The welcome death of memorials

The government’s decision not to allow residences in Lutyens Delhi to be turned into memorials is bad news for freeloading dynastic politicians.

This is a decision that will not save the government much money, nor will it directly affect many people. Yet it’s a decision that will surely cheer all Indians, especially those living in Delhi. Well, all, except for a few freeloading politicians. On Saturday, Union finance minister Arun Jaitley announced that no official bungalow in Lutyens Delhi will any longer be made available for conversion into a memorial to a person.

This has been a quiet and long-standing racket in India’s plushest residential area, home to the country’s most powerful. A political leader passes away and his near and dear ones ensure free accommodation for life by getting the government to convert the bungalow, with its beautiful lawns and comfortable outhouses, into a museum in honour of the great departed soul. Or a typical dynastic politician loses his seat in Parliament and wants his residence to be designated a memorial to his departed father, so he can continue to enjoy free accommodation (all maintenance work included).

The immediate provocation was Ajit Singh, civil aviation minister in the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government, who clung on to his official house for months after being defeated in the Lok Sabha elections. When all notices to vacate were ignored, the government cut off the power supply to the house. Singh installed giant generators. When he finally realized that his goose was cooked, he left, but then organized thousands of his supporters to descend on the heart of Delhi, demanding that the bungalow be converted into a memorial to his father, Chaudhary Charan Singh, the powerful farmer leader who had managed to become Prime Minister of India for a month by entering into an underhand deal with Indira Gandhi, and then was outsmarted thoroughly by the wily Mrs G. Singh, thus, appears in Indian history as the only Prime Minister who never got the chance to face a Lok Sabha. (Technically, he was PM for about six months, because after his government fell, he remained caretaker PM for another five months till the January 1980 elections).

Ajit Singh—incidentally the first IITian to ever become a Union minister—even made this memorial thing an election issue in the Haryana assembly polls. In a campaign rally in Meerut, former Prime Minister H.D. Deve Gowda and JD(U) leader Sharad Yadav joined him on stage and supported his demand.

One politician who, however, managed to scrape through in time is former Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar, who got her residence converted by the UPA government into a museum on father, former Deputy prime minister Babu Jagjivan Ram. The Times of India reported on 20 September that though museum timings were displayed at the gate of the bungalow, a security guard stopped anyone from going inside.

In fact, in 2000, the Vajpayee government had decreed that government residences would not be allowed to be converted into memorials, but the UPA government thought otherwise and handed over the prime real estate to Meira Kumar (or, officially, to the Babu Jagjivan Ram Memorial Foundation) for 25 years.

The fun is over now. But a new variety of fun will now begin. While reiterating the previous NDA government’s decision, Jaitley said that houses that had already been converted to memorials would be allowed to stay as memorials, but the government would no longer pay for their maintenance. That expense would have to be borne by whatever trust or foundation is in charge of the memorial. That is a really unkind cut for our freeloading dynastic politicians. One can just imagine their jaws dropping at this outrageous announcement, which flies against the whole entitlement culture these people have happily grown up and fattened on.

What are the chances that these ‘memorials’ will now be maintained? Will they be decrepit ugly ruins within a decade? If so, what will that say about the respect these politicians have for their parents?

This is a beginning. Now can we get some red lights removed from roofs of cars, and some ministerial convoys severely cut down to size, and some police bandobasts and barricades whenever they zip through the roads of the capital dismantled, so that the citizens of Delhi can live a better life, and our politicians are forced to move around more like citizens of India?