India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy

by Ramachandra Guha

  However, while the central government could set the machinery in motion, it no longer had the powers to compel the states to accept its recommendations. Fifteen years after it was constituted, the Cauvery Water Disputes Tribunal has yet to come up with a final resolution. When the monsoon is good, Karnataka has no problems releasing 205 million cubic feet to Tamil Nadu. But if the rains fail, panic sets in all round. Tamil film stars lead demonstrations and go on fasts to compel Karnataka to ‘see reason’. In her most recent term as chief minister, Jayalalithaa went on fast herself, surely a less-than-constitutional method of pressing her state’s demands on the centre. Meanwhile, peasant leaders in Karnataka warn their government that if water is released without their consent, the administration will have to face the consequences.

  In bad years, between the months of June and September the Cauvery question rarely strays off the front pages of the newspapers in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. Protest and counter-protest is followed by the centre ordering Karnataka to release x million cubic feet of water to save standing crops in Tamil Nadu. The Tamil Nadu chief minister demands more than x; her counterpart in Karnataka says he can release only so much less than x. A central team rushes to the Cauvery valley to supervise operations. The precise amount of water eventually released is never made public. One can, however, be certain that it is determined more by the fluid dynamics of inter-party politics than by the logic of science or the letter of the law.11

  Meanwhile, at the other end of the country, in July 2004 the Punjab assembly passed a resolution abrogating its agreements on water-sharing with other states. It would, it said, appropriate as much of the Ravi and Beas rivers as it chose before allowing them to flow on to Haryana and Rajasthan. The resolution was clearly at variance with the spirit of Indian federalism. Moreover, it was piloted by a Congress chief minister at a time when the Congress was also in power at the centre.

  The act of the Punjab Assembly was possibly unethical, probably illegal and certainly unconstitutional.12 It might yet come to be viewed by other states as an encouraging precedent. For water, more than oil, is the resource most critical to India’s economic development, critical both for agriculture and to sustain the burgeoning population of the cities. With the increasing fragmentation of the polity, and the declining capacities of the central government, more states might be tempted to take such unilateral action.

  IV

  In 1993 Parliament passed the 73rd and 74th Amendments to the constitution. The 73rd Amendment mandated the creation of local government institutions at the level of the village, taluk (county) and district while the 74th did the same for towns and cities. Office-bearers were to be chosen on the basis of universal adult franchise. Everywhere, one-third of the seats were reserved for women, with additional reservation for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes.

  Panchayati Raj, or village self-governance, had been an abiding concern of Mahatma Gandhi. However, both Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi were hesitant to devolve power to lower levels, if for different reasons: the former because he felt it would be inimical to economic development, the latter because of a general preference for centralization. In the 1960s Rajasthan and Maharashtra had both experimented with village and district councils. However, the first serious attempts to create village panchayats were in West Bengal, after the Left Front came to power therein1977. The process was taken further by the Janata government in Karnataka, which between 1983 and 1987 devolved significant responsibilities to local institutions.

  As prime minister during 1984–9, Rajiv Gandhi sought to create an all-India system of local self-governance. His interest was in part a nod to the rise of local autonomy movements, which called for a wider sharing of power and authority, but it was also based on political calculation – namely, the fact that while the Congress ruled at the centre, state governments were dominated by parties hostile to it. Panchayati raj would allow New Delhi to bypass these parties and deal directly with the people, putting straight into their hands a portion of the funds previously controlled by the state administration.13

  The process initiated by Rajiv Gandhi bore fruition after his death, when the Congress regained power at the centre. During the discussions leading up to the amendments, state governments had expressed concern about the undermining of their authority. The legislation as finally passed gave individual states the discretion to specify the functions and powers of the panchayats in their territory. The provincial acts varied widely in intent and consequence. Some states gave panchayats responsibility over all aspects of development work – irrigation, education, health, road-building etc. – and transferred funds appropriately. Other states followed a more parsimonious line regarding the functions and finances of their local institutions.14

  In the 1980s West Bengal was at the forefront of panchayati raj; afterwards, the lead was taken by another state with a strong communist presence, Kerala. When it came to power in 1996 the Left Democratic Front (LDF) decided to allocate 35–40 per cent of plan funds for programmes designed and executed by local institutions. Across the state, panchayats were encouraged to hold meetings at which villagers were helped by officials and technical experts to set their own priorities. Hundreds of locality-specific plans were prepared, which tended to highlight the careful management of natural resources such as soil, water and forests.15

  In Kerala, as in Bengal, the promotion of panchayati raj is based on an unstable mixture of idealism and opportunism. On the one hand, left-wing intellectuals and activists believe that, by devolving power, villagers can spend public money on projects relevant to their needs instead of being subject to directives from above. There is also some evidence that decentralization reduces the leakages in the system, that there is less corruption and thus more money actually spent on development works. On the other hand, in the original Gandhian vision, panchayati raj was to be a ‘partyless democracy’, where the most respected (or able) villagers were elected regardless of political affiliation. In practice, the process has been deeply politicized. In Kerala, and even more so in West Bengal, the CPM has seen in panchayati raj an instrument to tighten its grip on the countryside. The power of the panchayat, and its officials, is used not merely in and for themselves but, crucially, to mobilize votes during assembly and parliamentary elections.16

  These caveats notwithstanding, the 73rd Amendment has set in motion a process with possibly profound implications for the future of Indian democracy. A decade after its enactment there were more than 3 million elected representatives in local institutions, a third of them women. They were chosen through a very competitive process, with voter turnout at panchayat elections generally exceeding 70 per cent.

  One subject of great interest, and greater importance, is the impact that panchayati raj will have on relations between castes. In Uttar Pradesh, where the Dalits are vocal and organized, the dominant castes are now forced to share power at the local level with those historically less advantaged. In Orissa, where the Dalits are more submissive, they have been (illegally) excluded from participation in many panchayats. In Tamil Nadu, the formation of village councils has sharpened existing conflicts between the landed Thevars and the Dalits. About one-fifth of panchayat presidents have to be Dalits, but these often find their authority eroded by the upper castes. Likewise, while some women presidents act autonomously, others are mere mouthpieces for the male members of their family or caste.

  Notably, members of Parliament and of the various state legislatures are often hostile to the panchayati raj experiment. So are many members of the Indian Administrative Service, who argue that it will merely lead to the ‘decentralization of corruption’. Supporters of the new system answer that such criticism is motivated, emanating as it does from groups that would be hard hit if administrative and financial authority were to be more widely distributed than is presently the case.17

  V

  During the 1990s Indian politics became more complex at the domestic level, with greater competition between parties and the
introduction of a third tier of government. However, when it came to India’s dealings with the rest of the world there was a noticeable convergence of views. Whether led by the BJP or the Congress, the ruling alliance was committed to enhancing the country’s military capabilities, and to a more assertive foreign policy in general.18

  One manifestation of this new strategy was a growth in the size and power of the military. India was rapidly moving ‘from a defence dependent upon diplomacy to a diplomacy strengthened by a strong defence’.19 Military expenditure rose steadily through the decade, from US $7,000 million to $12,000 million between 1991 and 1999. Some of this money went on salaries – there were now more than a million Indians in uniform, members of the army, navy or air force, with another million staffing the various paramilitary outfits.

  Some of the money also went to buy state-of-the-art weaponry. And some went to manufacturing instruments of war that the richer Western countries were not prepared to supply. In addition to the Agni and Prithvi missiles developed in the 1980s, India now had an intercontinental ballistic missile, Surya (with a range of up to 12,000 kilometres), and another, Sagarika, that could be launched from sea. Indian scientists had also developed a range of defensive options, designing shorter-range missiles to be aimed at any the enemy might throw at them.20

  These missiles were designed by the Defence Research and Development Organization, one of two scientific institutions that played a vanguard role in the defence sector. The other was the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), which had responsibility for the production of both nuclear power and nuclear weapons. An atomic device had been tested in 1974, but in subsequent years the AEC scientists were able to improve considerably its sophistication and destructive capability. From the early 1990s they pressed the government to allow them to test their improved bombs.

  In his history of India’s nuclear programme, George Perkovich tracks the persistent efforts of the scientists. Those who led the missile and nuclear programmes told successive prime ministers that, in the absence of tangible results, talented young scientists would prefer high-paying jobs in the commercial sector to the service of the state. ‘Without full-scale tests’, they argued, ‘morale would fall and the nation would not find replacements for the aging cohort that had produced the first device in 1974.’ In late 1995 Prime Minister Narasimha Rao sanctioned tests, but backed off when American satellites revealed the preparations, provoking a strong warning from the US government. When a United Front government came to power in 1996, the scientists urged the new prime minister, H. D. Deve Gowda, to give them the green signal. Gowda demurred; he didn’t care about American opinion, he said, but his priorities were economic development rather than a show of military strength.21

  The BJP-led National Democratic Alliance assumed office in March 1998. The next month Pakistan tested a medium-range missile, provocatively named Ghauri, after a medieval Muslim warrior who had conquered and (according to legend) laid waste to much of northern India. A quick response was called for, if only because ‘the BJP’s historic toughness on national security would have seemed hollow if the government did not respond decisively to the new Pakistani threat’.22 The heads of the AEC and the DRDO insisted that a nuclear test would be the most fitting response. Their calls were endorsed by the atomic physicist Raja Ramanna, who carried enormous prestige as the man who had ‘fathered’ the1974 tests. Ramanna met Prime Minister Vajpayee, who assured him that he wanted ‘to see India as a strong country and not as a soft one’. To this the physicist added a definitive caveat: ‘Also, you can’t keep scientists in suspended animation for twenty-four years. They will simply vanish.’23

  In the second week of May 1998 the Indians blasted five nuclear devices in the Rajasthan desert. Three kinds of bombs were tested: a regular fission device, a thermonuclear bomb and a ‘sub-kiloton’ weapon. Before and after the tests senior members of the NDA government made provocative statements aimed at India’s neighbours. The defence minister, George Fernandes, described China as India’s ‘number one threat’. The home minister, L. K. Advani, said that India was prepared to give hot pursuit across the border to any terrorists that Pakistan may send to make trouble in Kashmir.

  Opinion polls conducted immediately after the tests suggested that a majority of the urban population supported them. The most enthusiastic acclaim, however, came from the BJP’s sister organizations, the VHP and the RSS. They announced that they would build a temple at the test site, and take the sand, contaminated by radioactivity but nonetheless ‘holy’ for them, to be worshipped across India. The Shiv Sena chief, Bal Thackeray, saluted the scientists for showing that Hindu men were ‘not eunuchs’. The scientists themselves posed triumphantly before the news cameras, clad in military uniforms.24

  Two weeks later this balloon of patriotic pride was punctured and deflated. On 28 May Pakistan tested its own nuclear device. Their atomic programme had been built on the basis of designs and materials acquired in dubious circumstances from a Dutch laboratory by the scientist A. Q. Khan, supplemented by Chinese technical help. The Indian bomb was wholly indigenous. But these discriminations were made meaningless when six atomic blasts (deliberately, one more than the other side) disturbed the Chagai hills in Baluchisthan province. The Pakistani public greeted the news by dancing and singing in the streets. The ‘father’ of this bomb, A. Q. Khan, told interviewers that ‘our devices are more consistent, more compact, more advanced and more reliable than what the Indians have’.25

  The Pakistani achievement was glossed as an ‘Islamic’ bomb, in part because at this time no other Muslim nation had one. In India, too, both supporters and opponents of the tests tended to see them as ‘Hindu’ inspired. In truth, although the BJP was in power in May 1998, the preparations had been laid under successive Congress regimes. The policy of nuclear ambiguity – we have the bomb, but we won’t test it – was becoming unsustainable. Pressed by the West to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, India decided to make its nuclear status a matter of public record.26

  The BJP naturally tried to make political capital out of the tests, but faced with signing the CTBT and thus shelving further nuclear ambitions, a Congress regime would have acted likewise. Indeed, it had been Congress prime ministers who had, in the past, most insistently laid claim to a ‘great power’ status for India. These claims became more persistent after the end of the Cold War. Indian leaders demanded that in deference to its size, democratic history and economic potential, the country be made a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. That the claim was disregarded made the matter of nuclear tests all the more urgent. Across party lines, strategic thinkers argued that an open declaration of nuclear weapons would make the Western powers sit up and take notice. Reason and argument having failed, India had necessarily to blast its way to world attention.27

  VI

  The only countries to be acknowledged as nuclear powers were the five permanent members of the UN Security Council – the US, Russia, China, France and the UK. It was also known that Israel had nuclear capability. When, in the summer of 1998, India and Pakistan simultaneously entered this exclusive club it created some disquiet among the older members. It was feared that the Kashmir dispute could spark the first atomic war in history. Pressure was put on both countries to sort out their differences on the negotiating table.

  In February 1999 the Indian prime minister travelled by bus to Lahore to meet his Pakistani counterpart. Atal Behari Vajpayee and Nawaz Sharif spoke of increasing trade between the two countries, and of putting in place a more liberal visa regime. No progress was made on Kashmir, but the fact that the two sides were talking was, to subcontinental eyes as well as Western ones, a most reassuring sign.28

  Barely three months after the Vajpayee-Sharif talks Indo-Pak relations were once more on a short fuse. The provocation was the infiltration into the Kargil district of Jammu and Kashmir of hundreds of armed men, some Kashmiri in origin but others unambiguously citizens of Pakistan. The operation had been
planned by the Pakistani army, who told their civilian prime minister about it only when it was well under way. The idea was to occupy the mountain tops that overlooked the highway linking Srinagar to Leh, the only all-weather road connecting two towns of crucial importance. The generals apparently believed that their nuclear shield provided protection, inhibiting the Indians from acting against the intruders.29

  The Indian army was first alerted to the infiltration by a group of shepherds. Scanning the mountains with binoculars in search of wild goats to hunt, they instead spotted men in Pathan dress digging themselves into bunkers. They conveyed the information to the nearest regiment. Soon, the army found that the Pakistanis had occupied positions across a wide swathe of the Kargil sector, from the Mushkoh valley in the west to Chorbat La in the east. The decision was taken to shift them.30

  The shepherds saw the Pathans on 3 May 1999. Two weeks later the Indians began the artillery bombardment of enemy positions. Air force planes screamed overhead while on the ground jawans made their way laboriously up the mountain slopes. Men reared in tropical climes had now to battle in cold and treacherous terrain. ‘In battle after decisive battle Indian infantry battalions clambered up near perpendicular cliffs the entire night in freezing temperatures before lunging straight into battle at first light against the intruders.’31

  The exchanges were fierce and, on both sides, costly. Dozens of peaks, each defended by machine guns, had to be recaptured one by one. A major victory was the taking of Tiger Hill, in the Drass sector. The battles raged all through June. By the end of the month the Pakistanis had been cleared from 1,500 square kilometres of Indian territory. The areas reoccupied included all vantage points overlooking the Srinagar-Leh highway.32