Essay - Not With A Bang But A Whimper

All political careers end in failure.”

-        -  Anon

Politics is a tricky business with far too many variables, far too many divergent agendas, far too many disparate interests for any one person to successfully prevail in perpetuity. The need for consensus and compromise mean that whatever achievements or victories gained are at best, limited, and often, short-lived.

There’s also the fact that the particular political environment and circumstances that nurtures a politician’s career can change with frightening speed. Yesterday’s success can become outmoded very quickly…

An example of the above would be the late Baroness Margaret Thatcher who was generally portrayed as an unbending dominatrix who always met with success in getting her way. This was summed up by the famous quote – “the lady’s not for turning”. Moderate Tories in her party were accused of equivocation and derided as “wets”.

In practice, as Prime Minister, Lady Thatcher turned quite often on diverse political issues; it’s just these climb-downs and U-turns were never publicized. Her eventual (and eminently avoidable) political downfall over the issue of the infamous poll tax was caused precisely by her refusal to brook any compromise or listen to the counsel of her remaining supporters. By then “Thatcherism” had long run out of steam, with the most prominent Thatcher-ites having voluntarily abandoned ship or fallen by the wayside - well before the lady’s eventual ouster.

To some extent, this was an experience also shared by Mrs. Thatcher’s ideological soul mate Ronald Reagan. Despite being semi-deified by the American Republican Party as an unassailable conservative icon, President Reagan had, by the end of his second term, imperceptibly retreated from the declared Reaganite agenda. The political team he began his presidency with, were mostly gone by then too.

Supply-side “Reaganomics” had been exposed as a hollow sham and was by then widely denigrated as “Voodoo Economics” by establishment economists, no less. The deregulation of the early Reagan years indirectly encouraged fraud, malpractices and various insider trading scandals that rocked Wall Street. This move was subsequently reversed by a gradual return to regulation, albeit unpublicized.

From a hard right stance that demonized the former USSR as an “Evil Empire”, Reagan moved towards talks with Mikhail Gorbachev and Strategic Arms Limitation Talks that led to the eventual winding down of the Cold War. This process was accelerated by the eventual collapse of the Soviet Union, due to that entity’s inherent systemic weaknesses. While Reagan has been credited with “victory” in the contest with the rival superpower, most political scientists, economists and historians are of the view, that at best, his policies nudged the already bankrupt Soviet Union closer to its end by forcing it in to a financially ruinous arms race.

The arms race inaugurated by President Reagan had consequences for the US economy too. His unprecedented trillion dollar defense budget is reckoned to be among the major root causes of the present US deficit. Defense spending in the United States has seen an ongoing rationalization since the Reagan high, and one that looks all set to continue.

The conservative ideology, that Ronald Reagan entered office with, is no longer as central to US domestic politics as it once was. Despite today’s alt right-dominated Republican Party warning of an apocalyptic drift towards European-style socialism, widespread public support for a return to Reagan-style conservatism seems highly unlikely. The so-called “Tea Party” hailed in some right-wing quarters as a conservative resurgence, has since proved to be an incoherent coalition of fringe interests, already fragmented, marginalized - and well on its way towards political irrelevance.

Closer to home, it could be argued that Mrs. Indira Gandhi’s later political career was a prolonged exercise in deferred failure. Post the high of military victory over Pakistan in 1971, India’s very own Iron Lady made a series of significant political blunders – the Emergency of 1975-77, the farcical elections in Assam that led to massacres in Nellie, interference in Sri Lanka’s civil conflict, mishandling of extremism in Punjab that resulted in Operation Blue Star; the assault on the Golden Temple, Amritsar. The last named misstep directly caused Mrs. Gandhi’s demise, when she was assassinated by her Sikh bodyguards outraged over this indignity offered to their religion’s most central shrine.

A recently-released study by the American state department has highlighted the widespread culture of institutionalized corruption and sycophancy fostered under Mrs. Gandhi. While this analysis was probably motivated by the open animus towards her by the then-President Richard Nixon, it still rings uncomfortably true. Mrs. Gandhi consistently displayed a certain low cunning in successfully manipulating both her political opponents and allies. She shored up her own personality cult within the Congress Party at the cost of eroding its internal democracy. The other institutions of democratic India suffered similarly under her.

Foreign political analysts have not been so inhibited as their Indian counterparts in assessing Mrs. Gandhi’s bitter legacy; the economic stagnation that made a mockery of slogans such as “Garibi Hatao” and the communal riots that were a regular feature of urban India during her long tenure. The excuse for all this most often trotted out by the lady and her many sycophants (memorably compared to eunuchs) was the machinations of a “foreign hand”. Even assuming a foreign hand of malevolent intent actually existed, did this really absolve her administration from any responsibility for countering the nefarious designs of this chimera – or shielding the Indian nation from its deleterious effects?

Fantasies about conspiracies to destabilize India were a favorite of the chattering classes of the time. Yet despite the best efforts of the “foreign hand”, the country has so far stubbornly refused to politically fragment in the Yugoslav manner. Secessionist movements in the North-East and Punjab have withered away. Even insurgency in Kashmir (despite enthusiastic Pakistani support) appears to be in a stagnant phase at present. If there really was a foreign hand at work, it doesn’t seem to have been very effective – or successful.

P V Narasimha Rao, one of India’s later Prime Ministers after Mrs Gandhi, was personally responsible for the dismantling of the “License Raj” and is often referred to as “the father of Indian economic reforms”. Rao (1921-2004) was also considered to be a modern-day Chanakya for his ability to successfully steer the tough economic policies and political legislation needed to rescue an almost bankrupt nation from financial collapse. And all this when he headed a minority government in parliament…

Narasimha Rao has been termed as the best Prime Minister of India after Lal Bahadur Shastri, for crafting India's post-Cold War diplomacy and economic reforms. The origins of India’s ballistic missile program and the “Look East” initiative that brought India closer to the ASEAN nations can also be credited to Rao. During his tenure Sikh separatists in the Punjab were defeated and insurgency in Kashmir controlled. His handling of the 1993 Bombay blasts and the Latur earthquake were also widely praised.

Despite his many successes in the spheres of foreign policy, national security and crisis management, PV Narasimha Rao eventually foundered on his pusillanimous handling of the demolition of the Babri Masjid. This was to prove his ultimate undoing. Finally, the Congress Party headed by Rao was badly defeated in the 1996 elections and he had to step down as Prime Minister.

Today, according to historian Ramachandra Guha, Rao has become “the great unmentionable” in the Congress Party -  “From the point of view of the present Congress leadership, Rao’s problem was not just that he was not a Nehru-Gandhi, it was also that as prime minister he did not genuflect enough to the Nehru-Gandhis.” 

The need to genuflect before the Nehru-Gandhis may not be necessary any longer. In keeping with the fate of many a political dynasty before them, they appear to have already embarked on a slow decline towards political irrelevance, and eventually, terminal failure.