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A Time of Transition: Rajiv Gandhi to The 21st Century
Mani Shankar Aiyar looks back to the changes that have taken place during the -Time of Transition' "the two decades since Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi left office after the Lok Sabha elections of November 1989. Rajiv Gandhi was the fourth prime minister of India in four decades of independence, but the last twenty years have seen as many as eight prime ministers and several more governments. Accompanying the change from single-party governance to the instability of coalition politics are major transformations in the pace, trajectory and even the goals of nation-building. It is these contentious transitions that are reflected in the five major themes of this volume: Democracy, Secularism, Socialism, Nonalignment, and Neighbourhood Policy. Mani Shankar Aiyar was both a witness to, and a reluctant participant in, these processes of change: as joint secretary in Rajiv Gandhi's prime minister's office, as an MP since 1991, and today as a cabinet minister in the United Progressive Alliance government. His columns for the Indian Express are analytical and vivid commentaries on their times, written in the author's inimitable style. This collection sheds light on a critically significant era in contemporary India.
- GenresIndia
394 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2009
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March 13, 2022
Interesting book, full of perceptive insights into various aspects of the Indian political system. The author is a staunch Nehruvian, and seeks to defend and reinterpret Nehru for the world of the 1990s and early 2000s- recognizing the continuing relevance of democracy, secularism, socialism and non-alignment in our polity. The author also recognizes the plight of the millions, by far the majority of the Indian population who are bypassed by policy-makers, who concentrate more on the middle and upper classes in fields like the stock market (which barely 5% of the population is a part of, yet plays a huge role in our media discourses of 'development'). His interest in Panchayati Raj, and an independent non-jingoistic stance on neighbourhood policy (especially Pakistan-India relations and the Sri Lanka Tamil-Sinhala conflicts) is also explored. India's delicate role in Palestine-Israel is also surveyed.
After the elections of 1989 marked the end of Congress domination, dawned an era of coalitions, often led by the BJP or the Congress. Thus dawned an era of transition, in the fields previously mentioned: liberalization replaced socialism, a steadily more hardline communalism replaced secularism, and kowtowing to the American defence establishment instead of the higher moral ground of Non-Alignment became foreign policy.
There are many great insights, listing a few of the ones which most struck me:
(1) Europe, especially Germany and France is no longer willing to kowtow to the American government's whims. It is Europe who is non-aligned in this century, as India steadily gives up the moral high ground it had from 1950-1990.
(2) Afghanistan was historically a more integral part of the Indian polity than Tamil Nadu. From his insider's perspective, he explores the relation of Tamil nationalism to the Indian context.
(3) Article 356 is reprehensible, but needs to be preserved for the sake of Indian unity.
(4) The destruction of the Nehruvian consensus in 1989, had created an atmosphere of ideological bankruptcy. Perhaps in 2022, it is being replaced by a definite right-wing ideology.
(5) Panchayati Raj and devolution is important for preserving the integrity of India. It was PRI that explained the Communist Party's grassroots dominance in West Bengal.
(6) The main achievement of the Shimla agreement was that India-Pakistan discussions would remain bilateral. Trying to get the US involved, who do not have South Asia's interests at heart, would result in chaos. The outcome of the Oslo Accords was Panchayati Raj in Palestine, a pathetic show of the Palestinian demand for sovereignity.
(7) Pakistan will remain more of an integral ally for the US, than India for purely geopolitical factors. Pakistan borders Afghanistan and Iran, is close to the Gulf, and the natural gas reserves in Turkmenistan. It was also necessary to contain the USSR. Hence, it is futile for India to attempt closer ties with the US. Let's remember Kissinger's own dictum: 'Those who seek American approbation end with American intervention'.
(8) India-Bangladesh cooperation would result in rapid economic development in both countries. That is forestalled by trivial disputes over river water sharing rights, which do not really impact the economy as much as politicians on both sides expect. The economic decline in West Bengal is due to the hostile business environment, and Bangladeshi agriculture is not really as reliant on Teesta as hoped. The better way forward, for both countries, is cooperation, instead of getting hung up on trivialities.
(9)Nehruvian socialism was a necessity for the Indian polity and supported by the industrialists too. It was state planning that created the entire middle class. Heavy industry was deliberately not encouraged, so that SMEs could arise, and a strong middle class- the backbone of liberal democracies could develop. Irony of ironies, that self-same middle classes is now seeking to throw it away with liberalization.
(10) The answer to both the Israel-Palestine conflict and Tamil-Sinhala conflict is devolution and federalism. A liberal democratic federal state, not based on narrow notions of nationhood (like India) is the way forward to defuse the conflicts that rage on. Partition or a two-state solution would be catastrophic and continue the terrorism.
(11) Compare Hindu-Muslim conflicts to the Sinhala-Tamil conflict. When pushed to the wall, minorities are forced to resort to violence. Communalism thus harms all communities in India.
(12) It speaks to the self-confidence of Hinduism that it has absorbed so much without feelings of insecurity. Hindutva speaks more of a Semitic notion of intolerance (rather essentialist, one notes), than Subcontinental tolerance. Gauraksha and conversion issues are just constructed political capital, cunningly exploited
(13) What made Vajpayee as a Prime Minister tolerable was his junking of his entire agenda for the sake of power.
(14) India willingly gave up rapid economic development, precisely so democracy could thrive. The Asian tigers- China, Indonesia, Singapore have developed rapidly precisely because they were either (a) Resource-rich, and (b) Authoritarian. We consciously chose to avoid a Great Leap Forward.
(15) Our budgets, notwithstanding only the first page, is entirely too corporate oriented. It does not help the masses. We are unwilling to spend 650 crores on PRI, while willingly spending 7000 crores on the Commonwealth games. The masses get a say in the elections, every 5 years, while the middle classes determine policy during that time.
(16) A higher growth rate will not help the poor, who are the majority in India. What is tangible to them is services, and welfare. Public goods, the little things, like a pukka road to their funeral, is what is most ardently sought by the villagers. Growth rate refers to a growth in heavy industry, or the corporate sphere. It is neither realized by the Urban proletariat nor the rural poor. Frequently, it is also capital-intensive (like Gujarat), thus giving no tangible results.
(17) The Market Trap: They say, liberalize the agro sector. Poppycock. What that would do is transform the rural poor, who still have their do bigha zamin, into a land-hungry urban proletariat thronging our cities for work. Les Miserables, and Oliver Twist were both set after the Land enclosure movements in Europe. That would be the scale of the tragedy that would befall us. And who would benefit? American and Indian corporate fat-cats.
(18) Why is Gujarat so riot-prone despite developing so fast? Well, the development is merely capital-intensive. Factories have shut down, the textile industry is dead. It is those who knew better lives and do not any more, the urban proletariat that are dissatisfied; and get caught up in communalist xenophobia. The perennial poor do not riot.
(19) Previously, we willingly gave up a seat at the UN to rise above the power game. Gandhi fought the violence of the British Raj with non-violence, for although the British could best them with their military prowess, India maintained supremacy in the moral and social realm. This was savvy realpolitik, notwithstanding detractors. However, now, we appeal for a seat at the UN, hanging on to America's coattails. From rising above the games of domination in preference for a just world order, India now sinks to the level of playing the game. The aim of UN reform should always be to strengthen the UNGA and dismantle the UNSC, not bargain to be a part of the UNSC, which loses India's moral credibility.
(20) India was called to moderate the conflicts in Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, and Korea, because we were fundamentally trusted to not play the war game. And yet in 2003, the government was seriously contemplating sending troops to Iraq! Iraq is colonialism at its worst, and it is foolish to not recognize it. It is European non-alignment with Schroeder's Germany and Chirac's France that hold out hope for our century. India should be strengthening its ties with them, and not the UK (America's lapdog since 1956) and the US. A minister in Schroeder's cabinet aptly called George Bush, the Hitler of Iraq.
(21) The war on terrorism is not India's war. It is for the West, and the West alone to decide. The US and the West conveniently decides whom to call terrorists and has the gall to ask for international support. Will helping the US bomb Afghanistan and Afghani civilians, Yemenis, Iraqis, help solve our internal conflicts in Jammu and Kashmir, Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Bihar and Manipur? Will it stop the US from knowingly funding these movements through grants to Pakistan? As history has shown, the West is quite happy to support terrorism when it suits them. Let's not forget Osama was created by the US.
(22) We need cooperation with Pakistan to secure natural gas rights, and other treaties. We are forgoing prosperity because of posturing. Pakistan too needs money, running a huge budget deficit. The only place it can cut money is its defence, for which it needs South Asian cooperation.
(23) India was among the first to recognize Israel and help Indian Jews settle there. However, when the Palestinians were expelled and Al-Naqba happened, India was also among the first to express support to Palestine. Nehru expressed the liberal democratic federal solution which was ignored. Even Martin Buber, one of the founders of Israel recognized the crisis as unjust.
(24) Turkmenistan is the Saudi Arabia of the next century, due to natural gas reserves. (?)
(25) Bilateral summits, when held, should be private and screened off, immune to the depredations of day-to-day politics. Only then can they actually come to good conclusions, immune from media hype.
(26) Ironically, despite Pakistan being an inefficient dictatorship (or now, a military-backed democracy) and India being an inefficient democracy, the net amount of political freedoms in both countries is the same! The military establishment does care for public opinion. Pakistan also seems to resist Islamization, as the military remained sternly secular. However, the American invasion of Afghanistan has led to an influx of Pashtun refugees, whose impact remains to be seen.
(27) Public opinion in both India and Pakistan is sick of the smooth non-words of the foreign policy elite. Hence, they loved Laloo's Yatra, because it came across as unflinchingly sincere. There is a large constituency for peace on both sides.
After the elections of 1989 marked the end of Congress domination, dawned an era of coalitions, often led by the BJP or the Congress. Thus dawned an era of transition, in the fields previously mentioned: liberalization replaced socialism, a steadily more hardline communalism replaced secularism, and kowtowing to the American defence establishment instead of the higher moral ground of Non-Alignment became foreign policy.
There are many great insights, listing a few of the ones which most struck me:
(1) Europe, especially Germany and France is no longer willing to kowtow to the American government's whims. It is Europe who is non-aligned in this century, as India steadily gives up the moral high ground it had from 1950-1990.
(2) Afghanistan was historically a more integral part of the Indian polity than Tamil Nadu. From his insider's perspective, he explores the relation of Tamil nationalism to the Indian context.
(3) Article 356 is reprehensible, but needs to be preserved for the sake of Indian unity.
(4) The destruction of the Nehruvian consensus in 1989, had created an atmosphere of ideological bankruptcy. Perhaps in 2022, it is being replaced by a definite right-wing ideology.
(5) Panchayati Raj and devolution is important for preserving the integrity of India. It was PRI that explained the Communist Party's grassroots dominance in West Bengal.
(6) The main achievement of the Shimla agreement was that India-Pakistan discussions would remain bilateral. Trying to get the US involved, who do not have South Asia's interests at heart, would result in chaos. The outcome of the Oslo Accords was Panchayati Raj in Palestine, a pathetic show of the Palestinian demand for sovereignity.
(7) Pakistan will remain more of an integral ally for the US, than India for purely geopolitical factors. Pakistan borders Afghanistan and Iran, is close to the Gulf, and the natural gas reserves in Turkmenistan. It was also necessary to contain the USSR. Hence, it is futile for India to attempt closer ties with the US. Let's remember Kissinger's own dictum: 'Those who seek American approbation end with American intervention'.
(8) India-Bangladesh cooperation would result in rapid economic development in both countries. That is forestalled by trivial disputes over river water sharing rights, which do not really impact the economy as much as politicians on both sides expect. The economic decline in West Bengal is due to the hostile business environment, and Bangladeshi agriculture is not really as reliant on Teesta as hoped. The better way forward, for both countries, is cooperation, instead of getting hung up on trivialities.
(9)Nehruvian socialism was a necessity for the Indian polity and supported by the industrialists too. It was state planning that created the entire middle class. Heavy industry was deliberately not encouraged, so that SMEs could arise, and a strong middle class- the backbone of liberal democracies could develop. Irony of ironies, that self-same middle classes is now seeking to throw it away with liberalization.
(10) The answer to both the Israel-Palestine conflict and Tamil-Sinhala conflict is devolution and federalism. A liberal democratic federal state, not based on narrow notions of nationhood (like India) is the way forward to defuse the conflicts that rage on. Partition or a two-state solution would be catastrophic and continue the terrorism.
(11) Compare Hindu-Muslim conflicts to the Sinhala-Tamil conflict. When pushed to the wall, minorities are forced to resort to violence. Communalism thus harms all communities in India.
(12) It speaks to the self-confidence of Hinduism that it has absorbed so much without feelings of insecurity. Hindutva speaks more of a Semitic notion of intolerance (rather essentialist, one notes), than Subcontinental tolerance. Gauraksha and conversion issues are just constructed political capital, cunningly exploited
(13) What made Vajpayee as a Prime Minister tolerable was his junking of his entire agenda for the sake of power.
(14) India willingly gave up rapid economic development, precisely so democracy could thrive. The Asian tigers- China, Indonesia, Singapore have developed rapidly precisely because they were either (a) Resource-rich, and (b) Authoritarian. We consciously chose to avoid a Great Leap Forward.
(15) Our budgets, notwithstanding only the first page, is entirely too corporate oriented. It does not help the masses. We are unwilling to spend 650 crores on PRI, while willingly spending 7000 crores on the Commonwealth games. The masses get a say in the elections, every 5 years, while the middle classes determine policy during that time.
(16) A higher growth rate will not help the poor, who are the majority in India. What is tangible to them is services, and welfare. Public goods, the little things, like a pukka road to their funeral, is what is most ardently sought by the villagers. Growth rate refers to a growth in heavy industry, or the corporate sphere. It is neither realized by the Urban proletariat nor the rural poor. Frequently, it is also capital-intensive (like Gujarat), thus giving no tangible results.
(17) The Market Trap: They say, liberalize the agro sector. Poppycock. What that would do is transform the rural poor, who still have their do bigha zamin, into a land-hungry urban proletariat thronging our cities for work. Les Miserables, and Oliver Twist were both set after the Land enclosure movements in Europe. That would be the scale of the tragedy that would befall us. And who would benefit? American and Indian corporate fat-cats.
(18) Why is Gujarat so riot-prone despite developing so fast? Well, the development is merely capital-intensive. Factories have shut down, the textile industry is dead. It is those who knew better lives and do not any more, the urban proletariat that are dissatisfied; and get caught up in communalist xenophobia. The perennial poor do not riot.
(19) Previously, we willingly gave up a seat at the UN to rise above the power game. Gandhi fought the violence of the British Raj with non-violence, for although the British could best them with their military prowess, India maintained supremacy in the moral and social realm. This was savvy realpolitik, notwithstanding detractors. However, now, we appeal for a seat at the UN, hanging on to America's coattails. From rising above the games of domination in preference for a just world order, India now sinks to the level of playing the game. The aim of UN reform should always be to strengthen the UNGA and dismantle the UNSC, not bargain to be a part of the UNSC, which loses India's moral credibility.
(20) India was called to moderate the conflicts in Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, and Korea, because we were fundamentally trusted to not play the war game. And yet in 2003, the government was seriously contemplating sending troops to Iraq! Iraq is colonialism at its worst, and it is foolish to not recognize it. It is European non-alignment with Schroeder's Germany and Chirac's France that hold out hope for our century. India should be strengthening its ties with them, and not the UK (America's lapdog since 1956) and the US. A minister in Schroeder's cabinet aptly called George Bush, the Hitler of Iraq.
(21) The war on terrorism is not India's war. It is for the West, and the West alone to decide. The US and the West conveniently decides whom to call terrorists and has the gall to ask for international support. Will helping the US bomb Afghanistan and Afghani civilians, Yemenis, Iraqis, help solve our internal conflicts in Jammu and Kashmir, Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Bihar and Manipur? Will it stop the US from knowingly funding these movements through grants to Pakistan? As history has shown, the West is quite happy to support terrorism when it suits them. Let's not forget Osama was created by the US.
(22) We need cooperation with Pakistan to secure natural gas rights, and other treaties. We are forgoing prosperity because of posturing. Pakistan too needs money, running a huge budget deficit. The only place it can cut money is its defence, for which it needs South Asian cooperation.
(23) India was among the first to recognize Israel and help Indian Jews settle there. However, when the Palestinians were expelled and Al-Naqba happened, India was also among the first to express support to Palestine. Nehru expressed the liberal democratic federal solution which was ignored. Even Martin Buber, one of the founders of Israel recognized the crisis as unjust.
(24) Turkmenistan is the Saudi Arabia of the next century, due to natural gas reserves. (?)
(25) Bilateral summits, when held, should be private and screened off, immune to the depredations of day-to-day politics. Only then can they actually come to good conclusions, immune from media hype.
(26) Ironically, despite Pakistan being an inefficient dictatorship (or now, a military-backed democracy) and India being an inefficient democracy, the net amount of political freedoms in both countries is the same! The military establishment does care for public opinion. Pakistan also seems to resist Islamization, as the military remained sternly secular. However, the American invasion of Afghanistan has led to an influx of Pashtun refugees, whose impact remains to be seen.
(27) Public opinion in both India and Pakistan is sick of the smooth non-words of the foreign policy elite. Hence, they loved Laloo's Yatra, because it came across as unflinchingly sincere. There is a large constituency for peace on both sides.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 6, 2020
very well written just that it has a biased outlook and they still cannot accept that anyone else can run the country apart from the,
February 28, 2015
This book is a compilation of opinion pieces penned by Mani Shankar Aiyar in the Indian Express during the 90s and early 2000s, a time when India was making the transition from a closed, protected economy to a more open and liberal one.
One word of caution: Mr. Aiyar being a member of the Congress party, his views are invariably politically motivated. Besides, given his tendency to use half truths and selective quotations, it would be follhardy to draw conclusions from his articles.
I would advise and reader to verify the facts quoted in this book and draw his/ her own conclusions. Nonetheless, there's no denying that this compilation gives excellent insights into Indian politics in the 1990s. Given how little has been written about that (admittedly pretty recent) era so far, this book fills a vacuum.
One word of caution: Mr. Aiyar being a member of the Congress party, his views are invariably politically motivated. Besides, given his tendency to use half truths and selective quotations, it would be follhardy to draw conclusions from his articles.
I would advise and reader to verify the facts quoted in this book and draw his/ her own conclusions. Nonetheless, there's no denying that this compilation gives excellent insights into Indian politics in the 1990s. Given how little has been written about that (admittedly pretty recent) era so far, this book fills a vacuum.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews