Federal set up under strain

M.L. Kotru
I don’t know, and I don’t care, whose corns and how many I have tread upon by the time I am through, sharing my anguish with those, who, like me, feel vandalized by men and women who speak in the name of the people and yet end up each day and night, every hour of these in fact trampling, what I believe are my rights and privileges as a citizen of free India.
The day the Constitution was proclaimed I was just out of my teens, a wide-eyed young Indian seeking my place under the sun, the new dawn ushering in an era when we Individual Indians became “We the people……” The founding fathers have painted, a picture of hope for us all Indians and some of the dreams they manfully tried to translate into reality. Not always successfully, to be honest. Some of them, like it or not, subscribed to certain ideologies, dogmas, if you will, that didn’t work. Or, by the time the realization dawned on them that what may have worked in some country or countries may not necessarily work for a nation as diverse as ours. By the time that realization dawned India unfortunately had fallen a few steps behind some others, notably China and now even Indonesia.
Indira Gandhi’s emergency, some believed, was the kind of strong medication an emerging India needed but sadly it did in the process negate most of the positives she had inherited from the founding fathers. Emergency, one believed, has finally brought it home to us that strong arm tactics did not necessarily work in a democratic environment the country was fed on Mahatma Gandhi onwards.
This is not intended to be a profound analysis of how we have fared in the first 65 years of our nation as an independent republic, its institutional stability applauded by most until recently. What concerns me, as it does every citizen, is the mess our politicians are intent on making of not just the institutions but of the country’s economic and political stability.
If our economy appears to be drifting uncertainly for the past three years and more the fault lies entirely with the UPA-led coalition, unusual for a government that on paper at least seems not to be lacking policy-makers, economists to boot, who should have been forewarned by happenings in more advanced economies.
Team Manmohan Singh and its policy-makers, including of course, Sonia Gandhi’s personal fief, her Advisory Council, which flaunts some of the best known economists and sociologists and other assorted do-gooder as its members, have all come a cropper. If the Indian rupee has seen its poorest days in recent history all credit to Manmohan Singh. If prices of commodities have hit the roof with no apparent signs of relief, the credit again goes to Manmohan Singh and his team.
Wasn’t it the Planning Commission, headed by his blue-eyed boy, Montek Singh Ahluuwalia which told us only the other day that an income of Rs. 26 or above a day took one above the poverty line. You can’t even buy a half kg or tomatoes or dals for that sum. Shades of Marire Antoinette! Anyway even this is no part of my present discourse.
What worries me most is the negativity that has overtaken every single Indian political party, no exceptions, please.
The Opposition led by the BJP has in the recent past reduced parliament to a non-functioning organ of the State. We were assured though that the ongoing monsoon session would be allowed to transact its business. Not quite true. But an inept UPA has seen to it that the agreement didn’t work. Its belated decision to concede the demand for Telengana has divided its own flock from the State, and these are the ones who (pro-and anti-Telengana) have made the well of the House their abode each working day. The result: almost no business is conducted except when it comes to introducing the odd fresh bill. The UPA, I confess appears to be consumed by some kind of a death wish which is taking it down the path to nowhere.
Parliament has barely been able to transact much business for months- or is it a year and a half? -and no one is particularly concerned. The rushed monsoon session summoned to clear the legislative backlog has started off most inauspiciously. It is not the BJP or the Opposition parties that are acting the spoil-sport, it is the Congress Party’s own ineptitude (Telengana) which has split the large Andhra contingent into two rival camps, each storming the well of the House to keep up a noisy chant for or against Telengana. And believe me the Congress may live to rue the day when it belatedly took the decision in favour of a separate Telengana.
BJP may not be the answer to my prayers but the problem really is that the oldest political party, the Congress, is in total disarray. If Rahul Gandhi is considered to be the party’s Brahmastra (the ultimate weapon) I am afraid the man just does not inspire confidence, not even when he rolls his sleeves halfway up. If you are looking for sycophants and ‘ji hazooris’ the Congress is you party. The tragedy may seem to be that the BJP’s choice is the controversial Narendra Modi for the top job. That man simply seems to bristle with arrogance and his vision (Gujarat model). Whatever that may be, does not seem to be the one India needs.
Then you have the concerted attack mounted by regional parties (not that the Congress and the BJP haven’t indulged in it) playing ducks and drakes with the services, the IAS and IPS in particular. Things have come to such a pass that Mulayam Singh Yadav and his son, UP Chief Minister Akihilesh Yadav have publicly challenged New Delhi to withdraw all the Central Services- civil and police-from the State. “We have the capacity to run the State by ourselves”, as if UP is their private “Jagir”. BSP’s Mayawati, who played havoc with the Services has no intention to let Yadav go unchallenged.
Looks strange, the lady who played favourites to the hilt as CM, is willing to take up the cudgels on behalf of the IAS and IPS. Other Chief Ministers including Narendra Modi, Ashok Gehlot of Rajasthan, Mamta Banerjee in West Bengal have treated the IAS and IPS as vassals. If the federal structure in the process suffered several body blows you have none but the egoistical CMs, Ministers at the Centre and in the States to blame for it. Similarly no opportunity is lost by the States to question the role of Central para military forces.
Of corruption less said the better. Even the smallest cog, it is generally accepted, needs regular greasing (of the palm) to keep the wheels of the administration in motion. But it is the top that causes much worry now. The Prime Minister’s Office, the Defence Ministry, Railways, Coal et al and all under a cloud. So much so it is becoming difficult to tell which of the Ministries is more corrupt: Coal, Telecom, Defence so on and so forth? Judiciary, which by and large, compared to the other organs of the State, has done reasonably well is now said to be under Ministerial scrutiny. I will not be surprised if Mr. Kapil Sibbal, the Law Minister tells us one day soon that the process of selecting members of the higher judiciary must be revised.
One of the biggest failures of the Manmohan government has been in the realm of foreign affairs. Even traditionally warm relations, say, with countries like Iran, have been allowed to suffer. China and Pakistan, India’s two inimical neighbours, whose bilateral relations have been publicly described as an “all weather friendship…………sweeter than honey” have been nibbling at our borders for months.
The Chinese only a few days ago made another serious incursion into our area in Ladakh-and this one in an unprecedented night operation; not to be left out Pakistan has ambushed and gunned down five Indian soldiers in the Indian territory of Poonch in Jammu and Kashmir.
What’s our response: Prime Minister will go ahead with his proposed meeting with Nawaz Sharif in New York and our so-called China experts, including the National Security Adviser to the Prime Minister, will continue to be sweet-talked to by the Chinese. One wonders whether our high representatives at the Sino-Indian border talks have ever at all dared to openly challenge the Chinese position. The Indians are always said to be so overwhelmed by the show of concern by their Chinese counter parts that they forget their primary objective; to find a way out of our border dispute. The Pakistanis and Chinese would at the same time appear to be acting in concert.
This brief sordid narration sums up the second UPA, led, as the first, by Manmohan Singh and the Congress boss woman, Sonia Gandhi. Between the two of them they have managed to put a question mark over our future as a democracy. With this UPA twosome around, the federal set-up has been under grave strain and Allah alone knows, if he has the time, whither we are going.

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