Populism and Emotional Blackmail in Indian Elections: Time to Grow Up

Dr M N Buch, 

Dean, Centre for Governance and Political Studies, VIF

India is a representative democracy, a republic which is socialist and secular and in which the Preamble of the Constitution and Article 19 guarantee the fundamental right of freedom of speech and the freedom to form associations or unions. These can be political, which means they would be political parties, social, welfare oriented, religious or even groups of friends with common interests. In a representative democracy, elections are fought on the basis of political parties and this finds legal recognition in the Representation of Peoples Act 1951. After the election, the President in the case of the Union and the Governor in the case of a State appoints a person as Prime Minister or Chief Minister, as the case may be, under Articles 75 and 164 respectively because under Articles 74 and 163, the President or the Governor performs his executive functions in accordance with the aid and advice of his Council of Ministers, whose existence, therefore, is mandated by the Constitution itself.

This article refers only to the situation in the Union because constitutionally the position in the States vis-à-vis the Governor and the Council of Ministers is the same as that for the Union. Because the Council of Ministers is collectively responsible to the House of the People under Article 75 (3) and the Prime Minister and his Ministers can hold office only so long as they enjoy the confidence of the House, it is obvious that unless they belong to the majority party or group in the House, they cannot enjoy the confidence of the House. It is for this reason that politicians form parties which then try and get a majority in the House at the time of the election. A heterogeneous collection of 543 Members of Lok Sabha can never develop the cohesion necessary to form a majority group and, therefore, let us take it as axiomatic that in a representative democracy there will be political parties.

To differentiate itself from other parties every political party adheres to an ideology, a political philosophy and a programme which can promote that particular ideology. There is complete freedom to develop, evolve and present one’s own ideology, ranging from the extreme left to the extreme right, but subject to the restriction that no political party will question the sovereignty, unity and integrity of India or advocate a system of government which rejects the socialist, secular and democratic nature of our republic. Nor can a party advocate that there will be no justice, liberty, equality and fraternity in India. The Representation of People’s Act states categorically that for a political party to be recognised by the Election Commission, it must swear allegiance to the Constitution. Every office bearer who holds a constitutional position is required to swear an oath or make a solemn affirmation that he or she will function according to the Constitution. For example, the oath for the President is: “I, A.B. do swear in the name of God/solemnly affirm that I will faithfully execute the office of President of India and will to the best of my ability preserve, protect and defend the Constitution and the law and that I will devote myself to the service and well being of the people of India”. As per the Third Schedule, a minister is required to take the following oath, “I, A.B, do swear in the name of God/solemnly affirm that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the Constitution of India as per law established, that I will uphold the sovereignty and integrity of India, that I will faithfully and conscientiously discharge my duties as a minister for the Union and that I will do right to all manner of people in accordance with the Constitution and the law without fear or favour, affection or ill-will”. Similar oaths have to be sworn by a minister in a State, by judges, by Members of Parliament and the State Legislatures, amongst others. Every M.P. or MLA, every Minister belongs to some political party or is an independent and if he has to swear an oath to uphold the Constitution it means that the ideology of every party and individual has to accept the common denominator of the Constitution. This point is pertinent here because whereas every party is free to adhere to its ideology, it cannot forswear the Constitution or advocate its overthrow. That would constitute an offence of sedition under section 124 A of the Indian Penal Code and invite drastic penalties, apart from making the party ineligible to hold public office.

If India is a representative democracy and elections are largely fought on the basis of parties, then obviously every party has to present to the people its own ideology, its vision of India in the long term and its specific programme of work in the next five years after an election by which it will promote such action as will facilitate the party in achieving its political goals. For example, Margaret Thatcher as leader of the Conservative Party in Britain stated categorically that if the party was voted to power she would dismantle the socialist state. The people of Britain accepted this and for the next eleven years Margaret Thatcher worked diligently to achieve what had been stated in the election manifesto of the party. Even when a particular policy was unpopular, Margaret Thatcher relentlessly worked towards implementation of the policy and by the time she ceased to be Prime Minister, the entire political picture of Britain had changed. Even successor Labour Governments were unable to restore the old socialist state and in one form or the other they continued to implement what Margaret Thatcher had wrought.

In a true representative democracy ideology and programmes for implementation of ideological goals have to form the base of a party’s electoral platform. There is no room for cheap populism, nor is there any need, because every political party prepares a programme on the basis of an ideology which has strong philosophical moorings and which has been adopted after considerable thought. Of course, in a true democracy governments can change according to whether the people accept or reject the performance of the government and, therefore, the ideological differences between the parties have to be within defined parameters which ensure that no extremist philosophy can take over the State. In India, the Constitution itself provides for such parameters because if a party steps outside these limits, the courts and the people would intervene and the party would cease to hold office.

The extreme example of this in India was the proclamation of Emergency in June 1975 and the attempt by Mrs. Indira Gandhi and the Congress Party to establish authoritarian rule by using the emergency provisions of Article 352, 357, 358 and 359 of the Constitution. However, even this failed because though Parliament extended its own life by one year, ultimately in 1977 elections had to be held, in which the people firmly rejected Indira Gandhi and the Congress Party and the new government, through the Forty-fourth Amendment of the Constitution, rescinded all the amendments under the Forty-second Amendment which had promoted authoritarian rule. In other words, our Constitution is strong enough to ensure that however extreme in its political ideology a party may be, such ideology has to restrict itself to the bounds set by the Constitution.

Unfortunately India is witnessing the phenomenon of sheer populism substituting for ideology in the functioning of political parties. This populism takes many forms, including handing out largesse to undeserving people in the hope of getting their votes, introducing a communal appeal to voters so that specific sections of the electorate which might be religion based, caste based, region based, even gender based may vote for a particular party. Such largesse can take the form of job reservations, pandering to a particular community without necessarily benefitting it in any meaningful way, using state agencies such as CBI to force political groups to support a particular party under the threat that if that party does not fall in line its leaders may have to face criminal charges. The way in which CBI registered cases against Mulayam Singh Yadav and Mayawati, then delayed them, then once again became active and then officially decided to close the cases, has been coterminous with the fortunes of the Congress Party and the need to coerce or appease the target group or party from time to time. This is blatant misuse of the coercive power of the State and has no place in a democracy.

India has a multitude of problems. Setting aside decimal point economic demography, the fact remains that larger numbers of Indians are poor, huge numbers are unemployed or under employed, they cannot feed their families adequately, there is considerable child malnutrition and the living conditions of vast numbers of people are horrendously bad. How does a sensible country deal with such issues? What should be the approach of every political party to address the question of poverty? Poverty can be ameliorated or eradicated only if there is healthy economic growth in which equality is a focal point. Unless the economy expands in terms of infrastructure development, higher productivity in agriculture, industrial growth and higher level of business which generates wealth, we cannot tackle poverty and malnutrition. Every political party in its manifesto must state categorically how it intends to promote economic growth in which there is social justice, increase gainful employment and ensure adequate income to the last man, thus ensuring that hunger, malnutrition and bad living conditions disappear. Every manifesto must state how the party views the social sector, in particular education and health and what it intends to do to strengthen it. Every manifesto must state what can be expected both long term and immediately if the party comes to power. In the field of agriculture, industry, business, infrastructure development, the social infrastructure, social welfare and security the party must state how it intends to go about its task in the next five years. The manifesto must specifically give the position of the party in the matter of law and order, dispensation of justice speedily and economically, foreign policy globally, in relation to the developed world and in the context of its immediate neighbours. All these are issues which the party must place before the people and discuss with them so that the voter can form an intelligent opinion and exercise an intelligent option while casting his vote. What is more, every party must state how it intends to bring about a casteless and classless society in India, what it intends to do to promote the welfare of the backward and socially disadvantaged people, not by giving them sops but by organising them, educating them and leading them towards genuine empowerment so that they acquire an equal status with the more advanced social groups. Unfortunately, reservation is the only means that parties seem to visualise for bringing about social equality in India and this falls firmly within the definition of populism.

Populism takes many perfidious forms, of which the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) under the MNREG Act is a leading example. Instead of using funds to create rural infrastructure which would bring about a permanent change in the village economy by increasing water availability, giving road connectivity, providing additional fuel and fodder, the programme has become a muster based one whose principal objective is to provide a hundred days employment per year to those who come forward for it in the rural areas. A muster based programme cannot be run honestly and MNREGS has led to massive corruption and leakage of funds, with very little to show for it by way of village improvement. Now we have the Food Security Act, much touted by the National Advisory Council of Sonia Gandhi and the UPA Government, which is really the use of Keynesian deficit financing to fund a food dole. Deficit financing to kick-start a flagging economy which makes the economy function more efficiently is justified because it creates gainful jobs, increases production and removes stagnation without creating excessive inflationary pressure. Deficit financing to pay for a dole is a recipe for economic disaster.

However, populism in the name of the political game in India, so if one Chief Minister says that he will make rice available for Rs. 2 per kg., some other Chief Minister is bound to give it at Re. 1 per kg. Populism makes free electricity available to agriculture, thus beggaring the Electricity Board, leaving distribution lines in a state of disrepair for want of funds, but with no commensurate advantage to the farmer because power supply becomes more erratic as the Electricity Board becomes dysfunctional. Populism leads to surrender to anti social elements such as the Naxalites when they kidnap an official and populism prevents the use of those stern police measures which are necessary in order to restore peace to the Naxal infested districts. Populism is what makes politicians surrender to every pressure group. Populism is what takes a highly prosperous state like Andhra, promising to carve out a separate state of Telangana, thus causing an upsurge of resistance in the main State of Andhra Pradesh, wrecking the economy of the State and causing disorder to prevail in every nook and corner. Populism substitutes an emotional appeal to the voters instead of telling them in practical terms what the party will achieve if it is given a chance to come to power.

The extreme form of populism is emotional blackmail, whose chief practitioner now seems to be Rahul Gandhi, on whom Congress has pinned all its hopes for the five State elections in 2013 and the general election of 2014. Some of the gems of this scion of the house of Feroz-Indira Gandhi are worth recounting. Addressing a conclave of Dalits, Rahul Gandhi wanted to give a message that Dalits have to strive hard to escape from their present lowly status. The way he explained things was to refer to the velocity of acceleration needed to escape the gravitational pull of the earth if one is to go to the moon and of Jupiter if one is to leave that planet. Even here he made a factual error because it is not a particular speed which breaks one away from a given gravitational pull but it is rather acceleration per second per second till one achieves the critical speed. Anyway, the speech made no sense to the audience, but it did attract considerable media reaction, a great deal of it sarcastic. During the U.P. elections, Rahul Gandhi was clean shaven in Delhi and sported a two-day stubble when visiting a scheduled caste household, with a fortnight’s facial growth when visiting Muslim constituencies in Azamgarh. Was he signalling that his incipient beard made him a Muslim and thus one among the crowd in Azamgarh?

In Madhya Pradesh, Rahul Gandhi has excelled himself. In Gwalior he said that the Congress was all for the poor and the Food Security Act will take care of their hunger. His family was emotionally attached to the Bill that when Sonia Gandhi found that she could not attend the House on the day of the vote because of her physical indisposition, she wept uncontrollably. Naturally the people would be expected to vote for such a compassionate leader. At Indore he said that his grandmother and his father were assassinated and perhaps he, too, would be assassinated. The appeal obviously was that he comes from three generations of victims and, therefore, the people should vote for him and his party because after all the victim of assassination needs some compensation from the people at large. He has also stated that the Muzaffarnagar riots were engineered by BJP and that an Intelligence Bureau officer had told him that ISI had contacted a group of about fifteen Muslim boys thereafter in order to create more trouble. Was he indicating that ISI and BJP have a pact to create trouble in India? Who was the IB officer who gave information to a person not authorised to have access to it? Why were the Muslim youth not questioned and their assistance sought to trace the ISI agents?

At some stage an election campaign may have a degree of emotional appeal creeping in. But to go before the electorate with nothing but cheap melodrama does not behove a great national party, the party of Gandhi, Nehru, Patel, Maulana Azad, B.C. Roy, G.B. Pant, K. Kamaraj, B.G. Kher, Morarji Desai, Rafi Ahmed Kidwai, Swaran Singh and all the other great men who fought for our independence and then gave us a Constitution and a polity which aimed at leading a secular India into the modern world. Is this the best that the Congress can offer us? 

Building a Self Cleansing Environment

Dr M N Buch 

(Visiting Fellow, VIF)

One of the defining moments in my life was when I was on deputation to Princeton University for a mid-career course. It was the height of the Vietnamese War and the United States was in ferment because many people, especially students, opposed the war because they did not feel it justified. Many liberals thought that the United States had taken over the colonial mantle of the French, who ruled Indo-China. The Americans, therefore, were fighting an unjust war in which, despite the fact that a major contender for power in Vietnam was the Communist Party; the South Vietnamese regime was not really legitimate because it was a puppet of the colonial rulers. This was the regime that was supported by the Americans. Lyndon Johnson, the President of the United States who was constitutionally eligible for one more term, made a public broadcast that his policies had split apart the nation and, therefore, he was not offering himself as a candidate for the post of President. I call this a defining moment because despite the fact that Lyndon Johnson was not a pronounced liberal or the best example of a principled politician, he was at least mature enough and responsible enough to realise that he could not offer America the kind of leadership it needed at this time of crisis and, therefore, he was voluntarily withdrawing from the field.

The King of England reigns but does not rule. Kind Edward VIII fell in love with a divorced American woman, Wallis Simpson and wanted to marry her. The Prime Minister advised that this marriage was not acceptable, even as a morganatic marriage, to the government, parliament and people at large and he advised the King not to enter into this matrimonial alliance. In many ways Edward VIII was a weak man, but rather than giving up the woman he loved he preferred to give up the throne of Great Britain. In doing so, in choosing the woman he loved above the Crown, Edward VIII did recover some of the character which a king should have. This is a case where principles and statecraft triumphed over a desire to hang on to a position. There are many countries in the world where politicians have stepped down because their conduct could no longer pass scrutiny. Yoshihiro Tanaka, Prime Minister of Japan, resigned when he was accused of taking a bribe of two million dollars from the Lockheed Corporation. The party demanded that he resign and he obliged immediately. He was ultimately convicted of the offence and given a jail sentence, but he did not stay in office a day longer than was justified by his conduct and he thereby saved the post of PM from public opprobrium and contempt. John Porfumo, a senior minister in Britain, resigned when it came to light that he had bribed a prostitute in order to buy her silence. Even Margaret Thatcher quit as Prime Minister when her party asked her to step down. She did not form a rival party in protest, as happens so often in India. In all those countries where politicians follow a code of conduct being in power is not the ultimate goal and losing power is not the ultimate shame.

It is not as if Indian politicians never followed a code of conduct or ethics which transcended the purely legalistic or the narrowly defined rules of propriety. T.T. Krishnamachari resigned as Finance Minister because of certain allegations relating to the Life Insurance Corporation of India. Lal Bahadur Shastri resigned as Railway Minster because he felt that he failed in his duty to ensure railway safety and an accident occurred killing a large number of passengers. There never was an allegation that the minister was himself in any way negligent or remiss in his duties, but he was a dead honest politician who felt moral responsibility for the way in which his ministry functioned. Madhavrao Scindia resigned as Civil Aviation Minister after the crash of a newly acquired Airbus 320 at Hyderabad despite the fact that an enquiry proved that the accident was caused by pilot error only. LK Advani also resigned from all public offices, including in the BJP organisations, because of the Jain Hawala case in which investigation later revealed that he had no hand whatsoever. These four politicians quit not because they were pressurised to do so but because they answered to a higher inner voice which reminded them of their moral duty. There have been other resignations also, such as two Chief Ministers of Maharashtra, but all these resignations followed proven wrongdoing, which forced the party in question to insist on such resignation. Today’s politician seems to be a breed apart from our earlier politicians who, perhaps because of Gandhian principles, did accept that conscience is also a factor in governance and that if they have done wrong, wittingly or unwittingly, they should accept moral responsibility for their acts of omission and commission. The present generation of politicians and, for that matter, bureaucrats, seems to feel that all that is needed is not to be caught in wrongdoing. Doing illegal or improper acts which benefit them personally are considered not only to be in order but almost to be a perquisite of office which they would be foolish not to enjoy.

How does the voice of conscience operate? A very good example would be that of the late Kaka Saheb, that is, N.V. Gadgil. He was Minister for Works and Housing at the Centre, he was a contemporary and close colleague of Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru and Sardar Patel and he was austere, hard working and honest. His Private Secretary was another outstanding Civil Servant called D.S. Borker. On a visit to Bombay Kaka Saheb Gadgil decided to inspect some of the CPWD works. In those days perhaps the highest ranking CPWD officer in Bombay was an Executive Engineer and he accompanied the Minister during the inspection tour. At lunch time he invited the Minister to eat with him at home. After the meal when Kaka Saheb and Borker Saheb departed, in the car the Minister told his Secretary that an enquiry should be held against the Engineer to ascertain how he was able to feed the Minister in silver thalis and whether the Engineer was honest or not. Borker Saheb turned to the Minister and asked whether he had read what was inscribed on the thalis. He told him that the thalis were shown to be the property of Mafatlal Group’s guest house and had been borrowed by the Engineer because he did not have utensils of a quality in which he felt he should feed the visiting dignitary. Kaka Saheb immediately ordered the driver to return to the Engineer’s residence. That gentleman was taken aback at the Minister’s return, but Kaka Saheb told him that he had come to apologise for having an unjustified thought in his mind about the integrity of the Engineer. Such was the conscience of the man, who refused to harbour an evil thought about his subordinate on account of pure conjecture. Perhaps we can not all be Kaka Saheb but surely our politicians can at least begin to distinguish between right and wrong and to behave accordingly. In this we do not need a lesson from the West.

It would be foolish to insist that there has been no erosion of values in India. We are no longer governed according to the principles laid down by Mahatma Gandhi. The change is best exemplified by a small article written for the Times of India by Shri Sriprakasa, a senior Congress leader, a Gandhian, a former Central Minister and Governor of Assam. He narrated an incident where after retirement he was required to travel from Bombay to Madras in order to attend a meeting. His granddaughter came to visit him in the evening and found him sitting morose. On being asked why grandpa was sad she was told that he had to cancel his visit to Madras because railway reservation and ticket were not available. The granddaughter said that she would get him the ticket, which she did next morning. When Sriprakasa asked her how she managed this miracle she blithely told him that she had bribed a ticket agent Rs. 50 and was able to obtain the ticket. Sriprakasa told her that he would have been unable to do this because he was born in the land of Gandhi and could not give a bribe. The granddaughter said that she, too, was born in the land of Gandhi but she had no difficulty in paying something extra for the ticket. Sriprakasa’s comment was classic. He said, “My child, my Gandhi was Mohandas Karamchand and yours is Indira”. I think this example amply illustrates how our value systems have eroded and that it is now considered quite legitimate to use even questionable means to attain one’s objective. This is a very dangerous thing to happen to any nation, more so to a country which has always prided itself on its sense of morality and decency.

For the first twenty years of independence our politicians were still guided by the principles of satya, ahimsa, austerity and impeccable personal integrity as taught by the Mahatma. The year 1967 saw the emergence of a new culture of purchasing legislators in order to gain power, thus awakening in them a sense of commanding a price and for this purpose to forego every principle of good conduct. The decline in public morality has been so rapid that it is difficult in India to point to an honest politician, official or businessman. Every field of human endeavour is now pervaded with a sense of selfishness in which personal gain has replaced any desire for national service. Jawans of the army are put to risk if their weapons are faulty, but there does not seem to be any qualm of conscience in buying defective weapons after taking hefty bribes. Hospital patients face the difference between life and death, depending on the quality of the drugs that are administered to them. Despite this drug manufacturers and retailers offer spurious drugs and doctors happily purchase them on account of large commissions received by them. Who cares for the patients? The Gwalior region and western U.P., both areas renowned in the past for the quality of milk and milk products, are today centres of production of synthetic milk which contains poisonous detergents, fertilisers, etc., and is positively toxic. Mawa, the base of so many Indian sweetmeats, is adulterated and we virtually eat poison when we consume sweets at festivals. Most food products are adulterated. The automobile industry, especially the service stations which maintain vehicles, is known for imitation parts substituting for the genuine at the time of repairs, which endangers the road worthiness of vehicles and is substantially responsible for so many accidents. Appointment in service is often done on the basis of bribes offered, contracts are sanctioned in a similar way, construction is defective because essential materials are either adulterated or stolen and are substituted by spurious materials, functions are organised on paper and the money is swallowed up and even in the matter of such items of national and international importance as the Commonwealth Games, the making of money illegally seems to supercede the need to complete the projects in time and of the quality and standard which is required of such construction. It is a horrifying tale in which ultimately the average citizen becomes the prey, politicians and officials are the predators, unscrupulous businessmen are the beneficiaries and the nation is the loser.

Where do we begin in cleansing of the system? The constitutional arrangement of government in the country is that policy decisions and broad rules and regulations for implementation of policy lie firmly within the domain of the Legislature, the elected members of the Legislature and, by implication, in the parties which support the legislators. Who will stand for election is determined by each individual political party. These parties, therefore, are a part of the overall system of governance that we have adopted. Because it is the party which chooses the candidate, it is of the very essence that the political parties themselves should be responsible, conscious of their national duty and with office bearers of impeccable integrity. Ministers and officials may be covered by the Prevention of Corruption Act, but one cannot expect honest politicians to come from a party whose office bearers are not themselves completely honest and who, therefore, cannot insist on high moral standards being adhered to by the representatives of the party in public office. If a minister, on account of holding public office, must accept a code of conduct which is more restrictive and stringent than what applies to an ordinary citizen, then the office bearers of the political parties to which the holders of public office belong have also to adhere to such a strict code of conduct. This code must not only lay down the rules for the party and its office bearers but also the moral values according to which the party and its members will work. By definition the head of the party has to be a person who can be respected, not only because he is politically astute but also because he is known to be a person of integrity and high moral principles. This puts political leaders a notch above even Caesar’s wife, because they have to be not only seen to be honest and above suspicion but also must be proactive in enforcing a code of conduct on their party members. It is against this benchmark that political leaders have to be judged.

There has been a spate of complaints by neo activists such as Arvind Kejriwal and professional complainants such as Subramaniam Swamy against Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi, Robert Vadra, Nitin Gadkari, the Ambani brothers, etc. Some people refer to these activists as crusaders. A contrary view could be what Mahatma Gandhi said about Katherine Mayo’s scurrilous book on India, which he described as, “A gutter inspector’s report”. However, there is no gainsaying that corruption levels are high. Because the highly placed are generally not touched by our investigating agencies, the political parties concerned themselves do not have a mechanism by which they watch and judge the conduct of their own office holders or prominent supporters and then take action suo motu against those who have fallen below acceptable standards. Robert Vadra is not a Congressman, but he is the son-in-law of the lady who is President of the Congress. Without in any way applying judgment to the allegations I would still suggest that the Congress Party should have had an inbuilt mechanism similar to an Ombudsman, which mechanism should have persons of universally accepted credibility, who could conduct internal enquiries into allegations made against the party’s leaders and then come out with a reasoned report of what they have observed. If the report is objective then where it finds the charges to have substance, it would set the public mind at rest either because the party has taken action against the guilty person or the party has found the person not to be guilty and made known publicly the reasons for the findings.

This would apply equally to BJP, where Nitin Gadkari, its President, is under fire. A credible enquiry which finds one way or the other about the charges would be in the interest of the party itself. If Nitin Gadkari has done no wrong then detailed reasons for arriving at this conclusion must be given. If, however, Nitin Gadkari has strayed from the straight and narrow then the party itself must take action against him. The present attitude of the party in which it has given a tongue in cheek clean chit to Gadkari is neither in the interest of Gadkari nor of the party.

The law defines the acts which constitute an offence. The Police, specially constituted investigating agencies, various administrative structures which can hold a proper enquiry are in place, but they have a limited role in that they come into play only when there is an offence, or there has been such a breach of administrative propriety that disciplinary action should be taken. This, however, will be restricted to persons in office. On the other hand the arrangement I have suggested for political parties would go well beyond that which is defined as an offence and will cover the entire gamut of the conduct of the person complained against or about whom there is suspicion. Here the party would take suo motu action. If the political parties are serious about building the internal mechanism which could give us a self cleansing environment of governance and politics, then we can once again create a new paradigm of moral values and join Sriprakasa in the land of Gandhi, whose name was Mohandas Karamchand.

Incidentally, the mechanism suggested is different from that of Lokpal, which would be in the official domain and, regardless of what Anna Hazare, Arvind Kejriwal and Prashant Bhushan say, would be vulnerable to pressure. Moreover, being a creation of an Act of Parliament the institution can be abolished or neutered by another Act of Parliament. The self cleansing mechanism of the political parties would be an internal creation and unless the party is bent upon being reviled in public, it would itself support its own creation and protect its credibility by acting firmly on its findings and recommendations. Given a fair chance the party Ombudsman may actually force the parties to become clean.

India’s Political Class Lacks Ideology

Dr. M.N. Buch
Visiting Fellow, VIF

The Preamble to the Indian Constitution rules out any form of government of India other than democratic because it constitutes India into a sovereign socialist secular democratic republic. Part V of the Constitution trifurcates the State into three equal constituents, the Executive, Legislature and Judiciary. The composition of the Legislature, the Parliament of India, is of members elected by adult suffrage in the case of the House of the People, the Lok Sabha, and indirectly by the State Legislatures in the case of the Council of States or Rajya Sabha.

The whole of Parliament in the Lok Sabha is divided into territorial constituencies and each elected member becomes the representative of all the people residing in his constituency and registered in the electoral roll of that constituency. Each Member of Parliament then acts in the House on behalf of all his constituents and it is for this reason India is a representative democracy. The division of powers between the Executive, Legislature and the Judiciary closely follows the Westminster model and, therefore, India is considered to be a representative parliamentary democracy in contrast with the United States of America, which is a presidential form of democracy. In the Westminster model government power is exercised by the Prime Minister and the Council of Ministers who collectively enjoy the confidence of the House and who advise the President on how the executive powers of the Union will be exercised. The minute the House loses confidence in government the Prime Minister and the Council of Ministers must resign and the government would fall. In the presidential form of democracy the President is directly elected by the people and neither he nor his cabinet is responsible to the House of Representatives, the lower house in the American Congress or Parliament. In fact in the United States a cabinet member cannot be a member of either House of Congress. There the balance of power is established by the Legislature through its functions of legislation and approving the budget, but by itself Congress cannot either dismiss the cabinet nor remove the President except through the process of impeachment. In India, which follows the Westminster model, legislation itself is initiated by government and because the Council of Ministers is collectively responsible to Parliament the Executive and the Legislature come together in the matter of legislative business. Because government enjoys a majority in the House the Prime Minister can and does influence what goes on in Parliament, whether it be in the mater of the budget, legislation or debate. To that extent the Executive embodied by the Prime Minister can override the checks and balances between the Legislature and Executive, which are a feature of the American Constitution. It should be remembered that the infamous Nazi rule was initiated, facilitated and executed through the entirely democratic process of Hitler as Chancellor or Prime Minister, persuading Parliament to approve the Enabling Act and further succeeding in making President Hindenburg sign the Act into law. This enabled Hitler to rule Germany for a year by decree and one of his first decrees was to abolish Parliament itself and establish an absolute dictatorship.

I mention this because in a representative democracy a Nazi Germany scenario is not beyond the realm of possibility. For example, under Article 75 the President can appoint a person as Prime Minister who doe not enjoy the confidence of the House but is a potential Hitler. Under Article 85 of the Constitution it is for the President to summon each House of Parliament and the only restriction is that six months shall not intervene between one session and the previous session. In other words, after swearing in the Prime Minister the President need not summon Parliament for a period of five months and twenty-nine days. In this period the President would have the power to legislate by ordinance under Article 123, except in the matter of the Appropriation Act under Article 114 because under Article 113 (2) all estimates relating to expenditure from the Consolidated Fund of India must first be assented to by the Lok Sabha and only when a demand for a grant on any subject is approved by the Lok Sabha can it be included in the Appropriation Bill. This then is the principal check on the ability of the President and Prime Minister in conspiracy to convert India into a dictatorship because if there is no grant and no Appropriation Act no money can be withdrawn from the Consolidated Fund and, therefore, government would come to a halt. Another check, of course, is the Judiciary which in India would strike down any attempt to bypass the Constitution or convert India from a democracy to a dictatorship. The Indian Constitution, therefore, does keep India safe from conversion to a dictatorship, notwithstanding an attempt made by Indira Gandhi in 1975 to superimpose her absolute rule on India.

A representative democracy cannot function if, for example, the Lok Sabha consists exclusively of 543 members, each independent and not part of a group or party. To form a government these members would have to come together in a sufficiently large group to form a majority in the House so that collectively this group can constitute a government which will enjoy the confidence of the House. 543 persons can form a group or groups only if they subscribe to and enjoy a common ideology, a common programme, a common platform and common views so that they act cohesively. Such groups are what we call political parties. Section 29 A of the Representation of People Act 1951 provides for registration by the Election Commission of associations and bodies as political parties. Section 29 A (1) reads, “Any association or body of individual citizens of India calling itself a political party and intending to avail itself of the provisions of this Part shall make an application to the Election Commission for its registration as a political party for the purposes of this Act”. In other words, the Act governing elections recognises the existence of political parties and provides for their registration, regulation and superintendence. It is the political parties which approach the people to vote for their candidates on account of ideology and programmes of the party as enunciated in the party’s election manifesto and the people have the freedom to exercise their choice, not only on account of the suitability of the candidate proper but also because the candidate represents the party whose ideology appeals to the electorate.

In Britain there was a fair balance between the Tories (now Conservative Party) and the Whigs (now the Liberal Democratic Party). Disraeli epitomised the Tories just as did Gladstone the Whigs. In fundamentals these parties by and large agreed, though any functioning and nuances of approach the parties differed. Gradually the Whigs faded away to be replaced by the Labour Party as socialism began to take roots in Britain. Now the Conservatives and Labour are the two main parties in Britain and government alternates between them, but at present the Conservatives share power with the Liberal Democrats in a coalition. By and large the parties are fairly and evenly balanced and this results in a fairly stable democracy in which political parties and their members have to behave, especially in Parliament, because if they did not the opposition would pull them up and the people would not vote for them in the next election. This leads to a healthy democracy. In India for many years after independence the Congress, whose ideology was rooted in Gandhian principles, ruled the country both at the Centre and in the States. The opposition was weak but the prevailing parliamentary culture was such that it was heard with respect and the opinions expressed by it in Parliament on any issue were considered very seriously without the majority party steamrolling them. Men of the stature of Ram Manohar Lohia and Shyama Prasad Mukherjee carried a weight in our politics far in excess of the numbers they represented in Parliament. Because the party in power had an ideological base and a programme in which the nation came first our democracy was healthy, our politics relatively honest and our politicians definitely nationalistic in outlook. The nation came first and the self came later. The Gandhian principles of austerity governed our politicians, whose life style, needs and attitudes were simple and, therefore, their greed was nonexistent. Govind Ballabh Pant, Gopinath Bardaloi, B.C. Roy, B.G. Kher, C. Rajagopalachari, Jainarayan Vyas, U.N. Dhebar, Ravi Shankar Shukla, EMS Namboodiripad, Jyoti Basu, Gulzarilal Nanda, Morarji Desai, not to mention Jawaharlal Nehru, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel and Maulana Azad are all remembered almost with reverence by our people, generation after generation, because of their sacrifices, their simple living and their deep commitment to the people and the nation of India. These were examples of the political class who represented an ideal which has not been paralleled anywhere in the world.

In politics and in the political class the most important thing is ideology. The Chambers Twenty-first Century Dictionary defines ideology in the following words, “The body of ideas and principles which form a basis for a social, economic or political system: the opinions, principles and way of thinking, characteristic of a particular person, group of people or nation”. We cannot have a political system in which there are neither ideas nor principles and if that happens we cannot have a social or economic system. A political party bereft of ideology is no party. Unfortunately as politics stands today there is no party which has an identifiable ideology and I state this in the context of the Communist Party of India or Communist Party of India (Marxist) also. Ultimately the programmes of a party have to be based on an ideology and the Preamble to the Constitution itself states that this ideology must take into account the fact that India is and will be a republic, its form of government will be democratic, it will be secular in nature and it will be socialist in that it will promote both equality and equity. Here one is not talking about dogmatic socialism but rather of a republic in which socialism means that there will be social, economic and political justice for all and there will be equality of status and of opportunity for all. The socialist ideal here would ensure that the right to equality before law enshrined in Article 14, prohibition of discrimination on grounds of religion, race, caste, sex or place of birth enshrined in Article 15 and the equality of opportunity in matters of public employment enshrined in Article 16 will be the guiding stars of every government, regardless of party affiliations. Socialism in the Indian context also means that the directive to the state enshrined in Article 38 to establish a social order for the promotion of the welfare of the people in which justice, social, economic and political, shall inform all the institutions of the national life will determine every policy of government. The question is whether any of these ideals forms part of the ideology of any political party in India and whether in fact any party has an ideology.

Ideology cannot be a matter of the moment. Ideology is the core of any political party and that core can evolve, but it cannot change like a weathervane responding to erratic air flows. Certainly ideology cannot be twisted and turned as a means of expediency. In this behalf I would like to mention Margaret Thatcher, the Conservative Prime Minister of Britain. She made an ideological statement when she came to power that she would dismantle the socialist state in Britain and in the process would destroy the instrumentalities of socialism. She then proceeded single-mindedly to fulfill her ideological objectives and whereas she faced enormous opposition in the manner in which she dealt with the Arthur Scargil led coal miners strike, the issue of poll tax, the reduction of milk in the school mid-day meal schemes, etc., she remained unperturbed by the personal unpopularity which visited her on some of her more controversial decisions. Regardless of momentary praise or opprobrium Margaret Thatcher went ahead with her programme to an extent where the political philosophy of the country changed. When ultimately Labour came to power under Tony Blair after a Conservative interregnum under John Major, that party had to repudiate many of its shibboleths and instead adopt many of the programmes of Margaret Thatcher. That is called an ideological approach to ruling the country. No Indian political party today has any ideology.

Up to1967 the Congress ruled India and by and large the old political class we inherited from the freedom movement continued to uphold Indian traditions. One could recognise the political class and identify oneself with it because it represented the best there was in this country. In 1967 everything changed. Starting from Haryana and rapidly coming to Madhya Pradesh we had the Ayaram--Gayaram phenomenon in which Members of the Legislature were bribed to defect from the ruling party and form a separate group which caused the ruling party to be ousted and new united front governments to be formed for the first time. In the history of independent India for the first time power was thus purchased. Suddenly our legislators found that they could command a price and if this price was paid the mandate of the electorate could be undone and new political combinations could be formed to constitute the government. Of course the new government itself would be unstable, based as it was on bribery and, therefore, having illegitimately won power it had to continue bribing in order to retain power. That was the end of any form of principled government in India and it brought into existence a new political class whose origin was corruption. In order to buy power one needed money and unless the State was subverted money could not be had. Therefore, the instrumentalities of the State had to be overawed and made totally pliant so that they would not stand in the way of illegal money making and to facilitate it the Civil Services had to be suborned. A systematic attack was launched on the Civil Services, they were made to surrender to threat and coercion, the honest officers who stood their ground were identified and isolated and the corrupt and the pliant brought to positions of power. The reason for the existence of the All India Services, independence, fearlessness in giving advice and impartiality, integrity and fairness in implementing the orders of government, was attacked at the very root and virtually destroyed. Thus a nexus was built up between the Services and the political class and the binding force was corruption.

Let me give one or two examples of how the political class has changed. Prior to 1967, in fact prior to 1975 when the Emergency destroyed whatever was left of principled government in India, one could differ from the ministers but one never questioned their motive or their integrity. Takhatmal Jain, who had been Chief Minister of Madhya Bharat, was the Minister for Industries and for Development in the new State of Madhya Pradesh. P.D. Chatterjee was Secretary of the Industries Department. Takhatmal Jain told Chatterjee that a case of one of his friends was pending in the department and that he wanted it to be examined urgently. Thinking that this would please the minister Chatterjee prepared a favourable note and recommended approval of the applicant’s proposal. Takhatmalji sent for him and said that he had expected the Secretary to Government to examine the case and not a courtier of the minister. He then sent the file back for proper examination on merit and in doing so he wrote on the file, “Please examine the case on merit. If sanction is justified please give the reasons for this. If, however, the case does not merit approval please advise accordingly. If I still want to favour the applicant I shall do it at my discretion, but your job as Secretary to Government is to render the correct advice”. By way of sharp contrast when I was head of the Delhi Development Authority my then minister Sikander Bakht, wanted me to sanction the building of a five star hotel at 15, Aurangazeb Road, New Delhi by Bhai Mohan Singh, the owner of Ranbaxy Laboratories. When I pointed out that our Regulations did not permit this Sikander Bakht did his best to pressurise me into violating my own regulations, including a written directive to change them. I had to tell him that he was free to change the Delhi Development Act through appropriate legislation but so long as the Act was in force government could not direct me either to change the Regulations or to violate them. Thereafter I remained the target of his anger, but I refused to give in and the hotel was not built. The cumulative result of this and other fights with his successor, Ram Kinker, resulted in my ouster from Delhi Development Authority and I spent a whole year without a posting. Most officers are not prepared to undergo such a fate and that is why the Services are today in shambles. The moral of the story remains that a principled minister would not accept the flattery of his Secretary and an unprincipled minister would not accept a stand taken by his officer based on law and rules. This is the change which has come about in our political class over the years.

No democracy can function on the basis of the bureaucracy alone, however efficient, honest and forward looking it might be. The power to legislate vests in the Legislature and the power to take policy decisions vests in the Council of Ministers which consists of elected members of the Legislature. At different levels of government, including urban and rural local government, the same position prevails and ultimately it is the elected representatives who, in a democracy, take policy decisions based on their party ideology, their declared programme and the mandate of the people. It is a Civil Servant’s job to advise, to point out precedents and the law and to bring to the notice of the decision makers the various courses of action available and the consequences of each. Once a decision is taken the Civil Servant must faithfully implement the decision, though in doing so he must be totally fair, evenhanded and impartial. In other words, the policy decision will be political but its implementation will be totally impartial. These respective roles become completely blurred when all decision making becomes a function of expediency and it is dictated by either the bribe which is received or the fear that is instilled by the possibility of losing power if a particular pressure group is not pleased. Such a political class no longer cares for the duties mandated to it by the Constitution because to it service of the nation, the welfare of the people, the development of the country are not issues of importance. What is important is how to remain in power, may be even for one extra day, so that everything that the system has to offer to oneself is squeezed out of it. The objective of the leaders of the past was to govern well, whereas the objective of the leaders of the present is not to govern at all and yet to enjoy power. The dictionary meaning of ‘govern’ is, “to control and direct the affairs of a country, state or organisation” Power, on the other hand, is defined as “control and influence exercised over others”. If power is used to govern it is desirable. If, however, power is used for self-aggrandisement, for pelf, for nepotism or for creating the means whereby power can be re-purchased, it is highly undesirable. In the case of the Indian political class as it exists today it is the latter use of power which governs all its actions. Such a political class cannot run a true democracy.

What the Indian political class has forgotten is that the reason for its existence is not self-perpetuation. If that were the case India could have opted for a hereditary absolute monarchy. If that were the case India could have opted for a Kuo-min-tang type of autocracy which afflicted China under Chiang Kai-shek before the Communist take over in 1949, or we could have opted for a Pakistan style theocracy in which the most powerful force is the Army. Instead we voluntarily opted for a secular republic which today has a second largest Muslim population in the world after Indonesia. We opted for a democracy in which the armed forces are clearly subordinated to civil authority. We opted for good government. Unfortunately we have gifted ourselves a government which is virtually non-existent in terms of the will to govern, manned by extremely corrupt and self-seeking politicians and their Civil Service supporters. As a result a country with enormous potential for growth is hamstrung by government itself. India does not deserve such a political class.

Is the situation irremediable? The fact that Indira Gandhi was voted out of power in 1977 means that the electorate will not accept a dictatorship. The fact that the Left Front was voted out of power means that the electorate will not accept single party rule. The fact that in election after election those who are known to be corrupt often lose the election means that the people of India want honest leaders. The fact that where there is good government, as is the case of Gujarat under Narendra Modi, Bihar under Nitish Kumar, Orissa under Navin Patnaik means people vote the party back to power. Where there is bad government, as occurred in Tamil Nadu under M. Karunanidhi and in Uttarakhand, the ruling party was ousted. The electorate wants a political class which will serve the people rather than themselves. That is the message of the common man loud and clear. Now the ball is in the court of the political parties.

It is time that political parties took stock of the situation and restored the trust of the people in ideology and programmes. That has to start by eschewing every form of caste and religion based politics. Today every political party calculates its chances of success according to the mathematics of caste and religion. That is why Rahul Gandhi, who is clean shaven in Delhi, has a two-day stubble when visiting the house of a scheduled caste person and sports a beard when he visits a constituency with a sizable Muslim population. Does he think that everyone in India is born an idiot and that such symbols will get him votes? Therefore, starting with the Congress it will have to break away from its dependence on the Nehru-Gandhi family, it will have to think in terms of developing a grass-root leadership in which Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Vadra do not count on account of their marriage or their birth and there is genuine democracy and development of leadership based on support at local levels. Then Congress must also have a specific ideological base from which programmes should develop and these should be presented to the people for their judgment. The Left Front, where leadership questions are not based on heredity, must also now decide whether it wants to become only a clone of China, a country ruled by the Communist Party but somewhat to the right of United States in the matter of a capitalist economy, or it wants to function under Indian realities in which a State Government cannot dare to acquire 38,000 acres of fertile agricultural land as the Left Front tried to do in Nandigram for allotment to an industrialist. The BJP itself must decide whether it wants to develop in a secular environment in which RSS is no longer its principal mentor. I say this because the dilemma before the BJP is that unless it widens its base it cannot be accepted in the South and in the East and if it widens its base the RSS may break away. Even if BJP were to work according to Hindutva philosophy, which could further widen the religious divide and polarise minority votes, there is no guarantee that there would be a counter Hindu polarisation and more Hindu votes for the BJP because the Hindu vote is already divided on the lines of caste. BJP fails to win not because the Muslims vote against it. It fails to win because a large number of Hindus vote against it. It is for the party to decide whether it can garner more Hindu votes through an aggressive pursuit of a Hindutva programme or whether a more genuinely secular approach will get it more Hindu votes. One phenomenon in Gujarat where anti Modi journalists, social scientists and politicians have spared no effort to attack Modi, is that in that State without in any way appearing to reach out to the Muslims Modi has been able to get a percentage of Muslim votes and in the last local government elections he had given party tickets to Muslims and succeeded in having a large number of Muslims elected. This means that at least a section of Muslims in Gujarat feels that good government, even though appearing to be communal in outlook, is more beneficial to them than a government which promises secularism but delivers nothing. Introspection by the political parties will have to include coalescing of parties on ideological lines so that the blackmailing pressure of small groups representing either individual interests or regional interests do not take over and overwhelm any future coalition. In other words, the parties must try and absorb smaller groups so that eventually we have a centrist party, a right of centre party and a left of centre party in which the limits of extremes on both sides become circumscribed. It is this which will lead to more meaningful coalitions and, therefore, better government. Ultimately the political class has to draw itself back from the brink of corruption and go back to what the Constitution envisaged for them -- principled politics whose objective is to promote the welfare of the people and wealth of the nation.

Lastly, as things stand today by 2014 we may reach a stage where no party, including Congress and BJP, may get more than a hundred seats. This would lead to very fragmented coalitions and there would be virtually no government. Nothing can be worse than a fragmented polity for that opens the door to a future Hitler. For the sake of India the political class must reform itself and parties who can win the confidence of the electorate and in return deliver good government are strengthened.