August 17, 1998

Why is Vajpayee running just another Congress government?

Tavleen Singh

The sight of the entire Cabinet lined up at Delhi airport, wilting bouquets in hand, to bid the prime minister farewell when he left for Colombo recently was sadly symbolic of what a typically Congress government Atal Bihari Vajpayee has given us. At first I thought the exercise had occurred by accident, perhaps because some bureaucrat had convinced some novice in the Government that this was protocol.

But when I asked a cabinet minister why he had agreed to participate in a practice that the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty copied from tinpot dictatorships and totalitarian regimes, he said, "I went because I was ordered to go." One of the prime minister's closest aides apparently rang up ministers and reminded them to show up.

Why am I making such a fuss about a small thing like a bit of airport sycophancy from the Cabinet? Because it is not as small as it may seem. It is an indication that Vajpayee has not understood at all the mandate the people gave him, or half-heartedly gave him. The most important facet of this half-hearted mandate was: although there may have been some doubts about the BJP, the one thing people knew for sure was that they didn't want another Congress regime. They wanted change.

The average Indian voter, contrary to what liberals and lefties have been telling us for half a century, is not the cleverest of beings. He is usually illiterate, politically ignorant, and quite unaware of the progress other countries have made. What he does understand though is that the Congress ruled India for 40 years and failed to solve even his most basic problems. He may not understand how these problems can be solved. But he fully understands the need for change. Sadly, Vajpayee does not.

When you mention this to people in his inner circle, they tell you that he understands everything. But he is unable to make any changes because he is under constant siege from allies like Jayalalitha. Rubbish.

If the prime minister makes an objective analysis of his record of the past four months, he may discover that he and his most important aides have spent almost their entire time conducting foreign policy. Jaswant Singh -- instead of trying to abolish the Planning Commission or at least transform it into something less suited to Soviet-style governance -- has been whizzing around the world convincing Americans that we may be nuclear but are still non-violent.

In which case, you would imagine that the prime minister's principal secretary would concentrate on a few domestic matters. But no. Since his only experience of government is from the Ministry of External Affairs, he too spends his time interfering in the affairs of his former ministry.

Pramod Mahajan, we hear, has been silenced since he ticked off China in language more appropriate to the bazaars of Mumbai than the realms of diplomacy. As for the prime minister himself, he has been busy being paranoid about the actions of his friends and allies.

As a result, nobody has paid attention to the fact that if India is to move forward even slightly it is going to need to change the way it has been governed. We are one of the poorest countries in the world but we probably spend more money on our government than almost anybody else. We have vast ministries in Delhi that spend almost their entire time interfering in every sphere of economic activity for the simple reason that if they didn't do so, they would have nothing left to do.

Not one of Vajpayee's cantankerous allies would object if he seriously considered cutting down the size of the government. And it can be done, as P. Chidamabaram pointed out to me in 1997. He couldn't do it because his government was only an extension of the Congress. But the BJP should dare to be different.

Chidambaram had said, "Governments at the Centre and the states must become much smaller and withdraw from many areas ... There are many ministries which do not deserve to be ministries. If we have sail, why have a Ministry of Steel? When we have Coal India, why have a Ministry of Coal? "If we can liberalise the mining sector, why have a Ministry of Mines? Why have a separate Ministry of Food Processing when it should be part of the Ministry of Industry? When you have so many ministries all looking at segments of industry, they will interfere. They will pretend they are laying down policy, they will think they are doing good for their country. But what they will do is distort the market."

If Vajpayee starts abolishing ministries, you will say, where will he find jobs for his friends and allies? They can be given jobs in ministries the country really needs. We could use two ministries of education or even three: for primary, secondary and higher education. We could have a separate ministry for population control and maybe four health ministries, one for hospitals, another for rural health, and so on. We could have a separate ministry for children's nutrition, considering 60 per cent of India's children are believed to be malnourished.

There are a hundred other things the Government should be doing but isn't. To make changes we need a prime minister who stops thinking of himself as a devotee of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty. Could we, at least, begin by cutting out ministerial line-ups at the airport and those interminable samadhi tours. They will not be missed.

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