Have we forgotten Indira Gandhi?

Many Indians love Indira Gandhi for what she stood for and what she did. Many Indians shun her memory for what she did between 1975-77.But her imprint on post-independence history of India is indelible. In the government policy area, the shadows of her polices linger though unacknowledged. Her signature was leadership, writes S Narendra, former adviser to PMs and ex-Spokesperson, Govt of India. A PRapport exclusive! (Pictures from Congress party website)

As an Indian I was both sad and upset to see in my morning daily newspaper a half-page bland

display advertisement on Indira Gandhi by the Congress party announcing on 19^th November her birth centenary.The party in its present form,under dynastic leadership,continues to exist solely because of Mrs Gandhi’s daring and successful confrontation against the old guard in 1969. The party’s credentials as a pro-poor, secular outfit with pan -India appeal are based largely on her record. Even posthumously her name earns votes. The half page newspaper tribute is one more evidence of  theabsence of imagination and leadership in  the party. Purely in utilitarian terms, Indira Gandhi’s centenary was a  great opening for reminding the post -1991 Liberalisation generation of the unquestionable contribution of Indira Gandhi in putting India first in several fields. This was also a missed opportunity to come forward with the leadership’s vision  fora youthful India, especially when Rahul Gandhi is likely to replace his mother as party president.

Like all political leaders who wielded enormous power about whom posterity reads in history books, Indira Gandhi’s record was mixed.As an adversary,she was formidable and the present ruling establishment  has lots of causes to despise her. But we as a nation have to thank her for a lot of things that may be politically inconvenient for the present rulers. Again.as a nation, we cannot forgive her for imposing ‘her political emergency’ in 1975,abusing the Constitution. Nothing prevented Indira  of those days from preceding Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe and many others who declared themselves to be heads of their governments for life. But She redeemed herself by abruptly ending the emergency and opting for election in early 1977. And,Indira should be remembered for this act alone, If not for other reasons I am about to list.

I was more upset to see the Congress tokenism, because if in power, the party would have splurged government  money on ‘celebrating’  Indira’s centenary and made it a political event. In 1969, the party and Indira politically exploited Mahatma Gandhi’s birth centenary and claimed impliedly that she was out to fulfil Gandhi’s dream of wiping the tears of the last man in the line[ the talisman]. In 1989, an election year, Rajiv Gandhi’s government opened the government purse to observe Nehru centenary for a year to tell the nation that his grandson deserved to be rewarded by the electorate.

In 1969, the Nehru family’s hold on power was about to slip out. Indira resolutely rescued the dynastyand made the Congress a family owned party, against daunting odds.She, thus, set the trend of dynastic politics. Regional leaders-Karunanidhi,Jayalitha,Mulayam Singh Yadav, Patnaik, Devegowda to name a few,later only followed her example of promoting dynasties.

What all did the Congress party miss out to tell? The present government is presenting its successful confrontation against China at Doklamas an example what strong leadership could achieve.No doubt that must be noted and applauded.The successful face-0ff against China was facilitated by Indira’s gutsy master stroke in making Sikkim a part of India in 1975, where the Indian army ,at present ,is deployed in strength. For those unfamiliar with Doklam geography, it is atthetri-junction between Sikkim,Bhutan and China, a highly contested territory, important for  India as it helps in protecting the narrow(24 km wide) Siliguri corridor that connects the north east states to the rest of India.If Sikkim were not part of India, it would have placed India in a precarious situation.

The Sikkim annexation was not the only peaceful expansion of India’s territory. Indira was also responsible for the ground work that entitled India to a piece of territory in the Antartic,  one among  half a dozen countries  to set up research stations there.Not only that India’s exclusive rights to explore polymetallic nodules from sea-bed in central Indian ocean basin have been extended by five years in August 2017.These rights are over 75000 sqkms of area in international waters allocated by International seabed Authority for development activities for polymetallic nodules. How did that come about?.This was possible because the government set up a separate Ocean Development department in 1981 and encouraged it to  pioneer in developing seabed survey and research, including the technology for seabed mining.The Ocean department and the Indian navy cooperated in carrying out the sea bed survey in 2000, that entitled India to claim seabed territory.

ISRO,India’s space agency is globally hailed for its innovation in the satellite technology business.The Space commission and ISRO took shape in 1969 and Aryabhata satellite went up in 1975.Satellite TV broadcasting was introduced  throughSITE experiment; this was followed by satellite telephony experiment. Indira was criticised for spending money on fancy projects. In a congratulatory message to ISRO, Indira had said;’ expensive high technology was low cost in the long term when harnessed for development’. ISRO’s Chandrayaan and other odysseys have made the country proud.

Pokharan-II nuclear explosions in 1998 made India a nuclear power, and in 2009 India shed its status as a nuclear pariah when the Indo-US nuclear cooperation agreement was signed .The efforts of the present  government to gain the membership of NSG, pacts for nuclear cooperation with Japan and with others would not have been possible without Pokharan-I in 1974.

Coming to the strides made in agriculture,rural development, poverty reduction  and Make in India, the humongous contribution of the nationalised banks must be acknowledged.When Mrs Gandhi nationalized the 14 commercial banks on July 19,1969,their total number of branches was less than 2000 and their total deposits was less than Rs3000 crores.Of the total bank lending, barely 1.75 percent went to agriculture.When the present government is taking credit for announcing the earmarking of highest bank credit (10 lakh crore) for agriculture, it has to be noted that this would not have been possible if the banks had not been nationalized.India now can boast of being a leading producer of milk,vegetables and fruits and agri- products. Impartial research would show that the farm and rural directional change in economic growth and development was ushered in by the 1970 budget. Prime minister Indira Gandhi had presented this budget as the finance minister. A document accompanying the Budget-titled ‘growth with social justice’ had launched the small farmers development agency, dry land development agency and many others with self-employment avenues (dairy farming,poultry, animal husbandry) assisted by nationalised bank finance. This white revolution is noted but its author is less remembered. Indira’s CSRE {1972} or crash scheme for rural employment has now turned into MNREGA, aboon to landless labour in drought seasons. The government’s direct intervention for reducing poverty, distress in agriculture took off ina big way. Of course, lots of money has been syphoned off by politicians of all hues from such schemes but Mrs Gandhi cannot be blamed for the leakages. Politics teaches its practitioners to tap into any and every government programme with a kitty.

This 1970 budget also tightened the ‘Licenceraj’, under which many industrial houses,new and old flourished. And, crony capitalism spawned big businesses.Owners of some of them today are making it to the list of billionaires in the Forbes magazine.

Her finest hour, and that of India, was December 16, 1971 when the Pakistan army surrendered to the Indian army at Dacca in Bangladesh and the latter became an independent country.

Then PM and statesman Vajpayee paying tributes to at Indira's Samadhi - Shakti Sthal

On that occasion ,the poet in Atal BehariVajpayeeji came out to anoint her as ‘Durga’. This powerful and benign ‘Durga’ , unfortunately showed  to the future prime minister and to her other political rivals her dark  face in 1975.

The opposition and the regional parties also must thank her for breaking the cycle of simultaneous elections to Lok Sabha and the state assemblies in 1971. The argument advanced then was that the issues in play in a parliamentary poll are national in nature,unlike in Assembly elections in which regional and local issues are agitated. This one Indira move incapacitated the Congress juggernaut from steam-rolling into power across states.Smaller and regional political outfits had very little chance of coming to power if simultaneous polls were held for the Lok Sabha and assemblies. Strangely, now there is talk of undoing this in the hope of establishing a political monolith on the lines of the Congress party before 1967.

History has mysterious ways of revisiting itself. Unlike her father, Jawaharlalal Nehru, after India’s victory over Pakistan in 1971,Indira`veered towards the cult of personality. Wikipeadia explains it thus:’cult of personality arises when a regime uses mass media,propaganda or other methods such as government -organized demonstrations to create an idealized, heroic and at times worshipful image of a leader,often through unquestioning flattery and praise. Her party president Devkant Barooah became famous with his quote ; ‘Indira is India’. Indira was irritated by media criticism and began to ignore media.She had said that the media represent 0.001 percent of the population and public opinion. Editors like B.G.Verghese who  were critical of her policies  and centralisation of power ,came under their newspaper owners’ pressure and were sacked. Her contempt for free media not unexpectedly showed up as media censorship during the emergency. However, her contribution to media development was significant.Under her instructions, the TV training was added to the Film and Television Institute in Pune in 1974 and the institution became a full -fledged visual media training facility  with full government support. The film documentary wing as well as the film development corporation for financing creative films flourished.The newspaper industry starved of news print due to global scarcity let out a sigh of relief when the government responded to its appeal for producing newsprint by government mills.

Indira Gandhi when she became PM after the sudden death of prime minister Lal Bahadur Shastri initially did not have power; it was wielded by her appointees in the party. But she acquired it by sheer dint of her determination and wielded it demonstratively. The academic literature on Power states that power is rarely given;It has to be acquired and exercised and make other feel it in action.She brought that into  full play in the months leading upto the Indo-Pak confrontation over Bangladesh. The crisis was an opportunity for Indira Gandhi to established herself as a leader to be reckoned internationally.Her face off with US President Nixon and secretary of state Henry Kissinger are well documented. The Indo-USSR 20 -year agreement for peace and friendship singed a little before the Indo-Pak war of 1971 was a diplomatic coup that unsettled both the US and China that were siding with Pakistan. This pact, according to some commentators, stopped the US from sending a contingent of its 7^th Fleet into Indian ocean to brow beat India.

Many Indians love Indira Gandhi for what she stood for and what she did. Many Indians shun her memory for what she did between 1975-77.But her imprint on post-independence history of India is indelible. In the government policy area, the shadows of her polices linger though unacknowledged. Her signature was leadership.

Blast from the past: Vajpayee's professionalism beyond politics

By S.Narendra

(Former Information Adviser to PM, Principal Information Officer

to the government, & Spokesperson)

Personal equations play a critical role even in a professional setting. This is more so in semi-political situations such as when I was the Spokesman and Information Adviser to more than one PM. When there was a political transition, such as the one that happened in May 1996 when BJP under Atal Behari Vajpayee replaced the Congress government of P.V.Narasimha Rao, I did not know the new PM personally.

Adding to my difficulty was the fact that several persons, with party affiliation, including some media persons, had entered PMO with Vajpayee to look after media affairs. In their eyes, officials who had worked with the previous governments, which were mostly Congress party ones, were suspect. No government official, including myself, had a choice because BJP had not won power at the centre since Independence. The BJP party functionaries could not understand the concept of civil service neutrality and official professionalism.

But their tallest leader, Atal Behari Vajpayee was different by miles. Soon after Vajpayee was sworn in as PM, I called on him. The great leader received me very cordially, put me at ease by telling that I should continue to function as before and said: ‘Hum media ko bahut samman karte hain’. His foster son- in- law Ranjan Bhattacharya, who was functioning as his personal assistant, was extraordinarily warm and courteous and did not seem to share the hang up of party functionaries. He greatly facilitated my work, especially by giving free access to PM, whenever I needed to meet him.

To recall, BJP had emerged in the 1996 elections as the single largest party but far sort of a majority. The President Dr. Shankar Dayal Sharma  asked the government and prove its majority in Parliament within two weeks. The Congress had finished as the second largest party in Lok Sabha and was trying to forge a coalition with non-BJP ‘secular’ parties such as the left, Janata Dal and other small outfits. The Congress was not only surprised but upset that the President who originally hailed from the Congress and was elected to the office with its support had done the unthinkable act. At that stage of Indian politics (post-Babri Masjid demolition) BJP had been isolated as a ‘non-secular’ Hindu party and treated as a political pariah. In essence, politics was in a flux and the prospect of India having a stable government was uncertain.

It is customary for a newly sworn- in PM to make a national broadcast, very soon after assuming office for setting out his vision and agenda for the nation. During my meeting with Vajpayee, I broached this subject and submitted a draft text. He instructed me to pass it to Pramod Mahajan, who was very close to him. I followed the PM’s instructions and did not pursue the broadcast subject.

  

On the third day, I was instructed by Pramod Mahajan  to bring the official TV team to PM’s office. It was late evening. When I entered the PM’s office, he was busy discussing something with his principal secretary, B.N.Tandon. The TV and Radio recording teams began milling around in the room to set up their equipment. There were some other familiar faces from the media world who were considered close to BJP.  After some time, the PM spotted me and generally enquired whether all arrangements for the broadcast were in place. Without waiting for an answer, Vajpayee asked me: "Aapne speech dekha hai?” and gave me the folder containing the draft text. I had not seen the final version that had been given to PM, although I had given my draft to Pramod Mahajan.

On reading it, I was greatly disappointed with its contents. I submitted my view that the draft was needlessly combative: it also did not take into account the delicate political situation in which BJP was looking for allies to score a parliamentary majority. I frankly told PM that the text did not fit in with his image as a national leader, whose appeal cut across the political divide. The text had effectively reduced him to the level of a BJP PM.

Obviously, Vajpayee had not had the time to go through the text before. He took the file and spent some time in going through the draft. And then he apologized to the TV and radio teams and refused to record the broadcast that day, and asked his political advisers to rework the text. He also ensured that my inputs to be reflected in the revised version.

On the thirteenth day in office as PM, Vajpayee resigned as his government was unable to muster a majority in the Lok Sabha.

The author
sunarendra@gmail.com

Again, it is customary for an outgoing PM to broadcast a farewell message. His political advisers had presented a text to PM for the broadcast. When I took the TV team for recording his message, he asked me to read the text. It contained passages attacking political parties and did not showcase the tall leader's sagacity for reaching out to all sections, including opponents. There was no healing touch befitting an unstable national political situation that was bad for the country. After hearing my assessment, Vajpayee asked his political advisers to issue a press statement from the party office. And there was no PM's farewell broadcast.

Atal Behari Vajpayee was one wise leader who did not view professional advice through party or political prism. (Blog: (https//Spokesperson.blogspot)