Venugopal & Anbumani

Some time ago, Manmohan Singh, Prime Minister of India aired his view that in a coalition of regional parties regional compulsions can distort national concerns and visions; or something to that effect. That his views are stating the obvious are only too obvious from the manner in which the nation is held to ransom by the DMK, the PMK, and the Arjun Singhs (their compulsions are also regional in more than one sense!). But the statement has come from a person, who not long after assuming office as Prime Minister, when reporters quizzed in Andhra Pradesh about the arrest of Jayendra Saraswathi by Tamil Nadu Chief Minister, Jayalalithaa, said “the least said we are not concerned”!
That statement was only soon modified by Home Minister Shivraj Patil, who knows the art of politics in a land of flattery, flunkeyism, and sycophancy. That Manmohan Singh had no answer to the modification was one indication of the political trap into which the economist in him was being led by the Congress I cabals. Since then he has been a victim of circumstances. But having tasted politics far from being an Ostrich any self-respecting person of his caliber should have soon said “quits” and gone into the wilderness of academia.

If memory would serve me right in the history of Indian politics since the 1950 seldom a cabinet minister appeared larger than the Prime Minister. Devi Lal tried it and Prime Minister V.P. Singh snubbed him using the Mandal card. Even then it was not the education minister but the prime minister who took the lead in introducing the Bill. Whether one likes V.P. Singh’s action or not he showed the nation that cabinet or no cabinet in India’s parliamentary politics Prime Minister is supreme. Even Karnataka’s Prime Minister at the Centre, H.D. Deve Gowda, did it.

Compare the above situation with Shivraj Patil overshooting Manmohan Singh, and India’s infamous MHRD minister Arjun Singh behaving as a super-Prime Minister, holding the entire nation to ransom on the pretext of his sudden love for the backward classes, for whose welfare, in reality, he does not care a hoot.

While these are indications of the rapid slide down of India’s parliamentary practices there cannot be anything more grotesque than the manner in which Dayanidhi Maran, Union Minister of Communications and Information Technology, was eased out for no fault of him, but to fulfill one of the last wishes of his aging, ailing, uncle Karunanidhi to have one of his daughters from one of his wives as first a Rajya Sabha member, and later a minister. Rajya Sabha in Indian context is “house of the elders”. One might wonder how an “upstart” suddenly became an “elder”, with Shekhar Gupta, one of India’s errand and under-employed journalists first “walking the talk” with her, and later “crawling it” before her father in her presence.

While what may happen to the Karunanidhi saga in Tamil Nadu politics is part of the political grapevine and wish-list of the DMK opponents in the state, its impact on the politics at the Centre is a telltale.

Turn to the other and more disturbing trend, a metaphor for a malaise of the Anbumanis of regional parties who are allowed to ruin the nation by prime ministers like Manmohan Singh.

If Left parties are taking on Congress I, they have reasons, and they have their “principled” stand, whether one agrees or not. What of Anbumani Ramdoss, son of Ramdoss, leader and founder of the PMK party in Tamil Nadu, which is another millstone round the Congress I neck. But for regional compulsions Anbumani would have continued prescribing and dispensing medicines in his father’s nursing home. It is an ignominy of ignominies, an irony of ironies, a tragedy of tragedies, that he has been forced on the nation as its health minister. Ideally, in a large country like India all crucial and nationally important ministerial portfolios should be with seasoned, senior, and mature politicians and not with upstarts and wreckers. Manmohan Singh would blame the Anbumani misfortune on coalition politics. What has Anbumani done to the health of the nation after becoming a minister? His case has been like Nero’s fiddling. The entire nation, particularly its rural areas, has been crying out for medical facilities. As these cries remain unheard, NRIs and MNCs have found their way for easy and exploitative riches.

Anbumani’s first ministerial itch was banning smoking on the idiot box, a disease which he probably contracted from his father. The wise in the film world came down on him like a tonne of bricks. While he did not have his way as yet, he did not learn anything either. “Smoking is not necessary in films” he crunes, as though he is an avatar of Satyajit Ray!

The more damning of his dabbling is into institutions. The manner in which he has pulled down the All India Institute of Medical Science (AIIMS) brick by brick will remain a sordid saga of Sonia Gandhi’s coalition politics and Manmohan Singh’s Prime Ministership. When a minister from a much touted grassroots level political party should be spending his time in villages and with the sick and suffering, why is Anbumani frittering away his time, the nation’s time, the nation’s resources and pulling down institutions built over several years?


All India Institute of Medical Science


Anbumani’s witch hunt of the AIIMS Director, Venugopal, is all too familiar. What may not be familiar to many is his latest “below the belt” tactics to get rid of the feisty Venugopal through the pliable Indian parliament which is now at its nadir. This he has done through “The All-India Institute Of Medical Sciences And The Postgraduate, Institute Of Medical Education And Research, (Amendment) Bill, 2007”, which going by its contents is a fraud on any parliamentary democracy and on its governance structures. The lady, Pratibha Patil, India’s first woman President, before assuming office claimed that she will not be a rubber stamp. But it looks as though she literally grabbed the Bill after it was passed by parliament in her urge to put her rubber stamp on it!

The Bill has become an Act, and in minutes after that, Venugopal has been removed as Director of the AIIMS, all at break-neck speed, in frightful hurry. Anticipating the denouement Venugopal has approached the judiciary which will be hearing his case on Monday. But it is doubtful if the judiciary can fully undo the damage already caused.

The issues narrated here are not stories from the Panchatantra to regale the readers. They are to drive home the rapid downhill journey of Indian democracy with politicians who can only wreck institutions and not build them, only widen social divisions and tensions and cannot work for the welfare of people and well-being of institutions.

When a parliament passes an act ideally its work should be over. There are other agencies and instrumentalities to take care of the rest. If it feels that its time is better spent on petty power play, it is as good as a closed shop. Using parliament to remove the Director of a national institution is like burning the building for killing the rat. When the same parliament had refused to deal with, among other things, the alleged misdeeds of a supreme court judge through impeachment, it exposes in retrospect its chicanery.

All said, when retired judges of the supreme court and high courts have their sinecure as president and chairman of various commissions such as the minority commission, human rights commission, national and state consumer redress forums, and so on, who continue to enjoy their perks and privileges even beyond 75 reducing the institutions under them as mere appendages of politics, bureaucracy, and often even defunct, why a Venugopal, known for his work as an institution builder should be singled out merely because an upstart of a politician is allowed to boss over him. It is time our parliamentarians pondered over the disastrous consequences of petty power play, learned to respect and develop scholarship and institution builders, and got rid of persons like Anbumani and Manmohan Singh who are misfits in politics and who can by being so can also do a lot of harm to the nation and its polity.

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