India After Independence: 1947-2000 (44 page)

Immediately after coming out of the jails in January 1977, the opposition leaders announced the merger of Congress (O), Jan Sangh, Bharatiya Lok Dal (BLD) and Socialist Party into the new Janata Party. The Congress was dealt a blow by the sudden defection from it on 2 February 1977 of Jagjivan Ram, H.N. Bahuguna and Nandini Satpathy who formed the Congress for Democracy (CFD). Along with DMK, Akali Dal and CPM it forged a common front with the Janata Party in order to give a straight fight to Congress and its allies, the CPI and AIADMK in the March elections to the Lok Sabha.

The opposition front made the Emergency and its excesses, especially forced sterlizations and the restriction of civil liberties, the major issues of its election campaign. The people also treated the elections as a referendum on the Emergency. With the popular upsurge in favour of them, the Janata Party and its allies were victorious with 330 out of 542 seats. Congress trailed far behind with only 154 seats, with CPI its ally getting 7 and the AIADMK 21 seats. Congress was virtually wiped out in North India—it won only 2 out of 234 seats in seven northern states. Both Indira Gandhi and Sanjay were defeated. The electoral verdict was, however, mixed in western India. Surprisingly in the South, where the Emergency had been less vigorous, and the pro-poor measures of the Twenty-Point Programme better implemented, Congress improved its performance, winning 92 seats in place of 70 in 1971. Janata won only 6 seats in the four southern states. The Congress for Democracy merged with Janata Party immediately after the elections.

There was a near-crisis over the issue of prime ministership between the three aspirants, Morarji Desai, Charan Singh and Jagjivan Ram. The matter was referred to the senior leaders, Jayaprakash Narayan and J.B. Kripalani, who ruled in favour of the 81-year-old Desai, who was sworn in as prime minister on 23 March.

One of the first steps taken by the new government was to try to consolidate its hold over the states. Arguing that in those states where Congress had lost in national elections, it had also lost the mandate to rule even at the state level, the government dismissed nine Congress-ruled state
governments, and ordered fresh elections to their state assemblies. In the assembly elections, held in June 1977, Janata and its allies came out victorious in these states except in Tamil Nadu where AIADMK won. In West Bengal, the CPM, a Janata ally, gained an absolute majority.

Control over both the parliament and the state assemblies enabled the Janata Party to elect unopposed its own candidate, N. Sanjeeva Reddy, as the President of the Union in July 1977.

The Janata government took immediate steps to dismantle the authoritarian features of the Emergency regime and to restore liberal democracy. It restored fundamental rights and full civil liberties to the Press, political parties and individuals. Through the 44nd Constitutional Amendment, it also modified the 42nd Amendment passed during the Emergency, repealing those of its provisions which had distorted the Constitution. The rights of the Supreme Court and High Courts to decide on the validity of central or state legislation was also restored.

The political support to the Janata regime, however, soon began to decline and disillusionment with it set in, given its non-performance in administration, implementing developmental policies, and realizing social justice. The political momentum of the regime was lost by the end of 1977 and the uneasy coalition that was Janata Party began to disintegrate, though the government, remained in power till July 1979. By then the lack of confidence in its capacity to govern had begun to turn into anger, for several reasons. First, the Janata Party was not able to deal with the rapidly growing social tensions in rural areas, of which the increasing extent of atrocities on the rural poor and the Scheduled Castes was one manifestation. Janata Party’s social base in North India consisted primarily of rich and middle peasants belonging mostly to intermediate castes and large landowners belonging to upper castes and the urban and rural shop-keepers, small businessmen and the petty bourgeoisie. The rural landowners felt that with the Janata governments at the Centre and the states, they had now unalloyed power in the country as a whole and in rural areas in particular. On the other hand, the rural poor, mostly landless labourers and belonging largely to the Scheduled Castes, too had become conscious of their rights and felt emboldened by the prolonged functioning of democracy and adult franchise. They also defended and asserted the rights and benefits they had obtained under the Twenty-Point Programme. In many states the landowners tried to forcibly take back the plots given to them and the moneylenders began to reclaim debts cancelled during the Emergency. The result was the wide prevalence of caste tensions and violent attacks on the Scheduled Castes in North India, an early instance being the killing and torching of Harijans at Belchi in Bihar in July 1977.

There was recrudescence of large-scale communal violence. There were growing agitations, lawlessness and violence which particularly
affected colleges and universities, often leading to their closure. The middle of 1979 also witnessed a wave of strikes and mutinies by policemen and paramilitary forces.

Next, the Janata regime explicitly repudiated the Nehruvian vision of rapid economic development based on large-scale industry, modern agriculture, and advanced science and technology. But it failed to evolve any alternative strategy or model of economic and political development to deal with the problems of economic underdevelopment.

Janata’s economic policy merely counterposed rural development to industry-oriented growth. This policy came to be based on three pillars: labour-intensive small-scale industry, not as complementary to but in place of large-scale industry; decentralization in place of national planning; and rich-peasant-led agricultural development based on generous subsidies, reduction in land revenue, and massive shift of resources from industry to the rural sector. This shift in economic policy was a recipe for low or non-economic development.

Interestingly, the Janata Party made no effort to fulfill its earlier radical demands for land reform and payment of higher wages to agricultural labourers. The one positive economic step that the Janata government did undertake was the effort to provide employment to the rural unemployed through the ‘Food for Work’ programme, which was used to improve village infrastructure such as roads, school buildings, etc., and which was particularly efficiently implemented by the CPM government in West Bengal.

After the first year of Janata rule, the economy started drifting with both agriculture and industry showing stagnation or low rates of growth. Severe drought conditions and devastating floods in several states affected agricultural production in 1978 and 1979. Prices began to rise sharply, especially as foodgrains stocks had been used up in the ‘Food for Work’ programme. International prices of petroleum and petroleum products again rose steeply. The heavy deficit-financing in the 1979 budget, presented by Charan Singh as finance minister, also had a marked inflationary impact. 1979 also witnessed widespread shortages of kerosene and other goods of daily consumption. By the end of that year, inflation had gone beyond 20 per cent.

The Janata government’s tenure was too brief for it to leave much of an impact on India’s foreign policy, though while continuing to function within the existing, widely accepted framework, it did try to reorient foreign policy. It talked of ‘genuine non-alignment’ which meant strengthening ties with US and Britain and moderating its close relations with the Soviet Union.

Holding the party together seems to have been a major preoccupation of the Janata leaders. Already disintegrating by the end of 1977, by 1978-79, the government, lacking all direction, was completely paralyzed by the constant bickering and infighting in the party both at the Centre and in the states. Each political component tried to occupy as much political and administrative space as possible. In the ideological sphere, the Jan Sangh
tried to promote its communal agenda via textbooks and recruitment to the official media, educational institutions and the police. The Janata Party remained a coalition of different parties and groups and was a victim of factionalism, manipulation and personal ambitions of its leaders. The different constituents were too disparate historically, ideologically and programmatically; bound only by an anti-Indira Gandhi sentiment and the desire for power. Jan Sangh, its best organized and dominant component with ninety MPs, was communal and populist with umbilical ties to RSS which provided it cadres and ideology and which was not willing to let it be incorporated in or integrated with other parties. Congress (O) was secular but conservative and basically Congress in mentality. BLD was secular, but a strictly rich-peasant party with no all-India or developmental vision. The Socialists were largely ideologyless and rootless except in Bihar.

In the meanwhile, the Congress witnessed both a split and a revival. Feeling that Indira Gandhi was not only a spent force but, much worse, a serious political liability, a large number of established Congress leaders, led by Y.B. Chavan and Brahmanand Reddy turned against her. She, in turn, split the party in January 1978, with her wing being known as Congress (I) (for Indira) and the other later, as Congress (U) (for Devraj Urs).

Thereafter, Indira Gandhi’s political fortunes began to revive and in the February 1978 elections to state assemblies Congress (I) defeated both Janata and the rival Congress in Karnataka and Andhra. There were two reasons for this revival. One was the Janata government’s effort to wreak vengeance on Indira Gandhi and punish her for the happenings of the Emergency. Several Commissions of Enquiry—the most famous being the Shah Commission—were appointed to investigate and pinpoint the malpractices, excesses, abuses and atrocities commited by Indira Gandhi and the officials during the Emergency. In 1979, special courts were set up to try her for alleged criminal acts during the Emergency. The common people, on the other hand, began to increasingly view Indira Gandhi’s persecution not as justice but as revenge and vendetta and an effort to disgrace her. They felt she had already been punished enough by being voted out of power. Moreover, deep down, the rural and urban poor, Harijans, minorities and women still considered Indira Gandhi as their saviour, their Indira
Amma
or Mother Indira.

However, the government remained ignorant of Indira Gandhi’s growing popularity, thanks to the bias of the Press against her. A dramatic demonstration of her growing popularity came when she won a parliament seat with a large margin from the Chikamagalur constituency in Karnataka in November 1978. Ironically, soon after, on 19 December, Janata used its majority to expel her from the parliament for breach of privilege and
contempt of the House on a minor charge and committed her to jail for a week.

The factional struggle in the Janata government and the party took an acute form in the middle of 1979. Charan Singh, the home minister, had been forced to resign from the Cabinet on 30 June 1978, and, was then, brought back as finance minister in January 1979. He broke up the party and the government in July with the help of the Socialists, who walked out of the party and the government on the refusal of the Jan Sangh members to give up their dual membership of Janata Party and RSS. Having been reduced to a minority, Morarji Desai’s government resigned on 15 July. A week later, Charan Singh formed the government in alliance with the Chavan-wing of the Congress (U) and some of the Socialists and with the outside support of Cong (I) and CPI. But he never got to face the parliament as, on 20 August, a day before the confidence vote, Indira Gandhi withdrew her support after Charan Singh rejected her demand for the scrapping of special courts set up to prosecute her. On Charan Singh’s advice, the Presidet dissolved the Lok Sabha and announced mid-term elections.

The elections, held in January 1980, were fought primarily between Cong (I), Cong (U), Lok Dal, the new party floated by Charan Singh and Socialists, and Janata, now consisting primarily of Jan Sangh and a handful of old Congressmen such as Jagjivan Ram and Chandra Shekhar, CPM and CPI were not in the picture except in West Bengal and Kerala. Having been disenchanted with Janata’s non-governance, lack of vision and incessant mutual quarrels, the people once again turned to Congress and Indira Gandhi, perceiving her Congress to be the real Congress.

The Janata Party’s main appeal consisted of warnings against the threat to democracy and civil liberties if Indira Gandhi came back to power. Charan Singh talked of ‘peasant raj’. Indira Gandhi concentrated on Janata’s non-governance, asked the people to vote for ‘a government that works.’

The people, once again cutting across caste, religion and region as in 1971 and 1977, gave a massive mandate to Cong (I), which secured 353 out of 529 seats, that is a two-thirds majority. Lok Dal with 41, Janata with 31 and Cong (U) with 13 lagged far behind. CPM and CPI alone withstood the Congress tide and won 36 and 11 seats respectively.

After the elections, Janata Party split once again, with the old Jan Sangh leaders leaving it to form the Bharatiya Janata Party at the end of 1980 and Jagjivan Ram joining Cong (U).

After having been out of office for thirty-four months, Indira Gandhi was once again the prime minister and Congress was restored to its old position as the dominant party. Following the wrong precedent set up by Janata government in 1977, Congress government dissolved the nine state
assemblies in the opposition-ruled states. In the assembly elections, subsequently held in June, Congress swept the polls except in Tamil Nadu. It now ruled fifteen of the twenty-two states.

Though once again the prime minister and the only Indian leader with a national appeal, Indira Gandhi was no longer the same person she was from 1969 to 1977. She no longer had a firm grasp over politics and administration. Despite enjoying unchallenged power, she dithered in taking significant new policy initiatives or dealing effectively with a number of disturbing problems. She did, however, still manage some success in the fields of economic and foreign policy. But, on the whole, there was a lack of direction and a sense of drift, which led to a feeling among the people that not much was being achieved. The Emergency and the Janata years had left their mark on her. She was suspicious of people around her and trusted none but her son, Sanjay. Her earlier energy, decisiveness and determination were replaced by ‘an approach of hesitation and caution’. As time passed she showed signs of being a tired person.