Politics of compassionate governance
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| Rajiv Desai |
At about 5 a.m on May 21, 1991, Rajiv Gandhi showed up on the steps of the circuit house in Agra, bright-eyed and immaculately turned out as always. Just a few hours earlier, he had arrived at the venue after campaigning in Mathura. His clothes were soiled; he was bruised all over from people touching him. He looked tired. I was almost embarrassed to ask him to approve a statement we wanted to issue as part of the Congress campaign in the ensuing general election. He read through it and said it looked okay to him.
On that hot and sultry dawn, I stood with him as he got ready to drive off to the airport to take a flight to Vishakhapatnam and then on to Madras. "So do we go ahead?" I asked. "Yes," he replied, "but you must check with PV." Less than 18 hours later, he was dead. We were bereft. And PV (Narasimha Rao) went on to become the prime minister. In turn, Rao appointed Manmohan Singh as finance minister and despite the uncertainty caused by Rajiv’s assassination, India was off and running to join the global mainstream.
I cannot help experiencing wonder and awe that exactly 13 years later, Sonia Gandhi won the election for the Congress and stepped aside to nominate Manmohan Singh as prime minister. What struck me about Rajiv and persuaded me to chuck up a life of almost two decades in the United States was his vision of India shining in the 21st century. Dr. Singh did more than anyone else to realise Rajiv’s dream and it seems to me entirely appropriate that Sonia, having redeemed the Congress, asked him to be India’s first prime minister to be elected in the 21st century.
It’s true that Dr. Singh heads a coalition government. It’s also true that the Left’s support from the outside is critical to the survival of his government. It is equally true that between them, Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh represent the best of India: compassionate governance and progressive policies. The support of the Left is crucial because they will help the government take on vested interests. These are the knee-jerk jholewallahs with no stake in the system, who opposed the reforms of the Rao government, and crony businessmen who cheered the BJP’s cash-and-carry reforms.
On the other hand, it’s not really clear what ‘reforms’ are. By and large, reforms are understood to be measures taken in favour of the ‘haves’ in the belief that the gains will trickle down to the ‘have-nots’. In the years that I have known Dr. Singh, I have learned to appreciate his view that reforms are about creating ‘public goods’ not just private wealth. Over the long period I have worked with Sonia Gandhi, I have learned to appreciate her view that government must focus on welfare of the poor.
Between the two, the government will sort out its priorities and that is what ‘reforms’ are all about: getting your priorities right. On the expenditure front, this government will ensure that money is directed to primary education and public health on the one hand and to the welfare of the people who need it most on the other. On the investment front, this government will focus on creating public goods such as power, water, sanitation, mass transport and the rule of law.
However, the path is strewn not just with obstacles but with landmines. There are enough insecure people in all the parties that constitute the ruling coalition. They will try to drive a wedge to disrupt the near-perfect understanding between the prime minister and the Congress president. Indeed, even without its coalition partners, the Congress itself has many a naysayer. A group of these negative people disrupted the healthy relationship between the Congress president and her chief ministers, who at one time numbered 15. In the confusion, the Congress lost Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh. More recently, the Congress lost its decisive majority in Karnataka and now heads a coalition government. Today, there is a question mark over its prospects in Punjab, Kerala and Maharashtra.
It is clear that the success of the Congress-led government depends on the ability of Mrs.Gandhi and Dr. Singh to weather the slings and arrows of internal Congress politics as well as coalition differences. The Left can be useful in negotiating conflicts within the coalition. However it is up to the prime minister and the Congress president to bridge the faults in the Congress edifice, faults that are caused by vaulting ambition as well as petty personality conflicts.
In the 23 years that I have known and worked with the Congress, I have come to realise two things: one, that the party’s commitment to secular politics is total and two, that its compassion for the poor is unmatched. The BJP, poor loser that it is, even when it was in power, unfailingly pointed out that during the 45 or so years that the Congress held sway over India’s government, there was no dearth of communal riots and not much happened to alleviate the lot of the poor.
What the saffron lot does not understand yet is that the Indian people gave them a chance and they blew it because of their arrogance and bigotry. The BJP’s fascist mindset is evident in their members’ contempt for the institutions of constitutional democracy. In power, they sought to bully the legislature, subvert the judiciary, downgrade the executive and co-opt the media. In defeat, they are still shrill, like spoilt children whose toys have been taken away from them. They have lost nearly 25 percent of their seats in Parliament. If they continue with this spoilt-brat approach, they might scream themselves back to their 1984 tally of just two seats.
In their misbegotten ‘India Shining’ campaign paid for by taxpayers, the amoral saffronistas willy-nilly made India shine. That is why we have a progressive and compassionate government in place to help India negotiate its place in the 21st century.
(Rajiv Desai is the Delhi-based president of IPAN)