An Opinion on Opinion

Such are the times that everyone has an opinion on the Mumbai Attacks. Some of us lesser mortals just publish them on our blogs and are satisfied if a reader or two wander here. May be, leave a comment. Some are more privileged to get their opinions published in respected newspapers! But I have an opinion on the opinion.

In this Sunday’s Indian Express, Lord Meghnad Desai has berated the government for the attacks on Bombay – not Mumbai, because he apparently grew up in the city when it was known as Bombay. He also demands that Bombay be accorded statehood and somehow believes that that will solve the problems. Why? First off, it was Nehru’s wish that Bombay be a separate state and secondly, even though the Chief Minister and the Home Minister were asked to go, the punishment wasn’t enough, especially since both of them were not from Bombay and it somehow does not make them accountable.

In my opinion, this opinion itself is flawed. Lord Desai, what we are seeing here is the failure of the Westminster style democracy, which does seem to have worked well for countries like the UK. Let us flashback a little bit. 9/11/2001 – ghastly attacks struck New York City. Who sprang into action? The Mayor of New York City. Whatever political mileage and revenues from books Rudy Giuliani drove out of this event, he should be commended for his leadership in those difficult times. When President George W Bush went on TV, he talked of smoking the terrorists out of their holes alive or dead. He did not get into the bickering of petty politics and pushing blame around. No one, naively or not, believed that statehood to New York City would solve the problems.

Now flash forward. The real question is that in case of our hierarchy and various positions are we ourselves clear, who does what? The Home Minister is routinely in charge if internal security matters (strangely, the Federal or Union Home Minister is also in charge of the Border Security Force in peace times!). But then what happens to the Mayor of the city? What does the Municipal Commissioner do? Who does the Police Chief of a city report to? Aren’t the authorities like either the Municipal Commissioner or the Mayor of the City and the Police Chief of that city expected to be in charge of the general well-being of the city? Aren’t these guys more close to what is happening in the city and shouldn’t they be in touch with each other always? When broader help, like the NSG involvement is required, who is the liaison for the Intelligence Chiefs? What is the command structure like? We hear that the Intelligence Bureau had given some information to someone. Do we know who gave the information to whom? Do we know who is accountable to do what?

Now with this imbroglio, if Mumbai were to be renamed again as Bombay and were given statehood, how are all these problems going to be solved? Just because the Chief Minister will then be ‘local’ does not make him or her any more accountable. If the real hands behind the power are somebody else’s then how will it help? Are smaller states like Mizoram, Goa to name a few, happier because they are small and have local leaders? Would different departments, such as the intelligence guys and the defense guys and the internal security guys start coordinating better because the state is small?

Even more important, how many times has it happened that the leader was chosen through the voting of the elected members of the legislature? Would you not agree that every leader we have, including the prime minister himself, has been appointed? What are we going to do about the extra-constitutional remote controls like Sonia Gandhi et al. then? Does really unseating an MP or MLA make a difference? Our earlier Union Home Minster was such a guy, wasn’t he? He was unseated by his own folks in the Lok Sabha election, but rewarded for his loyalty to the Gandhi-clan by giving him what is considered an important post in the Cabinet. It is deplorable that RR Patil and Vilas Deshmukh are going to go unpunished; the only loss to them is no opportunity of hoarding money and power for the next year or so. But if anything, propose accountability here too…put these guys in jail for incompetence and let a justice system decide what to do with them. If we establish accountability like that, being local won’t matter. Is the question of accountability even valid in our context here?

Let us not rush into creating more states and adding more layers of bureaucracy unless we have answered these more important questions. And even more important, let us not divert attention from reforms and correcting past mistakes, if we ever get to that, to more politically motivated solutions like statehoods.