Blurred economic scene
HE is a man of understatement. He points out the failures of others with anguish, not anger. He is the quintessential gentleman politician standing far above the crowd.

Time for Gamang to go
MAINTENANCE of law and order is among the primary duties of any state government. Since Orissa Chief Minister Giridhar Gamang has proved to be a dismal failure on this count, the least disgraceful option available to him is to own moral responsibility for the breakdown of the law enforcement machinery in the state and resign.

Off with vehicles!
IT will be an official "rasta roko" on Sunday when various constituencies go to the polls. According to the Election Commission diktat, the plying of vehicles on that day has been banned. Nobody has thought of the great inconvenience it would cause to the public.

PROMISE AND PRETENCE
Secularism in Indian politics
by Darshan Singh Maini
THERE’S perhaps no word in our political lexicon that has caused so much communal mischief and moral miasma — and so much ideological confusion — as this otherwise felicitous word, “secularism”. Indeed, in its passage as a concept from the West to the East, and its dubious history in post-Independence India compel one to think about its nuclear conceptual meaning, and its inversion, distortions and desecration en route.

New twinkle to Bollywood stars
by V. Gangadhar
DREAM Girl” Hema Malini campaigned for fellow film star, Vinod Khanna, Bharatiya Janata Party candidate for the Gurdaspur Lok Sabha seat.

Can politicians ensure basic needs?
by Tavleen Singh
I WRITE this a long way from the mud-slinging that has become the Indian election campaign. But, I read in The Asian Age about the controversy over whether Pramod Mahajan compared Sonia Gandhi to Monica Lewinsky and whether George Fernandes was wrong in saying her “only contribution” to India was that she “produced two children.” It seems like a pointless debate.

The younger they come the better
by Amita Malik
MY distinguished colleague Shekhar Gupta wrote a very interesting thesis on the edit page of his paper recently. He was answering the criticism that too many young people went to cover the Kargil campaign, that they were inexperienced and brash, if not positively irresponsible. And Shekhar went on to say that when he was their age, he also covered insurgency, wars (where in the forefront are young army captains and majors) and communal disturbances. I remember right, one of his finest pieces was on the Nellie massacre and he was in Sri Lanka too.

Come one, come all!
by Amar Chandel
DEEPLY distressed over the declining status of politicians, several progressive leaders, including yours truly, have organised themselves under the banner of the All-India Politicians Welfare Association (AIPWA). The newly floated party will strive to ameliorate the lot of all politicians: acting, resting and budding.

Blurred economic scene

HE is a man of understatement. He points out the failures of others with anguish, not anger. He is the quintessential gentleman politician standing far above the crowd. That is why when Mr Manmohan Singh suggests that there is something worrying about the economy the nation should sit up and start really worrying. In his interaction with the media on Thursday he refrained from peppering his remarks with weighty statistics. It was not needed at all. Only that morning a newspaper had packed its detailed report with grim figures provided by official sources. The former Union Finance Minister merely took off from there and deftly hit the high points. He started off in his transparent fashion. He would increase revenue collection (a widely used jargon for slapping new taxes) by another 2 per cent of the GDP.This works out to a whopping Rs 40,000 crore, and attests to the gravity of the fiscal situation rather than to the sadistic pleasure a future Minister may draw. Another area he says he would wield the axe briskly is subsidies which drain away as high as 14 per cent of the GDP. This will hurt some sections of the population but then a severe crisis calls for sacrifice. The root cause of the grave situation is the old one — falling revenue, mounting expenditure and ballooning public borrowing to run the government. In the first four months of the financial year revenue collection must be close to one-third of the budget projection but it is actually only 18 per cent. Expenditure had, however, gone up by nearly 30 per cent and this does not include the Kargil charge which could be anything between Rs 1500 crore and Rs 2000 crore. The upshot is for the government to borrow three-fourths of the amount projected for the entire year. Inevitably the fiscal deficit threatens to go through the roof.

By the time the next Finance Minister stands up to present the budget, things would have improved; they always do in the second half of the year. But structural flaws and policy mistakes would sustain the trend of these problems even if their scope gets narrower. Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha should have imposed the much talked about Kargil tax in the middle of July; then the popular mood was quite receptive and the need for a psychological prod was acute. Similarly, he should have taken advantage of the very low inflation rate to stimulate growth and exports. That would push prices up but the economy could have absorbed it and even benefited by it. But the government was scared of a gentle increase in the price level upsetting its electoral calculations. So it neglected the incipient signs of an economic turnaround, kept the prices of foodgrains and sugar down (in the second case by importing generously from Pakistan) which in turn sucked out the anticipated additional purchasing power from rural hands, strengthening the demand recession for a number of consumer durables. This urban-centric outlook and policy prescription have been tried out by successive Finance Ministers, often with negative results. The rural voter turns angry and his urban cousin is indifferent. Similarly, the incessant talk of growth rate and industrial revival has ceased to be exciting in the midst of the cacophony on Kargil and personality cult. It is all a huge irony. In a country like India, politics is but an instrument to change economic relations in favour of the dispossessed and deserving. But in so vital a political process as elections, economics has ceased to have any place. India sees the contours of an economic problem with no hope of economic vision.

Time for Gamang to go

MAINTENANCE of law and order is among the primary duties of any state government. Since Orissa Chief Minister Giridhar Gamang has proved to be a dismal failure on this count, the least disgraceful option available to him is to own moral responsibility for the breakdown of the law enforcement machinery in the state and resign. When Christian missionary Graham Staines and his two sons were torched to death in January, allegedly by members of the Bajrang Dal at the behest of Dara Singh, the Congress high command, and not the Central Government, decided to ask Mr J. B. Patnaik to step down from the post of Chief Minister. The illogical assumption was that Mr Gamang’s tribal background would help him in providing better administration than his predecessor. However, it is becoming increasingly clear that he has no understanding of the basics of sound administration. Less than a week ago Dara Singh allegedly plotted the gruesome end of a Muslim trader in Mayurbhanj. The state and the Centre together raised the amount of the reward money on his head to Rs 8 lakh. Four policemen have been suspended as knee-jerk reaction to the wide criticism of the inept handling of the Dara Singh case, for dereliction of duty. But the ease with which another Christian priest was killed in the same district which reported the murder of the Muslim trader indicates that the entire police force of Orissa should be sacked.

Of course, it is not clear whether Dara Singh was behind the latest attempt to whip up communal passions in the state which once took pride in embracing the Buddhist philosophy of non-violence. Whoever was behind the murder of the Roman Catholic priest Arul Das, the objective was the same which made Dara Singh kill Staines and his sons and the Muslim trader. There is an ominous pattern in all the three incidents of murder of members of the minority communities. Staines was killed on the occasion of Saraswati Puja, the trader Sheikh Rehman was hacked to death on Rakshabhandhan day and the latest crime was committed a day before the nationwide celebration of the birth of Lord Krishna. Putting the blame at the door of certain Hindu fundamentalist organisations for the attempt to destroy the centuries old tradition of communal harmony in Orissa would in no way make Mr Gamang a less incompetent Chief Minister. Ironically the Congress took the lead in organising a multi-party state-wide bandh on Thursday to “protest” against the killing of the Muslim trader. At about the time they were raising slogans for the arrest of Dara Singh the criminals were executing their diabolical plan in Jamabani village. They not only killed the priest but set ablaze a make-shift church in the village. With voting in the first round of the five-phase Lok Sabha election due to commence on Sunday the killings in Orissa would most likely be turned into an electoral issue, by both the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party, for influencing the verdict.

Off with vehicles!

IT will be an official "rasta roko" on Sunday when various constituencies go to the polls. According to the Election Commission diktat, the plying of vehicles on that day has been banned. Nobody has thought of the great inconvenience it would cause to the public. While buses would run as usual, private vehicles, including mopeds, scooters, motor-cycles, three-wheelers, cars, jeeps and trucks, would have to remain off the roads. In effect, it would be less of an election and more of a curfew. To say that the order will not be applicable to vehicles plying on national and state highways is neither here nor there because this would not benefit anyone other than inter-state travellers. On paper, it is possible for someone having a genuine problem with regard to the use of vehicles on the polling day to get special permission. But everyone knows how "simple" it is to get such permission from the officials concerned by applying in writing in advance on the prescribed form. It would take a very brave man to first get the form and then stand in a queue for god knows how many hours to get the permit. And what about those who have to go out all of a sudden? Would the policemen on duty be kind enough to be sympathetic to their plight? Those who know their police would swear that leave alone sympathy, they would be lucky to escape with their self-respect and pocket intact. Police parties are authorised to use their "discretion" in such cases. One only hopes that this privilege does not become a pretext for money-making exercises.

There is no denying the fact that the motive behind the restriction is beyond reproach. The administration is only eager to ensure that various candidates do not influence voters by ferrying them to voting booths. But the method that has been chosen to prevent the malpractice is worse than the malady. The administration has refused to learn any lessons from the chaos that prevailed when the then Chief Election Commissioner, Mr T.N. Seshan, imposed a similar ban during an election in the Kalka constituency. Some young boys and girls who were to reach Chandigarh that day had to walk all the way from Parwanoo to the State Capital! This time similar difficulties would be witnessed on a much larger scale. Moreover, the ban would also bring down the percentage of voting drastically. As several irate residents of Panchkula told The Tribune, how can someone be expected to trek all the way from, say, the Mansa Devi complex to the voting booth in Sector 6 with one's family to exercise his right? Small wonder that the ill-conceived brainchild is being called a "black law" by the general public.

PROMISE AND PRETENCE
Secularism in Indian politics
by Darshan Singh Maini

THERE’S perhaps no word in our political lexicon that has caused so much communal mischief and moral miasma — and so much ideological confusion — as this otherwise felicitous word, “secularism”. Indeed, in its passage as a concept from the West to the East, and its dubious history in post-Independence India compel one to think about its nuclear conceptual meaning, and its inversion, distortions and desecration en route. How words and expressions can dislocate human relations and responses is today a question which occupies a great deal of modern linguistic and philosophical thought. So, it’s proper that in the context of this misused and abused word, we look a little deeper and wider into the problematics of secularism.

In a general or popular sense, secularism has come to mean a view of polity and governance where religion is not permitted to affect the affairs of the state, or interfere in any constitutional way. In other words, the sacred and the profane — the two primal levels of the human condition — are to run on parallel lines, without crossing each other. In sum, the kingdom of God and the sway of Caesar are to be exercised, obeyed and submitted to simultaneously and separately. A little thought should, however, show that this view of secularism is restrictive, rigid and unhelpful in the end. For, in a truly religious world-view, the secular is subsumed in the vision itself, as for instance, in the bani of Guru Nanak, in the writings of Vivekananda, or in such modern Western thinkers as Martin Buber, Pieried’ Chardin, Paul Tillich etc, And, of course, one could also cite any number of examples from the utterances of Hindu divines and Muslim sufi poets. That is to say, there is no conflict or division in this vision, for the larger religious view is essentially expansive, humanist and radical. It partakes of the world of the senses and of the world of the spirit in a cognitive, constitutive and constructive sense. It’s a bonding that outlasts other obligations.

However, both history and experience have affirmed or proved beyond doubt that this holistic view is seldom permitted by the established church or the entrenched clergy anywhere to guide the life and values of the laity. The tyranny of the explicated law, or the imperialism of the letter becomes over a long period of time a part of the process of religion per se, and an inexplicable part of the communal mindset. In fact, the trained church orders to colonise the common mind as to make it not only a willing pliable tool, but also, in most cases, an inflammable tinder-box ready to be ignited in any crisis. The Jungian unconscious undermines our reason, our day-light perceptions. Thus, a moment comes in the life of a nation or a community when some kind of resistance or rebellion becomes an imperative of the Zeitgeist or time-spirit, and the bonding breaks, or is hugely weakened in some advanced, awakened sections. This historic moment in Europe became manifest around the time of the Renaissance in the 16th century, and it acquired identity and power during the Age of Reason in the 18th century.

This meant, in effect, that the state and the church were to become sovereign in their own respective spheres. The edicts from the Vatican or from any other pontiff were not to be a legal or obligatory tender in the affairs of the state. In turn, such thought, propagated not from the pulpit but from the public platform, helped create what is called humanism, a loose but affirmative concept that sanctified man without any heavenly condition. Thus, it became a liberalising, liberating force that considered man alone as the measure of man. All socialist, Fabian and Marxian thought drew its milk from the fount of Enlightenment in one form or another. And what’s known as “the scientific spirit” was an essential outcome of the process. Though liberalism as a political philosophy too had the roots in it, it degenerated later into a low pragmatism of the bourgeoisie in most cases. They truly liberal imagination whose best-known literary proponent was Lionel Trilling, a leading American critic, is still an operative force where it has refused to become a hand-maiden of the Establishment.

Secularism, thus understood in historical and philosophical perspective, has come to mean a vote for reason, for conscience, for resilience, for wholeness etc. It offers a choice between the petrified past and the vibrant present, between the palpable truth and the insufferable idolatry.

Before I turn to the manner of its abuse in Indian politics, I may as well first set down a couple of the known definitions of secularism to reduce confusion, for the concept in question is often seen as (a) something anti-religious, (b) as vague liberal body of ideas, and (c) as a shield to protect religious minorities in this country. For example, Collin’s Dictionary defines it as “a doctrine that rejects religion”, especially in ethics.According to the C.O.D., it is “the attitude that religion should have no place in civil affairs”, or in “national education”. Some have gone on to equate it, wrongly, of course, even with paganism which they believe is closer, like the Greeks, to the ground, and to the pulse and beat of life.

Here in India, a very ancient civilisation, secularism, it has been averred, was also an integral part of pristine Hinduism. For Hinduism is not a codified, proselytising religion, but a way of life and conduct and thought, and it brings the sacred and the profane together in the best sense of those expressions. Our ancient temple architecture, and the Ajanta-Ellora paintings, among other things, show this in a most eloquent way. The aesthetic impulse is rooted here in the religious. However, it does not suit the regressive Hindu priestly and brahminical order to permit such a view of Hinduism to prevail. Thus the sacerdotal became sovereign, and the common Hindu mind lost its sense of openness and accommodation. It moved from a genuine respect for all sentient life to a metaphysical tyranny causing the Hindu society to become under the Manu code caste-bound, and rigid, scornful of the lower and disenfranchised sections of their society, treating them as dirt. And it’s this kind of fake Hinduvata which the RSS and the more militant elements in the BJP have been promoting with a view to capturing political power. And today when political compulsions have made even Mr Vajpayee sing of the “genuine secularism” as Hinduvata’s true aim, one is not surprised. The obscurantist Muslim sections of our society are only an obverse side of its own persona for this kind of Muslim mind was as much a prisoner of old doctrines and beliefs, and prone to extremism, as this kind of Hindu mind. In fact, the Christian mystics and Muslim sufi thinkers have always tried to go behind and beyond the letter into the spirit of their scriptures. What has come to be called fundamentalism is not confined to any single religion or community, though its more lethal form is now a global phenomenon in several Muslim countries.

Secularism is, therefore, opposed to any type of totalisation, uniformity and regimentation. In short, it abhors all manner of fascisms, political, religious or ideological. A fascist spirit is an armed spirit — not against societal injustice and tyranny, but against the beauties and poetries of life, against all kinds of freedoms. And life vibrant resists “the apes of the Absolute” to use Buber’s expression.

Now in India, though the Marxan parties are ideologically secular, and relatively free of the communal biases, other self-proclaimed secular parties like the Indira-Sonia Congress, the Janata Dal, the Samata Party and other regional parties, such as Laloo’s and Mulayam Singh Yadav’s are only pertatively secular, and use the concept as a vote-catching mantra, by and large. Whilst Gandhiji’s secularism had truly a religious character in the best sense of the word, and Nehru’s in the modern, Western sense, the colour of secularism after the infamous Emergency in particular has acquired a different character. The Congress leaders have been more openly using secularism as a fig-leaf to cover its communal lapses and weaknesses, and corner minority votes. That’s why the Muslim vote in general keeps shifting away from it in one election, and drifting back to it in another out of both recoil and helplessness.

Now let this be conceded that the minorities all over the world — religious, racial or cultural-linguistic — have always felt insecure, afraid of losing their identity and way of life. They experience or feel fears of engulfment, of persecution, of discrimination, even of extinction. Only a truly secular state armed with not merely constitutional remedies, but also with a visionary polity can bring about some kind of a just integrated society. And one sees no such prospects in today’s India that is Bharat: “The butcher problems of politics”, to quote the Nobel Prize novelist, Saul Bellow, would continue to bedevil human relationships, so long as man and society remain slaves to animal instincts, atavistic impulses and strangulating conventions.

New twinkle to Bollywood stars
by V. Gangadhar

DREAM Girl” Hema Malini campaigned for fellow film star, Vinod Khanna, Bharatiya Janata Party candidate for the Gurdaspur Lok Sabha seat. She was joined by screen villain, Amrish Puri, who exhorted voters in chaste Punjabi to vote for Khanna. In New Delhi’s Chandni Chowk constituency, another group of Bollywood stars, Rahul Roy, Bhagyashree and her husband Himalaya, waved the saffron flags and campaigned for Vijay Goel, the BJP candidate for the Lok Sabha poll.

Bollywood and BJP! For years, Bollywood had been identified as one of the remnants of the secular front, how could its representatives campaign for a communal party? Of course, the BJP for the time being, had distanced itself from the Ram Mandir, Article 370 and the Uniform Civil Code issues. But can a saffron party-led front really change its spots?

Several Bollywood stalwarts, over the years, had reiterated that the Hindi film industry was a truly secular organisation, untainted by communal poison. “There are no communal divisions here,” producer-director Nasir Hussain once told me. “We measure people not on their religion but on their successes or failures.” Don’t forget the industry came out with films like, “Amar, Akbar and Anthony”. Who can forget the sentiments behind the song in B.R. Chopra’s “Dhool ka Phool”. “Tu Hindu banega, na Mussalman banega, insaan ki aulad hain insaan banega!”. The Hindu heroes always boasted of Muslim “yaars” and together they fought the designs of the villains. Hindu heroines tied “rakhis” on the wrists of their Muslim brothers.

This approach was no doubt full of syrupy sentiments, but clearly carried the “Hindu-Muslim bhai bhai” message. Yet it did not cross certain limits. Hindu heroes romanced Hindu heroines, Muslim heroes wooed and won Muslim heroines. An Amar never wooed an Asma, Akbar had to be content with Salma and Anthony would not sing and dance to a Lakshmi.

For years, several of the top-ranking actors, producer-directors and music directors were Muslims and this was accepted without question. Dilip Kumar, Nargis, Madhubala, Meena Kumari, Mehboob Khan, Nasir Hussain, Naushad and Ghulam Mohammad reigned supreme in their respective fields. Today, the three Khans are right on top as heroes. Representatives from different religions are ready to pitch in and support national causes. They organised processions, played cricket, sang and danced to collect funds for the National Defence Fund. Sunil Dutt and Nargis, for their Ajanta Arts, roped in brilliant performers and took them to remote border areas to sing, dance and act before adoring jawans.

Yes, Bollywood, despite communal flare-ups in the rest of the country, remained a secular paradise. This happened so long as there was political stability at the Centre and the Congress ruled the nation without any challenges. The situation changed slightly after the imposition of the national emergency by Indira Gandhi. Dev Anand among others, supported the opposition Janata formation, but was quickly disillusioned. But as the Congress began to weaken, some of the Bollywood stars began to do a rethink on their political affiliation. Shatrughan Sinha was first with the Janata Dal, and then switched over to the BJP.

From the 1990s, the BJP was seen as a national alternative and began to attract the attention of the Hindi film stars. The huge popularity of TV serials, “Ramayan” and “Mahabharat”, the Advani “rath yatra” and the controversy over the Ayodhya Ram temple were other significant factors. As the epics on the TV screen enthralled the nation the BJP staged a coup offering the Baroda LS seat to Deepika who had enacted the role of Sita. A non-actress and a non-politician, she was still able to win the election and spent time in the Lok Sabha without making a single speech. But the trend had been set. The destruction of the Babri Masjid sent ripples through Bollywood, but its scars were quickly forgotten.

Basically, Bollywood stars had not inclined much towards politics and tended to swim with the party in power. Issues did not matter much to them. This was in sharp contrast to Tamil film stars, several of whom were born out of the Dravidian movement. In Mumbai, there were no takers for Marxist ideology. The late Balraj Sahni, thespian Hangal and Bengal’s Utpal Dutt carried the Red flag but made little impact. For Bollywood, it had always been the Congress. But with fortunes changing, many of the stars looked upon the BJP as the national alternative.

This lack of ideology was in sharp contrast to how Hollywood viewed American national politics and presidential elections. Many of the top stars, both male and female, supported presidential candidates like Jimmy Carter and Senator McGovern. They idolised Martin Luther King and walked along with him during the famous Washington march singing “We shall overcome”. These included Paul Newman, Jane Fonda, Gregory Peck and Warren Beatty. In fact, Beatty has announced his candidacy for next year’s presidential poll because he found both the Democrats and Republicans not liberal enough. However, conservatives among the stars like John Wayne and James Stewart were staunchly Republican with “Duke” Wayne clamouring for saturation bombing of North Vietnam. Once a cowboy, always a cowboy!

Bollywood’s understanding of political ideology was always vague. Talk to some of the BJP supporters, they staunchly denied the party was communal and that Bollywood still remained secular. So far, the political affiliations did not seem to affect the working of the industry. Shatrughan Sinha, for instance, refused to campaign against “elder brother” Sunil Dutt, the Congress candidate from Mumbai North-West. But the current crop of stars would rather swim with the tide and keep their secular credentials well hidden. Thespian Dilip Kumar hardly found any vocal support from his colleagues when he was hounded by Shiv Sena thugs on the issue of his not returning the highest civilian award from Pakistan. The BJP had come to be associated with visible nationalism and patriotism and that was enough for our cardboard heroes and heroines.

These are not happy developments. Bollywood, out of fear and its instinct for self-preservation, is ready to fall at the feet of Shiv Sena chief, Bal Thackeray. Many of the stars see the BJP as the party of the future, in view of the decline of the Congress. There is hardly any support for the Socialist or the leftist groups.

Hema Malini had staged a ballet on goddess “Durga” and would not mind being identified as “Durga” by the BJP in Gurdaspur. If Deepika could be projected as Sita and Arvind Trivedi as Hanuman, why not a Durga image?

Come one, come all!
by Amar Chandel

DEEPLY distressed over the declining status of politicians, several progressive leaders, including yours truly, have organised themselves under the banner of the All-India Politicians Welfare Association (AIPWA). The newly floated party will strive to ameliorate the lot of all politicians: acting, resting and budding.

A meeting of AIPWA was held yesterday at a five-star holiday resort under my chairmanship. It was sponsored by a charitable business house. The meeting squarely blamed film-makers, writers, journalists and cartoonists for defaming the leader class by presenting it in an unfavourable light. This kind of character assassination was uncalled for and would be challenged in courts of law in future. A unanimous resolution passed at the meeting sought a blanket ban on offensive words like Defector, Turncoat and Aya Ram, Gaya Ram and their replacement with respectable words like Mobile Leaders and Rolling Stones.

AIPWA regretted that the number of politicians had not kept pace with the ever-increasing population. To fulfil the ideal of "leaders at your doorstep", it was necessary to have a "one citizen: one leader" ratio. This man-to-man marking is the only way to serve the public efficiently. Then there is also strength in numbers. Politicians have suffered so far because they are in a hopeless minority. It was decided to launch a leadership recruitment drive all over the country. Our scouts will be sent to promising places like jails to spot talent and nurture it.

The meeting unanimously resolved that black laws like the Anti-Defection Act were an attack on the personal freedom of leaders. Such measures nip individual talent and bring herd mentality in politicians. Existing rules provide undue advantage to wholesale dealers, at the cost of odd-lot merchants. A drive will be launched to seek the repeal of such unfair laws.

In fact, in an age and time when the two Germanys have come together, South Africa has given up apartheid and the whole of Europe has gelled into a community, the party distinctions still prevalent in our country should be totally removed. A leader should be free to walk in and out of a party at will as many times as he wants to. Barbaric customs like the party whip should also be dispensed with.

AIPWA condemned the tendency of untrained outsiders like academicians, journalists, doctors and lawyers to encroach on the politicians' territory and grab power. It is such people who brought a bad name to the profession. To safeguard the interests of full-time politicians, it was necessary that at least 90 per cent electoral seats were reserved for them. Similar reservation should prevail in all social, religious and sport organisations, delegations going abroad and appointments to the posts of Ambassador and Governor. The entry of outsiders is particularly undesirable in the case of high offices. To begin with, Prime Ministership and Chief Ministership should be reserved strictly for the wards of the serving and former politicians.

On being defeated, a PM or a CM should have the right to co-opt his wives, sons, daughters, sons-in-law and daughters-in-law to the post. A well-defined Order of Precedence in this regard should be published in the official gazette.

Politicians commit their children and relatives to the service of the nation. All expenses on their education and medical treatment abroad right from their birth should be borne by the State.

If politicians are to do more for the country, it is imperative that separate roads, trains, planes, hospitals, theatres etc are made available to them. Until new facilities materialise, 90 per cent of the existing facilities should be earmarked for them.

Diplomats enjoy diplomatic immunity. Politicians also should enjoy political immunity. No leader above the level of panchayats should be arrested while in office or while alive (whichever clause is applicable).

To get these demands accepted expeditiously, it is essential that the Constitution is amended. That is possible only if AIPWA comes to power. So become a member at once. You are always free to break the organisation into a thousand factions after that.

Can politicians ensure basic needs?

by Tavleen Singh

I WRITE this a long way from the mud-slinging that has become the Indian election campaign. But, I read in The Asian Age about the controversy over whether Pramod Mahajan compared Sonia Gandhi to Monica Lewinsky and whether George Fernandes was wrong in saying her “only contribution” to India was that she “produced two children.” It seems like a pointless debate.

I also read a complete version of Dr Manmohan Singh’s campaign speech in which he urges us to accept a new kind of politics, one in which people’s needs become central rather than the big issues of politics. They do not ask for much, he says, just basic things like clean drinking water and a roof over the head. His sentiments are noble but I believe wrong because once again he wants us to dream only a very small, a dream of basic minimum needs, the same dream that Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru had and which probably is the reason why we remain one of the poorest countries in the world. I notice from The Asian Age that the good doctor even quotes Gandhi’s famous remark about wiping the tear from the eyes of the poorest Indian.

I read all this, incidentally, in a country that dreamt the big dream and made it happen. I read it after jogging through the wooded streets of McLean, Virginia. We are barely 15 minutes from the centre of Washington D.C. but the air is clean enough to eat, there are thick forests everywhere and the streams running through them in which the water is clean enough to drink. The houses are carefully laid out in measured pieces of land and there are orderly churches, schools and sports clubs. Even the local graveyard seems to have been carefully planned by some urban designer. All of this makes a sharp contrast to the disorder, chaos and ugliness of Indian cities and it’s hard for me not to believe that the reason why we have disorder and chaos in our cities and filth and backwardness in our villages is because we continue to dream only a small dream. We also continue to glorify poverty and despise prosperity so we care nothing about such things as urban planning and the environment because these go beyond the basic needs of our people.

Dr Manmohan Singh calls for a new kind of politics but offers us only an old idea; what we need is a new kind of politics that makes ordinary Indians realise that they can and should be demanding that their political leaders offer them clean cities, a clean environment and the sort of policies that will make India prosperous. And, here there is much to learn from America, from even a small suburb of Washington like McLean,

Most Indians, who grew up on the shadow of the cold war, as I did, believed USA was a strange combination of Hollywood and the CIA. On the one hand, we loved the movies and on the other, we believed that USA represented neo-imperialism. Those were times filled with Marxist jargon and most of it was believed in our Soviet-friendly country. Then came satellite television and Californian soaps like the “Bold and the Beautiful” and “Santa Barbara” became America’s new face. A frighteningly large number of Indians believe that this super power lacks moral fibre because in these soaps we see women, who often end up having affairs with fathers and sons at the same time. Legion are the Indian politicians, who tell unsuspecting Indians about the moral bankruptcy there. So, we do not realise how much there is for us to learn from here or that most Americans, in fact, live in small, prosperous communities that go to church on Sunday and believe in their right to a clean, beautifully ordered environment in which not just the air and water but even the streets are clean. The poorest localities in US cities are better than most of the richest areas of Delhi and Mumbai, which is a sad comment on our urban planners.

What we also do not realise is that prices of food and many other things are cheaper here than in India. At McLean I went shopping with my Indian hostess to a supermarket and was astounded to discover that she paid less for groceries then I would end up paying in India. In keeping with the small dream that Dr Manmohan Singh is selling the people of South Delhi, we have managed to keep things like daal and rice cheap, but everything else, including vegetables, is shockingly expensive, particularly when you consider the earning capacity of the ordinary Indian. This is the small dream, the dream of basic minimum needs. So, we offer the ordinary Indian only the right to live in a clean jhuggi. We have not even begun to offer him the right to clean water or a clean environment. We do not offer him the right to orderly cities with broad roads and pavements because to us even this is a luxury.

Our political leaders tell us that we cannot think of bigger things until the smaller things are dealt with but 50 years of believing in only the small dream should be sufficient proof that we are not going to achieve even the small things until we accept that we have to try and dream of bigger things. You cannot dream even small dreams in cities that are mostly slums or in villages that do not aspire to even the most basic hygiene.

So, when they come asking for our votes this time we need to remind our politicians that it is their fault that only the very rich in India have standards of living that can be described as reasonably decent. We need to remind them that in 50 years this has not changed and that perhaps the reason why it has not changed is because, in the name of the poor, we continue to glorify poverty instead of treating as a hideous curse.

Indians who go seeking their fortune in foreign lands usually end up doing extremely well. We need to ask ourselves why? Could it be that it is mainly because when they see an environment that is clean and prosperous they automatically aspire for bigger things?

Dr Manmohan Singh is absolutely right when he says that it is shocking that our people still do not have the most basic amenities of 20th century life, but as an economist surely he needs to be truthful and add that the main reason why this is so is because we have followed economic policies that are based not on bringing prosperity but on glorifying poverty? That last tear in the eyes of the poorest Indian will only disappear when we accept prosperity as a goal, when we dare to dream bigger dreams. And, here there is much to learn from America.

The younger they come the better

by Amita Malik

MY distinguished colleague Shekhar Gupta wrote a very interesting thesis on the edit page of his paper recently. He was answering the criticism that too many young people went to cover the Kargil campaign, that they were inexperienced and brash, if not positively irresponsible. And Shekhar went on to say that when he was their age, he also covered insurgency, wars (where in the forefront are young army captains and majors) and communal disturbances. I remember right, one of his finest pieces was on the Nellie massacre and he was in Sri Lanka too. But, he added, he would certainly not be eager to do such assignments now, for the simple reason that it needs tremendous physical stamina, the ability to rough it out in freezing or boiling temperatures, drink water of dubious quality and survive on bad or inadequate food.

He might have added that TV is a young medium and mostly subsists on young people with initiative, enterprise and the willingness to take risks. Some years ago, I was told in Cairo that the reason the Egyptians prefer the BBC is because their reporters are experienced, middle-aged people. But they were referring to radio. I wonder if Yuri, the popular FM anchor from Delhi who was in line to be India’s first astronaut if Rakesh Sharma had not gone up, would be able to compete with teenagers, which he now does comfortably from a studio.

Admittedly some of the young TV reporters start by faltering painfully some go on to behave like prima donnas, become over-confident and irritating, take needless risks and are over-loudly aggressive at press conference. But most are responsible, well-informed, polite even when asking nasty questions and they work terribly hard. Their hours are killing which take their toll of young lives, often ruin their health and reduce them to nervous wrecks. A few organisations pay ludicrous salaries, or pay at long intervals, or not at all. They still soldier on because they love the medium, they have enthusiasm, dedication and work awfully hard.

So personally I am with the under-40’s generation and if I am mentioning just a few of them it is only as typical examples because the list could fill this column. Look at Sohaib Ilyasi of India’s Most Wanted and now India’s Most Fugitive. It is not an original idea, both Britain and the USA and no doubt other countries have similar programmes. But to do it in India not only involves literally risking one’s life and facing open threats from desperate criminals, but cutting through official red tape of a most tangled variety. Yet his programme has relentlessly hunted down criminals, the police are now on his side, not least of all because they get country-wide publicity if they have done good work. Channels are now fighting over him and Ilyasi has left Zee for DD (always picking up good ideas and good people from other channels, since they have no original ideas or people to offer). Ilyasi now has many imitators but remains in a class of his own.

Then I will take the example of Shikha Trivedi who remains strangely unsung and largely unseen (a pity, because she is very beautiful) who has been to the most remote as well as familiar areas in the country and brought us harrowing stories about the underprivileged and the neglected environment. But whether it is Barmer or Banaras, the research is thorough, the visuals compelling and Shikha speaks in quiet, unflurried tones which register on the viewer. I can mention others, like Radhika Bordia, I particularly liked her story on the Ladakh Scouts, there was Vivek Rai at the UP earthquake and many, many others... And all credit to the private channels, particularly NDTV, which picks up highly educated, eager novices, puts them through proper training and then lets them work under proper professional conditions. Which is why they respond in a way that DD never could. Because it lets the other bureaucratic services, with no connection with the media, whether IAS or CIS, over-run AIR and DD and keeps the few young professionals with initiative on a tight leash. Or sends them on training courses when they should be covering Kargil. Or, in spite of being a government organisation, misses the army helicopter which should have flown them there.

I repeat, TV is a young medium at least as far as new reporting and news anchoring are concerned. Let the over-40’s stick to their ever-increasing talk shows with the same politicians on every channel. And flourish in the safety of the studios monotonously and endlessly interviewing gray-beards and shifty politicians. But leave reporting to the young, please.