EMERGENCY- A TERRIBLE BLOT ON DEMOCRACY IN INDIA-PART I

 

Emergency was a blow to India as it had the capacity to destroy the Country and let loose anarchy with a strong dictatorship at the top that was totally bereft of any ideas. It was the blackest period for Indian Democracy and lasted from 25^th June 1975 to 21^st March 1977, a period of 22 months during which time India perched precariously on the verge of chaos and dictatorship.

Most unfortunately, today’s youth do not know anything at all about it, as it transpired some 48 years ago. How did it come about and what are the factors that triggered it? What are its repercussions?

A little preamble needed to be known in order to understand it. In the 1950’s, Indira Gandhi unofficially served her father as a Personal assistant. Later, Indira Gandhi became the Congress President in the year 1959 and served for 1 year when she was just 42 years old. During her tenure as the Congress President, she was instrumental in getting the Kerala government dismissed. Clearly that position would not have been possible without Nehru’s backing. Thereafter she was made the Minister for Information & Broadcasting in Lalbahadur Sastri’s cabinet between June 1964 & January 1966.

When Sastri died of a heart attack in Tashkent in 1965, the Senior most Congressman then available was Morarji Desai who promptly announced his candidature for the PM’s position.  The Congress President then was Kamaraj Nadar. There were also 4 regional party bosses who were powerful and controlled the Congress cadres in their areas. They are Neelam Sanjeevareddy of Andhra Pradesh, S. Nijalingappa of Karnataka, Atulya Ghosh of Bengal and S.K.Patil of Maharashtra. Congress was then still a Democratic organization and a person has to be elected by the party in the Loaksabha if he/she were to become the Prime Minister. Kamaraj Nadar along with the other 4 party bosses was known as the Syndicate as they exercised immense power over the Congress Organisation.

Morarji Desai was a no no for the Syndicate, because he was seen as rigid and inflexible and was totally immune to their influence. Thus Kamaraj favoured Indira Gandhi who was seen by them as soft and pliable. With this in mind, Kamaraj first got the name of Indira Gandhi nominated by 12 Congress CM’s out of 14 and with that with her being elected the PM candidate by the Loksabha became a mere formality, yet Morarji Desai insisted on a context and lost with 169 votes to Indira Gandhi’s 355.

The Indira Gandhi government faced the largest problem in the Economy. Sastri era did terribly on the GDP. The economy registered a negative growth rate during his tenure; a -2.64% in 1964-65 & a -0.06% in 1965-66. For those years the inflation was 9.5% & 10.80% respectively. So the economic condition was terrible. In comparison the last FY of the Nehru era 1963-64 registered a GDP growth of 7.45% but the inflation was high at 13.4%.

Indira’s first year as PM was pretty good for the GDP and it registered a 7.8% increase during 1966-67 but the inflation was high at 13.1%. Thereafter the GDP growth rate fizzled out.

Till 1977, 3 years under her were pretty bad registering a mere 1.64% in 1970-71, 1.19% in 1973-74 & 1.6% in 1975-76, not to mention the negative growth of -2.2% during 1971-72 on account of the Bangladesh war. In the 11 years between 1966-67 to 1976-77 Indira averaged 4.1% on the GDP but a high 7.5% on inflation. Ultimately it was this miserable growth rates that led her to the discontent among the people and the Emergency. The Allahabad High Court judgment was merely the precipitating factor and not the cause itself.

It was an irony that the slogan for the 1971 elections by Indira Gandhi was Garibi Hatao. This slogan, along with nationalisation of Banks & Abolition of Privy purses indicated to the poor that she wanted to help the poor.

Congress got a huge majority of 352 seats out of 518 in those elections. That was over a two thirds majority. But, it was that very election that later led to her downfall because let alone removing Garibi, she managed to make things worse for them.   

Between 1971 and 1974 in the 3 years the GDP only logged an average yearly growth of a mere 0.73% while the inflation averaged over 17%. A feeling of hope soon gave way to despair and despondence. Little wonder there was unrest in the country which was quickly exploited by the opposition. Indira Gandhi failed most miserably on the economic front after winning such a massive mandate.

How did the precipitating Allahabad High court Judgment affect Indira Gandhi and the nation? In the 1971 Loksabha elections Raj Narayan contested as the candidate for the Samyukta Socialist party and managed to poll only 71,499 votes against Indira Gandhi who won 183, 369 votes getting 64.4% of the vote share.

Later Raj Narayan filed a petition against Indira Gandhi in the Allahabad High Court, alleging electoral malpractices like using Government employees as election agents, and organising campaigns by them in the constituency while being Government employees. He also accused her of corruption. Indira Gandhi was represented by Nani Palkhiwala while Raj Narayan was represented by Shanti Bhushan. Palkhiwala later resigned as Indira Gandhi’s lawyer in protest when Emergency was promulgated by her.  Palkhiwala was later appointed as an Ambassador to the USA by the Janata Government.

On 12^th June 1975 Justice Jagmohan Sinha pronounced a verdict against Indira Gandhi. He found her guilty of the charges and declared the 1971 Rae Bareilly MP seat as null and void. He also banned Indira Gandhi from holding any elected office for 6 years. This is a most unjust judgment because in that constituency Indira Gandhi got almost 65% vote share while Raj Narayan only got 25%. Employees may well have been used but he had no right to judge the result as null and void based on that alone. At the most he could have penalized the officials if any specific people are named and chastised Indira Gandhi. Declaring the election null and void on account of that is nonsense.

Prior to that in late 1973 and early 1974 there was public unrest simmering in the country obviously because of the messed up economy when the GDP growth averaged less than 1% in 3 years but inflation galloped at a hefty 17%. Little wonder the country was on the boil.

There was a student agitation in Gujarat against the state education minister after which the central Government was forced to dismiss the state Government and dissolve the legislature. There were also assassination attempts on public leaders in which Lalit Narain Mishra the Railway minister was killed.

Then in March-April 1974 began the student agitation in Bihar by the Bihar Chatra Sangharsh Samiti which was supported by Jayaprakash Narayan. JP called for total revolution. A month later the Railway Union went on strike led by George Fernandez. The strike was brutally suppressed by the government which arrested thousands of employees and drove their families out of the quarters.  

With all this discontent simmering out came the verdict of Jagmohan Sinha and it exploded like dynamite on Indira Gandhi. Indira Gandhi appealed to the Supreme Court on the issue but Justice VR Krishna Iyer upheld the judgment of the High Court. He also ordered that all the privileges she was receiving as an MP be stopped. However she was allowed to continue as PM pending decision on her appeal.   

On 25^th June 1975, the next day after Krishna Iyers decision JP called for a huge procession at Delhi where he indicated that Policemen should disobey the orders of the Government and act as per their conscience. On the same day Indira approached the pliant President Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed and got the proclamation of the Emergency signed. Within 3 hours electricity to all the newspapers was cut and the political opposition was arrested. The decision was sent to the cabinet only next morning and they quietly fell in line.

The Emergency came about because of the utter incompetency of Indira Gandhi to take proper economic decisions which threw the economy into a downward spin. Clearly not a single ordinary person would be satisfied with a less than 1% growth rate and 17% inflation. Any government that brought it in has to face the music and that is what happened to Indira Gandhi. To get out of that and keep her power she resorted to draconian powers and persecuted the people who opposed her at her whims. But draconian powers are no substitute for governance and everything boils down to good governance which Indira Gandhi could not provide.

Imagine today if any Government gives a less than 1% GDP growth rate and 17% inflation, then would it be spared by the people? That too, a government with over a two thirds majority? Why blame the opposition? They took the opportunity because she bungled right royally and wanted to hang on to the chair despite that. She was very lucky that her opposition was a motley bunch of parties sans any ideology except sitting on the PM’s chair and so they blundered on and gave India back to her on a platter. Those gentlemen; Morarji Desai, Charan singh, Jagjivan Ram and of course the BJP had diverse ideologies and nothing in common except getting the chair. What else can be expected to happen with such gentlemen at the helm?