Author: Arun Shourie
Publisher:

Anywhere you go in India, in almost any conversation you may have with strangers, family, friends, one word tends to creep in persistently,
We don’t speak of ‘society’ like the Brits and Americans do as a holistic thing, is it because our society is too fragmented? No, we use the word, the phrase, loaded with meaning which no one needs to explain, even a child gets it, we are so familiar with its implications---we say the word deprecatingly, usually as a term of blame, “the system.” What is this grey, formless thing, this system, sometimes pronounced “Shyshtem-- how does it come into being, how has it grown, who is it for, who does it benefit, how does it work, why does it work? And more importantly, why does it fail, as it does more often than one would care to acknowledge..

The system envelops us almost from the time we are born, (That’s our hospital and medical system), grow up to the school and college routine,
then jobs/career, marriage, raising our children, (our socio-cultural system), retirement and the strange euphemisms we coin for old age---the golden years, senior citizens, caring or not caring for the buzurghon….all within this system… where does it begin, where does it end?

When a man like Arun Shourie writes for the hundredth time on the failure of the system, is he writing for our amusement, to make us angry, to push and prod us into changing the way things work? Or does he write because he is driven, as someone has suggested by vendetta rather than by reason? Just looking at the range of his writing, one is forced to ask, does anyone read Arun Shourie anymore?

Every Indian who has been on the receiving end of the system, and I think, each one of us would have a million stories to tell of run-ins with government offices, whether it is the police, income tax, customs, the banking system, the BMC, the railways, ( a friend of mine has just come out of a long, running battle with the Passport office), and let us not forget our courts of justice. More often than not we come out of these encounters, stomachs churning, blood boiling, tearing our hair, sputtering with rage, blood pressure hitting the roof, which would then take us back to our wonderful hospital system.

Arun Shourie has from the beginning set himself apart, as a critic of society. When he returned to India in the early seventies from a comfortable job in Washington, I think he saw himself as a man with a mission and so traumatized were we at that point of time, by the various events that led to the Emergency, Mrs. G’s vice-like grip on the State, that someone like Shourie with that transparent goodness seemed like a knight in shining armour. Goodness, integrity, public zeal, an extraordinary capacity for hard work, but with an equally extraordinary capacity to make enemies. His sorry exit from editorship at the Indian Express is just one example.

I cannot get out of my mind the image of his standing on the dais at a function to felicitate him on winning the Magsaysay, while his face was being blackened with boot-polish (or was it tar?) by some RPI thugs. He just stood there and took it, while no one in that paralysed audience did anything. The excuse which has become habitual to anyone who wants to perpetrate violence in our uncivil society, is that he insulted Dr. Ambedkar in his book, ‘Worshipping False Gods.’

Indeed I tend to see Shourie as a rather tragic figure. I have followed his path with great interest, and once I would have given much to have worked with him during his Indian Express days: the high promise, noble ideals of public service which seems almost a family tradition, his disabled child, etc. But with his joining the BJP, everything, all my ideas about him came crashing down, followed by a pervasive disappointment and a pervading sense of betrayal. What a terrible narrowing down of his horizons!

For whom has this book been written? There is an urgency in his writing as if he was trying to fulfill a personal agenda, but we cannot ignore the facts as he has presented them. Just to take the example of the projected sale of the loss-making ITDC properties, the constraints placed by the bureaucrats, the delays, the feet dragging, and finally the threats of violence to the possible buyers by the employees who were part of a complex web of corruption, the huge, huge losses by the government, and even with all this on record, nothing could be done.
He gives example after example, the code word ‘examination’ that officials use to delay progress…. This must be examined and that must be examined…the inertia that envelops officers even though they may have joined government with zeal and idealism.

What I found really interesting were his ideas about deregulation, his thoughts on the spread of technology that has changed our world so spontaneously and completely, and the need to modernize the rules as well as untie the knots in the system that will benefit growth. His rather philosophical ideas about the nature of the State and his warning not to place too much dependence on the state in matters which are more a natural function of the family, as in the taking care of the old and sick, are also worth a great deal of consideration.
One must give him his due. As we know, very few people in public life give us their ideas on the state of the nation, whether it is poetic musings, or philosophy or paternal harangues on how we should behave as a people. Nehru used to do it in his long rambling speeches bound to his people with strong bonds of affection.Mrs. G spoke in high, shrill tones about how she was surrounded by enemies and how she would give the last drop of blood to this poor nation… Rajiv Gandhi started talking to us in a ritualized manner on television, but we were early in his regime disillusioned by his not having a clue about what was really going on and then to hear him saying, hum yeh banna hai, aur woh banna hai became a joke. But no public servant as far as I know, let alone someone who has been a minister in government writes so much.

But the fact that Shourie writes about things intelligently though humourlessly, however unpopular is itself a huge step forward. That he studies things deeply and then suggests necessary reform is laudable. At least that starts a debate, and that is probably the most important thing we need. But when he brings his own prejudices and political agenda into his writing that’s when I see red. Was Chapter 9—A Matter of Life and Death-- really necessary to be included in a book on governance? The infiltration by Bangladeshis, the setting up of madarssas along the border, the ideologies being spread by the madarssas seem to be more of a political failure rather than of governance and I think there is a marked difference between them. This really demands a whole new book to include why successive governments have failed to act on the intelligence passed on by army generals as well as Governors of North-Eastern states. These are matters that require full public airing as well as an examination of RSS-run schools within the country which should be subjected to equally intense scrutiny. We are under attack from within and without and all these aspects should be considered. Mr. Shourie has made practically no mention of Gujarat which was a failure of governance in every way.

For someone like me who avoids like the plague, anything to do with government or public office, the book contains passages no, pages and pages of paralyzing boredom. Fact after dreary fact, columns of figures and statistics to prove his point, which all of us would accept without argument, so profound is our knowledge of how things work or rather do not work in this country. Government or governance, whatever you may choose to call it, has failed to bring succour or sukhoon to its people.

I am always reminded of stories we were told or read in childhood about kings like Vikramaditya whose justice like that of Solomon’s was so perfect that everyone went away satisfied. Then there were kings who built roads with wells and shady trees and frequent stops where weary travellers could rest. Kings who went in disguise to public places to hear what the people were saying about them. Rulers who had bells outside their palaces which anyone in need could ring at any time of the day or night to get not just a hearing but justice and assistance.

Even in Ashoka’s time tax collectors who were too greedy were given public punishments. Ashoka’s edicts gave his people a clear idea of what they could expect of him and what was expected of themselves. Those wonderful stories of Akbar and Birbal, Tenali Raman, Vikramaditya may be stories we tell children but clearly concepts of what is expected of a ruler have existed in our country over millennia.

In our own time, governments are completely alienated from the people—it’s as if we don’t even speak the same language. Can you imagine a Vajpayee or Manmohan Singh moving freely among the people disguise or no disguise?

The media often has its own agenda and so we are left with no one to trust. Our tax collectors stink, our police does what their masters tell them without any clear idea of who they should be serving. Our courts are in such a mess that the backlog of cases will probably not see light of day in this century.

Every new government that comes speaks of reform and letting daylight into dark places. What happens at the most is some fiddling with unimportant matters: there was talk of having bureaucrats on contract renewable every five years or so. Nothing came of it. Did anything come of the very public denunciation about Mafia involvement in the Golden Quadrilateral highway project after Satyendra Dubey was killed? Has any real thought been given to the millions of people who come looking for food and work to Mumbai every year and what their conditions are? Is anyone truly interested in the children growing up without homes or food or education in our cities?

The abysmal state of governance is there for anyone with eyes who walks on our streets.