Political horse-trading or pure dynastic ruling—which is the way to be?

I WAS IN LONDON at the beginning of June during the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Celebrations and began to wonder if living in India for 20 years has turned me into a royalist. Isn’t such a system, I thought, better than the self-serving political manipulations that India’s politicians were going through, at the time, over the choice of the next President? The current holder of that office, Pratibha Devisingh Patil, has brought no dignity to the presidency. It seemed that she got the job because Sonia Gandhi, as Congress Party and governing coalition leader, picked her as a ‘safe choice’ and a ‘token’ woman in 2007. Safe choice in this context means someone who would not go against the Gandhi dynasty’s and Congress’s interests—if the 2014 General Elections produce a hung Parliament and the President has to invite someone to form the government. But as Sonia Gandhi discovered with a coalition that scents a lack of leadership, such dynastic considerations may have to be adjusted to maintain coalition unity. The politicking that was under way as this column went to press, with rivals emerging against Pranab Mukherjee, Congress’s longest-serving and most-able politician—though not a successful Finance Minister in the early 1980s when I first interviewed him for The Financial Times— showed the system at its worst. This column is going to press before the choice of the next President is clear. Though pointers seem to indicate that it will be Mukherjee. If he has been chosen by the time you read this, then at least Sonia Gandhi has been sensible enough to accept someone who is not believed to be regarded by her as ‘totally safe’ in terms of loyalty to the dynasty, though his loyalty to Congress is unquestioned. To come back to my question; is it good to have a head of state chosen by, what is in effect, political horsetrading? Ten years ago, when Britain’s Queen Mother died, there were debates on whether it was time for the monarchy to be sent packing. I wrote in a column for Business Standard that I’d prefer a royal head of state to a President ‘fixed’ by the then British Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair. The same applies now to the Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron. The question for India is entirely hypothetical. Because there is no chance of it turning to a royal dynasty, though it seems to have no objections to its governments being led for generations by one family. But it is not hypothetical for the UK where there will always be questions about the need for a monarchy, especially when members of the royal family have cavorted through affairs and scandals as they have done during the Queen’s reign. It was amazing to see and be among the hundreds of thousands who lined the banks of the River Thames in cold and wet weather on June 3, to watch a pageant of about 1,000 boats that carried the 86-year-old Queen and 20,000 people through the city centre. The next evening, in better weather, thousands filled the ceremonial Mall Avenue that leads to Buckingham Palace to hear and watch on big telly screens a splendid pop concert and an air force fly past, and to spot the Queen on a palace balcony. Partly inspired by a Canaletto painting of a Thames Pageant in 1752, the river event was the largest since that time, though its message was confused. People cheered on Boris Johnson who had just been re-elected Mayor of London. An elderly man with a naval-looking beard shouted, “Three cheers for the Dunkirk Spirit, our finest hour”, as small boats went past. Everyone joined in with the cheers, yet Dunkirk was not Britain’s finest hour. It was a retreat in 1940 from the German forces in France. But it can be seen as a victory because of the hundreds of civilianowned boats that crossed the English Channel to rescue 300,000 marooned troops. To mark that achievement, about 40 of the boats were in the pageant. That ‘Dunkirk spirit’—of grabbing salvation from the jaws of defeat—could be a marker of a country in denial. Just as the four-day festival to celebrate the jubilee was, given the current economic crisis facing the UK. There was, however, no denying the mood of celebration— mostly because people wanted a reason to be happy with so much bad news around. Of course, there was criticism of the event and what it stood for. The Guardian praised the pageant for its scale, organisation and the reverence shown to the Queen, but note, “She had sailed up London’s river from Chelsea, home of oligarchs and plutocrats, to the City, home of the unpunished financial sector for whose misdeeds the rest of us are paying”. A blog on The Independent site* criticised the “Dickensian conditions” provided for workers bussed to work at the event (reminiscent of Delhi Commonwealth Games!). Another** suggested that, “A republic will give the people of Britain a choice and a voice”. That of course would only work if the President was directly elected—and not chosen by an Indian system that puts power in the hands of a cabal of party leaders. Meanwhile, there is a stark contrast between India’s outgoing President who made a series of personal blunders, and Britain’s lady monarch who for 60 years has maintained the stature of the crown. It should not be difficult for India’s next President to restore the post’s image established by predecessors such as Abdul Kalam Azad, but it will tough for the Queen’s successor to emulate her achievement, especially if it is the rather voluble Prince Charles.