April 19, 1999
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FIFTH COLUMN Dr JJ Throws a Tantrum A provincial leader who can't outgrow her provincial mindset By Tavleen Singh If it wasn't obscene, it would be quite funny to hear Jayalalitha give "national interest" as her reason for subjecting the country to yet another period of political uncertainty. It makes you wonder whether provincial political leaders understand such things as national interest at all. And also whether the real lesson of the past few years isn't that provincial politicians should be kept firmly where they belong: in the provinces. Jayalalitha Jayaram wreaked havoc on Tamil Nadu during her reign but, because she ruled only one Indian state, her depredations were limited. Ever since she has had the chance to treat all of India as her stage, she has spent most of her time ensuring that nobody misses her presence for even a moment. It was clear from day one to even the politically illiterate that national interest was the last thing on her mind. But so deceived does she appear to be by illusions of her own grandeur that she hasn't noticed everyone has her figured out. And that she currently epitomises the ugly Indian politician. Even more than Laloo Yadav does. She wins the first prize mainly because of her astounding inability to understand that national interest is not the same as self-interest. It could be in her interest to keep the Government quaking and quivering every time she rolls into Delhi. In her interest to have her tea parties splashed across the front pages while more important news gets buried inside. Very much in her interest to be the hottest political story in the country. But not in the national interest. What is in the national interest is for Atal Bihari Vajpayee's Government to be allowed to get on with the business of governance. This it had just begun to do when Jayalalitha decided it was time for her "political earthquake". An earthquake created ostensibly by the prime minister's refusal to concede Jayalalitha's "reasonable" demands. These included the setting up of a joint parliamentary committee to investigate the dismissal of former navy chief Vishnu Bhagwat and the transfer of George Fernandes to a ministry "less sensitive" than defence. Why, you may well ask, is Dr JJ so interested in the Defence Ministry? And if you did ask you would be in good company since many people in Delhi's political circles are asking the same question. What we also need to ask is whether Jayalalitha has the right to interfere in decisions that should be taken only by the prime minister, especially since Jayalalitha has such a peculiar understanding of national interest. If she really understood or cared about the nation, Jayalalitha would have realised that there could not have been a worse moment to create political turmoil. She timed it to coincide with the exact moment when things were beginning to look up for the country. Vajpayee's Government has taken a long time getting into the governance mode. It has spent a year bogged down in largely irrelevant issues. Initially, there was the Jayalalitha problem, then there were the nuclear tests, then there were settling-down problems, then there was the problem of the BJP's lunatic fringe trying to push its agenda. Conversions became more important than governance and swadeshi nearly succeeded in reversing the process of economic liberalisation. So it has only been since the beginning of this year that the prime minister has shown any signs of being in control. As a result we have seen the beginnings of a sensible, new foreign policy and a budget that sent the stock markets on an upward spiral unseen since the heady days of 1991 -- when P.V. Narasimha Rao began the process of economic reform. Economists and businessmen are in agreement that the economy was definitely on the road to recovery. Then, along comes Jayalalitha with her tea parties and her glib one-liners about political earthquakes and we are almost back to square one. Moving backwards is the last thing the country can afford because there is so much more that needs to be done. It is clear, for instance, that the economy is not going to recover in any major sense unless the Government starts to invest in infrastructure instead of simply talking about it. The grandiose highway network that the prime minister announced in 1998 has remained a paper highway and will remain one unless the Government accepts that it cannot be built. If someone sensible is put in charge of surface transport he is likely to point out that we need to choose a road that has the highest traffic density -- Delhi to Mumbai, for example -- and convert it into a modern expressway before going any further. Government investment on one road and a couple of other big projects could help boost the economy. Next the Government must seriously consider cutting costs. We can no longer afford a Central government that employs four million people and costs taxpayers Rs 32,000 crore. We can no longer afford ministries that should have been closed down long ago. Steel, food processing, hotels, airlines, television, telecommunications -- why is the Government still involved in these areas, especially since most of them lose vast amounts of taxpayers' money? If Jayalalitha were not so provincial in her comprehension of national interest, these are the things she would be making a noise about. But then perhaps she is not really her own woman. Perhaps she is only being used by the Congress to do its dirty work and once it is done she will be allowed to fall -- with an earthquakely thud -- between two stools. |
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