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EDITORIAL
Health
Without Stealth
Make
politicians' medical histories public. And begin with the PM.
 When
Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee truncated his visit to Nagpur citing
trouble with his knees, he must have expected the intense speculation
it would trigger. Especially in a month in which a relatively young Union
minister-Rangarajan Kumaramangalam was only 48-passed away due to a curious
ailment the country is still unclear about, worries about the health of
senior politicians are bound to be exaggerated. While Vajpayee's fitness
is literally a matter of national importance, the secrecy that surrounds
it is hardly unique. A smaller version of the same drama is being played
out in West Bengal, where the political future of Jyoti Basu is being
fervently discussed without any ordinary citizen having access to his
chief minister's medical records. Not since the high noon of the Soviet
empire-when the death of the supreme leader in the Kremlin was routinely
announced a good two to three days after the event-has public life seen
anything as bizarre.
This conspiracy
of silence and cussed refusal to publicly even accept that septuagenarians
and octogenarians may suffer from the usual ailments that accompany age
is not just unfair but actually counter-productive. The voter has a right
to know if his chosen representative is in fine fettle. To conceal illnesses
or medical histories is, at one level, as unjust as whitewashing a politician's
corrupt past. In the absence of concrete, easily verifiable information,
rumour rushes in to fill the vacuum. This does not become mature democracies.
Francois Mitterrand, Ronald Reagan and Nelson Mandela underwent major
surgeries while in office. They did so after taking their people into
confidence-and neither democracy nor France, the United States and South
Africa suffered. India deserves similar trust. Is it too much to ask its
MPs and MLAs to place their medical files in the public domain?
Knights
of Darkness
So the
Congress relates to power-sector reforms on a state-by-state basis
 In
the midst of Andhra Pradesh's catastrophic floods, the Congress and the
communist parties are focusing their energies on the increase in power
tariff. There is no point talking logic to hidebound Marxists and their
protests are entirely in character. It is the behaviour of the Congress-and
its leadership of an anarchist agitation that has caused the death of
three people in police firing-that is disconcerting. The enhancement of
charges is scarcely localised to Andhra Pradesh. It is part of a package
of reforms being implemented in states as far apart-and diversely ruled-as
Haryana, Orissa and Uttar Pradesh. Simply put, the plan seeks to insulate
loss-making state electricity boards from a combination of populist but
ridiculously low rates and defaulting but influential consumers. The upshot
of such a situation is obvious-little or no surplus is generated for re-investment.
The example of Punjab, where Akali-sponsored "free power" for
farmers has only led to chronic power shortages for everybody, is there
for all to see.
Reforms in
this area are a tricky business, particularly since India's public-sector
power units are big breeders of corruption. In Uttar Pradesh earlier this
year the dismantling of the power corporation into distinct generation
and distribution companies led to a workers' strike. Andhra Pradesh represents
another face of the challenge. Ironically Congress regimes have initiated
identical changes, higher tariff proposals and all, in Maharashtra, Rajasthan,
and Karnataka. The party's liberalisation clapper boys advocate similar
treatment for Delhi too. The passage from darkness to light is as much
a scientific phenomenon as a matter of philosophical reckoning. For the
Congress, however, it only represents the journey from opposition to government.
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