Friday, October 30, 2009

Looking back at Indira Gandhi

Writing in Indian Express, Pratap Bhanu Mehta looks back at Indira Gandhi. He offers five lessons for today's Congress:
  1. Leaders are more effective when they work through institutions rather than attempting to subvert them.
  2. Sound economic policies are not a matter of simply projecting good intentions; they require a concerted understanding of the causal conditions that make for successful intervention.
  3. Being personally secular is neither here nor there. The important thing is to fish in the treacherous waters of communal identification, from wherever it comes.
  4. As the Punjab crisis demonstrated, when the state does not act impartially and in time, it sows the seeds of greater violence in the future.
  5. Democracy is not just about the practice of popular authorisation. It is about a whole gamut of constitutional values that have to be zealously guarded.
India had a bad period from 1962 to 1977, of which the worst part was the Emergency. This period preceded Pakistan's worst years (Zia ul Haq's period, 1978-1988). Kamal A. Munir has an article in Financial Express about Pakistan where we see the sustained impact of those years.

India seems to have come out better from the dark period, partly because that period ended a long time ago and there has been more time for healing. In addition, in Pakistan's case, the Afghan wars and islamisation which began in Zia ul Haq's period have not yet ended. In some sense, Pakistan is not yet into the post-authoritarian post-conflict period of reconstruction of institutions, which began in India in 1977.
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1 comment:

  1. AnonymousTuesday, 3 November 2009 at 19:22:00 GMT+5:30

    The reason is deep rooted in our history. The evolution of the Hindu and Muslim communities in pre independence India did not happen at the same pace. Even later presence of “active” democratic forces in our post independence societies have influenced our political lives.

    The Bengal (read Indian) Renaissance were largely a Hindu phenomena, Muslims were almost excluded from the movement. The iconic leadership of Raja Ram Mohan Roy, Vidyasagar et. Al. truly transformed the Hindu society, but at the same time failed to influence or impact the Muslim society. The fallout of this event were far reaching and was an important reason for unequal development of democratic forces in our post colonial societies. Even today we have not been able to obliterate this divide and our political lives are bearing burnt of fire that was set long back, I guess unintentionally. It’s really unfortunate.

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