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In defence of PVN

To be sure, P V Narasimha Rao is not the first Indian prime minister to be accused of corruption, but he has made history of sorts by becoming the first one to be convicted of the same.

Right from the first elected prime minister of India, none of the incumbents of the high office -- barring that paragon of rectitude Vishwanath Pratap Singh and Atal Bihari Vajpayee -- has escaped charges of financial prestidigitation. Chandra Shekhar's regime was thankfully too short for the accusers to go into overdrive; otherwise, given the company he flaunts, he too would have joined the none-too-elite ranks. Thankfully again, Rao is not the first Indian prime minister who was voted out on the issue; that honour shall belong to the star of the Gandhi family alone.

And just look at some of the other political honchos with who Rao happens to share the honour: Jayalalitha, Laloo Prasad Yadav, Sukh Ram... Given the Indian politician's proclivity for confusing the public weal with his own, the list could go on ad infinitum.

Unfortunately, in my opinion, Rao's 'crime', for which the honourable Judge Ajit Bharihoke has convicted him and promised to sentence on Wednesday, was not corruption; it was sheer survival. And, even granting that paying bribes, offering financial or any other inducement to influence another individual's decision amounts to corruption, a basic knowledge of jurisprudence tells us that corruption has two parties, the giver and the taker. If paying a bribe is a crime, so is taking... which principle Judge Bharihoke has chosen to eschew, with good reason I am sure.

However, the purpose of this piece is not to criticise the magistrate's verdict, as much as to defend a man who I think has been wrongly punished.

Let us look at the circumstances in which Narasimha Rao took over in 1991, and held on for 5 long years.

Between 1989 and then, his was the third government. Political instability was the order of the day, and economic chaos was just around the corner. The sense of gloom, despair, was all-pervasive. What India needed at that point was not another political melt-down, but as the cliché goes, a steady hand at the helm. Unfortunately, it was not to be, as the electoral verdict was for another hung Parliament.

The need for political stability is not something one has cooked up. As everyone knows, the Opposition in India exists only to oppose, and will bring down the government in a jiffy if it could. For months, Rao ruled as prime minister on the Opposition's largesse, which simply refused to bring him down.

It was imperative at that point in the nation's history that Rao complete his term. India needed it, and whatever Rao did to provide it was in the national interest. You could excoriate him and his finance minister, Manmohan Singh, for blindly following what the World Bank had prescribed; but there was little choice before the nation at that point in time. Had Indira Gandhi been around, I am sure she would have pulled the nation through on dead shibboleths about socialism, and today India would probably rank along with Latin American nations that are on short fuse, and not become a nation that the West is so eager to court. To do what Rao and Singh did, needed not just balls; it also needed legislative numbers.

Of course, Rao led the most scam tainted government since Independence. He was also the first prime minister who was directly accused -- by someone who is himself facing court proceedings in the securities scam -- of taking money. Barring his finance minister, his Cabinet boasted of no navratnas.

My contention is simply this: if Rao is guilty of financial impropriety, by all means proceed against him. If he lined his pocket, throw the book at him. If he siphoned off funds from contracts, like at least one of his predecessor was accused of doing, put him behind bars. But to convict him of corruption, that too for providing stability at a time when the nation most needed it, and without taking into consideration the extenuating circumstances, is simply unfair.

Rao's corruption, in this case, is not the kind that has landed worthies like Jayalalitha and Laloo in trouble. In their case it was simple avarice; in Rao's case it had to do with buying stability since the voter did not provide it. If anything, the verdict of 1991, and subsequently in 1996 and 1998, tells us that when the voter fails the system the solution lies in engineering a solution that does not depend overmuch on the voters' fickleness.

As an aside, it never ceases to amuse me, the way Indians breast-beat over corruption. Here's a race that is corrupt to the core, but will still expect its rulers to be as pure as Gangotri, little realising that its leaders are stitched from the same cloth as themselves. For the leaders to be straight, the people will have to be abandon the crooked path, but no. We are all happy in our own little world of corruption, jumping the line, buying favours...

Tailpiece: In Highway Scars I had written about the way rumblers had been forced on a national highway in Mumbai. I am now happy to report that the offensive excrescence is off the road for good. And for this Mumbai's drivers have only the prime minister to thank. On Monday he flew into the city for his knee surgery, and his motorcade cannot just be delayed by speed breakers on the highway. So out with the damned spot!

Will Vajpayee turn saviour of Mumbai's neglected streets and lease drive down on what rediff.com regular Sajid Bhombal calls 'all those stretches of pothole broken by bits of road'?

The JMM case: Full Coverage

Saisuresh Sivaswamy