India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy

by Ramachandra Guha

  Finally, the writer predicted that the growth of caste, communal and regional caucuses would lead to an ‘increasing instability of Government first in the States and later also at the Centre’. This instability, in turn, might lead to a competitive patriotism among the different parties.

  For instance, the Congress Party may try to unite the nation behind it by warning of the dangers of ‘Balkanisation’, the Jan Sangh by playing up the fear of aggression from Pakistan, the P[raja] S[ocialist] P[arty] by emphasising the competition between India and China and the Communist Party by working up popular indignation against dollar imperialism.1

  Of all the predictions quoted in these pages, this one reads best with the passage of time. The 1967 elections, the first held after Nehru’s death, produced instability at the centre as well as in the states. There was a growth of popular sentiment along the axes of region, religion and caste, which found expression within the ruling party and – something the writer did not anticipate – in new parties organized on sectarian lines. As politics became more competitive, the Congress under Indira Gandhi played up the fear, real or imaginary, of Balkanization, the Jana Sangh played up the threats, real or imaginary, from Pakistan and the communists pointed to the diabolical designs, real or imaginary, of the United States. There was an increasing infusion of money into politics, and various attempts to rig elections.

  Who was this gifted political astrologer, whose forecasts have been so largely vindicated by later events? He might have been a Western political scientist, constrained to write anonymously about a controversial subject concerning another country. Or perhaps he was a civil servant working within the government of India, precluded by his job from speaking out in his own name. That he was one such is suggested by the remark that ‘senior civil servants are hoping that they will retire before Nehru goes’, so as not to work under what was likely to be a less broad-minded as well as less competent successor.2

  II

  While Jawaharlal Nehru was alive, the Congress always ruled at the centre. And of all the opposition parties, only the communists in Kerala had enjoyed power in the states. Beginning with the elections of 1967, the political landscape of India became more variegated. An increasing number of state governments fell into the hands of non-Congress parties. In 1977 the first non-Congress government came to power in New Delhi. The 1980s saw Congress regain power in the centre, but at the end of the decade it lost it again.

  This growing decentralization of the political system has manifested itself in the rise of coalition governments. The Janata Party which came to power in 1977 was itself a coalition of four different parties. The next non-Congress government was the National Front that came to power in 1989. This had seven distinct components, and was yet a minority government. Since then no government in New Delhi has been ruled by a single party.3

  These coalitions have been of three types. The first kind has been dominated by the Bharatiya Janata Party, successor to the old Jana Sangh. For two weeks in 1996, and then for six years between 1998 and 2004, the BJP headed coalition governments. In this National Democratic Alliance the BJP kept for itself the post of prime minister and the key portfolios of Home, Finance, and External Affairs, while allotting other ministries to its coalition partners, these mostly regional groupings.

  The BJP took to coalition politics in the well-founded belief that it could never come to power on its own. With its roots so strongly in northern India, its expansion depended heavily on alliances with other parties, each based in a particular state. With the exception of the Shiv Sena in Maharashtra, these parties did not subscribe to the Hindutva (Hindu-first) ideology. Thus, in forging alliances the BJP had to promise to put to one side such contentious issues as the Ram temple in Ayodhya and the abrogation of Article 370 of the constitution (which accorded special status to the state of Jammu and Kashmir).4

  The second kind of coalition was initiated by the socialist remnants of the Janata experiment. These led the National Front government of 1989–91 and the United Front government of 1996–8. They were both minority governments, which encouraged a wider dispersal of ministerial responsibilities. While the prime minister came from the Janata Dal, important portfolios such as Home and Defence were allotted to alliance partners.

  The third type of coalition has been dominated by the Congress Party. In 1991, in the elections held in the aftermath of Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination, the Congress won 244 seats. It was by some distance the largest single party, but still fell nearly thirty seats short of a majority. However, the support – brought about by persuasion or other means – of independents and the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha allowed it to remain in power for a full five-year term.

  In the elections of 1996 the tally of the Congress fell to 140 seats. P. V. Narasimha Rao resigned as prime minister and, shortly afterwards, as party president. Now the party bosses turned to Sonia Gandhi, Rajiv’s widow. Born in Italy, a Catholic by upbringing, Sonia had married into India’s premier political family but had no political ambitions herself. In 1981 she had been deeply resistant to the idea of her husband entering politics. After his death ten years later, she retreated into her home and her family.5

  Before the 1998 elections, however, Sonia Gandhi yielded to the pressure applied by old colleagues of her husband and mother-in-law, and joined the campaign. When the party won only 141 seats the incumbent president, Sitaram Kesri, was replaced by Rajiv’s widow. A year later, mid-term elections were held, in which the Congress tally dropped further, to 114 seats. At this stage pundits were ready to write off the housewife-turned-politician. However, Sonia Gandhi kept her job and campaigned energetically in a series of assembly elections. Her persistence was rewarded: at one stage, although the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) was in power at the centre, as many as fifteen state governments were headed by the Congress.6

  In early meetings held under Sonia Gandhi’s leadership the Congress had scorned the idea of entering a wider alliance. The old guard held that, in the future as in the past, they would come to power under their own steam. But the realities on the ground compelled a change of orientation. Before the 2004 elections the Congress put in place alliances with a variety of other parties. In the event, the Congress won 145 seats, but their United Progressive Alliance (UPA) won 222 in all. Since the BJP-led NDA had won only 189, the UPA formed the government with the support from outside of the communists. Sonia Gandhi declined the post of prime minister, which went instead to her trusted colleague Manmohan Singh. Following the NDA model, the Congress kept the Finance, Home and Foreign Ministries. However, important economic ministries such as Information Technology and Agriculture were ceded to alliance partners.7

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  Table 28.1 – Percentage of votes won by the Congress Party and the BJP, 1989–2004

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  1989 1991 1996 1998 1999 2004

  Congress 39.5 36.5 28.8 25.8 28.3 26.4

  BJP 11.5 20.1 20.3 25.6 23.8 22.2

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  The year 1989 marks a watershed in Indian political history. Before that date, the Congress was a mighty colossus; after that date, single-party dominance gave way to a multi-polar system. In the past, some 40 per cent of the national vote had allowed the Congress to win some 60 per cent of the seats in Parliament. Now, behind the fall in the number of seats won by the Congress lay a steady decline in its vote share, as Table 28.1 makes clear.

  Between 1989 and 2004, the vote share of the Congress declined by more than 10 percentage points; over this period, the vote share of the BJP increased by roughly the same extent. However, in the last few elections these two major parties have garnered a mere 50 per cent of the vote between them. Where does the other half go? The communist parties, concentrated in West Bengal and Kerala, generally win about 8 per cent. The backward-caste and Dalit parties, strong in north India, together claim about 16 per cent. The regionalist parties, which have a marked presence in southern and eastern India, get about 11 per cent.

  The dec
line of the Congress has come in two phases. The first phase, which began in Kerala in 1957 and peaked in Andhra Pradesh in 1983, saw Congress hegemony challenged by parties based on the identities of region, language and class. The second phase, which began in north India in 1967 and has peaked in the same region in the last decade, has seen the Congress losing ground to parties basing themselves on the identities of caste and religion. On the one hand, the upper castes in particular and Hindus in general have deserted the party and gravitated towards the BJP. On the other hand, the lower castes have preferred to throw their weight behind parties such as Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party and Mulayam’s Samajwadi Party. Even the Muslims, traditionally among the Congress’s strongest supporters, were turned by the demolition of the Babri Masjid into voting for other parties.

  It is this fragmentation of the party system that lies behind the rise of coalition governments. These coalitions are truly multi-hued: the BJP-led NDA government of 1999-2004 brought together sixteen separate parties; the Congress-led UPA alliance which fought (and won) the last general elections had nineteen. And because they are so variegated these coalitions are also unstable. In forty-two years between 1947 and 1989 India was ruled by ten different governments and had six different prime ministers. In the fifteen years between 1989 and 2004, the country was ruled by seven different governments and had six different prime ministers – i.e. there was a change of government (and usually a new prime minister) just over every two years on average.8

  The rise of coalition governments is a manifestation of the widening and deepening of democracy in India. Different regions and different groups have acquired a greater stake in the system, with parties that seek to represent them winning an increasing number of seats – usually at the expense of the Congress, which for the first two decades of Independence had claimed, rather successfully, to be a party that represented no section of India in particular but all in general.

  This deepening of democracy has come at a cost – that of a steady loss of coherence in public policy. The wide-ranging policies of economic and social development that Jawaharlal Nehru crafted in the 1950s – among them the boost to heavy industry, the reform of archaic personal laws and an independent foreign policy – would not have been feasible in the fragmented and divided polity of today. Even programmes focused on specific sectors, such as the thrust to agricultural development that Lal Bahadur Shastri and Indira Gandhi provided in the 1960s, would now be difficult to bring to fruition. In the past, in allotting portfolios to ministers their relevant experience and abilities were taken into account. Now, the distribution of ministries is dictated more by the compulsions of having to please alliance partners, who demand portfolios seen either as prestigious or profitable. And in the execution of their duties, Cabinet ministers are prone to put the interests of their party or their state above those of India as a whole.

  III

  From parliamentary elections, let us move now to the unfolding dynamic of party politics in the states. Despite its declining fortunes, the Congress remains a genuinely national party, a force to be reckoned with in most parts of the Union. In many states, there is a stable two-party system, with the Congress providing one pole and the BJP, the communists, or a regional party the other pole. However, in the vast states of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, the Congress has been reduced to insignificance. Here the main players are caste-based parties and the BJP.

  State elections over the past two decades have been marked by a great deal of volatility. The phenomena of ‘anti-incumbency’, the voting out of the party in power, is very nearly ubiquitous. Thus, in Himachal Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, Congress governments alternate with BJP ones. In Andhra Pradesh the Congress alternates with the Telugu Desam, in Kerala with the communists. Rarely does a party enjoy more than a single term in office. One exception was the Rashtriya Janata Dal in Bihar, which held office more-or-less continuously from 1989 to 2005. More striking still has been the success of the CPM-led Left Front in West Bengal, which has been in power since 1977.

  For the two decades following Independence the Congress was in power in the centre as well as in virtually all the states. Then, from 1967 to 1989 (except for the brief Janata interregnum), the Congress ran the central government in New Delhi while it shared power with its rivals in the states. In this, the most recent period, the Congress has been out of power for long stretches at the centre as well.

  These changes have radically altered the form and functioning of Indian federalism. Now, before a general election, the smaller parties, each powerful in a single state, need to be cajoled and placated before joining an all-India coalition. Thus, ‘the two aspirants to be “national parties”, the Congress and the BJP, now must behave like fast-food franchises. They sell their brand to local agents, who choose, reject, bargain or change sides on the basis of local conditions.’9 Ideology plays no part in this bargaining – it is all based on strategic calculation, on what one can extract from the national party by way of ministerships at the centre or subsidies to one’s state. Thus, the DMK and AIADMK have each been part of both Congress and BJP-led alliances, while the Telugu Desam has been with the BJP as well as the National Front.

  The alliance in power in New Delhi tends to favour those state governments run by their own people. A World Bank study for the period 1972-95 found that states ruled by parties which were also in office in Delhi received 4 per cent to 18 per cent more from central funds than did states that did not enjoy this status. Another study, by two Indian economists and for amore recent period, estimated that grants were 30 per cent higher when the same party was in power in the state as well as the centre.10

  Another consequence of this fragmentation is that the writ of the centre does not run as authoritatively as it once did. When all chief ministers were of the same party as the prime minister, it was easier to make them sacrifice the interests of their state in favour of what was perceived to be the wider national interest. Now, chief ministers are less likely to do the prime minister’s bidding. Once, a dispute between two states could be amicably settled after a word to the two chief ministers from Nehru or Indira Gandhi. Now, a dispute once begun becomes increasingly hard to resolve.

  Illustrative here is the dispute between the states of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu over the waters of the Cauvery river. The Cauvery originates in Karnataka, flows through the state and into Tamil Nadu, from where it merges with the Indian Ocean. The lower parts of the delta have for centuries had a sophisticated irrigation network, allowing farmers to grow high-value paddy. In contrast, irrigation works in Karnataka are of recent origin; the first canals were built in the early twentieth century, with a further spurt in canal building after the 1970s.

  In 1928 Cauvery waters irrigated 11 million acres of farmland in what is now Karnataka, and 145 million acres in what is now Tamil Nadu. By 1971 the gap had increased; the figures now were 44 million acres in Karnataka and 253 million acres in Tamil Nadu. However, by the end of the twentieth century the upper riparian state had virtually caught up with the lower one – the figures now were 213 million acres for Karnataka and 258 million acres for Tamil Nadu. This massive expansion of irrigation facilities has generated much wealth for the farmers of the Mandya and Mysore districts of Karnataka. Once dependent on a single harvest of a low-value crop (usually millet), they can now enjoy two or even three harvests a year of high-value crops such as rice and sugar cane.

  During the 1970s and 1980s the central government convened a series of discussions to work out a mutually acceptable distribution of the Cauvery waters. Twenty-six ministerial meetings were held between 1968 and 1990; all failed to arrive at a consensus. Tamil Nadu feared that the frenetic canal building in the upper reaches threatened its farmers downstream. Karnataka argued that its late start should not preclude the fullest development of the waters in its territory.

  In June 1990, by an order of the Supreme Court, a Cauvery Water Disputes Tribunal was constituted. Three (presumably impartial) judges were
its members. On 25 June 1991, the tribunal passed an interim order, directing Karnataka to release 205 million cubic feet of water per year to Tamil Nadu, pending final resolution of the matter. Ten days later the Karnataka assembly passed a unanimous resolution rejecting the tribunal’s order. The Karnataka government then passed its own order, which mandated its officials to ‘protect and preserve’ the waters of the Cauvery for the state’s farmers.

  The matter went to the Supreme Court, which held that the Karnataka directive was ultra vires of the constitution. The central government now made the tribunal’s interim order official by publishing it in the official gazette. The Karnataka chief minister, S. Bangarappa, responded by declaring a bandh (general strike) in the state. All schools and colleges were closed and, with the administration looking on, protesters were allowed to go on the rampage in Tamil localities of the state capital, Bangalore. The violence continued for days, with an estimated 50,000 Tamils being forced to flee the state.

  Karnataka’s defiance sparked angry words from the chief minister of Tamil Nadu, J. Jayalalithaa. Her administration, in turn, encouraged the targeting of Kannada homes and businesses in Tamil Nadu. Altogether, property worth more than Rs200 million was destroyed.

  While ordering the constitution of the Cauvery Water Disputes Tribunal, the chief justice of the Supreme Court noted that ‘disputes of this nature have the potentiality of creating avoidable feelings of bitterness among the peoples of the States concerned. The longer the disputes linger, more the bitterness. The Central Government as the guardian of the interests of the people in all the States must, therefore, on all such occasions take prompt steps to set the Constitutional machinery in motion.’