07-28-2005, 02:21 AM
<!--emo&:tv--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tv_feliz.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tv_feliz.gif' /><!--endemo--> <b>Ruled by the nominee </b>
The remote control is more commonplace in our democracy than we admit
T. V. R. SHENOY
Posted online: Thursday, July 28, 2005 at 0034 hours IST
When Vijayalakshmi Pandit arrived in August 1947 to take up her post as Indiaâs first ambassador in Moscow, the Soviet Foreign Ministry told her first secretary that there was a mistake in her credentials; the letter had been addressed to Marshal Stalin rather than the ââChairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Sovietââ. (For anyone who is interested, this was someone called Shverin, an apparatchik who barely rates a footnote today.) The point is that Stalin didnât care a toss who held the offices of government as long as the reins of power were actually in his fist.
Pick up a civics text-book, and it tells you that the Indian republic enjoys the parliamentary form of government, occasionally also called the Westminster model. This is a lie. It is not the Palace of Westminster which is the role model for governance in 21st century India but another court altogether â the Kremlin.
The difference is not subtle. The men and women who gather in the chamber of the Commons in the Palace of Westminster have been directly elected by the British people. But how the masters of the Kremlin conquer the Russian fortress is a secret known only to themselves over the centuries. Whether tsar or commissar, the masses of Russia never had any say in the matter. (And I am not so sure that all that much has changed even in the Yeltsin-Putin era.)
The cornerstone of the Kremlin model is that the party is more important than the popularly elected representatives. Who expected Khrushchevâs rise to power soon after Stalinâs death? Or that a Chernenko would serve an interregnum between Andropov and Gorbachev? Certainly not the people of Russia!
True power in the Soviet Union lay with the general-secretary of the CPSU, not with the formal head of state or government. For a large portion of his career, Stalin never bothered to take up the post of president or prime minister. You can trace the decline of the Soviet Union by the titles assumed by the Supreme Leaders; Stalin didnât care, Khrushchev was premier during his years in power, and the last ones, from Brezhnev to Gorbachev, insisted on being full-blown heads of state.
Our home-grown Communists may be the last in the world to share Stalinâs mild contempt for the fripperies of government office. When the party is more important than the elected representatives why would any ambitious Marxist dirty his hands by begging for votes? Thus it is that Alimuddin Street in Kolkata carries more punch than Writersâ Building and that the AKG Centre is far more important than the puppet (assuming there is one) in the Thiruvananthapuram Secretariat.
Unhappily, the Congress and other parties are following the same undemocratic path. Who would deny that 10 Janpath ranks far higher for the average Congressman than does 7, Race Course Road? And how many Lok Sabha MPs were involved in choosing either H.D. Deve Gowda or I.K. Gujral as prime minister? Certainly not Gujral himself, who admitted that he was so far out of the loop that he was taking an afternoon nap when the United Frontâs inner group nominated him! (If memory serves me, the only Lok Sabha representatives in the cabal that anointed both men were P. Chidambaram and Mulayam Singh Yadav.) Proving that the disease is contagious, the popular perception is that Keshav Kunj in Nagpur is starting to tower over Asoka Road in Delhi. In this at least, the BJP is a party with no difference!
I couldnât care less about the internal dynamics of the Congress, the BJP, or the Marxists. How they choose to conduct their internal affairs is really nobody elseâs business (except that of the Election Commission in certain instances). But as a citizen of the âworldâs largest democracyâ I am certainly worried that I seem to have no say in choosing my prime minister or my president. The last General Election was supposed to be a contest where Indians were invited to choose between Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Sonia Gandhi, so where did Dr Manmohan Singh come in?
No, I have no axe to grind against our current prime minister. He is an honest man and an efficient administrator. But, and this is what sticks in the craw, he was not sent to Race Course Road with a popular mandate. He was certainly not chosen by the elected MPs either, as Doordarshanâs cameras made amply clear by showing us the scenes when Sonia Gandhi nominated him. Whether prime minister or chief minister, the man in office is chosen by the party High Command rather than the voters.
When Britons went to the polls in May they knew they were choosing between Tony Blair and the Conservative nominee, Michael Howard. The voters also knew that Gordon Brown might replace Blair in the life of this Commons. The Americans knew they could send either Bush or Kerry to the White House last November, and they also know who stood by in the wings should either man be incapacitated in office. Which voter in India has such a luxury?
We sniggered when Bal Thackeray spoke of possessing the âremote controlâ when Manohar Joshi became chief minister of Maharashtra in 1995. The Shiv Sena chief was just being less hypocritical about the situation than his colleagues. Rule by progeny and <!--emo&:furious--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/furious.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='furious.gif' /><!--endemo--> rule by nominee are the twin banes of Indian politics â and, of the two, the second is the greater threat to democracy.
The remote control is more commonplace in our democracy than we admit
T. V. R. SHENOY
Posted online: Thursday, July 28, 2005 at 0034 hours IST
When Vijayalakshmi Pandit arrived in August 1947 to take up her post as Indiaâs first ambassador in Moscow, the Soviet Foreign Ministry told her first secretary that there was a mistake in her credentials; the letter had been addressed to Marshal Stalin rather than the ââChairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Sovietââ. (For anyone who is interested, this was someone called Shverin, an apparatchik who barely rates a footnote today.) The point is that Stalin didnât care a toss who held the offices of government as long as the reins of power were actually in his fist.
Pick up a civics text-book, and it tells you that the Indian republic enjoys the parliamentary form of government, occasionally also called the Westminster model. This is a lie. It is not the Palace of Westminster which is the role model for governance in 21st century India but another court altogether â the Kremlin.
The difference is not subtle. The men and women who gather in the chamber of the Commons in the Palace of Westminster have been directly elected by the British people. But how the masters of the Kremlin conquer the Russian fortress is a secret known only to themselves over the centuries. Whether tsar or commissar, the masses of Russia never had any say in the matter. (And I am not so sure that all that much has changed even in the Yeltsin-Putin era.)
The cornerstone of the Kremlin model is that the party is more important than the popularly elected representatives. Who expected Khrushchevâs rise to power soon after Stalinâs death? Or that a Chernenko would serve an interregnum between Andropov and Gorbachev? Certainly not the people of Russia!
True power in the Soviet Union lay with the general-secretary of the CPSU, not with the formal head of state or government. For a large portion of his career, Stalin never bothered to take up the post of president or prime minister. You can trace the decline of the Soviet Union by the titles assumed by the Supreme Leaders; Stalin didnât care, Khrushchev was premier during his years in power, and the last ones, from Brezhnev to Gorbachev, insisted on being full-blown heads of state.
Our home-grown Communists may be the last in the world to share Stalinâs mild contempt for the fripperies of government office. When the party is more important than the elected representatives why would any ambitious Marxist dirty his hands by begging for votes? Thus it is that Alimuddin Street in Kolkata carries more punch than Writersâ Building and that the AKG Centre is far more important than the puppet (assuming there is one) in the Thiruvananthapuram Secretariat.
Unhappily, the Congress and other parties are following the same undemocratic path. Who would deny that 10 Janpath ranks far higher for the average Congressman than does 7, Race Course Road? And how many Lok Sabha MPs were involved in choosing either H.D. Deve Gowda or I.K. Gujral as prime minister? Certainly not Gujral himself, who admitted that he was so far out of the loop that he was taking an afternoon nap when the United Frontâs inner group nominated him! (If memory serves me, the only Lok Sabha representatives in the cabal that anointed both men were P. Chidambaram and Mulayam Singh Yadav.) Proving that the disease is contagious, the popular perception is that Keshav Kunj in Nagpur is starting to tower over Asoka Road in Delhi. In this at least, the BJP is a party with no difference!
I couldnât care less about the internal dynamics of the Congress, the BJP, or the Marxists. How they choose to conduct their internal affairs is really nobody elseâs business (except that of the Election Commission in certain instances). But as a citizen of the âworldâs largest democracyâ I am certainly worried that I seem to have no say in choosing my prime minister or my president. The last General Election was supposed to be a contest where Indians were invited to choose between Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Sonia Gandhi, so where did Dr Manmohan Singh come in?
No, I have no axe to grind against our current prime minister. He is an honest man and an efficient administrator. But, and this is what sticks in the craw, he was not sent to Race Course Road with a popular mandate. He was certainly not chosen by the elected MPs either, as Doordarshanâs cameras made amply clear by showing us the scenes when Sonia Gandhi nominated him. Whether prime minister or chief minister, the man in office is chosen by the party High Command rather than the voters.
When Britons went to the polls in May they knew they were choosing between Tony Blair and the Conservative nominee, Michael Howard. The voters also knew that Gordon Brown might replace Blair in the life of this Commons. The Americans knew they could send either Bush or Kerry to the White House last November, and they also know who stood by in the wings should either man be incapacitated in office. Which voter in India has such a luxury?
We sniggered when Bal Thackeray spoke of possessing the âremote controlâ when Manohar Joshi became chief minister of Maharashtra in 1995. The Shiv Sena chief was just being less hypocritical about the situation than his colleagues. Rule by progeny and <!--emo&:furious--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/furious.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='furious.gif' /><!--endemo--> rule by nominee are the twin banes of Indian politics â and, of the two, the second is the greater threat to democracy.