India Prepares to Vote
STERN, ROBERT W.
CONGRESS VS. ITSELF India Prepares to Vote NEW DELHI Next month India will hold its fourth general elections, and its first without Jawaharlal Nehru. Those who used to answer the question "After...
...State leaders, once happy to send to New Delhi those they did not want around, are now looking ahead to an expected postelection struggle for national leadership and picking their Parliamentary deputies very carefully...
...India Prepares to Vote blocked attempts by the Prime Minister and Congress President Kam-araj to secure V. K. Krishna Menon the Congress nomination for the Lok Sabha (lower house of Parliament) from North Bombay????constituency he has represented for the last 10 years...
...She could not overcome the objections of their patrons, Atulya Ghosh of West Bengal and S. K. Patil of Bombay, the kingfish of a group of powerful state Congress bosses who have come to be known here as the "Syndicate...
...Politics are like that, he said, adding that American politicians who oppose President Johnson's Vietnam policy have merely found a convenient issue on which to oppose Johnson...
...With the voting only weeks away, the major battleground has become the state Congress Election Committees charged with recommending candidate lists for Parliament and the Legislative Assemblies to the New Delhi government...
...In most other states, however, ticket seekers who lose the battle in the local Election Committees can pursue the fight by trekking to New Delhi to wait on the verandas of the Mighty...
...It is strong only among the petty bourgeoise in the Hindu-speaking belt, and weak to non-existent everywhere else...
...Over the past few years there has been a marked shift of power from Congress party leaders in the national government, which under Nehru was at least in part program-matically oriented, to local Congress politicians whose primary interests are their states in general and the fortunes of their state party factions in particular...
...True, since Nehru's death the Congress party has succeeded in placing the late Lai Bahadur Shastri and then Mrs...
...Finally, it is highly unlikely that the newest political contender, the Jana Congress, a collection of disgruntled and displaced Congress party leaders and their followers, will replace its estranged parent...
...Get out of this country while there is still order, administration, and some stability...
...Congress is under no compulsion to unite...
...Consequently, when the Marathi successfully agitated for their own state after first having been denied it by the government, the Sikhs did the same and were granted a new Punjab state where they are the dominant community...
...A statistical rundown shows that opposition in the Lok Sabha is fragmented into about 20 parties and 20 independent members...
...In the last general elections, in 1962, Congress men met opposition party and independent candidates in three and four-corner fights, and by winning 45 per cent of the popular vote, obtained 73 per cent of the seats in the Lok Sabha...
...I said to the British Government once sitting there: 'For God's sake go...
...But the strains of perpetual dissent among Socialists have left them weak, faction-ridden and incapable of replacing the ruling party...
...Now the Sikh leader, Sant Fateh Singh, is pressing territorial claims on the neighboring state of Haryana...
...A few weeks later Patil also Robert W. Stern, assistant professor of government at Wells College, is now travelling in India...
...The next step in Indian political lobbying is usually to translate agitation for something into agitation against someone...
...It has made many mistakes...
...The Government's receptivity is well known, of course, and its concessions to its opponents of the moment whet new appetites as often as they satisfy old ones...
...In Bombay and West Bengal, where the Election Committees are under the firm hand of the Syndicate, the Central Election Committee must necessarily approve its recommendations...
...by complacently referring to the organizational strength of the Congress party may be given second thoughts in the coming balloting for Parliament and the state Legislative Assemblies...
...Congress appears likely to lose some votes and some seats as it runs up against its most serious challenge to date at the polls...
...As has been widely observed in New Delhi, even being Nehru's daughter does not make one Nehru II...
...Today Congress alone can amend its own efforts...
...Government ministers respond to any determined campaign involving large numbers of people and posing a threat at the polls...
...This was vividly demonstrated recently when Mrs...
...Those who used to answer the question "After Nehru, who...
...For the last two months, they have been busily trying to set up an intricate network of local and regional electoral alliances in the hope of coalescing their individual minorities into anti-Congress majorities...
...the Center lacks the will to formulate a policy and stick to it...
...In the majority of other states and in the Center government, too...
...Yet the area for exciting and inspiring in India lies outside the realm of politics, in the strivings of groups and individuals for self-realization and in the increasing opportunities for productivity and self-assertion created by political democracy and economic development...
...But the continuation of its dominant position in Indian politics is quite certain...
...there will be chaos and you will destroy this country before you go.' And I sav this to these men also: For God's sake go . . . !" But when the British left, the Congress party was there to replace them...
...The political modus operandi is: If you get something, try for something more...
...The Communists were never strong outside of Kerala, West Bengal and Andhra, and the party split in 1964 weakened them further...
...Because if you hang on to power any longer . . . there will be no authority left...
...In Rajasthan, for example, if a dissident section splits off from Congress, as it threatens to, then the chances of the opposition front will brighten considerably...
...The anti-cow slaughter demonstration that raised havoc in Delhi last November became the occasion for removing an unwanted Home Minister, Gulzar-ilal Nanda...
...The same is true for both the left-wing and right-wing Communists...
...In the February elections, opposition leaders are attempting to avoid meeting Congress men in multi-corner fights...
...In the debate on the no-confidence motion with which the Lok Sabha opened its final session before the elections, Minoo Masani, the articulate General Secretary of the conservative Swatantra party, pointed toward the Treasury bench and said with great emotion: "I remember in this very House, in this Chamber, as Congress Member of the Opposition during the dark days of the Royal Indian Navy Mutiny...
...Those who oppose the Congress party have not developed any practical alternatives...
...Most of the opposition parties have fewer than five members and none have more than 20, compared with Congress' 370...
...What it desperately needs though is new leadership and direction...
...Indian Socialists have also thought of themselves as the democratic alternative to the Congress party...
...Thus the Chief Minister of Andhra has been supporting an at times violent campaign of agitation aimed at pressuring the Center government into locating a steel plant in the state, and for him it has the added attraction of embarrassing the Center minister who was his patron and is currently his rival in the local Congress party...
...if someone else can get it, you can try too...
...Still, the achievements of Congress have been noteworthy, whether measured against the performances of democratic parties in other developing countries, or against the staggering problems it has faced????nd chosen to face within a democratic framework...
...Indira Gandhi in office as Prime Minister...
...Only in Kerala is the opposition????seven-party front dominated by the left Communists????ikely to come to power...
...This prospect probably does not excite or inspire many people...
...The Congress party is in no small measure responsible for facilitating and stimulating this democracy and development...
...and an enterprising typist has set up shop on the sidewalk outside the All India Congress Committee office to prepare their petitions...
...In West Bengal, the Communists have frustrated the formation of a united front by the state's dozen or so opposition parties...
...Neither can the Hindu-revivalist Jana Sangh...
...Khadi Gram Udyog Bhavan, the big hand-loom emporium in the capital, has been doing a brisk business selling sweaters to protect these political pilgrims against the chill winter weather...
...In the unlikely event any of the opposition alliances are called upon to form state ministries (they have no chance in the Center government), it is hard to imagine what they will do or how long their ministries will last...
...Indian politicians view their politics in intensely personal terms...
...Similarity, once the All Party Council for Cow Protection compelled the government to advise all states to ban cow slaughter by threatening a mass demonstration in New Delhi, the Jagadguru Shankaracharya of Puri threatened an indefinite fast to enforce the ban by an Act of Parliament...
...But as Nanda pointed out in his bitter letter of resignation, his policy on the cow issue was the government's policy, and with his departure the government's policy has not changed...
...Since the village headmen can be depended upon to turn out the vote for the Congress party, the politicians are only concerned with what faction will reap the harvest...
...In a recent conversation with a former government minister and major contender for power in the Congress party, I was assured that opposition to his policies within the party was primarily opposition to him personally...
...In the states themselves, meanwhile, power struggles are being waged between Congress cliques controlling the party organizations and the ministries, and among the myriad sub-groups representing castes, regions, and special interests...
...On the contrary, weakness in the Center and factionalism in the states assures some support for almost any demand that has political possibilities...
...Uninterrupted tenure in power and the apparent certainty of its continuation has allowed the party to turn upon itself...
...The price the Congress party will pay in February for its disunity will probably be small despite the high hopes of its opponents...
...Who is there now to replace the Congress...
...But with the formal office it has not been able to pass on the substantive power that Nehru wielded...
...The situation is unsettled in several states and may change between now and election day...
...With left-wing Communists more interested in using the elections to eliminate the right-wing Communists than in defeating the Congress, there will continue to be at least two opposition fronts in West Bengal, and the ruling party's majority in the Legislative Assembly will probably be saved...
...And it is in no small measure responsible for stabilizing the disruptive forces of growth in India's poor and divided society...
...In the states, where there are even more opposition parties, the outcome was similar...
...Gandhi sought to oust her finance and commerce ministers...
...Even if Masani's hopes (or dreams) of electing 100 Swatantra members to Parliament?more than five times their present number????re fulfilled, and even if the Swatantra-Jana Sangh electoral alliances in Rajasthan, Gujarat and Orissa are as successful as Masani wishes them to be, the Swatantra party cannot replace the Congress...
...This does not mean the Congress party is unresponsive to the demands of the electorate...
...But it is a response with few programmatic priorities...
...There is corruption, mal-administra-tion, opportunism and machinations by hack politicians...
...But these are merely temporary adjustments for electoral purposes by diverse ideological groups...
Vol. 50 • January 1967 • No. 1
