T C A Srinivasa-Raghavan: Of PMs and party presidents

LINE & LENGTH

In January 1966, a small group of men that had taken control of the Congress party after Jawaharlal Nehru died on May 27, 1964, had heeded its inner voice, and seen political advantage in placing Nehru's daughter, Indira, on the Prime Minister's chair. She would head the government, but they would run it.

From the very beginning, it was an unworkable arrangement because the Prime Minister didn't like it. She had been led to believe by her father that she was the heiress apparent. She resented the Old Men, who wielded the real power.

But she was unable to do much about it. She was widely seen as a puppet, and not a very voluble one at that. One important opposition leader even called her a goongi gudiya (dumb doll) in Parliament.

Then, in the spring of 1967, the Congress, for the first time since 1952, lost about half the states and came back with a vastly reduced majority in the Lok Sabha as well.

Mrs Gandhi decided that the time had come to assert herself. Slowly but surely she set in motion a process that led, about 28 months later, to the Congress splitting down the middle.

From July 1969 to March 1971, Mrs Gandhi ran a minority government with the help of the Communists. (They dictated terms as mercilessly and as irresponsibly as the lot now are doing.)

By the end of 1970, she was ready for a snap general election and in the one held in March 1971 she emerged as the undisputed leader of India. The Old Men were consigned to the wings of Indian politics, and later forgotten.

This long preamble was necessary to remind readers of how the first experiment in separating political power from prime ministerial power had failed, quite spectacularly in fact.

After that, even when the Congress president and the Prime Minister were not the same person, no one had any doubts as to where real power lay. When the Prime Minister said jump, the Congress president asked how high""on the way up.

Today, as we know, it is the other way round.

Tension between party president and Prime Minister is not peculiar to the Congress. There have been three episodes of non-Congress governments at the Centre. In each of them, in spite of statements to the contrary, the party president and the Prime Minister did not get along.

The first episode was during 1977""80, when India had its first non-Congress government under the Janata Party. Prime Minister Morarji Desai never saw eye to eye with anyone, let alone the party president, Chandra Shekhar. The results were disastrous because the Prime Minister""yes, even the formidable Morarjibhai""was constantly looking over his shoulder.

The second episode was during 1989""91 and again the same thing happened. Prime Minister V P Singh and his party president could not get along. Again the results were disastrous.

The third episode was during 1996""2004, which has two components. Between 1996 and 1998, there was a United Front government with two Prime Ministers, both of whom had problems with the party president, S R Bommai. It didn't help that both were ineffectual bleaters, Prime Minister by accident. The results were disastrous.

During 1998""2004, there was another coalition government, led by the BJP. Prime Minister A B Vajpayee could not, until the end of 2002, get along with his putative party president, L K Advani. The results were disastrous.

It was only after the Gujarat riots that Mr Vajpayee emerged as the undisputed boss. This was because the party realised that India wanted a moderate face, and if it had an avuncular visage, so much the better.

So the main point is worth repeating: there is always tension between Prime Minister and party president. Thanks to Indira Gandhi's 1969 experiment the cardinal lesson learnt by successive party presidents (be it any party in power) is when the Prime Minister gets too comfy and confident, the party president will be the first one to feel its effect.

This leads to us to the First Theorem:

<i>It is necessary, in the interests of good governance, that the party president and the Prime Minister should be the same person. But it is not sufficient.</i>

If you look at the record of the relationship between Prime Ministers and party presidents, you will see that the only occasions when the separation has worked is when the party president is, as it were, an agent or nominee of the Prime Minister, holding office at his or her pleasure. There are no exceptions to this rule, even during Nehru's time.

Whence the Second Theorem:

<i>If you must separate the post of party president from that of Prime Minister, then make sure that the party president is beholden to the Prime Minister and not the other way round.</i>

So, therefore, combining the two theorems, we have my Law of Political and Executive Power:

<i>While it is both necessary and sufficient to have the Supreme Leader exercise political as well as executive power, it is neither necessary nor sufficient to have it the other way round, that is, exercise neither or only one.</i>

It can legitimately be asked why this sort of tension doesn't arise in other countries with a similar political structure. In the UK, for example, which comes closest to our form of democracy, the Prime Ministers and the party presidents do tend to get on.

But, in fact, you will find that even there my theorem holds: whenever the Prime Minister was all powerful, say, like Margaret Thatcher, or until the Iraq war, Tony Blair, things tended to work more smoothly than when it was the other way round, which, it must be added, was not often.

It has to do, I think, with the oldest of all political equations, whether amongst animals or humans, namely, that there can only be one King, Mufasa or Scar. Leadership is not divisible because a government is not a phaeton.

Nor can the real leader operate from behind the scenes. Octavia tried to help her grandson Claudius, who, being seen as a weakling, had never been expected to become Emperor. But he did, against all odds. In the end, Claudius had to assert himself because his pro consuls began taking orders directly from her.

There are innumerable other instances through the ages. I had written about one of them some months ago. It was something that happened after the death of Aurangzeb, when the Sayyid brothers tried to run things as the nominal emperors, first with Faurkhsiyar and then with Rafi-ud-Darjat, who was another mild fellow. Eventually, the Sayyid Brothers were done away with.