LUTYENS’ MAVERICK Ground Realities, Hard Choices And Tomorrow's India

LUTYENS’ MAVERICK

Ground Realities, Hard Choices And Tomorrow's India

by

BAIJAYANT 'JAY' PANDA

Pages 219 ₹ 500

Rupa Publications 2019

MUSINGS OF A POLITICIAN

With qualifications in Engineering and Management, Baijayant Panda worked for the corporate sector for a few years and joined politics after he had “already developed scepticism about the system.” He was a member of the Rajya Sabha in 2000 & 2006, and his second term in the Lok Sabha ends this year; then, though he was a founding member of the Biju Janata Dal he was suspended for “anti-party activities”. During this period, he has been writing articles (OPEDs mostly) on a wide range of subjects, celebrating as he says, the largest democracy the world has known while pointing out its “systemic shortcomings”.

 

Some 56 of these articles/OPEDs, published in various magazines between 2009 and 2018, find place in the book under review; the Introduction records his resentment over one of his pieces being “edited” because it didn’t agree with an editor’s opinion; hopefully, this resentment will crystallise into an assurance of such freedoms for other citizens.

One would agree with Panda that the possibility of putting together a constituent assembly of eminent men and women whose integrity is respected across the political divide, is unthinkable today – though the reasons why we agree may be different from his. But, when a person can have strong reservations about “caste-based reservations” and yet feel politically right in asserting women’s quotas; when one can speak of transparency in political funding without referring to the controversy vis-à-vis the Right to Information Act and the supposed anonymity of the donors; when one’s thoughts on the economy (including demonetisation) are so neatly aligned with the political dispensation; when mention is made of Public Sector Units and their “ambiguous objectives” while deploring the “pessimistic domestic opinion” about “stunning improvements” in the present day; when it is observed that those involved in the independence-struggle had no experience in foreign policy except Subhash Chandra Bose “who had extensive practical experience building international alliances….” one wonders.

When he discusses the presumption of guilt under the SC&ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act he asserts, boldly, that such a presumption is equivalent to “giving up India as a democracy”, and while discussing the judgements on child marriages and the triple talaq, he hopes that the course for a uniform civil code has been set. But when he discusses religious conversions, he has a quaint observation: “If minority communities have the right to convert others, then so does the majority”. Then he suggests that vigilantism is a public response to “visible system breakdown” ignoring the possibilities of sheer majoritarian arrogance. And finally, in the Epilogue, the shocker: “…in democracies, lasting solutions only emerge from bridging differences, even if it has to wait until power is gained through less temperate means.” He is now vice-president of the BJP.

Most journalistic output is ephemeral in nature, an OPED is even more so; its limitations on length and readership discourage depth or serious intellectual forays.