Anybody out there?

Government's inaction down the line is only matched by the silence at its top.

File image of Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi | Photo: Sonu Mehta/Hindustan Times via Getty Images

The flavour of this disastrous season seems to be distinctly Greek. Who is to blame for the rupee and the Indian stock market being the emerging markets’ worst performers? And, of course, as the brilliant and irrepressible Indian Express columnist Surjit Bhalla points out in today’s Op-ed page, for India’s industrial production growth being the lowest in the world outside Europe? Of course, it is the wretched debt-defaulting Greek.

And who is responsible for this state of total decision paralysis, a loss of political authority so severe that in one sector after the other, bureaucrats have taken over all power? Where the almighty Sarkar-e-Hind has to unleash the governance equivalent of a WMD by issuing a presidential directive to one of its own PSU monopolies to supply coal to stranded power producers even if it is entirely according to its laid-down policy? Where economic bills are being put in cold storage even when many have the BJP’s support? And where, two months from the installation of the new president of the republic, the ruling party is still keeping all its hopefuls on wait? If they were to be held responsible for this total paralysis of political governance in India, then those 11 million Greeks would have to be awfully hard-working people. Unless, of course, our famous CAG carried out their last census and counts, as it has often done lately, the 11 million as 110 crore: what’s a few more zeros between friends? After all, you have to be given a margin of error.

Take a closer look at this total abdication of political authority by UPA 2. After the courts and civil society moved in to fill the governance space ceded by UPA 2, what was left has been taken over by the civil services. After the courts, now regulators, who are almost all retired civil servants, are determining basic policy while senior ministers wring their hands in main-kya-karoon despair that has now been printed on the calling card of this cabinet: take TRAI, for example. One year ago, we were all fighting to defend the political class, and justifying its supremacy in a democracy as the assault from Anna’s civil society raged. Today, we have entered a fascinating new phase in democratic evolution, where civil servants are so dominant, they are also cornering many of the sinecures the political class usually counted as its own. Note, for example, how retired IAS and IPS (in fact, more IPS than IAS) officers have governorships of more key states in the country than political veterans. Who do you blame for this political debacle? The Greeks?

You have to look within, a skill and quality UPA 2 has lost, caught in the maze of confusion, scams, its lack of conviction. But, most importantly, its lack of leadership. The old story of discord between the party and the government is rubbish. Surely, the government is neither deciding, nor implementing. But, equally, the party either does not know what it wants or is not telling anybody. Unless you think it is being done through leaks, deep-background briefings and whispers that are usually prefixed with but 10 Janpath has a different view…. Has anybody heard 10 Janpath’s point of view on any key policy issue? Or of 12 Tughlaq Lane (Rahul Gandhi’s residence)? And let’s be fair, have you lately heard what 7 Race Course Road thinks on any of the issues, problems and pains assailing India today? A capital city like this, where no one speaks to anybody in such a vast country, may be fascinating for journalists and pundits. But it looks like a very, very foreign place to the rest of India. A very alien place, more distant than even Greece.

We have, today, an incredible situation where the top three in the ruling establishment almost never speak to the people of India. Sonia, Rahul and the prime minister speak sparingly in Parliament, almost never to the media and hardly ever directly to the people of India, except during election campaigns. Media, you can understand. Everybody seems to think that journalists are vermin and the only thing they now need is regulation. UPA 2 has also added Indian entrepreneurs to that category. Go back to some of the footage that shows Revenue Secretary R.S. Gujral admonishing the captains of corporate India at FICCI and CII forums. Nobody knows if he was mandated by the finance minister to do so, but entrepreneurial India has not been kicked around so rudely since the V.P. Singh-Bhure Lal raid raj.

So you have today an establishment where nobody speaks with their people. Nobody explains any action taken, and certainly nobody tries to build any public opinion for any contemplated policy action. You cannot help thinking sometimes that our establishment has lapsed into some old Beijing/ Moscow style of governance. But at least then you could pore over People’s Daily, Pravda or some such and read between the lines and guess what was on the comrades’ mind. Not so in India, today. The Congress does not have an official daily, and the government does not speak through any official media. In fact, if you looked at government-owned TV, particularly the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha channels, you would find the entire discourse so utterly in conflict with any idea of modern, reformist economic policies that you can see how government’s own media does not speak for it.

In any case, what is the government policy on key issues? On the economy, it seemed to follow calculated ambiguity until the new revenue secretary changed it to coercive diplomacy. On foreign policy, particularly on Pakistan, nothing has been done to sensitise public opinion on the historic opportunity that has emerged after an entire decade of peace on the LoC, while old establishment hawks (in India, not Pakistan) continue to fan disinformation. And on politics, the party is playing with the cards so close to its chest even on its nominee for the president, that every possible and impossible name is being speculated upon, the latest being Labour Minister Mallikarjun Kharge.

This reminds me of a story from I.K. Gujral’s short-lived government. His principal secretary (now governor of Jammu and Kashmir) N.N. Vohra, exasperated by decision-freeze in the PMO, once told him, Prime Minister, there is an allegation against us that ours is a government of the Punjabis.

Gujral lifted his head and asked, sort of philosophically, “So what can we do about it?”

“For once, Sir, for just two weeks,” said Vohra. “Can we function like Punjabis?”

I am not betraying any confidences because Vohra did not tell me this story, Gujral did, and he will forgive me. But it is a conversation worth recalling in these unusual times.