Absence of a Policy-Perspective

While Conservative leader David Cameron took over on May 11 as Britain’s 53rd PM with the Liberal Democrats’ Nick Clegg as his deputy in the first coalition government in the UK in 65 years, in our country Minister of State for Environment and Forests Jairam Ramesh has become another member of the Union Council of Ministers to be suffering from the ‘foot-in-the-mouth’ syndrome. Ramesh’s statement in Beijing that India’s security establishment and Home Ministry were “paranoid”, “alarmist” and “defensive” on the issue of restrictions on the Chinese companies’ investments here was not only imprudent but impolitic too since it amounted to, as aptly pointed out by The Asian Age, “caricaturing this country’s overall equation with a powerful neighbour with which relations have been more down than up”.

Interestingly Ramesh felt it necessary to “clarify” his utterances in China to Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram in the Capital on May 12. However, he was not alone. Senior Congress leader Digvijay Singh, who in a newspaper article last month had called Chidambaram “rigid” and “intellectually arrogant” while questioning his approach of fighting the Maoists, also publicly stated that he was ready to express regret if his criticism of PC on handling the Maoists had hurt the Union Home Minister.

But what about PC himself? Saying there was a “huge trust deficit” between the elected government and people in the Maoist-infested tribal areas, he told the annual meeting of the CII on May 12 that industries should join hands in developing such areas instead of being content with profit and loss accounts, adding: “It is a wake-up call for us.”

Such a view had not been publicly expressed by the Home Minister earlier. What does it indicate? Belated realisation of the ground reality? Or is it a reflection of the absence of any clear-cut policy in the highest echelons of power on how to tackle this specific problem?

Meanwhile the most positive news is that External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna would visit Islamabad on July 15 to hold talks with his Pakistani counterpart, Shah Mehmood Qureshi. This was agreed upon by the two sides during a phone call by Qureshi to Krishna on May 11. It is learnt that the proposal for the dates was made by India and accepted by Pakistan during the 25-minute telephonic conversation. It is further learnt that these talks would be preceded by a meeting between the Foreign Secretaries of the two states on June 26 on the sidelines of a conference of the Home Ministers of SAARC member-states in the Pakistan capital, and they are to finalise the agenda for the Krishna-Qureshi talks. Obviously this is a follow-up of whatever was decided during the meeting of the two PMs on the sidelines of the SAARC Summit at Thimphu. The apprehensions on the Indian side regarding Pakistan’s actions against anti-Indian terrorists operating from across the border have yet to be removed no doubt, but this exercise New Delhi is embarking on is intended to bridge the gulf between the two countries on this subject before launching a full-fledged dialogue suspended after the perfidious 26/11 terror attacks in Mumbai in 2008.

Against this backdrop the stand taken by the young and highly educated industrialist MP, Naveen Jindal, on the issue of intra-gotra marriage, as his pronouncements before a khap panchayat in his constituency in Haryan clearly testify, is definitely a throwback into the medieval darkness and completely out of sync with the modernist outlook of 21st century India. This is all the more shocking as it is a concession to “honour killings” carried out through the directives of such panchayats (one of which took place only the other day once again besmirching the image of this country as a forward-looking pluralist society). Jindal may be playing competitive politics, but there is no gainsaying that this is absolutely reprehensible, unacceptable and unjustifiable as it is an open invitation to these panchayats to hold our polity to ransom by even demanding an amendment to the Hindu Marriage Act to uphold their sectarian approach which militates against both modernity and humanism.

One gets the unmistakable impression that on several crucial questions the government lacks a policy-perspective that is severely affecting its functioning.

May 13 S.C.