MARCH 28 Political Realism

After the general elections of March 1977, this scene was re-enacted, only on a larger scale. In this historic election the supposedly corrupt community had met with a stunning defeat. All those who now came into power belonged to the supposedly clean community. In the words of Lok Nayak Jaya Prakash Narayan, this was ‘a total revolution.’ But it very soon became evident that this entire supposition was quite wrong. The clean community, the Janata Party, soon fell a prey to corruption, a state of affairs which led to the collapse of the government in August 1979, even before the completion of its term. The truth is that this notion of there being distinctly separate corrupt and clean communities is entirely baseless. Corruption, far from being a vice peculiar to one community or another, stems from the human weakness of individuals. As Lord Acton very aptly observed: “Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.” In this world there are certain things which have to be tolerated as necessary evils. Imperfect government clearly falls into this category and, as such, should be borne with. This is a piece of realism which is inescapable if there is ever to be an end to the political unrest which threatens to place stability beyond our reach. Over and above this, we must also realize that a government cannot do absolutely everything for us. Even if it so desired, it could perform only in certain restricted spheres, for it has its limitations. It is thanks to our lack of political awareness that we vote governments into power and then, before they have even completed their terms in office, we set about toppling them. If we want political stability in our country, we shall have to curtail our expectations of the governments we elect. Without this, no progress will ever be made. As a matter of history, our form of government is based on the British model. But if you go to Britain during the elections you will find no excessive furore among the people, as happens in our country, the reason being that the British consider their government to be just one of the many institutions in their society. They know that the government’s contribution to national construction can be only partial. We, on the contrary, have come to regard the task of national construction as something which falls entirely within the purview of the government. It is such misguided and inflated expectations which give rise to unnecessary excitement before the elections and the subsequent unnecessary despair. During his term in office, in the course of the second world war (1939-45), Sir Winston Churchill inspired his people with the watchword: “Go to it!”