The best tribute to Atal Bihari Vajpayee will be if our leaders follow his way of thinking in dealing with matters that concern the nation
With the demise of former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, India lost a man who was endowed with some of the finest virtues. The country fell into a pall of sadness that was best explained in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s his emotional tweet: “I’m speechless, I feel a great void, yet am overcome by emotions”. As it is said, everything begins with shunya (zero) and ends in shunya. Vajpayee’s death brought back the gloomy atmosphere in the country as was witnessed during the death of Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru and other freedom fighters. However, with his intellectual, lovable and amiable persona, Vajpayee best personified an Indian wedded entirely to the Indian value system. India today lost one of the best Prime Ministers of post-independent India. There will be several tributes to this great leader from eminent people of all hues but most importantly, Indians loved him dearly. Civil servants, who tirelessly worked behind the scenes, pay their tribute to this great personality and touch upon their experience of working in the Union Government during his regime.
The country, during Vajpayee’s regime from 1998 to 2004, saw great changes that revolutionised India’s social and economic infrastructure. Politically, he was a master in bringing disparaging political groups under one umbrella, best exemplified in the way he ran his Government. His actions proved that true federalism had arrived in Indian democracy, though sometimes he had to make a few compromises in the larger interest of the country. It was due to his political conviction that he was admired by all, including his political foes. He was a shrewd administrator with uncanny ability to see the future and act accordingly. On the diplomatic front, he took several initiatives to bring India and Pakistan closer and to solve the Kashmir issue once he was back to power. He was also the first Foreign Minister after the 1962 war to visit China in 1979 where he had succeeded in breaking the ice. What happened to the Sino-India relations after that is history that is admired by many experts. Vajpayee also showed a remarkably mature leadership during the Kargil war, his visit to lahore by bus and also during the aftermath of the 2001 Parliament attack. On controversy of dual membership in the Janata Party, he had the gumption to break and revive the BJP with his Jan Sangh colleagues. But his decision to go for a nuclear test in 1998 soon after becoming the Prime Minister will be written in golden words in the history of India as one of the boldest decision taken by any Prime Minister. He was also the first Indian leader to address the UN General Assembly in Hindi.
In view of the negligence meted out to the north-eastern States, all three Prime Ministers — HD Deve Gowda, Inder Kumar Gujral and Vajpayee — announced that 10 per cent of the Union Budget would be spent on the North-East. It was, however, only under Atalji’s tenure that this became a reality. This writer himself witnessed during his stint in the Ministry of Environment & Forests, as the Inspector General of Forests, that frantic attempts were made by all Ministries to submit figures to the PMO on their achievements. Till then no one had the will to do something for the North-East. The then Marxist Chief Minister of Tripura Manik Sarkar, during his interaction with this writer in 2004, was fulsome in his praise for the then NDA Government and the Prime Minister for helping Tripura liberally and financially for infrastructure development and border fencing. It even granted one-time forestry clearance to fence the Indo-Bangla border — an unusual step taken for the first time in the nation’s interest.
The second episode this writer would like to narrate is of February 2004, when a delegation from Madhya Pradesh just before the Assembly election in February 2004, headed by the then Chief Minister Digvijay Singh, met the Prime Minister in presence of Ministry officials and demanded handing over the forest lands under joint forest management to the panchayats. Deftly, he deflected the discussions in a very amiable manner and refused to barter away the forest land in such a manner. later on, a notification was issued in the same month to recognise the Forest Rights of the tribal communities, which ultimately acted as the precursor for the present Forest Right Act, 2006. In hindsight, many people feel that the Vajpayee Government notification was more pragmatic — it led to economic upliftment through livelihood generation as the core of tribal peoples’ disputed land settlement policy. The country, during Vajpayee’s regime, witnessed his astute farsightedness in the construction of golden quadrilaterals, which led to a cascading economic growth and revolution in the highways and road construction, equally complimented by the telecom revolution and an unprecedented boost in the automotive industry by opening these sectors and bringing the country in the elite nation’s category.
India mourns the death of a great son who set an example for other political leaders to follow. The best tribute will be if the politicians of this country follow his way of thinking in dealing with issues in the context of overall governance. Rest in peace, Sir.
(The writer is a retired civil servant)