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Happy New Year from your PM

Timeri N. Murari

DEAR citizens of India: First, I would like to wish you all a very happy 2001. If we give India a chance, we might even get to 2002. We should all hold our collective breaths.

I hope by now you have read my long letters to you, and, despite the hangovers and late nights celebrating the New Year, some of it has filtered into your conscience. I spent a quiet night here alone (not counting the 10,000 security guards and sundry ha ngers-on) in Kerala, listening to the sea lap the beach. I needed the break and, in fact, I am planning to take one more often. I ate well, slept, read and wrote a bit. I thought my writing would clear the air, instead it has become murkier.

I was led to wonder why I took up the thankless job of governing this bunch of rabble. The Delhi gaddi is about as hot a seat as you can find anywhere in the world, barring the one in death row, Texas. At least those prison inmates would have some reprie ve as Gov Bush has become Prez Bush and wont be signing too many execution orders.

I will not have such luck. I am stuck here for the next few years until my term of office ends. You may hear rumours of my calling a snap election, but do not believe them. The mere thought of campaigning with my NDA partners is enough to make me wish I was in Texas. If you think being PM of a country that lives by the chaos theory is a piece of cake, you have another thing coming.

To give you an instance: Now being PM you have to be very careful about what you say. If I say `Good morning', the press and fellow politicians find more subtext in those two words than you would find in a whole Harold Pinter play. Was the emphasis on `g ood', or was it on `morning', they ask themselves. If `good', it means I am going to call a snap election. If on `morning' it means I may declare war on West Bengal and `morning' is my code word. And if the emphasis is on both words, it could mean I am a bout to resign and this is the start of my farewell speech. So you see, every time I open my mouth, either I put my foot in it or someone else puts theirs into it.

The second problem one has to deal with as PM is that there are too many political parties with absolutely no agenda. In the US, they have two parties -- the Democrats and the Republicans, with a couple of fringe parties. In the UK too there are two part ies, the Labour and the Conservatives, with the Liberals hovering around like lost souls seeking a haven. They have agendas of how they see the future of their nations. In India, we have approximately one billion political parties. Everyone has an opinio n, but no agenda on how to get things done. This is why India is such a babble of tongues and utter confusion.

Everyone speaks, no one listens or does. Spend a day in the Lok Sabha and you will understand what I mean. You can watch the antics on television daily. Talk, talk, talk. No business is being done, and then, as the PM, I am accused of not getting it done . Of course, you people must remember that we politicians live in a rarefied world that has nothing to do with the reality of your lives.

As you may remember, I made a few promises when I became the PM. One of them was to cut down the babudom. This has turned out to be almost impossible. The babus cling to their jobs and their mini-empires with the tenacity of leeches. We inherited a creak ing, elitist system from the Brits and before you could say Jai Hind, our babus usurped it and made it their own. We should just be grateful they are not demanding home leave in the UK! You cannot sack them and you cannot get them to work properly. We po liticians may pass laws, but our babus are meant to implement them.

Now I have just sanctioned thousands of crores of rupees to build proper roads to every village in India that has a thousand people. We will be very lucky if any roads are built, but still those thousands of crores will vanish into the thin air of our ba bus' pockets. Or, the roads will be built with more potholes than a sieve.

I could, of course, go on about the problems of being PM. I just wanted to be brief and set a few things straight for the record. I remain, yours faithfully, your PM.

P.S. I have made my New Year's resolution: To keep my mouth shut and say as little as possible. I hope every politician will make the same resolution.