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Amma holds many aces — will she use them wisely?
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In spite of the badly bruised face of the Tamil Nadu bureaucracy, there are still quite a few outstanding officers, especially among the younger ones, whose morale constitutes the most precious resource of good governance. All that is required to make her dream (which she expressed as soon as Andipatti election results were announced) of making Tamil Nadu the number one State in India come true is for Jayalalithaa to identify these officers and tell them, "Go and get results; you don't have to cover your backs any more!"
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REFERRING TO the retirement of the famous batsman, Ranjitsinghji, the Jam Saheb of Nawanagar, A.G. Gardiner wrote, "The last ball has been bowled, the bats have been oiled and put away. Cricket will come again but not the Jam Saheb." With the convincing electoral success of Jayalalithaa can we now hope that the last bumper in Tamil Nadu Dravidian political cricket has been bowled, that rankling memories have been oiled by legal and political victories and put away and that governance will come again but not the political jamming and ramming?
All the din and bustle associated with the cases filed against Jayalalithaa has now almost died down and she has sealed her legal victory with a resounding electoral one. In a legal sense, she now starts with a clean slate. It is now her opportunity to start with a clean slate in the several dimensions of good governance. It used to be said that in India, no senior political leader ever faced criminal action for his or her misdemeanours while in office and even if he or she did, the cases usually fizzled out and were forgotten. Jayalalithaa's case is, perhaps, the only criminal case in post-independence India against a top-level political leader to be pursued to its logical conclusion right up to the highest judicial level and in which the accused was finally acquitted and exonerated. While these cases provided in rich measure the kind of cinematic spice and suspense which appear to be the staple diet of an average, incurably silver-screen-obsessed Tamilian, the time has come for more serious problems of governance to be addressed by both the rulers and the ruled, and for Tamil Nadu governance to mean something more than inter-Dravidian political score-settling. What would an average Tamil Nadu citizen, reasonably knowledgeable and rightfully concerned about the state of governance, and uninterested in the fluctuating political fortunes of either individual leaders or parties, now hope for or look forward to?
Happy coincidence
By a remarkably happy coincidence, all four southern States today have Chief Ministers who are relatively young, well-educated and enjoying a stable majority. There is, therefore, an opportunity not only for the citizens of one State to compare their Chief Minister with neighbouring ones but also for one Chief Minister to benchmark himself or herself with the neighbouring CMs. The south, always ahead of most northern States (except perhaps Maharashtra and Gujarat) in efficiency of administration, now has a rare opportunity to progress synergistically through not only cooperation but also friendly competition among the four States. We have a unique opportunity for the image of integrity of an Antony, the suave, polished and balanced responses of a Krishna, the dynamism and modernity of a Chandrababu Naidu and the intelligence and mental toughness of a Jayalalithaa to be benchmarked and emulated by all the four Chief Ministers. It is, therefore, a time not for being obsessed with local political one-upmanship but for being forward-looking and functioning at a higher plane and planning for an era of better governance. Purely from the point of view of personal competence for functioning as above, Jayalalithaa is as well, if not better, equipped as the other Chief Ministers. In fairness to her, in spite of all the rumours and controversies surrounding her, she has several plus points and advantages. (She may, if anything, have more to unlearn than to learn).
Strong points
The strong points of Jayalalithaa are:
* Very high intelligence. (All officers, whether they are her fans or critics, are one in conceding her extraordinary and quick grasp of issues and that in meetings convened by her, she would usually be the person most well-prepared).
* Mental toughness. (This needs hardly any elaboration and her political career is itself a standing testimony to this trait).
* Absolute control over the party.
* Relative youth compared to her predecessors.
* The distinct possibility of the Central Government depending on her l support in the coming years.
* The sophistication and charm for interacting at the national level if she chooses to use them.
Some of the matters on which she could concentrate for producing a beneficial impact on the quality of administration, and which she is certainly capable of doing successfully if only she chooses to, are:
(1) Instead of being obsessed with unearthing what was done wrongly by the DMK in the past, she would gain more durable political mileage by concentrating on what needs to be done right now. Having come out successfully in the legal and political battles against the DMK, she can afford largely to ignore them for the present and not allow a persecution complex to become a prosecution complex. (After all, who could have had greater justification for wanting revenge than Nelson Mandela who was imprisoned by the South African whites for 23 years? He gained the admiration of the whole world by setting up a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, exposing facts and allowing bygones to be bygones). This is not a plea for letting corrupt politicians go scot-free but to allow the investigation and the law to take their normal course without any undue political pressure, instigation, dramatisation or the appearance of a gleeful vendetta. Giving the people a far more efficient, responsive and cleaner administration than what the DMK gave is the most decisive, telling and lasting defeat that Jayalalithaa can inflict on it rather than any legal action.
(2) In the early days of her first tenure as Chief Minister, Jayalalithaa is said to have been frequently interacting with experienced, reputable and disinterested civil servants, intellectuals and experts on various matters relating to administration. While the final judgment and decision have always to be hers, this earlier practice is well worth reviving. Powerful people may have everything else, but bold, impartial and dissenting advice is one thing that they will rarely get unless they actively seek and encourage it and it is also the one thing that they cannot do without. The first source of such advice, of course, has necessarily to be her own senior civil servants. The availability of a Chief Secretary known for his integrity and competence should be fully exploited and through him the full potential of other senior officers has to be effectively leveraged in the interests of good administration.
(3) Black sheep among officers should certainly be punished and weeded out, but this should not be done by a shotgun approach hurting all and sundry on the sidewalks and shell-shocking honest, competent officers into subservience or silence. Nor should this be done solely on the basis of who were in the good books of the earlier government.
Interaction with officers
(4) Irrespective of who were guilty and who were not, the events of the past few years have taken their toll on the morale of senior officers in Tamil Nadu who give the impression of holding themselves back and playing safe in spite of many of them being decidedly of high calibre and naturally enthusiastic in their work. By taking the initiative to give them easy and direct access in an atmosphere of informality, courtesy and attentiveness and breaking the tradition of "tight-lipped obeisance before omnipotence", Jayalalithaa could win not only their willing cooperation but also their fruitful contribution to the success of her government. This would also prevent negative public perceptions of governance as something influenced by behind-the-scene palace intrigues. (After all, even the deadly AIDS virus does not survive for more than a few seconds when exposed to fresh air!) Andhra Pradesh, for example, has a long tradition, barring one aberration, of Chief Ministers affording easy, almost instant, direct access to senior officers if the latter consider the matter important enough and interactions with the Chief Ministers have invariably been easy, frank, relaxed and stress-free (again, but for the same one aberration).
(5) Without splitting hairs about who first made government a tool of corruption on a large scale in Tamil Nadu and who broke previous records, the need of the hour is to cleanse the whole atmosphere of governance of the suspicion and public perception of pervading corruption and convey in unmistakable terms the government's determination to do so. (There are even whispers from the industrial circles that potential investors are deterred and diverted to other States by their fear of exorbitant illegitimate demands from political sources). Unlike most other Chief Ministers who may announce such an intention but usually remain helpless in implementation, because of her pre-eminent, all-powerful position in her party and her basic toughness in pushing things through, Jayalalithaa is in a unique position to make this a reality if only she puts her mind to it. Let officers and Ministers of unimpeachable integrity become her new blue-eyed boys and trusted advisers, and the rest of those in government and her party and the corrupt middlemen will take the hint and behave themselves. In spite of the badly bruised face of the Tamil Nadu bureaucracy (with many self-inflicted injuries), there are still quite a few outstanding officers, especially among the younger ones, not only in the All India Services but even in the State Services, whose morale constitutes the most precious resource of good governance. All that is required to make her dream (which she expressed as soon as Andipatti election results were announced) of making Tamil Nadu the number one State in India come true is for Jayalalithaa to identify these officers and tell them, "Go and get results; you don't have to cover your backs any more!"
(6) In the past, there have been instances in Tamil Nadu of politicians belonging to the ruling party misbehaving with public servants on duty even to the extent of getting their followers "released" from police custody. Because of her unquestioned leadership and control over them, Jayalalithaa has now a unique opportunity of setting and enforcing a refreshingly new standard of decent, responsible, law-abiding political conduct among her partymen. This is an area where she can score a valuable point over not only the DMK but most other political parties and earn the appreciation of the public and the respect of the bureaucracy.
Media management
(7) In the past, Jayalalithaa has had skirmishes with the media who, she felt, were prejudiced against her. Without going into the merits or otherwise of the issue, suffice it to say that the media are a fact of life and, with all their shortcomings and sensation-mongering, can still be leveraged to one's advantage. It would be a pity if a good image gets badly projected merely because of lack of media management skills, especially when a person like Jayalalithaa could be charming when she chooses to be. Jayalalithaa would benefit by studying the media management skills of her counterpart neighbour Chandrababu Naidu in whose image-building, apart from his undoubted dynamism and initiative, media management has certainly played a positive role.
(8) Among Indian politicians, Jayalalithaa's mental toughness has a parallel only in Indira Gandhi. Apart from whatever advantage it has given her in politics, it would be invaluable in administration, especially as sooner or later in the coming years public employees will have to be made to comply with certain non-negotiable parameters of performance if the government machinery is to show any dynamism or improvement at all and be effective in the new economic environment.
(9) With the changed political scenario in Tamil Nadu, the Central Government is sure to come to depend more on Jayalalithaa's political support in the near and medium future. One may not approve of the way she used such power in the past, but Jayalalithaa would do well to benefit from Chandrababu Naidu's strategy in a similar situation. While undue advantage of such dependence should not be taken for securing narrow or unfair benefits to the State, it can and should certainly be used imaginatively and in an enlightened manner to secure, protect and further the legitimate interests of the State.
People's expectations
If a poorly educated, unintelligent and politically precarious person becomes a Chief Minister, the people's expectations would be low and so also their ultimate disappointment. But when a well-educated, highly intelligent and politically strong person becomes a Chief Minister, the expectations of the people are understandably high and so would be their disappointment, if not disillusionment, if that person dissipates his or her potential and falls far short of what he or she is capable of. Many people among the educated intelligentsia feel that this was what happened during Jayalalithaa's first tenure as Chief Minister when they expected a much better government than what was provided by the Chief Ministers before her. They are now prepared to assess her on a zero base forgetting the past provided this time she makes a good enough impact quickly enough.
In other words, they sincerely hope her priority would be learning lessons and not teaching the DMK some!
P.K. DORAISWAMY
Former Special Chief Secretary,
Government of A.P.
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