archive: So many obvious things to do way to do them
So many obvious things to do way to do them
Arun Shourie's
The Observer
April 23, 1999
Title: So many obvious things to do way to do them
Author: Arun Shourie's
Publication: The Observer
Date: April 23, 1999
The mandate is for a coalition government", the pundits declared in
1996. "Coalition governments have worked for decades in Europe. Why
will they not work in India?", they demanded. The obvious answer was
that Indian politicians are not European politicians. That at every
turn the outcome will be in the hands of persons who have no scruple,
no ideology, no idea, no shame. But this was rejected as carping, as
specious pleading on behalf of communal and fascist forces. Several
coalitions later, how does that rationalisation of 1996 look? So, the
first lesson is for analysts: Do not contrive rationalisations.
The second one is for us, readers: Do not believe them. Do not let
these eye-shades blackout the quicksand in which the country is. The
ones who fabricate rationalisations are not as much expert analysts as
they are experts at manufacturing analysis which will cover up what
they want to see happen. In 1996, the result was ambiguous: Our
friends read into it 'a mandate for coalitions'. In 1998, the result
was ambiguous again: They read into it 'a mandate for secular forces'.
Each 'analysis 1 had the virtue of providing a ground for keeping out
the side they wanted kept out.
The mega-rationalisation, the Mother of All Rationalisations so to
say, has not been merely about seeing one bunch in office rather than
some other. It has been about casteism: "The masses are coming into
their own", these progressives have declaimed. It has been about every
casteist politician: "Man of the masses", these progressives have
declaimed. "Keeps the masses spell-bound", "Kept the House in splits",
they have declaimed about his buffoonery. "Corruption, what is being
done to institutions, these are issues only in your drawing rooms",
they have scoffed - in their drawing rooms, and ours.
Apart from being an abomination in itself, casteism is what has
fractured the electorate. That has resulted In fractured legislatures.
And that has placed the fate of the country at the mercy of every
unscrupulous clutch.
This is the sequence which has to be reversed, and to do so the
rationalisation has to be seen through. The allied rationalisation is
as ruinous. As standards - in legislatures, in the way ministries are
run - have plummeted, we have been told, "But all that talk of
standards has been a colonial hang-over, now the masses are coming
Into their own". "What is all this talk of merit?", the casteists
demanded during the reservations debate. "When the system has no
merit, where is the ground for demanding that an individual has the
merit required' by that system to perpetuate itself"
It is typical of our times that this foolishness found favour with
some judges of the Supreme Court itself. Well, governance, legislation
- all these are tasks which require even greater expertise and
specialisation, which require temperaments even more specific to them
than space engineering.
Just because a person has been born into some socially disadvantaged
group, just because he is 70 per cent illiterate, just because he can
be as loutish as the next man at a pan-shop does not mean that he is
equipped to run ministries or decide matters of law and Constitution.
The institutions cannot run without the very traits which these
"representatives of the people" dismiss as "elitist, rectitude,
restraint, civility truthfulness. Unless this 'masses-coming into
their own' rationalisation is set' aside, we will continue to
reconcile ourselves to the shout" and stalling
and wheeling and dealing of our legislators. And ruin will be
unavoidable. As is always the case, the primary responsibility for the
ouster of a government rests with itself.
But there are two features of discourse which injure governance in
general. As the press has been the main instrument by which
politicians are using. these features, the press is the one that
should wake up to them.
Our newspapers have become mega-phones for the unsubstantiated charge.
The more outrageous the charge, the more prominence It gets in them.
T-90 tanks have not even been purchased, trials are to be held this
summer, but allegations about millions having been made on them are
broad-cast all over. A former finance minister says he has nothing
beyond the allegations of a former adviser, the adviser says it is not
his intention or his Job to provide evidence. But the allegations are
broadcast all over.
For me, not just this trait but this phase is typified by
Jayalalitha's statement about Agni-II: The government has caved m to
pressure from arms dealers in London, it has surrendered to foreign
powers, and halted the development of Agni, the Statement read.
Agni-II had already been tested earlier in the day.
Assume for a moment that the missile had not been tested that day.
This statement would have been the box-item on front-pages the net
day. "The specific charges a leader" of Jayalalitha's stature has made
must be examined by a JPC", it would have been argued in orchestrated
statements.
"After all, we have not made the charges, an alliance partner of the
government has", the statements would have stressed. And newspapers
would have revered in giving these "follow-up demands" as much
importance.
The effect achieved, the allegation would have been forgotten, its
place taken by the next fabrication. Remember the use that was made of
the Jain Commission report? The purpose achieved, a week had not
passed and it was not even mentioned. The onion-crisis disappeared
from the front pages the day polling was over last year. That was soon
followed by story upon story of atrocities being heaped upon helpless
Christians. The tarnish complete, the atrocities suddenly ceased!
This feature is compounded by the studious neglect of facts - even
when these are set but in a readily accessible form. For two months,
those atrocity- stories about Christians were on the front pages.
When facts about them were nailed, and the stories were shown to be
fabrications, newspapers looked the other way. For three months,
news-papers had been blowing up every allegation that Bhagwat and his
wife made. When George Fernandes disclosed the facts on Doordarshan,
and in a book-length paper, the newspapers all but blacked them out.
The feature results in part from ego: Though they, too, see within
days that they have been used, by that time the papers have got
committed to the falsehood they purveyed, and they are loathe to show
themselves up.
In part the exclusion of facts results from laziness: It is so much
easier to repeat an allegation than to excavate and analyse facts. In
part it results from the new creed about what "the reader wants": "The
reader is not interested in details", the dogma goes. But so
systematic and pervasive is, the neglect of facts that it cannot be
put merely to these fortuitous factors.
It results in much larger measure from design: The papers come to the
view that a government or a minister ought to be out - that is putting
it too high: The correct expression would be that it becomes
fashionable to take the view that a government ought to be out, that
an individual ought to be pilloried; as the allegation serves to
weaken the government or individual, it is paraded about; as facts
which nail the allegation would come in the way of that design, they
are ignored.
Either way, this al-legation-mongering is destructive in the extreme.
When the issue Is as serious as, say, defence, the harm it does on
that issue alone should compel us to wake up to what we are doing.
Worse, allegation-mongering thickens the air of negativity in the
country. In the anxiety to run down the particular government, not
just politicians who seek to replace it but the press, too, dampens
achievements from which the country as a whole could, and should have
taken heart.
It has also become the fashion to put on airs of skepticism. Indeed,
to discover something suspicious in every proposal has become proof of
independence. Steps which are necessary are thereby killed in the
womb.
Just see what was happening as the Vajpayee government was being voted
out. In his interview on the Bhagwat matter, George Fernandes revealed
that there is a project which has been regarded as so secret that
there is just one file about it, that file is kept in the personal
custody of the Prime Minister, that when he hands charge to the next
Prime Minister he personally hands that file over to his successor. He
was talking of just one matter. One can assume that there are several
other matters knowledge of which is limited to the Prime Minister.
Parliament voted Vajpayee out. Without any idea whatsoever as to who
would be replacing him. Yet, it is that unknown person to whom all
these secrets will have to be made available.
Is that any way for affairs of State to be safeguarded? To prevent
such leaps into the dark, as also to minimise the sort of bargaining
which has followed the removal of three Prime Ministers in succession
-- Deve Gowda, I K Gujral, and Vajpayee -- the German Constitution has
two excellent provisions. By virtue of Article 67 the only way for the
legislature to remove a Chancellor is to pass a motion reposing
confidence in someone else. A successor is put in place by the very
act by which a Chancellor is removed. By virtue of Article 68, should
the legislature fail to elect within three weeks a successor to some
Chancellor whose confidence-motion it has rejected, the legislature
stands automatically dissolved.
Under the Swiss Constitution, the Premier is elected by the whole
House - he is elected as an individual. He may choose ministers from
any party in the House. Ministers can be removed for grave misconduct
by the House, and their place can be filled by others. Even the
Premier can be removed and another one put in his place. But the
government continues, and so does the legislature for the full term.
The sorts of things which have been happening in the last decade cry
for some alterations of this kind - this is the third year in
succession that even the most elementary function of Parliament, that
of passing the budget will not be performed in any satisfactory way.
To consider and propose alternatives, the Vajpayee government had
announced that it would constitute a commission. The commission was to
have been headed by a distinguished former President. It was to have
had the very best jurists and others as its members. The commission
had but to be mentioned and all sorts of suspicions were raised about
"the real purpose" behind the proposal, all sorts of theories were put
out about "the hidden agenda" behind it. The result? A government
which had enough problems as it was, thought it best to let the matter
die. The result? A thing for which events cry out remained unattended.
Parliament voted out a Prime Minister without any idea of who would
step into the office as a result.
It isn't just a government which has gone. It is this Lok Sabha - for
the next government will be as dependent on the word of persons whose
word cannot be trusted. And if it indeed be the case that the
electorate is so fractured that there is no prospect that even three
or four elections will yield a Lok Sabha any less fragmented, then it
is not just this particular House which has gone, it is the system as
,we have known it. But nothing can be done, it seems. For enacting the
changes which would save it lies in the hands of legislators and
leaders who are the direct beneficiaries of the stalemate. Do the
conduct, caliber, priorities of parliamentarians we saw on TV last
week hold out any hope that they will attend to reforms?
In the meanwhile, the world leaps ahead. As do our problems.
Truly, an abyss whose depth we have numbed our brains not to
comprehend....
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