Politicians....Organized Criminals ??? (part 3)

Preface 

This is the third and last post of the trilogy, where I have tried to explore the similarity between politics and organized crime in the country. This post goes into the depth of political rot in contemporary times and also explores the few silver linings in these dark clouds.

        With the end of Congress Hegemony in Indian Politics in 1989, it was now the era of coalition and vote bank politics. By this time, there was widespread public disinterest in politics. The middle and upper class were completely alienated from the electoral process. The elections were wide open, with extremely low winning margins and several close candidates for each seat. It essentially meant that to be 'first past the post' in any elections, you don't require support cutting across all communities, like in earlier times. Hence, instead of a 'unity in diversity' campaigns for the entire constituency, the complete electoral emphasis was now on specific targeted audiences, based on caste, religion, ethnicity, region etc. The old imperialist technique of 'Divide and Rule' was perfected by the modern Indian Politicians. These politics led the Indian society in the vicious cycle of mutual hate and self-destruction which continues unabated even today.

Protest Against Mandal Commission

        Ticket distribution on the basis of caste has been going on since the late 1950s.  However regressive caste politics reached new heights with the development of competitive reservation system, for vote bank purposes. Every caste/community started proving themselves backward and demanding reservations, added and abetted by opportunist political leaders. Instead of expanding the overall pie, all efforts went in securing a smaller separate slice for ever increasing sub-divisions. As expected it led to a development of creamy layer in every historically oppressed section of Indian society. The creamy layer kept reaping almost the entire benefit of reservations while the remainder remained untouched as they couldn't even cross the minimum qualifying threshold.

Ram Rath Yatra by L.K Adavani

        The Hindu fundamentalist groups had long been sidelined by secular charismatic leaders such as Gandhi and Nehru. But the continuous vote-bank minority appeasement policies led to dissatisfaction in the majority. On the highly emotional and religious demand of creation of 'Ram Janyabhoomi Temple', the Hindu fundamental groups revived themselves. It finally resulted in BJP forming the first stable non-Congress government in the country. As expected, acquisition of power in the center led to a more moderate and secular approach being adopted. India finally found the long required and very essential (right-winged) political alternative to Congress. However it came at a huge cost on the society. The demolition of Babri Masjid led to several religious riots. The Gujrat riots of 2002, was the second major government-supported riot in the country after the Anti-Sikh riots of 1984.  

Laloo Yadav

        Party sponsored criminals, during elections, had been a very common thing, right from the late 1960's. Later booth capturing, intimidation and sporadic violence during elections, became the norm of the day. But now hard-core criminals started coming into politics. With their muscle and money power, they were able to gather enough critical votes to be the 'first past the post' and hence they were welcomed with open hands in all parties. The thin line between organized crime and politics was blurring very fast. One of the worst sufferers was the state of Bihar. For more than two decades, the state was very similar to a mafia-ruled place. There were even parallel caste armies and proxy civil wars in the state. Things were not much better in the rest of the country either. In eastern India and especially in tribal areas, organized exploitation by the state and police machinery increasingly drove people to violence and Naxalism.

Political Choice

        All the mainstream parties more or less lost their separate identities. Party ideology became a poor joke. People frequently swapped sides with perfect ease between rival parties. Horse trading and power struggle became far too blatant and unapologetic. In a supposedly spiritual country of ours, public morality and even basic ethics were thrown out of the window. Another interesting pattern is the change in the personal relationships between ardent political rivals. It had progressed from once ideological differences to personal differences, to now pure shadow-boxing. On a personal level, everyone in politics helped each other. They even bailed out their opponents at critical times, ensuring that rarely anyone ever got convicted in courts. For all effective purposes, the complete political class was above the law. Although outwardly, the politics appeared to be more dynamic, with no party ever being sure of returning back to power; actually, the system became very stagnant, with no real change being brought about, through any elections.

P V Narsimha Rao

        By the early 90's, Indian economic was in tatters. There was a minority government at the center headed by Narasimha Rao, who had mastered the act of staying in power, by hook or by crook. There was not even a single party then, that had economic liberalization in its agenda. Yet the circumstances forced India to liberalize its economy. Great path-breaking reforms that would have never passed had there been proper discussion or debate on it, in the parliament, were readily passed as  everyone was just busy trying to avoid a second election and get the maximum out of the costly election that they had somehow won.

People's Committee Against Police Atrocities

        Apart from having a very positive impact on the economy, the economic reforms completely changed the scale and scope of corruption, black money and politics in India. The pace of economic reforms and liberalization slackened as soon as the Indian economy stabilized. Certain key sectors were never reformed, and the bottleneck in those critical areas now yielded much higher returns for the bureaucracy and politicians, from the increasingly rich business class. The country moved from 'ineffective socialism' to 'effective crony capitalism'. This crony capitalism led to very harmful effects on the environment and much greater exploitation of the extremely poor (especially tribal) class. As a reaction to it, counter-productive communism and Naxalism spread explosively, to cover approximately one-third the total districts of the country.

        As the scale of corruption scandals grew, so did the task of covering it. Rajiv Gandhi made a mess of covering up the Bofors scam and hence paid dearly. Learning from that, the politicians soon realized the need to bring every investigative agency, especially CBI, under their water-tight control. Very soon they were masters of the game and even the creation of CVC by Supreme Court through the famous 'Vineet Narain case' helped little. CBI soon became one of the most effective tool, in the hands of the government to blackmail its coalition partners and others in the opposition.

Election Commissioner, T N Seshan

        After the demise of Indira Gandhi, the non-political, independent institutions of the country slowly strengthened themselves. In 70's and 80's a number of elections were rigged. Money and muscle power had become predominant in Indian elections, slowly turning India into a banana republic.  One man, Election Commissioner, T.N. Seshan changed it all. He utilized the power and autonomy of the Election Commission, under the constitution, to free the office from all political pressures. His legacy ensured that elections became freer and fairer over the years.

Vinod Rai, The Controler and Auditor
General (CAG) of Ind

        After the Emergency, no government could ever dare to put binding restrictions on the media. With the emergence of TV and the subsequent popularity of the media, it became a very powerful fourth pillar of democracy. The media has never been completely free from political pressures. However the fact that its competitive popularity in most cases, rests on taking an anti-political and anti-establishment stance, has led it towards constant scrutiny and criticism of the politics. Similarly, as the executive kept losing popular support and people power, the judiciary filled in the gap through increasing judicial activism. A lot of important decision were taken and monitored in courts rather than in executive bodies. Historically, the CAG's audit reports were routinely thrown into the dustbins by the politicians. Lately, under Mr. Vinod Rai, the CAG has successfully managed to name and shame politicians. Thus India has, over time, developed and nurtured all the necessary elements of a fully working democracy.

        The advent of modern technology, the internet, social media, the spread of education, the growth of urban middle class and increase in prosperity due to economic reforms has strengthened the civil society of India. IT revolution, growing demand for e-governance and greater public scrutiny through acts like RTI has dented the political power slightly. Even though disturbing similarities do exist between current politicians and organized criminals, the experience of other countries, who have gone through a similar path, suggest a far rosier future for India. India is too diverse a country to make any sweeping statement and hence it remains a matter of speculation whether Indian politics has reached its nadir or not.

Politicians....Organized Criminals ??? (part 2)

Indira Gandhi

        In the previous post, I went over the initial era or the golden era of Indian politics, from Jawaharlal Nehru to Lal Bahadur Shastri. Till this time the rot was only at the lower levels, while the Gandhian aura still persisted in the higher echelons of power. Politicians were still highly respected and revered in the society and great debates used to happen in the parliament. All this was about to changed very rapidly.

       

        Indira Gandhi had been the president of the Congress in 1959, but that was not something liked by Nehru. He never gave her a cabinet berth and he was frequently embarrassed by her ruthlessness and disregard for parliamentary traditions. Only due to growing nepotism in the party, Lal Bahadur Shastri gave her an unimportant portfolio in his ministry. However defeating Morarji Desai in the party election, she became the next Prime Minister of India. 

     
        Indra Gandhi stood for almost the exact opposite of everything that her father stood for. She nearly destroyed everything that her father had so painstakingly built over so many years. Indira Gandhi had huge personal ambitions and absolutely no respect for any institution or person. Her primary goal was to keep herself in absolute power, whatever may be the cost, and to ensure that the power remained within her family perpetually. In her own words to the journalist Bruce Chatwin - ‘you have no idea how tiring it is to be a goddess.’
      

V. V. Giri

        Nepotism and personality cult were now openly encouraged. Indira Gandhi first gave a Bharat Ratna to herself and then to V.V. Giri whose most important qualification was perhaps just his loyalty to Indira Gandhi. The Congress party now became a family business. Internal party democracy became a joke. Only loyal and subservient people were given important posts and even senior independence struggle veterans were sidelined and shrugged off. It created a huge furor in the Congress party, the result being that the party was split twice. But Indra Gandhi prevailed over all her opponents within the congress party and outside, majorly due to championing the socialistic cause, her hugely popular "Garibi Hatao" slogan and the Nehru-Gandhi family legacy.
  
        Instead of the corruption being bottom up and behind closed doors, it became top down and the norm of the day. Honesty and morality were thrown out of the window completely. Corruption spread to every government department and was institutionalized, with fixed percentages for every officer in the department, from top to bottom. With the official patronage given to corruption and an absolute guarantee of safety ensured to its perpetrators, corruption spread like cancer in the entire system.

   

        Indira Gandhi took the Nehru's socialism to newer heights with her nationalization drive, the abolition of privy purses etc. However her motives were completely different. Nehru genuinely believed that democratic socialism was for the upliftment of the poor and the welfare of the nation. Indira Gandhi had no such noble aims. She had rarely ever invoked the word 'socialism' before 1967. Socialism was only her way of cashing on the popularity of her father, engendering populist support for herself, creating more centralization with a concentration of power in her hands and generating more money through rampant corruption in the license-permit-raj. In fact under Indira Gandhi, the country started moving from democratic socialistic policies to communistic policies of Stalin and Mao. 
       

        Indira Gandhi believed in staying in power by any and every means. She resorted to open rigging of elections, booth-capturing and violence, using public machinery for party purpose, spending much more than the allowed limit etc. She even encouraged anti-national elements just to counter the rise of new regional parties. She was also notorious for imposing president's rule on flimsy grounds in a lot of non-Congress states. Constitutional posts like those of the president, the Governor etc became her puppets. There were interferences even in the appointment and promotion of Judges. The bureaucracy was obviously kept under an iron fist and good and honest people were promptly sidelined.

   
Total Revolution

Jayaprakash Narayanan

        While the Gandhian morality was dying in the Congress, a new ray of light appeared in the 70's in the form of Jayaprakash Narayanan. JP had abandoned 'rajniti' for 'lokniti', but in 1974, he came back to the national politics to fight against corruption and misgovernance. He gave the call for "Total Revolution" to redeem the unfulfilled promises of the freedom movement. He openly equated the Congress government with the British government. His movement soon spread from Bihar to the rest of India. His movement was so intense that to keep herself in power Indira Gandhi had to declare an Emergency.
    
Emergency (26 June 1975 – 21 March 1977) and Janta Party
        Oppression brings out the best in a country and the Emergency achieved just that. The vehement opposition of emergency in the country proved how deeply Indians care about their liberty and how deep were the roots of democracy in the country. The growing apathy to politics in the Indian society was replaced by the most popular public movement since Independence.

Morarji Desai
(India's First Non-Congress PM)

        Jayprakash Narayanan called for a united front against the Congress and hence Janta Party was formed. However the design was flawed from the beginning. The Janta Party was an amalgam of various parties who had just one thing in common - opposition to Congress and Indira Gandhi. They had no common ideology, agenda or even an acceptable PM candidate. Moreover JP was not that much concerned about the character and past record of people joining the Janta Party. However, to be fair to him, he was almost on his deathbed at that time and had no time to prune or mentor the party like Gandhi did for the Congress Party. 

        The Janta Party government proved to be no less corrupt that the Congress Party. It began to wither as significant ideological and political divisions emerged and broke up in less than three years. With the death of JP, the grand endeavor to create a credible alternative to Congress came to an end. Indira Gandhi came back to power but she was never as much in control as in her early years as the Prime Minister. More importantly, the country lost one of its best chance to reform the Indian Politics even after such great public mobilization and turmoil.

Dynastic Politics

Sanjay Gandhi

          Indira Gandhi made no bones about the fact that she wanted Sanjay Gandhi to succeed her. After his death, Indira began grooming her other son, Rajiv Gandhi, for the top job. This Dynastic tendency, though started by Indira Gandhi, was not just limited to the first family or the Congress(I), but it soon spread to most regional political parties. By this time almost all political parties had become like family businesses. Ideology was secondary and getting to power was the primary purpose. Most of them had tasted power in the State and had become more of less like Congress itself.
     
        Although the middle class constituted a very small percentage of the Indian population, they played a very central role in the independence movement. The Congress party itself started as a middle-class party and later it expanded to the lower class. However when it came to winning elections, the middle class had no significant at all and hence it kept getting alienated with time, from the political consciousness. After the death of JP movement, the disconnect between the politicians and the middle class became almost absolute. Voting percentages in the rural India increased but in towns/cities, it came down heavily. A large percentage of the middle class didn't even bother to enroll themselves in the voter lists.
   
Anti-Sikh riots 1984

        The Hindu-Muslim riots in 1946-47 had the open tacit support of the British Government. After that, initially, the Indian Government always tried it best to prevent or contain all riots. Later on, in many cases, due to appeasement policy, the Government went soft on riots. However the murder of Indira Gandhi by a Sikh led to state-sponsored riots for the first time in post-independence history. With this Indian politics touched a new low.
        

Rajiv Gandhi

        Curtsey his mother's death, Rajiv Gandhi came to power with a thumping majority (404/506 seats but only 49.01% votes!!). Since he was an outsider in politics, some people had unrealistic hopes that he might clean up the system. However that requires exceptional moral fiber and guts which he clearly lacked. He tried to introduce some reforms but quickly retraced his steps and went back to tried and tested vote bank politics. Moreover he lacked the basic political knowledge to cover his tracks and thus one after the other corruptions scandals kept coming out of the closets. His inexperience destroyed the Congress's absolute monopoly in Indian politics, forever.
      
        With the loss in 1989 elections, (and murder of Rajiv Gandhi shortly afterward) the second era of Indian Politics came to an end and the era of coalition politics had begun. Things are now about to get much more criminalized, murky and complicated. However against this backdrop of dirty politics, Indian society and many institutions would progress by leaps and bounds. I will continue with the third era of Indian politics in the next blog.

(to be continued...)