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'Is this the way the country should be trifled with?'

Following is the text of Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's address to the nation on Wednesday, April 28, 1999:

Well, my countrymen, you sent your representatives to the Lok Sabha for five years. They are coming back to you in just 14 months.

You know the reason for this as well as I do -- for the entire drama has been enacted on an open stage.

There was no issue, whatsoever, for bringing down the government. During the debate in the Lok Sabha, as well as outside, my colleagues and I asked repeatedly: what is the issue on which the government is guilty of such misconduct that it should be brought down, that the country should be pushed into an abyss? I listened diligently to the debate -- as you would have -- for hours and hours. Not one new fact was brought out, not one issue of any gravity was raised to warrant what was being done.

It was not an issue that propelled those who acted. It was calculation. A calculation that boomeranged.

The government was working well.

• It was taking steps from which earlier governments had shied away for years -- steps to make India strong.

• Even as the worst ever crisis struck the economies of the South-East Asian countries, the government took steps to insulate, to save our economy.

• Having saved it from that typhoon, it took steps to make India prosperous.

• The country was at peace.

• Terrorism was thwarted.

When the debate began, I asked, "What is the alternative you have in mind? Who is going to lead the new government? Of whom shall that government consist?" My questions were scoffed at. We will provide the alternative in five minutes, it was said. In one minute, it was said. Seven days went by, and you saw what happened.

We will tell the President what the alternative is, it was said, we will not tell you. The President held meeting after meeting. And they could not specify an alternative.

In any case, was this the right way to go about a matter of such grave import? As you know, the government has to handle matters of utmost importance for the life and security of the country. It has to handle matters of the utmost secrecy. There are matters so secret that they are known only to the prime minister of our country. It is his duty, when he hands charge to his successor, to inform the latter of these matters. Can it be that in a parliamentary democracy, the House should be asked to vote out a government and a prime minister without knowing in whose hands it will be placing matters of such extreme secrecy and importance? Matters that spell life or death for India?

But that is what was done.

Friends, democracy rests on one belief. And that is: when the leaders of a country cannot solve their problems, the people will. That is why the President, after having assessed all possibilities, decided, and the Cabinet concurred, that there was no solution to the current impasse except to come back to you.

Such episodes are ruinous for the country. The new election, as our chief election commissioner has told us, will impose a burden of 1000 crores of rupees on our people. In one week of instability small investors lost Rs50,000 crore. And now, till elections are held, no policy decisions can be taken -- even though issues of great urgency are coming up every other week: our negotiations with other countries, our negotiations with international organisations, what we should be doing in regard to international treaties, decisions relating to the security of the country, decisions that directly affect your welfare.

The world is leaping ahead of us: it is not going to pause, and wait for us to settle our internal problems. Our own problems - the enormous growth of population, uncontrolled urbanisation, your getting jobs -- are not going to slow down just because we do not have a government in place.

This is what you must ponder: is this the way the country should be trifled with?

There is only one way to prevent such episodes from recurring in future: that is, to remember.

Ever so often in the pressure of day-to-day difficulties, ever so often because peripheral issues are deliberately stoked up to divert us, we forget. The old pattern recurs, the entire ruinous sequence is repeated. And before we know it, another generation is lost.

So my first request to you is: remember.

Second, our jurists and public men should reflect on the changes that ought to be made in our system to insulate our country from such buffeting. I will give you an example. You have just seen that a government was removed without the sponsors of that move having worked out any alternative. Under the German Constitution, to remove a chancellor, the House has to vote confidence in another person. In the very act of removing one chancellor, therefore, his successor is installed. This would be a small change in our system. But even such a small change would have prevented what the country is being put through. There are many such small things that can be done and should be done, and I would appeal to our public men: examine such changes, and place them before the people.

Third -- while it is true that in the end the government was done out by the manoeuvres you have seen, the basic problem lies further back. Because of the divisive turn which politics has been given over the last 20 years, our electorate has been fractured. This resulted in a fractured Lok Sabha. And that in turn resulted in a situation in which, whichever government would have been put in place, it would have been vulnerable to the pushes and pulls of twos and threes. This is the central problem that confronts us today. And the solution to that lies in your hands alone.

That is my appeal to you:

• Rise above caste.
• Rise above sectarianism.
• Rise above parochialism.
• Rise above the advantage to your immediate group.
• When elections come, do vote.

Jai Hind!

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