and a decentralized one. It is one between a centralized order resting on the Congress or another more or less similar party, and chaos. It does not follow that a Prime Minister should breathe down the necks of chief ministers and deny them such freedom and powers as they need to be able to perform their duties. That only produces irresponsibility and corruption. The Indira Gandhi era bore testimony to this reality so much so that it is not easy to think of an honest Congress chief minister in the 1980-85 period. But it must be added that if she had been around, Mr. Solanki could not have become the threat he did to orderly life in Gujarat.
Having grown up in the Congress organisation, Mrs. Gandhi was sensitive to the need for maintaining some form of balance between different factions in state units. Her detractors, often one-sided in their assessment of her leadership style, attributed this to her inherent distrust of strong state leaders. Even if this was so, it served an essential need. The point is not just that our complex and diverse social formations need to be represented in the ruling party even if it leads to factionalism, but also that in the absence of an internal balancing factionalism produces in it, the leadership will be free to pursue caste-communal politics.
In the specific case of Gujarat, Mr. Solanki had managed to drive out of the party one of his strongest rivals, Mr. Ratubhai Adani, when Mrs. Indira Gandhi was still alive. He had also managed to cut his other rivals such as Mr. Sanat Mehta and Mr. Jinabhai Darji down to size before her assassination last October. But he had not been able to eliminate them. This objective he achieved earlier this year when at the time of the selection of party nominees for election to the state legislature, Mr. Rajiv Gandhi gave him complete authority which Mrs. Indira Gandhi would never have allowed him.
Mr. Solanki created a virtually new legislature party. As many as 72 percent of the nominees were new faces, most of them nondescripts at the state level. And out of 182 candidates, only eight to 10 belonged to the dissident groups. So he brought into being a legislature party which was obedient to his will. He could do what he liked. By common consent, he also chose ministers who were faceless. No wonder, Mr. Solanki towered above them all, a giant among pygmies. The result, including his own downfall, is there for all to see.
The Times of India, 10 July 1985