VIEWPOINT: FIFTH COLUMN

Living Off Gandhi

By Tavleen Singh

There is a tired old adage in government circles that goes like this: do nothing and nobody will bother you; do something-anything-and you could attract unwanted attention and unnecessary trouble. That this is a maxim most of our ministers and bureaucrats abide by is evident from the fact that almost nothing changes in government offices no matter how many changes we, the people, try to effect. We vote out governments and give prime ministers marching orders and still the business of government goes on much as it has always done-unhurriedly, inefficiently and without dramatic change. A recent incident made me realise that perhaps we of the Fourth Estate are partly to blame for this.

Not long ago in a less salubrious corner of Delhi's fashionable Khan Market a new store called the Khadi Shop opened. It is a new old shop really, since there always was a government shop there selling second-rate khadi goods in the usual half-hearted government manner. Its newness comes from it being the first government shop that has made a determined effort to let the fresh breeze of the market blow through its musty interiors. Gone are the dreary heaps of coarse cloth, the mouldy smells, the badly stitched kurta pyjamas. In their place are khadi clothes designed by some of our best known designers who, incidentally, charged the government nothing for their services. Also available are herbal products in nice containers, all of which indicates the government has at last realised that there is a real market for these goods. The shop has reported sales so brisk that it is hard to keep it adequately supplied but you would not know this if you read about it in your daily rag. Most reporters who have visited the shop have reacted not with approval but righteous indignation. "Aren't we messing up Gandhi's legacy?" is a sample of the sneering headline that greeted the new shop.

Not one of our famed investigative journalists has so far bothered to find out whether Gandhi's legacy has not been "messed up" for many years or whether the shop is not a first, small attempt to clear up the mess.

Had they bothered they may have discovered that in the name of Gandhiji, the Khadi Village Industries Commission (KVIC) has long been used to loot the poor by racketeers who hide behind the banner of khadi and under the ragged cloak of Gandhism. The Government discovered this when it asked management consultancy firm Arthur Andersen to prepare a report on what was wrong with KVIC. The report revealed several flaws in the system including the fact that massive amounts of taxpayers' money was being handed out in rebates and subsidies to organisations and individuals who were not producing a single yard of khadi. Acting on the report the Government investigated the agencies to which it was shelling out rebates and cancelled spurious organisations from its list. So, this year the amount we spend on rebates has come down from Rs 200 crore to Rs 60 crore.

Interestingly, instead of being applauded, the Government was reviled in the press for bringing an "MNC" into Gandhiji's swadeshi path. The same sort of reaction has greeted the Government's attempts to improve its hopelessly outdated and over-staffed retail outlets. Even more interesting is the fact that the opposition from the press has helped the charlatans and the racketeers. The old Congress Gandhians, you see, have now been replaced by (irony of ironies) RSS Gandhians who want the rebates, subsidies and shoddy goods to continue for exactly the same reasons: patronage at taxpayers' expense for supporters and acolytes. Not the poor.

Meanwhile, there is a huge market not just in India but abroad for good quality KVIC products since herbal cosmetics and tonics and environment-friendly cloth is much in demand. We may never tap it, though, if we continue to prevent the Government from making the necessary changes.

Khadi is not the only story in which the Fourth Estate has missed the point. Whenever a ministry or government department tries to make changes-in the ineffectual PDS or in anti-poverty programmes that rarely reach the poor-there is more outrage than approval. Why? Because, for some mysterious reason, we believe we speak for what we so disparagingly call "the common man". Does the common man shop in Khan Market or Connaught Place? No, but the reporters who attacked the Khadi Shop appeared not to know this.

The truth is we speak not for the common man but for vested interests. We speak for those who have exploited the government in the name of the poor. If competition from television had not forced even serious newspapers to replace investigative journalism with gossip columns we may have already found this out. As things stand we could use an Arthur Andersen report on the Fourth Estate.