Off with the kid gloves

Indian citizens are sick to death of being held to ransom by assorted hoodlums — militants, dons, smugglers, or mealy-mouthed strikers

It has been two months since Veerappan kidnapped filmstar Rajkumar, and if there is any hint of a quick solution to the crisis I, for one, have missed it. Since nothing else seems to be working, here, with all due respect, are the terms that I would offer to the bandit.

First, offer him a free telephone. (If nothing else, it might enable the Tamil Nadu and Karnataka authorities to speak to him without enlisting the media’s aid.) Second, offer him a lot of cash. Third, promise him guaranteed employment for the rest of his life.

If your eyebrows are coming dangerously close to your hairline, think about this for a minute: those are (more or less) the terms that are being offered to the striking telecom employees. Veerappan is small fry compared to them; he has taken only one man hostage, they are holding the entire country to ransom. And no matter how much ransom the sandalwood smuggler demands, it will be peanuts compared to the damage this pampered bunch of public sector employees have already caused to the economy.

To give all concerned their due, the authorities are remarkably even-handed when it comes to dealing with both sets of blackmail. If it were not for the timely intervention of the Supreme Court, the S. M. Krishna ministry in Karnataka would have released over a hundred of Veerappan’s criminal associates; I did not perceive an equal haste to nab the man himself. And has anyone noticed any real action being taken to counter the sabotage of the communications network? There is a lot of tough talk in both cases, but that is so much hot air and little else.

I should add at this point that I am not singling out the government of Karnataka as far as the Veerappan case is concerned. Rajkumar was kidnapped from a hamlet in Tamil Nadu. He is, to the best of anyone’s knowledge, being held captive somewhere in the jungles of Tamil Nadu. Given those circumstances, does Karnataka have the locus standi even to file a First Information Report? Tamil Nadu, let us admit, must accept its fair share of the blame for giving Veerappan his head — both today and over the past decade and a half. (The AIADMK’s criticism of Karunanidhi is rank hypocrisy given that Jayalalitha did nothing to bring Veerappan to book when she was in power.)

The sandalwood smuggler’s chronic defiance of all civilised norms is disturbing. So is the reported vandalisation of public property by telecom employees and the continued damage caused by the “go slow” attitude of some workers. (I use the word ‘workers’ loosely!) But these shrink into insignificance beside the attitude of the authorities — indifference at best, a cringing subservience at worst.

Sadly, this is not confined to striking public sector employees and a jungle hoodlum. Has anyone noticed how Dawood Ibrahim has regained almost all his old clout in Mumbai? I have no idea where he is holed up — Karachi, or possibly Murree — but it does not really matter since he can hold India’s commercial capital to ransom without setting foot in the place. (This was always true to an extent, but his clout has grown at a truly frightening pace since the Congress (I)-Nationalist Congress Party alliance took over the reins in Mantralaya. I hope and pray that this is just a coincidence.)

What, if anything at all, have successive governments done to bring “Bhai” to book? I freely admit that it may not be possible to touch the man as long as he is under Pakistan’s wing. (Why he was permitted to leave India in the first place is another story!) But Dawood Ibrahim is not a one-man army; he operates through agents who are necessarily physically present in Mumbai. Given sufficient political will, it would be possible to send them scurrying back into hiding, possibly even to crush them. (Dawood Ibrahim himself admitted as much in an interview long ago if I remember correctly.) The question is: do the powers-that-be in Mumbai actually possess that will?

There is, we should all realise, a strong under-current of sympathy for the militants in Jammu and Kashmir because they are seen as Muslims fighting a Jihad against “Hindu” India. (This poisonous stupidity, I am sorry to note, has seeped into some quarters within India as well.) But Dawood Ibrahim is not fighting a holy war, no matter how much you stretch the definition of the word. His activities are those of a criminal, pure and simple. But when was the last time that you heard anyone in Maharashtra advocate taking off the kid gloves?

Let us go back to those striking telecom employees. Who will take India’s claims of economic reforms seriously when they see how a handful of people can defy ministers? The Government of India promises to corporatise the telecom units; the employees go on strike. The Government of India appoints an IAS officer as head of the Department of Telecom Services; the engineers go on mass casual leave. And on each occasion, the Union Minister for Telecommunications has tried to bribe them back into doing their job!

One of the strikers’ favourite excuses is that they are actually protecting national assets by resisting corporatisation, privatisation, or any other reform. That is rubbish; experts say 90 per cent of the Department of Telecommunications’ assets were created by fleecing customers after creating a monopoly. Yet, no minister seems interested in protecting the rights of paying subscribers. Offering free telephones to striking workers at the expense of long-suffering consumers is an insane mockery of justice. And unsuccessful too one might add!

The telecommunications sector is universally regarded as a key sector of any economy in any country. If reforms are stalled there, you may as well bid adieu to any hope of an Internet revolution in India.

Indian citizens are sick to death of being held to ransom by assorted hoodlums — militants, Dons, smugglers, or mealy-mouthed strikers. If the prime minister acts decisively, sacrificing short-term pain for long-term gain, he will be widely applauded.

In a sense, what we are seeing is a struggle for the very soul of India. Are we going to be a nation governed by the rule of law, or shall we descend to a wilderness where twenty-first century Pindaris loot at will?

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