Tamil Nadu Ex Chief Minister Funny Explanation for Snuff Powder

Ye voh Vajpayee to nahin
Tavleen Singh

B Y my bed always lies a book of poems by Faiz Ahmed Faiz. I had it bound in black leather after he signed it for me in March 1980 when he was in Delhi and I met him for an interview. I count it as among the most memorable interviews I have ever done because as I listened to him talk about poetry, India, Pakistan, love and life I realised that I was privileged to have met one of the last surving thinkers of the generation that witnessed the historical changes that gave us freedom and partition. Not to mention the honour of meeting one of the two or three great poets that we have produced this century. Because poetry is so absent in our �great culture�. I turn to the book from time to time to find answers among the beauty of the words and so I did on Independence Day last week. A particularly appropriate day since one of the most famous poems Faiz wrote was for that first Independence Day in 1947. He called it Subah-e-Azadi and said it was a false dawn. �Yeh voh seher to nahin�. This is not that dawn for which we waited.

How ironic that 55 years on it is still not the dawn for which the freedom struggle was fought. It is not that dawn because we have been let down by those who have ruled us. So badly that not one of our Prime Ministers bothered to change the colonial system of government the British left behind. We are still ruled by a bureaucracy and a state structure that remains indifferent to the aspirations of the people of India. So indifferent has it been that our rulers have not even attempted to change methods of policing or a system of education that was evolved by Lord Macaulay to teach the Indians English so that our colonial masters could create �a nation of clerks�. Many of the laws that govern us are British-made. So hopeless has been our quest for turning India into a prosperous, developed country that when you add up the number of railway tracks and roads laid since the British left you find that the addition since 1947 has been relatively insignificant.

Yet, every Independence Day our Prime Minister stands up on the ramparts of the Red Fort and makes promises, promises and more promises. Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee made his fourth Independence Day speech last week and as the Aaj Tak television channel pointed out said pretty much the same things he said in his first speech.

We will not tolerate terrorism, we want peace, we will fight corruption, we will take steps to boost the economy, we will empower women, help our farmers, we will, we will, we will. Meaningless, empty promises that remain so blatantly unfulfilled that even the schemes that get announced from the Red Fort usually languish in dusty government files. The empty words are particularly offensive when they come from Mr Vajpayee because his reputation as a politician was built on the brilliance of his oratory so we should at least be able to get an inspiring, beautiful speech. It was what he did best and as, recently, as when he went to Lahore on that unfortunate bus he mesmerised the large audience of Pakistanis gathered to hear him in the lawns of the Governor�s house. A retired judge came up to me afterwards and said with tears in his eyes that he had never heard such a wonderful speech.

It was wonderful only because he spoke extempore. I remember an official from the Ministry of External Affairs breathing a sigh of relief when he put aside his written speech and spoke from the heart. �Thank God that he put away the speech his officials wrote� he said feelingly. Since then, though, the Prime Minister has relied only on what his officials write for him so what we get is the usual, dreary drivel that is generally all that officials are capable of producing. An omnibus collection of empty promises and worthless words. Why does Mr Vajpayee allow this? Is it because the poems and the oratory have died? Or is it because he has become just another politician?

I tried finding out and learned, from those who claimed to know, that there had been some discussion before Independence Day about the need to inject a feel-good factor into a government and economy besieged by shame and scandal. Someone suggested that one way was to allow the Prime Minister to make an unwritten speech. He chose not to, so we got more of the usual drivel.

Result? The government looks as bad as it has done since Tehelka ended its time of innocence and the UTI scam brought even the Prime Minister�s Office into disrepute. Perhaps, Mr Vajpayee is not fully aware of how bad his government has begun to look.

In the week before August 15 I travelled between Mumbai and Delhi. In Mumbai I went to The Economic Times awards function where every major Indian businessman was in attendance. I talked to merchant bankers, automobile manufacturers, oil-wallahs and consumer goods kings and the biggest names and came away with darkest gloom. I met nobody who had anything good to say about either the government or the economy. Things were worse, they said, than they had been in a long time because people were afraid to invest. Part of the problem is that because the Finance Minister has been weakened, his hound dogs in the form of income tax inspectors and enforcement officials are breathing down the necks of prospective investors. Generally, they can be shooed off after they have made a few lakhs to lay off but the atmosphere they create is one of economic dictatorship rather than that of a market economy. Then there is the problem of the Finance Minister not doing anything by way of reform.

If big business is shrouded in gloom big politics is even less cheerful. In Delhi I met people in the government who admitted that nothing was moving forwards and that nobody at the top seemed to care. The �two old men� as Mr Vajpayee and Mr Advani are called, in the view of their own party men, appear to have been gripped by a collective paralysis.

Had they seen how the government�s ratings have dropped? �Yes, yes�, said a young minister irritably �they read India Today but they either don�t care or seem not to know what to do�. Similar dismal views were expressed by other people I talked to and they claimed that they had expressed them �at the top� as well but nothing seemed to change.

On the night of Delhi�s downpour I went to see Shatrughan Sinha�s play. There were senior ministers in the audience and Congress leaders like Manmohan Singh and Madhavrao Scindia and it was interesting that the loudest laughs came when Sinha poked fun at politicians and the atrophy that grips government offices. The Prime Minister was not there or he may have understood that he needed to make a really inspiring speech from the Red Fort instead of doling out the usual, meaningless promises. Meanwhile, as a poet himself, perhaps he should mull over why �yeh voh seher to nahin�.

�The state is tied up in knots�
Gobind Thukral

P AKISTAN'S most influential weekly, The Friday Times, has taken Gen Pervez Musharraf to task. Its editor, Najm Sethi (remember the one who faced the wrath of Mian Nawaz Sharif) feels sad that the new military ruler is unable to end terrorism now devouring the country. In an editorial, Sethi said,�Terrorists enrage Gen Parvez Musharraf. He says he wants to don his SSG uniform and blast them all to smithereens. We share his sentiment. But we are not terribly enthused by the government�s state law and order approach to the problem. Many of these terrorists are motivated by religious passions. Others are clearly agents of foreign powers seeking to destabilize state and government. Together, they have laid our country low. Foreign tourists and businessmen are afraid to visit Pakistan or invest in it. Enforced work stoppages in the wake of terrorist violence greatly hurt the economy. The targeting of Shia professionals. especially doctors in Karachi, has scared them into seeking refuge abroad. In short, an environment of violence, fear and loathing has confirmed the awful perception of Pakistan abroad.�

Mr Sethi is right. But he forgets a simple fact. Is this not Pakistan, which exported terrorism to Afghanistan in order to fight the Soviets and nearly destroyed that country and is this not Pakistan, which is responsible for the cross-border terrorism in Kashmir? Now it has to taste the poisonous pudding it has made for others.

Nevertheless, Mr Sethi has made a bold assessment. He said �The worst offenders are religious fanatics. Last year, over 300 Pakistanis died at their hands. This year the score already exceeds 150. Karachi is the current hot spot and Shias are the main target. For weeks TFT has reported on what is brewing in the city, why the police is unable to handle the problem, why the issue defies purely administrative measures. Yet the government�s fixation on dusting curative prescriptions off the shelf rather than attempting preventive solutions, despite the continuing failure of this approach, suggests that the state is tied up in knots.

Similarly, other newspapers like Dawn, Nation and Jung have taken the government to task.

Pakistani news media have given an equal importance to another burning issue: the local bodies elections. Interestingly, while the people participated in large numbers in this military controlled exercise to elect Naib Nazims, that is deputy district heads and heads, the newspapers have been generally skeptical. The general refrain is that the elected members would always be pawns in the hands of the men in olive. How could the army allow such elected representatives to take their roots and act on their own? In an article titled, �Democracy of a blind date,� a well-known politician A B S Jafri commented in the Dawn that with these captains at the helm, where does the boat go? �It could be anywhere, more likely to nowhere in particular. Not one of those elected to positions of state power has any declared programme with the voter�s endorsement. Few, it any, have any experience in public administration. At their respective level, the nazims land in the seats of power without any recognisable political credentials. The votes that brought them to power were cast in culture where candidates were not required to talk, nor the voters enabled to listen. If there can be a blind date in the political life of a people, this electoral extravaganza has been just it.�

�In a democracy, the public representative is the bird of passage, the public servant is a permanent presence. Yet the beauty is that the transient incumbent issues orders, the ageless dinosaur obeys. What sustains the unquestionable authority of the elected element is the strength of his political party out in the field. In the case of the nazims, there is no political base or support. The sovereign factor is conspicuous by its total absence.� Mr Jafrai also said:

�Our established tradition is that when it comes to the nitty-gritty of public administration, the bureaucrat tends to give the slip to the elected superior. It is a part of our national experience that more often than not, the bureaucrat has pulled a fast one on his elected boss. Take a look at the NAB record. The largest single element in this parade of the tainted has its origins traceable to the class of bureaucrats. The winner at this particular post in the race is the bureaucrat. Such prognostication may be morbid but it is rooted in long experience.

�Do not fail to note a crucial deficiency in the devolution philosophy. You are taking the government to the people, not the government servant. He remains aloof, a federally controlled (or pampered) automaton. The government is to belong to the village, but the government servant must remain an Islamabadi imposition. What about devolution here?

�Local self-governance without local public administration is a case of putting the pony right on top of the cart. This is profound inconsistency. Give it a thought. It is never too late to correct your errors, even if pointed out by others. If the civil and police functionaries are not local, government a self-induced illusion. Think it over. Take a look at local governance in better politically governed communities.

�As elsewhere, in Pakistan too, there should be life beyond the DC and the SP.�

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Source: https://m.tribuneindia.com/2001/20010818/edit.htm

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