[Reader-list] Sadanand Dhume: India's Gandhi God-Kings (Wall Street Journal)

[Patrice Riemens]

original to: http://bit.ly/bMF4zY
bwo Goanet

India's Gandhi God-Kings
Opaque family rule is no way to run a political party, let alone a major
economy and aspiring great power.

By SADANAND DHUME

To make sense of the latest storm in the tea cup of Indian politics, you
need to wrap your mind around a curious epithet: intellectual arrogance.
That, says Digvijay Singh, a senior leader of the ruling Congress Party,
is the problem with Home Minister P. Chidambaram, the man tasked with
perhaps the toughest job in Indian public life—keeping its 1.1 billion
citizens safe.

Mr. Singh's broadside against his party colleague, launched in an op-ed in
April and repeated Saturday in a television interview, comes against the
backdrop of a deepening insurgency by Maoist rebels in eastern and central
India that has claimed nearly 800 lives this year. By suggesting that Mr.
Chidambaram pays too much attention to security, and not enough to public
welfare, Mr. Singh has triggered a flurry of speculation about government
policy on what Prime Minister Manmohan Singh (no relation) has called the
country's "most serious security problem."

Has the home minister lost the confidence of his party's leadership? Will
the current law-and-order-led approach to the insurgency be replaced by a
"hearts and minds" alternative? Should the government view Maoists
primarily as rabid ideologues and brutal killers, or as gentle tribals
forced to take up arms to defend their way of life?

Officially, and incredibly, the Congress Party denies a rift between
Digvijay Singh and Mr. Chidambaram. And indeed no rational person, least
of all the home minister, denies that a successful anti-Maoist strategy
will wield the carrot of development as much as the stick of law
enforcement.

Nonetheless, the incident reveals a strange contradiction at the heart of
Indian democracy. Though the country holds regular elections and boasts a
free press, deciphering its politics can require the skills of a
Soviet-era Kremlinologist. The Indian equivalent of interpreting the
seating arrangement at a Soviet May Day parade: figuring out a
politician's closeness to Congress President Sonia Gandhi or her son,
General-Secretary Rahul Gandhi.

Exhibit A in this drama is Mr. Singh, a party general secretary and a
former chief minister of the Hindi-heartland state of Madhya Pradesh. One
day he chides the home minister on television and faults the government's
anti-Maoist strategy. The next day he publicly second guesses the
government account of a controversial 2008 police encounter with Islamist
terrorists in Delhi.

Instead of suspending Mr. Singh, or stripping him of responsibilities, the
party treats his outbursts as business as usual. The result is rampant
speculation that the Gandhis have given Mr. Singh their tacit approval.

If Congress were more like its counterparts in mature parliamentary
democracies—say Britain or Australia—it would not tolerate this public
confusion over vital matters of national security. But unlike the
Conservatives and Labour in Britain, or for that matter the Republicans
and Democrats in America, Congress is defined less by adherence to a
coherent ideology than by fealty to a single family.

The party may reject the Hindu-first philosophy of the BJP and the narrow
linguistic and caste-based agendas of smaller parties, but beyond that
it's utterly amorphous, a motley crew of economically savvy technocrats,
clapped-out socialists, family retainers and regional satraps. In this
hothouse of intrigue and sycophancy, careers can hinge on the ability to
change tack according to which way the Gandhis' views are seen to be
blowing.

Meanwhile, with their handpicked prime minister and his cabinet taking
care of day-to-day governance, the Gandhis themselves tend to float above
the fray in the manner of medieval god-kings, promoting a government
program here or an idealistic piece of legislation there. Rahul Gandhi is
associated with a program that guarantees the rural poor 100 days of paid
work every year. His mother has championed, among other things, quotas for
women in parliament and subsidized food for the poor.

Beyond this apparent sense of noblesse oblige toward the toiling masses,
the Gandhis are probably the most opaque major politicians in the
democratic world. They rarely speak to the media, and when they do it's
not to critics. Their views on the pace of economic liberalization, the
nature of the Maoist threat, or the roots of Islamist terrorism must be
gleaned from a scrap of information here or a stray rumor there, say a
book on counterinsurgency recommended by Mr. Gandhi to the prime minister,
or his mother's packing an influential advisory council with assorted
tax-and-spend do-gooders.

Most Indians haven't the faintest idea about whether the Gandhis see the
rise of China as more of a threat or an opportunity. Or whether they think
American influence in Asia is in India's interest or not. Or if, for them,
the trouble with India's economy is too much capitalism or too little
reform.

For the family, this opacity clearly has benefits. It keeps them above the
fray of petty politics. It allows them to exercise power without
responsibility. It gives them the flexibility to change political course
on a dime.

But smart politics doesn't always generate good policy. Fostering a
culture of opacity and public second-guessing about sensitive policy
matters is no way to lead a major economy and an aspirant for great power
status.

(Mr. Dhume, a columnist for WSJ.com, is writing a book on the new Indian
middle class.)