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Sunday, Feb 06, 2005

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Consensus that merits an accolade

By Inder Malhotra

After many a winter there has taken place in the realm of foreign policy making in New Delhi something that merits an accolade. That, faced with the grave crisis in the region caused by the indefensible royal takeover in

Nepal, the Manmohan Singh Government took prompt, clear and firm decision was commendable in itself. Even more heartening, however, was the manner in which this was done after the Prime's Minister's quiet and close

consultations, with not only the leaders of the principal Opposition, the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA), Atal Behari Vajpayee and L. K. Advani, but also two former Prime Ministers, V. P. Singh, and Inder Kumar

Gujral.

For their part, Mr. Vajpayee and Mr. Advani, to their credit, saw to it that their party issued a constructive statement supporting the official policy, for once preventing a sensitive foreign policy issue from becoming a football of partisan politics. Only the other day — in a different context — Dr. Manmohan Singh had reminded the country that its foreign, security and nuclear policies had to be based on ``consensus and continuity.'' Sadly, this sound principle has usually been honoured more in the breach than observance. For, quite apart from endemic polarisation of the polity, successive Governments have considered policymaking their exclusive preserve. By the same token, Opposition parties have deemed it their duty to make political capital out of every foreign policy question, unmindful of national interest. The one conspicuous exception to this general rule was Mr. Gujral's remarkable success — as Foreign Minister in the Deve Gowda Government in 1996 — in building up not just consensus but unanimity behind this country's rejection of the CTBT (Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty).

India — with its pluralities, diversities, complexities and contradictions — is a classic consensus country.

Hurdles

But hurdles to the building up of healthy consensus on even vital issues have also been high. To be sure, a broad national consensus existed during Jawaharlal Nehru's heyday. Though it was ruptured over China policy from 1959 onwards, it survived materially during the Shastri era and in Indira Gandhi's initial years. Of the two factors that destroyed it, polarisation beginning with her rift with the ``Syndicate'' of Congress party bosses was one. The other was the Congress dominance and the utter disunity of small Opposition groups leading to complacence of

the former and frustration of the latter. This befouled the atmosphere. The rules of the parliamentary game also did not help because to be officially recognised as the Opposition, a party or combination had to command the

loyalty of at least 50 members in the Lok Sabha. Such a situation did not exist until the first Congress split in 1969 when the Congress (Organisation) reached a tally of 68 members. Indira Gandhi's tremendous triumph in the 1971 General Election ended this state of affairs until her own humiliating defeat in the post-Emergency poll in 1977. After her return to power in 1980 and even more so after Rajiv Gandhi's mind-boggling majority in 1984, no Opposition group could reach anywhere near the magic figure of 50 for a whole decade.

Under these circumstances, there was no question of introducing here the salutary practice, normal in mature democracies, of briefing the Leader of the Opposition on all major policy issues, no matter how delicate or secret.

Unfortunately, things did not improve but worsened during the six years of the NDA rule when Sonia Gandhi headed a sturdy Opposition of more than a hundred.

As a matter of fact the nadir was reached at the time of the Shakti series of nuclear tests in May 1998. The wide world knew that right from Nehru's time this country had kept the option of weaponising its nuclear capability

open. It was Rajiv Gandhi who had authorised the weaponisation in 1988 after the international community had ignored his three-phase programme for total elimination of nuclear weapons and Pakistan had built its bomb. Narasimha Rao had ``operationalised'' the nuclear programme though he had refrained, under intense American pressure, from going through with a nuclear test he had planned for December 1995.

And yet after Pokhran II, Mr. Vajpayee and his cohorts pretended as if the six weapons tested then had been developed during the 54 days after the BJP's ascent to power. Indeed, the saffron party launched a jingoistic and

divisive campaign to monopolise all the ``credit'' for making India a nuclear weapon power. Only after Narasimha Rao's death did Mr. Vajpayee concede that Rao was the ``real architect'' of the 1998 tests. Later, over issues such as sending this country's troops to Iraq, the Vajpayee Government did try to evolve all-party consensus. But its practice of inviting 36 leaders of 28 parties amounted to no more than the formality of explaining the Government's decision to a public meeting. Dr. Manmohan Singh has now shown the right way to build consensus. Hopefully, it would be followed in future meticulously.

Tailpiece: In Chanakyapuri, Delhi's Diplomatic Enclave, they are saying that in present-day India it is the ``Age of Sonia and Sania.''

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