dailyO
Politics

Why we must stop and assess how we should evaluate our prime ministers

Advertisement
Rajeev Dhavan
Rajeev DhavanAug 20, 2018 | 11:19

Why we must stop and assess how we should evaluate our prime ministers

Vajpayee supported the Advani-Joshi rath yatras – knowing it would tear the nation apart.

While assigning distinct functions to the Prime Minister (PM), India’s Constitution reposes accountability in the Council of Ministers which is “collectively responsible to the House of the People”.

Yet British commentators and India’s post-Nehru experience suggest that it is the PM who is the “be all and end all” of constitutional authority. It is he who determines who in the political chequerboard of his Cabinet remains or goes.

Advertisement

vajpayee,-modi-insid_082018103012.jpg
A statesman or a politician: What should a PM be? (Photo: Reuters)

Dual role

The PMO’s office selected by the PMO’s personal choice dwarfs the Cabinet Secretariat.

The Cabinet, itself, has a role to play but its collegiate influence has waned excepting gravitational pulls in coalition government.

But PM has a dual role: as the ruler of the nation and all its people and as a party political leader expected to lead the party into victory in the next election.

This imperative reduces the constituency to whom the PM is accountable.

In the BJP — more than other parties — this accountability is to the Sangh Parivar’s defining influence.

With Vajpayee’s passing away we need to reflect on our normative expectations of a PM.

What should the Indian people expect of a PM?

The Indian people have used their electoral power to throw out, or even bring back PMs. It is election results that produce PMs.

The result: the PM is not necessarily the best person for the job but the victor of electoral battle.

This should not blind us not to make normative assessments of PM’s.

manmohan-singh_082018103039.jpg
In 2004–2014, the party leaned on the PM who was not the electoral face. (Photo: Reuters)

Advertisement

Facing 2019, Indian elections have become Presidential. Do we look for oratory, charisma, policies, Hindu or Muslim votes or the best?

The best is not the enemy of the good. It is a vector to which we must strive lest electoral democracy degenerates into indifferent results and populist dictatorship. To return to the PM’s conflicting polarities; as a leader of the nation and his party. 

In 2004–2014, the party leaned on the PM who was not the electoral face.

Since 2014, and into 2019, PM Modi has placed party and victory above all else. He won the last elections and will lead the political party into next elections. As ruler, a PM must rule all, as party leader he must win the next victory at all costs. Nehru’s Congress’s popular vote was: 44.99% (1951), 47.78% (1957), and 44.72% (1962).

He was accused of allowing appeals to ‘caste’. Yet he remains the epitome of a statesman despite many mistakes. President’s Rule in Kerala was one of them. This was engineered by Pant and Indira Gandhi. He was quintessentially a statesman — democrat. He was wary of the press, but its editors were his best friends who wrote biographies of him. When he remarked on the 7th fleet outside Parliament, he apologised in a privilege motion for not speaking first to Parliament. He responded to summons in the Madras High Court and allowed intense criticism against him. His daughter ruled in different times obsessed with power. If anything, the Nehru dynasty died with Nehru or in different ways with Indira.

Advertisement

advani-joshi_082018103056.jpg
Vajpayee supported the Advani-Joshi rath yatras – knowing it would tear the nation apart. (Photo: Reuters)

Atal’s greatness

Vajpayee is certainly the greatest leader that the opposition has produced as PM. He was a great parliamentarian (as Nehru acknowledged), a poet, a great personality and a would-be statesman of parliamentary democracy. At the same time a great swayam sevak of the RSS.

But his life was marred by the same contradictions between “statesmanship and “party leadership”.

As a party leader, he knew that Rajiv Gandhi was a pushover. He implicitly and explicitly supported the Advani-Joshi rath yatras – knowing it would tear the nation apart. Ruchira Gupta (whose testimony I looked at) all but exposed the BJP leadership. Radha Kant Barik also had a damning story to tell.

Vajpayee wanted them to pipe down and be good. Vajpayee’s reaction in advance of, and after the Babri Masjid, encouraged rather than deterred whom I called the Hindu Taliban in court.

Faced with corruption, the Lokpal Bill collapsed once again in his tenure. His party continued the impetus of Narsimha Rao — adding controversial disinvestment to his policies. He had jingoist support for Pokhran II and must be credited for the Kargil victory which was far from being a strategic strike. What made him statesman-like was his Pakistan policy of resolution by dialogue. It does not matter that he was outmanoeuvred. But today, the RSS-VHP-BJP combine regards anyone who wants dialogue with or praises’ Pakistan as traitors. His legacies of democracy, political toleration, and foreign policy lie in shambles in the hands of his followers.

modi-amit-shah_082018103119.jpg
PM Modi has placed party and victory above all else. (Photo: Reuters)

What now?

After Vajpayee What? Modi learnt nothing from Vajpayee. Far from being a statesman, along with Amit Shah and colleagues he is power-hungry at all costs. Many followers are rabid communalists, full of hatred of minorities, with violence and blood on their hands. Modi is a travelling salesman for India. A populist absolutism travels across Indian democracy.

These are worst of times. We have to fall back to the people of India to fight for the soul of India’s secular, multinational, multi-religious, multi-linguistic and multi-people democracy. With Vajpayee gone, the BJP has lost its democratic rudder. Vajpayee is to be honoured for his commitment to parliamentary democracy and personality. But when we assess him, we have to do so with some objectivity.

Unable to win 2004 elections, he was taller than many, but also victim to the polarities of party and ideology.

(Courtesy of Mail Today)

Last updated: August 20, 2018 | 15:09
IN THIS STORY
Please log in
I agree with DailyO's privacy policy