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In the first 45 days of 1996 there were 859 murders in Uttar
Pradesh. In the first 45 days of 1997 there were 928. In the first
45 days of 1996 there were 157 cases of rapes registered in Uttar
Pradesh. In the first 45 days of 1997 there were 175 of them.
In the first 45 days of 1996 dacoits staged eight hold-ups on the
roads of Uttar Pradesh.
In the first 45 days of 1997 they were bold enough to make that 15.
In the first 45 days of 1996 1,320 houses were burgled. In the
first 45 days of 1997 the figure was 1,346.
Why, given all this, don't the citizens rise up against the rule of
Romesh Bhandari? Simple - they are slaves.
I mean that quite seriously. The people of Uttar Pradesh have been
denied the most fundamental of all democratic rights - the right to
choose their own government.
Had there been a similar crime situation in any other state, say,
Maharashtra or Rajasthan, I am sure the Congress and the United
Front would have been delving the thesaurus to express their
outrage. They would certainly have demanded that the rulers of the
state be dismissed for crass incompetence and they would have been
right.
But because this is Uttar Pradesh, Mulayam Singh Yadav pouts when
Union home minister Indrajit Gupta gives the Lok Sabha his
considered opinion that Uttar Pradesh is headed for "anarchy,
chaos, and destruction"!
Romesh Bhandari, the self-willed governor of the state took offence
at this. He forced the chief secretary to write that the home
minister had got it wrong. Governor Bhandari also smugly noted that
Prime Minister Deve Gowda, at any rate was satisfied.
Gupta, who has faced down greater men than Mulayam Singh Yadav's
lackey, refused to be moved. He simply reiterated that the law and
order situation in the state wasn't good.
The spectacle of a governor publicly squabbling with the successor
to Sardar Patel and Govind Ballabh Pant takes one's breath away.
And what does one make of a Union Cabinet where the home minister
and the defence minister are publicly at loggerheads?
The Speaker got it absolutely right when he denounced the lack of
collective responsibility. On second thought, however, I don't know
why Mr Sangma should be so surprised.
Collective responsibility is indeed one of the pillars of
parliamentary democracy. But so too is the concept of the executive
being responsible to an elected legislature. If the
Congress-United Front combine can deny one principle in Lucknow,
why should they uphold another in Delhi?
That, not Romesh Bhandari, should be the focus of our attention.
But amidst the charges and counter-charges, in the arguments over
the rights and prerogatives of home ministers and governors,
everyone seems to have lost sight of the original point - the
fundamental rights of the citizens of Uttar Pradesh.
It is useless debating Bhandari's atrocious behaviour. A friend of
Adrian Khashoggi, a disciple of Chandraswami, a faithful partyman
under Narasimha Rao, Bhandari was clearly a horrible choice for
governor. (Of any state - as the Left Front vociferously stated
during his stint in Tripura!)
In the current instance, he is clearly in the wrong, and he must go
(the sooner the better). But what happens next?
Uttar Pradesh is not going to know any peace if Bhandari is
replaced with another of Mulayam Singh Yadav's men. (A defence
minister is supposed to keep his eyes on Lahore and Lhasa; the
current incumbent can focus on nothing but Lucknow!)
It suits Mulayam Singh Yadav perfectly to keep Uttar Pradesh under
President's Rule. He knows that he does not have a chance of g
power through the ballot box. But why bother to campaign if he can
rule the state through Delhi?
That is fine for the Samajwadi Party boss. But should 100 million
citizens of India suffer to serve the interests of one man?
Which brings us back to the original point: is the situation in
Uttar Pradesh truly deteriorating?
The Samajwadi Party is wasting its breath making speeches to a
disbelieving Lok Sabha. Perhaps it should try its eloquence on,
say, Vineet Jain. This man, the son of a rich builder, was abducted
by AK-47 wielding goons. His family allegedly paid through the
nose to get him back alive.
If Jain's abduction didn't raise a great ruckus, it was because of
one grim fact kidnappings have become so common in Uttar Pradesh
that they don't make news any longer.
In Ghaziabad district, just across the border from Delhi,
kidnappings and contract killings are a cottage industry. The place
is a magnet for criminal elements from across the state.
Some years ago Dawood Ibrahim confessed to an interviewer that the
police could finish off every gang in Mumbai if it were given its
head. The unstated implication was that there was a
politician-criminal nexus operating at the cost of the citizen.
That is just as true of Uttar Pradesh today as of Mumbai yesterday.
How is it that the swaggering gangsters of Ghaziabad are
transformed into purring kittens once they cross to Delhi? Is it
because they know that the Delhi police aren't hamstrung?
Assume, if you like, that the gangs are suppressed with a firm
hand. Will that solve the problem? Scarcely, those goons are only
the most visible face of crime.
White collar crime is just as destructive. And I would like to
point out that it has reached new depths in Uttar Pradesh. So much
so that even the indolent bureaucracy has been forced to take
notice. In which other state would you have civil servants voting
to elect the three most corrupt officers?!
Romesh Bhandari's response to all this is a public relations
blitzkrieg. But wasting paper is not going to improve the law and
order situation in the state he treats as his feudal property.
Let us get rid of Bhandari by all means. But let us not kid
ourselves by pretending that his removal is a solution to all of
Uttar Pradesh's problems. If a governor feels free to flaunt the
Constitution, can you blame lesser men too for breaking the law?
Come to that, if Indrajit Gupta can wink at breaking the law, can
we blame Romesh Bhandari for doing so? It was the home minister's
duty to protest when Uttar Pradesh was dosed with President's Rule
immediately after the assembly polls. But Gupta kept quiet.
Gupta probably does not care a fig for what journalists, jurists,
and members of the opposition may say. But 1 do hope he recalls
the words of his own partyman Hiren Mukherjee when a similar
situation occurred in Kerala in 1965. (When governor Ajit Prasad
Jain dissolved an assembly where the communists were the largest
group.)
The brutal fact is that Uttar Pradesh has been betrayed by Indrajit
Gupta no less than by Romesh Bhandari. Or rather by the United
Front-Congress combine as a whole.
In the debate allowed by the Speaker, the Congress and the
communists may lash out at Bhandari. But not one will vote to
censure him. And they won't even dream of replacing President's
rule with an elected government. Collective responsibility? More
like collective irresponsibility!
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