HVK Archives: Crowing in peacock feathers
Crowing in peacock feathers - The Telegraph
K. P. Nayar
()
15 April 1997
Title : Crowing in peacock feathers
Author : K. P. Nayar
Publication : The Telegraph
Date : April 15, 1997
The day after Sitaram Kesri withdrew his support for the H.D. Deve
Gowda government, several Congress members of parliament were
witness to an unedifying spectacle of their leader being berated,
taunted and cross examined by the defence minister, Mulayam Singh
Yadav.
The setting was Kesri's home, where he was in a meeting with some
MPs and the defence minister was on the phone demanding an
explanation for what the Congress chief had said in his letter to
the president about the United Front government's shabby record on
matters of defence and security
"How have we compromised the nation's security and defence?" the
Samajwadi Party chief demanded to know from the Congress president,
barely caring to be polite and speaking in Hindi slang that
bordered on the crude. All that Kesri could do, the Congress MPs
recounted later, was to mumble a few inanities into the telephone
and tell the defence minister, almost in apology, that he had
nothing against Yadav. It was clear to all those who were witness
to this episode that Kesri did not know what was wrong with the
United Front government's external or security policies although he
had put his signature to a letter which called these into question.
What is true of Kesri is unfortunately also true of a large number
of Congressmen, including the bulk of party MPs in Parliament.
This was abundantly clear during the debate in the Lok Sabha on the
confidence motion last week, when they allowed the external affairs
minister, I.K. Gujral, to get away completely unchallenged on his
"achievements" in foreign policy.
Foreign policy was about the only issue on which speaker after
speaker from the treasury benches claimed unparalleled success on
behalf of the United Front government. They took their cue from
Gujral who unveiled before the Lok Sabha an impressive list of what
he had done to bring India's external affairs back on track. He
talked of India's river water accord with Nepal, the tripartite
agreement with Iran and Turkmenistan, the improvement in relations
with Bangladesh, the talks with the United States, which had been
derailed by Kesri's action.
Every one of those "successes" listed by the United Front's
external affairs minister actually belong to P.V. Narasimha Rao and
Pranab Mukherjee. Gujral had merely usurped these and claimed them
as his own. And yet, there was not even a murmur of protest from
the Congress benches that some of the finest achievements of their
government until last year were being stolen by their rivals with
impunity.
Take, for instance, India's relations with Nepal, which Gujral
placed right at the top of the United Front government's credit
listing. It was the previous Congress government which unveiled an
unprecedented range of commercial concessions to Nepal putting
behind it the long legacy of tension and mistrust between New Delhi
and Kathmandu during the years of Indira Gandhi and her son. It was
Rao who displayed unexpected sensitivity towards Nepal and opened
discussions on the controversial friendship and security treaty
between the two countries. And it was Pranab Mukherjee who not only
finalized the Mahakali river agreement with Kathmandu, but authored
one of the most sensitive initiatives in Indian diplomacy by
securing the approval of all the political parties in Nepal to that
agreement.
A The South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation is another
case in point. It was during the previous Congress government's
tenure that the only worthwhile SAARC initiative, the South Asian
Preferential Trading Arrangement, was launched. It was Rao who set
the stage for an improvement in relations with Bangladesh by
handing over Tin Bigha. Again, it was he who normalized ties with
Sri Lanka, eschewed Indian interference there and created
conditions for a vast increase in bilateral economic links.
Almost throughout the Lok Sabha debate, the Congress was roundly
criticized for withdrawing support to the United Front while the
India-Pakistan foreign secretary level talks were going on in New
Delhi. These talks are popularly viewed as being among the major
achievements of Deve Gowda and Gujral.
But the fact is that without the fanfare or publicity that has
attended the United Front government's efforts to improve relations
with Pakistan, Rao met his Pakistani counterpart five times in the
five years that he has been in power. Deve Gowda has completed 10
months in office, but he has not met the prime minister of Pakistan
even once. Besides, every single confidence building measure with
Pakistan to date - be it the opening of hotlines, notification of
exercises or redeployment of troops anywhere along the border - has
been put into place by a Congress government.
The upgrading of India's relations with the Association of South
East Asian Nations - of which India is now a full dialogue partner
- has been claimed by Gujral as yet another of the United Front
government's crowning achievements. For the record, it was Rao who
opened the lines to ASEAN, which accepted India first as a sectoral
dialogue partner and then upgraded the relationship to full
dialogue status.
In its 10 months in office, the Deve Gowda government did not do
anything to further this relationship. With the ASEAN, it scuttled
more projects than with any other bilateral partner The road
projects with Malaysia, the joint venture between the Tatas and
Singapore Airlines, the Bangalore airport ... the list is long
indeed.
But it is perhaps in its dealings with the big powers that the
United Front government completely lost its way. The Rao government
successfully retained India's nuclear option without getting into
the kind of confrontation that Deve Gowda and Gujral opted for on
the comprehensive test ban treaty and carried on sustained
bilateral negotiations with all the five nuclear powers on security
issues and disarmament. This policy is now in a shambles and the
vacuum caused thereby is an awesome burden which will have to be
carried by successive governments in New Delhi.
Gujral claimed in the Lok Sabha that he would have been in
Washington talking to the US secretary of state and other Bill
Clinton administration officials had not Kesri pulled the rug from
under the feet of Deve Gowda. The impression that was being sought
to be created was that he had cancelled his plans to go to the US
because of the political crisis. The fact is that the US had
unilaterally called off Gujral's trip a few days earlier.
The previous Congress government had worked out a structured and
balanced relationship with the US, despite serious policy
differences. Gujral's legacy is that bilateral ties between India
and the US have never been worse except during the Bangladesh
crisis in 1971.
The biggest foreign policy aberration in the United Front's scheme
of things is that it believes, quite erroneously, that the
counterweight for India's problems with Washington lies in cosying
up to Moscow. Nothing can be farther than the truth. Rao realized
this quite early in his tenure and went to both Tokyo and Bonn
quickly enough. Ten months into office, these two capitals figured
nowhere in Deve Gowda's itinerary for this year.
Through a deft combination of media management subterfuge, Gujral
has been able to create the impression that no government since
Jawaharlal Nehru's has taken so many worthwhile initiatives in
foreign policy. It is the United Front's dubious record in
external affairs which prompted Pranab Mukherjee, the author of
Kesri's letter to the president, to question the 10 month legacy of
Deve Gowda and Gujral on issues that effect the nation's security
But Mukherjee's was a challenge whose significance was lost not
only on his partymen but also on his. party president.
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