7/30/2019 So Many Lobbies in Delhi, But None to Bat for India

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So many lobbies in Delhi, but none to bat for India

DNA, Nov 8, 2010

R Vaidyanathan

New Delhi is like a huge five-star hotel, flooded as it is with lobbies of all types, shapes andinterests. What is missing is an Indian lobby. We all know about Warren Anderson, formerchief of Union Carbide during the Bhopal gas tragedy. He landed in Delhi and went toBhopal.

Based on a non-bailable warrant, he was arrested and kept inside a guest house.Miraculously, its doors opened, and a flight took off by itself from Bhopal to Delhi and fromthere onwards to the USA.

Anderson left on December 7, 1984. Meanwhile, Adil Shahriyar, son of Muhammad Yunus a close confidant of Indira Gandhi was released from a 35-year prison sentence forillegal possession of firearms and drug trafficking following a pardon by president RonaldReagan. Are the two events the release of Anderson and Shahriyar mere coincidences?

Rajiv Gandhi, who was also foreign minister in 1984, was apparently not aware of anythingand a group of ministers (GoM) is looking into Andersons escape. Incidentally,homeminister P Chidambaram and surface transport minister Kamal Nath, who were ministers offinance and commerce respectively in 2006, endorsed a proposal to let Dow Chemicals thecurrent owner of Union Carbide off the hook with regard to remediation, or the clean-upof the contaminated site. Both are part of this GoM!

Another example is more bizarre. Naga political and student groups have been starving the

Manipuris for more than two months by blockading the state. Petrol sells for Rs200 per litreand everything is scarce. But the Centre is still requesting (cajoling/begging) Naga militantsto lift the blockade.

Now imagine what would have happened if it was the other way round: the Manipurisblockading the Nagas. It would not have continued for more than one day. The global BaptistChurch would have created a ruckus and many delegations of leaders from Europe and theUS would have rushed to India and our PM would have been forced to go to the north-east tomake amends. But Manipur can starve since they dont have a lobby.

In Delhi, we thus have a US lobby, a Chinese lobby (even unelectable Jairam Ramesh lobbiesfor Chinese businesses), a Middle Eastern lobby and, of course, a Pakistani Lobby.

Obamasvisit reveals the power of the US lobby. It appears that in the last few days nothingof importance has happened in any part of the world. Its just Obama all the way.

Then there are lobbies for the IT industry, for pharma, for liquor barons, for global armsmerchants lobbies for everyone from Aruba to Zimbabwe. But no lobby for India andIndians.

7/30/2019 So Many Lobbies in Delhi, But None to Bat for India

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There are several reasons for it. One is our colonial genes. For our leaders, what is good forthe US or Europe is good for India. We are physically here, but our minds are in Washingtonor London or Paris or Berlin.

Our leaders in Delhi do not consider India as a civilisation but as a market. Indians are juststatistics. As former foreign secretary MK Rasgotra put it succinctly in an interview on the

Anderson escape: If, let us say, this gentleman Anderson had been arrested and tried inIndia, would corporates anywhere in the world would they look at India in thosecircumstances? Maybe. But the citizens of Bhopal are obviously dispensable statistics. Theydont have a lobby. Thats why the PR official of Dow, Kathy Hunt, said that $500 ascompensation is plenty for an Indian.

Secondly, most of our leaders are rootless wonders. We dont have an elected PM. Our homeminister cannot get elected without coalition support. Our finance minister got elected onlyonce, thanks to tacit opposition support. Rootless wonders do not fully grasp the pulse of the

people.

We have also emasculated all organs of the state the CBI, the CAG, the bureaucracy, etc.

All are reticent about acting and speaking for India. Telecom minister A Raja is still around,and so are Suresh Kalmadi and Ashok Chavan. Its quite clear that many of our leaders haveill-gotten wealth stashed away in foreign tax havens. Whether it is IPL or the CommonwealthGames, tax havens have a role to play in funding domestic activities.

Of late, even sedition has become fashionable, thanks to the mobile, one-woman, republic ofArundhati Roy. She does not perhaps know that the original Booker was a slave trader inGuyana. So her hands are stained by cash from the slave trade. But she is weak in history andwants to alter geography. If her audience protests against her seditious remarks, they are atfault, not she. As for Anderson, he left in 1984 saying, I am free to go home. Bye-bye.

Nobody is going to even mention Andersons name to Obama. The former proved with a fewwords that we are a cactus republic. Dont call it a banana republic. Banana is a great fruitand offered to the gods. In these interesting times, when treason is considered respectable, wedo need a lobby for India in Delhi.