1991: Quo Vadis

As the decade turned into the millennium's last, the country and my life were delicately poised, with deliverance a few tantalizing months away. Personally, it was a cusp between hitherto sheltered school life and college as well as the big bad world lurking beyond; and not bereft of birth pangs. Those life-defining moments did pale into utter insignificance over the winds of change that were about to be unleashed on a somewhat ill-prepared nation!

To many, the national landscape appeared despairingly bleak, with little by way of redeeming features. The economy seemed destined for what was despicably called a 'Hindu' rate of growth. Any advantage from the baby steps of the Rajiv Years had been mostly bungled away by succeeding regimes. Indeed, some ominously portended India turning a banana republic, with IMF-World Bank painted as the New Age avatars of the East India Company (though in retrospect it can be said that doomsayers read too much into what was certainly a perilous macroeconomic situation, or its aftermath). Ascribing imperialistic motives to multilateral lending institutions was accompanied by barely-suppressed murmurs of a grand design on the part of 'foreign powers' (read the United States, with its real or perceived proximity to arch-enemy Pakistan).

This was more than mere Cold War hangover. It can be argued that years of Nehruvian Socialism had sapped away the nation's collective confidence, or its appetite for change. There also existed a school of thought (the Right) that looked further aft to trace the roots of our lack of self-belief and passivity. Swiftly gaining mindshare and acceptance, this view argued that the defeatism stemmed from events over the preceding thousand years in our history, notably the countless cross-Hindu Kush assaults on her suzerainty and economic wealth. Regardless, at this crucial juncture, the emasculating Nehru model was more than Banquo's ghost at the feast, with significant coinage in political discourse and economic intent.

There is, of course, merit in debating the point of inflection when Nehruvian dogma outlived its usefulness. However, in 1991 it was academic in the face of income inequity and regional imbalance that were sorry realities of our prevalent socioeconomic existence. At another level, the incipient Licence Raj had merely changed the skin-colour of India's ruling elite, adding endemic corruption to an atmosphere of mistrust and opacity that was a British legacy. Again, shibboleths of Demos had taken a big beating from the futile poverty-alleviation pledges of the 70s, the snuffed promise of 1984, and doomed Janata experiments. Governance seemed equally eclipsed by the scourge of terror that shifted addresses yet never got wiped out.

Hope, in short, was at a premium. Unfortunately, its purveyors were yet more so. The probable best bet had been tragically lost to a human bomb that summer. The multiple Janata Dal PMs-in-waiting were but wasted breath. Abki-baari-Atal-Behari was still waiting to happen. And the last election's messed-up messiah had taken his well-earned place in the dustbin of history, following his doomed premiership and ill-disguised social agenda, with eminently forgettable poetry and equally inadequate art.

As it turned out, aided by sympathy over Sriperumbudur, the mandate swung largely towards India's GOP. The leadership mantle fell on the unlikely shoulders of a vanprastha ashram-bound PV Narasimha Rao. The nation had her first Prime Minister from south of the Vindhyas (in fact the first not from the electorally crucial state of Uttar Pradesh). What followed thereafter — the politics of pout, a rapid rise in barter-system of social pressure groups, and ostrich-like approach to national issues; yet, surprisingly significant, even if inevitable, economic reform — is a tale for another day!

Ides of May, Democracy and Hope

My first tryst with the ballot box, albeit vicarious, is one of my sharpest preteen memories. It followed from two formidable influences. The first was not really a choice: an accident of birth in India's most politically conscious state indelibly imprints one's social DNA (it also bred a marked proclivity to opinion-dissemination as my later-day acquaintances would vouch)! Second, my skewed reading habits accentuated such leanings: newspapers had displaced ACK and assorted comics as a lunchtime accessory, helped no doubt by having a national daily in HT set up shop in my hometown (their first venture out of Delhi).

Whatever be the fount of my hyperactive appetite for things political, fact is that the 1984 election was epochal. Its preceding event had been notoriously described by a key protagonist as "when a giant tree falls, the earth below shakes". Consequent sympathy, combined with Obamaesque 'change' appeal and youthful vitality, delivered a verdict that shattered all records. It remains possibly the strongest mandate India would ever hand any of her progeny. My inclinations too were firmly in line with the national pulse.

Unfortunately for me and India, this virginal promise was belied. What followed is most tellingly described by the incomparable Nani Palkhivala in his seminal We the Nation, adapting Malcolm Muggeridge to write: "never was any generation of men intent upon the pursuit of well-being more advantageously placed to attain it, who yet, with seeming deliberation, took the opposite course - towards chaos instead of order, towards breakdown instead of stability, towards destruction and darkness instead of life, creativity and light."

This is not to argue that no good came of the Rajiv years. Indeed, economic paradigm shifts that became more pronounced in the Nineties had green shoots in his regime's policy changes. Yet, the overwhelming mood in Elections 89 was one of frittered opportunities. It did not leave me untouched. Across India, the angst spilled onto the streets, with a new Mr Clean as its face. The sense of disenchantment and nascent anti-establishment spirit rang true personally too, but my feelings towards the new hero remained ambivalent. Instead, in this backdrop, my leanings had started to swing Right.

A notable reality of electoral life in those days was the scourge of booth capturing. Variously manifest in avatars like 'scientific booth management' a la Comrades in West Bengal, seething discontent of denied Dalit voice across the hinterland, or in-your-face Bahubali muscle-flexing in what became Laloo's Bihar, this malaise made a mockery of universal suffrage. Doordarshan would later run an exposé on it, a true shot in the arm for the maturing of Indian democracy (it made Nalini Singh a household name, inspiring a generation of budding journalists more than Tehelka's scandal-mongering or early-Barkha bravado that would follow). In 1989, though, it ruled the roost. Despite it, that multiple close relatives of the then Bihar CM lost at the hustings, was an early lesson in the power of Demos for me.

As it transpired, the verdict was split, but the writing was on the wall. VP Singh, erstwhile Congressi and Sanjay acolyte, took helm in Delhi, with forces from opposite ends of the political spectrum 'supporting the government from outside'. Beset by internal quibbling from day 1, it took but a few months for the tenuous JD sarkar to crumble, although not before the Raja of Manda contributed his pernicious bit towards social re-engineering (euphemism for vote bank creation). The forces unleashed through Mandal, little understood by that misdirected messiah, would dramatically alter the country's political landscape.

The dispensation that followed VP made PM of an old Young Turk: one who had challenged Mrs G in the 70s; and whose supporters had fought a pitched battle on camera with Shri Ram Jethmalani (trying Gandhian tactics with the warrior of Ballia over JD leadership) just months ago. As a government it was meant to bide time, which it did; and not disturb historians much, which it did not. Of course there were non-trifles like our sovereign Republic needing to pledge gold to honour debt servicing commitments, but that happenstance was too big for blame to be placed on Chandra Shekhar's footnote-in-history regime.

Elections were announced in the summer of 1991, with disillusionment over the non-Congress experiment on the rise and Mandal-Mandir working overtime to cement their respective positions in our polity. With a heart pulled strongly Right, my vote had one only other potential legatee: the original Herald of Hope, wizened by the decline and fall of his 411/542 government. One felt Rajiv's battle-hardened second coming, with political instinct more sharply honed, could be more potent and present.

It may have been a great combination but, for a second time, it was not to be. An erstwhile misadventure returned to haunt RG fatally, an evening eighteen years ago to the day, while on the campaign trail in a dusty town on Chennai's outskirts. In classical sub-continent political drama mould, the conspiracy behind the assassination at Sriperumbudur has never entirely untangled, at least in the public domain, except affirming that an LTTE suicide squad was its instrument. Perhaps far greater than the facts, repressed or otherwise, was the tale of a tragically extinguished promise: avowed goals, provided means but missed opportunities in 1984; lessons learnt, force revitalized but a life cut short seven years later. Too soon.

PS: The principal architect of the May misfortune was killed by the bullet that he had lived much of his life by, just this past week. Not too soon.