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Home Minister Indrajit Gupta has shown characteristic candour in
revealing to Parliament what is hardly the best kept national
secret: that "the largest State in the country is heading towards
anarchy, chaos and destruction". Simultaneously, Gupta has admitted
the Centre's helplessness in coping with the prevailing state of
lawlessness in Uttar Pradesh. The implications of the Home
Minister's experiments with the truth are quite startling. The
Government of India - which, in the absence of an elected
government, is responsible for the governance of UP - has
proclaimed the abdication of its responsibilities.
There are two possible ways of viewing the Home Minister's
statement. The first is to marvel at this Government's brazenness
and ineptitude, and draw comfort that the rest of India is not at
the mercy, of Comrade Gupta's purposeful administration. The second
is to take up the Minister's suggestion that the depths to which UP
has sunk "is not a matter of reaction but something on which all of
us have to come together". The second approach seems - on the
surface at least - more worthwhile. But before a UP variant of
Anna Hazare is encouraged-to start a movement to cleanse the
Aryavarta of its accumulated sins, it is important to acknowledge
the magnitude of the problem. The issue is not, as the BJP would
like us to believe, a simple matter of injecting Governor Romesh
Bhandari with a sense of responsibility. True, the former Foreign
Secretary's gubernatorial priorities could do with some
modifications. Renovating the Raj Bhavan, constructing a helipad
on its sprawling lawns and commandeering Corbett Park for a
convivial New Year bash may constitute the sum total of the
Governor's agenda, but the country is entitled to the belief that
UP's problems are a wee bit more complex.
For a start, the Governor could begin the task of rescuing the most
productive belt of western UP from the criminal gangs which have
made kidnapping, extortion and murder a routine occurrence. This is
not an impossible task. In his brief spell as Chief Minister,
Kalyan Singh succeeded in restoring a semblance of order in the
region, and the BJP is still reaping the electoral rewards of that
enterprise. Second, the Governor could utilise the enthusiasm of
those civil servants who seem determined to isolate and expose
those colleagues who have excelled in corruption. There are enough
honest and motivated bureaucrats in UP who are capable of providing
the state with an efficient administration. They need to be
encouraged and not put at the mercy of political charlatans and
bureaucratic wheeler-dealers. It is too much to expect a
non-elected administration to even begin tackling the other
problems, such as casteism, which plague UP. A limited agenda of
fighting lawlessness and corruption is calculated to put the state
on the road to recovery at least. Alternatively, there is a
radical course which Bhandari may be unwittingly pursuing: letting
UP fall off the map gracefully. It is an option which will have
many takers.
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