WEAK CENTRAL LEADERSHIP IS HURTING INDIA, THE NATION It is often ignored that ever since 1990 our successive Central Governments coming to power have been progressively growing weaker. India still exists but a careful look reveals that the governance of Indian state is weakening due to unstable and ineffective Central Leadership. India lacks a committed charismatic National Leader that enjoys the love and respect of majority of Indians spread throughout the country; someone in whose abilities and integrity people have an explicit trust. In fact, there is hardly anyone at the centre who has risen above his state interest and has shown primary concern for the entire nation and its equitable development. Most of the central leaders with grass root support are state or community leaders and have little or no influence in the rest of the nation. State leaders serving at the centre do not seem to dare the risk of keeping away from their constituency since their political power is primarily derived out of the local influence. Most have not bothered to expand their political base that covers the entire nation. Net result of this is a weak central power and growing factional and regional politics further weakening it. The first crop of National Leaders, from amongst the freedom fighters that formed our first government had a national following not limited to their state or region or religion. People of India saw them as leaders with an unbiased interest in welfare, development and economic growth of India as a nation. The entire nation was their constituency. Rajiv Gandhi was forced into politics since the Gandhi Nehru Family was the only political family in whom party’s regional leaders and people at large could place their trust. The family had no regional identity and its members were Indians first and Indians last. In his early days because of his clean image and personal charm, almost entire nation rallied behind him in spite of his inexperience of active politics. After him we have not had Prime Ministers who have a national image, with the probable exception of Atal Behari Vajpayee. Unlike the Gandhi Nehru families, these “regional” Prime Ministers had their advisors and personal staff essentially coming from their parent state. Influence in the PMO was clearly biased towards their parent state. Rajiv Gandhi was new to politics but he was the last one to be equally near or far from all regions of India and consequently he always thought of India as a whole entity. He was the last secular leader accepted by India as leader with unbiased non-partisan interest at heart for every Indian. Biharis, Panjabis or people of any other state across India today find Mrs. Sonia Gandhi nearer than say Sharad Pawar or Karunanidhi in spite of not being an Indian by birth. Atal Behari Vajpayee could probably be the last who can claim the honour being a national leader. Unfortunately Rajiv or later Vajpayee proved to be too weak to provide bold leadership and focussed direction to build a strong central power. Both failed to discipline the administration and in fact got caught in crafty political traps laid by self-centred sycophants gathered around them. This lack of national leaders strengthening national parties with effective leadership and appealing plans for all inclusive national growth and prosperity has been weakening the nation. Centre’s political and administrative hold over various states is sharply reducing. Often Central policies are heavily biased towards some states depending on the ruling power equations. Weak central leadership has resulted in half-hearted, inequitable and personality influenced planning of national development projects and their poor implementation. Most of these projects are almost never completed in a time bound fashion and are invariably poorly executed and shabbily maintained. All this also ends up in huge cost overruns. One has to just see across the Himalayas to see what a strong central government with a focus on development can deliver to its people. China’s exquisite public infrastructure is a good example in terms of its quality, comprehensiveness in its planning, maintenance and speedy execution. Study will reveal that commonly quoted excuse of our democracy being a bottleneck is largely invalid. The proof of this lies in the fact that whenever the project leadership was strong, unbiased and non-corruptible, India too has done very well as in cases like Kokan Railway, NDDB, Delhi Metro or transformed cities of Thane, Surat and a few others. Our Parliament has over thousand elected members drawn from all over the country. Just a quarter of them even think of India as a nation when it comes to development, law and order and administration etc. The know little about the nation, its heritage and can’t even recite the national anthem. Majority of the balance are there just to get the best deal for their state even at the cost of the interest of the country as a whole. Quite a few are indeed there as a business opportunity to make money acting as liaison agents at a price. Central Government’s authority and power as a national government cannot be upheld with these opportunists. In early years of our freedom people loved their leaders, often compared them with parents and respected them. No one feared them but held them in a great esteem. That has changed. Electronic Media allowed our education deprived masses to get informed and have a chance to scrutinize their leaders. As result people today may fear the leaders like one would fear the evil gang-lords but in reality common man hates and distrusts them. Leaders may even admired by few for their cunning strategies to remain in power but primarily they regard them as corrupt and selfish opportunists. One can notice today that strong and influential state leaders growingly see no reason to follow their so called national party leaders in Delhi. Success of Gujarat CM in working as a loner has shaken up his party’s weak central leaders. Every Indian however really wishes for a strong national leader to be in control of the nation. Everyone wants someone who is committed to nation building, who can inculcate discipline and who is focussed on inclusive development benefitting all sections of the Indian society. However since no one is in sight who can give such leadership people are becoming clannish, looking for security from groups they trust. Weakness of the Centre is vividly highlighted by visible intolerance to migrants, disputes about state boundaries and sharing river waters and power resources by states etc. People openly talk of their state being burdened by the BIMARU states. Successive weak, unfocussed and timidly compromising Central Governments have achieved little except surrendering their power over the nation. State governments are getting powerful and guarding their constitutional rights more alertness. Time is not too far when states would start claiming greater autonomy like Jammu Kashmir. Today global commercial interests are taking advantage of this and targeting our governments with their accomplices amongst Indian professionals and World Bank favoured professionals in politics. We are made to believe that it is the private enterprise and not the government that can give efficient infrastructure. The fact is, government controlled development can in fact be exceptionally good and those seeking evidence have to just visit China. Problem in India is the lack of strong central power that can force discipline amongst the government servants. But our poorly managed central government finds this privatisation theory a convenient and profitable escape route from their responsibility to the people of India. They are willingly surrendering their right and responsibility to private enterprises. Indian private enterprises who gain benefits from this are mainly traders and businessmen with little domain knowledge in public services. They lack the technology & knowhow and this gives massive backdoor entry to multi-nationals to get into public services that are indeed a primary obligation of the national government to the people of India. Current escape route for both central and state governments in India from their responsibility to work for the people by providing essential services is to privatise these and wash their hands off. Public Private Partnership is another popular slogan. It turns out finally as private partnerships of public servants. It doesn’t therefore bother the current leadership that such development gets planned just to benefit a section of the society that can afford its use. Highways are built for private cars and commercial vehicles. But no one bothers or invests to create safe and clean roads for common citizens. This route will never give clean water to our rural folks or spread education amongst those lacking resources. Many buildings will be built but never any affordable ones for those are daily wage earners. Currently the central power is hijacked by the administrators. Political parties lack any well defined political principle and its leaders the charisma. Gentlemen administrators are trusted to be honest but have failed to earn confidence of people or give them a sense of safety. They appear weak and helpless without having a muscle to prevent unjust rule and giving a positive vision for growth. They appear to lack the authority. Country lacks the symbol of central power. The first manifestation of this is uncontrolled indiscipline amongst its own employees. Bureaucracy has cleverly structured itself to be unaccountable by preventing audit by the people. Blanket of State Secret Act is exploited to hide indiscipline, inaction, injustice and corruption everywhere. This disables the government to deliver any quality service to the society it represents. Another major outfall of the weak Central Governance is self-esteem of Indians. It can’t strengthen the dispirited self-confidence of a common citizen who has no national achievements to brag about or feel proud of. India’s fast increasing number of billionaires may please the elite but it does nothing to people’s self-esteem. During freedom movement, Indians came together as a nation to fight the foreign rule. Charisma and ideals of selfless leaders like Mahatma Gandhi enabled India to have that self-esteem. That national spirit has been eroding more and more speedily decade after decade of independence except momentarily after Bangla Desh liberalization. Let us remember that history is replete with instances showing that European nations who functioned under a strong central power grew fast both economically and industrially. These nations then used their power to support and secure the advancement of the society by ensuring that inconsiderate infringements of the regulations were severely penalised. The state enforced and socially desired self-discipline by the strong central power eventually becomes a habit through this process. It can be seen that such firmly grounded self-control becomes a fixed component of people’s lives over a period of time. Freedom of individual has to be seen in context of society’s rights guarded by a strong central power. Even recent developments in China shows that a strong central leadership with selfless agenda for developing and intrinsically strengthening their nation can record admirable development. Current success of China is not just its admirable and astonishing economic development but also the growing self-esteem of its people as reflected in their individual development and vividly seen in the manner Chinese individuals excel in sports, arts, engineering, science and technology. Average Chinese is today extremely proud of his own country and its achievements. People of India are indeed no less competent but the weak government with consequential poor governance fails to open gateways for personal development of its people. India today needs a strong and visibly powerful central government, but since coalition governments seem to be the order of the day and a sad reality, the time has come to perhaps re-look at strengthening our central government constitutional powers. India’s unique linguistic states structure might require some unique solutions to minimize regional clannish political parlaying. If a two-party system is not feasible in the Indian context, then a serious thought should be given to a three or four party system; or perhaps a system where states elect their MPs, but they are restricted to just two parties for forming the Central Govt. – the two largest national parties. Notwithstanding, how radical these ideas seem, the urgency with which we need a political solution will only become increasingly urgent. P.S.Deodhar June 8, 2008