Opinion Erring on the side of good sense

In 1985,Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi signed an “accord” with Sant Longowal. This accord was signed by Rajiv Gandhi with a person who was not operating in any official capacity. Sant Longowal was not a chief minister or for that matter any minister. And Rajiv,who wanted to bring peace to Punjab,did not allow formal technicalities like prior parliamentary approval or approval from a standing committee to get in his way. If I remember right,Rajiv Gandhi went ahead with the agreement without any approval from his cabinet even though they undoubtedly would have given him,and did give him,ex-post-facto approval.

And it was not in Punjab alone. Rajiv signed another “accord” with the All Assam Students Union,which represented no government and which was not even a political party. The AASU could well be described as a “civil society movement” much like Anna Hazare’s. No one accused Rajiv Gandhi of violating constitutional norms,undermining Parliament’s integrity or giving inappropriate recognition to unelected members of self-styled civil society. Incidentally,in the Assam accord,Rajiv Gandhi agreed to specific legislative commitments. If Rajiv Gandhi did it,surely at least in the Congress party’s view,such actions must be quite in order. Why would you then hesitate in signing an “accord” with Hazare and his group?

Incidentally,the founder of the modern version of your party,Indira Gandhi,signed an “accord” with Sheikh Abdullah at a time when the latter had no official position and in fact,when he might have had sedition charges pending against him! Following in Indira Gandhi’s footsteps is something that even the hardest hardliners in your party cannot fault you for.

If none of these political initiatives,which involved implicit and even explicit official dealings with unelected,unofficial civil society actors and which involved “truncation of due parliamentary process” succeeded in undermining our Constitution or our Parliament,then why did you think reaching out to the Hazare group and signing an “accord” with them,would somehow have dealt a body-blow to our Constitution and its institutions?

Talking of constitutional propriety and tradition,President Zail Singh violated precedent and tradition when he swore in Rajiv Gandhi as prime minister after Indira’s death. At that time Rajiv Gandhi was not a minister. No meeting of parliamentarians or of the Congress parliamentary party was held. So there was no official,correct,constitutional way of stating that,in fact,Rajiv Gandhi represented the majority. If constitutional precedent were to be followed,President Zail Singh should have sworn in the senior-most cabinet minister as the PM (this is what Dr Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan did when Nehru,and later,Shastri died. He swore in Gulzarilal Nanda.) President Zail Singh followed his instincts for realpolitik and I have not heard too many people quibbling about his action. If “respect for parliamentary procedures” could have been bypassed when Rajiv Gandhi was made prime minister,why could you not have bypassed it now by withdrawing one bill from a standing committee and introducing another bill in Parliament? Realpolitik considerations,common sense,wisdom and sagacity have in the past overruled technicalities.

I have been wondering for some time why the Hazare movement and the large crowds distrust the government and were convinced that,if given an “out”,the government would once again postpone a proper Lokpal bill or come up with a toothless one. Why this so-called “trust deficit”? And then I thought of Telangana and your erstwhile allies,the TRS. Chandrababu Naidu’s defeat was,in substantial measure,due to the sweep in Telangana following the Congress-TRS alliance and a virtual promise of a Telangana state. TRS leader Chandrasekhar Rao joined UPA 1 without the usual demands of an ATM ministry or even a piggybank ministry. Five years of UPA 1 went by and the TRS felt that they had been “tricked”. During UPA 2,the same Chandrasekhar Rao went on a fast. The home minister of India publicly announced that a bill to create a separate Telangana state would be introduced in Parliament “immediately”. Months,years,later after yet another committee report and more discussions,the TRS can claim to have been “tricked” once again by the government’s tactic of making promises,buying time and then backing away. The English expression,I believe,is “bait and switch”.

No wonder Anna Hazare was reluctant to give up his fast and his lieutenants were wary of stopping the agitation based on mere “assurances”,however solemn or well-meant they may have been on your part.

Your party and your government can find enough precedents in the actions of your forebears that can help you take imaginative political steps without hiding behind the smokescreen of constitutional and parliamentary procedures.

The writer is an entrepreneur