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Ashok Mitra

National integrity can be ensured only by coming to terms with a permanent state of dishevelment

The obsession in the capital borders on absurdity: almost everyone congregating over there talks of the crucial importance of a stable government -- and of a stable polity, which, as per locally received wisdom, is the product of a stable administration.

Why should this be so at all? India, it needs stressing and re-stressing, is a patchwork of a thousand compromises. It is several centuries packaged together. The residents living in the different slots of centuries have separate minds, separate horizons of vision, separate behaviour patterns. They have separate foibles, predilections and prejudices. Even as the process of articulation of rights and prerogatives gains momentum amongst the diverse elements constituting the Union of India, the circumstances in the country will be increasingly disequilibrating. There will be, it is a fair guess, no worthwhile centre at all, either still or unstill.

The likeliest prospect is of a succession of temporary compromises leading to temporary government formations in New Delhi. Each of these transient arrangements will come apart sooner or later, sooner rather than later.

Such a denouement is only to be expected, since disparate elements who form a coalition will discover after a short while that the parameters of their interests have undergone a shift or, alternatively, the external or the internal environment has transformed qualitatively. The cliche that in politics there can be no permanent enemies and no permanent friends will suddenly attain an acute relevance in the Indian context. The universe of the cliche will, however, be much wider than the contours imagined in conventional dialogue.

The near uninterrupted run the Nehru-Gandhis enjoyed during the first 30 years of the post-Independence phase is therefore an aberration, an aberration induced by the deadly torpor which had spread its empire in the minds of the masses during the long spell of foreign rule.

The Nehru-Gandhis themselves too, in some sense, represented an alien household. They stood apart from the people, who were expected to keep their distance, expressing their awe and admiration from afar. When the Indian masses strained at the leash to be liberated from the bondage forced upon them by the family, Indira Gandhi attempted a putsch. She did not succeed.

And the story of the Indian Republic since then has been, as it should be, one of continuous turmoil. The stalwarts of the Congress obviously have still not a clue to the emergence of this ground reality in their native land. In their hour of disaster, they have desperately opted for a lady linked by marriage to the Nehru-Gandhis. The Indian masses could not care less. This is hardly a biased statement, for, despite the lady's vigorous campaigning, the Congress has ended up with roughly the same number of seats in the Lok Sabha as it held on the last occasion.

Notwithstanding their significant electoral advance, the leaders of the Bharatiya Janata Party will make a similar mistake if they nurture the illusion that their version of national integrity has been ratified by the nation. Were the BJP to proceed on this assumption, it will come a cropper, and soon.

The polity is split widely apart; it will remain split indefinitely. Coalition arrangements are inevitable in this situation. In such coalitions, there may well happen to be one major partner, but the moment it tries to take advantage of its numerical dominance, revolt will tear apart the combination. A new arrangement will then have to be sought.

Representation in the Cabinet put together via these arrangements will be on the basis of the respective strengths in Parliament of the coalescing partners. In case the situation drifts to a point where old coalitions have collapsed and new coalitions fail to emerge, fresh elections will need to be called for. Please fasten your seat belts, for some while elections could even be necessary to be held every other year or thereabouts.

Sections of the citizenry who feel so deeply embarrassed with a development of this nature that they are unable to show their faces to their foreign friends have not the slightest acquaintance with the Indian ethos, which is that there is no single, unique Indian ethos. India, to repeat, is not a country; it is a compromise and the compromise changes its complexion from day zero to day one and to day two and on to day n.

If this is regarded as tragic, the root cause of the tragedy does not lie in the myopia of the Indian politicians. When they proclaim their distinctiveness from the rest of the crowd, they reflect the urges and aspirations of their adherents, the bulk of whom are clawing their way out of the morass of darkness and ignorance. Not that these leaders are not often self-seeking, nor that some of them are not in the profession of politics to avail of the opportunity to indulge in some money-making on the side.

They, nonetheless, do not lose sight of the principal contradiction; they dare to challenge openly the status quo. They know their constituents will back them upto the hilt. The smashing of idols comes easily to these subalterns.

Chaos, of this genre, some will complain, is antithetical to the prospect of smooth economic growth. The only way out of the predicament, a few others may suggest, is to have a Presidential form of government with power concentrated in the hands of a strong Centre. These wise ones could not be more wrong. Three decades ago, Indira Gandhi could get away by having recourse to Article 356 of the Constitution on 70 odd different occasions. In more recent times I K Gujral's regime failed to put the Article to use even in a single instance; it had the will, but it lacked the strength to perpetrate the scandal and the President himself put paid to its feeble ambition.

Those who would love to take the quasi-authoritarian route of Presidential rule should therefore think again. In case an exercise is attempted along that direction the chances are that, that will destabilise the system even faster; and one of the consequences may well be to create an opening for foreign agents to make a beeline for India's seedy alleys and bylanes.

There is no alternative to patience -- and to accept with grace the harsh datum that any future regime, in case it is to survive, has to be a loose confederation of states as well as a wobbly coalition at the Centre. To attempt to scuttle this federal coalition by overbearingness is likely to provoke deeper trouble. For example, it could be the progenitor of fierce new movements for a drastic realignment of Centre-state relations here and now, with power and resources mostly transferred to the states. If the provocation is of a more extreme nature, some of the citizenry may actually threaten to walk out of the Union of India itself.

To sum up, national integrity can be ensured in this neighbourhood only by coming to terms with a permanent state of dishevelment. This is no cause for worry, the disparate elements within the polity will learn how to strike a deal with one another. India, in other words, will from now on be the triumphant arena for performing Chandrababu Naidus.

Ashok Mitra