Unsteady at the top

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Abstract: 

Judging by even our modest standards, governance at the top has taken a nosedive during the United Progressive Alliance’s (UPA) rule. Some of this can perhaps be blamed on the specific actors involved. But there is a deeper structural explanation for it: the vesting of true power to govern outside the government, in the Congress high commandUPA rule has been the longest in our history that this phenomenon has played out. In all previous such episodes, either the executive successfully wrested power back from the external authority or it fell.
Thus, the first time the organisational wing of the Congress seized effective power was immediately following the death of Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. Known as the Syndicate, the organisational wing successfully kept the heavyweight Morarji Desai at bay and installed the more amicable Lal Bahadur Shastri as prime minister. But once the victory in the 1965 India-Pakistan war had turned him into a natio-nal hero, Shastri began to assert his independence. The battle between him and the Syndicate was already brewing when he unexpectedly died in January 1966.