Making the change-Haroun-Al-Rashid used to go around his capital incognito to hear what his citizens were saying. -9/8/10

By Meghnad Desai, 09/08/2010

Column: Making the change

Haroun-Al-Rashid used to go around his capital incognito to hear what his citizens were saying.



Pranab Mukherji has had the inadvertent experience of suffering what his fellow citizens (or at least all those who own a mobile) suffer constantly. This is unwanted messages from people trying to sell things you do not want to buy. Luckily now that the powers-that-be know what it is like to be at the other end of an unwanted intrusion, we may have reforms on that score.

If only everything was that easy! If only Ministers knew what it was like to access public services while they drive in Delhi free of traffic snarls, even as citizens fume as they speed past with their lal battis and outriders. If any minister would try to get his passport renewed standing in a queue at the Passport Office, he would know how much contempt citizens suffer at the hands of people who are supposed to be public servants. Try to get to South Block on one of Delhi's buses and you would know what daily oppression is.



We may get rapid reform of Delhi buses if Delhi MLAs and Municipal councillors took the bus every day. The Mayor of London has gone one better. He has initiated a scheme whereby people can ride free bicycles from one location to another and then leave them for others to use. It is a free Rent-a Bike scheme. What is more, he himself rides a bicycle to work. David Cameron used to do the same when he was Leader of the Opposition. Now he has to fight his security guards to walk the five minutes from Downing Street to Parliament but he still manages it many times.

Why is it that we see ministers and even ex-ministers in other countries behaving much more like their ordinary citizen brethren do than we do in India? They do not need to find out what happens in the world. You only invoke the aam aadmi when you want to bring Lok Sabha to a halt, not to benefit him a jot. Imagine being dependent on PDS yourself for your food shopping and then imagine how long would MPs defend it. Or obtaining a gas cylinder or suffering power cuts.



Sometime, of course, the distance is even vaster. If you are not a citizen of Kashmir, you never experience your mobile phones being shut off for days when the authorities feel like it or not knowing whether your child who has gone to school will return safe or will she be gassed or arrested or killed or all three. If you are not a Kashmiri, you have the luxury of doubting their motives for protesting, even their loyalty. Why can't they enjoy their membership of a democratic secular socialist republic like the rest of us? Why do they have to march against extra-judicial killings or blatant rape for which they will get no redress?

We have seen the spectacle of a Gujarat Minister being arrested for his alleged involvement in an encounter killing. One can only hope that the CBI will stick to its guns and get him tried. Being of a cynical disposition, I suspect the CBI may suddenly botch the case and suffer a summary dismissal by the courts of all their pleas. In that case, it will confirm my suspicion that the entire case was dragged up to divide opposition in Parliament on the eve of the crucial debate on inflation. I only wish I am wrong. In any case, the so-called secular Opposition parties always fall for this obvious ploy.



In Kashmir of course there are encounter killings often, but they are not juicy enough from a Parliamentary perspective to be investigated. When I used to march for civil rights for Black Americans in the Sixties, the White Racists used to complain that all these agitators were outside infiltrators. We hear this all the time in Kashmir, about all the trouble being caused by these bad elements. In the US it was these outside agitators who brought about the radical change. Kashmir may yet solve its troubles if only there were more of them.

Source: The Indian Express