For weeks now we have been fed with miles of print on Narasimha Rao’s record as Prime Minister during the three years since he took over. Thousands of words, both kind and unkind, have been written about his performance, Among the official efforts to enlighten the public is a handy volume of achievements under each ministry and department compiled by the Principal Information Officer, S. Narendra, and sent gratis to accredited journalists and presumably a few others who are presumed to be interested or should be. l include myself in the first category of the recipients, In a total of 36 chapters, beginning with the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting and ending with the Ministry of Defense, the PIO has made a good job of recounting the ‘activities of the present government, which is only an indirect manner of summing up what has been done under Narasimha Rao’s stewardship. One must not find fault with the government’s principal official spokesman for doing his duty in a style which is both neat and adequate. It is not the PIO’s job to deal with the government’s failures or the political aspects of the administration. That function belongs to people like me, whether they are journalists or commentators Outside this increasingly traffic-jammed profession. Comment, on the whole, has not been uncomplimentary although I have the uncomfortable feeling that not enough notice has been taken of the one quality that makes the current regime worthy of complimentary attention, That quality is the restoration to the average citizen of the feeling that he will not have to nun or be driven to the polling booth in the near future to elect another bunch of rulers at the Center In fact the present sense of stability after the shaky regimes presided over by V.P. Singh and Chandra She; char is no small pain for public morale and national self-assurance, It is not as if we have stood still at the cost of stability, nor has the forward movement been confined only to economic policies, important though these are, a few errors and omissions notwithstanding. A tangible additional plus point is a marginally growing global recognition of our existence as a nation, still among the poorest parts of the world and involved in internal conflicts but nevertheless seeming to be on the upswing. Narasimha Rao has more than a small hand in shaping this upward curve. But all this is only a part of the balance sheet showing the credit column, not the debit column. The latter does not require elaborate mention, whether it is the growing immorality of our political System and leaders, the rising graph of crime or the mounting distrust and even hatred among the “unprivileged” classes against one another Or against the hitherto socially entrenched sections of a bafflingly diverse society, These don’t have to be counted at length since we have ugly reminders of their existence every day from personal experience Or through our newspapers.

You cannot blame the Prime Minister for all this. Narasimha Rao did not take up his present office to create a social revolution but to provide a government which would at least fast long enough to stem the rot of uncertainty which he inherited. Politicians do not create social revolutions, As a rule, they are much too occupied With the task of governance and promoting their own interests to have the time or ambition to transform society, especially in our OWN Country, Where the most predictable growth belongs to the area of problems. You mention any, and we have it by the dozen whether it is Poverty or disease, illiteracy or unemployment, population bursting at the seams or corruption whether in the administration or politics, who is going to tackle and over what period of time?

If this long preamble reads like an apologia for Narasimha Rao, it is not intended to be so, My objective is to project his three-year stint Prime Minister with a sense of proportion between the positive and the negative aspects of his not very long career as head of government. The negative aspects are all too obvious to need elaborate treatment. Of these the principal minus point is universally described as a lack decision. He has been presented as a to-be-or-not-to-be Hamlet even compared irreverently to the famous as who, faced with t equally tempting stacks of hay, could not make up its mind about which of the two to tackle and starved to death in the process.

This, in my view based on some knowledge of Narasimha Rao, is only an unkind assessment of a man who has been talking a great de. lately of the “middle way” in choosing a direction in life, both nation: and internationally, but also incorrect, What looks plainly like inductiveness is, in my opinion, a decision not to go into action in conditions in order to avoid creating further problems. Whether this is the right attitude to take for a Prime Minister is open to question, but this seems to be Narasimha Rao’s choice between Options in prickly situations. If such an approach appears to reflect lack of courage we must remember that political suicide is not necessarily the act of a hero.

 Another way of describing this trait in a man’s mental make-up is brand it as induced amnesia. An outstanding example of such a self-inflicted ailment is the Prime Minister’s treatment of the Bofors scandal, which appears to have been put away somewhere in the unconscious recesses of his mind. While Rajiv Gandhi kept Praying that the unpleasant truth would remain locked up through procedural protection  Narasimha Rao seems to have suffered from a lapse of memory brought on deliberately and calculatedly, The occasional noise by the Opposition does not break the spell of forgetfulness, Unfortunately for the Prime Minister, the induced amnesia Prescription has not worked in dealing with the bank securities scam: Possibly because it is still too fresh in the public memory to be forgotten. Going by what is by common knowledge the report of the Joint Parliamentary Committees can of worms which is going to crawl all Over the two chambers Parliament when the government’s action on the report is discussed at the monsoon session in a few days. The Prime Minister could not put off the evil day much longer.

One of the most scandalous Samples of governmental forgetfulness in the country’s recent history is the handling by those concerned of the massacre of lover 3,000 members of the Sikh community in Delhi 10 years ago. No one seems to know for certain where the cases against the killers stand. Rajiv Gandhi reminded us that the earth shakes when a big tree falls on the ground. Narasimha Rao has never used such picturesque language in referring to that espied of merciless rioting  but has repeatedly promised action. Amnesia induced or otherwise, does not help in such situations.

 by: Prem Bhatia, Courtesy: The Tribune

Article extracted from this publication >> August 5, 1994