Implosion: India’s Tryst with Reality

by John Elliott

  Such speculation was instantly swept aside when it became clear that the Congress and its allies were winning. The party was euphoric, but the result was not primarily an endorsement of the Congress, nor of the Gandhi dynasty. Sonia Gandhi had undoubtedly prepared the ground by uniting and galvanizing her party, but the outgoing BJP government had over-sold its election slogan of ‘India Shining’ and, with its regional allies also doing badly, lost the election more than the Congress and the Gandhis won it. The result was a stunning example of how India’s electorate throws out national and state leaders when it thinks that things are not as they should be – as it had done when it rejected Indira Gandhi in 1977 after the Emergency.

  By the time the result was announced on 13 May, it looked as if the dynasty’s future was assured – maybe even with Sonia Gandhi as prime minister because she had built enough credibility since the 1999 debacle. The political significance of her Italian origin had dogged her from the time she entered active politics, but the BJP had failed to capitalize during the election campaign on the possibility of India having a foreign-born prime minister. With the Congress about to form a government, however, the BJP stepped up its campaign. Two BJP leaders threatened to resign from their political positions in protest, and the party decided to boycott the presidential swearing in of a Sonia Gandhi-led government.

  In the subsequent turmoil, Gandhi announced at an emotional meeting of her MPs that she would not be prime minister, and she confirmed this a day later. Before the election, she had dodged the question and said that, if they won, Congress MPs and coalition allies would together choose a prime minister after the polls. Her decision, which brought tears to the eyes of some MPs, was flagged as an act of tyaag or renunciation in keeping with the highest traditions of India’s culture, and she was seen to be combining this with wisdom when she named Manmohan Singh as the prime minister.

  However, praise for what she had done was tempered when those who watched politics closely realized that she had not renounced political power at all. She had merely renounced accountability by passing the difficult and accountable prime minister’s job to someone who would not challenge the dynasty. She had changed the party’s constitution so that, as the president of the Congress and its leader in the Lok Sabha, she would choose the prime minister. She remained chairperson of the coalition, and headed a new National Advisory Council (NAC) that was created to give her the status of a minister of state with an office staffed and paid for by the government to monitor the implementation of the UPA’s Common Minimum Programme manifesto and, as it turned out later, push pro-poor policies.

  The dynasty was back where it had been in the days of Nehru and his daughter and grandson – with a member of the family in charge of the government, and with a new generation in the wings.

  The Good Years

  The 2004–09 UPA coalition government was stable and worked because there was empathy between the Congress and a communist-led Left Front that gave parliamentary support from outside the coalition. There was also an effective coalition coordination committee. Sonia Gandhi found it easy to deal with some of the Left leaders, as the American Embassy in New Delhi noted in a 2005 cable to the State Department in Washington that WikiLeaks publicized in 2011, accurately noting that she seemed ‘more comfortable working with the often high-caste and well-educated Communists than with regional satraps’.12 This was despite the fact that the Left blocked many economic reforms and other policies. The chemistry between Sonia and Manmohan Singh also worked well, with her running the party and politics and him the government, despite efforts by some ministers to undermine Singh by reporting primarily to Sonia. Singh had frequent frustrations with the Left, especially over opposition to a civil nuclear deal with the US. ‘How can I run the government like this?’ he asked rhetorically in 2007, hinting, some thought (wrongly, as it turned out), that he might resign.13

  Sonia made her mark mostly by insisting on the government introducing policies that would help the poor and by using a virtual power of veto on policies she considered bad – usually on economic reforms and development. This often displayed her empathy with the Left and the liberal economists and social activists she appointed to her National Advisory Council.

  The extent of her interventions were revealed in 2012, when The Economic Times successfully filed a right to information application with the National Advisory Council secretariat and found she had written 25 letters to Manmohan Singh and 17 to various cabinet ministers from the time the council was constituted for a second time in 2010.14 These mostly pushed her social reforms agenda on issues – some major and some minor – such as a rural employment guarantee scheme, legislation on food security and tribals’ forest rights and enforcement of environmental regulations on controversial mining and other projects. Between 2010 and 2012, she ensured that domestic workers were included in legislation on protecting women against sexual harassment at work. In January 2011, when there was a controversy over tribal people in the Andaman and Nicobar islands being exposed to tourism, she told the then home minister, Chidambaram, that ‘the Ministry of Home Affairs may coordinate with them (Tribal Affairs Ministry) so that all issues related to the Jarawa tribe are comprehensively addressed’.

  She stopped petrol price rises in 2006 and also dramatically slowed down the use of agricultural land for industry by saying such land should not be used for special economic zones that were then being pushed unwisely fast by Kamal Nath, the commerce and industry minister, who had strong equations with the business sector. She also tried to slow down talks on free trade agreements with Asean countries because she feared they could hurt India’s farmers. Some of these and other initiatives originated with her council, but not all. After she had personally vetoed the oil price rise, a well-connected Indian businessman dubbed it, in a conversation with me, as a display of ‘amazing democratic autocracy’.

  In 2009, the Congress won an unexpectedly strong victory, with Manmohan Singh playing an important vote-pulling role alongside a public relations offensive to raise the profile of Rahul Gandhi and the more charismatic and astute Priyanka.15 There were hopes that the government would do better than it had in the previous five years because it was supported by various regional parties and not the communist-led Left.16 The Congress, it seemed, would be able to lead a much more stable government with fewer corrupt cabinet ministers from regional parties, especially in lucrative infrastructure and transport ministries. There were hopes of economic reforms being implemented without being held back by the Left, which would pull in foreign and domestic investment which had been lacking.

  The Stars Fade

  The predictions and hopes turned out to be totally misplaced. The coalition was constantly disrupted by its partners and lacked any cohesion. The cabinet was not of a better quality, and economic policy making and implementation came to a virtual standstill. Sonia Gandhi and Singh knowingly allowed a welter of corruption scandals to develop, and failed to handle them effectively when they became crises because the Congress was more interested in keeping the coalition intact and appeasing corrupt regional partners. The Gandhi-Singh chemistry was also far less effective than it had been.

  The dynasty suffered in 2011 from Sonia Gandhi developing unexplained health problems, while Rahul continued to fail to acknowledge that he was her successor. In short, the government lacked visible leadership. Singh and Sonia Gandhi rarely spoke in public on major issues and Rahul, the heir apparent to both of them, was even more silent. Because of Sonia’s position as the Congress ‘High Command’, no one dared challenge her as the party leader or Singh as the prime minister.

  By mid-2012, the Nehru-Gandhis were providing a prime example of the problems that dynasties can cause. Their determination to stay in control, whatever the cost to India, was preventing the Congress from developing and electing new leaders and it was depriving the country of the quality of government it desperately needed. Absolute loyalty to the dynasty, namely Sonia and Rahul, had become a primary qu
alification for most top, and sensitive, posts. This led to key government posts being given to those who were seen as loyal rather than capable. A prime example was A.K. Antony, the defence minister, who was kept in his post even though he failed to reform the defence industry and ensure adequate preparedness of the forces.17 Shivraj Patil was home minister from 2004, even though he was clearly inadequate at a time of increasing security concerns – Sonia Gandhi only agreed to move him after a devastating terrorist attack in Mumbai in November 2008.18 The president of India from 2007 to 2012, Pratibha Devisingh Patil, was chosen by Sonia to be India’s first woman president because of her loyalty to the Gandhis, but she turned out to be one of the most undistinguished and self-serving in the country’s history.19

  Singh had been appointed prime minister in 2004 because Gandhi knew that, as well as being a distinguished and respected veteran public servant and economist, he would not challenge her authority and would keep the prime minister’s seat warm for her son. He constantly pushed aside advice from close advisers to assert himself more and build a power base as head of government alongside Sonia Gandhi’s party and coalition leadership.20 And he said several times that he would hand over when Rahul Gandhi was ready to succeed him.21 It seemed that, approaching 80, he was no longer up to the job but did not want to resign for having failed, preferring to hang on till he could gave way to the heir apparent, who was little more than half his age at 41 and showed no sign of wanting to take over.22 With no other acceptably loyal candidate, Singh was kept in the job instead of being allowed to retire, and was boxed in by the dynasty and its coterie so that he was less than effective in most areas, apart from foreign relations with the US and Pakistan.

  It had become clear by now that the dynasty was becoming a drag on India’s economic development because both Sonia and Rahul believed that the way to keep the Congress in power was to channel subsidies and funds to the poor, irrespective of how wasteful that could be, while discouraging growth-oriented economic reforms that might do short-term harm to the Congress’s pro-poor image.23 The worry was that they were not interested in striking a balance between pro-poor and growth initiatives, but focused solely on the first as the route to election success.24 This contrasted with the constructive economic growth policies that Rajiv Gandhi had initiated in the 1980s.

  The image of a government adrift, constrained by the inadequacies of dynasty and a coalition, was magnified by reports of extensive graft and extortion, especially corruption scandals in the coal and telecom industries that Singh appeared to have condoned for years. Foreign investors were worried by the growing evidence of corruption, and how far and deep its tentacles reached into India’s institutions and the country’s overall performance. A London-based banker friend, in a superb British understatement, emailed me that ‘India is looking sticky’. I replied: ‘Sticky indeed, but nothing much that we didn’t know about, just woodwork crumbling a bit and everything crawling out!’25

  The reputations of top politicians and others were publicly undermined by revelations from Arvind Kejriwal, the founder of the Aam Aadmi Party.26 One of Kejriwal’s hottest targets was Robert Vadra, a brass ornaments trader who 15 years earlier had married Priyanka, Rahul’s sister.27 A stocky fitness enthusiast, Vadra had accumulated surprising wealth through land deals in Haryana and elsewhere after his marriage. Many of the deals were with DLF, the leading and well-connected real estate developer, though it was not clear whether the investments were on his own account or were linked to the Gandhis’ money. Leading Congress ministers including Chidambaram publicly defended Vadra when the accusations were first made, presumably thinking that was what Sonia Gandhi would want, but they quickly backed off as details of the land and property deals emerged and indicated close links with DLF and regional politicians.

  During this period, there was also the national furore over rape and violence against women and about police brutality. Economic growth and the value of the rupee were both declining and there were loud complaints from businessmen about inadequate government, a lack of economic reforms, growing power shortages and blockages on new investment projects, and other problems. Parliament was failing to function because of disruption by opposition parties, and key legislations on issues such as land allocation, mining, foreign investment in insurance, food security and banking reform were stalled. In an attempt to reboot India’s international image, Pranab Mukherjee was replaced in the middle of 2012 as finance minister by Chidambaram, who brought fresh energy to the ministry and persuaded Sonia and Rahul Gandhi to speak in favour of reforms that would generate economic growth. But none of this succeeded in halting the general decline.

  It seemed to be too late. Sonia Gandhi’s experiment of being in command as the dynastic head of the coalition without any constitutional accountability while a captive prime minister met her wishes, was not working. She was successfully keeping the Congress party and her dynasty in business, but India was being badly governed.

  Notes

  1. Private conversation with source

  2. JE, ‘At last, India’s imperial phase draws to a close’, New Statesman, 10 May 1999, http://www.newstatesman.com/node/134728

  3. Rasheed Kidwai, Sonia – A biography, p. 125, Penguin Books India 2003, updated and revised 2012, http://penguinbooksindia.com/hi/book-category/biography?page=1

  4. JE, ‘At last, India’s imperial phase draws to a close’, New Statesman, 10 May 1999, http://www.newstatesman.com/node/134728 5. Sonia a Biography, pp. 75–77 as above.

  6. David Lyon, ‘Obituary: Rajesh Pilot’, The Independent (UK), 14 June 2000, http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-5070727.html

  7. Vir Sanghvi and Namita Bhandare, A Life of Madhavrao Scindia, p. 303, Penguin Viking India 2009

  8. ‘A victory of sorts – Sonia Gandhi trounces Jitendra Prasada but not in an election that was completely free and fair’, Frontline, 25 November 2000, http://www.frontline.in/static/html/fl1724/17240280.htm

  9. ‘The unlikely heiress, Can Sonia Gandhi lead Congress to victory?’, The Economist, 22 January 2004, http://www.economist.com/node/2370836

  10. ‘In the Name of the Father – The new Gandhi generation’, The Economist, 24 April 2004, http://www.economist.com/node/2618146

  11. Ibid.

  12. ‘Sonia more comfortable with Left than with regional allies’, The Hindu, 27 March 2011, www.thehindu.com/news/the-india-cables/article1574328.ece

  13. http://ridingtheelephant.wordpress.com/2007/10/23/indias-unhappy-pm-faces-unclear-future/ and http://business-standard.com/india/news/pm-talks-toughallies-over-nuclear-deal/302065/n

  14. ‘Sonia Gandhi’s letters guiding Prime Minister & cabinet ministers’, Economic Times, 13 August 2012, http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2012-08-13/news/33182673_1_domestic-workers-sonia-gandhi-law-minister

  15. http://ridingtheelephant.wordpress.com/2009/05/12/india%E2%80%99s-voting-ends-%E2%80%93-after-four-weeks-of-hot-air/

  16. http://ridingtheelephant.wordpress.com/2009/05/16/congress-wins-%E2%80%93-communists-lose-%E2%80%93-orissa-stable/

  17. http://ridingtheelephant.wordpress.com/2012/04/04/army-intrigue-and-graft-hits-indias-defences/

  18. http://ridingtheelephant.wordpress.com/2008/11/30/chidambaram-is-a-good-choice-as-india%E2%80%99s-home-minister/

  19. ‘Dogged by Controversy’, Outlook magazine, 30 April 2012, http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?280623

  20. Sources in his office told JE.

  21. ‘Manmohan Singh says open to Rahul Gandhi succeeding him’, Economic Times, 29 June 2011, http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2011-06-29/news/29717287_1_lokpal-bill-congress-high-command-prime-minister

  22. http://ridingtheelephant.wordpress.com/2012/02/06/government-in-blundering-retreat-on-corruption-crisis/

  23. http://ridingtheelephant.wordpress.com/2012/07/09/time-mag-misses-the-target-in-dubbing-manmohan-singh-an-under-achiever/

  24. http://ridingtheelephant.wordpress.com/2012/08/15/has-india-abandoned-economic-debate/


  25. http://ridingtheelephant.wordpress.com/2012/09/11/india-is-looking-sticky-as-the-system-crumbles/

  26. ‘Popular war on corruption ignites India – A former tax man is taking his campaign to the streets’, The Independent, 14 October 2012, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/popular-war-on-corruption-ignites-india-8210445.html

  27. ‘Robert Vadra and DLF accused of illicit links by Arvind Kejriwal’, NDTV, 5 October 2012 http://www.ndtv.com/article/india/robert-vadra-and-dlf-accused-of-illicit-links-by-arvind-kejriwal-276051

  15

  Waiting for Rahul

  Sonia Gandhi has managed to build around herself such an exclusive and untouchable aura of personal privacy and secrecy, combined with ultimate authority, that few people have dared publicly to question her role or criticize her supremacy despite the government’s growing failings. Apart from election campaigns, she has rarely appeared in public and never made herself available for the sort of public questioning routinely faced by most national leaders elsewhere.1 She has done this with a style of modest elegance, her demeanour refined, and the effect much more persuasive than that of many other politicians.

  Before she entered active politics in the late-1990s, Gandhi seemed unassailable, protected by a charismatic protective halo. Believers say that once someone steps outside a chakra’s psychic circle of protectiveness, it shatters and cannot be repaired.2 Gandhi however managed to retain her psychic chakra when she ventured into the real world of politics and even extended its reach so that the whole family became virtually unassailable, growing aloof with an understated but pervasive arrogance. The acceptance of this preeminent position would be envied by many less democratic rulers, as would Sonia Gandhi’s ability to rule with a minimum of public utterances.

  Remote, Aloof – and Ill

  This, of course, is the secret of her success. By rarely commenting on, or becoming associated with day-to-day policies and other such issues, she rarely exposed herself to criticism and thus avoided the risk of arousing controversy and generating political attacks that could undermine her authority and upset the future of the dynasty. She intervened on pro-poor subjects such as fuel prices and the industrial use of agricultural land and, later, on legislation providing food aid, but she mostly stayed away from major controversies such as India’s 2008 nuclear deal with the US and foreign direct investment regulations (though both she and Rahul Gandhi made one or two references in favour of foreign involvement in supermarkets). Neither she nor Rahul showed any interest in foreign policy, which they left to Manmohan Singh. ‘Rahul won’t pontificate on things that might go against him,’ said a friend.3