Congress: A Split that was Waiting to Happen

(Originally appeared in the 1990s in the Times of India, as published in M. D. Nalapat's book "Indutva", Har-Anand Publications, 1999)

A period of rapid economic progress. Damping down of social

tensions despite the implementation of Mandal. Crafting of a

stable majority that looks set to run a full term. Breaking of

militancy in Punjab and battling it to the ground in Kashmir.

These are not small achievements. Indeed, a case may be made

out that the past four years have seen greater positive change

than any previous four-year period since 1947.

This is the reality. And yet, what is the perception? Like the

Cheshire cat in Alice in Wonderland that slowly vanished,

leaving behind only a grin, there has been a steady blurring of

the achievements of the Narasimha Rao government, leaving

behind a residue of confusion as to what exactly these are. Partly,

this is due to the differences in emphases articulated by individual

leaders. N.K.P. Salve is MNC-friendly while A.K. Antony sounds

pro-poor, Mallikarjun would destroy the Prithvi, while Jaffar

Sharief would go to war (hopefully with it). Pranab Mukherjee

would place greater reliance on Indian business houses, while

Manmohan Singh appears to have a soft corner for the foreign

kind. But such differences have been there in every period, and

in every system save that of Stalin. Then why the negative vibes?

In a democracy, a leader needs not just to be effective, he has

to show to the people that he is so, that he fights very strongly

for values and objectives with which they relate. Despite the

egalitarianism of the ballot box, voters want an individual who

leads on horseback. Who speaks in equivocal tones about his

priorities, and who does not appear defensive or inarticulate. In

short, not just a good manager, but a good communicator.

Franklin Roosevelt would never have succeeded in stemming

social tension during the Depression had he not, through his

fireside chats and the warmth of his public personality,

transmitted optimism even to the jobless. Britain may have lost

heart in 1940-41 but for the pugnacity of Winston Churchill, who

refused to accept that the Germans had whipped his nation

almost to the ground.

Revolutions are made not just in conference rooms peopled

by efficient officers calling forth facts on a computer, or giving

orders to subordinates through the telephone. 

They are made in fields and workshops, homes and offices,

through an organic bonding between voter and leader, a sense

of identification of each with the other. The idiom has to be

simple, not talk of a billion dollars in Rayalaseema or televiews

of sleek foreign delegations arriving in their limousines. And the

instruments of communication: the political party organisation.

The media, the ground-level administration, needs to be kept in

constant contact with. A direct contact that alone can provide the

vehicle for them to transmit the leader's vision to his flock. The

Congress party is no exception to this rule of political life.

Today interaction between the Prime Minister and the print

media, for example, is usually confined to airport exchanges. The

frequent exchange of ideas and views (on what the reality is),

with journalists that characterised a John Fitzgerald Kennedy or

a Lal Bahadur Shastri, is absent. journalists are to be kept a Black

Cat-length away. Whether it is the ministries or the General

Secretaries of the AICC, not a scintilla of information is to be

provided unless there is sanction from the top. Which means that

information very seldom gets disclosed, with the result that

rumour takes its place. Although much takes place, public

communiques about this are absent. One is made to wait for a

'final and definitive' statement of policy at an 'appropriate

forum' that almost never occurs.

Used as one may be to a P.N. Haksar or even P.L.N. Dhar —

individuals who welcomed views totally different from what

they or their bureaucratic colleagues were saying and made sure

that the heretics were given access to the top-it is difficult to

generate enthusiasm for those whose attitude is that interaction

with the media is a chore best avoided. It is difficult to appreciate

a home ministry that stores away rather than reveals mountains

of evidence about Pakistan's complicity in terrorist acts. It is not

possible to feel enthusiastic about a defense ministry that appears

to regard Abdul Kalam and his brilliant team of scientists as

morons to be kept out of public view, or to feel kindly towards

a group that bestirs itself publicly only to rebut the allegations

of an Arjun Singh, while till then there was mostly silence about

actual achievements.

However, one should not blame the bureaucracy overmuch.

Those within it are trained to feel suspicious about public affairs.

Which is why there is a parallel political channel to the top,

manned by individuals presumably more attuned to grassroots

needs. However, in today’s Delhi this too is manned by

individuals who have taken the indirect route to power rather

than by facing an electorate. Predictably, their approach to

filtering up ideas and individuals is little different from more

obvious bureaucrats. The result is a system that allows tainted

ministers to continue till they are heckled out by public clamour.

That gives sheep like signals on core issues of concern such as

national defence, making a minister admit that vital programmes

such as Agni and Prithvi may be scuttled. That brings in

perceived deadwood—and worse—in the name of change. That

gives an impression of fawning surrender to external pressure.

None of this may be the reality, but this is the perception.

That perception today has the Congress party on the

defensive. Indira Gandhi’s elephant ride to Belchi, or Jawaharlal

Nehru’s leaping into a crowd with a cane to shoo away rioters,

may not have won approval in schools of etiquette, but they

played well in the minds of the emotional people that Indians

are. A scholarly mien may excite university dons, but few others.

An individual who leads has the responsibility not just to

achieve, but to simultaneously put into effect a policy that will

imprint such deeds into the public consciousness. If such a policy

exists, it has never been put into operation.

The present Prime Minister is probably the best in the

country's history in many respects. But if matters go on as they

are now, his party may secure barely 150 seats in the next Lok

Sabha polls. Is there an individual responsible for this apparent

dichotomy of which the split in the Congress party is only a

minor symptom? There is, and he is the reticent, restrained

Pamulaparthy Venkata Narasimha Rao.