Wisdom in Short Supply

FROM N.C.’S WRITINGS

The security environment in which the Republic of India steps into the thirtyeight year of its eventful career this week, is, to say the least, disturbing indeed. While one earnestly hopes that the Pakistani arms build-up along our frontier may not escalate into one more tragic war between the two neighbours, the climate of confrontation seems of have already set in. This by itself is an extremely unsettling development which not only threatens to vitiate normal relations between two important countries of South Asia—thereby undermining the very foundations of SAARC—but also to disrupt the entire foreign policy projection of India, with its priority concern for world campaigns for nuclear disarmament and for the dismantling of apartheid. The holding of the Africa Fund summit in New Delhi this week is a tribute to the confidence reposed in India’s leadership by the entire nonaligned movement. The tension along the Indo-Pak frontier threatens to disrupt this focus of our foreign policy perspective, apart from adding one more tension spot in the trouble-tossed continent of Asia.

More serious is the impact of any Indo-Pak tension on the internal situation in India. A warlike fever in Indo-Pak relations poses a threat to our national integrity. Placed as we have been, this may grievously affect Hindu-Muslim relationship, vitiated in recent years by the phenomenal mushrooming of communal organisations while the government has so far failed to move in the matter beyond the precincts of pious platitudes. A new dimension to the Indo-Pak animosity is the backing that the Khalistani secessionists in Punjab have been getting from Pakistan, which, in the event of heightened tension, will be a matter of serious concern for our security apart from embittering Hindu-Sikh relations.

Despite the Prime Minister’s rather glib assertion at his recent press conference that “the economy on the whole is looking very good”, careful observers realise how difficult is the economic situation where resource raising has practically come to a standstill, while the so-called libera-lisation of the economy under the present government has not brought the expected benefits: on the contrary, the foreign exchange reserve has been badly depleted. In such a precarious situation, the high cost of any military conflict can be back-breaking indeed as the burden of the previous wars in the sixties and seventies could be felt for years afterwards.

In such a far-from-reassuring scenario, what strikes one as perhaps the most disturbing is the amazingly juvenile manner that the governance of this country is being conducted today. From the pronouncements and functioning of the Prime Minister himself one senses an extraordinary lack of serious application to complex problems. Ad-hocism seems to be running riot. This could be seen in the handling of such formidable problems as the continuing crisis in Punjab and the mounting communal violence in different parts of this country; whether it is Gorkhaland or managing the economy, there is a conspicuous lack of any long-range thinking. This is equally true in foreign policy, whether it is in the handling of the Tamil question in Sri Lanka or working out a realistic approach towards China; or examining in depth the perspective for Indo-US relations or about the future of SAARC. The persistent impulse for quick effect betrays a singular reluctance or incapacity to evolve a serious policy approach.

Such a frightening political vacuity is sought to be filled up by shibboleths and exhortations which neither stir nor convince. While the Prime Minister’s cohorts are engaged in projecting his image in the style of a PR exercise for marketing a consumer item, Rajiv Gandhi himself has been displaying an unbelivable aversion to sustained and serious examination of issues and problems confronting his government. He has chosen to distance himself from his political colleagues to a measure unthinkable for the leader of a government entrusted with the responsibility of such a vast country as ours. As one closely watches the New Delhi scene, one cannot help getting worried at the spectacle of a Prime Minister choosing to be cut off from his ministerial colleagues to an extent that no political leader of even a small country would risk to go in for.

A political leader to be effective needs a well-run party at his or her command. Without a party worth the name a political leader, however eminent he or she may be, becomes paralysed while the living links between the leader and the masses get withered away. Whatever be the ideological pursuits of a leader, he or she can hardly afford to neglect party building except at his or her peril. In the two years of his being the President of the Congress-I, Rajiv Gandhi has virtually dismantled whatever party organisation was left behind by his mother. His periodic announcements of measures to gear up the party has ceased to be taken seriously. In fact, his supreme inaction on this score has become a matter of ridicule among senior Congressmen. Many of them were taken by surprise when Rajiv at his recent press conference blandly said he did not ask for the resignation of office-bearers of the AICC, for they had to send in their resignations to the party President when it had been conveyed to them that he wanted them to do so. Nor were they amused by Rajiv’s remark “I am watching their performance”, because they have felt that all the sudden changes in the past two years have come in fits and starts without any evaluation by the party President. The state of the Congress-I party organisation is such that it can hardly be in a position to withstand any crisis at the national level and the party organs have been so badly emasculated that in any critical development, they cannot save the party President himself.

Sometimes one comes across in history and in the contemporary world, a political leader having a weak party set-up to back him, nurturning the bureaucracy and building it up as his or her bulwark. What is Rajiv Gandhi’s record on this score? There has been a lot of talk in the last two years about streamlining the administration to make it efficient and accountable. But actually it has ended up in plenty of smart talk, flourish of supercilious air and astonishing resistance at going to the root of the problems that beset the administration in the context of our times and in the setting of our country. What is perhaps the most disconcerting is the display of arrogance in dealing with officers in his government. One had thought that after his headline-hitting angry outburst against Anjaiah, the then Andhra Chief Minister—whch had cost the Congress-I party dearly in Andhra Pradesh—Rajiv Gandhi had perhaps got over such display of temper of his greenhorn days. But a series of recent incidents have belied that expectation. In fact, the new year score of the Prime Minister on this count threatens to be distressingly impressive. The public display of temper against an officer over a trivial matter during his Andaman holidaying, leading to his instant removal from his assignment, has been widely noticed.

More serious was the Prime Minister’s conduct in humiliating two senior officers—Bandyopadhyay and Shastri—during a recent session of a parlia-mentary consultative committee, caused conside-rable embarrassment for the Ministers and MPs present. If one were to examine the details of this incident, it becomes clear that the Prime Minister was totally in the wrong in insulting his officers. Notwithstanding the touching defence of the Prime Minister in the press by Dr Najma Haptullah, there is no gainsaying that there was a singular lack of propriety and fairplay in his conduct on that occasion. Much in the same style has come the report of high-handed conduct of his Railway Minister in dealing with a Vigilance Officer in course of a conference.

What has transgressed all bounds is Rajiv Gandhi’s shocking behaviour towards Foreign Secretary Venkateswaran. Details of this episode are now public property thanks to the enormity of the scandal. At his press conference on January 20, when a Pakistani correspondent quoted the Foreign Secretary having said that the Prime Minister would be visiting Pakistan as the SAARC Chairman, Rajiv Gandhi replied with a smirk: “You will talk with the new Foreign Secretary soon.” Venkateswaran, who was present at the press conference, had no foreknowledge of his going to be replaced, for the Prime Minister did not care to inform him about it. As was to be expected of a person of integrity and self-respect, Venkateswaran promptly resigned from government service.

The episode has actually hurt the Prime Minister and his government more than the Foreign Secretary. In an unprecedented sweep, the media reactions condemned the Prime Minister’s petulance with almost striking unanimity. His Ministers were dumb-struck; in course of the next thirty hours, the present writer met five Cabinet Ministers and three Ministers of State none of whom could find a word of explanation for their leader’s conduct, while most of them expressed concern over his style of functinoning. Equally significant is the instant support for Venkateswaran by the Foreign Service Officers’ Association, a move without precedent in its record stretching over three decades. What is perhaps more serious is the repercussion of the episode on the diplomatic world. India has a long record of sobriety in the conduct of foreign affairs: against such a back-ground, it would not be surprising if many of the chanceries of the world begin to wonder if things had gone haywire in New Delhi where the Prime Minister is found to be blissfully unaware of the consequences of discrediting and publicly humiliating the head of his Foreign Office.

Nobody questions the right of the Prime Minister to discipline his officers if they go astray from their briefs but nobody would grant him the prerogative to humiliate them in public. The Caligula style functioning did not help the Roman Empire, and would certainly not be relished in a vibrant democracy like ours.

The fact of the matter is that at least in Venkateswaran’s case, there was no brief at all. Not only with regard to Pakistan but China and other crucial spheres of foreign policy, the Prime Minister himself has been indulging in statements which are often contradictory and betray a conspicuous absence of any serious thinking. One is inclined to believe that a coterie having the Prime Minister’s ear—neither his Foreign Minister nor his ministerial colleagues—is interested in getting rid of persons of integrity and putting their own chums in key posts.

From these and other incidents one is worried at the Prime Minister’s incapacity to evaluate the personnel in his own government. There are quite a few laggards and intriguers thriving under his benign protection, while on the plea of gearing up his administration, Rajiv Gandhi picks up as the target of his attack some of the ablest of officers in the government. D. Bandyo-padhyay, who had to face the Prime Minister’s wrath, has a legendary reputation of a dedicated officer with a calibre which any government anywhere in the world would be proud of. Venkateswaran’s outstanding abilities, sharp intellect and sterling patriotism bring out the qualities of leadership in him which a government worth the name cannot fail to recognise. But in the hothouse of Rajiv’s establish-ment super-smart Alecs seem to be preferred to solid intellect.

The hauteur displayed in these cases that have of late attracted wide negative public response is not confined to officials as part of a drive against the bureaucracy—as some of the Prime Minister’s cronies have mumbled lately in his defence—but could be noticed even when Rajiv Gandhi recently addressed the Science Congress delivering the homily to the eminent gathering to abjure “mediocrity”. The scientists, of course, were too polite and honourable to retort that the physician could as well heal himself first.

Rajiv Gandhi has to realise that with all the image-building via TV does not make a leader, not cetainly the leader of a nation. The officers and professionals are public servants and not his domestic staff. The government is not the private enterprise of any Prime Minister: whether he likes it or not, there can be no privatisation at least this area.

Although history seems to be at a discount in the Rajiv establishment, he would do well to read and ponder over what his grandfather wrote to the Chief Ministers thirtyfive years ago just after the opening of the Parliament elected for the first time under adult suffrage: “The governance of any country in the world today is no easy matter; the governance of a great and varied country like India is perhaps as hard a task as any in the world today. Any person who is associated with this governance must approach this great task with humility as well as with a measure of faith."

The edifice of this great Republic was built upon the foundation laid down by such great minds. Rajiv Gandhi is expect to protect and preserve and not squander this precious heirloom—precious to the entire humanity that is India. It’s time for him to grow up in maturity and be guided by the tenets of wisdom.

(Mainstream, Republic Day, 1987)