For reasons which remain rather obscure, Mrs. Gandhi’s old decisiveness has not been in evidence since she returned to office over two years ago. It is, therefore, not particularly surprising that she should have sought to ease out Mr. Charanjit Chanana, minister of state for industry, and Mr. SS Sisodia, minister of state for finance, in the strange manner she has chosen. It has been the same story of hesitation in a number of other cases – Mr. Jagannath Pahadia (Rajasthan), Mr. AR Antulay (Maharashtra), Mr. Chenna Reddy and Mr. Anjiah (Andhra) and so on. In each case, she has dithered long after it had become all too evident that they were a heavy liability for her, the Congress (I)and the country. In Mr. Chanana’s and Mr. Sisodia’s case even the flimsy pretext of finding in advance suitable replacements for them has not been available to her. Almost any Congress (I) activist can step in their place. And it should not even be necessary to point out that the Prime Minister could not possibly be in the dark either about their record as ministers or about their poor reputation for probity. Above all, it is odd that they should have been denied party nominations for election to the Rajya Sabha while they are still her ministers. If Mrs. Gandhi has been so unhappy with them, as she clearly has been, as to deny them membership of the Upper House, she should have first dropped them from the council of ministers. She could have easily done so at the time of the last cabinet reshuffle.
There can be no doubt that the chief ministers and ministers Mrs. Gandhi has dropped have amply deserved this treatment. Even they themselves cannot claim that she did not show them enough consideration for their “loyalty” during the period of her difficulties. The popular complaint has been that she has been setting too much store by the criterion of “loyalty”. This has been a just grievance on the part of the people. Having elected her to the august office she holds, they are entitled to demand that she subordinate every other consideration to their interest in honest and competent administration. This calls for ruthlessness because things have been allowed to drift too far. Several others in high office need to be sacked and every appointee put on probation. Apparently, Mr. Rajiv Gandhi is using such influence as he commands with the Prime Minister to persuade her to act. This is a welcome development, all the talk of “dynastic succession” notwithstanding. But quiet and piecemeal actions are not going to suffice. The fight against inefficiency and corruption has to be waged boldly and publicized widely.