Home Alone

Now pause and reflect on how the reverse has happened in our country. Our stuttering reform process still leaves us with an Industry Ministry so powerful that even an incumbent as discredited as Karun- akaran in a government as lame-duck as Narasimha Rao8217;s in its last year could almost hold a corporation like Maruti to ransom. But our Home Ministers have become so inconsequential and their charge so systematically balkanised that what used to be the clear number two position in theCabinet has today lost all relevance.

It is possible now that L.K. Advani8217;s induction will 8212; and should 8212; reverse some of that. But it is important now to assess the damage this trivialisation of India8217;s premier political ministry has caused in a country so riven by internal violence and conflicts. Even more fascinating is to see how this process has accelerated in the last three decades. And why.

Until Mrs Gandhi, there was no doubt as to who the number two in the Cabinet was, and which ministry the second most important. Patel was a direct rival to Nehru and agreed to settle for the Home portfolio only because of Mahatma Gandhi8217;s persuasion. His three successors, Gobind Ballabh Pant, Lal Bahadur Shastri and Gulzari Lal Nanda too held the same pre-eminent position. In fact the last two officiated as Prime Minister on the incumbent8217;s death. That, possibly, is what made Mrs Gandhi rethink the whole equation. Her insecure phase, 1966-69, didn8217;t help.

Wary of a clear number two breathing down her neck,she was also pushed by Y.B. Chavan8217;s flip-flops between her and the Syndicate in 1969. Chavan managed to stay back on the winning side and keep his job. But she reduced much of his ministry8217;s clout by taking the Department of Personnel under her direct charge. Also gone with it was the CBI.

Thus began the downslide. The subsequent Home Ministers were all individually and politically weaker supplicants and the ministry lost clout with each one8217;s tenure. With the exception of Charan Singh, who was far too distracted by the urge for vengeance to focus on damage-control, all the other incumbents have been no better than potted plants. Probably of the bonsai variety.

Mrs Gandhi was so suspicious she wouldn8217;t even trust a sycophant like Brahmananda Reddy. So she created a new centre of power by appointing a minister of state who more or less reported directly to her. So Om Mehta controlled real power in the ministry as Reddy twiddled his thumbs.

Yogendra Makwana was a worthy successor in this tradition.Later, Mrs Gandhi chose as her Home Ministers people who could barely be taken seriously as politicians 8212; P.C. Sethi, Zail Singh and then Narasimha Rao, who was not even kept in the picture when Operation Bluestar was launched. At its peak, the Punjab crisis was handled by buccaneers like Arun Singh and Arun Nehru without so much as a reference to the Home Ministry.

Rajiv Gandhi institutionalised this decline by creating the position of the Minister of State for Internal Security for Arun Nehru. When he fell from favour, Chidambaram stepped in. Both rode roughshod over their minister though it is not as if Buta Singh, the quintessential Congress bonsai, was complaining too much. He didn8217;t even complain when the Thakkar Commission report was kept away from him by his own alleged deputy.

V.P. Singh only hastened this slide, first by choosing a weakling like Mufti Mohammed Sayeed and then giving George Fernandes charge of Kashmir. Chandra Shekhar then did the most logical thing by only appointing an MOSSubodh Kant Sahay and Narasimha Rao took his own revenge on history by having Rajesh Pilot constantly snap at quot;headmasterquot; S.B. Chavan8217;s heel. The United Front8217;s ineffectual Home Minister Indrajit Gupta did not have an Internal Security Minister. But that place was more or less taken by his workaholic Home Secretary, Padmanabhaiah.

Mere history, you might say. But a process rooted in Mrs Gandhi8217;s insecurities destroyed the institution of the Home Ministry. Over the years, besides Personnel and the CBI, Kashmir was formally taken out of the ministry whereas in the crucial years Punjab and the Northeast were handled directly by the PMO or the Cabinet Secretariat. The Home Ministry, therefore, was confined to transferring and posting paramilitary units, though cynical North Block officials would point out to you that in most operational situations these too work under the Army8217;s direct command. When newer paramilitary forces like the SPG and the NSG were raised, there was a mere pretense made of giving theHome Ministry a role.

The upshot, besides overcentralisation at the PMO, is a decline in the quality of governance. Successive Prime Ministers have preferred to function through trusted, extra-constitutional hatchet-men instead of the institution of the Home Ministry and compounded the disasters in the Northeast, Punjab and Ayodhya. It is true that the management of national security sometimes calls for original thinking. After all, Nehru kept Kashmir under the Foreign Ministry as it was initially seen as a purely bilateral matter.

Later, the Naga negotiations were handled by the Cabinet and Foreign Secretaries since the insurgency was basically seen to be foreign-sponsored. At the same time, when Nehru took a conscious decision in 1963 to plan for a front across the international border in Punjab in case of a future Pakistani incursion into Kashmir, he sent his Home Minister, Shastri, and not his Defence Minister to the HQ of the XI Corps in Jalandhar on a secret visit to finalise the plans with thegenerals.

Much has changed since then at the Home Ministry, and for the worse. But now, with Advani8217;s arrival, the status quo cannot continue. He will not be happy merely pushing routine files, and surely that couldn8217;t have been Vajpayee8217;s expectation when he chose him for this ministry. There is no reason, then, for the Home Ministry not to be in for some change. In fact, it is the only ministry that needs to revert to the past or, to be more precise, to the way it was three insecure decades ago.