It seems not everybody wants to be prime minister. Congress’s Rahul Gandhi claims faith instead in selfless service: “nishkaam seva”. Recalling the work ethic elaborated in the Bhagwad Gita – “To action alone hast thou a right and never at all to its fruits” – Rahul says, “We should all be detached from power.”
This out-of-the-box counsel is unlikely to find takers among politicians – Congressmen included – who’re busy lining up prime ministerial candidates for 2014, preferably earlier. Replay their competitive clamour, and you’d swear prime ministership and philosophical detachment don’t gel.
The question is this: Why must someone not be PM to do “nishkaam seva”? Why can’t he do it being PM? Does the idea seem outlandish because we habitually build personality cults around this office? People saw Nehru as larger-than-life, rarely brooking challenge without threatening resignation. They feared and admired Indira for being overtly authoritarian. Powered by dynasty, Rajiv seemed deceptively easygoing till crossed. An affable consensus-builder, Vajpayee was yet projected as grand statesman. The PMs that few deified, from Gulzarilal Nanda to Gujral, have hardly evoked prime ministerial prestige in the public mind.
Now consider incumbent PM Manmohan Singh. Singh was “king” in 2008, after winning the nuclear deal duel. His opponents now dub him “nightwatchman”. A technocrat rather than a career politician, it’s evident why he’s targeted. In all this time, he hasn’t learned the tricks of the trade: vote-bank politicking, for one. When he supports other people’s populism, his heart’s not in it. Rather, he seems ready to gamble away his crown promoting reforms instead of himself. His critics think: What’s not to dislike?
Singh’s behind-the-scenes way of functioning, his detractors lament, denotes ‘leadership deficit’. It’s a charge he recently sought to counter in Parliament, cautioning the BJP against “arrogance”. Mild as it was, this combativeness was unusual. Normally Singh has a signature low-key style, approaching the rare quality of self-effacement in a powerwielder. His political DNA is such he likes to remain in the wings. Or he hovers like a silent, levitating presence over the stage, giving the key lines to other UPA actors.
Singh’s critics say his being a staunch decontrol freak exposes his ineffectual reign. He dares defy the near-caricatural image of a PM as Master Helmsman, steering the ship of state through choppy waters. In this stereotype, a premier’s Authority – spelt with a capital A – is the kind that imperiously sets national agenda, and yours, mine and ours as well.
Only, that’s a fundamental misreading of the PM’s role in India’s constitutional and institutional scheme. The notion of prime ministerial supremacy flows from an erroneously inflated view of this seat of necessarily restrained power. It bears repeating that India adopted the Westminster model of democracy: a parliamentary system where lawmaking and even key policy changes require cooperation between government and opposition. No law unto itself, the executive’s accountable to Parliament, and must not lose its confidence. The PM’s to negotiate change, not bamboozle or finagle it through.
Nor is the executive synonymous with prime ministerial will, notwithstanding the regal real estate of 7 Race Course Road. It’s said Singh can’t get this or that minister to toe his line. Yes, that’s partly courtesy the party-government duality set up by the dynasty-driven Congress. But that apart, if cabinet members merely obeyed prime ministerial diktats, why not replace democracy with autocracy? If the PM were a sun king around whom ministers orbit like courtiers, they wouldn’t be collectively and individually answerable to the legislature.
Westminster-style democracy discourages czarist pretensions in a PM. A fractured electorate further circumscribes his ranging area, generally in a negative sense. As we’ve seen, opposition obstructionism and coalition sniping are thorns he lives with, his ideas not always seconded by his allies. Sure, he must draw the line at times, as Singh did with the Marxists and Mamata. But these are defining moments, not standard practice. Coalition powersharing requires hard-nosed bargaining best left to party troubleshooters. Here, the more tactically distanced a PM is, the more he carries party and partners along.
Given the existing systemic and political constraints he’s subject to, what does a PM need? He needs consensus-building skills, patience and a quiet professionalism. Above all, he requires perspective, the kind gained from a yogi-like ability to rise above. For him, shows of strength are less of a strategic virtue than laissezfaire detachment. After all, 21st century India’s politics has its own evolutionary dynamic: no government can blink at people’s developmental needs and material aspirations. Here, grandstanding aids a leader less than sincere resolve to deliver. How sincere a PM is depends on how dispassionately he goes about the job – and how many hands he gets on deck without his ego playing spoiler.
Reared on a mai-baap culture based on reverential awe of political authority, how many of us realise that prime ministership isn’t about an all-powerful politico strutting his hour upon the stage? How many see it’s really about disinterested pursuit of national good – and that benign dispassion gives the vantage-point needed to know what’s good? A true leader, to borrow the Bhagwad Gita’s words, “performs his duty without attachment”. To him, nothing is personal. He deeply cares – because he does not care. And so he lets things evolve, knowing the fruits of disinterested action ripen in due course.
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