Opinion Political leaders go AWOL

When political leaders fail to lead,you get Baba Ramdev.

June 5, 2011 03:31 AM IST First published on: Jun 5, 2011 at 03:31 AM IST

When political leaders fail to lead,you get Baba Ramdev. We have three political leaders at the head of our present government. Sonia and Rahul Gandhi and Dr Manmohan Singh. All three vanish when there is a political challenge. This is what happened again last week when Baba Ramdev made his first political speech in Delhi. I listened carefully. And,discovered that his economic ideas are nonsense,his statistics fantastical,but politically he is raising issues that our political leaders have failed to address. He talked not just about corruption and black money but of a long list of other things. Like the need to make it possible for students of engineering and medicine to study in Indian languages to give rural Indians a fair chance. Like the need to do something to enhance the incomes of farmers. He pointed out that while farmers are driven to suicide by desperate poverty,peons make Rs 15,000 a month. He spoke for that vast majority of Indians who have not benefited from the economic boom of the past twenty years but who can see on their television screens that others have.

It is ridiculous to assume that those who have are only those who have black money in foreign bank accounts but it is an assumption that many Indians make. This is because no political leader has dared lead from the front when it comes to explaining why the economic reforms became necessary or the prosperity they have brought. Not even the Prime Minister,who was the architect of these reforms,has dared to defend them,so people like Baba Ramdev can easily take the lead.

To say that the amount of black money that supposedly lies hidden in foreign bank accounts is Rs 400 lakh crore is utter rubbish. As the editor of this newspaper explained when he interviewed Baba Ramdev on television,this figure exceeds the GDP of India and cannot be true. To say that if this mythical black money is brought back to India there will be no poor,illiterate or hungry Indians left in the world and that one rupee will be worth $50 is an outright lie. These lies could,and should,have been disproved long ago but since nobody came forward to do this,Baba Ramdevs lies have become widely accepted truths. Try saying anything against his facts on Twitter and you will soon find out.

So we now face the possibility of a political movement in India led by a gaggle of high-flying gurus,quite simply because our political leaders have failed to lead. There are those in the Congress Party who are trying to say that Baba Ramdev has the support of the RSS. If anything,it is the RSS that is trying to infiltrate his movement. As is the Bharatiya Janata Party. For a political party with decades of Opposition experience,it has shown an astonishing inability to raise the political issues that are important to Indians today. So all they can do now is lend their support to Baba Ramdevs movement in a pathetic attempt to gain politically.

The real failure to lead lies with the Sonia-Manmohan (Rahul?) government. A smug complacency settled over the Congress Party after its coalition won again and while the Prime Minister took a back seat,amateurs in Sonias NAC (National Advisory Council) were allowed to make economic policies that have served mostly to increase corruption rather than reduce poverty. The Prime Minister did nothing to stop this reckless misuse of public money. Meanwhile,his political management was so weak that corruption in government remained unchecked until it was too late. Had Suresh Kalmadi resigned when the Commonwealth Games scandal surfaced,the scandal would have died down. Had A Raja done the same,there would not have been the 2G scandal either. Inquiries would have been ordered and inquiry commissions in our ancient land can sit for decades. We now have another DMK minister trying to brazen things out instead of resigning quietly. If this government has about it the reek of scandal,it is entirely due to inept political management.

Meanwhile,the political arena is now awash with ascetics whose understanding of serious economic and political issues is limited but who have captured the public imagination because they dare to lead. As someone who believes that our holy men should restrict their activities to teaching yoga and taking seekers down the spiritual path,I see this new trend as worrying. But,what else can we expect from political leaders who appear not to have understood that the reason why they are called leaders is because they are expected to lead. Instead,they cower in the background while Baba Ramdev makes political speeches from Ramlila Maidan.

Follow Tavleen Singh on Twitter@tavleen_singh