TO NOBODY’S surprise, the media has played up Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s claim, during his recent interaction with editors, that his government has functioned with “greater cohesion than any other Cabinet, including those of Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi”. With utmost respect one must submit that there may be a grain of truth in this magnum of exaggeration, but the good doctor is comparing the incomparable. The Cabinets of Nehru and Indira Gandhi were as different from what exists today or has existed at any other time after father and daughter, as cheese and chalk, to reverse the aphorism for obvious reasons.
Moreover, while the reference to the “almost daily” exchange of letters between Nehru and Sardar Patel is relevant, it is not in the same class as the petty and public bickering, sometimes bordering on personal attacks, among today’s Cabinet colleagues. Current exch­anges of compliments are seldom secret or private. The media never invents them though it may embellish them. In sharp contrast, not a word of the letters exchanged betw­e­en Nehru and Patel — including the Sardar’s fa­mous one on China, sent only five weeks before his death — was ever le­aked. Their historic correspondence — usually on high policy though minor administrative issues also crept in — became public long afterwards.
Both Nehru and Patel were leaders of the freedom movement of titanic stature. In independent India’s first Cabinet, full of talented personalities, they dwarfed all others. Furthermore, Patel was the only “near-equal” that Nehru ever had. Indeed, it is no exaggeration to say that for over three years after the tryst with destiny, India was ruled by these two men. (There is again a two-person rule in the country but of an entirely different kind; in special circumstances, power lies, since 2004, in the hands of the Congress president, not those of the head of government.)
No two men could have been more unlike in outlook and basic approach than Nehru and Patel. But however acute their differences or however br­u­ised their personal feelings, neither violated the discipline and decorum that underpin the Cabinet’s collective resp­ons­i­b­­ility. At one time each had insisted that he be allowed to resign so that the other could run the co­u­ntry; neither wanted to push the other out — a strange reversal this of the pehle aap (you first) syndrome.
In April 1950, Nehru and his Pakistani counterpart Liaqat Ali Khan, with great difficulty sig­ned a pact to avert a war between the two countries over the atrocities on the minority community in East Pakistan, the consequent exodus from there, and the inev­itable reaction in eastern India. There was strong opposition to it even wi­thin the Congress, especially in West Bengal. That is when Patel, who had earlier advocated “mi­litary occupation” of East Pakistan, rose to his full height. After taking care of critics among party MPs, he flew to Ca­l­­cutta, calmed Bengali op­­­inion and secured support from even those qu­a­rters that had refused to listen to the Prime Minister. “Vallabhbhai”, wrote Nehru to C. Raja­g­o­pala­ch­ari, “has been a br­ick during these days”. Compared to those lofty he­i­g­h­ts the current political la­­ndscape is distressingly flat.
One more point about the Nehru Cabinet is in order. Beginning with V.P. Singh to Atal Behari Vajpayee to Dr Singh, successive Prime Ministers have spoken of being hemmed in by “compulsions of coalition politics”. There has been no coalition as rainbow-like as the one Nehru formed on August 15, 1947, though he had overwhelming majority in the Constituent Assembly that also doubled as provisional parliament. R.K. Shanmukham Chetty, who had nothing to do with the Congress or the freedom movement, was finance minister. Defence was with Baldev Singh, an Akali. B.R. Ambedkar, the tallest harijan leader opposed to the Congress, was law minister and chairman of the committee that drafted the Constitution. The most startling of all was the inclusion of Shyama Prasad Mookerjee, the founder of the Jan Sangh (forerunner of the Bharatiya Janata Party). Except for Chetty who was accused of favourtism, some other non-Congress ministers also resigned but always on policy issues — Moo­kerjee because he was opposed to the Nehru-Li­aqat Pact, and Ambedkar because the Hindu Code Bill was not being pushed through strongly enough. Others stayed. At no time, however, was there anything like Mamata Banerjee’s tantrums, Azhagiri’s abs­e­nteeism, Sharad Pawar’s preoccupation with international cricket rather than his portfolio or ironclad security for alleged perpetrators of the 2G mega scam.
Indira Gandhi-Morarji Desai clashes cannot be compared to either the complex Nehru-Patel relationship or the present goings on. Desai never got over the feeling that the “syndicate” had “cheated” him of his due by “masterminding” Lal Bahadur Shastri’s succession to Nehru. He stood against Indira and lost heavily. His determinati­on to challenge her again after the 1967 general election was shot down by the party driven by its self-preservation instinct after the huge losses it suffered in the poll. It virtually directed Desai to become deputy Prime Minister in Indira’s Cabinet. The arrangement was phoney — what Dr Singh has said about that time is absolutely accurate — and inevi­tably broke do­wn. Desai lasted in Indira’s Cabinet only from March 1967 to July 1969. Needless to add that after 1971, Indira be­c­ame su­preme in the government and the party. Her grip on both was co­m­plete. No minister dar­ed to express any dissent even in private. During her second innings (1980-84) she ac­c­epted the “resignation” of an errant mi­n­ister that the poor fellow had never submitted. Th­e­re wasn’t a squeak from him.
It is noble of the Prime Minister to declare that he does not want his Cabinet ministers to “shut up”. He also wants Cong­r­ess MPs to be free to sp­e­ak out at appropriate pa­rty forums. But the tr­o­ub­le is that with the exception of the Congress Core Group that meets only be­h­ind closed doors, hardly any party forum, All-In­d­ia Congress Committee or Congress Parliamenta­ry Party, discusses policy matters or anything else. No wonder even senior partymen call the Union home minister “intellectually arrogant” and “wro­ng on policy” in front of TV cameras. Others take recourse to wrecking their own government’s bills on the floor of Parliament.