Indira Gandhi
Page 13
This became harder to do as questions arose and a storm broke in Parliament over the non-appearance of Maruti, her son Sanjay’s car project, his failure to account for the delay and his personal financial gains from government contracts. There was critical comment in the press and talk in marketplaces and coffee houses, where most controversial issues and political scandal ended for dissection. Industry was called to account and penalized for failing to produce under a licence. No strictures had been served on the Maruti factory, built in record time in a period when building was handicapped by shortages of cement and other materials.
One newspaper, the Hindustan Times, was expected to withhold both unfavourable comment and neutral assessment. K.K. Birla, its proprietor and financial backer of Sanjay Gandhi, conveyed Sanjay’s annoyance to the editor. B.G. Verghese replied on September 19, 1973, with his customary clarity and composure:
Dear Mr. Birla,
Following your telephone call yesterday I checked through our file of items published on Maruti. According to our library clippings there is only one item recently published and this is an interview with Mr. Sanjay Gandhi published in the Evening News of September 5. This interview gave Mr. Gandhi an opportunity to project his project in the best manner possible.
Earlier in July we had published a news item about the automobile industry in which the opening reference was to Maruti.
Wing Commander Chaudhury of Maruti Ltd. sent us a letter discussing some of the points contained in our news report. This was published extensively. The clippings are enclosed. Some time later Wing Commander Chaudhury sent us a second letter apropos of nothing, which very largely repeated the points contained in his earlier letter. This we did not publish as it made no new point and came within a few weeks of the publication of the earlier letter.
I am, therefore, surprised that Mr. Sanjay Gandhi should feel that we have been unfair to him or his project. On the contrary we showed great forbearance in accepting the letters sent by Wing Commander Chaudhury although these were sent to us personally through a senior information official of the Prime Minister’s Secretariat. This was very improper and is the kind of thing that arouses a great deal of suspicion, and lends credibility to the various public charges being made about official favours being bestowed on Maruti Ltd… .
With kind regards,
Yours sincerely,
(Sd.) B. G. Verghese
Verghese’ editorship of the Hindustan Times was terminated on Sanjay Gandhi’s order and with Mrs Gandhi’s knowledge and tacit consent. Actual dismissal was held up by the Delhi High Court’s stay order and did not become official until September 22, 1975. Verghese’ case became a cause celebre with a macabre twist. The issue it raised—proprietal interference—gave a handle to the government’s ‘diffusion of ownership’ scheme and later its steps to ‘restructure’ the press, while in fact the proprietor was carrying out the orders of Mrs Gandhi’s son. The government’s claim that it wished to end the ‘monopoly’ of the larger newspapers stood revealed as hypocritical when in 1976, K.K. Birla, publisher of the Hindustan Times, was made chairman of the board of directors of the Indian Express newspapers in obvious recognition of his services to the Gandhi family, with control over a larger newspaper ‘monopoly’ than before.
Indian agriculture depends crucially upon the period of rain between June and September. Its failure in 1972 was the beginning of a severe economic crisis laying bare the government’s lack of programme. Prices rose by 14 per cent, essential supplies fell short, and drought and famine gripped large areas. Constant and crippling power crises affected vital areas of public and private industry. The anxiety over food and unemployment set off agitations, often violent, at nine universities. These had to close for a time, including Delhi University and the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology in the capital. Government’s announcements that disparities must end, ‘crash’ programmes would be launched for employment and agriculture, and ‘big’ business would be drastically limited in its scope of manufacture and would have to abandon the profit motive, got no further than cutting off existing initiative and performance. The excitement of bank nationalization had died away and with no clear credit policy had become a non-event. The optimism following the Bangladesh victory was turning into shock and anger. Remedy, or even an attempt at it, seemed blocked by an atmosphere of moral decay surrounding and supporting political functioning at the highest level. No one expected purity of politicians, but the conviction that things had gone too far was not confined to critics of Mrs Gandhi’s party. Addressing a convocation of Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi, of which Mrs Gandhi herself was chancellor, film actor Balraj Sahni, a star in the Left firmament, created a stir when he named Union and state ministers as corrupt. The sins of the undivided Congress looked pale and sedate compared with the lawlessness of Mrs Gandhi and her lieutenants and their assumption of non-accountability at the bar of any opinion.
In October 1972 a debate on fundamental rights began before a thirteen-member bench of the Supreme Court. Counsel for the petitioners who challenged the validity of the recent amendments was N.A. Palkhivala, eminent constitutional lawyer and authority on tax law.The government was defended by a galaxy of state advocates general in addition to the attorney general. The judgement, a mixed one, was delivered on April 23, 1973. The main issues before the judges were: (1) Can Parliament amend fundamental rights under its normal amending power consisting of a two-thirds majority in both Houses of Parliament? (2) Assuming it can, are there any areas affecting the use of these rights that the amending power cannot override? The majority of judges decided that fundamental rights can be amended by the normal amending power, but that essential features of the Constitution cannot be so changed. These, however, were not demarcated, leaving the fundamental rights in a grey legal area to be variously interpreted. A bulwark against possible dictatorship was heavily eroded, and the government’s use of its mandate became a palpable anxiety.
The annual Congress session at Bidhan Nagar near Calcutta, held in December 1972 amid flourish and display during India’s worst economic crisis, aroused comment, both despairing and caustic, from leading newspapers. Some of its severest critics were Congressmen themselves, the ebullient younger element, unawed and unsilenced, whose crusading fire had helped to raise Mrs Gandhi to her powerful pedestal, and who had pinned great hopes on her for the fashioning of a clean, cohesive instrument to bring about change.
Key speeches at Bidhan Nagar took no searching look at the party’s ills or the economic crisis. The Congress president, Shankar Dayal Sharma, spoke instead of ‘the forces of reaction eager to take advantage’. Defence Minister Chavan called the violent agitations in Andhra Pradesh and Assam the efforts of right and left extremists to obstruct socialism, ‘We have to do everything possible to frustrate their machinations. They are not yet reconciled to the massive victory of the Congress in the last two elections.’ Mrs Gandhi predictably declared, ‘We are with the people. Neither the capitalists nor the press can detract us from our path.’ This monotonous chant added thin comfort to what the Tribune editorially called:
… a year of less hope and more despair, of rich rhetoric and poor performance, of more bogeys and less realism in India. For Mrs. Gandhi personally and the Congress generally, it was in some ways the worst year since the historic split in 1969. Both were at the crossroads again, totally uncertain of the future.
*The term ‘Centre’ is commonly used for the Union government (as opposed to the state governments).
NINE
Rhetoric and Reality
The ruling party had framed a national policy on agricultural land ceilings, with urban ceilings to follow, and had announced it would ‘extend the public sector’ in areas where ‘state ownership is vital’. These included coal, sections of foreign trade and food grains. The Bidhan Nagar Congress session decided to eliminate the wholesale trade in food grains, making government the sole buyer of the wheat crop of April 1973 and the rice crop in Octo
ber, through a government agency. Some chief ministers advised delay of such a massive operation that would need careful preparation, not only for procurement from the farmer, but for distribution over a vast population. These misgivings were hesitantly put forward and not freely aired in party councils for fear that doubts about policy would mean a reactionary label and a black mark. An incomplete plan, conceived in haste, driven by the need to maintain a radical posture, resulted in long queues for bread in cities, the disappearance of grain altogether at intervals and conditions bordering on anarchy in some areas. Discussing its failure, E.N. Mangat Rai1 describes it as twofold: (1) Government made exceptions to its own monopoly, allowing retailers, and then consumers to buy privately, thus drilling leaks into the system. (2) An effective distribution system to ensure grain to the public was not created. The resulting panic put a strain on monopoly procurement that broke it:
… if government as the sole controller of grain creates a monopoly … it must create a distribution agency for all persons to be fed… . The responsibility to supply and the obligation by the consumer to accept no other supply were both lacking. In the absence of rationing, which provides precisely these twin points of security to system and consumer, there was a vacuum. The government met the situation by allowing retailers to purchase limited amounts from the market to feed their customers, and by allowing customers to buy direct from the farmer for personal consumption. The farmer was convinced that he had not one buyer … for his wheat, but several. In places the consumer, when he could not lay hands on supplies, panicked… . As the season advanced there were food riots, first in Nagpur, then in Bombay, later in Mysore. In Kerala education was shut down after students attacked grain trucks. Supplies were rushed to distress areas; the movement of ‘special trainloads’ was publicized in the press and over the government-operated radio. There was drama about the movement of food. The wheat ‘monopoly’ had become a shambles within weeks of its start. On 31 August Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed, the Food Minister, reporting to the party said that the government had purchased to that date 600–700,000 tonnes less than it did in a free market in the previous year. The buffer stock (of 9 million tonnes on July 1, 1972) had been reduced, after accounting for new purchases, to 4 million tonnes.
Some of the chaos could have been avoided if the experienced wholesale trade had been retained as government’s agent and paid at a fixed price, as had been done in a streamlined operation following the Bengal famine of 1943 and continued for some years after Independence. But policymakers had now labelled the wholesale trade a ‘vested interest’ and earmarked it for destruction.
As the government lost control of the food situation, a mixture of incentives and threat was held over the farmers, further confusing the takeover operation, and the country was driven to import more than 60 lakh tonnes of grain at a high international price in the very year that self-sufficiency was to have been proclaimed. The rice crop takeover by the government, scheduled for October, was ‘postponed’. The intention to take over the wheat crop of April 1974 was abandoned. Mrs Gandhi’s statement that the people would have starved but for government action did not explain why the action had been abruptly discontinued. She laid the blame for its failure on the bureaucracy’s ineptitude. On July 29, 1975, when dictatorship had silenced dissent, efficiency was the government’s proclaimed watchword and blame could no longer be passed on, Food Minister C. Subramaniam said in the Rajya Sabha, quietly disowning a past disaster, ‘The idea looks all right on paper. But taking over the entire surplus grains would burden the system, leading to its collapse. Instead efforts should be made to build up a public distribution system for specific areas.’
This manifest economic failure was accompanied by a rude shock to stability in Uttar Pradesh, the country’s most populous state, with the largest number of seats in Parliament, and Mrs Gandhi’s constituency. Chief Minister Kamalapati Tripathi was clearly not in control, as a lightning revolt of the Provincial Armed Constabulary (the state’s special police force) succeeded to the extent of capturing arsenals and refusing to surrender. President’s rule was imposed on Uttar Pradesh. Governor Akbar Ali Khan’s letter on June 12, 1973 to the President, reporting economic crisis and police revolt halted only by the army’s intervention, spoke glowingly of the chief minister:
You and your Government have been in touch with the recent happenings in the State. The power shortage and scarcity of essential commodities had already created considerable difficulties for the general public and the State government was trying to grapple with these problems, as well as with the growing student unrest, when it had to face quite a serious situation caused by some sections of the civil police and the PAC. The incidents of grave indiscipline on the part of the subordinate ranks in some companies of the PAC had to be dealt with firmly, and assistance of the armed forces of the Union Government had to be requisitioned to meet an unprecedented situation… . The voluntary resignation of the Ministry headed by Shri Kamalapati Tripathi has come in spite of his unchallenged leadership of the Congress Legislature Party… . I would like to place on record my deep appreciation of Shri Tripathi’s record as Chief Minister, the crowning glory of which consists in what he has rightly described as his act of self-abnegation in the larger interests of the State and the nation.
This letter is perhaps unsurpassed as an example of the mythical air state governments breathed, remaining bland and benevolent towards such stark realities as ‘the power shortage and scarcity of essential commodities’, ‘growing student unrest’, and even the ‘unprecedented situation’ of actual police revolt. A state seething with political and economic discontent headed by a chief minister known to tolerate corruption—twin evils creating a volcanic resentment against Congress power in many parts of India—appears to have left the Governor blissfully undisturbed. It is possible Akbar Ali Khan was aware a more factual report would have angered New Delhi, placing him in a position of critic towards Tripathi, a favourite. With President’s rule, the legislature was not, according to normal practice, dissolved. No risk could be taken with the Congress majority, which showed signs of being heavily eroded if another election were held, and members of Legislative Assemblies (MLAs) continued to enjoy their perquisites. Despite the Governor’s assertion of Tripathi’s ‘unchallenged leadership of the Congress Legislature Party’, the Uttar Pradesh Congress presented a classic picture of political talent and vigour kept in check by an ineffective leadership obedient to the Centre.
This travesty of a Governor’s responsibility for assessment and report reached its climax with the dismissal of Kamalapati Tripathi’s successor in 1975. H.N. Bahuguna, one of the state’s younger politicians, was appointed chief minister in Tripathi’s place on November 8, 1973. Bahuguna set about with energy, ambition and drive to restore efficiency. His solid political base in Uttar Pradesh and his confident stride attracted unfavourable notice. He was reported as having less than the requisite ardour for Mrs Gandhi and dismissed without cause in November 1975. No effort was made to cloak this executive order in constitutional guise. It had been preceded by the appointment of a new Governor, Chenna Reddy, whose brief included a close watch on Bahuguna’s ‘loyalty’ to Mrs Gandhi, a mission he took no trouble to hide, taking over executive functions in the process that were not within a Governor’s province. S.C. Kala reported in the Times of India on March 13, 1975:
He [the new Governor] has called officials of the intelligence departments of the State and Centre to report to him and also issued orders directly to State government officials… . The Governor, who is hardly discreet in his utterances, has often made remarks which betray his hostility to Mr. H. N. Bahuguna… . There is no doubt his behaviour has not been constitutionally correct.
On November 29, 1975 Chenna Reddy reported to the President simply that Bahuguna, who enjoyed an ‘absolute majority in the State Assembly, has tendered the resignation of his Ministry to me this morning… .’ By this time the imposition of President’s rule on a state bore no rel
ation to the reasons stated for it in the Constitution: the actual or imminent failure of constitutional government. In fact, the frequency and transparent unconstitutionality of its exercise had deprived it of its meaning. In an article ‘Misuse of President’s Rule’ in the Times of India ( July 16, 1973), Ajit Bhattacharjea had commented, ‘Since Mrs. Gandhi became Prime Minister 7½ years ago, the Centre has invoked President’s Rule 22 times to take over the administration of States. In the previous 16 years, after the Constitution took effect, these emergency powers were used 10 times.’
Among the rising stars Mrs Gandhi was to cut down from their heights before long were two Young Turks about whom a special splendour shone as they took up fighting positions to demand a clean and dedicated Congress. Mohan Dharia and Chandrasekhar (born in 1925 and 1927 respectively) had both come to the Congress via the Socialist Party, home of some of the most original intellects in the country. Like many of their generation now celebrities in politics, they had been student activists. Both were of the calibre a political party normally regards as leadership material. Dharia had charge of the party’s election campaign in Maharashtra in 1962 and 1967. He had been elected to the Rajya Sabha in 1964 and 1970, and to the Lok Sabha from Poona city in 1971. Mrs Gandhi had appointed him minister of state for planning in that year. Chandrasekhar had been a member of the Congress Working Committee since 1967. He was elected to the Central Election Committee in 1971, to the Rajya Sabha in 1972 and re-elected to it in 1974. His immense popularity and political flair had won him elected party posts against determined attempts to defeat him.