'I am merely recapitulating facts, not apportioning blame'
History will probably remember your prime ministership for
the reforms that transformed India. Why do you think that these
reforms did not win votes for the Congress?
This is really not very difficult to understand. When you
embark on an elaborate scheme of change, several unforeseen shortcomings
creep in. Due to the euphoric rhetoric we adopt, the urges of
the people suddenly rise sky-high while the capacity and pace
of translating the schemes into reality lag far behind in the
short run.
The ruling party, on which alone falls the responsibility of piloting
the schemes, is unable to create the motivation in a short time,
particularly when the change proposed is sudden and far-reaching.
Party activists either cannot acquire the required conviction or
tend to look upon the change as the leader's 'fad', aberration
or downright surrender to other countries or bodies -- chiefly
America, IMF, World Bank, etc. The pattern is familiar.
In a matter like this, it is not easy to trace your policies back
to Nehru, although I am personally convinced that there is a clear
nexus. If you don't establish the nexus, you are dubbed as a renegade,
alien to the Gandhi-Nehru line, India-seller, etc., and therefore
fit to be removed as leader -- the logic is instantaneous. It is
often difficult to separate the argument from the intention.
Much of it is thus connected with intra-party politics and also
with the leader's limitations in articulating, without accompaniment,
such a big change -- all by himself -- with many others whispering
opposition through familiar slogans ingrained in the party rank
and file for decades.
For instance, there was no clear distinction drawn between our
economic reforms and the classical laissez-faire; and yet, this
is the gravamen of our reforms. We refused to have an exit policy,
without which liberalisation was unthinkable in those days. The
Middle Path, Reforms With a Human face, Market-plus -- all these
concepts were our own innovations, but they did not seep down
into our party ranks or in the people in general who normally
receive such new ideas from the party ranks.
On the contrary, reforms got equated with benefits to the rich,
unlimited consumerism and more misery to the poor. In the media,
notably government media, advertisements of luxury goods and grand
buildings, etc., abounded in the earlier years and proper presentation
of anti-poverty programmes took quite some time to take off. Anti-
poverty programmes do not bring revenue to the television; this
was perhaps the main hurdle.
On the policy front, what I had simply called the 'By-pass
model' of development was not sufficiently highlighted, although
that was the main rationale of liberalisation...... I could add
many more such comments, some not so, but this should suffice.
Meanwhile, the people got annoyed with the Congress party -- and
all other parties; the result is well-known.
I remember a parallel from the fifties. In those days, we vied
with each other to get NES (National Extension Service) programmes
to our areas. But the urges created in the people were so high
and the temporary inconveniences in implementing the NES programme
so many (like a road being dug up and lying in that state while
the sanctions for metal collection or black topping etc took
a very long time and created irritation all round). In the elections
following this situation, the ruling party lost in a majority
such areas.
Your detractors have consistently maintained that you are soft
on the BJP. Would you like to clarify your stand?
They believe in spreading falsehood; it has to be persistent
to be effective. By the way, there is nothing substantively consistent
in their disinformation.
In 1991, Sunday asked you how would you like to be remembered.
You said, 'As an honest man who did his best.' Do you
feel, five years later, that you have succeeded in being an honest
man who did his best?
Yes.
Journalists like to say that you were a good prime minister
but a mediocre, or even, poor party president. Can you explain
to us what you feel you have contributed to the Congress over
the last five years?
The new mission of the party was extremely difficult to put
across. My Tirupati presidential address never had a chance to
reach all sections of the party and get explained. Within days,
doubts were sown everywhere.
It was so easy to talk of the poor, even without any direction
as to how to go about helping them. The anti-poverty programmes
of my government were in fact much better conceived and much more
systematically put on the ground.
Yet, for one thing they came piecemeal, year after year, and got
no concrete and effective focusing in any year -- neither by
the government whose publicity apparatus was ineffective as usual,
nor by the party which has to mainly concentrate on putting across
these programmes.
There was always, an invisible -- sometimes visible -- brake which
one could feel, but it was very difficult to remove or break through.
The beliefs of 40 years were too strong. Conviction within the
ranks persisted on old lines. All this was compounded by intra-party
wranglings on 'one-man, one-post' controversy, etc.
I am merely recapitulating facts, not apportioning blame.
Do you ever wish that you were a charismatic leader like some
of your predecessors? Or do you feel that there are other ways of
providing leadership apart from mass charisma?
I have not wished to be anyone different, at any time.
Your friends and close associates portray you as a scholarly,
articulate person who is detached from the demands of petty power
politics. Yet, increasingly, the media have portrayed you as cold,
arrogant and manipulative. Can the gulf between these two perceptions
be explained by your own failures? Or do you think that the press
has been needlessly harsh?
The media were kind and understanding for a longer time in
my case perhaps. They have now made good for it, perhaps with
a vengeance. Gulfs can be bridged with some will.
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