August 31, 1998

15 months of chronicling two failed prime ministers.

Mani Shankar Aiyar

Here's some good news for that army of readers who have hated this column. This is my valedictory. The targets of my ire need not, however, breathe a sigh of relief. The column moves back to where it came from 15 months ago.

The onset of this column coincided, more or less, with the arrival of Inder Kumar Gujral at the helm of the nation's affairs. Gujral is one of our most intelligent, well-informed and well-read politicians. With a political record that dates back to the immediate aftermath of Independence and Partition, he is one of Midnight's Political Children. A soothsayer looking into the crystal glass in 1947 would have said India's democracy was safe in the hands of dedicated young men like Gujral.

The same soothsayer would also have found hope in Atal Bihari Vajpayee, all of a swashbuckling 24 as freedom came. A splendid orator, a keen and incisive mind, a decent human being. Just the kind to provide an alternative which would make for a real choice in democracy. Yet, have 15 months under the leadership of these eminent representatives of independent India, who between them have spanned the golden jubilee year of our Independence, made the country believe there is indeed something to celebrate?

Hardly. The fault, I hasten to add, is not that of Gujral and Vajpayee. They have lasted at the helm too briefly to make the vital difference. Moreover, they represent political formations that have spent 45 of the past 50 years in the Opposition. Much that is wrong with India at 50 cannot be laid at their door.

Yet, the fact remains that it was they who held the reins through all of this celebratory year. It is they who constituted the alternative to the long dominance of the Congress. They were given the opportunity to enthuse the country with another vision. Both fell flat. Why?

Certainly not because they are personally or politically flawed. On the contrary, they are the best and the brightest of the non-Congress alternative on offer. Either -- on his own and given the time -- might have rivalled some of the biggest names of post-Independence India. The problem was neither was on his own. And it is this amorphousness that makes them such transient figures of history.

Gujral, of course, began from before Independence as a Congressman. Had he remained with the Congress, there is the off-chance he would have been in the league of P.V. Narasimha Rao, another foreign policy expert, when the Nehru-Gandhi family opted out of Congress politics in 1991. But Gujral did not like the politics of Indira Gandhi. So he set out to find himself a Congress destiny outside the Congress. And ended in the wilderness, albeit as prime minister.

For men like Muthuvel Karunanidhi and Laloo Prasad Yadav, there is an alternative vision of India to what the Congress desires and conceives. Their natural place is, therefore, outside the Congress. But a man like Gujral, who arrives with his Congress baggage in a non-Congress setting, is neither inspired by the company he keeps nor can he become an Inder Kumar Mandal.

So he remains the quintessential outsider, saddled with priorities that are not his own and perspectives he cannot possibly share. The non-Congress alternative is primarily based on regionalism. That is why every United Front leader is a satrap, not a soldier. Gujral was not a satrap. Indeed, he was a soldier in the wrong army.

After the anodyne premiership of Gujral, the wit and sparkle of Vajpayee should have brought about an emotional high. Instead, the cares of office have transformed Vajpayee. His walk is slower, his speech enfeebled, the pauses painfully long. There is no sense of a new dawn on the horizon. He is a stop-gap prime minister, no more.

Why? Because as prime minister he represents no one and nothing. His personal Hindutva has little in common with the fanaticism of the RSS or the VHP or even his own party backbenchers. Even his BJP ministerial colleagues, like Lal Krishna Advani and Murli Manohar Joshi, dream of an India far removed from the gentle dreams of Atal Bihari. As for his Government, what except expediency keeps it together? No wonder the Akalis, the Samata, Mamata and, of course, Jayalalitha are constantly at loggerheads with Vajpayee on whatever little governance he is able to provide.

The lesson to be learnt is there is no short cut to power. It is not enough for the Gujrals and the Vajpayees to have their convictions and be good and decent men. They must also keep the company of good and decent men, whose vision and programme they share. They must lead their own kind. And they must persuade a majority of the electorate that they have on offer what the country wants.

Gujral and Vajpayee have failed to inspire because they have become prime ministers not of their own combinations but of those cobbled together by others. One of them could have been a competent Congress prime minister and the other a great BJP prime minister. Instead, they became chiefs of inchoate coalitions in the golden jubilee year. Which is why the country found so little to celebrate in the year that had been marked out for celebration.

The author is secretary, AICC. The views expressed here are his own.

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