Dear Naveen, Amarinder and Kamal Nath Season’s greetings boys and my best wishes to Kamal Nath on becoming the Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh!
I hope you haven’t forgotten me, the first headmaster(1935-1948) of your common alma mater (Doon School, Dehradun), although you all came long after I left for Ottershaw School in the UK, and by that time my deputy at Doon, John AK Martyn was your headmaster.
Nostalgia apart, the revival of Congress in the States of Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan is a significant political transformation; but to me, equally important is another piece of news, that, with the elevation of Kamal Nath as Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh, three contemporaries from Doon School, have become Chief Ministers of three different Indian States at the same time, the other two being Naveen Patnaik in Odisha and Amarinder Singh in Punjab, and this coincidence is certainly remarkable and first of its kind.
As a school master, your success is always a matter of contentment to me, but I had a dream same as SR Das, former Advocate General of Bengal and the founder of Doon School, Dehradun, best articulated in my first Founder’s Day speech, I had then said, “The boys should leave Doon School as members of an aristocracy, but it must be an aristocracy of service inspired by ideas of unselfishness, not one of privilege, wealth or position.”
But how far such an ideology is conveyed to the generations of Doscos (as alumni of Doon School are referred to) down the line, is a subject matter of inquiry and evaluation. It may be little eerie to many, Kobad Ghandy, a prominent Indian Naxalite leader, is also an alumni of your school, whose sociopolitical clan is at loggerheads with rest of the nation, and surely, popular consensus shall not call it as coherent to what we (SR Das and me) had envisioned about.
There is always a difference between what you have been taught and what actually manifests in your performances. So to start with, I shall begin from evaluating Amarinder, who is a passionate military historian with eight books to his credit, apart from serving Punjab for the second time, as Chief Minister. And as such he has constituted a Special Task Force for containing drug menace, waived farm loans up to Rs 2 lakh ceiling limit for small and marginal farmers who constitute 65 per cent of the State’s debt ridden farmers, expedited the confiscation of properties of drug dealers under Chapter-V-A of NDPS Act, the Punjab Industrial and Development Policy-2017 has been formulated which aims to augment industrial development of the State with a set of measures, but the relatively populist targets are to increase the share of secondary sector in GSDP to 30 per cent and tertiary sector to 62 per cent and to enable job creation, at least one job per household to fulfil Ghar Ghar Rozgaar Mission of the State and set up one skill university in the State. On the personal front, Amarinder has been acquitted in Amritsar land scam and Ludhiana City Centre scam.
Now, Kamal Nath has recently been sworn in as Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh, so there isn’t much to say about his performance, but he is otherwise one of the longest serving members of Parliament having been elected to Lok Sabha from Chhindwara Lok Sabha constituency for nine times, and has also served as a Union Minister. He is credited with enunciating global concepts on environmental tariffs and conceptualising global emission quotas, apart from being the chief spokesperson for the developing countries at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. During the World Trade Organization (WTO) negotiations, he emerged as one of the chief architects of the G-20 and G-33 Alliances and the Non-Agricultural Market Access-11. However, his alleged complicity in the anti-Sikh riots of 1984, has often cast shadow on his acceptability and credential as a leader, despite being absolved by the Nanavati Commission, set up by the Vajpayee -led NDA Government.
On the other hand, Naveen, who is largely perceived as a recluse, has achieved an exceptional feat by being Chief Minister of Odisha for four successive terms. Though initially he was considered naive in politics but with keen observation over the years, one can only conclude that he is not only an astute politician but an imperium in imperio. His administration performed extraordinarily well in rescue and evacuation operations during cyclone Phailin in 2013 and his regime survived the Modi wave in 2014. The alleged charter of corruption levelled by the Opposition is almost destined not to see light of the day despite the omnipotent Modi reigning at Delhi, especially when the Supreme Court has dismissed a petition for summoning Naveen regarding coal allocation at Talabira II block to Hindalco and termed the petition as frivolous, wherein the petitioner was fined with Rs1 lakh. On the development front, according to the State Economic Survey, between 2011 and 2017, the State economy expanded by 53%, but its real per capita income increased by 42% with the GSDP registering a growth rate of 7.14% in FY-2017-2018. Besides, the unemployment rate was estimated at 3.8% in the State during 2015-16 which is almost at par with all-India rate of 3.7%.
The Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) in employment in organised sector from 2004 to 2015 has also declined by 2.1%, but in case of private sector it is up by 1.4%. In a nutshell, the Make in Odisha Conclave, the recent World Cup Hockey event, and an array of announcements from PEETHA Scheme to KALIA Yojana for benefit of marginal and landless farmers, announcement of financial incentives in Mission Shakti, have helped to enthuse the supporters and general public at large, but as obvious, it is considered an election gimmick by the Opposition.
It is deplorable to note that there is a tremendous rise in instances of shabby and unfair recruitment into various services conducted by the Odisha Public Service Commission, which almost escapes with impunity masquerading with constitutional autonomy. And often meritorious students are rendered helpless with a cumbersome judicial process and an almost nonchalant State administration, which is certainly not expected with Naveen as Chief Minister. Especially, if one is reminded of his interview with Karan Thapar, after his father’s death, where, in order to reason with his plunge into politics, he said, “As you know, I have been a writer Karan, and in my profession, it is the job of a writer as you know to feel the pulse, to keep the ear to the ground...” Naveen, I anticipate that you indeed have your ears to the lament of the unemployed youths, oppressed classes enduring the pain of atrocities and you indeed feel the pulse of the victims of chit fund scam and those betrayed by the OPSC.
There can’t be anything that I can leave for you people, more than the advice of James Madison in Federalist No. 51, wherein he has said, “If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on Government would be necessary. In framing a Government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: You must first enable the Government to control the governed; and in the next place, oblige it to control itself.”
Have a very happy new year ahead!
Headmaster Arthur Foot
(This letter is based on the author’s imagination of what Headmaster Arthur Foot would have written in the prevalent times if he were living to write a letter to the alumni of Doon School (Doscos), who are coincidentally serving as the Chief Ministers of three Indian States.)
(The author is a lawyer based at Bhubaneswar. sjyotiranjan3@gmail.com )