Tough choices for India's Rao

Shortly after this year's general election in India, P.V. Narasimha Rao faced two choices. The first was to resign gracefully from the post of Congress Party president, taking responsibility for the party's worst ever performance in the polls and hope that the other controversies dogging him would eventually fade from public memory.

The second was to hang on cynically to his party post and use it, through a complex back-room game, to protect himself from what was to be offered by destiny. Rao chose the latter option, only to find that destiny finally caught up with him last Saturday.

This time, he had to step down from his post in the party after a Central Bureau of Investigation special judge turned down his plea for the withdrawal of an earlier court order making him a co-accused in the US$100,000 Lakhubahi Pathak cheating case.

The judge also ordered Rao to appear before him at the end of the week, and said there was prima facie evidence regarding conscious complicity of the accused in the conspiracy to cheat Pathak.

With a huge crisis staring it in the face, the Congress Party quickly elected 76-year-old veteran Bihar leader Sitaram Kesri as its provisional president until party polls some time in the next two months.

With unity and unanimity, the words Rao stressed after announcing his intention to resign, the party did not take much time to decide on Kesri, who has been the treasurer of Congress for a number of years.

In a system where no politician bothers about the company he keeps, Rao's fate should be an eye-opener. His far-sighted and calibrated opening up of the country's economy and adroit handling of foreign and security policies in a rapidly changing world all add up to nothing now, only because of his fatal attraction for a character so undesirable as self-confessed swami-cum-financial guru Chandraswami.

Rao's case is that of a politician who had everything in place for greatness in his profession -- tact, intellect, patience and experience -- but not the strength of character that distinguished immortal statesmen from minor manipulators.

A man who could have gone down in history as one of India's greatest prime ministers has paid for his utter cynicism by undergoing the humiliation of being asked to appear before the courts, after being accused of conspiring with an unscrupulous "tantrist" to cheat a self-confessed bribe-giver. It is sad that the art of consensus politics that Rao perfected and practiced might now lead to his undoing.

-- The Nation, Bangkok