In a parliamentary democracy such as India, two very commonly-used maxims to define the tenuous balance of power and the sharing of responsibilities between the prime minister and the Union Council of Ministers are: ‘They swim together, they sink together’; and ‘The prime minister is first among equals’.
Restricting, for the time being, the academic interest surrounding such expressions to the confines of the scholastic labyrinths of Political Science textbooks, let us focus on the growing clout and ever-expanding reach of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi – both, within the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Union Government – which offer an interesting case study on the emergence of a mass leader, the like of whom the world’s largest democracy has not seen since the time of former prime minister and Congress leader late Indira Gandhi.
The hot-button issue of demonetisation, currently sweeping Asia’s third-largest economy, presents a classic example of a ‘Super Prime Minister’ coming to the fore with all the trappings and paraphernalia of a lynchpin who has at his disposal the blessings of the electorate and who commands the unquestioned allegiance of his party comrades and colleagues in government.
The 2014 general elections catapulted a state-level leader (the then Gujarat chief minister) to the pulpit of India’s national politics and exposed him to the dazzle of arc-lights on that massive podium. And one must admit that Modi took it in his stride. In the ensuing two years, the metamorphosis of an ‘earthy’Modi to ‘Brand Modi’ and the transformation from being an ardent pracharak (preacher) for the rightist, Hindu nationalist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh to being the BJP’s biggest political capital -- since BJP stalwart Atal Bihari Vajpayee receded to the sombre somnolence of a superannuated man – have been truly spectacular.
Spectacular, yes. But not without the forebodings of a superstructure that now threatens to unsettle the substructure!
Going back to demonetisation. Under normal circumstances, a strictly fiscal policy-measure such as the banning of a certain legal tender would be announced by the governor of Reserve Bank of India (RBI). Okay, let’s add some extra dollops of executive gravitas to that and rope in the Union finance minister as well. So, an Urjit Patel (Governor, RBI) and an Arun Jaitley (Union Finance Minister) would have sufficed to make all those hoarders of ill-gotten wealth break into cold sweat with the announcement that the two most popular legal tenders (currency notes of 500 and 1,000 rupee denominations) in India won’t be worth the paper they were printed on come November 8, 2016, midnight.
But this announcement came from none other than the prime minister! In the form of an unscheduled address to the nation.
Demonetisation is neither new nor unique to India. But what really magnified the move on this occasion was the head of the executive and the highest public servant in the country making an announcement that would ideally be the favourite topic to deliberate upon for a Finance Ministry mandarin.
Days later, when the fine print of what was touted as a revolutionary move started emerging in clearer and bolder font and as the man on the street started feeling the pinch, the RBI governor and the Union finance minister were the ones left fielding unpleasant questions from the media as part of a desperate damage-control exercise.
The embarrassment
Since coming to power in the summer of 2014, Modi has very consciously built the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) as a parallel power-centre to two key ministries within the Union Cabinet: Foreign Affairs and Finance. His numerous sojourns to countries far and near, while helping add more muscle to New Delhi’s new, robust foreign-policy doctrine, have effectively overshadowed Sushma Swaraj’s presence as Foreign Minister. Ditto for Jaitley, who has been reduced to playing second-fiddle to the PMO over the issue of demonetisation, which would ideally constitute an area of core competence for senior bureaucrats working directly under the finance minister at the North Block secretariat in New Delhi.
For Jaitley, the embarrassment didn’t end there.
On December 30, 2016, as the deadline over old Rs500 and Rs1,000 notes ended, it was time for the prime minister to address the nation – yet again. This time, to extol the virtues of demonetisation and sing paeans to the patience displayed by the public over a 50-day inconvenience.
And he didn’t stop at that.
What Modi effectively did with his December 30 address was to pre-empt the Union Budget that was still more than a month away. Announcing a slew of populist measures, with a very clear outreach to the rural and semi-urban populace, Modi’s pitch was every bit a scene-stealer.
Or for that matter, take the prime minister’s very own Pragati initiative (Proactive Governance and Timely Implementation) – a monthly meeting that Modi chairs at his office in the presence of the chief secretaries of the states, to resolve procedural issues and other bottlenecks concerning various ongoing development projects. While Pragati has helped burnish Modi’s image as a hands-on PM, several chief ministers have expressed their concern over what they see as an affront to India’s federal structure of governance, with the PM directly discussing development issues with chief secretaries, bypassing the chief ministers’ offices. In fact, in a tactical move smacking of one-upmanship, West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee reportedly insisted on sending her home secretary, instead of the chief secretary, to the last two meetings in September and October, citing administrative imperatives.
Now coming back to ‘swim-together-sink-together’ and ‘first-among-equals’.
Does it really look like the Union Council of Ministers and the prime minister are collectively responsible for all their decisions? A difficult question to answer, perhaps. But ‘first-among-equals’? Let’s not mince words here. This prime minister is ‘first’ by a long shot, with the rest of his Cabinet colleagues coming in a distant second – ‘equals’ they all are indeed!
Taken in its entirety, the unfolding picture constitutes very clearly-defined edges of an emerging ‘super prime minister’ — a throwback to Indira Gandhi’s all-encompassing and even draconian hold over India’s national politics in the mid-1970s. Smug with the confidence of a leader whose wish was command in a party bursting at its seams with sycophants and cliques subservient to the Nehru-Gandhi clan, Indira and the PMO of her time were the last word in both, the Congress party as well as the government in New Delhi. So much so, that she could even take India’s Constitutional propriety and democratic ethos for granted and clamp something as fascist and unethical as the Emergency on the Republic of India in 1975. From June 25, 1975, to March 21, 1977, democratic rights remained suspended as Indira cited the flimsy alibi of a “threat” to “the security of India” owing to “internal disturbances” to merely extend her stay in power.
Now consider what Nobel laureate economist Amartya Sen had to say, 42 years later, reacting to Modi’s demonetisation move: “Despotic action that has struck at the root of economy based on trust.”
The moot point
Indira and her party paid a very heavy price for having triggered an acute trust-deficit — an anti-Indira wave swept through the nation in the 1977 general elections, unseating the prime minister and booting the Congress out of power. Only time will tell what impact demonetisation will have on the 2019 general elections. For Modi, the advantage is that by the time 2019 arrives, the dust will probably have settled at the hustings and demonetisation may not be as potent an issue then as it is now. Indira wasn’t so lucky, though. She faced the 1977 elections while the whole nation was still seething with anger over Emergency.
The moot point is, whether it is disbanding the Planning Commission, banning legal tender, preempting the Union Budget, taking the sheen off the Finance and Foreign Ministries, or instituting Pragati parleys, Modi’s many forays into realpolitik have seen him consciously side-step time-tested institutions and practices in pursuit of a new playbook — with him as its unmistakable watermark. From the pin-striped suit bearing his signature to his image being used as the new mascot on Khadi India diaries and calendars, Prime Minister Modi has ‘evolved’ in more ways than one. But whether all of that is in the true spirit of shared responsibility that a parliamentary democracy entails, begs a serious question or two.
There is also a danger on another count: Having cast himself as a behemoth and transformed a multi-starrer such as the BJP into a one-man show, the stakes couldn’t possibly have been any higher for Modi, who has left India’s ruling party practically bereft of its shock-absorbers and crumple zones. A crash-test called assembly elections could soon serve up a few interesting conclusions.
‘Swim together, sink together’; ‘first among equals’ ... For now, it’s perhaps time for a re-reading of The Great Gatsby!
You can follow Sanjib Kumar Das on Twitter at www.twitter.com/@moumiayush.
