Modi, the RSS and incompetents like Khattar and Adityanath. By Swati Chaturvedi
Both Yogi Adityanath,
chief minister of India's largest state Uttar Pradesh, and ML Khattar, chief
minister of Haryana, have several things in common. Both have zero
administrative experience - the price for which is being paid by the blood of
little children in UP as the horrific deaths in the BRD hospital continue unabated (61 children died again in the BRD
college in the past 72 hours), and Khattar's serial mishandling of three major
crises during his tenure, which has led to the death of nearly a 100 people.
The latest being the
violence that set Haryana on the edge as 36 people died in the rioting that wrecked the state
after Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh was convicted of rape last Friday. Last year, Khattar had
mishandled the Jat quota agitation, which led to 30 deaths in three days as Haryana burnt. Before
that, another cult head Rampal had a violent standoff with Haryana police in 2014, when six
people died.
The other commonality
the two greenhorn administrators share is that they have been anointed to their
jobs by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. It is at the insistence of the Rashtriya
Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the Sangh Parivar mothership, that
"normalising" the Sangh cadre in top jobs in the government is going
on, and that is the reason for imposing Sangh full-timers (pracharaks) at
crucial positions, such as CMs.
The RSS has decreed
that pracharaks need to be in public life irrespective of the consequences.
I spoke to several BJP
and RSS leaders while researching for this piece, and RSS leaders had a
steadfast belief that a full-time pracharak could do any political and
administrative job with absolute competence. Currently, the country is paying a
price for this core belief but, it is an article of faith with the Sangh that
cannot be trifled with. That, along with
perhaps the steadfast refusal of the various BJP-led governments to accept any
mistakes on their part which would entail a sacking and thereby an admission of
incompetence, has saved their jobs.
The RSS, which was
shunned and treated like a pariah for many decades since Independence, is now
revelling in its ascendancy at the top of the political structure. It has its
man in Rashtrapati Bhavan, while the vice president is M Venkaiah Naidu – a
former RSS full-timer, who has described Modi as an "avatar of God"
and the BJP as his "mother". The sense of arrival will be complete
when the last edifice of the Nehruvian structure – the bureaucracy – is made to
submit to its cadres.
Similar is the
insistence that all foreign dignitaries who come to India pay a ritual visit to
the RSS-founded and Ram Madhav-led India Foundation, which is constantly
organising seminars and dinners for visiting heads of state. It's completely
mandatory for the cabinet to be in attendance and the invitees don't really
have the option of saying no. This is also normalising the RSS as part of the
diplomatic establishment, in fact putting it at the heart of India’s consular
outreach.
The process of jobs
for these “RSS boys” is ironically an imitation of the earlier establishment
created by the Congress, which PM Modi, with his self-professed disdain for
"Lutyens’ Delhi", has sworn to dismantle. Instead, the Sangh has
created its own. So Khattar, despite his serial missteps, will always be safe
as the RSS has too much invested into its "project pracharak"... read more:
see also
The Supreme Court, Gandhi and the RSS
The emperor's masks: 'apolitical' RSS calls the shots in Modi sarkar
The emperor's masks: 'apolitical' RSS calls the shots in Modi sarkar
Ravish Kumar on the Ram Rahim verdict
The letter written by Sadhvi against rapist Baba Ram Rahim 15 years ago
The letter written by Sadhvi against rapist Baba Ram Rahim 15 years ago
State protected hooliganism in Ramjas College
Punjab & Haryana High Court castigates state and central governments
Punjab & Haryana High Court castigates state and central governments
