India’s second tryst

It is the 40th anniversary of the first non-Congress government’s assumption of office at the Centre. But 1977 was no ordinary election. More than a transfer of power, it was a peaceful ballot revolution. That was the time when the Indian voter held her head high among the world community for throwing out an elected government and its leader, who started identifying herself with the nation, and coerced the political system into silence, let alone a whisper of dissent.

The country and the politics were under a different environment those days. The generation of freedom fighters were still alive and they could question the government without nurturing any personal ambition for an electoral office. Tallest among them was Jayaprakash Narayan. JP, as he was popularly called, was put in solitary confinement in Chandigarh during the Emergency and was released on account of fragile health. The regime feared international political opinion turning adverse in the event of JP dying as a prisoner of conscience. Later, the Indira regime relaxed the internal emergency and declared elections. The government of the day got the supreme confidence of winning the polls based on its agencies’ reports regarding public mood.

But the events moved fast and opposition parties like Congress (O), Jan Sangh, Socialists and Bharatiya Lok Dal merged to form Janata Party and contested on the electoral symbol of Lok Dal, the farmer with a plough in a wheel. The wheel of political change was set in motion and several leaders from Congress, led by Jagjivan Ram, came out of the party and allied with Janata party. The catchy slogan coined by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was ‘Vote for Stability’. The Janata’s counter narrative was magnetic and catchier, ‘Democracy v Dictatorship’ and ‘Bread with Liberty’. The civil liberties-centric campaign, led by JP, had an electric effect in whole of North India but the wind blew very mildly in the South.

After the victory, the most difficult choice was the selection of the Prime Minister. This exercise was done by JP and Acharya J B Kripalani. There was an ocean of difference between the Janata and the Congress. The latter was a party with one unchallenged leader and the rest compliant followers, who only fought among themselves, but never dared to question the supreme leader.

On the contrary, Janata Party had a number of leaders with Prime Ministerial ambitions. The mantle fell on Morarji Desai, who was earlier the Deputy Prime Minister. In the short span of two years, during which the Janata remained in office, bickering over leadership continued unabated and finally led to the collapse of the government. But, the Janata period witnessed certain irreversible changes in India’s political history.

The euphoria of March 1977 was unparalleled and it also went to substantiate the old adage that “The best day after a revolution is the first day”. Morarji Desai, in his broadcast to the nation, declared that the clouds of fear had lifted and the citizen need not fear the midnight knock as she/ he had to during the Emergency.

The biggest achievement of the Janata’s two-year period was the restoration of democratic features of the Constitution, which were sought to be obliterated during the Emergency. Declaration and extension of Emergency was restricted by amending the Constitution. Right to Property was removed from Fundamental Rights and made a legal right. This put paid to the attempts to encroach into the domain of rights to life and liberty in the guise of framing progressive legislations.

The Janata government also initiated serious moves toward decentralised democracy by appointing a committee, headed by veteran socialist intellectual Asoka Mehta. This was later implemented by the Congress government in a different form.

Another contribution, on which the societal opinion is sharply divided, is the appointment of Mandal commission. This was implemented by V P Singh in 1990 and since then the electoral equations in the Gangetic plain changed substantially. The pyramidal vote base of the Congress with upper castes at the top and Dalits at the bottom broke up and middle ranking communities became increasingly assertive as a vote base. The majoritarian religious answer to this was Mandir politics and of late, social re-engineering of caste combinations with high resonating Hindutva slogans with development as the sugar coating on these.

The early bickering in Janata party was also connected with socialists and Chaudhary Charan Singh resenting the dual membership of erstwhile Jan Sangh leaders in Sangh Parivar organisations and reservation for Other Backward Classes (implemented in Bihar chief minister Karpoori Thakur).

In short, the brief tenure in office of the first non-Congress government at the Centre had several lasting consequences for Constitutional democracy and social regrouping which formed the base for identity politics.

The majoritarian agenda, which has now successfully countered this, has become the main pole of Indian politics. The country now needs an effective opposition. For this, Congress has to reinvent itself and exorcise the ghosts of the past. It has to honestly tell people that its earlier politics had flaws and redraw its economic policy menu with a pro-people agenda. Else, a credible alternative to the new centre in Indian politics would remain a day dream.