INDIA AFTER THE FOURTH GENERAL ELECTION

PROF. M. VENKATARANGAIYA

After the fourth general election India has politically ceased to be what she was during the twenty years which followed the achievement of freedom from British rule. She now enters on a future which is full of uncertainties. The fourth general election has created the possibility of the triumph of anti-democratic and anti-national forces. There is now the danger of the country having to face an alternative between orderly development and chaos, between democracy and some kind of dictatorship, and between the maintenance of the political unity of the country under a fairly strong Central Government and the emergence of a number of independent States.

I

History has always a tendency to repeat itself. What happened in 1947 was the fall of an empire which maintained the unity of the country and preserved internal order and security for at least a century. Its fall, however, was like the fall of all previous empires–the Mauryan and the Gupta in ancient times, the Afghan and the Mogul in medieval times. The fall of every empire left a power vacuum behind it and ambitious seekers after power tried to fill it. Every schoolboy is familiar with what happened after the collapse of the Mogul empire with the death of Aurangazeb in 1707. It gave the opportunity in due course for a Nizam of Hyderabad, a Hyder Ali of Mysore, an Ali Verdi Khan of Bengal and a Shujauddawlah of Oudh to establish themselves in authority while the Peshwas in Poona and the Sikhs in the Punjab expanded their power. A period of internecine warfare commenced and it continued until the British overthrew them all and established their empire.

It is true that the struggle to fill the power vacuum after the fall of the British empire in 1947 has taken a different form. It has come to be carried on in a formally democratic situation with appeals to the electorate to decide as to who should rule over them in the country as a whole and in each of the States. The struggle was not, of course, among military leaders at the head of armies. It was among the leaders of political parties and in several cases among persons with local influence and not attached to any party. In essence, however, it was all a struggle for power and from this point of view it was no different from similar struggles in the past. The various parties in the country the Congress, the Communist, the P. S. P., the S. S. P., the Swatantra, the Jan Sangh, the D. M. K. etc., have been the Nizams, the Ali Verdi Khans, the Hyder Alis and the Peshwas of today. They have not been averse to the use of violence in several cases to get into power. Each party has been trying to create for itself a regional nucleus where it can hold an entrenched position and extend itself to the other parts of the country. The Communists have their stronghold of this kind in Kerala, the D. M. K. in Madras, the Akalis in the Punjab, the Communists and leftists in West Bengal and the Jan Sangh in the Hindi-speaking region. There is the possibility of some of these starting secessionist movements and declare the region over which they have been able to secure a hold as an independent state. This is the ultimate purpose of their constant reference today to an unresponsive Centre and to the need for greater powers being transferred to states.

We are not as yet a mature democracy in the sense that the British, the Americans, the Scandinavians and the Swiss are. They have attained maturity because of their longer experience in the working of democratic institutions. We have, it is true, an electorate just as they have, but ours is an immature electorate with no emotional attachment to democracy. Very few among our countrymen will care to die for preserving a democratic political system if someone tries to overthrow it. This is borne out by the fact that it is only the leaders of political parties that resent the imposition of President’s rule in a State while the masses are either indifferent or even welcome it. Even in the sphere of municipal government we often come across the spectacle of rate-payers welcoming the suppression of elected Government and the appointment of a Commissioner to manage municipal affairs.

The large majority of the electorate are incapable of thinking for themselves and decide as to how they should vote. Their voting behaviour can be easily manipulated. Their vote can also be purchased. This is the present situation. Other democracies were quite as immature and as unenlightened in the early days of their history. Corruption was widespread among them. If democracy is given the fullest opportunity to grow in our country for three or four decades, people will then be in a position to appreciate its value. Today it is mostly wire-pulling by influential brokers–the presidents of Zilla Parishads and Panchayati Samitis, the office-holders of co-operative societies and the so-called social service institutions receiving grants from Government, the contractors who have been benefited by the plan projects and the local landlords that shape the voting behaviour of the electorate. There are, of course, sections of people who are politically conscious and who know what a vote means. But they are to be found mostly in urban areas. Most of the youth in cities belong to this category. Unfortunately they have little faith in democracy. They are attracted to communism and to various types of leftism. Political analysts have already told us that it is their vote that has to a great extent led to the debacle of the Congress in the fourth election. The youth have revolted against the Congress party.

The fourth general election has resulted in the Congress party not securing a majority in Bihar, Kerala, Madras, Orissa, Punjab, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal. Non-Congress coalition ministries have been formed in six of them, while there is the D. M. K. ministry in Madras and President’s rule in Rajasthan (at the time of writing). Although in Haryana and Uttar Pradesh Congress ministries were first formed, they later on gave place to coalition ministries because of several members of the party crossing the floor. Today nearly two-thirds of the country’s population, so far as state subjects under the federal system are considered, may be said to be ruled by non-Congress coalition ministries. This is the most arresting feature of the situation brought about by this election.

There is also the likelihood in the coming months of some more states having coalition ministries. This possibility arises because, as events in Haryana and Uttar Pradesh have shown, the members of the Congress party have no regard for principles or for any standards of public morality. The greed for personal power has taken root in them. Factionalism and corruption, which have overtaken the Congress and which, according to most observers, are the causes for its defeat, have completely demoralised the members. For the sake of a ministership they are quite prepared to desert the party and join the ranks of opposition. The so-called independents are no better or worse. They are also prepared to attach themselves to some party or other, and gain a ministership. In this situation it will be no surprise if some more states come to have non-Congress coalition ministries.

There is also a similar possibility even at the centre. In the Lok Sabha the strength of the Congress party is 281 in a house of 521 members. If twenty leave the party, the Congress ministry will have to resign. The members of the Congress party in Lok Sabha are of the same mould as those in State Assemblies. To add to this there is the rivalry between the President of the Congress and the Prime Minister–the kind of rivalry which encouraged factionalism in the State Congress parties. Besides these sources of internal weakness there is the strategy of the opposition parties which may result in the Congress ministry at the Centre toppling down. The opposition parties have been proclaiming aloud that they won’t rest satisfied unless and until the Congress ministry at the Centre is driven out of office. It is their strategy to see that a mid-term election is held. They do not want to give to the Congress party any time to recover from the rout it suffered at the last election. They are prepared to resort to action of any kind, violent or non-violent, inside and outside parliament, to bring about the fall of the Congress ministry. They are not as much interested–at least for the time being–in the good government of the country as in dealing a final and fatal blow to the Congress.

It is these factors–the immaturity of the electorate, the revolt of the youth, the unscrupulousness of the members of the Congress party and the strategy of the parties in opposition–that are responsible for the uncertainty regarding the future of the country–the future which has emerged out of the fourth election.

In 1947 the British withdrew after transferring power to the Congress party. The Congress had a monopoly of power for twenty years. The fourth general election is a revolutionary event in as much as it has led to the complete breakdown of this monopoly.

It may, however, be argued that there is nothing revolutionary in this change. In a democracy there is nothing unusual in one party going out of office as the result of a general election and another party taking its place. It may even be argued that such a periodical change is a sign of health as no one party should be permitted to monopolise power for long periods of time and get corrupted by its uninterrupted enjoyment of power. Both these arguments assume that it is through the strengthening of the democratic forces in the country that the collapse of the Congress has been brought about and that it would further the cause of democracy. There is, however, no warrant for such an assumption. The defeat of the Congress is the result of an unholy alliance between a few disgruntled democratic parties and a number of parties which have no faith in democracy and which are bent on murdering it. In this process there was also the help given to them by parties moving towards regional separatism.

Poll-analysists have told us that what distinguished the fourth general election from all the previous ones is the united front formed by opposition parties in almost all states for defeating the Congress. In the previous elections the non-Congress votes were split among a number of opposition candidates and the Congress was enabled to emerge as the party having the largest number of votes, even though it might be a minority of votes cast. In the fourth election the position was reversed. The opposition parties joined together and put up only one candidate in very many constituencies against the Congress candidate. There was not, therefore, any split in the non-Congress vote and it was this that led to the defeat of the Congress. We have begun to speak of the growing maturity of our electorate as symbolised in more votes being cast by them in favour of non-Congress parties. No one denies that there was some maturity of this kind though it was marginal. It is, however, the new strategy of the opposition parties than the growing maturity of the electorate that led to the defeat of the Congress. The electorate could be credited with more maturity if, while casting fewer votes in favour of the Congress, they indicated clearly by which parties they wanted the various States to be governed. They failed to do so. Their verdict had only a negative character about it. In some cases more than half-a-dozen parties had to join together to form a ministry. The electorate was not perhaps entirely to be blamed for this. The multiplicity of opposition parties was more responsible for this situation. Very few regret the fall of the Congress. The general feeling is that it richly deserved such a blow. But t»ere is widespread regret that as a result of its fall the political future of the country has become most uncertain.

II

We have now to consider why the future is uncertain. One reason for drawing such a conclusion is that, except in Madras where there is a D. M. K. ministry with a strong party majority behind it, in all other non-Congress States ministries are of a coalitionist character. Coalition ministries are generally unstable. This is borne out by the experience of such ministries in Kerala and Orissa in the past. The only bond that keeps them united today is their hatred of the Congress. But this is too negative a bond to produce a lasting effect. If foreign experience is to serve as a guide to us in this connection we have to say that coalitions have been successful only in small countries like Switzerland, Belgium, Holland, Denmark, Norway and Sweden. They are countries which are not faced with many complicated problems. Moreover they have coalitions of like-minded parties without extreme ideological differences like those which exist in our states between the Swatantra, the Jan Sangh and the P. S. P. on one side and the Communists, the S. S. P. and the other leftists on the other. In a fairly big country like France, with complicated problems of domestic and foreign policies, coalition ministries have been unstable, no ministry being in power for more than ten months on an average. Ministry-making created so much difficulty that a De Gaulle had to revise the Constitution and establish a sort of constitutional dictatorship. There are, of course, eminent leaders in our country who see no, instability in coalition ministries and who even advocate the formation of such ministries. But their views have no basis in experience. In any case coalitions of parties with extreme ideological differences are bound to be unstable. Sri Balraj Madhok was more realistic when he observed recently that at the national level a coalition, with Jan Sangh and the Communists as parties in it, would be extremely difficult because of policy differences. No efficient government or good administration will be possible with unstable ministries. There will not be any continuity of policy. It will produce an undesirable effect on the permanent civil service with their political bosses changing rather frequently.

One may ask if there is any alternative to this. The alternative consists only in like-minded parties, which do not differ very much in their ideologies, entering into a coalition. The coalition which we now have in Orissa has this character. If the Congress is prepared to enter into coalition with the Swatantra or Jan Sangh there is some chance of stable ministries. At present the Congress is averse to enter into coalition with other parties. There is no justification for such an attitude. In the larger interests of the country it has to revise its policy in this matter. But this will be possible if the more democratically-minded opposition parties like the Swatantra give up their bitter hatred of the Congress party and recognise that it has a right to exist. Such changes in the attitudes of like-minded parties are absolutely necessary as there does not seem to be any likelihood of the multiple party system in our country giving place to a two-party system.

III

Unstable ministries are undesirable but ministries in which communists and other leftists, who have no faith in democracy and who follow the creed under which it becomes their duty to destroy democracy, are not merely undesirable but dangerous. Unfortunately the fourth general election has brought into existence such ministries in several States like Kerala, West Bengal and Bihar. With their faith in class-war and hatred of parliamentary democracy the communists and leftists are a peril even when they are outside the ministries. They become a source of greater peril when they are a part of the government. There is nothing to show that their democratic colleagues will be in a position to tone down the extremism of communists. Experience shows that it has always been the other way. In Czechoslovakia and in several other countries of Central and Eastern Europe the coalition ministries, of which the communists formed a part, enabled them to ultimately sieze power. They value coalitions merely because they give them an opportunity of this kind.

There is a view that communist-dominated ministries are not dangerous in States and that they become dangerous only when they are formed at the centre where they can control the army and shape foreign policies. But this is a mistaken view. In our federal system the States have a large amount of power. The police who are the guardians of law and order are under their control. There are the State civil services on which the whole administration depends. Education, agriculture, co-operation and industries are within their jurisdiction. They are in a position to levy taxes of various kinds. Those who believe in class-war and in the doctrine that without liquidating the vested interests, the land-lords and the capitalists by revolutionary means no reconstruction of society is possible are sure to use their power as ministers to bring such a revolution, nearer. They can so manipulate their policies and administrative actions to secure Communist domination in the ranks of the police, the teachers, the managers of co-operative societies and in Panchayati Raj organisations. Adherence to a policy like the one announced by the West Bengal Government that the police would not be used to suppress disturbances caused by labour strikes or that announced by the Bihar ministry that the police will not be allowed to enter academic institutions indicate in what direction leftist-dominated ministries are likely to move. There are also other steps taken by them in regard to procurement of grain, the siezing of hoarded rice or wheat which may create social tensions of an undesirable character. The situation created by the fourth general election has thus become a perilous one. It has placed power in the hands of anti-democrats and the advocates of a system of government similar to that in Soviet Russia or Mao’s China.

There is also another source of danger in the emerging situation. It is the danger arising from resort to direct action–a weapon which has increasingly come to use in the post-independence period. There is no space in an article like this to deal comprehensively with the nature of direct action and how it will kill democracy if it is frequently resorted to. The tragedy of the situation lies in the fact that even parties like the Congress and the P. S. P., which profess to believe in democracy, have resorted to direct action whenever they thought that they could gain their immediate objective through it.

Direct action has taken two forms–non-violent and violent. Individual and group Satyagraha, mass processions in which hundreds and thousands of people participate crying all sorts of slogans, hartals and bundhs are theoretically the non-violent forms of direct action. Destroying Public and private property, looting shops, setting fire to police stations, railway stations, railway wagons, buses, and motor cars, forcibly driving away people from schools and colleges and from the offices are some of the violent forms of direct action.

The alleged purpose of every kind of direct action is to directly bring pressure on Government to take some action which those who resort to it think it necessary. It may be the location of a steel plant in a particular place, the repeal of a certain law; the abrogation of a certain tax or the grant of a certain concession. Government is coerced to take action without paying consideration to all the issues involved. Almost all kinds of direct action are coercive in character. Even the so-called non-violent action like hartals and bundhs have invariably resulted in violence. There is no analogy between Satyagraha as advocated by Mahatma Gandhi and the Satyagraha of today.

To resort to it as a weapon of last resort when all constitutional action has been tried may have some excuse. There may also be some justification for resorting to it in protest against governmental measures like conscription for which one entertains a conscientious objection. But there is no justification whatever to resort to it as a normal method of political action in a democracy where there are constitutional methods of various kinds available for influencing governmental policies. A democratic political system cannot function if people resort to the extra-constitutional method of coercing Government.

After the fourth general election the danger of discontented groups resorting to it has become greater. This is because the political parties which have been encouraging it are now in power in many states and they are anxious to create a situation in which it becomes impossible for the Central Government to function. To create chaos is their objective. We have had in the past the experience of Government employees in U. P. going on strike for nearly two months and bringing all administration to a standstill. We have the more recent experience of the police strike in Delhi and several leftist parties espousing their cause. There is now a feeling among them that with the defeat which the Congress met at the polls it has become weak and that the capacity of the Central Government to take decisive action in the face of a threat of violence and disorder is at a minimum. The country will therefore have to be prepared to witness resort to direct action on an unprecedented scale, leading to chaos and confusion and making orderly development impossible. Can democracy survive under conditions like these?

The formation of non-Congress ministries in several states with a Congress Government at the centre has opened a new chapter in the history of Central-State relationship. New tensions are bound to arise and a high order of statesmanship is called for if these tensions are not to result in the breaking up of the political unity of the country.

We have to note that no federal system has so far worked without tensions, however well-conceived its constitutional basis might be, and we have also to note further that such tensions have also resulted in secession movements and in some cases in open civil war as in the case of the United States and Switzerland. There was a time when Western Australia was anxious to secede from the Australian Commonwealth. In Canada today Quebec, with its French-speaking and Catholic majority, has not completely reconciled itself to being a unit in the Federation. There are many who wish to see Quebec become an independent state.

Some of the non-Congress ministries have grown rather hysterical on this question of Central-State relationship. They assume that the Congress Government at the Centre will be unsympathetic to their needs and even persecute them. They have called for a conference of all non-Congress Governments in the country to decide on the attitude they should adopt towards the Government at the Centre.

This is rather a short-sighted policy and an uncalled for one. Our Federal Constitution has demarcated quite clearly the respective jurisdictions of the Central and State Governments. It has provided for a Supreme Court to decide disputes of a constitutional character between the centre and the states and among the states themselves. It has also provided for a periodical Financial Commission to allocate certain important revenues between the Central and State Governments. There are also provisions enabling the Central Government to make other grants to states and such grants have been made in the past and there is no reason to think that they will be discontinued simply because some non-Congress Governments have been formed at the state level. This has been made quite clear at the recent conference of the Central and State ministers in charge of finance. The only factor which may interfere with the making of such grants is the financial position of the centre itself which at present is not very hopeful.

Besides these there are other provisions in the Constitution under which any disputes between the centre and the states can be peacefully settled, provisions like that under which an Inter-State Council can be constituted or central legislation may be undertaken at the request of two or more states.

Provided there is goodwill on either side there is nothing that will create tensions between the centre and the states so long as both are prepared to function in accordance with the Constitution and provided also that there is no move to create tensions artificially with a view to strengthen the disruptive forces in the country. Unfortunately it has to be said that several of the non-Congress Governments are not displaying any capacity for the kind of goodwill and accommodation required. They seem to be more determined to pick up quarrels with the centre on some pretext or other and magnify their importance simply because there is still a Congress Government at the centre. It is this tendency displayed by them that is likely to endanger the political unity of the country.

All non-Congress Governments want to fulfil the promises they made to the different sections of the electorate at the time of the fourth general election. They have increased the dearness allowance payable to Government employees; they have also abolished several taxes; they want to increase the emoluments of teachers and to provide more for social services. All these are laudable objectives. But the policy of an increase in expenditure is inconsistent with that of unwillingness to tax the people. The ministries wish to gain cheap popularity and in this game they have been making large demands on the centre for financial assistance. They have even suggested that the centre should satisfy the demands by reducing its own expenditure on defence. All this shows a high degree of irresponsibility on the part of non-Congress ministries. It is a step preparatory to making the centre a sort of scapegoat in all their difficulties and create hostility between the people in the states and the Central Government. Here is one cause of unnecessary tensions. Nothing will so much strain the relations between the centre and the states as this tendency on the part of non-Congress ministries to increase their expenditure and call on the centre to find the resources for meeting the expenditure.

The Communist Party has been in recent months talking of the sub-nationalities of India and the need to recognise her importance. At one time they spoke in a more or less similar manner about the Muslim nation and supported the movement which brought Pakistan into existence. The present talk about sub-nationalities is sure to lead in the same direction. A nation has according to these protagonists the right of secession and self-determination. It will not be a matter for surprise if they utilise the power they have in Kerala and in West Bengal to promote secessionist movements in them. It is appropriate to recall in this connection the plea put forward by the Kerala Chief Minister that the foreign exchange obtained from the export of rubber should be utilised to purchase food for Kerala. There are other ministries which wish to have direct dealings with Soviet Russia, Communist China, and Burma so as to enable them to get food from those states. They have shown a tendency to ignore that foreign policy is a subject exclusively within the jurisdiction of the centre.

Some of the non-Congress ministries have called for a revision of the Constitution so that the states might have more powers than what they have at present. We suffered in the past from a lack of a real sense of national unity. What the country requires today is the strengthening and not the weakening of the forces of unity. Unfortunately the new governments are working in a direction quite opposite to this. Let us also not forget that we have in Kashmir and in the Punjab an open secessionist movement and that it was only recently that the D. M. K. gave up the idea of an independent Tamil Nad and that even in Maharashtra there is a Shiva Sena movement proclaiming that Maharashtra should be only for Maharashtrians. It is only by a slender thread that the unity of India is being maintained. The fourth general election has strengthened the disruptive forces in the country.

One need not conclude from all this that the future is dark. But one will have to recognise that it is not all smooth-sailing. The fight between democratic and anti-democratic forces, between the forces standing for unity and those of a disruptive character and between chaos and orderly development has entered on a more active phase after the fourth general election. It ought to be the endeavour of all right-thinking men and women in the country to throw their strength-physical, intellectual and emotional on the side of constructive forces like democracy, national unity and orderly development. Otherwise there is no hope for the country. This is the warning given to us by the history of the past and we will be foolish if we ignore the warning.

Back