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Magazine
Official birthdays
ANIL DHARKER
SUBIR ROY
The icing ... everything is in lakhs and quintals.
WHY blame Mayawati? Everyone does it. Everyone, that is, who is a politician and has therefore, stopped seeing the demarcating line between what is public and what is private.
Nonetheless, the details of Mayawati's birthday party make compelling reading: over one lakh laddoos, 60 quintals of flowers, a birthday cake the size of a minibus. There's more: a "return gift" for every party worker, blue paint for the city and a pandal made of special glass for the guests (inspired, it is said, by the film Mughal-e-Azam).
This was the Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister's 48th birthday, and the lady has declared that it will be an annual event. Presumably on an even grander scale. Imagine what the 50th birthday party will be like! Provided, of course, that she still heads the U.P. Government. Because the important factor in all this is that the celebration costs the celebrator nothing. The State's police and the security network is used without hesitation; government servants are assigned party work (i.e. birthday party work), official cars are commandeered in strength, government guest houses are pressed into service. In other words, the private function becomes a government function.
Mayawati, of course, went one step further: She actually drew money from the State coffers. The U.P. Government's finance department was apparently forced to grant permission for withdrawal of Rs 1.35 crore from the State's contingency funds. But before the money was released, the government department concerned had to give what is known as an "Essentiality Certificate". Since the funds were earmarked for the CM's birthday party, the department concerned was deemed to be the Culture Department! Its Secretary refused to sign it (Boy, is his head going to roll!) Other departments with some tenuous connection to ministerial birthday bashes, were asked to give the certificate. They too refused. (More heads earmarked for rolling). Finally a department directly under the CM herself produced the essential paper.
What the Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister can do, the Bihar Chief Minister can do better. After all, these are the two leading States of India. From the bottom, that is. They lead in poverty and they lead in lawlessness, so when the Uttar Pradesh C.M. makes her birthday into a government function, what does the Bihar CM do? She makes her daughter's wedding into a Hijack Function.
When Rabri Devi and Laloo Prasad Yadav's second daughter got married, their henchmen decided they needed certain goods, and needing certain goods, they just helped themselves. The inventory went like this: 45 brand new cars forcibly taken from Patna showrooms, over 100 sofa sets and other furniture taken from a dozen shops, suits and shirts worth of Rs. 7 lakhs "borrowed" from Raymond's outlets, 50 kg dry fruits, confectionary worth thousands etc etc. No one dared complain, and when one of the car dealers (the upright Tatas), lodged a FIR with the police, they took the precaution of keeping all their premises locked and shut, and moved all their employees out to Kolkata. No wonder: one of Laloo's close relatives, Subhas Yadav said of the allegations, "Saamne aa kar bolo. (Dare say that to my face").
The two events had one more thing in common: not only were they paid for by others, they were a means of raising money. Mayawati converted her birthday into a "Fund Raising Day" for her party; and so, she decreed, it would be every year, with party workers farming out all over the State to twist as many arms as possible. In the Yadav wedding, counters were set up to receive gifts and money. (But since the Income Tax authorities had raided the first Yadav daughter's wedding, guests this time were asked not to bring cash but give cheques and demand drafts).
Mayawati and the Yadavs not only head the two poorest States in India, they are also self-styled "messiahs of the poor". Their own ordinarily underprivileged background made it possible for them to take on this mantle, but the same background has also made their untrammeled power go to their heads. And their power-crazed heads obviously long to wear a crown, which is why they behave like old-style nawabs and potentates.
The line between what is theirs and what is the State's has so blurred them that good sense and propriety can be hammered into their heads only by an external force. It won't be the central government because power equations make a rap on the knuckles impossible. It won't be the income-tax department because at this level, the department will find its decisions overruled by politicians.
A check can be imposed only through the intervention of the Judiciary, by people lodging Public Interest Litigations against misappropriation of public money and misuse of state administrative machinery. The Magsaysay Award winner from Lucknow, Sandeep Pandey, has already declared his intention of doing so against Mayawati. Surely there are brave people in Bihar - or outside - who will do the same for the Yadavs.
Our messiah potentates may, of course, still get away with it. But even if they do, the least we can do is make them sweat a bit, so that the next time they want to sign an improper order, they will at least do so with a clammy hand.
Anil Dharker is a noted journalist, media critic and writer.
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