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Prime Minister Inder Kumar Gujral doth protest too much. He protests,
curiously enough, not his resolve to do something, but his inability to do
anything. At the outset, he was helpless about corruption. These days he
pleads his helplessness about the Pay Commission award, which will
single-handedly blow a hole into his government's fiscal deficit
management. The unions, he explains, would have settled for no less. Apart
from being much else, politics also is the art of making a virtue of
necessity and putting a shine on unhappy events. Having made a
mind-boggling concession to the unions, Gujral could still have claimed
magnanimity and said that his Government had given away fabulous Pay
Commission goodies to substantially raise, in one fell swoop, the living
standards of government staff. It now seems that the Prime Minister was
also aware all along that the President would send back his Cabinet's
recommendation on the imposition of President's rule in UP. But he was
helpless, if you set aside the obvious argument that he could have chosen
loss of power over capitulation.
Now coalition politics has its compulsions, and this is especially true of
the politics of a coalition as disparate and fractious as this one, with a
crutch as fickle as the Congress. For that reason, this country was
willing to give Gujral a fairly long rope even without being repeatedly
prompted by him. In return, it sought a minimum of resolve and governance.
What it finds difficult to swallow is their utter lack, and prime
ministerial helplessness as the explanation. If Gujral considers his
frequent proclamations of helplessness a sign of his disarming honesty that
will make the people warm to him, he is wrong. Candour is a secondary
virtue in politics to being in command and being seen to be so. For a Prime
Minister to be prime ministerial is not the exercise of a choice. It is a
necessity, the Prime Minister's stature being the price of failure.
Circumstances imposed constraints on Gujral; he is thrusting smallness on
himself.
The conditions in which his predecessor had to work were in no way more
fortuitous than they are for Gujral. Yet H.D. Deve Gowda managed not
merely to offer some government but also to put the fear of God - or,
rather, of the CBI into his political crutches. This is no appeal for
Gujral to take recourse to the same intimidating tactics. It is simply to
make the point that politicians are only as helpless as they choose to be
no matter what their circumstances. Janata Dal deity V.P. Singh is the best
example of this. He was candid enough as Prime Minister to make the famous
statement that politics was the art of managing contradictions. And yet he
was famous too for ever being just an arm's length away from a resignation
letter that rested in his pocket. The price of boldness has obviously to
be a preparedness to have one's bluff called. It is only a reluctance to
fade away into the night rather than compromise too much that sets
helplessness apart from resoluteness. This is Gujral's problem, but there
is no reason why it should be India's. It needs someone less frail who
would have to worry less vocally about all the things circumstances forbade
him to do.
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