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Deve Gowda, the former Prime Minister-by-sufferance, has been telling whosoever is
willing to listen to him in the past few days what a wonderful job he did in the
ten months he was in power. Nobody would grudge him this indulgence. Every
deposed leader has his own trumpet to blow. He should be suffered in peace. But
the question is: how long will Inder Kumar Gujral last? CPM leader Harkishen
Singh Surjeet does not give him more -than a year, if that long. Possibly the BJP
is right: it does not believe that Gujral will even last till the end of the
current year which would give the Prime Minister hardly eight months to prove
himself. He will, of course, have to play a subservient Pole and for all
practical purposes take his orders from the Congress which, having tasted blood,
is unlikely to let him alone. Possibly, the Co-ordination Committee will prove
Gujral's graveyard. Meanwhile, he is locally enjoying a good press. And one hears
sympathetic noises from Dhaka, Islamabad, Colombo and even from distant
Washington. Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has found "great pleasure" to
congratulate Gujral. No doubt Sharif found "great pleasure" in ordering Pakistani
troops to open fire on the inhabitants of the border town of Kargil, forcing
people to flee and rendering upto 1,300 people homeless, as well. Pakistani
barbarity knows no limit. It would be nice to have Pakistan as a friend but at
what cost to India? One can be "soft" towards Pakistan as one has been ,,soft"
towards Bangladesh but in the face of continued armed depredations that take a
daily toll of lives in Jammu & Kashmir when does India propose to draw the Laxman
rekha and tell Pakistan what the limits are? If Islamabad by now hasn't realized
that on Jammu & Kashmir India will not budge an inch, when will it ever learn?
Admittedly it is better to keep talking with each other than firing at each other,
but it must be plain to our neighbours that the firing must stop if the talks are
to continue. Presently we are being taken for a ride.
It is worth reminding Gujral that so far as the BJP is concerned it will extend to
the government its fullest cooperation where national security is concerned. It
was Gujral who expressed his respect for Atal Bihari Vajpayee and the hope that
the latter, as in the past, will once again lead an Indian delegation to the
United Nations. How can one lead an Indian delegation to the United Nations while
being condemned on grounds of "communalism" at home'? India cannot possibly be
led by a communalist and bring shame to the country! The truth is that charges of
communalism against the BJP are baseless and self-serving and the sooner the
United Front realises this the better it would be not only for the Front's
constituent parties but for the nation as a whole. The tirade against the BJP is
getting to be tiresome, especially considering that it is without any foundation.
The meaningless debate on what secularism is and what it is not is taking
attention from the more pressing tasks facing the country. Gujral is no doubt
aware - and if he is not, he should be - of the food situation in the country.
There is a major crisis and very little attention is being directed towards it in
all the politicking that has been going on in Delhi. The foodgrain buffer stock is
barely half of what it was two years ago. The wheat stock, as on 1 April was 2.7
million tons, a million tonne less than the minimum buffer norm and way below the
April 1, 1996 level of 8.2 million tonnes. If we are to believe the Agriculture
Ministry, last year's decline in foodgrain production is not a sign of a new
trend, but an aberration. Nobody is going to believe that. India's food
production is not keeping pace with population growth and the Prime Minister would
be wise to take a serious look into this matter. An agriculturally weak country
is at the mercy of all predatory foreign countries. Spending time trying to
placate this or that party within the coalition may be necessary for the time
being - but the Prime Minister's attention must be focused on issues that matter,
and food production should receive the highest priority. In the absence of vital
public investments in the agricultural sector India would very likely find itself
continuously dependent on the global food market. That is not a healthy
development and should be immediately attended to. During the debate on the
vote-of-confidence motion, Gujral did express concern over the rising population
trend, but this issue has been with us for a long, long time; quick action is
indicated. Meanwhile, the Prime Minister might give a thought to the increasing
influence being wielded by the Left Front and more especially the CPI and CPM
which was unheard of before. The influence wielded by the Left Front is out of
proportion to its popularity in the country. The percentage of votes the Front
polled on an all-India basis is negligible but Comrade Harkishen Singh Surjeet is
behaving as if he is the king-maker, a highly undesirable state of affairs. It
would seem that for the CPM, it is the Congress which is the main enemy. The
candidature of Moopanar to the Prime Ministership was vetoed by the CPM on grounds
that the TMC is Congress-friendly, whatever that means! For a party whose
patriotic credentials have been, in the past, sorely suspect, to act as the
conscience-keeper of the United Front now is not just hilarious: it is tragic. The
Tamil Maanila Congress will, no doubt, soon rejoin the government - there is
nothing like power to overcome personal hurts - but Gujral will do well to watch
out for the deleterious effects of CPM influence on the running of the
administration. Reports suggest that Chidambaram will be sworn in today
(Thursday).
There are no pressing problems that need attention on the foreign front, though
the new-found camaraderie between the Soviet Union and china would bear close
watching. Gujral spoke of his hope that Vajpayee will lead an Indian delegation
to the United Nations at its annual session starting September and this in the
face of American opposition to conceding to India a Permanent seat in the Security
Council. The time has come to show India's annoyance at this in no uncertain
manner. Gujral must ask himself this simple question: to what extent has India
been really successful in channelising United Nations resolutions in meeting
India's concerns? Would it greatly matter if India, even while retaining its
membership of the world body, decides to treat it with the coldness it deserves?
What is the need of sending a high-powered delegation to the United Nations when
its effectiveness is at the ground-level? Do we have to make fools of ourselves
in the face of American - and European - intransigence? If Gujral is open to
suggestions, the Government of India must pointedly decline to send a high-powered
delegation to New York thereby sending a message to those concerned that India
will not henceforth take American insouciance without protest. Sending a two or
three-man low-level delegation to the United Nations should do the trick. We do
not have to send a man of Vajpayee's eminence to New York to be insulted.
By now one hopes that Gujral has had enough time to find out whether or not a
"witchhunt' is on to nail Congressmen on corruption charges. The prevalent belief
is that a deal has been struck between the Congress (read Mrs. Sonia Gandhi) and
the United Front whereby the former would support a UF government on condition
that charges against Congressmen (read Rajiv Gandhi) would be withdrawn. To what
extent that is true only the Prime Minister, looking deep into his heart, would
know. One would like to recommend that exercise to Gujral who swears by
transparency in government thereby unintentionally conceding that such
transparency did not exist in the past. Would Gujral retain Joginder Singh as
head of the CBI, knowing fully well that the latter is Gowda's man? Would the
investigations be carried with a greater sense of urgency than in the past?
Surely
Gujral does not want the judiciary constantly to remind the CBI of its duties and
responsibilities? Even more important than the charges against Congressmen are
the charges against that arrogant Chief Minister of Bihar, Laloo Prasad Yadav.
The Rs. 950 crore 'gowala' seam - that sum is mind-boggling - is a mother of all
scams in the face of which the Bofors seam sounds too minor to be bothered with.
The longer the cases drag on, the more suspect will be the government, and
especially the Prime Minister whose greatest asset as of today is that he is a
"decent" man. But even a decent man will have to watch out for his reputation.
In months past, the non-BJP parties have been marching on a confrontationist
course against the BJP which, for all the venom poured against it, has caught
public imagination. The BJP stands for certain values which are meaningful to
Indians. These values are too deeply embedded in the Indian psyche to be
dislodged by the vituperation indulged in by parties that claim to be 'secular'.
Whatever V. N. Gadgil might now say, what he wrote about 'secularism' in his
pamphlet which Vajpayee so effectively read out in the Lok Sabha, is relevant.
Non-BJP parties would do well to examine what they mean by 'secularism' and to
what extent their concepts clash with those held by the vast majority of the
Indian people. When, some months ago, the Bishop of Hyderabad said that by
culture he was a Hindu, by religion a Christian and by nationality an Indian he
uttered a profound truth. Hindutva is the base of Indian tradition, no matter how
strenuously the fundamentalist mullahs refuse to acknowledge it. And the
elections to come -how long can the country afford to postpone them? - will show
the error by which the non-BJP parties are living. In a way the 'longer the
elections are postponed the more advantageous it will be for the BJP, for then the
United Front would have completely, shown itself as incapable of ruling. Which is
just as well. Notwithstanding what the wise may say, coalition governments are
not the trend of the future. But what can one do when people are determined to
keep hugging illusions?
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