Laloo Prasad Yadav and Richard Nixon:
unfortunate hand me downs

The Nixon-Laloo coincidence is particularly pointed in mid-1997 because June 17, the day Bihar's governor, A.R. Kidwai,sanctioned the chargesheeting of Yadav in the fodder scandal case, was also the 25th anniversary to the day of the notorious break in at the Watergate headquarters of the democratic national committee in Washington. It was this bungled piece of political espionage which set in motion the constitutional crisis resulting in Nixon's resignation from the presidency in 1974. It was a unique event in American political history.

Nixon's paranoia about his political"enemies", as he viewed them, had led him to engage in political "dirty tricks" long before. But the fallout from the Watergate caper, involving both the Nixon White House and the Republican national committee, led, over the course of two years, to a charge of obstructing justice, with the ultimate involvement of the Supreme Court and his assured impeachment by the United States house of representatives. It was in the end an episode of the egregious abuse of power at the highest levels of government.

Without carrying the Laloo-Nixon comparison too far, one need only cite the reports in the newspapers of June 24, on the chargesheeting of the chief minister and 55 others, to make the point about the abuse and misuse of power in the present instance. The accused in the fodder scandal case No. RC 20(A)/96 have been charged with forgery, conspiracy, criminal breach of trust, and falsification of accounts. The details of the case have dominated the national and regional press for far too long to require repeating here. It should be noted, however, that while the current case involves a mere Rs 370 million withdrawn from the Chaibasa treasury between 1994-95 against false bills and supply orders, the scandal totals�most of which are attributable to the years after 1990 and the time when Yadav was chief minister and also holding charge of finance�are estimated at between Rs 9.5 billion to Rs 15 billion.

That the chargesheeting of the chief minister should happen only days before the June 25 anniversary of Indira Gandhi's Emergency is an additional irony to a year of ironies in the life of Yadav. In January 1996, when the fodder scandal first came into public view outside of Bihar, Yadav was named president of the Janata Dal, to replace the then hawala tainted S.R. Bommai. In April and May 1996, Yadav was projected and projected himself as the potential prime minister, an exercise which was repeated by Yadav and his supporters among the political classes with the demise of the H.D. Deve Gowda government in April of this year.

In the meantime, of course, the citizen voters of Bihar had already begun making their rather more sensitive judgments at the polling place. In 1996, they reduced the Janata Dal Lok Sabha representation from 32 to 22, or if one includes the National Front-Left Front allies in 1991, from 48 seats effectively controlled by Yadav to the present 22. That pattern of voter reaction to the Yadav's Janata Dal was confirmed in the October 1996 byelections when the Janata Dal lost four of 10 assembly seats - all of which it had previously held - to the Samata Party-Bhharatiya Janata party combine. However one reads these results, the citizen voters of Bihar appeared on the electoral surface to be sending a message much more powerful than the contrived publicity of maharaillas, bandhs, and promises of subsidized saris and dhotis which have dominated the daily press in recent months.

The irony of the Emergency connection is that Yadav appears to be neither aware of nor concerned with the abuse of power in 1997, an issue which confronted him very directly in the mid-Seventies. It will be recalled that Yadav, who with his contemporaries, Sushil Kumar Modi and Nitish Kumar, experienced his political baptism by fire in the student and anti-corruption movement of Jayaprakash Narayan in 1974, was, together with many others, a victim of the Emergency.

Indeed, Yadav much like Nixon, and certainly like Indira Gandhi has come to believe in his own indispensability. And like Nixon, he is fully convinced that he is victim of a grand conspiracy wherein everyone who is not his supporter, is inevitably his enemy. This paranoia cost Nixon his presidency as it will almost certainly cost Yadav the chief ministership. And in the Indian case there is the additional burden that Yadav's obdurate resistance to all norms of civil democratic responsibility may well split the Janata Dal he has done so much to strengthen over the years.

It is of course far too early to write Yadav's political obituary. He remains a powerful player both in Bihar and in New Delhi and his actions will do much to determine the course of events in both places. But it is not too early to draw meaning from the fodder scandal episode and the chargesheeting of the first sitting chief minister in India's history as a democratic republic.

The retrospectives in the US 25 years after Watergate provide a number of interesting ideas that are at least as relevant to the Indian case as they are to the American. Most prominent of these reflections is that Watergate and the Nixon resignation showed clearly that the system works. The nation was traumatized by Vietnam, and Watergate added to this climate of cynicism and anger about the way things were. But though Nixon was reelected to a second term, and the legal and political processes leading to his certain impeachment and resignation took more than two years to work themselves out, he did in the end resign. His vice presidential successor was defeated by a massive anti-Washington mandate, and Jimmy Carter the low key governor of Georgia, was elected president in 1976.

So too in India the process may seen to be overlong and drawn out. But that is, of course, precisely what the authors of the Constitution intended. It is certain that the fodder scandal will spend much time in the courts in the months and probably years ahead. And Yadav will indeed have his day in court to prove his innocence. And the warning of the special judge in the case that the Central Bureau of Investigation must follow all legal procedures, assures the chief minister of a fair hearing. In the meantime, whatever the immediate political future holds for Bihar, the Janata Dal, and the United Front at the Centre, it is certain that the people of Bihar and of India will have the final word, whenever that may happen, at the polls.

I have said before that the democratic system, whether in the US or India, may be flawed, but it works. The US survived Watergate and the assumption is that in 1997 it will survive the campaign finance scandals a notoriously weak federal election commission seems incapable of comprehending, leave alone resolving. Nor do politicians of either party show the interest or political will to enact meaning reform.

So too in India multiple scandals dominate politics and the news on an almost daily basis while the political classes do little more than wring their hands in apparent dismay. On the other hand, public interest litigations and the courts have forced the fodder scandal to its current resolution, and a powerful Election Commission monitors internal party elections, apart from regulating an electoral experience at the state and national level over 50 years that is unique on the planet.

While the chargesheeting of a chief minister apparently consumes the political life of the nation, life goes on. India will elect its constitutional head of state on July 14, and on July 25, K.R. Narayanan will be sworn in as India's 11th president. To repeat, the system is not flawless, but at its best the democratic process has the built in mechanisms to make necessary changes. It is an image that keeps hope alive wherever democracy is firmly rooted. India is such a place.

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