BackThe greatest security threat
Arrogance of power travels seamlessly from the districts and states to the capital of India
Premium(Priyanka Parashar/Mint)
If anyone except politicians and their hand-it-to-me maidens in administration and coercive business still doubt that this conglomerate constitutes the greatest internal security threat to India, now would be the time to stand up and be counted. But first, let me tell you a story.
One of the more interesting by-products of my focusing on conflict situations is the acquaintanceship and trust of several people. They are not always rebels, from Maoist to Manipuri, several of whom remain suspicious of the fact that I am not an employee of a media, corporate or political organization; and so, am I perhaps an infiltrator?
They often are in the Indian Administrative Service, state administrative services, and various police, paramilitary and armed forces. And they tend to quite often be angry—perhaps even rebellious—because of the arrogance, corruption and mismanagement they experience, practised by politicians and their cohorts. And of course on account of such practices among their own tribes.
What is most galling to them is that such infestation prevents them from performing their duties, and censure arrives when they do so. (Recent examples of the bureaucrats Ashok Khemka in Haryana, whistle-blower for land deals allegedly preferential to Robert Vadra, UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi’s son-in-law; and Durga Shakti Nagpal in Uttar Pradesh, suspended after preventing illegal sand mining by politically important persons, are among a minuscule few whose instances are public knowledge.)
A relatively junior IAS officer posted to a poor district in Maharashtra wrote to me this past Independence Day. This person described a “welfare committee" last week of visiting MLAs who accepted donations from even low-level state government employees, who formed a consortium of donors to insure their jobs. This committee also held reviews and hauled up officials who had in its opinion erred: by returning unused portions of grants instead of creating projects to siphon funds, not awarding contracts to those recommended by the political establishment, and similar misdemeanours. A well-wisher had also warned the officer through a text message: “Ur coleagues misguiding politicians for ur trnsfer. Pls be prepared…"
The officer updated me a few hours later: “... the vultures have finally left the system robbed and yet zip lipped... wow democracy!!"
Such examples are legion. These directly weaken the well-being of the locality, the region and, in turn, the country.
Of course, such examples of arrogance and irresponsibility are not restricted to the districts. Ajit Pawar, deputy chief minister of Maharashtra, created dubious history earlier in the year when questioned about irrigation; he offered to urinate in order to fill its lack in a region of staggering agrarian crises. West Bengal’s chief minister Mamata Banerjee has made it a habit to call critics of deteriorating law and order “Maoist", even if they belong to the family of a rape-and-murder victim.
Gujarat’s chief minister Narendra Modi and his colleague in Chhattisgarh, Raman Singh, are tainted by the overlooking of severe human rights violations. Singh is also an exemplar of encouraging business, usually big- and medium-sized, to either enter areas of active internal war, or create situations of conflict by heavy-handed industrial and land acquisition policies. In this he is joined by Orissa’s chief minister Naveen Patnaik, and a string of chief ministers in neighbouring Jharkhand. If the point of perpetuating economies of conflict or well-distributed poverty over economies of peace or well-distributed prosperity was to be considered, it would include nearly all states, and in particular Manipur, Nagaland, Assam, and Jammu and Kashmir.
Arrogance of power, with or without attendant corruption, travels seamlessly from the districts and states to the capital of India. The Parliament of India is not a questionable institution, but surely the majority of its occupants in the Rajya Sabha and Lok Sabha have earned a dubious distinction for severe lack of application. Urgent legislative business, including the discussion over, or passing of, more than a hundred Bills—including those with urgent internal security ramifications of securing land and livelihood—has repeatedly been stalled.
Petty political points are instead sought to be scored. This past week the chairman of the Rajya Sabha, vice-president Hamid Ansari, was appalled by the disruptive behaviour of legislators, and asked if Parliament was to become a “federation of anarchists". It is a dangerous indication of the attitude of the political leadership that, far from apologizing, they criticized Ansari.
In this era, when public servants routinely make servants of the public, it would perhaps be foolish to expect decorum in democracy, let alone the deepening of internal security.
Sudeep Chakravarti is the author of Red Sun: Travels in Naxalite Country and Highway 39: Journeys through a Fractured Land. This column focuses on conflict situations in South Asia that directly affect business. Respond to this column at rootcause@livemint.com
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