Dec 21, 1998

Rabri has taken bad behaviour to new depths. She must apologise.

There is no better manifestation of the increasingly adversarial nature of public life than the death of decorum. Rivals abuse each other, male MPs make obscene gestures at female colleagues, legislators come to blows.On December 8 Rabri Devi, chief minister of Bihar, took this process further at a public rally in Patna. In perhaps her most shrill performance ever she described the prime minister and home minister as "impotent" and dismissed the state's governor as a langda (lame) conspirator "whose other leg too would soon be broken by the people of Bihar". The comments have been interpreted variously. To some, they reflect Rabri's "coming of age" in politics; to most, they represent gross vulgarity. To be fair, Rabri's performance is not unprecedented. For instance, in the late '80s K.K. Tewari, eager to ingratiate himself with Rajiv Gandhi, directed nasty barbs at the then President. It is a sobering thought that Tewari's crassness seemed more outrageous then than Rabri's does today. In the interim, the language of Indian politics has become that much more harsh.

While the overall degeneration of the polity is worrying, the immediate issue can do with a stronger reaction than mere hand-wringing. Whatever his past, S.S. Bhandari is today not a politician but a state governor. Rabri's attack on him is an attack on constitutional authority and triggered by his recommendation that her Government be dismissed. If this action begins a trend, then nothing may remain sacrosanct. The President could be vilified by a party he disagrees with. Otherwise mild-mannered, Rabri's conduct is completely out of character. It is possible she simply got carried away by the grief of the fact that her husband, Laloo Prasad Yadav, is in prison facing embezzlement charges. It would be appropriate if she apologised to the governor. More important, the next time she writes a speech she should depend on a housewife's innate sense of decency -- rather than attempt to second guess what the rabble may want to hear.

Laboured Point

The more trade unions disrupt work the more sympathy they lose.

In a sense, the proponents of the December 10 and 11 industrial strike cum Bharat bandh represent almost the entirety of the anti-liberalisation brigade. Aside from Congress and leftist trade unions, bank employees, small fishermen's groups, Medha Patkar and an assortment of freelance Luddites have come together. True, the country's largest trade union, the Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh (BMS), has stayed away but that is only because it is an arm of the ruling BJP. The BMS' heart is with the cause -- which, pared of verbiage, amounts to a demand that economic reforms be halted if not reversed. It would be futile to see the strike as just another example of political jockeying and complain about the damage to productivity indices. There is a larger point. Such recurring strikes only emphasise what a colossal public relations failure the reforms have been.

Despite the unmistakable human trauma it may entail, much of what the unions are protesting against is actually quite logical. For instance, the recommendation that 10,000 uneconomic branches of state-owned banks be closed down is aimed at streamlining, to whatever extent, India's disjointed banking system. The picture is equally stark in almost any sector of commerce. Entry of private capital, employee retraining, a shift to an economic decision-making which stresses quality rather than quantity: all these are not going to be painless -- but they are not going to be useless either. Obviously the government has failed to carry the liberalisation mantra to the worker on the shop floor. On their part unions have refused to accept that they can delay change, not deny it. For a start, they could do with curbing this urge to go on strike. It has already cost them public sympathy. Under a strong, retributive regime, it could cost them much more.

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