Must we weaken all our institutions?

By Harish Khare

THE PARTISANS, inside and outside the National Democratic Alliance, have unsheathed their rusted swords. The leading opposition, Ms. Sonia Gandhi's Congress(I), understandably wants to send the Vajpayee Government packing; other professional oppositionwallahs have revived the Third Front to occupy the high ground of moral indignation; from within the BJP, Mr. L. K. Advani's acolytes are gleefully looking forward to a crippled Prime Minister; and, even the senile RSS bosses are self- righteously commenting on the quality of officers manning the Prime Minister's Office.

Such political animosity and over-reach are inevitable by- products of the tehelka.com revelations. It is a matter of satisfaction that the saffronised columnists and editors are squirming now that the self-appointed high priests of the national security church have been shown to be on the take. May be the public discourse would now stand exorcised of the BJP- inspired but nonetheless a bogus presumption that crookedness was confined only to one side of the political divide. Now that the playing field has been levelled by the Tehelka crew, it becomes all the more imperative to ensure that this outbreak of moral deficiency is not allowed to drain the efficacy and legitimacy of the Indian state.

However, our collective tragedy in recent times has been a proclivity to undermine institutions to settle scores with this or that political rival. But it would be a greater disaster if partisan voices - for or against the Vajpayee Government - succeed in using the current convulsions to weaken our governing institutions, especially the authority of the Prime Minister. Only those unmindful of the external and internal challenges being faced the Indian state would want to encourage an assault on the authority of the office of Prime Minister; only those ignorant of the centrality of this office in the institutional power structure can favour the dilution of its efficacy.

It requires no great imagination to demonise the ``PMO'', but it needs to be understood that in our constitutional scheme of things, the Prime Minister is cast in the role of the chief political executive in the country; and, as such a Prime Minister's effectiveness depends on the extent to which his office can exercise the initiative over power, policy, patronage and personnel. The principles of accountability only require that this power be not abused; but the law of systemic efficiency demands that the office of Prime Minister should have a hegemonic role only if it has to synergise the administrative resources with the political compulsions and the policy preferences. Over the years, there has been a steady erosion in the Prime Minister's institutional authority; this process has to be reversed. Neither a weak Prime Minister nor a weaker PMO is ipso factoa guarantee of probity or efficiency.

Unfortunately, the response from the ruling quarters to the Tehelka revelations only demonstrates how difficult it is to insulate institutions from wayward individuals. For example, till this date the unrepentant Jaya Jaitly-George Fernandes duo refuses to concede that it is wrong and unethical if defence deals get discussed in the Defence Minister's drawing room by those who have no business discussing weapon systems. Or, take Mr. Advani's unseemly challenge to the Opposition to bring a no- confidence motion, little realising that the governance in this country cannot be a matter of majority and minority. And, the BJP is now on the verge of letting Mr. Fernandes' political waywardness push it into a defence of crookedness.

The morally shabby response to the Tehelka revelations is part of a three-year-old cultivated habit of preferring individuals over established organisational norms and procedures. The NDA crowd betrayed this preference early enough in 1998 in the matter of throwing the book at Mr. U. N. Biswas of the CBI for wanting to commandeer the Army into effecting the arrest of Mr. Laloo Prasad Yadav. As Union Home Minister, Mr. L. K. Advani, gave in to the BJP-Samata bosses's demand that Mr. Biswas be not penalised for a gross over-reach. The tin-man, who wanted to be an iron-man, bought the spurious argument that only one individual in a central investigative agency, that too under central control, would be able to inflict retribution on Mr. Yadav. Now Mr. Advani has become the prisoner of that decision; Mr. Biswas has to be retained in the job even after his retirement. As Prime Minister, Mr. Vajpayee is guilty of going along with this assault on bureaucratic norms and traditions.

Beginning with this administrative folly, the Advani-Fernandes mob sent out signals that officers, in mufti and uniform, could strike gold if they were mindful of the NDA bosses' petty political requirements. The inevitable denouement was the Bhagwat Affair, and the Indian Navy ended up getting a chief who elevated a sordid ``burglary'' in the outhouse of his residence into a pattern of threats from the enemy with a capital ``E''. It is this monkeying around with the bureaucracy and the defence forces and their institutional norms and habits that has emboldened a Bangaru Laxman to entertain ``defence contractors'' and for a Samata ``Madam'' to blasphemously invoke ``national interest'' in accepting a ``donation'' for her ``political party''. Again, Mr. Vajpayee the Prime Minister acquiesced in these creeping aberrations.

But the NDA's hour of chicanery was when it gave marching order to a CBI Director for daring to investigate the links of a powerful industrial house with a known criminal. That incident announced to every corporate corner-cutter that the incumbent regime simply did not take a morally exacting view of businessmen's crookedness. At the policy level, in the name of economic reforms, doubtful entrepreneurs, desi and foreigner, were given all the breaks; at the behavioural level, the R.K. Jains and the R. K. Guptas, in the Tehelka tapes, naturally felt at home in this officially blessed crooked world; and, at the cultural level, the standards were set by the much serenaded Amar-Akbar-Antony trinity which spawned a corrosive world, a milieu in which Mr. Ranjan Bhattacharya cheerfully sought companionship. And, again, the Prime Minister's equanimity remained undisturbed.

The onus is now on Mr. Vajpayee to retrieve the threatened authority and prestige of his office. Far too long he has given in to the comforting and confusing vagaries of coalition politics rather than tap the powers of his office. So much so now that as a Cabinet Minister Ms. Mamata Banerjee could usurp the prime ministerial prerogative and demand that the Defence Minister be sacked. Mr. Vajpayee watches ambivalently as Mr. Fernandes instigates two of his MPs, that too those with a dozen criminal cases against them, to demand that the Prime Minister should get rid of ``corrupt'' officers in his office.

Rather than allowing the Jaya-George duo to ensnare him in unseemly street fights, the task before Mr. Vajpayee is to find ways of acknowledging that sensibilities have been offended. He can do this only by spurning the petty tacticians; cleverness of small minds should not be confused with wisdom and statesmanship. The country cannot respect a Prime Minister who is seen as a prisoner of partisans at the expense of expectations of probity. Rajiv Gandhi discovered this bitter lesson as did Mr. Narasimha Rao; parliamentary majorities did not help. And, a man who is not respected at home cannot be respected by the international community or by jehadis out to test the staying power of the Indian state.

A few months before he became Prime Minister, delivering the Deshraj Memorial Lecture, Mr. Vajpayee had noted that ``the biggest challenge that we who have preached and practised probity in public life face is to restore faith in the political class and rejuvenate the democratic process''. It is now enjoined on him to convince the country that he presides over a regime that is not partial to crooks and criminals.

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