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EDITORIALS
Red (Fort) Tape
August 15 promises have become a bad national joke
 This
is the annual trichromatic moment of platitudes and promises. The prime
minister's Independence Day speech from the Red Fort. Truly, this commemorative
moment has come to assume a weary predictability. There he comes, the
leader of the nation, carrying with him that midnight memory of freedom
from the coloniser, climbs on to the elevated stage, and addresses the
people, the words always of a great tomorrow, of national dream and national
determination, of a resurgent happy land. The leader, every morning of
August 15, is a receptacle of will and vision, for a couple of ceremonious
moments at least. Really, going by those Red Fort performances, India
should have reached superpowerhood years ago. Prime ministers come and
go, talking utopia, but India continues to remain what it is: a land of
dead promises and zero political vision.
And one more ritual at the Red Fort last Wednesday.
The prime minister, once upon a time a great communicator and of late
a man of few words dependant on written texts, talked all the usual subjects:
Kashmir, terrorism, economy, poverty, farmers, women, health ... He will
turn "every stone" of this land for a better India. He will
talk peace with the nasty neighbour but he will crush crossborder jehadis.
He wants to eliminate poverty from this country and he wants the nasty
neighbourhood leader to eliminate poverty from his country. And he has
big plans for his countrymen: a Rs 10,000-crore village employment programme,
a national tourism policy, more fast-track courts, more power to women...
And, he is serious, a rapid action force will ensure that next year is
the "implementation year". Ah, perhaps that was what India was
lacking all these years-a rapid action force, but not the kind the prime
minister envisages. An action force driven by leadership vision. Don't
worry, you will have more of it on August 15, 2002.
Only In Chennai
But the Centre can't change the script of the Dravidian
theatre
 The
day after the DMK's shirtless display of agony in Parliament the national
headlines were full of shock. As if it was the first dramatic performance
of Dravidian politics. Maybe first time inside Parliament. In Dravida-Nadu
it is a permanent show of the underdog versus the top dog-bathetic and
violent. In the beginning, however, the show had a thematic coherence,
the enemy was the Brahmin or Hindi or the North. Today, the enemy is not
an outsider, and is defined by three extra alphabets or the absence of
them: DMK versus AIADMK. It is a power struggle in which every method
is acceptable, including midnight knocks and roadside rage. And both parties
want to stand on the moral highground, preferably with some partisan support
from Delhi. To get that support, the underdog may have to take off his
shirt in the House of People.
At the moment, it is M. Karunanidhi's turn to
be the victim. He has lost the election miserably and now the winner wants
to ensure that he loses his dignity as well. Chief Minister J. Jayalalitha,
the self-chosen wronged woman of Indian politics, has been pursuing a
kind of beating-the-dead-horse sadism since her return to Fort St George,
occasionally defying democratic niceties, as in the case of the midnight
humiliation of Karunanidhi. And when the bleeding underdogs take their
trauma to the street, the raging empress of Poes Garden ensures they bleed
more. Hence the SOS to the Centre: tame the tormentor, call back her chief
gestapos. Since the victim is part of the ruling National Democratic Alliance,
the Centre is in a dilemma: can't ignore the partner, can't afford to
be like Jayalalitha either. In the irrational Dravidian feud, third parties
can do nothing except watch the never-ending farce.
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