There’s an overdose of sweet-talk by politicians, mainly those who run governments. They have no compunction promising the moon and yet not acting on even their implementable promises. Their strategy is to keep hopes alive. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s latest assertion is that “rules are meant to do good to the people, and not to harass them.” As the chief executive who ran the nation for over 10 years and previously as CM for repeated terms, he should know as much. In reality, however, the rules or laws the parliament enacts under the PM’s direct watch are often half-baked, drafted by bureaucrats who are divorced from the social mainstream, and passed even without proper discussions.
The quality of debates both in parliament and state legislatures have degenerated over the years. Intelligent minds have only a marginal presence in these houses. The cream of society is excluded from the political process, where muscle-flexors and loud-mouths rule the roost. The voice of sanity is drowned in the cacophony of loose talk and mutual recriminations. The result is that adequate thought is not going into the making of new laws. This is unlike the time of Jawaharlal Nehru, who, with his western education and public life tempered by the heat of the Freedom movement, kept with him an enlightened lot in the governance system. His daughter Indira Gandhi as prime minister ruptured the good systems for personal advantage. The downslide began then and there. Today, the scenario is beyond repair. Modi as prime minister has not demonstrated any significant interest in reforming the system to the people’s advantage. The systems are being taken for a ride by the bureaucracy and politicians. Massive corruption is the result in which they join hands to rob the exchequer. People are fed with a regular diet of bombastic claims and big talks from the podium. Now Modi asks parliamentarians at the NDA parliamentary party meeting to focus on reforms, but his seriousness about meaningful reforms is questionable.
Modi made these remarks in the context of the massive disruption of the aviation sector in recent days, when over 1200 flights were cancelled by the main airline, IndiGo, as it struggled hard to implement new rules introduced by the government in the name of flight safety. With additional rest hours granted to pilots, the airline could not match it with an immediate increase in the number of pilots to fill the gaps thus created. Granted that a high court order forced airlines to implement the new rule with a sense of urgency but the government or its Director General of Civil Aviation should not have remained in a state of paralysis. They should rather have intervened as they did lately, and granted a reasonable time for the airlines to implement the new rule. It appears the civil aviation ministry run by TDP, a BJP ally, has complicated matters. Perhaps ulterior motives were involved. This was a scenario similar to the note demonetization goof-up. A sense of uncertainty has gripped the aviation sector. A simple statement, or even an apology, does not repair the serious hurt.
