India at 54

Time to accept the challenge of the future

Long years ago, independent India’s first Prime Minister, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, asked of us as a nation if we were “brave enough and wise enough” to grasp the opportunity freedom gave us and “accept the challenge of the future”. It is a question that Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee should be asking of his own party and the leaders of all other political parties when he addresses the nation from the ramparts of New Delhi’s Red Fort today. As an opinion poll conducted by a national newsmagazine showed this week, the people of this country are desperately seeking leadership. They see in Mr Vajpayee a likeable, decent, gracious and grandfatherly sort of person, but the impatient citizen is in search of a more assertive, energetic, far-sighted and tenacious leader capable of fighting vested interests, of empowering the disenfranchised, of asserting the greatness of India on the world stage, someone who is impatient with incompetence and mediocrity and will make the government work. In short, they want to resurrect the likes of an Indira Gandhi!
The overwhelming national vote in the opinion poll in favour of Indira Gandhi’s leadership is more a comment on the mood of the nation today than an informed and reasoned endorsement of her tenure in office. After all, the economy has done much better in the 16 years after her assassination than during the 13 years of her rule. But there is a message in that poll for the entire political leadership today. Make mistakes like Indira did, and she indeed made collosal mistakes both on the economic and political front, but get going. The electorate wants a government that can get a grip on the nation and take it somewhere; that pays heed to the concerns of the depressed classes and look to the future at the same time. There is no readymade Indira available anywhere, certainly not in Ms Sonia Gandhi. India has its Boris Yeltsin in office, but no Vladimir Putin waiting in the wings to take charge. But leaders are useful only upto a point. The real work, however, has to be done by all of us. A mood of pessimism seems to have gripped the nation. It is time to stand up and be counted and energise the forces of change. Hopefully, Mr Vajpayee will draw the right lessons from the prevailing mood and change it when he addresses the nation.