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 October, 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 relation 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.

A third rebel who incurred his leader’s displeasure was Krishna Kant. He was elected to the Rajya Sabha in 1966 and re-elected in 1972. During 1971–72 he was Secretary to the Congress Parliamentary Party.

All three shared an independence of speech and outlook and a dogged disregard for whom these might offend. In the sea of conformity, even servility, around Mrs Gandhi, they were irrepressible, identifiable, attractive individuals, each with a capacity to go far in the party. A child of privilege herself, with special courtesy and consideration shown to her as Nehru’s daughter by the party and the country, Mrs Gandhi had entered politics at the top and not through the rugged school of competition. Her insistence on her unique position revealed her insecurity on her pinnacle and her distance from the true métier and experience of the natural politician, which her inbred disposition did nothing to overcome. She felt safe with the mediocre, uncomfortable in the presence of outstanding political talent or personality and threatened by aspiration that sprang from the ground and did not need her permission to succeed. It was simpler for her to deal with the elders in her party, no longer willing or able to do open battle. Any show of political virility alerted her to danger. To disagree with her was unpatriotic. In her own party it was to become lèse-majesté.

In a country so diverse culturally, where the problems of poverty and integration demand solutions, a charismatic leader may well be an insurance of political stability and the will to get things done. Nehru had been one in his time. Mrs Gandhi, however, introduced authoritarian trends and ideas into the Indian polity very different from the values of her two predecessors. It is possible that, in her hunger for leadership and without the solid apprenticeship this required, she became involved in more than she bargained for—a complex human situation, not merely a political one—and that a turn away from freedom became the inexorable course in reducing the human to malleable material. By the end of 1973 India’s political and constitutional future was uncertain, without any balancing assurance of economic gain. And this was the consequence not of a ‘people’s’ urge but of a particular character driven by its own urges, in search of fulfilment.

Power has been sought for a variety of reasons. Mrs Gandhi was not unusual in thus using ‘the people’. The people serve, especially in a society such as India, patiently and often passively as the raw material of power. It is the leader who invents, or authentically articulates, their demands. How he conceives and articulates them is a matter of his own belief and temperament. What he draws from them reflects in part what he himself is. Thus Mahatma Gandhi could get mass participation through an appeal to suffering and make it a platform for dynamic political action. Jawaharlal Nehru could sustain democracy partly by sheer faith, upholding a vision of the future beyond present difficulties, so crucial for the courage all voluntary effort needs. Indira Gandhi understood the leadership of India as a relation between the ruler and the ruled, a formula that left out the richest possibilities in politics.