Asiad, Akalis and AIR

From N.C.’s Writings

November nineteenth is Indira Gandhi’s birthday. Normally, her birthday so far has been a very private affair, not an event in the public calendar. Not so this year. If anything, it brings out in bold relief the strange convergence of events, unconnected with each other, but together generating tensions that add up to a first-class crisis. At the age of sixtyfive, the Prime Minister of India faces challenges which she finds difficult to overcome, largely because of the in-bred weakness of the set-up she presides over and the style she has developed in her functioning.

The most conspicuous contrast that confronts Indira Gandhi today is one between glory abroad and depression at home. After rewarding trips to Washington and Moscow, supplemented by the rapport initiated with the new Soviet leadership following Brezhnev’s funeral, the Prime Minister of India is due to play host to President Mitterrand in less than a fortnight and to preside over the Non-aligned Summit in another four months. All these no doubt fetch kudos, but the glitter tends to fade when tensions within India have to be faced.

The opening of the Ninth Asian Games—abbreviated as Asiad—brings out intensely mixed feelings. While on one hand there is undoubted pride that this important Games festival should be taking place in our country providing the necessary fillip to different branches of sports in India, the reckless manner in which the preparations for the Asiad have been undertaken by the authorities has generated a sense of revulsion in a large section of the public otherwise eagerly interested in the Games.

Although the decision to hold the Asian Games in Delhi was finally taken soon after Indira Gandhi’s return to power, as early as January 1980, there has been large-scale scandal in the building of various stadia, the Asiad village and other construction works which have become a veritable bonanza for contractors—that is, those among them who are close to the authorities handling the project. Few will grudge the setting up of the necessary infrastructure for the holding of the Asian Games festival, and fewer would have preferred any shabby job, but hardly anybody in the Capital is in a mood to condone the lavish squandering of resources as the contractors could go in for a looting spree on the plea of doing an emergency job at break-neck speed.

The widening of roads, the construction of fly-overs and beautification of the Capital might be part of the long-range requirements of India’s Capital, but what needs to be noted is that with the very same amount of expenditure, at least three times more of the civic amenities and sports facilities could have been provided for. The generous manner in which the government has sanctioned hard-currency spending by the proprietors of ten new hotels—including the import of items which are manufactured in this country, apart from concessions for getting scarce building material—all in the name of the Asiad, without bothering to make a careful estimate fo the likely inrush of foreign tourists, leads one to suspect that the powers that be are dead set on making a Hong Kong or Singapore, Cairo or Dubai out of New Delhi. The ultimate input of the Asiad in India’s First City will amount to widening the gulf between the rich and the poor in their habitats and ways of living. The two worlds between the beautiful apartments in the Asiad or in the luxury hotels that today dot the New Delhi skyline, and the shanties of the construction workers and the bustee tenements in the Old City, have only widened the disparities to the point of utter vulgarity and morally impermissible incongruity.

The barbarous manner in which the construction workers herded like cattle were treated by contractors keeping them as bonded labour, has already evoked widespread protest; but amazingly, all this does not seem to have ruffled the conscience of the bosses whether of the ruling or the Opposition parties. Not that Delhi does not have civic experts and experienced architects, who could have certainly met the requiremnts of the Asiad within the overall planning of a beautiful and more equitable city as also the restraints of a developing economy. But a bunch of favourites and hangers-on virtaully captured all vantage points through which they could make their own kith and kin rich and pollute the environment with the odours of black-money culture.

This is but one part of the story that opens with Indira Gandhi’s birthday. The other part is provided by the angry sabre-rattling Akalis threatening to descend upon the Asiad unless their demands are met, here and now. At the same time that these lines are being written, hectic last-moment efforts are being made to pull off a settlement—at least to get the Akalis to put off their threatened morcha until after the Asiad.

Without getting bogged in the details of the protracted and at times frustrating negotiations over the Akali demands, some significant aspects of this stormy controversy are worth noting. For twelve long years the Akali demands have been left in cold storage. Chandigarh to be the Capital of Punjab was announced as early as 1970 but nothing was done to implement it nor the other points of the same award. Not that the Centre was hostile to the Akalis but since the government all these years has chosen to take a hand-to-mouth approach on all pending issues, the Punjab demands were left out of the priority list even during the days of hot-house politics under the Emergency. Contributing to the mess was the in-fight within the Punjab Congress itself: in fact, the Sikh leaders within the Congress do not themselves have a unified approach, obsessed as they are with their factional politics. The result was that there was no mass campaign at all on the part of the Congress in Punjab to counter regional chauvinism. No wonder the Akali leaders have exploited this to the full. The wages of drift and dissensions could not have been higher.

Secondly, within the Akali camp, the dominant leadership were for long as indifferent towards the settlement of the pending issues as was the Congress. When the Akalis were in government during the Janata days, they did not move in the matter at all. Inevitably, the extremists have in recent times gained the upper hand, with the slogan of Khalistan raised by a handful propped up abroad, particularly in the UK and US. The more responsible section of the
Akali leadership has now to play up to the extremists’ gallery for fear of losing their leadership over the entire Akali movement. Not surprisingly, these Akali leaders have calculated that the Centre, frightened by the prospect of a fiasco during the Asiad, would come to terms with them.

Very much the same sorry state of affairs is noticeable in the handling of the wage and bonus demands of the AIR and Doordarshan staff. For months, the authorities slept over them, and in desperation when the staff threatened to go in for direct action with the Asiad drawing near, large-scale repression under the hated ESMA has been let loose, as if police action against the staff can enable the authorities to manage the heavy programme on radio and television during the Asian Games.

Indira Gandhi’s own party in different parts of the country is not in the pink of health even if it has got a shot in the arm in far-away Kerala where Antony’s group has decided to join it, making the Congress-I the first party in the Assembly. As against this, the factional rum-blings in Gujarat and Maharashtra threaten to topple the Congress-I Ministries in these two important States.

From Asiad to Akalis to AIR, to say nothing of Assam—no comforting prospect greets Indira Gandhi on her birthday.

(Mainstream, November 18, 1982)