Though Rajiv Gandhi got historic mandate of 415 seats in the lok Sabha in 1984, he had to solely bank on family friends and Nehru loyalists. This coterie created all the rot that was required for the demise of the institutions of the Cabinet, the PMO, and the other vital institutions of the nation
Rajiv Gandhi, the youngest Prime Minister of India (1985-1989), had created India’s electoral history by winning over 400 seats in the eighth lok Sabha polls in December, 1984. He won the general elections cashing in on intense sympathy wave generated after the assassination of his mother and the then PM, Indira Gandhi. Indira’s murder by her bodyguards was both shocking and unbelievable for her countrymen. However, what followed her demise was a series of murder, rape and torturous acts against Sikhs in Delhi right under the very police nose. The brunt of her assassination was borne by Sikhs, and till date, the main culprits of the historic 1984 pogrom are still at large.
In Indira’s assassination, India received a double whammy: the untimely demise of the first woman PM of India was an immense loss to the nation, and at the same time, making every member of the Sikh community paying for her murder put an indelible blot on the august tolerant culture of India. Against the backdrop of this rare human tragedy, Rajiv Gandhi came to power and heralded a spring of hope amid the gloom the country was facing in 1984 and the previous years that marked serial bloodshed in Punjab and Assam. The younger Gandhi, could rightly be called a political novice, in comparison to his veteran mother who ruled the country with an iron hand unlike his grandfather.
Though Rajiv was brought to power with a massive mandate, his electoral success could not be translated into reality in true sense of the term. As the nation celebrated his 25th death anniversary a fortnight ago, it is worth revisiting his short-lived political career on the heels of the fast decline of the grand old party as seen in the election results. “During Rajiv Gandhi’s term in power, both the decline of India’s political institutions and activism of various socio-economic groups continued. In spite of a large electoral majority, Gandhi failed to provide effective government,” lamented Atul Kohli in his scholarly writings on Rajiv Gandhi. Initially, Rajiv hinted that his rule would entirely be different from his mother’s and that he would show the nation a new path, a break from the widely known democratic dictatorship of Mrs Gandhi under whom all the democratic institutions of the country badly lost their relevance.
First, as the political parties hold the key to effective Government, Rajiv sought to reinvigorate the Congress party by introducing internal party elections so that genuine leaders from the State and grassroots could emerge in future. Henry Hart and James Manor correctly notes, “When Gandhi announced that party elections would be held soon, it became readily evident that most party positions would go to those who could muster support of grassroots party members. This prospect, in turn generated two types of power conflicts: one involving the appointed officials against those who sought to challenge them in open, intra-party elections; and the other involving the top leadership, who became worried about ensuring their own power in face of a newly elected parety hierarchy.” Thus, Rajiv realised the imminent conflicts between the two streams of leaders, so he had to abandon the hope of rebuilding the Congress party by 1987.
Second, much of the decision-making power was centred around the PM which largely reflected his personal preferences. At times this process resulted into the coming of the best of the political and bureaucratic personnel to his Government, but it slowly contributed to continuing deinstitutionalisation of India’s democracy.
Third, he took a conciliatory approach to the problems of the Sikhs after coming to power which resulted in declining terrorist violence in the first year of his rule, unlike the horrifying 1980s of Punjab. But as he could not implement the core provisions of the Rajiv-longowal Accord of 1985, the intensity of terrorist violence sharply increased. For instance, only 64 people died in terrorist violence in 1985, but suddenly it rose to more than 600 in 1986 and nearly 1,000 and 3,000 in 1987 and 1988 respectively. Given that Rajiv treated Punjab crisis simply as a “law and order” issue and his inability to pursue an investigation into the 1984 anti-Sikh pogrom finally put a death knell to his popularity and gradual decline of the party in Punjab.
Rajiv also tried to shift India’s economic policies from its regulatory paradigm to a liberal direction. Though he had some success in lifting controls, lowering taxes and liberalising India’s restricted trade regime, this policy shift mobilised a diverse set of reactions. Kohli argues that when Rajiv lost power in 1989, economic policy, though still moving in a liberal direction, increasingly came to be couched in the rhetoric of socialism. The new bureaucratic-technocratic elites that came to grab the levers of power during his time, failed to take liberal reforms to the masses and this resulted into another half-hearted attempt of the young Gandhi to transform India once again. With the loss of the populist agenda, he attempted to flirt with the pro-Hindu themes but it bore no fruit either to his personal popularity or to the rejuvenation of the party.
However, Indira’s courting of the Hindu vote in the early 1980s was much clever move after she gave up her socialist commitment of massive “garibi hatao” programme. But with less skillful Rajiv, the pro-Hindu themes readily slipped out of his hand. Thus parties like the BJP, with their longer commitment to pro-Hindu voters and their superior organisation, were much better situated to take the advantage of the new political situation under the maverick leadership of lK Advani and Atal Behari Vajpayee. Rajiv encountered Bofors scandal that proved a last nail in his Government’s coffin and colossal loss in his political image. All these set the tone for the election debacle of the Congress in 1989 that bagged the party only 195 seats in comparison to 415 seats of 1984.
While re-examining the failures of Rajiv’s leadership, it is worth highlighting the legitimacy behind the power of his mother and grandfather in the heydays of the Congress. Nehru, the first PM of the country, largely acquired national power through direct anointment by Gandhi and through his personal political acumen. For Indira Gandhi, it was her father who introduced her to the world of politics and to the nitty-gritty of the Congress system which was in full control of the first PM then. And for Rajiv, it was all because of his mother’s pre-eminent and all powerful position in the party and most importantly the sympathy wave created by her assassination, that he quickly rose to power without having any grassroots level experience. He didn’t even have experience of working in close quarters with the party workers at the national stage like his brother late Sanjay Gandhi. Incidentally, Rajiv’s grandfather and mother retained their power over the party and the Government with their own political calculations — Nehru by an extreme bargaining and an understanding with the regional satraps, whereas Indira by fully destroying them. On the other hand, both of them had retained a mass contact that ensured their top-down approach within and outside the party.
The pattern of governance followed by Rajiv was almost synonymous with what his mother and the grandfather did. The architects of our Constitution adopted the conventions of the British Government by giving the Prime Minister the status of “first among equals” and the Cabinet, collective responsibility. Nehru, after the death of his chief political rival, Sardar Patel, from 1950 to till his death in 1964, functioned within the realms of prime ministerial Government by leaving a substantial role for his cabinet colleagues. But under lal Bahadur Shastri, the PM’s Office (PMO) emerged as a vital alternative for offering advice to the Cabinet. Mrs Gandhi while maintaining the tradition, simply enlarged the reach of the PMO. However during the Emergency period from 1975-77, she entirely banked on Sanjay and eventually limited the role of the PMO. As the Janata coalition Government of the Morarji Desai was not very powerful, when Mrs Gandhi came to power she restored the prime ministerial Government after winning a massive mandate in 1980. With the death of Sanjay in 1981, she had to rely on old family friends and Nehru loyalists for personal advice which gradually eroded the role of the PMO. When Rajiv Gandhi entered the office, he had to solely bank on this “coterie” as it exists even today more in American President’s office than in Britain. This coterie which finds its immediate parallel in the Indian darbar system has created all the rot that was required for the demise of the institutions of the Cabinet, the PMO, and the other vital institutions of the nation.
Paul R Brass, an eminent political scientist, rightly says, “Rajiv, who oscillated between qualities of his grandfather and his mother and lacked any distinctive qualities of his own, survived until his assassination in May, 1991, largely on the basis of divine right.” Probably it was true and he miserably led the party to a huge political vacuum. Thus, WH Morris-Jones aptly described post-Independent India as, “There is something of all this is India but less than elsewhere — she is inured to the mixing of continuity and change, too sophisticated to be deceived by either of the dreams.”
Hope the blatant failures brought in many fronts by Rajiv Gandhi, void created in the Congress after his assassination and the current hopelessness spread by “decaying Gandhis” would not lead to the failure of the idea of India dreamt of by millions of young Indians. let the oldest party of the nation learn its lesson from its constant debacles by accepting the alternatives offered by nationalist parties like the BJP that is promising a better India, a digital India. But the parties that are scripting new successes in the changing dynamics of Indian society and politics would meet the same fate or probably the worst of the days that Rajiv had witnessed during the latter part of his political career, in the hands of the global Indians who are being served much better by the gizmos and gadgets of the information and communication technologies of the 21st century.
(The writer is a Senior Editor, The Pioneer)
