Commentary/Dilip Thakore
The decline and fall of Narasimha Rao
By the time you read this piece P V Narasimha Rao, who until early
this year was the president of the Congress party, prime minister
of India and almost certainly the most powerful individual in
this nation of 900 million people, is likely to have stepped down
as the leader of the Congress Parliamentary Party.
And he may well be bemoaning his fate in a common prison charged
with a plethora of criminal acts of omission and commission.
Rao's fall from grace and public esteem is the most precipitous
and spectacular in the history of post-Independence democratic
India. During the five years when he was plucked from relative
political obscurity in the aftermath of the assassination of Rajiv
Gandhi, he quickly attained the meridian of his glory and now
he hastens towards an ignominious setting.
Almost in a flash, his public profile has been transformed from
that of a sagacious Chanakya-like statesman into that of a petulant
old man, desperately clinging to the floundering Congress party
for his own survival.
Behind Narasimha Rao's Lucifer-like fall from grace and public
favour is a latter-day morality tale which incumbent and aspiring
politicians, political scientists as well as bureaucrats and others
holding offices of profit under the state would do well to heed.
Yet to understand the causes of the dramatic decline and imminent
fall of Narasimha Rao, it is necessary to draw upon the so-called
soft sciences of psychology and sociology.
In retrospect, Rao's decline can be traced right back to his roots
in his ancestral village of Nandayal in Andhra Pradesh. Several
decades ago a book, Indian Ink, written by an Englishman
(whose name I forget), recounted the causal petty corruption which
is ingrained in rural India. The book earned the opprobrium of
educated Indians for being exaggerated. Yet on further reflection,
it was an accurate depiction of the open, uninterrupted and continuous
petty corruption practiced by petty officials at the grassroots.
Even to this day the extraction of illegal payments for the discharge
of official duties is the widely accepted norm in the nation's
700,000 villages and hamlets.
Unfortunately after Independence, when the continuing migration
from country to town began, this persistent social virus was transported
into urban India.
Narasimha Rao was part of the rural-urban transmigration. In the
light of subsequent events of recent vintage it is impossible
to believe that he was not influenced in his formative years by
soft societal attitudes towards petty corruption.
From Nandayal, Rao migrated to Hyderabad where he pursued his
higher education and like all idealistic young men of his generation
was inspired by the call of Mahatma Gandhi to join the freedom
struggle against the British rule. This brought Rao into the Congress
party and more pertinently into Congress-style politics which
has ultimately proved to be his nemesis.
Mahatma Gandhi had the prescience to foresee that given their
prolonged exposure to petty corruption at the grassroots level,
even the idealistic young men and women flocking under the Congress
banner were likely to be corrupted by political power.
Hence his advice to the leaders of the Congress to dissolve the
party after Independence and to transform it into a social service
organisation. Not surprisingly there were few takers for this
proposal.
It is tempting to speculate as to what would have been the character
of the nation had Gandhi not made the mistake of anointing the
patrician Jawaharlal Nehru as the nation's first prime minister,
and had the party favourite, the right-wing Sardar Patel, assumed
office as prime minister.
In retrospect it is now fairly obvious that post-Independence
India would have realised its economic potential to a greater
degree. Instead of developing and building upon the entrepreneurial
spirit of the newly Independent nation's business calls, with
his patrician disdain for money and businessmen Nehru set about
the impossible task of restructuring and re-engineering the Indian
economy.
And while attempting to re-engineer the India economy with the
objective of creating a "socialistic pattern of society"
in post-Independence India, he unwillingly let loose the corruption
virus which has multiplied with geometric intensity and has sapped
the nation of its vitality.
There can be no doubt that in his long career as a Congress politician
at the state and central levels Narasimha Rao absorbed the command
economy culture of casual, routine corruption defined as the extraction
of illegal payment for the discharge of official duties.
Preoccupied with the objective of ensuring that the then recently
promoted public-sector enterprises attained the commanding heights
of the economy, the Nehru administration had little time to formulate
rational electoral legislation which would facilitate the flow
of clean money into the coffers of political parties.
As a consequence, major and minor politicians were given license
to strike deals and collect campaign funds for political parties,
a proportion of which it is safe to conclude went into the collectors'
private hoards to finance the extravagant lifestyles to which
the nation's politicians have become accustomed.
Perhaps because of the influence of Soviet-style communism, the
Indian intelligentsia and the population in general suffers a
collective blind spot vis-a-vis the absurdly extravagant
lifestyles of the nation's politicians.
There is a curious reluctance to question the source of funds
which finance frequent foreign jaunts, extra-territorial health
care and frequent - and expensive - air travel and five-star hotel
loading within the country. Little wonder politicians across the
political spectrum are brazenly living beyond their declared sources
of income.
Looking back, it is now quite obvious that having become acclimatised
to the murky waters of the socialist command economy which endows
politicians, bureaucrats and even petty clerks with enormous discretionary
powers of clearance and negation, coupled with indulgent attitudes
towards corruption within the intelligentsia, Narasimha Rao absorbed
the Congress culture of casual corruption and real fixing for
a price.
Unfortunately for him extraneous, unforeseen developments such
as the collapse of the communist command economy ideology the
world over, the sudden overdue awakening of the judiciary and
the intelligentsia coalesced to mark him as the sacrificial lamb
in the ongoing ritual of cleansing public institutions.
Though an individual of considerable learning endowed with the
rare virtues of patience, tact and an open mind has been made
the sacrificial lamb at the alter of public morality, it is eminently
in the national interest that this cleansing ritual is pursued
to its logical conclusion.
It will serve to demonstrate the primacy of the rule of law to
the political class and the largely illiterate population within
a society in which anarchic impulses are straining the national
fabric to breaking point.
It would be only human to experience a sense of loss tinged with
a certain sadness that Rao, who during his five tumultuous years
as prime minister of the nation displayed great sagacity and courage
in leading the nation out of the wilderness of state driven socialism,
should in his twilight years come to such a sorry end.
Yet the manner of his going is likely to reaffirm the rule of
law and strengthen the institutions of orderly governance which
have been ravaged in the three decades since the death of Lal
Bahadur Shastri.
Now Rao has a unique opportunity to secure his position of honour
in Indian history by freely confessing his sins, accepting the
verdict of the law and making an honourable exit from public life
and discourse.
Dilip Thakore is the founder-editor of Business India and
Business World and former eidtor of Debonair.
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