An impaired system

That the same Congress party which imposed the emergency leads a coalition today is a coincidence. But the inclusion of six ministers of the emergency days in the central cabinet is not. They were willing tools of tyranny which was perpetrated for 19 months under the guidance of Sanjay Gandhi, Indira Gandhi's son, an extra-constitutional authority. Not one of them was punished for misdeeds.

Their rule during the emergency resulted in detention of more than one lakh people without trial. The press was gagged and effective dissent was smothered, followed by a general erosion of democratic values. The attitude of the general run of the public functionaries was largely characterised by a paralysis of the will to do the right thing.

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The emergency may not be repeated. But the nation still suffers from the taint left behind. Both the politicians and civil servants strayed from their assigned roles. They have not yet come back to the right path. The hopeful factor is that the CPI (M), supporting the Congress-led coalition, was against the emergency. It would never allow the government to bring back those black days. But since part of the Left supported Indira Gandhi, the Marxists were somewhat equivocal. Even now the party withdraws from total resistance when it comes to the crunch.

Fortunately, President Abdul Kalam -- he returned the office of profit bill -- is not Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed who was the president when the emergency was imposed. He unquestionably signed the declaration on the night of June 25 although Indira Gandhi did not have the requisite cabinet approval. It was only on the morning of June 26, after the emergency had been declared, did she call the cabinet meeting and got its approval.

There is no record of any minister resigning or registering dissent against the emergency. The late Swaran Singh was the only minister who said at the cabinet meeting where Mrs Gandhi's action was endorsed that the country was already under the emergency. It was explained to him that what had been imposed was "internal" while the ongoing one which was declared following China's attack on India in 1962 was "external." Even then, Swaran Singh had to pay the price for daring to make inquiries. He was dropped from the cabinet subsequently.

It is difficult to imagine that the Congress will make amends for the abuses and misuses of authority. But it can avoid one thing which affected the people all over the country at that time. That was the misuse of power. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who still has some moral stature left, can at least restore the rule of law. The Congress and the non-Congress governments continue to govern the states from their party or personal point of view.

And they continue to use the diluted version of detention law to punish their opponents and critics. During the emergency a large number of officers -- district magistrates and commissioners of police -- obediently carried out the instructions emanating from politicians and administrative heads issued on personal or political considerations. Things are no different even now. The states are particularly playing havoc.

The worst fallout of the emergency has been that the public servants have invariably become an instrument in the hands of ministers at the centre and in the states. The ethical considerations inherent in public behaviour have become generally dim and in many cases beyond the mental grasp of many of the public functionaries. Desire for self-preservation has become the sole motivation for their action and behaviour. Manmohan Singh who has been a top civil servant should have devised some steps to retrieve them. Anxiety to survive at any cost forms the keynote of approach to the problems that come before public servants. The Mussoorie Academy where they are trained is itself lives in an ivory tower because it is too elitist and too distant for aam aadmi (common man). It should be obligatory for the trainees to work with NGOs at the grassroots. They may learn, if not imbibe, the qualities of humility which officials lack.

And there has to be a mechanism to punish the errant civil servants. None was even demoted or sacked for deliberately flouting laws and harassing those who were against the emergency. Some of them occupy key positions today and it can be seen that the Congress is their godfather. The Shah Commission which examined the excesses committed during the emergency recommended to the government to determine what went wrong not only in each individual case but generally and how a similar situation can and should be averted in the future.

No remedial methods could be taken because the architects of the emergency came back to power in the wake of the Janata Party's disintegration. They in fact hounded the few officers who had not wilted. Today another look at what happened then is not possible. The Congress is presided over by Sonia Gandhi who tries to copy Indira Gandhi in every way. Indira Gandhi had sterling qualities but her authoritarian tendencies had better of her too often.

What happened was the subversion of a system. If a recurrence is to be prevented, it has to be overhauled. The key to it is the civil servants, including the police. Their attitude has to change.

They cannot act in a democratic system as public servants do in an authoritarian government. Of course, nothing can be done without a change in political masters.

This will necessitate soul-searching both at political and administrative levels. If the officials on the one side and the politicians on the other do not limit their areas of operation to their accepted fields, the nation cannot be kept safe for working a democratic system.

Unless this awareness permeates all strata of our society, the recurrence of emergency or something like that may not be prevented. The best way to begin is for the six ministers of the "emergency fame" to step down voluntarily so that the nation starts with a clean slate. As American luminary Robert Frost said, "Most of the change we think we see in the life is due to truth being in or out of favour."

Kuldip Nayar is an eminent Indian columnist.