It looks as if the Prime Minister, Mr Morarji Desai, has finally made up his mind to reshuffle the Union cabinet and allocate to someone of his choice the Home portfolio which has been lying vacant since Mr Charan Singh resigned on June 29 last year. If this is indeed the case, he has taken the correct decision. But if it is not, Mr Desai will only be prolonging the period of uncertainty and confusion for himself, the Janata party and the country. He would have been justified in continuing to take this risk if there was a sporting chance that Mr Charan Singh can be persuaded to accept a portfolio other than Home, call off his threat to quit the Janata at a time of his choosing and cooperate with the Prime Minister in the running of the government. But there is no such prospect. The former home minister is insistent that the status quo ante must be restored which Mr Desai cannot do except at the risk of further undermining his own position. And even if for some obscure reason he agrees, there can be no guarantee that Mr Charan Singh will be more accommodating and cooperative than he was till his exit from the government on June 29 last year. Thus by postponing the proposed cabinet reshuffle, Mr Desai will only be exposing himself to pressures by the mediators, including Mr Jayaprakash Narayan and Acharya Kripalani, some of his own ministers who for their own partisan or personal reasons are keen to ensure that Mr Charan Singh returns to the cabinet with honour, and the former home minister’s supporters. This, too, need not have been cause for undue concern if the resulting uncertainty was not adversely affecting the administration and
encouraging some individuals within the cabinet and outside to project themselves rather
prematurely as future prime ministers. But this is precisely what has been happening. The administration is in a poor shape partly as a result of lack of direction from the Janata leadership and there is no dearth now in the ruling party of candidates for the office of prime Minister. It will not be fair to illustrate this point in a manner that helps identify one or two of the aspirants and not the others. But it can hardly be disputed that the unhealthy race for prime ministership is on.
It is difficult, if not impossible, to say whether or not Mr Charan Singh and his firm supporters will regard a cabinet reshuffle, especially the allocation of the Home portfolio to someone else, as the final provocation and leave the Janata. But it is self-evident that if they choose to quit at this stage, they will be doing so at a time which is far from appropriate from their point of view. For Mr Charan Singh will be in a position effectively to challenge Mr Desai only when the two Congress parties have been reunited under Mrs Gandhi’s leadership. It is implicit in this view that she will then be willing to offer Mr Charan Singh the office of Prime Minister and that the offer will increase his pull with Janata MPs sufficiently to enable him to win over around 100 of them. Neither of these assumptions may turn out to be justified. Neither Mrs Gandhi nor Mr Charan Singh is known to trust the other and the latter has never been particularly good in winning over people and retaining their loyalty. But all this speculation is less pertinent than the fact that right now his exit is not likely to deprive the Janata of its majority in the Lok Sabha or, indeed, even in the Haryana, UP and Bihar legislatures where alone Mr Charan Singh commands considerable influence and that, therefore, this will be an inappropriate moment for him to leave the party and thus use up the last weapon in his armoury. If, on the other hand, the Janata leadership can use the opportunity provided by his exit to appoint more effective and less partisan chief ministers in these three states, it may well find itself much better placed to face Mrs Gandhi’s challenge irrespective of whether or not she is able to reunite the two Congress parties and whether or not she is willing to make common cause with Mr Charan Singh. For while the three state chief ministers have little to show by way of achievement, they have aggravated the caste divisions in society to a dangerous extent. The problem has become particularly acute in Bihar where we are witnessing the beginning of a caste war. And it does not appear that the situation is likely to ease in coming months. On the contrary, there is every indication that it will deteriorate so much so that it may neither be possible nor desirable to allow a so-called popular government to run the administration. Mr Desai has also had enough time to judge the performance of his cabinet colleagues and to find out who among them need
to be sent out in the interest of making the government more effective and purposeful and of improving its image among the people. In fact it is well known that about half a dozen cabinet ministers have earned no credit either for themselves or their party and they need to be eased out. Thus from whatever angle Mr Desai views the problem of asserting his leadership of the Janata parliamentary party and government, he has no good reason to continue to dither.
The Times of India, 6 January 1979