Why civil servants do not tick?
G. SUNDARAM
I wrote a postscript to my recent book, "The Plight of Honesty.. the Untold Bureaucracy" (reviewed by “The Hindu” and a number of other journals and newspapers including one leading Hindi daily) starting symbolically a political party known as ‘the Honest People’s Party’. Although the book has sold well going into a second print, not even one person rang me up or wrote to me enquiring about my party! So they denied me the opportunity of becoming another Allen Octavian Hume.
In the recent elections, a number of civil servants stood and I thought that they would make a change by winning. The indefatigable Jayaprakash Narayan, who resigned from the IAS., in Andhra Pradesh, true to his mentor’s name, converted his NGO, Loksatta, into a political party and, if I am right, contested all seats in the recent elections. But he has lost all seats.
Losing category
Incidentally, the newspapers used to give the details of all candidates in the past, but now they confine themselves to two or three ‘serious’ candidates only and, as a result, these poor souls are not even seen in print; one has to go to the Interent to get the names and figures. Of course, there are too many independents - as many as 43 candidates in South Chennai so much so I myself was foxed in the booth to locate the candidate to whom I wanted to vote.
In my opinion, as I had recommended once to the Election Commission after being an Observer, there should be no category as ‘Independents’ — they should be at least a member of an ‘Independent party’ with only one candidate. Some police officers succeeded in Andhra Pradesh and also became ministers for obvious reasons. In Tamil Nadu, Sivakami who resigned from the IAS, a good writer, speaker and a Dalit to boot, fared badly in Kanyakumari. Saptarishi got only 5000 and odd votes. So was the case with social worker N.S. Venkatraman in South Chennai. Since this is somewhat an enlightened constituency, IIM educated Sarath Babu’s performance was not bad, but nowhere near the winning candidate.
Voter behaviour
Has it anything to do with the enlightened public as in Kerala? K.R. Narayanan, Krishna Kumar and recently Shashi Tharoor, a rank new-comer, won without difficulty. Or, the candidate should belong to a strong party of the area – the Congress, the BJP, the BSP, the DMK, the AIADMK, the Trinamool, etc. Natwar Singh, Yashwant Sinha, Nikhil Kumar (IPS., in Bihar, son of a former Chief Minister) and R. Velu(IAS.,) (PMK) (lost in the recent election, but won last time). Is it because the voter is not able to identify himself with this category of candidates?
There was a debate in the Congress party about giving a Rajya Sabha nomination to a prominent ex-civil servant or to a contesting regular politician. A politician friend of mine told me : "Look, you civil servants had a good life and power for thirtyfive years at a stretch, but we were pelted with stones, at times jailed, false cases foisted upon, so on and so forth. You could aspire to become a Governor at the most."
Gangappa, the former Collector of Vellore district, is still remembered in Vellore for installing a deity in ‘a temple without God’ within the Vellore Fort. The temple attracts huge crowds now. But he could not win an election in Vellore.
Corrections and Clarifications
In an article "Why civil servants do not tick?" (Open Page, June 14,
2009), the second paragraph said that Jayaprakash Narayan, who resigned from
the IAS in Andhra Pradesh, converted his NGO, Loksatta, into a political
party and contested all seats in the recent elections. But he lost all
seats. Lok Satta contested more than 230 Assembly seats and N. Jayaprakash
Narayan won the Kukatpally assembly seat by a margin of 15,605 votes,
defeating his nearest rival, the Congress candidate Narsing Rao.
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