OPINION

The newspapers last fortnight carried headlines of the newly-appointed Lieutenant Governor of Delhi Vinai Kumar Saxena meeting chief minister Arvind Kejriwal, and two agreeing to work together for the benefit of the people. That the occupants of the two offices, mandated to work together, had to declare that they would work together reflects on failed governance in the national Capital in the past nine years.

Bureaucrats holding the office of Lieutenant Governor, staying put in their ivory tower of Raj Niwas, have always found themselves at the receiving end of the competitive politicking. With the new L-G hitting the turf running and giving clear signals that he would not restrict himself to the four-walls of his office, Kejriwal could have quite a challenge at hand.

Beyond the loud proclamation in hoardings and in media, governance in national Capital has declined. The culture to perform and deliver has also been lost. In the times before Kejriwal, the launch of a new Metro line would be followed by Press statements informing what the passenger footfall was and what was the day’s earning.

A few days back newspapers rightly went to town on a bureaucrat couple getting the Thyagraj statdium in the heart of Delhi emptied of the practising sportspersons to walk their dog. The bureaucrat couple has faced the music and have been separated by being sent on punishment postings of Ladakh and Arunachal Pradesh.

Given to his wont for opportunity for publicity under any circusmtances, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal was quick to announce that the stadium would remain open for practise by sportspersons till late in the evening.

Now would somebody tell Kejriwal that why did he keep this sports complex shut for days together ahead of Diwali last year for a political event. Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal with his wife and cabinet colleagues had offered prayers at the replica of Ayodhya Ram Mandir built at Thyagraj Stadium in Delhi.

 The event was preceded by the usual publicity blitzkrieg and people urged to witness the event live. This event was part of Kejriwal’s posy to entice voters of Uttar Pradesh, which was to go for assembly polls a few months later, with his Ram Bhakti, which included free trips to the citizens of Delhi to Ayodhya.

Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan has visited the Delhi University twice in less than a month’s time. On the first occasion, he accompanied Vice President M Venkaiah Naidu at the function to declare the centenary celebrations of the university open. The second time he came to give company to Union Home Minister Amit Shah at a seminar on political science.

The minister’s presence at the various celebrations to commemorate 100 years cannot be contested, it should rather be welcomed. However, the worry at hand is whether Pradhan is also aware of the challenge of Balkanization being faced by the hallowed university. Pradhan’s tenure in history should not be recorded as the one which saw maiming of the hoary campus.

The issue at hand is the move by the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government, cocking a snook at the Delhi University, to take over the prestigious College of Art and merging it with state government-run Ambedkar University of Delhi (AUD). Despite protest by students and teachers, a supine Delhi University administration and Delhi University Teachers Association (DUTA), both controlled by the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS), have not decided to contest the AAP government move.

They have so far failed to take the cognizance of the crisis, which has forced the employees’ association of the college to write to the Prime Minister and the Vice-President as an “emergency distress call” asking that the Delhi government’s decision to merge the college with Ambedkar University be stayed and the ongoing admissions under the latter be stopped.

About quarter of a century ago, a very revered editor of a big national daily was caught plagiarising. His famous weekly column called ‘musings’ was found to be copied from foreign newspapers. Those were the non-internet days and access to foreign newspapers was limited to a very few.

A rival daily, which broke the story, had given the headline, “Musing on borrowed plumes.” If the focus and content of deliberations at the Chintan Shivir of the Congress party currently on at Udaipur, it could be easily summed up with the headlines, “Musing on the borrowed plumes.”

The ‘great thoughts’ emerging at the Udaipur deliberations are literally borrowed from the presentations made to Congress president Sonia Gandhi by poll strategist Prashant Kishor some days back. While Kishore has been side-stepped in the run-up to the introspection session at Udaipur, his papers have been adopted.

Not that Kishor himself gave any great thoughts but he articulated it well and this has come in handy for a ‘work shirker’ Congress establishment. There is one thing very clear that the despite protestations to end family rule and cleanse party leadership of geriatric image, it would all finally prove to be mere pretensions.

If the much venerated English poet TS Eliot was ever asked to summarise the conclave of the Congress party at Udaipur, he would have altered the lines of his most celebrated work ‘The Waste Land’, and said, “It wasn’t ever expected to end with a bang, it did end with a whimper”.

The conclave – Chintan Shivir –, held after a gap of nine years, was largely expected to be an exercise in reiterating authority of the Gandhi clan and it managed to it successfully. If the party would have agreed to the setting up of the Congress Parliamentary Board, as demanded by the dissidents known by the epithet of G-23, the conclave could have been said to have ended with a bang. The much trumpeted reforms announced at the conclave only add to whimper.

If one further needed an evidence of the bang and whimper allegory, it was to be found in the statement of Thiruvananthapuram MP Shashi Tharoor, who said about the deliberations of the political panel, “saw views passionately debated with amicable solutions found”. Thankfully Tharoor did not enter into the usual wordy inanity to create further confusion among the rank and file on the outcome of the session.

The list of reforms are such that best adage which one could find for them is being 'politically correct' --  Enforcing the ‘one family, one ticket’ rule with exception to be made only when another family member has been working in the party for at least five years; No person should hold one party position for more than five years; Provide 50 per cent representation to those below 50 years of age at all levels of organisation; Congress president will set up an advisory group from among Congress Working Committee (CWC) members to deliberate on political challenges; Task force will be set up to initiate the organisational reforms; Party will launch a ‘Bharat Jodo Yatra’ from Kanyakumari to Kashmir beginning on Mahatma Gandhi Jayanti October 2; Party will also launch the second phase of its 'Jan Jagran Yatra' at the district level from June 15. They may be politically correct but will they be politically advantageous is a matter of conjecture.