The Political Eye | Decoding Rahul Gandhi’s worldview

The speech has drawn a fair bit of attention. In his speech in Parliament on Monday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, too, is expected to respond to some of Gandhi’s criticisms directed at the government.

What did Gandhi’s speech tell us about his worldview? What did he get right? And what did he get wrong?

On his critique of the economic policy of the government, Gandhi was substantially right – even though he runs the risk of undermining Indian capitalism in general unless he articulates a more nuanced economic worldview.

On his critique of the politically centralising tendencies of the government, and value of federalism, Gandhi was once again right – it is also instructive to see a bit of a shift in his discourse from focusing on pluralism to federalism. But he displayed political naïveté by coming across as opposed to the “nation” and ignored the history of the evolution of federalism.

On his critique of foreign policy, Gandhi was both factually and analytically wrong about both the roots and the response to the current crisis – though he was instinctively right about India being strategically vulnerable at the moment.

On the economy and capitalism

Gandhi’s first point revolved around a critique of crony capitalism, the concentration of economic resources and the devastation of the informal sector.

This is fair and there is now enough empirical work to show that there is a spike in both poverty and inequality, even as some segments have gotten wealthier. This disparity cannot be dismissed as a natural byproduct of growth anymore, for the pandemic has sharply aggravated the problem. The uneven nature of the recovery is causing distress and will have a socio-political cost. And the government cannot escape blame for it.

Cronyism – or just the perception of cronyism – erodes the political credibility of Indian capitalism. And that is a problem because there is no way to grow, tackle poverty, create jobs, and improve livelihoods but through healthy capitalism. You don’t want an anti-corporate capital mood in the country – or stigmatised capitalism, as Arvind Subramanian so incisively put it – for, as this government has just experienced in the case of farm laws, it makes structural reforms difficult. The route to healthy capitalism is the perception of fairness. And true or false, this sense of fairness doesn’t exist in the Indian political economy at the moment, as some are seen as benefiting more than others.

You also want healthy capitalism because it strengthens democracy. And this is something that India’s opposition doesn’t recognise adequately. Capital which is autonomous of the State provides resilience to other institutional actors to take on authoritarian regimes – this is a key, under-appreciated, reason why American institutions were able to stand up to Donald Trump. It is only by fighting to reduce the State’s discretionary powers and expand the freedom for private enterprise that this can happen. But the Opposition’s rhetoric often appears geared towards fighting for a more expansive State role, which will cripple the autonomy of the private sector even further. This doesn’t mean that the State should not step up to support those economic segments that have lost out in the pandemic or need a helping hand – but it means that economic freedom must be a central principle of the Indian political economy.

So yes, Rahul Gandhi’s diagnosis of the problem was correct. And it is good that he is giving voice to segments that need a political voice. But his somewhat vague prescription will probably not address the core issues he is concerned about.

On politics and federalism

Gandhi’s second point focused on how India is most effectively governed through conversation and negotiation. India, he argued, was a union of states where regional aspirations have to be accommodated and respected and central diktats don’t always work.

This too is fair. But Gandhi weakened his own case by saying the Constitution didn’t call India a nation, which the BJP, predictably, was quick to pick to paint Gandhi as “anti-national”.

In fact, the preamble does not say India is federal. And that was for the opposite reason than Gandhi indicated. Partition had just happened, India’s leadership was sceptical of devolving substantial rights to states, and the Constitution actually tilted the balance in favour of the Centre and created what came to be unofficially known as a quasi-federal model. Unlike in the United States, the rights of states was not a priority for the framers of the Constitution – the preservation of the Union was.

Rahul Gandhi’s own party or family hasn’t been as committed to the idea of India as a Union of states as he would now like us to believe either. His great grandfather wasn’t a particularly committed federalist, especially when it came to issues of identity – it took enormous struggles to finally get Jawaharlal Nehru to concede to the principle of linguistic reorganisation of states. His grandmother was the epitome of centralised control – state chief ministers, who were relatively strong under Nehru, became mere appendages of the Centre under Indira Gandhi, and the use of Article 356 to dismiss unfriendly state governments shot up. His father’s own record as Prime Minister in either Kashmir (the 1987 elections were widely perceived to have been rigged) or Andhra Pradesh (he insulted a state chief minister, triggering the rise of a regional force in the form of NT Rama Rao) reflected a rather weak commitment on the part of Rajiv Gandhi to the rights, autonomy and dignity of states.

The fact is that the weakening of Congress and the strengthening of federalism went together in India. Subnational aspirations grew, regional parties became stronger, the rise of the coalition era at the Centre meant that the views of states had to be taken into account – and all of this was good.

But none of this should take away from the merits of Gandhi’s warning about the perils of centralisation and homogenisation. This is especially true when it comes to the south, Jammu and Kashmir, and parts of the Northeast. Indeed, the fact that, under the current government, a state was carved out into two units, without the proposal even going to the state legislature, marks an egregious violation of the spirit of federalism.

This is a new Bharatiya Janata Party – not the solely north India-centric BJP of the past. But its electoral spread hasn’t been accompanied with the same scale of ideological flexibility that is needed to govern a diverse India. In fact, electoral success has made the party more ideologically rigid in pushing its vision of an Indian polity – and this has come at the cost of alienating and excluding religious minorities (especially Muslims but also Sikhs and Christians), and regions that don’t automatically associate with the rhetoric of the BJP (Gandhi’s emphasis on Tamil Nadu and Kerala was correct in this regard).

So on his political critique, Rahul Gandhi is being selective and ahistorical – but he is correct about the current moment.

On foreign policy

Gandhi’s third point was about how India, today, is strategically vulnerable. This is true.

But if Gandhi had just stuck to focusing on the increased threat from across the border in the north and west, it would have made sense. If he had said that China and Pakistan have got even closer, and the possibility of a two-front war cannot be ruled out, that too would have been true. If he had explained how the change in the constitutional status of Jammu and Kashmir had made it more vulnerable by deepening local alienation, which adversaries can leverage, it would have been a debatable but legitimate argument. And if Gandhi had said that because of domestic political imperatives, this government had closed the doors on creative diplomacy with Pakistan, that too would have been a legitimate point.

But Gandhi’s critique appeared to have many gaps.

One, his suggestion that the current government is somehow responsible for the China-Pakistan nexus, as external affairs minister S Jaishankar has already pointed out, isn’t true. This is a legacy of the past, though the challenge has undoubtedly increased in recent years. But this challenge has primarily increased because China has become assertive as its power and influence has grown. And its aggressive behaviour isn’t directed only at India but across the board, at smaller and larger neighbours, in the periphery and beyond. In this period, Pakistan’s dependence on China has grown for various reasons (and not just to do with India). India has been living with the threat of a two-front war for decades, and that threat today has grown because what was a relatively tranquil front has become a live front – and that tranquillity is broken because General Secretary Xi Jinping of the Chinese Communist Party has decided his time has come.

Gandhi suggested India had made a huge blunder which has led to two fronts becoming a unified front – he should explain what this blunder is. Is he referring to the effective revocation of Article 370? Is it Gandhi’s case that the change in the status quo in Kashmir is what has created the new strategic unified threat in India’s north? This may well be the case – though the China Pakistan Economic Corridor and China’s investment in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir predates India’s decision to change the status quo in Kashmir. But either way, Gandhi should properly explain the link he is drawing between an Indian “blunder”, a Chinese plan and the China-Pakistan axis.

Two, Gandhi seemed to suggest that India does not recognise the extent of the challenge posed by China. It is true that this government hasn’t publicly been entirely transparent about the scale of Chinese ingress into Indian territory – perhaps to keep room open for an eventual agreement that requires a compromise. It is also true that certain decisions – should India have given up its control over the Kailash range in exchange for a degree of Chinese disengagement in Pangong Tso, should India insist on de-escalation from Depsang as a prerequisite to a larger deal – can be debated, with legitimate viewpoints on both sides. But to suggest that Indian government isn’t aware of the scale of the China challenge is simply not true.

In fact, more than any other government in recent decades, not because of any great policy vision but due to China’s actions, the establishment in Delhi is today acutely aware of the Chinese threat. And it is responding to it by maintaining its own military presence at the Line of Actual Control; forming countervailing groupings such as Quad to bolster its strength; expanding its activities in the maritime domain to create leverage vis a vis the Chinese on the land frontier; deepening its engagement with the United States and a range of middle powers in Asia and beyond; seeking to reduce Chinese influence in the Indian economy; stepping up its economic engagement rather than just be engaged in the traditional political give and take in the neighbourhood; and becoming a part of global democratic efforts to have an economic and technological ecosystem that isn’t subservient to China. To be sure, all these efforts will take time to deliver results. But to either suggest that Indian policymakers at the highest level don’t see that China will remain India’s greatest adversary and threat in this century or are doing nothing about it is wrong.

Three, Gandhi seems to suggest that India is entirely isolated in the neighbourhood. He used a particularly wrong example – that no guests were willing to come for the Republic Day – to substantiate this, which wasn’t true.

The neighbourhood has indeed got more complicated – and Delhi’s actions, both under this government and earlier Congress regimes, have contributed to it.

But to suggest that India is entirely isolated in the wider neighbourhood once again is too simplistic a view of the dense ties that permeate India’s relations with countries in the region, the complexity of politics in these countries, and the fluidity of the current political moment in each neighbouring capital where “pro-Beijing” and “pro-Delhi” governments are giving way to each other more rapidly than analysts can keep pace. Should Delhi be doing more? Yes. Is Delhi entirely isolated? No.

Rahul Gandhi’s Parliament speech was an important window into his worldview. As an opposition leader, it is not his job to provide all the answers – and as many opposition figures who have been electorally successful have shown, to be rigorous in one’s critique is not a necessary prerequisite. There were substantive interventions, which the government must take into account, as it draws its political, economic and strategic policies. But, Gandhi too should provide both a more comprehensive and honest diagnosis and prescription of India’s current challenges.

The Political Eye is a weekly column focusing on Indian politics.

The views expressed are personal