The leadership vacuum

Gurbachan Jagat

Election dates have been announced for five state Assemblies and the process of filing nominations is on. It is up to the people now once they come to the voting booths. The usual parties are in the fray and most of their candidates are old players who know how to play their hand. However, the pre-poll scene looks dismal and the electoral buzz is missing in most places. Elections are a celebration of a vibrant grassroots democracy and, growing up, I remember it used to be a celebration. A colony had awakened to a new dawn of Independence. We no longer had foreign rulers — we had given ourselves a government of, by and for the people. Yes, elections were a celebration at the time — weeks before the polling date, there used to be bands playing, flags and balloons fluttering in the air, grownups huddled together in animated discussions and children running around to watch the convoys of cars. Candidates were well-known locals, and they had a personal rapport with their constituents. Money bags had not made their presence felt and everything, except enthusiasm, was at a low key. Gone are those days and changed are the ways. Hyperbole, claims of non-existent progress, promises for the future are the name of the game. Socialism, Nehruvian socialism, capitalism or any other isms are no-go areas. The temples of modern India have given way to the mythologies of an older India. The road does not lead forward to progress, it goes backwards to seek revenge and heap miseries on the innocent progeny of guilty forefathers.

The real problem is that we are unable to see that exceptional human being or a party amidst us, or on the horizon, to lead the country out of this mess. An individual and a party who will have solutions for our problems, who will translate dreams into deeds and who will be clear in their goals (our goals), and determined in their approach. People do not want purveyors of slogans, sellers of dreams, lobbyists for others in our name. People want men of action, who do not turn their eyes to the past for its lost glory or sell dreams of the future. We want our present, our today to transcend from its miseries to the fulfilment of our basic needs, to live our lives in dignity. We’ve had enough of Below Poverty Line and other classifications of backwardness. Enough of this, now give jobs, decent wages, education and health facilities and MSP for poor farmers. You have only to look at what the youth have been up to in Bihar and UP in the last few days. Rioting and arson — why? Jobs, that is what they want instead of placebos that are being offered. Tens of lakhs apply for a handful of jobs and then the papers are leaked. Why can’t there be a foolproof method of regular recruitment to ensure that our youth have job opportunities and a level-playing field? What holds good for employment holds good for other fields of administration. After the death toll of the pandemic, one would imagine that the entire healthcare system of the country needed an overhaul — strangely, not a single party or candidate even refers to it. Hundreds of thousands lost their lives to a faulty non-existent healthcare system, yet not a whisper is heard in the campaign? Where is the media and the keepers of our conscience in all this? Why aren’t we holding people accountable for the thousands of lives, jobs, businesses which were lost in the last two years? The image of four members of a Gujarati family frozen to death in the Canadian tundra while trying to cross the border in their desperation to find a better life is hard to forget. What desperation pushed them? What made a father and a mother carry their small children into that frozen wasteland… who will answer? This is not a one-off case but rather a stark representative of thousands of others from all over the country who make perilous journeys across seas, forests and deserts and pay humongous sums of borrowed money to find a better life.

Where is our new leadership, both political and administrative? You only have to look at the first two generations after Independence when we had leaders who had been tested in the crucible of the freedom movement to realise the difference. They were men and women who had never dreamt of power, their dreams were limited to the achievement of freedom and when freedom came, and elections were held, the people knew their leaders and elected them. There was no exchange of money, no lobbying by corporates, the media was fair and objective. Who were these men and women? To name but a few (because there were thousands of them at all levels and all over the country), in Punjab, we had Gopi Chand Bhargava, Bhim Sen Sachar, Partap Singh Kairon and Justice Gurnam Singh. In UP, we had Pandit Govind Ballabh Pant, Sucheta Kriplani, CB Gupta and HN Bahuguna. In Goa, we had Dayanand Bandodkar, Shashikala Kakodkar, Pratap Singh Rane and in Bengal, we had Dr BC Roy, in MP KN Katju, in Tamil Nadu K Kamaraj, in Maharashtra YB Chavan and Morarji Desai.

I have named but a few of the stalwarts who had passed through the test of the long freedom struggle and nearly all of whom had excellent academic backgrounds. Politics was not a goldmine for them but a way to strive for a better life for all Indians. They had no criminal backgrounds, and they did not have private armies under various names. They had no security cover unlike today where 30 to 40 policemen are deployed on security duty with each minister, MLA, party men and outright criminal elements — why is this necessary? It is because crime and criminals have infiltrated every sphere of our public life right from the highest echelons to the lowest. Well-educated people of integrity, people of vision shun politics because of its evil murky criminal nature and methods. So, who do we have? We have people most of them with poor academic records (those are also sometimes bought from pliant universities of poor reputation and integrity), and non-existent achievement in other spheres of public or professional life. What a substantial number of them have are criminal records. In fact, we should have a new classification: what are the charges against them? Have they been charge-sheeted? Have they been convicted? How long did it take from the FIR to final disposal? How many cases are still pending? I think the CEC would be the right authority to gather this data and keep on updating it and putting it on its website for public consumption.

Now let us look at the available leadership in some of the states going to the polls. Look at Punjab and the contestants for the top post and also look at UP, Uttarakhand and Goa — do they have the academic backgrounds, are they men of integrity, of vision? How many parties have they left and how many ‘ghar wapsis’ have been conducted? Where do all the rivers of money, liquor, drugs originate and how does this massive infrastructure needed to distribute go undetected? I am not going to answer these questions and I’m not going to judge these leaders. It is for the people to evaluate and choose or reject all of them. I say this because people know the truth about all of them and as the farmers’ agitation has shown, when the people decide that enough is enough and mobilise themselves, they achieve their goals. How long will PhDs and postgraduates continue to apply for jobs as peons and Class IV posts — how long will we stop the lava from flowing?

It is time for the present leadership to drastically change its ways and deliver unto the people what is due to them. Nature abhors a vacuum, and a new leadership is bound to emerge from the churning that is going on. We must reignite the passion that went into the freedom movement. We must build new Bhakras, Chandigarhs, agriculture universities, IITs, IIMs, centres for research and development, hubs for IT and auto industry. In the latest budget speech, the Finance Minister referred to creation of a digital university and a digital rupee — I do hope it does not become a dream of virtual reality in a metaverse where we must live our lives in some sort of computerised dream. We must involve the last man in our hierarchy and ensure that ‘the Gandhian’ tear is finally wiped. We must educate and heal, and we must bridge the growing gap of inequalities. Let our finest come forward to lead — finest in integrity, intellect and vision — and let us put the criminal in his place.

— The writer is ex-chairman of UPSC, former Manipur Governor and served as J&K DGP

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