V P Singh's half revolution

The Disruptor: How Vishwanath Pratap Singh shook India

Author: Debashish Mukerji

Publisher: Harper Collins

Pages: 699

Price: Rs 542

Jacobin revolutionary Louis Antoine de Saint-Just’s remark as he was led off to be guillotined is an apt lesson for all aspiring revolutionaries. He said: “Those who make revolutions halfway dig their own graves”. If you are irresolute or bow to pressure, the forces of counter-revolution — the very forces that you are trying to stamp out—can quickly return to overwhelm and crush you.

Debashish Mukerji’s work is a deeply researched and fascinating account of the life of India’s former prime minister. But it also brings to the fore the limits of structural change that Vishwanath Pratap Singh was able to bring about and should serve as a reminder to all those seeking to transform Indian society and economy — whether in the government or in opposition— about the power wielded by forces of counter-reform.

You might be justified in asking why a biography of V P Singh now.

Mr Mukerji explains that. “By bringing together a divided Opposition to usher in an era of coalition governments at the Centre, as also by implementing the Mandal Commission report which provided job reservations for the Other Backward Classes, Vishwanath Pratap Singh permanently altered India’s political landscape. A politician ambivalent about pursuing power, and obsessed with financial integrity, he was also an extremely complex human being. The main issues he confronted — caste disparities, communal tensions and corruption — continue to bedevil the country even today”.

The book is largely sympathetic to Singh. It explores his lonely childhood that explains many traits that would become a permanent part of his personality: “I was insecure, very insecure,” Mr Mukerji writes of Singh’s own admission as archived in the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library. It explains his adolescent years, his initial forays into student union politics, and the kissing of the ring that seemed the only way up in the labyrinthine route to power in the Congress. Singh made his way far enough up to become chief minister of UP but the killing of his brother, Chandrashekhar Prasad Singh, by dacoits in the midst of the chief minister’s campaign against them kind of took the stuffing out of him. He was forced to review his political and emotional commitments anew. Unlike other ham-handed and bludgeoned efforts at ensuring succession in Congress-ruled states (in Andhra Pradesh, which led to the rise of N T Rama Rao) the Congress leadership proved itself sensitive to V P Singh’s vision and rather than tangle with vested interests in the state, brought him to the Centre.

But that is the key: Vested interests. The book recalls in valuable detail because it is based on personal interviews, the role of Swaminathan Gurumurthy, currently on the Reserve Bank of India board, then just a chartered accountant, and how the case was built up against the Ambani family. That happened when Singh was finance minister. Today, investment bankers of Indian origin posted across the globe can say glibly that India’s wealth is in the hands of a few families — those that had access to capital. But in the 1970s to 1990s, old business houses were dying and new ones were coming up in their stead. Those that could influence government policy stood a chance of staying in the race. The clash between a rising Reliance and a declining Bombay Dyeing and the role of the Union ministry of commerce and finance is chronicled in great detail. In complete honesty, the book notes that as prime minister, Singh was as constrained in acting against big business as he seemed to be as finance minister.

The book describes the political pulls and pressures behind the Janata Dal, Chandrashekhar’s refusal to countenance Singh as his leader, the House of Cards moment when Devi Lal was expected to become prime minister (PM) but announced it would be Singh, Chandrashekhar storming out of the Central Hall and the decisions taken by the VP Singh government as PM. Devi Lal’s price was deputy prime ministership; and though there is no such constitutional position — something L K Advani discovered to his great dissatisfaction when he tried to use the same blunt weapon against Brajesh Mishra during Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s prime ministership — Lal played his part in undermining Singh. The book discusses in detail what lay behind Singh’s decision to implement the Mandal Commission report.

Through this book, you get glimpses of an India you think is left far behind: Until you see it again, lingering in the government decision to reverse “reform” because it is electorally unpalatable. Hence the dictum of de Saint-Just. The Singh government was unable to proceed against the cause célèbre that brought it to power — the enquiry into the Bofors pay-off, the source of the power of the Ambani family, corruption generally. Subsequent scholarship and a plethora of biographies by those who were witness to that era shed more light on various aspects: The VP-Singh regime’s view on hotspots such as Kashmir and Punjab, the last (and arguably only) integration of politics of south India into federal politics; and the light touch India adopted towards the neighbourhood.

Singh died while the 26/11 attacks were unfolding in Mumbai; his death went largely unreported in the national media. That wasn’t fair. Whether you agreed or disagreed with his politics, Singh changed Indian politics fundamentally: Even if that meant the forces he unleashed eventually ended up devouring him. This book is essential reading for all those trying to understand this process.