Getting Stuck

FROM N.C.’S WRITINGS

In an interview to Patriot and Link this week. Smt Indira Gandhi has said that life cannot be divided into stages because ”one takes some steps forward and then sometimes one gets stuck”. She has claimed that on the whole the nation’s progress has been “quite consistent”. She admits there have been “bad patches”, but the people have not allowed themselves to be defeated, rather they “have faced the challenges and ultimately emerged stronger”.

There is little doubt the people have been facing challenges, but there is less doubt that the government has “got stuck”, to quote Smt Gandhi’s own words. This realisation has its implications, its compulsions, which the Prime Minister has not spelt out.

Three years ago, the nation under her leadership looked up, the slough of despond had gone, and in its place had come a sense of self-confidence, of expectations of great deeds to be achieved, and there were possibilities of such expectations being fulfilled. Her phenomenal achievement in unseating the entrenched Right in the leadership that the Syndicate had come to represent, brought magnificent response from the common humanity, as could be seen in her sweeping electoral victory in the mid-term poll for the Lok Sabha early in 1971. This was further reinforced when the nation discovered its strength in actively helping in the liberation of Bangladesh, bearing all the consequent hardships with courage and fortitude. Out of this ordeal, the people proved their mettle, and once again they signified their readiness to go forward by the massive electoral support they extended to Smt Gandhi last year with her platform of Garibi Hatao.

Since then, there is little sign about the government knowing how to go forward. There has been a lot of talk, but little tangible results in terms of either building the infrastructure for a better social order or of bringing immediate relief to the common man. The Prime Minister, in her eve-of-the-session talk to the Congress Parliamentary Party, stressed the need of meeting the challenge of the economic crisis on a war-footing. Little however has come out of the big words. Smt Gandhi has commended consumer resistance to meet the rising prices of essential commodities; at the same time her government has been actively eroding that very resistance by sanctioning higher procurement price for foodgrains in a season of bumper harvest.

Nobody would dispute that the times are hard. There have been developments, both national and international, which have created serious difficulties for the government. But to take refuge behind these and not taking into account what could have been actually done from New Delhi itself is, to say the least, not a very honest way of looking at things. The days of clap-trap propaganda are gone, as Smt Gandhi herself must have realised after the rather ludicrous figure she cut by being ill-advised to take the ride on the buggy as a means of saving petrol. It is good that this has not been repeated, but it is equally important that the government seriously applies its mind to work out a determined programme of action.

The Prime Minister and her colleagues have often been talking about the harm done to the national economy by strikes and bundhs. Very few will deny that in a situation of total national mobilisation, such mass actions which hit even an hour’s production would not evoke popular support. In times of national emergency, the masses respond spontaneously to the nation’s cause and stay away from any action which could even indirectly hit the national interest. The mass responses during the war-time in 1962, 1965 and again in 1971 bear this out.

What is evident today is the growing incapacity of the government to command such nation-wide mobilisation. Even inside the ruling Congress party, the signs of unrest are evident.

Why is it that Smt Gandhi and her party, which could get unquestioned support only a year ago, have had to face today a situation of mass unrest born of disenchantment with the leadership? It is not that the people do not listen to, or that they have become unreasonable. Nor is it always the case of the Right Opposition exploiting the situation. Rather, it is within her own party that one can see the emergence of a clearly discernible Right-wing. To quote two instances in less than a week, the speech that Sri A.P. Sharma made in the debate on high prices on the opening day of the Lok Sabha session could have been delivered by Sri S.K. Patil, while in Calcutta, a section of the trade union bosses challenging the Pradesh INTUC has been openly campaigning against the Congress-CPI joint campaign, and the leaders of this section, even after declaring a war against the youth wing of the Congress, are not denied the Chief Minister’s tacit acquiescence, if not support.

However, the emergence of such Right-wing trends only brings out the contours of new demarcations that have been emerging inside the Congress. These are only the minority elements, while the overwhelming majority inside the Congress expect the government to implement its radical pledges. They retain their confidence in Smt Gandhi, although there are signs that the euphoria that surrounded her presence last year has, to a large measure, been dimmed.

This is largely because the very fibre of the Congress is in danger of being corroded. There have been cases of corruption in the Congress in the best of times, for, a party of such sprawling magnitude can hardly be expected to be totally free from undesirable elements. What has however made things serious is the large-scale incursion of corruption even at high places. The Ministers engaged in fund drive are more vulnerable today than they were two years ago, because Big Money has entered their parlour as a respectable client demanding its quid pro quo. The plea that is made is that election campaigns are expensive, and someone would have to raise funds and bear the odium.

Once the Money Game is permitted, there is no limit to which it can be carried. The very active leader of a Pradesh Congress body carrying the label of radicalism on his Khadi jacket, has distinguished himself as a fund raiser in the company of the affluent in one of the leading cities of the country. For him, the sky seems to be the limit—lakhs of rupees, if not crores, are being raised by him from sources which should, in any healthy society, be put down by the arms of law. And all this is done in the name of raising money to fight the Congress’ electoral battles in UP and Orissa.

The Opposition, expectedly, takes advantage of such aberrations, although its own record, particularly of the Right, is no less unsavoury in the link-up with the Money Bags. The point to note is that the Congress cannot expect to command the authority to deal firmly with black market when it permits high-level corruption to compromise its own standing.

In politics, one is sometimes told that moral standards can hardly be applied; whatever may be the pretensions, ends are supposed to justify the means. But the difficulty in handling the Big Black Money is that one often becomes its prisoner. To be financed by it and at the same time to talk about combating the vested interests make little sense.

If the government is today unable to catch the blackmarketeer, and lets him play havoc with the common man’s needs, it is largely because an important section of it and also of the Congress are involved in the shady deals of the underworld of the Black Money. With such sinews of war, one cannot fight the battle for radical social advance.

There are many formidable difficulties in the way of economic growth combined with social justice. These will not be overlooked by the masses, once they regain the confidence in the government’s credibility for a determined struggle against the vested interests—the confidence which was spontaneously generated on the very morrow of Smt Gandhi’s fight against the Syndicate.

The battle is certainly not yet lost, though it has been made more difficult by the last one year’s complacence in which corruption has crept in. There is still time for the Prime Minister to act, and clean her own party of corruption. That alone will make it an effective instrument for the struggle against the vested interests.

There is no reason for Smt Indira Gandhi and her government to “get stuck”.
She can go forward, once she plucks up the courage to fight this menace which looms large before the entire country. She has power today, and if she dedicates herself to this task, she will earn what she has yet to gain—the stamp to greatness.

This week when Smt Gandhi celebrates her birthday on November 19, she will have to ponder over this choice before her. Getting stuck can lead to sliding back.

(Mainstream, November 17, 1973)