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FIFTH
COLUMN
Truth
Omissions
Will we ever have a leader who will have the
courage to admit the mistakes of the past?
By
Tavleen
Singh
When
will we get a prime minister who will use his speech from the ramparts
of the Red Fort to tell us why India's "tryst with destiny"
has been a disappointment? This was not something we could have hoped
for in the 40 years when our prime ministers came not just from the same
party but usually from the same family. But in the past few years, when
so much has changed and so many governments have come and gone, I have
waited eagerly every year for a prime minister who would have the courage
to tell us the truth. Something along the lines of: brothers, sisters,
countrymen, we should be a rich, powerful country and if we are not, it
is because you have been let down by your leaders.
To make
a new beginning you need some acknowledgement of past mistakes, and A.B.
Vajpayee is in a better position to do this than almost anyone else. He
is a popular prime minister-the most popular in years-and he belongs to
a party that has nothing to do with the mistakes of the past. He is also
arguably the best orator Indian politics has ever seen. So when he stepped
into his bullet-proof, glass cubicle to make the first Independence Day
address of the 21st century I expected him to seize the moment.
And, when
after the routine sabre rattling over Kashmir he turned to the economy,
I really thought he would. He began by pointing out that 70 per cent of
India's population was under the age of 35 and that the 21st century belonged
to them. He explained that economic reform was necessary and that nobody
should be afraid of being hurt by it. Now was the moment, I thought, to
explain why so much had gone wrong. How we had spent our resources on
running airlines, phone companies and hotels when we should have spent
this money on schools, hospitals and roads.
With Vajpayee's
communication skills, it would have been so easy for him to explain that
the wastage had reached a point where governments were spending more on
administration and paying interest on loans than on meeting people's basic
needs. He could have admitted it was largely because of bad housekeeping
and a skewed idea of development that India-with its enormous resources-continued
to be one of the poorest countries in the world. Why did he not say any
of these things? Well, it could be because he has lousy speech writers
but more likely it's because we have so far not had a leader who fully
understands the importance of telling the truth about things that have
gone wrong.
This is
a problem not just in Delhi but in our states as well. So governments
come and go and the average India, continues to puzzle over why there
is so little that changes. Why all that changes visibly is that a new
set of faces stares out from the white ambassador cars with their red
lights and their sirens and a new caboodle moves into the high offices
and fine homes reserved for our "leaders".
On
Independence Day various states paid for full-page advertisements in the
national newspapers to boast about their achievements in exactly the way
governments did when the Soviet Union was our role model. The advertisements
assume that the average Indian is an idiot. So they list achievements
that would not be considered achievements even to anyone with minimum
powers of discernment.
Therefore,
from Rabri Devi we hear that the Government of Bihar "is working
round the clock to fight the challenges coming in way (sic) of ensuring
social justice to one and all, especially the Dalits, backwards, minorities
and women".
Terrific,
but will someone explain why Bihar has more massacres of the poor and
the underprivileged than any other Indian state? Or why there seem to
be so many more under Rabri's "committed to social justice"
regime.
What can
we expect from the chief minister of Bihar, though, when we have so far
not had a prime minister who has dared to be different? Not even in the
small things has anyone dared make changes, Why, for instance, do we need
to annually enact the Red Fort routine when all it does is bring Delhi
to a complete halt and when nobody who can be loosely described as "people"
can attend? Security arrangements are a nightmare and even the high officials
and politicians who get invited face so many checks en route that it is
almost better to stay home and watch it on TV. Is it not time the prime
minister spoke from the safety of his own home?
For me the
most poignant image of Independence Day 2000 was the sight of barefoot
children selling the national flag at street corners in Mumbai. They were
mostly small children but many carried smaller children in their arms
as they worked from dawn to dusk on our most important national holiday.
One day, if we are lucky, we will get a prime minister who will dare to
explain why, more than 50 Independence Days on, this is still the face
of the Indian child.
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