Ideas for good governance

Madhava Rao is virtually unknown today, but Rahul Sagar's book brings to life this forgotten statesman of the nineteenth century, who took the first steps towards enlightened governance in the country

The Progressive Maharaja: Sir Madhava Rao’s Hints on the Art and Science of Government

Authors: Rahul Sagar

Publisher:  HarperCollins Publishers India

Pages: 472

Price: Rs 580

Few Indians probably know that the first steps in providing enlightened governance in the pre-independence “native” states took place several decades before any such initiative in British India. This took the shape of efforts to groom Sayaji Rao Gaekwad to succeed Malhar Rao, who was deposed as ruler of Baroda in 1875 for gross misgovernment. (Sayaji Rao, when he was chosen to succeed Malhar Rao, was an unlettered 12-year-old from a distant branch of the Gaekwad clan.)

At the centre of this effort was Sir Tanjore Madhava Rao (1828 – 1891), who had the rare distinction of serving three maharajas (of Travancore, Indore and Baroda) as Dewan, or prime minister, between 1858 and 1883. On his watch, these states came to be known as well-governed “model states”. Madhava Rao is virtually unknown today, but Rahul Sagar, in his masterful 64-page introduction to Rao’s Hints on the Art and Science of Government, writes that he “was universally considered the foremost Indian statesman of the nineteenth century.”

Hints is a product of Rao’s distilled wisdom on statecraft learned over a lifetime, and comprises lectures that Rao delivered to the young Sayaji between May and December 1881. As the book jacket says, Hints was the first treatise on statecraft produced in modern India. However, it would have lain buried in some archive but for the painstaking research and detective work of Mr Sagar — an associate professor of political science at New York University Abu Dhabi — who has rescued it from obscurity.

As early as 1872, Rao was interested in drawing up a constitution for the native states, based on European political wisdom adapted to Indian conditions. This is clear from a letter he wrote to the then acting viceroy, Francis Napier. Finally, in March 1881, Rao was given the responsibility of drafting a constitution that Sayaji Rao would be required to accept before his accession in December of that year.

Rao did produce a “draft constitution” of 46 articles for the native states (it was published only in 1906, 15 years after his death), and it forms Appendix I of Hints. He writes in his introduction to this document that its main objects are to substitute laws for arbitrary will; establish a machinery for making laws; ensure observance of laws; protect public revenues; preserve the rights and liberties of the people; establish a proper judicial system; and ensure stability of the whole political fabric.

Rao had a stock approach to his responsibilities as Dewan, wherever he was appointed — land reforms, reforms in administration, the judicial system and law enforcement; abolition of state monopolies and moderation in taxes; investment in industry, social infrastructure and public works including schools, roads, municipal services and hospitals; and curbs on the misuse of state facilities by courtiers and their families.

Professor Sagar has organised the original manuscript into 46 chapters. They open with a discussion on public administration (chapters 1-15), which stresses the fundamental principle that the ruler’s first duty is to promote the happiness of the people. Hints, unlike Machiavelli’s The Prince, does not teach how to secure and maintain power; it simply addresses whoever is in power, and assumes that it will be a maharaja. Nor does it address the question of whether government should be representative.

Hints is interested exclusively in how power ought to be exercised, arguing that a regime’s legitimacy and continuance depends upon the provision of good governance, through the appointment of educated, competent and upright officers. Hence, the government is duty-bound to “provide public goods and social services, principally an efficient police and military, a professional judicial system, public health and food security, and infrastructure and public education.”

Chapters 23-46 of Hints cover public protocol and personal disposition. These lectures explain why the manner in which the maharaja interacts with subjects has serious implications for the dignity of his office —in Mr Sagar’s memorable turn of phrase, “mystique is desirable because it generates awe”. There is a discussion on how to stay clear of “intriguers” and flatterers. The maharaja is also advised to engage in a few hours of private study every day (especially of House of Commons debates and the speeches of four-time British prime minister William Gladstone) to expand his mind.

Frederick Elliott, a Bombay Presidency officer who was appointed Sayaji Rao’s tutor, in a report on the maharaja’s education, described Madhava Rao’s lectures as “something to be prized and remembered for a lifetime.” Hints must be read as much for the lectures as for the authoritative introductory essay.

Madhava Rao was a fine political thinker and his aims were high-minded, but he emerges as a tragic figure. His reforms were often in danger of being derailed by vested interests who were deprived of opportunities to misuse their privileges. British officials, with a few honourable exceptions, believed that “liberal constitutionalism” would not grow roots in India, and that traditional forms of rule were more suited to “the natives”. Sayaji Rao himself was not an ideal pupil. Finally, while Madhava Rao was hailed as one of India’s first “nation builders”, Hints itself was forgotten — until now.