Rajiv Gandhi (1944-1991)

          

                                    

Rajiv Gandhi

   No Prime Minister has been as full of ironies as Rajiv Gandhi’s was. Here’s an example: If his government lasted for just two and a half years, that is pretty much the norm these days, he would have been regarded as one of our best Prime Minister ever. By the spring of 1987, accords were in place in Punjab and Mizoram; the foreign policy was looking up, V.P. Singh’s Finance Ministry was being heralded for its honesty liberalising zeal, and the Prime Minister was astonishingly popular. If his government had fallen that March, then Rajiv would have been treated as a world-class statesman. But the problem was: his government lasted only for five years.

          Rajiv Gandhi, the leading general secretary of India’s Congress (I) Party from 1981, became the Prime Minister of India (1984-89) after the assassination of his mother Indira Gandhi. He was born on August 20, 1944in Bombay. Rajiv and his younger brother, Sanjay were educated at Doon School, Dehradun. Rajiv then attended Imperial College, London, and completed an engineering course at the University of Cambridge. He returned to India from Cambridge without a degree. In India, he acquired a commercial pilot’s licence and worked as a pilot for Indian Airlines. In 1968, Rajiv got married to Sonia, an Italian.     

     While his brother Sanjay was alive, Rajiv largely stayed out of politics; but after his death in 1980, Indira Gandhi, the then prime minister drafted for him a political career. In June 1981, Rajiv was elected in a by-election to the Lok Sabha (Lower House of Parliament), and in the same month he became a member of the national executive of the Youth Congress.

            Whereas Sanjay had been described as politically ‘ruthless’ and ‘will-full’, Rajiv was regarded as a non-abrasive person who depended on well-educated school and university buddies and also consulted other party members and refrained from hasty decisions. Rajiv was very changing and always believed in conciliation.

         When his mother, Indira Gandhi was killed on October 31, 1984, Rajiv Gandhi was sworn in as Prime Minister that same day and was elected leader of the Congress (I) Party a few days later. He led the Congress (I) Party to a landslide victory in elections to the Lok Sabha in December 1984. As a Prime Minister, Rajiv offered an irresistible combination: change but with continuity, and finally realised that everybody projected their own aspirations and wishes on him. He was every young person’s chosen candidate; he was every middle class person’s role model:  the first prime minister in history to have ever held a salaried job with a large corporation. Because his early image was so bland, he began with a clean slate, a slate on which everybody wrote whatever they wanted.

        To his credit, Rajiv tried his best. India was falling apart. It was his job to try and put it together. His administration took vigorous measures to reform the government bureaucracy and liberalize the country’s economy. Rajiv signed the Punjab, Assam and Mizoram accords. With Assam accord he managed what his mother had failed to do: he brought the state back to the national mainstream. In Mizoram, he ended the militancy that had raged for 50 years. He also signed the Indo-Sri Lankan Peace Pact but it was a failure and resulted in the IPKF misadventure.     

        Unfortunately, after two years, his government became embroiled in several financial scandals like Bofors case. His drawback was that he had no unified vision of the India he wished to create. When he was elected, that did not seem so important. At that time the priority was to save the India we had, no to create a new one. Moreover, his laidback charm and easy wit helped cover up for the lack of vision. Asked about his priorities at an early conference, he dodged the questions with a one-liner. “Your mother gave us a government that worked. What will you give us?” asked a reporter. “A government that works faster” answered Rajiv. In fact Rajiv had no desire to change the system, he just wanted to make it move more swiftly.                                           

                              The Prime Minister who could do no wrong for the first half of his term, could do nothing right for the next two years. He never again seemed the Rajiv of old. He became an imperious aloof figure who tried hard to bluster that, he was in control of events, while he was actually being swept away by forces he could not handle. Finally, his party was defeated in the 1989 Lok Sabha elections, though he remained leader of the Congress. Throughout 1990, he tried hard to work out where he had gone wrong, so that if he comes back, he would get it right. But in 1991, he was assassinated by the LTTE in Sriperumbudur. And then, just as it was all on the verge of coming together again, it fell apart forever. The Government of India conferred ‘Bharat Ratna’ on him posthumously.