The economic policy resolution which the All-India Congress Committee adopted on Sunday is very different from the one which had originally been prepared by a four-man drafting committee. While it would be an exaggeration to say that traditional Congressmen favouring a left-of-the-centre stance have forced a retreat on the part of the top leadership and that government policies in coming months will reflect this retreat, it is possible that Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and his aides would in future pay somewhat greater attention to opinion in the party than they have tended to do in the past four months.
On a surface view, our welcoming this development would appear rather odd in view of our consistent support for liberalization of the economy to allow greater freedom to the private
sector, freer imports of technical knowhow and even capital so that Indian industry is at once enabled and compelled to compete with the West, and reductions in taxation so that even those not inclined to take to dishonest practices are not compelled to do so.
But we have favoured these changes within the larger political-economic framework which Mr. Nehru and Mrs. Gandhi had evolved with an eye on the country’s political and economic needs. As the original economic policy resolution said “policy instruments relevant to one stage cannot be treated as permanently sacrosanct”. And, as the resolution added, “nor are they ends in themselves.’’ As general propositions these are unexceptionable. But their incorporation in an economic policy resolution for endorsement by the AICC reflects a charming innocence of the Indian reality.
Uses Of Ideology
India, unlike China, is a functioning democracy. Its rulers cannot swing it from one end of the spectrum to the other as their Chinese counterparts have for the last three decades – from the time of the “great leap forward” – and yet retain power. They have to take a substantial section of the people with them which they can do only if they consciously maintain a link with the past. As it happens, India has no need to take to “pragmatism” with a vengeance because, unlike China, it has not been guilty of revolutionary romanticism. At the very start of its experiment in planned growth it provided for a mixed economy which allowed a considerable leeway not only for the Indian private sector but also for foreign companies.
It is not our case that this model has been flawless. As we have emphasized again and again, the public sector, accounting for almost three-fourths of capital investment, has not performed well. And even leftist intellectuals would admit that the regime of licenses, permits and quotas has spawned a black-money parallel economy of unbelievable dimensions. But the model has not been a total failure either. If foreign investors have come to regard India as a reasonably attractive proposition, it is not just because the country has in Mr. Rajiv Gandhi a Prime Minister they like. They find India attractive principally because its economy is reasonably vibrant and its foundations sufficiently well laid and strong to admit of quick movement forward.
The private sector in India has, of course, matured over the years and can now take on responsibilities which only the public sector could possibly handle earlier. But how much of these responsibilities it can cope with is still an open question. This is a practical and not an ideological problem. But ideology is not without its uses.
India is an old civilisation. But it is a new nation. Indeed, it is still a nation in the making. It cannot do without an ideology. It needs an ideology which is flexible enough to suit the genius of the people who have been known for their remarkable capacity for accommodation and assimilation. But a new nation has to have an ideology. In a most fundamental sense the Constitution provides that ideology in our case as it does in America’s. That provides the framework within which the government is expected to function so that a violent deviation from it as during the emergency can arouse fierce resentment. But a ruling party is to have another ideology which can help it mobilize support cutting across regional, communal and casteist divisions.
Not Empty Rhetoric
As I see it and as I explained in a recent talk to Asia Society, New York (published in these columns on March 19, 20, 21 and 22), a mix of populism and nationalism alone can serve that purpose. Populism because a vast majority of the Indian people are poor and nationalism because a commitment to this larger cause can enable us to transcend our parochial loyalties.
Populism has become a dirty word for the well-heeled in India who incidentally have developed a contempt for politicians as a class not only because many of them have come to indulge in malpractices but also because they are not sophisticated enough in the Western sense. But populism has not been an empty rhetoric solely designed to hamstring private enterprise and fool the people. It has produced results. An impact has been made on poverty.
There is inevitably a clash between the ideology of the Indian state as embodied in the Constitution and the ideology of the ruling party which the Nehruite slogans of socialism, secularism, and non-alignment, a euphemism for national pride and independence, sum up. But we cannot do without either. We cannot have a state without the first and a stable political order and government without the second.
In her last years Mrs. Gandhi had come to emphasize the nationalist component of the party’s ideology to some extent at the cost of the populist one. But she always kept that in reserve and would almost certainly have brought it out at the time of the elections to the Lok Sabha if she had not been gunned down. Her martyrdom in the cause of India’s unity and integrity, as millions of ordinary people saw it, made the nationalist platform so powerful that it gave Mr. Rajiv Gandhi a victory the like of which even Mr. Nehru had not won at the height of his popularity.
A large number of Mrs. Gandhi’s detractors saw it as Mr. Rajiv Gandhi’s personal victory at least partly because they needed to convince themselves that the son would make a break with her legacy which they interpreted wholly in negative terms in utter disregard of facts. They rallied to his banner as if a new messiah had arrived. Quite candidly, it is difficult to be sure whether or not Mr. Rajiv Gandhi too saw it as a personal victory which gave him the mandate to do whatever he thought necessary to take India into the 21st century. But on a surface view at least, he behaved as if he took such a view. He got rid of Mrs. Gandhi’s old faithful aides, domestic, official and ministerial, and reduced references to her during the election campaign for the state assemblies in February.
Apart from the economic policy resolution adopted by the AICC, Mr. Rajiv Gandhi’s speeches to this gathering of Congressmen and on the occasion of the start of the party’s centenary celebrations would suggest that that brief phase is over. But effective and durable leadership calls for something more than a return to a well-tested platform.
The weaknesses of Mrs. Gandhi’s style of functioning are well known. She did considerable damage to institutions, including the cabinet, reducing ministers to inefficient executors of her will. But for all that, she ran an open government. She met a large number of individuals – MPs, partymen from the states, and others and listened to them. The imperial durbar every morning too was no empty ceremony. It helped her keep her finger on the pulse of the people. She knew what was going on.
Mr. Rajiv Gandhi cannot and should not even try to imitate her style of functioning. Women make a different kind of leaders than men. Mrs. Gandhi’s background was different from his and she grew up in a very different India from his. But all that does not dispose of the need for an open government and a reasonably easy accessibility on the part of the Prime Minister, especially of a Prime Minister who chooses to be president of his party.
Close To People
Congressmen are a strange lot. They tend to be sycophantic in the presence of the leader. But they are not without views of their own. Most of them do not look impressive in a modem setting. But they are close to the people A leader must at once be able to command their obedience and their loyalty. Their loyalty is assured only partly by his capacity to help them win elections. He has to provide for them in some way and be accessible to them.
A distinction has to be drawn between a modern Indian and a modernizing Indian. While the former tends to get cut off from the people, the latter can serve as the bridge between a modern India to be and an India that has been and is. So no Indian leader can afford to ignore the latter even if he tends to lean on the former. Mr. Nehru leaned a lot on Mr. Krishna Menon but he balanced him with Maulana Azad and Pandit Govind Ballabh Pant. And finally he paid a heavy price for leaning excessively on a man whose feet were not securely planted on the Indian soil.
Mr. Rajiv Gandhi is new to the office of prime minister. His leadership style is yet to take a definite shape. Judging by his performance at the AICC, he is quick to sense the need to adjust his position to the requirements of the situation. Meanwhile, he will do well to remember that governance of India requires all the skills he can mobilize, that quick fixes do not work in a mansion as vast and multi-layered as India, that high-tech is not a magic wand and the world of ordinary Indians is very different from that of WOGs (Westernized Oriental Gentlemen).
The Times of India, 7 May 1985