Change of guard in Delhi
THE Congress has secured a two-thirds majority in the 70-member Delhi Assembly, marking the beginning of a new era in the administration of the national Capital. The sustained campaign conducted by the Delhi Pradesh Congress President, Mrs Sheila Dikshit, was decent and pragmatic.

A shattering defeat in MP
DEFEAT hurts, but some defeats corrode self-confidence like the BJP’s in the Madhya Pradesh Assembly election. Everything pointed to an easy victory. In the Lok Sabha election, the party had led in 220 Assembly segments. That was only in February. It had produced the first Prime Minister from the state.

A PEEP INTO THE VOTER’S MIND
by S. Sahay
THE exit polls conducted by Doordarshan and DRS (for Delhi only) clearly established the anti-establishment mood of the voters. This provided some comfort to the BJP because of its being in power at the Centre. But the final results show that the voters did not reveal all that they had in their mind.

Kennedy and the world’s poor
by V. Gangadhar
A FEW days back while chatting with Ms Catherine Mitchell, who heads the Journalism Department at North Carolina University, Nashville, I asked her about her favourite American President. Ms Mitchell, in her mid-fifties, who was on a visit to Mumbai, courtesy the USIS, replied immediately, “John Kennedy”.

Delete economy from judicial cause-list
by Anupam Gupta
HIS views and writings influenced and shaped the judicial philosophies of three of the greatest Judges of this century — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Felix Frankfurter and Louis Brandeis, judges to whom constitution-makers and constitution-interpreters all over the world owe an immeasurable, even if often unconscious, debt of gratitude.

‘Insiders’ in line for Delhi CM’s post
by Humra Quraishi
NEVER before witnessed such quietude on New Delhi roads as on November 25, the day of polling here. In several booths there seemed more polling staff than the voters. And in the particular booth where I went to cast my vote, Junior Modern School, the turnout seemed so low that during the 25 minutes or so that I hung around barely 10 voters had come.

Before & after “Maha-vinash”
by K. Rajbir Deswal
IGNORANCE may be bliss and the ignorant may be blissfully unconcerned with the goings-on around them, but the way the “informed” people are cheated baffles me.

75 Years Ago

Jumna and Ganges in floods
ALLAHABAD: Heavy rain has fallen here and both the rivers are in flood. Upcountry rain has washed a number of animals and dead fish. Reports have been received of flooding of Hamirpur by Betwa and Jumna; several villages have been washed away, but no loss of life has occurred so far.

Change of guard in Delhi

THE Congress has secured a two-thirds majority in the 70-member Delhi Assembly, marking the beginning of a new era in the administration of the national Capital. The sustained campaign conducted by the Delhi Pradesh Congress President, Mrs Sheila Dikshit, was decent and pragmatic. The pattern of the 1993 Assembly poll has been reversed. Of course, there were problems in certain areas like Nangloi and Haus Khas. But the hooligans were kept in tight leash both by the BJP and the Congress. One expected some trouble in certain areas after the association of a few discredited leaders with the Congress poll drive. But, fortunately, the issues of the day like the rise in the prices of essential commodities and misgovernance reflected in the deteriorating crime situation were kept under the focus of public attention. The BJP had done precious little to improve the quality of life of the citizens in the ever-expanding metropolis. The outgoing Chief Minister, Mrs Sushma Swaraj, was right to an extent in saying that the BJP defeated the BJP in Delhi. It was Mr Sahib Singh Verma versus Mr Madan Lal Khurana in many constituencies. Mrs Swaraj was shifted to the State Administration in desperation. She has won in her constituency, but the compulsive agony of wearing a crown of thorns kept her ruffled and unsettled from the day she took over as Chief Minister. One would like to sympathise with her in her predicament. Mrs Sheila Dikshit, on the other hand, was handpicked by Mrs Sonia Gandhi to represent the Congress at the hustings. She is a confident person with the cherishable Dikshit legacy. She did not need any booster campaigning by Mrs Sonia Gandhi. She deserves credit. But the fact that the Congress had been at the helm of affairs in the Delhi Administration for decades cannot be lost sight of. The problems being witnessed today are chronic. It is not possible to bring the prices of various commodities down within a few weeks or months. The negative factors which ousted the BJP from the Old Secretariat need more than cosmetic efforts to be tackled. Mrs Dikshit is riding the crest of the wave of rising expectations. If she is able to make a difference in the spheres of prices and crime, she will keep two major promises made in the party manifesto. Number 10 Janpath cannot produce a magic formula to eliminate the city's ills. What the Congress will do in Delhi to improve the quality of life of the people will be keenly watched. The reputation of its government will make or mar its image elsewhere.

There are a few things which deserve to be prioritised. The city and its adjoining areas have to be made safe for those who live there. The public distribution system has to be improved and quality control has to be the cardinal principle of all sales and transactions. Civic amenities have remained neglected for a long time there. The supply of water and power has to be improved. The system of transportation—both of people and goods—requires immediate improvement. Effective short-term measures are direly needed. Change for the sake of change cannot befool the electors. They know how to deal with those who garner votes and then disappear in the cosy shells of complacency. "Perform or perish" is the mantra of the moment. In the larger context, the speedy trial and punishment of the villains of the 1984 riots must be made a special point of the Congress agenda. The escalating menace of the slums should be brought under control. The policing system has become weak and there should be no further confrontation between the administration and the law-keepers. Inner dissensions should give way to the collective will of the Congressmen at the grassroot level and the parasites among the politicians should be thrown out. It is a testing time for the Congress in the over-populated, polluted and criminalised state of Delhi. Mrs Dikshit will need public support in her reconstructive endeavour. She has practically elected herself to the post of Chief Minister by virtue of her being the head of the Pradesh Congress Committee and having become a symbol of unity and revival in a disturbed area. Closeness to Mrs Sonia Gandhi gives her additional advantage. Those who have voted for the Congress will judge the new government on the basis of its work. The people will keep it on daily probation.

A shattering defeat in MP

DEFEAT hurts, but some defeats corrode self-confidence like the BJP’s in the Madhya Pradesh Assembly election. Everything pointed to an easy victory. In the Lok Sabha election, the party had led in 220 Assembly segments. That was only in February. It had produced the first Prime Minister from the state. Then there was Pokhran and the resultant mass euphoria. The Congress government, on the other hand, looked jaded, assailed as it was by charges of corruption from the Cabinet to the village panchayat level. The party’s leadership was badly divided and openly bickering. Public opinion polls, barring the one conducted on behalf of a Delhi weekly, gifted the BJP with electoral success. There was the exhilarating shadow boxing for the eventual leadership of the legislature wing, a sure sign of brimming confidence. But the electorate has dealt the party a nasty surprise. It has to be satisfied with the previous strength of about 120 seats, give or take a few, in a House of 320. It will take months before it can come up with a convincing explanation. The party needed success in Madhya Pradesh for non-power reasons as well. A defeat for the Congress would have added weight to its theory of anti-incumbency factor and made the rout in Delhi and Rajasthan look more routine than pointedly anti-BJP. It has been denied that prop. Worse still, it has ceased to look like a winning proposition, a real alternative to the Congress. It now has to wait for five years for a genuine test, as the two parties are evenly matched only in the three Hindi-speaking states which went to the polls on Tuesday last and Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh, both of which elected their Assemblies only recently. That is a long time.

The Madhya Pradesh disappointment has dampened the hope of generating mass enthusiasm by promising small states to clearly identifiable regions and people. The BJP wanted to cash in on the near-reality of Chhatisgarh. At one time it came close to naming its Chief Minister for the new state. But a major chunk of the 90 Assembly seats in the region has now gone to the Congress, as is the voting tradition. The saffron party has high stakes in two other proposed new states — Uttarakhand and Jharkhand. Both are its strongholds. It should start worrying whether it would fare in those two areas, where elections are likely to be held soon, as it did in Chhatisgarh. A champion always loses his cause once it becomes a reality. The electoral verdict in Madhya Pradesh can be attributed, along with the price rise and lacklustre performance of the Central government, to the successful introduction of panchayati raj. Power has really been transferred to the village council, and the necessary funds that go with it. It has resulted in some cases of corruption, perhaps the customary mistakes and irregularities in the first years of a new system. But observers have rated the MP scheme as more democratic than what is being practised in Maharashtra or Tamil Nadu. It is possible that this new experiment has energised the villagers and the sole beneficiary has been the ruling Congress party. If there is a grain of truth in this cause-and-effect link, politicians will find it compelling to introduce panchayati raj, which would be wholly welcome.

A PEEP INTO THE VOTER’S MIND
Lessons of Assembly elections
by S. Sahay

THE exit polls conducted by Doordarshan and DRS (for Delhi only) clearly established the anti-establishment mood of the voters. This provided some comfort to the BJP because of its being in power at the Centre. But the final results show that the voters did not reveal all that they had in their mind. The BJP has suffered a sound drubbing at the hands of the electorate.

The results have certainly shaken the BJP, and even the Prime Minister has not ruled out the possibility of a mid-term parliamentary poll, though the party, worried over the fall-out of Mr Vajpayee’s observation, hastened to rule out a mid-term election.

One thing is reasonably certain. The BJP, which was already having problems in managing the coalition, will face more concerted attacks from the opposition parties. There will be fresh pressures on Mrs Sonia Gandhi to act, but whether she will oblige the Leftists and others will depend upon her assessment of the situation. Thus far the lady has been moving carefully and, in all probability, she will be disinclined to dislodge the Vajpayee government, without being certain about the prospects of her continuing to be in power at the Centre for the rest of the present Parliament’s term. It is perhaps for this reason that the party spokesman has said that the Congress would prefer to wait for the Vajpayee government to fall rather than try to destabilise it.

Mrs Sonia Gandhi’s main problem arises from her party’s past. Mr Jayant Malhotra articulated this while taking part in the Doordarshan exit poll programme when he said that his party, the Bahujan Samaj Party, would like to throw out the BJP, if it could, but the problem was that the Congress had exposed itself as an unreliable company. After all, it had caused the fall of both the Deve Gowda and Inder Gujral governments. Earlier it had caused the fall of the Charan Singh government, after propping it up — that was when Mrs Indira Gandhi led the party.

Let it be said straightaway that politicians do believe, as a class that in politics there are no permanent friends or enemies but only party (or personal) interests. Thus Mrs Sonia Gandhi is ready to do business with Mr Jyoti Basu, who is prepared to support her without joining her. Or could it be that, to make amends for the past historic blunder, Mr Basu would provide the leadership with the active support of the Congress. Such a possibility has been discussed in the newspapers and nothing can be dismissed out of hand as too fanciful.

The next question is: whether by not ruling out the possibility of a mid-term poll the Prime Minister was only referring to the further fluidity caused to the political situation by the election results in Delhi, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Mizoram or was he hinting that if, push came to a shove, he would be recommending the dissolution of the Lok Sabha? Since Mr Vajpayee has said at the same breath that the BJP and the coalition partners would be taking stock of the situation, one need not jump to conclusions but one had better wait and watch.

As some newspapers have mentioned, the States to watch would now be UP and Maharashtra. In both States Congress dissidents had significant influence, by their conduct, on who formed the government. Now that the Congress fortunes are on the upswing, will the prodigals return home? If that happens, the ruling coalitions in the two states could come under strain.

The election results have also driven home the point that not only is there a sharp polarisation of voters between the Congress and the BJP — the third force having been marginalised in the process in the four states — but, as the Delhi voting pattern has shown, government servants, big businessmen, students and retired personnel may have sided with the BJP. But the small retailers, the unemployed, the housewives, the labourers and the private sector employees seemed to have backed the Congress. Viewed as social groups, the Scheduled Castes and Tribes, the other Backward Classes, the Muslims and the Christians support the party.

And, as in the past, it is the downtrodden, the have-nots, who flock to the polling booths in order to exercise their franchise. The middle and upper classes tend to sulk over recessionary trends and drown their sorrows in wine.

This explains the increasing divide between India and Bharat. The educated and influential classes may rule through manipulation and the coming together of the criminals, bureaucrats and corrupt politicians, but, given an opportunity, the weak and the deprived are making it abundantly clear that they are not liking what they see.

If their dissatisfaction is not removed, it can spell disaster for the country. Let not our rulers be lulled by the belief that high prices matter in Assembly elections alone, and that in parliamentary polls higher consideration would prevail. This textbook approach is not going to help the politicians. In the elections that are over, onion symbolised people’s hardship, as did the sympathetic rise in the prices of tomatoes and potatoes. Even dal is increasingly becoming outside the reach of the middle class and poorer families.

Thus corruption and high prices, if they persist, would be the main issues in any election, Assembly or parliamentary. Our rulers would be committing a gross mistake if they believed that the World Bank-IMF driven liberalisation is going to get them votes of the poor and the downtrodden.

They must make strenuous efforts to give liberalisation a social face, and not come up with excuses of why the lot of the poor cannot be ameliorated, while loot of the nation’s resources in the form of various scams — bank and others — can be dismissed as institutional failures.

It is time for serious and fundamental thinking over the nation’s polity. More than the replacement of one coalition by another is involved.

Kennedy and the world’s poor
by V. Gangadhar

A FEW days back while chatting with Ms Catherine Mitchell, who heads the Journalism Department at North Carolina University, Nashville, I asked her about her favourite American President. Ms Mitchell, in her mid-fifties, who was on a visit to Mumbai, courtesy the USIS, replied immediately, “John Kennedy”. She paused for a moment and then added: “You know, America was sleeping during the eight years under President Eisenhower. Kennedy woke us up.” The journalism professor, who won the 1979 Pulitzer prize for local reporting, explained that she had worked for Kennedy in his presidential campaign. “In fact, almost the entire American youth was supporting him,” she pointed out.

John F. Kennedy, easily the most charismatic American President, was assassinated thirtyfive years back in this month — on November 22, 1963. I was then a college teacher in Ahmedabad and the news reached me as I was waiting at a bus stand on a chilly morning. Everyone was so quiet in the college on that fateful day. We had to rely on radio news and the newspapers for all the information from Dallas, where the President had been shot. Even those who did not closely follow American politics felt his loss and believed that the world was a poorer place.

Ms Mitchell agreed that the Kennedy assassination had shocked the entire world. “You know,” she reflected. “JFK did not really achieve much during his presidency. His successor, Lyndon Johnson, was more active on the civil rights front. And Kennedy did not take the initiative in reducing the impact of the Cold War and was brainwashed into sending troops into Laos. The sneak unsuccessful attack on Cuba, which resulted in the Bay of Pigs disaster, was also a major error of judgement.”

Judging Kennedy’s three-year presidency was not so easy. It was true that he brought freshness, youth and new thinking to the White House. But in his first term he had to deal with a conservative America, which was deeply suspicious of his youth, religion and motives. The military establishment was strong and frowned on any detente with the Soviet Union and Communist-held Eastern Europe. The CIA under Allen Dulles acted in tune with the Department of Dirty Tricks while the FBI was controlled by the formidable. J. Edgar Hoover, who possessed secret files on everyone in the administration, including the President and members of his family.

Recent revelations had further tarnished the Kennedy image. Investigative reporter, Seymour Hersh, who called himself a “JFK admirer”, wrote a highly unflattering biography of the late President which revealed all his secret romantic trysts. These were wellknown in the Washington of the early 1960’s, but the American media of those days felt that the private life of the American President was not for public scrutiny. During his days as the Senator and then as the President, Kennedy had charmed the media and cultivated editors, columnists and political reporters. Such was his clout with the media that he was able to persuade the powerful New York Times not to publish anything on the Bay of Pigs attack on the grounds of “national security”. Celebrated New York Times columnist James Reston swallowed the bait, but was to regret it for the rest of his journalistic career. If only NYT and the rest of the American media had exposed the preparations for the Bay of Pigs, the Kennedy administration would have been spared of much embarrassment.

Today, nearly 36 years after his death, John Kennedy continues to make news. People still talk about his “Camelot” and the unfulfilled promises to the nation. The Kennedy family was the “royal” family of democratic America. More books have been published on Kennedy and his government than any political leader. There is still an air of mystery about his killing, and new theories are sprouting up every day. The activities of his son and daughter and other junior members of the Kennedy clan are still avidly pursued in the American media.

I guess Kennedy was the first American President to pay some attention to the problems of the underdeveloped world. The role of the Peace Corps brought the USA closer to the poorer nations in Asia and Africa. Even while detecting the “red menace” everywhere in the Third World, Kennedy was often able to establish rapport with the people of the region. He appointed intelligent and compassionate ambassadors (Prof Galbraith to India) to many of these countries. Much was expected of his meeting with Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. Kennedy had been very impressed with Nehru’s intellect and his role in uniting India against the British. But when he actually met the visionary, he was deeply disappointed. Nehru had not recovered from the shock of the Chinese attack of October, 1962. His health was failing. He could only mumble replies, and the meetings with Kennedy did not yield much. This was a tragedy for both countries.

Before & after “Maha-vinash”
by K. Rajbir Deswal

IGNORANCE may be bliss and the ignorant may be blissfully unconcerned with the goings-on around them, but the way the “informed” people are cheated baffles me.

Yes, definitely they are cheated because nothing really happens despite all the inputs in the media and the entire extravaganza related to this aspect of awe-inspiring and frightening news, even when the possibility of comet Tempel-Tuttel’s entering the satellites’ path was something between 0.01 and 0.03 per cent.

Of course, it is a great relief that nothing really happens but a little insight into the human psyche will prove my point of apprehension that the homo-sapiens are sensitive to and respond to the stimulus in many ways — including excretions like perspiration and secretion of adrenalin — coupled with the palpitation of sorts.

Surely, there are innumerable suns and stars in the entire universe and their crossing of paths with each other should make news. But apprehensive and white-livered people postpone their transactions, put off marriages to later dates, push ahead ceremonies and wait for the catastrophe.

Well, holocaust, fireworks, total destruction, etc, are weak and thus inappropriate expressions when it comes to the vernacular projection of “Maha-vinash” at least for the common Indian. Whenever there is news of celestial disturbance — constellation crosses, planets’ path-breaking, etc — it is natural for informed human beings to be apprehensive.

Remember the well-known “sky-lab” which earned a niche for itself in the temple of terra-firma! Anything really falling from above to destroy something has verily come to deserve the appellation the “sky-lab” since then.

And remember the total solar eclipse of the eighties, when pictures of crows almost squatting and merry-making on the otherwise busy roads of the erstwhile Connaught Place in the Capital were published by newspapers the following day because information was made available that an unusual discharge of radiation could blind one instantaneously.

Doordarshan, I remember, had sought successfully to keep the TV viewers indoors for the whole day when Rishi-Dimple starrer “Bobby” and Dharmendra-Sharmila paired “Chupke-Chupke” were telecast that day. But this was to take care of the informed, and not the ignorant. The latter enjoyed the bliss of a sudden and strange happening and did not feel cheated even in the face of experiencing night-like darkness during the day-time. They rather had the thrill of bewilderment and reward.

I also remember, as a child in the sixties, when “ashtha-grihas” (eight planets) were to “rub shoulders” with one another and create fireworks that could lighten up (?) the whole sky and produce booms like thunders. The experience of my teens is still fresh in memory, and precisely for this reason my heart is gripped by fear like every other informed person everytime there is some news of celestial disturbance.

And it is then that I am reminded of Wordsworth, who exclaimed: there was a time “when meadow, grove and earth did seem to me apparelled in celestial light....”

Well, the celestial light shall lighten up (including the pun) only the blissfully ignorant mind and not those bombarded with information. The latter is only a cheated person. Why should we seek information and feel cheated even in matters “heavenly”?

Delete economy from judicial cause-list

by Anupam Gupta

HIS views and writings influenced and shaped the judicial philosophies of three of the greatest Judges of this century — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Felix Frankfurter and Louis Brandeis, judges to whom constitution-makers and constitution-interpreters all over the world owe an immeasurable, even if often unconscious, debt of gratitude. And that is reason enough to start this second piece on the latest judicial intrusion into the realm of onion and vegetable prices with a quote from Holmes’ colleague and Brandeis’ teacher at the Harvard Law School, James Bradley Thayer.

“The legislatures are growing accustomed to a distrust of (democracy)... turning that subject over to the courts,” wrote Thayer in 1901, but he could have been writing for today, “and what is worse, they insensibly fall into the habit of assuming that whatever they could constitutionally do, they may do — as if honour and fair dealing and common honesty were not relevant to their inquiries. The people, all this while, become careless as to whom they send to the legislature; too often they cheerfully vote for men whom they would not trust with an important private affair, and when these unfit persons are found to pass foolish and bad laws, and the courts step in and disregard them, the people are glad these wiser gentlemen on the Bench are so ready to protect them against their more immediate representatives....”

It should be remembered however, Thayer continues (and I draw the readers’ attention to this), that the exercise of the power of judicial review, “even when unavoidable, is always attended by a serious evil, namely, that the correction of legislative mistake comes from the outside, and that the people thus lose the political experience, and the moral education and stimulus that comes from fighting the question out in the ordinary way and correcting their own errors. The tendency of a common and easy resort to this great function, now lamentably too common, is to dwarf the political capacity of the people, and to deaden its sense of moral responsibility. It is no light thing to do that.”

There is, of course, one exception to this broad statement, as the Indian experience has shown and which Thayer possibly could not foresee. Resort to the judicial function, whether easy or difficult, is the only alternative when normal political channels are foreclosed by abuse of legislative or executive power, such as happened during the Emergency, and the political capacity of the people is forcibly suffocated. There is, then, no question of the people “fighting the question out in the ordinary way”. In any case, the cost of fighting such abuse of power is often too high for individuals, and not rarely for nations as well, to pay and survive.

But for the courts to go beyond this and carve out yet more exceptions to justify intervention in areas traditionally forbidden to the judiciary is indefensible in principle and undesirable in practice. And nowhere is such intervention more patently anomalous than in the field of social and economic policy.

Laws regulating economic activity, a Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court ruled in the Ambica Mills case in 1974, should be viewed differently from the laws which touch and concern freedom of speech and religion, voting, procreation, rights with respect to criminal procedure, etc.

Here in the field of the utilities, tax and economic regulation, said Justice K.K. Mathew (whose erudition matched his catholicity of vision), there are good reasons for judicial self-restraint, if not judicial deference to legislative judgement. The legislature after all has the affirmative responsibility. The courts have the power to destroy, not to reconstruct. “When these are added to the complexity of economic regulation, the uncertainty, the liability to error, the bewildering conflict of the experts, and the number of times the judges have been overruled by events — self limitation can be seen to be the path to judicial wisdom and institutional prestige and stability.”

Judicial review is not concerned with matters of economic policy, ruled another Constitution Bench more recently in the Shri Sitaram Sugar Mills case. The formulation and implementation of policy relating to the supply and equitable distribution of essential commodities at fair prices is a matter for decision “exclusively within the province” of the government. “Such matters do not ordinarily attract the power of judicial review.”

Headed by Chief Justice Sabyasachi Mukharji — whose untimely demise six months later in September, 1990, robbed the court of a strong, luminous personality acutely conscious of the imperative of judicial restraint — the Bench quoted with profit from Justice Frankfurter in the US Supreme Court. It would be a singular intrusion of the judiciary into the legislative process, Frankfurter wrote in Secretary of Agriculture versus Central Roig Refining Co, to “extrapolate restrictions upon the formulation of economic policy from those deeply rooted notions of justice which the Due Process Clause expresses....”

It was to avert the danger of such extrapolation that the Constituent Assembly, as I pointed out last time, had chosen wisely and after much thought to remove the expression “due process of law” from Article 21 of the Constitution. The founding fathers of four other nations — Australia, Ireland, Israel and Japan — had done the same in their Constitutions and for the same reason, as another great American scholar, Prof Wallace Mendelson informs us.

There is no doubt that the High Courts of Delhi and Allahabad have only the good of the people at heart as they embark upon the ambitious venture of controlling the rising prices of onions and other vegetables. The responsibilities of constitutional adjudication enjoin, however, restraints not apparent at first blush.

‘Insiders’ in line for Delhi CM’s post

by Humra Quraishi

NEVER before witnessed such quietude on New Delhi roads as on November 25, the day of polling here. In several booths there seemed more polling staff than the voters. And in the particular booth where I went to cast my vote, Junior Modern School, the turnout seemed so low that during the 25 minutes or so that I hung around barely 10 voters had come. The only point of interest seemed those new electronic voting machines — so much more convenient to use than those erstwhile elaborate ballot sheets but, yes, they could prove to be difficult for illiterates. And though I am filing this column at a rather odd juncture — just before the actual counting commences — but the opinion poll results must already have reached you. In New Delhi it is the Congress party which is said to be all set to sweep the polls. And if that does happen then Sheila Dikshit should, in all probability, be New Delhi’s new Chief Minister.

But there could be rumblings in this too. Some prominent Sikhs with Congress leanings have mentioned in not so hushed tones that they would play up Mahendra Singh Saathi’s name for chief ministership. Saathi has fought this just concluded elections on the Congress ticket from Vishno Gardens. Though active in politics since some years but has kept a low profile. Then, there is also talk that some ‘insiders’ like Deep Chand Bandhu would also stake their claim to the chief ministership, for his supporters are quoted as saying that they would oppose Dikshit’s claim to the chief minister’s seat on grounds that she is an outsider. Another interesting turn that has just been brought to my notice is that some Congress workers are all set to propose Jag Pravesh Chandra’s name for this post. When contacted he does relent that several Congressmen have come up with this proposal “... but I am already 85 years old; though I am physically fit but psychologically it does matter. That’s why I didn’t fight these elections”. In fact, Chandra is one of those politicians who has been in the thick of political activity right from 1929 — first in Lahore and then from ’48 in Delhi. He could be the one of the few surviving members of the Delhi’s First Assembly of 1952 and right now he is the leader of the Opposition. Before moving ahead let me add that for the masses he shot into prominence about 10 years back when he made public the fact that Brewer’s Yeast was responsible for his rather youthful looks and long strands of hair. I had interviewed him around that time and I was particularly taken aback not by his looks (no, I didn’t find him relatively young looking) but by seeing his austere living — till date this politician lives in a modest two room setup atop the shopping complex of Khan Market. And lives alone, without the usual paraphernalia politicians carry along. So much so that he doesn’t even possess a wife!

Moving on to Sheila Dikshit, it seems her chances of becoming the new chief minister are strong as she not only bears close proximity to Sonia Gandhi but has a certain personality about her. Daughter-in-law of the veteran Congressman Uma Shankar Dikshit she took the plunge into politics soon after her husband’s demise (her bureaucrat husband, Vinod Dikshit died of cardiac arrest in a train compartment whilst travelling from Lucknow to New Delhi, about 15 years back) and has, so far at least, been away from controversies. Though I have never met her, but have been to her house once, to interview her father-in-law in the context of a feature on Kamala Nehra. Uma Shankar Dixit had been one of the few people who had met Kamala Nehru and had some interesting things to recount. And let me be honest in admitting that whilst interviewing him I couldn’t take my eyes off the ethnic decor in the Dikshit home.

“Black Day”

December 6 could have Ms Mamata Banerjee visit New Delhi. Though I personally think that she will return to Calcutta that very day (from her proposed tour of the North East). For her presence here, in New Delhi, might bring in a further wave of embarrassment for the Vajpayee government but there, in Calcutta, she will be able to draw full political mileage. After all she has given the call to observe December 6 as a ‘black day’ in the context of the Babri Masjid demolition.

Moving ahead, as of now there is news that several organisations under the ‘Citizens Committee for Secular Action’ umbrella will hold a protest dharna at ITO on that day. This same organisation had held a similar dharna last year too but I was particularly dismayed by the rather poor turnout — maybe the venue had something to do with that. Afterall, it isn’t easy to find parking slots near ITO.

And, then, though till date no political party has given any call for any protest demonstration but sensing the buildup in Lucknow (tension and anger after reports that religious leader Ali Mian’s ancestral home at Rae Bareli was raided by supposed police personnel) some political parties might link the two. The demolition and now this raid and whip up sentiments. And as though to soothe nerves the Max Mueller Bhavan start with their first (of this season) “Music In The Garden” concerts on December 6 afternoon. Featuring Holger Mantey on the piano and a group by the name ‘Whimsy Logic’ said to be obsessed with improvisation! In fact, last year I attended at least two of these Music-in-the-Garden concerts and each time came back really relaxed — for one the shows are not ticketed, and it is indeed a luxury to hear live music in a verdant ambience.

75 YEARS AGO

Jumna and Ganges in floods

Allahabad looks an island

ALLAHABAD: Heavy rain has fallen here and both the rivers are in flood. Upcountry rain has washed a number of animals and dead fish.

Reports have been received of flooding of Hamirpur by Betwa and Jumna; several villages have been washed away, but no loss of life has occurred so far.

The Collector has organised relief measures. The town is practically an island. Reports of flooding of the Jumna and the Ganges have also been received from the districts in Cawnpore and Benares.

Floods in Burma

RANGOON: The breach in Nagwin River embankment, 3 miles north of Ngathiagyaung last week flooded an area of about five hundred square miles. The officials are organising relief and rescue work. No loss of life has been reported, but heavy mortality among cattle is anticipated and damage to agriculture is being assessed.