From Mrs G To Messers G

If, for some reason, a future historian decides to find out which letter of the English alphabet dominated Indias politics most, the letter G would surely win hands down. For we have:

G for Gandhi, Mahatma.

G for Gandhi, Indira.

G for Gandhi, Rajiv.

G for Gandhi, Sanjay.

G for Godse, Nathuram.

G for Gowda, Deve.

G for Gujral, Inder, Kumar and, stretching a point.

G for Ginnah, Mohammad Ali.

These Gs are not confined to people alone. You find them in the governments programmes also Garibi Hatao and Globalisation (which, many would say, is the anti-thesis of garibi hatao).

But it is not the purpose of this article to review all of these Gs. That can be left to the future historian.

For the moment, it is enough to look merely at the last 30 years, a period which can be safely described as being from Mrs G to Messrs G.

I refer, of course, to 1966-97, the years which have seen one giant mama G, one baby G, one Baba G and two pygmy-jis, called Gowda and Gujral respectively.

One of the questions which the historian could ask is: which one of these great Gs did the most harm to the Indian cause.

Mama G ruled longest. So she ought to win comfortably, for declaring the Emergency on the advice of Baby G if not for the myriad other politico-constitutional atrocities she unleashed on a still innocent nation.

Then, Baby G having perished in a flying accident, it fell to Baba G to follow her. But this time the boot was on the other foot. In his innocence, he fell victim to the very atrocities Mummy G had taught her henchmen.

After an interregnum, comes the age of the pygmy-Gs. The first of them, Gowdaji, with the cooperation of the Sardarji, used the CBI as he would have used the state CID against taluk-level opponents. He forget that the shark-like national politicians have far bigger teeth than the minnows of district politics. So when they bit back, he lost his job.

But that was an insignificant price to pay. The much larger, and probably unaffordable, price is still being paid by pygmy-G Jr, Shrimant Inder Kumar Gujral. That price has two elements.

One is the defiance of a regional satrap. In the fullness of time, he will have many emulators, just wait and watch.

When this sort of thing used to happen in the old days, they simply sent the army to sort the rascal out. Why, even Mamma G relied on her army of Gs the governors armed with Article 356.

But that kind of strong action is no longer possible. So pygmy-G Jr has to rely on another G Indrajit G, the home minister, who does nothing.

The other element of the price which is being paid is the final lowering of the boom on the CBIs reputation. When a chief minister, no less, says that its actions lack credibility, how are you going to convince the people, leave alone the crooks, to take it seriously?

These could well become the two main problems for the next-in-line G to resolve.