BETRAYER OR BETRAYED – AN ENIGMA NAMED DEVE GOWDA
K G Suresh

“Deve Gowda should realize that after 7 p.m there are better things to do than think of politics,’ the late Karnataka Chief Minister J H Patel had once famously remarked. Even the former Prime Minister’s detractors concede that he is one of the rarest 24x7 politicians in the country today. And at the age of 76, Hardanahalli Doddegowda Deve Gowda is perhaps the only former Prime Minister, who unlike others has not faded away into oblivion after stepping down, who continues to remain an active Parliamentarian (He is a Lok Sabha Member from Hassan) , who heads a nationally-recognised political party, the Janata Dal (Secular), which has a substantial base in Karnataka and shares power with the Left Democratic Front in Kerala and who has today become the fulcrum of the nascent Third Front seeking to provide an alternative both to the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance and the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance.

Though the credit for his 10-month stint as the 11th Prime Minister of India is often attributed to fiction or factors such as destiny and the wranglings within the United Front, the fact remains that this much taunted ‘humble farmer’ rose from the grassroots to occupy the highest post of the land.

Ahead of the 2004 Karnataka Assembly elections, a Delhi-based television reporter had asked Gowda whether like other political parties, he was also planning to engage agencies to conduct poll surveys, the Janata Dal patriarch gave his trademark naughty smile with a twinkle in his eye and revolved his finger over his head. “It’s all here”, he said. And when the results came, the party which had only four seats in the outgoing Assembly emerged as the Kingmaker with 58 seats, first aligning with the Congress to form the Government and then with the BJP. Rest is history.

The battle-hardened war horse knows not only the topography of his state like the back of his hand but also has on his fingertips, data and statistics pertaining to each and every Assembly and Lok Sabha seat, not to speak of his razor sharp memory about people, both his well wishers and foes. It is this earthiness, this rooted to the ground mindset that has endeared him to his supporters, notwithstanding all the charges of nepotism and corruption leveled against him. That he could win 28 seats in the last 2008 Assembly elections in Karnataka on his own braving all charges of betrayal and corruption is a testimony to his will and determination to fight against all odds, a quality that has earned him sobriquets like ‘the great survivor’, ‘Machiavelli’ of Indian politics etc;

Born on May 18, 1933 to Dodde Gowda and Devamma, who belonged to a poor, three-acre owning agricultural background, in a house built of mud and thatched roof in the non-descript hamlet of Hardanahalli of Holenarasipura taluk in Karnataka’s Hassan district, Gowda tended sheep after school hours and studied by the candlelight to obtain a Civil Engineering Diploma in 1952 at the age of 19. Belonging to the community of Vokkaligas or cultivators, who have stood by him even in his worst times, Gowda used to plough his own land till the time he was elected to the Karnataka Legislative Assembly for the third time. The young Gowda soon emerged as a highly competent engineering contractor who gained reputation in his area as a go-getter. The experience also gave him a thorough understanding of public works projects, an analytical skill which he still uses to the hilt in his ongoing legal crusade against the Bangalore-Mysore Infrastructure Corridor Project.

It was during those years of struggle that he polished his political skills under the tutelage of his political Guru A G Ramachandra Rao. Gowda, who joined the Congress party in 1953, was first elected to the Holenarsipur Taluk Board. He also served as President of the Anjaneya Cooperative Society of Holenarasipur. However, Gowda’s stint with the Congress party was short-lived. At the age of 29, he contested the Assembly elections as an Independent candidate and with a meager Rs 16,000/- contributed by his friends and relatives trounced his Congress rival prompting the party to expel him for six years.

Gowda even today vividly remembers how he traveled by bus to submit his nomination papers and the Rs 16,000/- he had spent for a splendid victory as against the present state of affairs in Karnataka where moneybags, land mafia and mine mafia rules the roost and hundreds of crores are blown away just to win one Assembly seat such as the ones in the iron-ore rich Bellary.

An effective speaker on the floor of the Assembly, Gowda soon gained reputation for his attention to details, keen observation powers and deep understanding of the pulse of the people, particularly the poor and farmers in the rural areas – qualities that enabled him to work effectively as a Legislator, Opposition leader, Minister in the state Government, Chief Minister and ultimately Prime Minister of India.

Civil Servants who have worked with him have vouched for these uncanny abilities time and again while media has hyped it up with superlatives such as ‘old fox’ and often uncharitable prefixes like wily, shrewd, calculating and scheming.

The former Prime Minister himself though disagrees with these attributes saying had they been true, he would have survived as Prime Minister for a longer tenure with the support of the BJP and others even after the ‘old man in a hurry’ (the term he used for the then Congress President Sitaram Kesri in his farewell speech in Parliament) had withdrawn support to his United Front Government.

Gowda’s commitment to secularism, often slammed by the Right wing as appeasement, has stood the test of time. Though he is targeted for the tie-up with the BJP, people close to him recall how shocked he was with the decision of his own party legislators led by his own son H D Kumaraswamy to enter into an alliance with the saffron party in January 2006. He dissolved the state unit of the party and suspended his son and other legislators, a move now termed by his critics as a stage managed show. Had it been so, it would not have virtually paralysed him for several months immediately thereafter. He revoked his son’s suspension only after the latter convinced him that the Congress party had made all efforts to break his party and that the new coalition would not at any cost compromise on secularism and welfare of farmers and underprivileged sections of the society.

While the BJP and the media projected as “betrayal” and “rank opportunism” the JD (S) decision to walk out of the 20 months each power sharing agreement, Gowda in his 70s did not want to share the blame of installing the first saffron Government south of Vindhyas having been a strong votary against communal forces all his life. Though he forgave his son, the fact remains that he never shared platform with any of the BJP stalwarts either inside or outside Parliament. He wrote strong letters to former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha L K Advani and BJP President Rajnath Singh cautioning against any attempt to patronize Hindutva issues including that of Baba Budangiri shrine.

In fact, on a highly confidential last minute mission to salvage the coalition, Advani conveyed to me his disappointment and surprise over Deve Gowda’s attitude towards BJP leaders saying never has an ‘ally’ behaved like this towards the saffron party. Despite his good relations with Bhairon Singh Shekhawat, Gowda ensured that his party abstained from voting in the Presidential elections where the Rajasthan leader was the NDA nominee though his party was running a coalition with the BJP in Karnataka. Gowda never felt comfortable with the BJP and favours a ban on Sangh Parivar outfits like Bajrang Dal for its “anti-minority stance” though he personally holds Vajpayee in high esteem and had not hesitated from praising the constructive social work done by RSS.

Secondly, Gowda has taken his Muslim following very seriously (C M Ibrahim was his Man Friday during his tenure as Prime Minister, though both of them fell out subsequently and JD (S) Secretary General Kunwar Danish Ali remains his most trusted lieutenant in Delhi even today) - one reason why he clung on to JD (S) when the Janata Dal split in 1999, with majority of the leaders led by Sharad Yadav forming the Janata Dal (United) and supporting the BJP-led NDA.

His supporters dismiss with contempt the charge that he was responsible for bringing BJP to power in Karnataka. They blame the Congress for dividing secular votes. Congress treated him as a pariah instead of joining hands with the JD (S) to combat communal forces. The argument holds some truth as the two parties together had won 108 seats as against the 112 bagged by the BJP.

Other charges often leveled against the soft-spoken Gowda are nepotism and corruption. Undoubtedly, like any other loving husband and doting father, Gowda too cares for his wife and children. He married Chennamma when she was only 17. A deeply religious woman, she cried and tried to persuade him against accepting the Prime Minister’s post as she feared that her simple, God-fearing husband may get lost in the dirty quagmire of national politics. The ‘King of Corruption’ as he was once described by a critic, Gowda could manage to build a modest dream roof over her head in the middle class locality of Padmanabha Nagar only in his 70s.

His eldest son H D Balakrishna Gowda was a State Administrative Service officer, second son H D Revanna took to politics at an early age, third son Kumaraswamy, a film producer by profession, is considered his heir apparent and son Ramesh is a Radiologist running a nursing home in Bangalore.

Both daughters Anusuya and Shylaja are married to eminent Bangalore-based doctors Dr Manjunath and Dr Chandra Sekhar.

Though both Kumaraswamy and Revanna were in active politics, it was for his long-time protégé Siddaramiah that Gowda lobbied hard to make Chief Minister when the Congress-JD (S) Government was formed after the last Assembly elections (but Congress had its way and Dharam Singh became Chief Minister and Siddaramiah and not either of his sons was made Deputy Chief Minister). However, the break up between the two parties took place when Siddaramiah was weaned away by the Congress.

Gowda could have easily bargained for cabinet berths for his sons when the Left parties withdrew support to the Manmohan Singh Government on the nuclear deal and sought his backing during the confidence vote. Much to the dismay of critics who have projected him as an opportunist, Gowda stuck to his avowed stand of maintaining equidistance with both Congress and BJP and voted against the motion even as one of his MPs was lured away by the ruling coalition, a decision which prompted party dissident and Kerala MP Veerendra Kumar to return to the party fold.

The trappings of power never enamoured Deve Gowda who has never touched alcohol and gave up smoking years ago. An epitome of simplicity, his life style and food habits would put to shame even a local corporator. A convert to vegetarianism after his father’s death, Gowda loves his Ragi Mudde (Balls made of Millet, a staple diet of the poor farmers in Karnataka) and loves to hear devotional songs. Even as Prime Minister, he traveled abroad in his usual attire – dhoti, kurta and chappals. A workaholic, Gowda is thoroughly occupied with politics and has no known recreations except spending some time regularly on the treadmill, watching television news and reading books and newspapers, particularly The Hindu. Of late, he takes an annual Ayurveda sabbatical for a fortnight in Kerala. He attends social functions as a duty or ritual not as a pleasure.

Gowda enjoys most when he is surrounded by people and is surrounded by them. Even in the midst of political battles, he finds time to write letters to different Ministers on issues ranging from funds for the needy from contingency and relief funds to transfer on compassionate grounds to admission in Kendriya Vidyalayas. People from Karnataka visiting Delhi on professional and personal work often walk into his modest 5, Safdarjung Lane House in Delhi without any restrictions whatsoever to pose for photographs with him or seek his help in resolving their problems. His secretarial staff too are perennially busy writing letters to different Ministries ranging from Agriculture to Railways and Civil Aviation pertaining to various problems faced by the people in Hassan, Karnataka and other parts of the country.

Nobody returns from empty handed from 5, Safdarjung Lane without a letter or a cup of coffee. And yes, it is also one of the few addresses of politicians in Delhi where there are no pending bills and service providers including newspaper vendors are pestered by the staff to collect their payments on time.

Another accusation made against Gowda is of being revengeful and capricious, charges his loyalists totally disagree with. They maintain it was Gowda, who has repeatedly been done in, not by his foes but by those who should have been his friends whether it be Ramakrishna Hegde, J H Patel (whom he anointed as Chief Minister when he shifted to Delhi as Prime Minister in May 1996) or his bete noir S M Krishna.

They say Gowda could have been Chief Minister as early as 1978 but S Nijalingappa and the suave and sophisticated Brahmin leader Hegde sabotaged the Assembly election campaign enabling Devraj Urs of the Congress to win a second term. Again after the Janata Party led by Gowda won the 1983 Assembly elections, Hegde outmanoeuvred him to become the Chief Minister.

Twice the President of Janata Party, Gowda became the President of the Janata Dal in 1994 and with his strategy and unmatched organizational skills was the driving force in bringing the party to power in the state, which was a Congress bastion for long, except for brief stints of Hegde and S R Bommai. Janata Dal secured a whopping 116 seats out of the 224 seats at stake leaving far behind BJP with 40 seats and Congress with 35. However, this time around his supporters were cautious and stormed the legislature party meeting demanding his elevation as Chief Minister and Gowda assumed office as Karnataka’s 14th Chief Minister on 11 December, 1994.

Though a somnolent Gowda was the delight of many a cartoonist and was a figure of derision for the country’s elite, diehard loyalists blame a Brahmnical and urban-centric media for the derogatory projection of a grassroots politician while the leader himself says that as a diabetic, he closes his eyes to avoid the powerful lights.

Unlike the popular perception that his life and politics are guided by astrology, Gowda’s decisions are based on his thorough understanding of the political realities and strict adherence to principles (right or wring) he strongly believes in.

For instance, his running battle with the promoters of the Bangalore Mysore Infrastructural Corridor is purely based on his conviction that farmers in the state were being deprived of thousands of acres of land at great loss to state exchequer and immense benefit to the builders. Not that the promoters did not make efforts to woo him but the man remains adamant and would not settle for anything less than a return of excess land and a lucrative compensation to the farmers.

He drew flak from his party colleagues, allies and critics alike when as Prime Minister, he met Shiv Sena supremo Bal Thackeray at the residence of super star Amitabh Bachchan to offer his condolences on the death of the latter’s wife and son and to inquire about his health after a heart surgery.
Gowda defended his decision stating that Thackeray had helped him as Karnataka Chief Minister by releasing 300 million units of electricity to the state when Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh had declined to help.

In 1987, Gowda had resigned as Irrigation Minister from the Karnataka Cabinet protesting against insufficient allocation of funds in the Budget for irrigation.

Often such ‘clash of interests’ with the children of urban India has led to his misplaced projection as anti-rich, anti-industries and anti-urban. But the fact remains that even the BMIC was conceived during his tenure as Chief Minister; which also saw the state emerging as a haven for foreign investments and the hub of information technology. Though his clash with Infosys mentor N R Narayana Murthy has hogged national headlines time and again, it was Deve Gowda who laid the foundations of the IT policy that transformed the face of Bangalore for all times to come. He was the only Indian state leader that time around to attend the World Economic Forum session in Davos, Switzerland and visit Singapore drum up investment in Karnataka.

Despite his socialist leanings, Gowda is an ardent believer in liberalization with a human face and brought about far reaching changes to the Karnataka Land Reforms Act which removed ceilings on land holdings and opened up agriculture to private investment and export-oriented growth. Providing a business savvy stable Government, he facilitated special investment packages for the software industry, huge sales tax exemptions and a conducive industrial atmosphere free of labour unrest.

Of course, Gowda never lost sight of the farming community, whose cause still motivates him no end. As Chief Minister, he not only waived off Rs 128 crore in interest payments and continued interest free loans but also regularized forest land inhabited by Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribes.

Though reservation for minorities has become both fashionable and controversial today, Gowda was the pioneer when he introduced a four per cent reservation for them in both education and jobs apart from quota in elected bodies right from Panchayat level. He also took the unprecedented step of reserving 33 per cent jobs for women in all state Government departments and institutions besides reserving 50 per cent jobs for them in educational institutions. He still advocates the Karnataka model of reservation as a role model for the rest of the country.

Gowda firmly believes that astrology is a science but he is a greater believer of destiny, which took him to the dizzying heights of power. But along with destiny, his “indefatigable optimism which looks for opportunities even in extreme misfortune” (as one foreign journalist put it), his political pragmatism, his network of loyalists both among bureaucrats and politicians and above all his willingness to listen and learn played no small role in his long journey from Hardanahalli Village to 7, Race Course Road, New Delhi.

Even he utilized his 18 months incarceration during the Emergency to enrich his knowledge through exhaustive reading and widen his network through interactions with other political stalwarts jailed during the time – factors which not only moulded his personality and perspective but also paved the way for his entry into national politics.

Following the outcome of the recent Karnataka Assembly elections where Gowda’s Janata Dal (Secular) was relegated to the third position with a meager 28 seats ( as against 58 in the previous polls which catapulted it from anonymity to power), several young journos and analysts sought to write his political obituaries. But the veterans in the profession know that he is one politician who cannot be written off. While it remains to be seen how he keeps his promise made to the Parliament (while resigning as Prime Minister) to “rise like the Phoenix”, the war horse is no stranger to the fickleness of political fortunes. In 1989, his group of Janata Party fared poorly in Karnataka winning just two of the 222 Assembly seats it contested and Gowda himself tasted defeat for the first time in his career losing in both the constituencies he contested.

Similarly, his re-election in 1967 gave him immense confidence and when the Congress split in 1969, he joined the Congress (O) headed by Sh Nijalingappa, which was in power in Karnataka then. However, the rout of the Congress (O) in the Lok Sabha elections after the Bangladesh war did not overturn his fortunes. On the contrary, he emerged as leader of the truncated opposition hit by the Indira Gandhi tsunami.

Though projected irreverently as a parochial leader with a limited vision confined to Karnataka, Gowda’s handling of sensitive inter-state issues such as Cauvery and inter-religious issues such as the Hubli Idgah Maidan as Chief Minister and the pioneering steps he took as Prime Minister within a short span of ten months contradict such notions.

It was his espousal of the cause of the poor, downtrodden, underprivileged and farmers which saw his consecutive election to the Assembly five times (1962-1989) and subsequently from December 1994-September 1996. His performance as Leader of the Opposition in the Karnataka Assembly (from March 1972 to March 1976 and November 1976 to December 1977) won him many admirers. He resigned from his Assembly Membership in November 1982. He served as the Minister of Public Works and Irrigation, a tenure which saw the launch of several key irrigation projects in the state.

Deve Gowda entered the Lok Sabha in 1991 from his native Hassan constituency and soon with his conduct and advocacy of the cause of the poor, particularly farmers, became a popular face in the national political circuit. A political worker of the 60s generation, Gowda has never disobeyed the Chair nor rushed to the Well of the House ever. He laments the decline of parliamentary standards including the level of debates, the growing intolerance to listen to each other and the bypassing of Parliament by successive Governments at the Centre.

Television Journalist Rajdeep Sardesai had once commented, “That Gowda became PM may rankle those who feel that his ascent to the post devalued the august institution. His choice was pure luck, plucked out of obscurity to the highest post only because the other contenders eliminated each other. And yet, Deve Gowda will go down in history as one of the only two Indian Prime Ministers (Charan Singh being the other) with well-defined rural roots, a consciously non-elite leader, and in his case, the first to perhaps have no connection with the Delhi durbar. In a sense, he was the first genuine regional satrap to become PM, a politian who derived his sense of power and importance, not from his proximity to the national leadership of his party but from his control over a particular state.”

His shrewd handling of elections to the 11th Lok Sabha witnessed his emergence as powerful regional leader with the Janata Dal winning 16 of the 28 Parliamentary seats at stake.

The fractured mandate and the subsequent collapse of the 13 day Vajpayee Government paved the way for Gowda to be sworn in as the 11th Prime Minister of India on May 30, 1996 heading a 13 party United Front coalition supported by the Congress party.

“Even in my wildest dreams, I never thought of becoming India’s Prime Minister. It was God’s grace and destiny,” says Gowda for whom the leadership of the Third Front came without him seriously aspiring for it.

With V P Singh turning down the offer and CPI (M) rejecting Jyoti Basu’s candidature, Gowda was accepted due to his broader acceptability among UF constituents, Narasimha Rao’s preference and a track record of being a pragmatic, down-to-earth consummate politician.

Though he reluctantly accepted the post, Deve Gowda’s 10 months and 10 days tenure were eventful and marked by historic decision, both in the domestic and international arena. “It is a tribute to our democracy that a humble son of India, a farmer’s son, has been entrusted with the responsibility to lead the nation”, Gowda said in his first televised address to the nation on June 16, 1996 soon after securing the vote of confidence.

Though 33 per cent reservation for women in Parliament remains a distant dream till date, it was the Deve Gowda Government which introduced the Constitution Amendment Bill to reserve 30 per cent seats in the Lok Sabha for women, as also the Lok Pal Bill to enquire into charges of corruption against public functionaries including the Chief Minister.

It was Gowda who set the peace process in strife-torn Kashmir rolling not only by visiting the state, the first by a Prime Minister in seven years, but also putting in place a popularly elected Government led by Farooq Abdullah after a lapse of nearly eight years and offering an economic package that included construction of 290 km railway line from Udhampur to Baramulla, linking the valley with the rest of India for the first time and completion of the long-pending Dulhasti and Uri Hydro electric projects.

In October 1996, Deve Gowda became the first Prime Minister to visit all the seven states of the North-East and announced s Rs 65,000 crore economic package asserting that “India as a whole cannot progress unless every state including the seven states of the North-Eastern region keep in step with the rest of the country.” He also extended an unconditional invitation to all insurgent groups to meet him saying, “I genuinely wish to understand their points of view and what exactly is troubling them”.

On the External Affairs front, Gowda peacefully resolved the long-pending Ganga water sharing agreement with Bangaldesh and the Mahakali Treaty with Nepal. He played a key role in resumption of stalled talks between India and Pakistan. Gowda set aside protocol and received Chinese President Jiang Zemin and the two sides agreed for Confidence Building Measures along the Line of Actual Control.

Gowda gave a free hand to his Foreign Minister I K Gujral to pursue his ‘Gujral Doctrine’ and to his Finance Minister P Chidambaram to implement his liberalization programes. It was Gowda’s determination to tap the “vast unaccounted money” for development purposes that led to the launching of the revolutionary Voluntary Disclosure of Income Scheme (VDIS).

However, such successes did not matter to the then Congress President Sitaram Kesri who feared that an increasingly popular Deve Gowda might ‘frame’ him in the Dr Surendra Tanwar murder case as also income tax violations and decided to withdraw support to the United Front Government. The rest is history. As Deve Gowda fought gallantly on the floor of the House, he spoke candidly and honestly outlining the good work done by his Government and challenging the Opposition to bring out any case of impropriety against him or his cabinet colleagues. He described Kesri as the ‘old man in a hurry’ and promised to rise from the ashes again.

Only time will tell whether the Karnataka patriarch would spring back to call the shots at the Centre once again as the emerging leader of the Third Front after the next Lok Sabha elections but history will remember him always as one of the tallest ever grass roots level leader, who rose from the obscurity of Hardanahalli to the nation’s most powerful office, in a remarkable display of the maturity and vibrancy of Indian democracy.