Deccan Herald: New Delhi: Tuesday,
May 24, 2016.
That there
are many issues which agitate the minds of people is beyond dispute. But the
minds of elected representatives in state and central governments appear to be
agitated on election issues or matters related to them, rather than the major
issues which affect the daily lives of the people.
If newspaper
headlines are an indication of what interests readers and those who make the
news which is in headlines, it would appear that the AgustaWestland chopper
scam being discussed a few weeks ago mattered more to the nation than anything
else. Yes, indeed “the nation wants to know” who are the big fish in this
humongous scam instead of focusing on senior Indian Air Force officers who
could not be more than small fry, if at all they are involved in actual graft.
The political
parties involved, namely the Congress and the BJP, have been shadow-boxing for
decades over scams of one kind or another, never going beyond some unspoken
point of investigation and prosecution. All accusations inside and outside
Parliament are routinely countered by what the accusing party did when it was
in power. Commissions of Inquiry are appointed and take years to bring out
voluminous reports, which never reach the glare of public scrutiny.
Activist
citizens who use the RTI Act to get information are sidelined or simply denied
information, and several RTI activists have been harassed by governments and
some even killed.
It is apt to
quote former chief information commissioner Shailesh Gandhi who wrote: “There
is a very disturbing news reports (sic) about the entire political spectrum
agreeing that RTI Act is misused and some constrictions should be developed to
muzzle it. This is indeed a sad state of affairs. Samajwadi Party’s member of
Parliament (MP) Naresh Agarwal has levelled a charge that the Indian Parliament
passed the RTI Act under US pressure!”
He went on:
“Praful Patel of Nationalist Congress Party made a remark, which was still
worse. He had objections to the poor – paanwaala and chaiwaala – seeking
information under RTI...” The truth of politicians across parties protecting
each other and of political shadow-boxing with the unspoken connivance of all
political parties is difficult to prove, though it is apparent to all but the
politically myopic or blind.
But surely
the “nation (also) wants to know” what is being done to address and solve the
extreme distress in India's rural sidelines, where large scale migration is
happening due to the worst drought in decades. Lean and dehydrated farmers,
agitated by their inability to repay a few thousands of rupees taken on loan
are committing suicide in their hundreds.
In this worst
drought in decades, left with no choice, millions are migrating from their
villages to towns and cities, leaving behind their old and infirm relatives.
Women are reduced to selling th-emselves and sometimes even their children for
small sums of money for food. And while such personal tragedies play out every
single day within the massive national tragedy of drought-poverty-migration,
these very people’s elected representatives coolly grant themselves up to 100%
rise in their own salaries. And an IPL match on television in air-conditioned
homes provides what people want to see and hear, saving them the decibels of
even what “the nation wants to know.”
This brings
to mind P Sainath’s poignant documentary film “Nero’s Guests”. In the context
of the decades-long history of farmers' suicides, Sainath brings out how the
well-to-do are oblivious or indifferent to the sufferings of the unwashed
millions, and how their indifference results in their silence and complicity to
all the violence and injustices heaped upon the poor.
High Court
and Pepsi
Tears were
shed on national television by a person at the top of his profession because
government neglected his profession. However, as reported from Palakkad
(Kerala), people’s tears are unseen and their throats dry when the High Court
limits soft drink major Pepsico to “only six lakh litres [of ground water
pumped out] per day”.
Thus, Pepsico
makes huge profits, even as thirsty people run behind tanker lorries for a
10-litre pitcher of water. In 2007, the Kanjikode Panchayat had cancelled the
licence of the Pepsico bottling unit as it was using huge quantities of potable
water, but the court had annulled the panchayat order. What price tears?
The on-going
drought-famine is engulfing over 300 million migrating Indians. They are
thirsting for drinking water, just like their animals, not excluding cows,
dying in their hundreds. What matter could be more urgent for our law makers
than the on-going drought?
In the final
analysis, there is no real difference between the NDA-1, UPA-1 and UPA-2
governments and the present NDA-2 government, inasmuch as their approach to
people's problems is concerned. Former minister Arun Shourie, perhaps in a
moment of pique, uttered the truth that “NDA equals Congress scaled up plus
cow.”
“Enough is enough,” is what one gentleman said
about the shadow-boxing between the Congress and the BJP on issues like the
AgustaWestland scam, demanding that the guilty should be punished. But “enough
is enough” is also being said in the streets and there is large-font
multi-lingual writing on the wall, indicating that people are more ready to
listen to the people-friendly likes of Kanhaiya Kumar than to the
corporate-friendly likes of leading politicians across the country.
Unless all
political parties pay full attention to the present crisis and make urgent
joint efforts to help the thirsty and starving hundreds of millions, they and
all of India's modern-day Nero's guests will inevitably pay heavily for their
self-interested acts of omission and commission. Saying sorry later will not
help, because the deadly bullet of people-neglect will be out of the gun barrel
of economic-growth-at-any-cost.
(The
writer, a retired Major General, is with People's Union for Civil Liberties)