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VIEWPOINT: FIFTH COLUMN
Wanted: A Leader
It's time Vajpayee learnt to lead from the front because
that is the job he was elected to do
The
most alarming thing about the opinion poll published in last week's INDIA
TODAY was that 41 per cent of the people polled said Indira Gandhi was
the best prime minister India has ever had. She was a seriously bad leader.
She left the economy trapped in some mistaken notion of socialism that
produced growth rates so low there was almost no growth at all. She left
politics in such a mess that we had secessionist movements in Kashmir,
Punjab and the North-east. But bad leader or not, she was a leader, and
it is the absence of a leader that the average Indian seems to think is
at the root of the gloom that enveloped the 54th anniversary of our Independence
last week.
 The
blame lies with Atal Bihari Vajpayee because despite his enormous popularity
when he became the prime minister, he has completely failed to lead. He
has his excuses, of course. He heads a disparate coalition, which has
meant that the loaves and fishes of office had to be distributed among
political parties that are more interested in private gains than the country.
And, he has faced constant criticism from within, in that the RSS (his
party's alma mater) has made it clear from day one that it was not happy
with Vajpayee's attempts to reform the economy or his attempts to be secular.
Having said that, though, it has also to be said that it is the prime
minister's job to lead and this he has singularly failed to do.
If this were his last year in office we could
simply vote him out of it and continue our search for a leader who would,
hopefully, prove that Indira Gandhi can, by no stretch of the imagination,
be considered a great leader. Alas, we are stuck with Vajpayee for another
three years, so he cannot threaten us with resignations and sulks every
time he is under fire. He has to show us that he can lead because that
is the job he was elected to do. If he had doubts about his abilities
to do this he should have retired from politics before the elections,
but now that he has taken the most important job in the country he has
to lead or at least show us that he is putting in his best effort.
If the prime minister wants to gauge the importance
of leadership, he need only look at how quickly things happen when he
leads. The Lahore bus trip and the summit in Agra come to mind as examples
of historical events that occurred because the prime minister took a personal
interest in making them happen. Vajpayee's only previous experience of
government was as external affairs minister in Morarji Desai's government,
so when it came to foreign affairs-and particularly peace in South Asia-he
took a keen interest. His Lahore trip and the Agra Summit may not have
brought instant peace in the subcontinent but they were both steps in
the right direction and are viewed that way by anyone who does not take
a partisan position.
Vajpayee's problem is that when it came to other
things like the economy, Kashmir, infrastructure development, public-sector
disinvestments, education, healthcare-to name only a few-he did not come
to the Prime Minister's Office with any clear ideas. So he made the mistake
of allowing the ministers in charge to do their own leading. This has
not worked and, inevitably, the buck now stops with him because there
has been almost no movement in anything that could be described as the
right direction. The truth is that there has been no movement, no change,
and we have ended up with the same lackadaisical policies that were rejected
by voters when they rejected the Congress.
Since the Government still has three years left,
it is time for the prime minister to now show us what he can do. No government
can do more than two or three things really well, so let him start with
a list of priorities. Even if he concentrates only on improving the appalling
mess in the infrastructure ministries and takes some steps to lift the
signs of rigor mortis that currently hang over the economy, he will have
done enough to prove he is a real leader. He has expressed a personal
interest in building roads-both highways and in rural India-then let him
begin by finding out why getting started is taking so long. How far have
we got with those golden quadrilaterals and other dream highways?
He has also stated on more than one occasion
that he is working towards the Indian economy growing at 9 per cent. Let
him find out why it has slowed down in the past couple of years instead
of speeding up. As someone who believes that all we need is an economic
boom for all our political problems to pale into insignificance, let me
say that if the economy grows at 9 per cent for five years we may even
have peace in the subcontinent. Nothing can happen unless the prime minister
decides that he must lead from the front. Surely, even Vajpayee should
know this now that he has had months of on-the-job training.
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