Fifth Column: Get Going Atalji

India Today
September 7, 1998

FIFTH COLUMN
Get Going Atalji

Vajpayee can't mask his lack of initiative with conspiracy theories.

Tavleen Singh

It should be the beginning of good times for Atal Bihari Vajpayee's beleaguered Government. The fat lady from Chennai has exposed herself for what she really is: an over-inflated gas balloon. The thin lady from Turino is off to the hills of Madhya Pradesh to see if fresh mountain air can stimulate the tired minds of the gaggle of domestic servants she calls a political party.

Even the press seems to have calmed down. The most "secular" newspapers, those which have spent four months making daily predictions about the imminent end of the Vajpayee Government, have been forced to resort to a new set of misleading stories. The Congress is not ready yet, they mutter (no more shrieking headlines), Sonia Gandhi is wise and knows that the timing is not right.

If these papers told the truth, what they would be saying is that despite all manner of machination, every conceivable kind of chicanery, the numbers simply do not add up for the Congress -- even if the fat lady manages to move, bag and baggage. In any case, she has baggage problems. Those of the AIADMK-led alliance's 27 MPs who do not have the lady's face tattooed on their chests are showing signs of mutiny.

Also, she appears to have noticed her antics have not gone down well in Tamil Nadu. So the Government is safe for the foreseeable future. The prime minister should be not just breathing calmly but celebrating. Cooking for his family, perhaps. Something he once told me he found almost as therapeutic as writing poetry. His speciality is khichdi (no reflection on his Government).

So when I heard that his two female antagonists had been stymied for the moment, I pictured him in the kitchen in a delicious cloud of spice and steam. After these moments of comforting domesticity, I pictured him racing off to South Block to announce a dynamic programme of economic and administrative reforms.

Alas, this is not yet to be. This time, for internal rather than external reasons. For some time now, political circles in Delhi have been agog with whispers of "trouble" between the prime minister and the home minister. I heard the first rumours about two months ago. Someone who can be described as almost a member of the prime minister's household told me, while commenting on a critical piece I had written, that I had no idea what was really going on: "How do you expect him to do anything when he does not have the support of his own party? How do you expect him to do anything when the RSS is against him?"

Why had the RSS turned against him, I asked. I was genuinely puzzled because I remembered from a recent interview I had done with the big boss of the Sangh Parivar, Rajju Bhaiya, that he had mentioned Atalji as being a personal friend. "Because they want their Sardar Patel to become prime minister," said my angry informant, "because they believe that only he can rule the country and do to the Muslims what they want done."

It seemed highly unlikely that even L.K. Advani, despite his reputation for eating Muslims for breakfast, could do much by way of promoting an anti-Muslim agenda as India's home minister. But taking the information seriously, I made inquires. I discovered a lot of the paranoia about Advani's alleged plotting and planning was coming straight from the prime minister's household. It is inside the household that they apparently believe the RSS has turned against Atalji so badly that it is spreading rumours about his ill health. It is also within the household that there apparently exists the belief that Advani has gathered around him a bunch of cohorts who are advising him on how to remove Vajpayee and become prime minister himself.

These feelings from inside the household are conveyed across Delhi's corridors of power by alleged well-wishers of the prime minister, who find themselves whizzing past alleged well-wishers of the home minister. This is where the trouble begins and the divisions start to materialise.

This is not a healthy situation. It gives the prime minister an excuse to blame his weaknesses on "propaganda" from the other camp. It also gives him the opportunity to hide behind doing nothing. It is time Vajpayee realised the country is waiting for him to lead. Now that he has the chance, let him show us he is a real leader and not just the fat lady's punching bag. Let him, for instance, immediately announce a programme of compulsory primary education. If we start with the first three classes now, it could still take us 20 years before we achieve complete literacy.

This can only be done if we have a truly competent minister for elementary education. Let Vajpayee privatise higher education so that government money can be released for schools. Let him have Ranga Kumaramangalam show him on a daily basis which power projects have been cleared, how quickly and by when they will be producing electricity. Ditto other infrastructure ministries. Daily reports, daily monitoring. This is the only way. If Vajpayee wants some lessons, let him learn from N. Chandrababu Naidu. If he manages to do for India even half of what Naidu has done for Andhra Pradesh, history will remember him as a hero.

The upshot is even if the rumours about the home minister trying to take his job were true -- which they don't seem to be -- they would become irrelevant if the prime minister can show us he can really lead.

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