Commentary/Dilip Thakore

The decline and fall of Narasimha Rao

And he may well be bemoaning his fate in a common prison charged with a plethora of criminal acts of omission and commission.

Rao's fall from grace and public esteem is the most precipitous and spectacular in the history of post-Independence democratic India. During the five years when he was plucked from relative political obscurity in the aftermath of the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi, he quickly attained the meridian of his glory and now he hastens towards an ignominious setting.

Almost in a flash, his public profile has been transformed from that of a sagacious Chanakya-like statesman into that of a petulant old man, desperately clinging to the floundering Congress party for his own survival.

Behind Narasimha Rao's Lucifer-like fall from grace and public favour is a latter-day morality tale which incumbent and aspiring politicians, political scientists as well as bureaucrats and others holding offices of profit under the state would do well to heed.

Yet to understand the causes of the dramatic decline and imminent fall of Narasimha Rao, it is necessary to draw upon the so-called soft sciences of psychology and sociology.

In retrospect, Rao's decline can be traced right back to his roots in his ancestral village of Nandayal in Andhra Pradesh. Several decades ago a book, Indian Ink, written by an Englishman (whose name I forget), recounted the causal petty corruption which is ingrained in rural India. The book earned the opprobrium of educated Indians for being exaggerated. Yet on further reflection, it was an accurate depiction of the open, uninterrupted and continuous petty corruption practiced by petty officials at the grassroots.

Even to this day the extraction of illegal payments for the discharge of official duties is the widely accepted norm in the nation's 700,000 villages and hamlets.

Unfortunately after Independence, when the continuing migration from country to town began, this persistent social virus was transported into urban India.

Narasimha Rao was part of the rural-urban transmigration. In the light of subsequent events of recent vintage it is impossible to believe that he was not influenced in his formative years by soft societal attitudes towards petty corruption.

From Nandayal, Rao migrated to Hyderabad where he pursued his higher education and like all idealistic young men of his generation was inspired by the call of Mahatma Gandhi to join the freedom struggle against the British rule. This brought Rao into the Congress party and more pertinently into Congress-style politics which has ultimately proved to be his nemesis.

Mahatma Gandhi had the prescience to foresee that given their prolonged exposure to petty corruption at the grassroots level, even the idealistic young men and women flocking under the Congress banner were likely to be corrupted by political power.

Hence his advice to the leaders of the Congress to dissolve the party after Independence and to transform it into a social service organisation. Not surprisingly there were few takers for this proposal.

It is tempting to speculate as to what would have been the character of the nation had Gandhi not made the mistake of anointing the patrician Jawaharlal Nehru as the nation's first prime minister, and had the party favourite, the right-wing Sardar Patel, assumed office as prime minister.

In retrospect it is now fairly obvious that post-Independence India would have realised its economic potential to a greater degree. Instead of developing and building upon the entrepreneurial spirit of the newly Independent nation's business calls, with his patrician disdain for money and businessmen Nehru set about the impossible task of restructuring and re-engineering the Indian economy.

And while attempting to re-engineer the India economy with the objective of creating a "socialistic pattern of society" in post-Independence India, he unwillingly let loose the corruption virus which has multiplied with geometric intensity and has sapped the nation of its vitality.

There can be no doubt that in his long career as a Congress politician at the state and central levels Narasimha Rao absorbed the command economy culture of casual, routine corruption defined as the extraction of illegal payment for the discharge of official duties.

Preoccupied with the objective of ensuring that the then recently promoted public-sector enterprises attained the commanding heights of the economy, the Nehru administration had little time to formulate rational electoral legislation which would facilitate the flow of clean money into the coffers of political parties.

As a consequence, major and minor politicians were given license to strike deals and collect campaign funds for political parties, a proportion of which it is safe to conclude went into the collectors' private hoards to finance the extravagant lifestyles to which the nation's politicians have become accustomed.

Perhaps because of the influence of Soviet-style communism, the Indian intelligentsia and the population in general suffers a collective blind spot vis-a-vis the absurdly extravagant lifestyles of the nation's politicians.

There is a curious reluctance to question the source of funds which finance frequent foreign jaunts, extra-territorial health care and frequent - and expensive - air travel and five-star hotel loading within the country. Little wonder politicians across the political spectrum are brazenly living beyond their declared sources of income.

Looking back, it is now quite obvious that having become acclimatised to the murky waters of the socialist command economy which endows politicians, bureaucrats and even petty clerks with enormous discretionary powers of clearance and negation, coupled with indulgent attitudes towards corruption within the intelligentsia, Narasimha Rao absorbed the Congress culture of casual corruption and real fixing for a price.

Unfortunately for him extraneous, unforeseen developments such as the collapse of the communist command economy ideology the world over, the sudden overdue awakening of the judiciary and the intelligentsia coalesced to mark him as the sacrificial lamb in the ongoing ritual of cleansing public institutions.

Though an individual of considerable learning endowed with the rare virtues of patience, tact and an open mind has been made the sacrificial lamb at the alter of public morality, it is eminently in the national interest that this cleansing ritual is pursued to its logical conclusion.

It will serve to demonstrate the primacy of the rule of law to the political class and the largely illiterate population within a society in which anarchic impulses are straining the national fabric to breaking point.

It would be only human to experience a sense of loss tinged with a certain sadness that Rao, who during his five tumultuous years as prime minister of the nation displayed great sagacity and courage in leading the nation out of the wilderness of state driven socialism, should in his twilight years come to such a sorry end.

Yet the manner of his going is likely to reaffirm the rule of law and strengthen the institutions of orderly governance which have been ravaged in the three decades since the death of Lal Bahadur Shastri.

Now Rao has a unique opportunity to secure his position of honour in Indian history by freely confessing his sins, accepting the verdict of the law and making an honourable exit from public life and discourse.

Dilip Thakore is the founder-editor of Business India and Business World and former eidtor of Debonair.