If there was any scope for doubt that the Janata leaders are caught in a trap partly of their own making, the four-day political conference in Ujjain should remove it. They are aware that the party has been losing support and that the prospect of Mrs. Gandhi’s return to office has improved as a result. But they are unable to do anything about it. This does not mean that no one among them has a solution to offer. On the contrary, too many of them have too many solutions to offer. Only they contradict one another. The party chief, Mr. Chandra Shekhar, does not mind a split in the Janata provided it is the result of a clash of principles and not of personalities. But what are those principles for which he is prepared to face a split? Is it possible to separate principles from personalities?
He perhaps favours a change of prime minister and Mr. Morarji Desai himself has said that he is prepared to step down if it helps the party. Mr. Desai, of course, does not think to such a step by him can help the party. But supposing he was in fact willing to step down, in whose favour could he do so? How is the new leader to be selected? By consensus or by competition? To pose these questions should itself suffice to show that the leadership issue is much too complicated to be resolved soon. Mr. Shekhar has blamed the government for the decline in the party’s popularity – non-performance is the key word in Janata circles these days. But what precisely does Mr. Shekhar have in mind and why has he not spelt it out so far?
Similarly, Mr. Desai has spoken of a lack of party organization in most states indicating thereby that that is where, in his view, the fault lies and that Mr. Shekhar must bear a substantial part of the responsibility for it. But he has enough experience to know that it is easier to talk of organization than to build one and that this is so especially in this case because the Janata is in reality a coalition and some of its constituents have pretty extensive organizations of their own. In fact, he must know that the first step towards integration by way of organizational elections now scheduled for early next year is likely to create more problems than it is likely to solve. That there is no other choice is a different proposition.
The leadership problem was largely unavoidable for the Janata. Coalitions do not throw up a leader who can quickly and easily impose his will on other colleagues and thereby produce a team capable of working together to some common purpose. But the Janata stalwarts do not even recognise the need for such a leader, though without it, there can be no nucleus around which the Janata can coalesce and grow. While this conceptual deficiency may not be of critical importance, it cannot be insignificant either, particularly because the Janata contains individuals who have not been used to working in reasonably disciplined mass organizations. The fact that the Congress (I) has come up rapidly mainly because it possesses such a leader has apparently not made any impression on them. They have been talking of performance without even realizing that their priorities have been wrong. Who favours prohibition, for instance? Mr. Desai obviously feels strongly on this question. But his Cabinet ministers and the Janata chief ministers do not and yet they have endorsed his policy. What sense does it make for the Janata to push Hindi with such fervour and cause concern in the South? How do those who have supported the Bihar chief minister’s casteist decision on the issue of job reservations expect to win over the Harijans? What have the Janata leaders expected to gain by criticizing Mr. Nehru and making it out that the Congress achieved nothing in 30 years of its rule and in the process making a gift of that national figure and the Congress party’s achievements to Mrs. Gandhi? And the Janata must be the only ruling party in any democracy whose leaders not only say that it is possible to implement a hastily put together election manifesto but criticize their own government for its alleged failure to be guided by its letter. Surely, in the face of such ineptitude it cannot be particularly surprising that Mrs. Gandhi is riding high once again.