The outcome of the election to the vidhan sabha in Haryana last week posed a difficult problem for Mrs. Gandhi both as Prime Minister and Congress (I) president. She could not have resolved it satisfactorily whatever decision she took.
Broadly, two choices were open to her – to try and win back Congress (I) rebels who had got elected (despite her strong denunciation of them) in order that her party may form the government in the state, or to allow the Lok Dal-BJP alliance, such as it is, to try and form the ministry. She could not have exercised either of these options without running some serious risks.
In the event, she took the first choice. It is open to question whether six of the rebels have in fact come back. The Lok Dal leader, Mr. Devi Lal, could not have produced 44 MLAs in addition to himself before the governor if they had in fact returned to the Congress (I) fold. This raises vital issues for the future of democracy In India. But to begin with, let us look at the consequences of Mrs. Gandhi’s decision for the Congress (I) which remains the only political instrument for ensuring democratic rule in the country.
In effect, Mrs. Gandhi has said goodbye to any hope of being able to impose any kind of discipline in her party. This cannot but spell disaster in its present ramshackle condition where only the fear of attracting her displeasure restrains potential dissidents. And who does not know that today any Congress f (I) legislator who is denied office is a potential dissident?
For Mrs. Gandhi as Congress (1) president, nothing could have been more important than to keep the fear of punishment alive, indeed to reinforce it. She should, therefore, have expelled for five years and longer not only all those who had contested the election after having been denied the party ticket but also their prominent supporters. She has done the very opposite. One of the Congress (I) general secretaries, Mr. G. K. Moopanar, has gone to the ridiculous extent of saying that the electorate had voted for the rebels because it knew that they would eventually return to the Congress (I). This unbelievably cynical formulation may be his own but the decision to persuade the rebels to come back cannot but be Mrs. Gandhi’s.
Casteist Party
The alternative open to Mrs. Gandhi as Prime Minister was, however, equally unpleasant. The Lok Dal is without question a casteist party. It is the party of the middle caste peasantry, headed by the Jats in Haryana and western UP, by the Yadavs in eastern UP and so on. It cannot, if and when in office, be expected to treat the other castes fairly. The record of its leaders in power as part of the Janata set-up in UP, Bihar and Haryana between 1977 and 1979 speaks for itself. It would have been a different matter if the Bharatiya Janata Party, a post-Janata incarnation of the former Jana Sangh, had annexed a sufficient number of seats and emerged as a more or less equal partner. It could then have ensured that the Lok Dal leaders kept their casteism under some control. But the BJP is not in a position to play such a restraining role.
This is not to justify either Haryana governor, Mr. Tapase’s only too obvious attempt to somehow deny the Lok Dal-BJP alliance an opportunity to form a government or his action of swearing in Mr. Bhajan Lal as chief minister without insisting on verifiable evidence that the Congress (I) leader enjoyed the support of the majority. The intention is to underline the fact that as Prime Minister wanting to ensure fair treatment for all sections of the people in Haryana, Mrs. Gandhi could not have viewed the prospect of an essentially Lok Dal government with equanimity.
It is hardly necessary to emphasise that Mr. Tapase has been thoroughly inept, if not worse, and that even if he had acted on his own, Mrs. Gandhi cannot avoid responsibility for his action. But it is perhaps necessary to point out that a sharp contradiction has arisen in Haryana between the form and content of democracy which no one familiar with the local scene can possibly ignore. Democracy involves much more than a mere counting of heads; it calls for fair play.
That problem is in fact not wholly peculiar to Haryana. It has arisen elsewhere, though in a different form. Despite the support of an overwhelming majority of the state legislators, Mr. AR Antulay had, for example, forfeited his right to continue as Maharashtra’s chief minister long before the adverse court judgment and his resignation last January. The same was true of Mr. Jagannath Pahadia in Rajasthan and Mr. Chenna Reddy and Mr. Anjiah in Andhra. And it is a gross violation of the spirit of the constitution that Mr. Chenna Reddy should have been appointed governor of Punjab after having been removed from the office of chief minister of Andhra on serious and widely believed charges of corruption.
The Gap
This gap between the form and essence of democracy has to be bridged if democracy has to survive. Mrs. Gandhi has to make the effort in her own interest. If the recent elections have established anything, it is that she cannot otherwise hope to continue to rule the country effectively.
The Congress (I) has done as well as it has mainly on the strength of her appeal and her hectic campaign. But it has not done well enough. It has, for instance, won only three out of the seven byelections to the Lok Sabha. This should leave little room for doubt that Mrs. Gandhi’s personal charisma and effort may not suffice for ensuring a convincing victory for her party in 1985. And this appears to be the prospect when the economy has been doing reasonably well in the past two years. What happens if there is a poor monsoon, leading to a substantial drop in food production and rise in prices?
This inference is strongly reinforced by the outcome of the electoral contest in Haryana. A great deal has been said and written on the role of the Congress (I) dissidents in the state. But the Lok Dal was not in a much better shape. A vertical split in the party was barely averted just on the eve of the poll. Similarly, while it is true that the Lok Dal enjoys the support of a significant section of the Jat community on caste basis, the community constitutes less than one-third of the state’s total population. And there have not been serious complaints of attempts at intimidation of the weaker castes. How then is one to explain the relatively poor performance of the Congress (1)?
Several explanations appear plausible. The party is in a very bad shape if it can be said to exist at all in a proper sense of the term; it chose its candidates on a factional basis, ignoring many individuals with strong local influence as the success of nine rebels shows; and its image has been pretty poor in view of the widespread impression that many of the former ministers were corrupt (10 of them were defeated). Indeed, it may not be wrong to say that the many of those who voted for the Lok Dal or the BJP did so not because they liked them but because they did not wish to vote for the Congress (1).
This decline of India’s grand old party would not have been cause for undue concern if another truly national party was promising in course of time to take its place. But no such party exists. The Lok Dal is confined to a couple of states and it is essentially a one-leader band, the leader Chaudhuri Charan Singh who is not at all capable of working with a team. Which is partly why it has virtually no organisational structure.
Narrow Base
The BJP is well placed in organisation terms, thanks to the RSS cadres who sustain it. But despite all its efforts, it has apparently not been able to outgrow its earlier limitation of a narrow social base limited to Hindi-speaking areas and the Hindus in Punjab. While, for example, the impression had spread partly on account of the violent clashes between its and CPM workers that it had made considerable strides in Kerala, it has not been able to secure a single seat in the election to the vidhan sabha. Similarly, the CPM, the only other well organised party with a mass base, has not been able to extend beyond West Bengal and Kerala.
The future of Indian democracy is, therefore, critically dependent on the Congress (I). This is, of course, not a new development. This reality has been obvious from 1979-80 when the Janata disintegrated and the Congress (I) won a landslide victory first in the election to the Lok Sabha and then to various state legislatures. But people well disposed towards Mrs. Gandhi then made several assumptions. They assumed that she would strengthen the party organisation to give it a measure of coherence, produce a hierarchy of leaders from the district to the national level and enforce discipline and certain norms of behaviour on her partymen in office. She has not fulfilled these expectations with the result that the Congress (I) has come fairly close to becoming a rabble.
The critics of Mrs. Gandhi take it for granted that she has neither the will nor the capacity to give the Congress (I) a firm organisational form which has some chance of surviving her. Her supporters still hope that she may summon up the necessary will. But even they are finding it difficult to sustain this confidence in her willingness and ability to deliver the goods. It may not be too long before they finally despair. Then the game will be up.
The Times of India, 26 May 1982