"Sycophancy corrodes :"

 

 

The Indian Express
11/05/2013.

Sycophancy corrodes :

Tavleen Singh : Sun May 05 2013, 02:30 hrs.

 

Are Sonia Gandhi's sycophants coming home to roost? I ask the question not just because I was attacked on national television last week by one of her toadies, although I admit it gives me a useful peg. Said toady was Mani Shankar Aiyar and he was obnoxious to the point of being crass. But I understand his behaviour. His survival in politics depends on his unreserved, unquestioning devotion to the Gandhi family so he has to exhibit his loyalty any chance he gets. There are others like him who have scuttled out of different corners of Sonia's court to make me their favourite hate object since my book Durbar came out. They are of no consequence except in the drawing rooms of Delhi.

It is sycophants that Sonia has placed in high office who are really letting her down at a time when her government is being seen as beleaguered and incompetent. At the top of this list is the Prime Minister. The reason why he was given his job, not once but twice, was because his loyalty to the Gandhi dynasty was absolute. He could be trusted to take the blame for all mistakes and to give credit to the Gandhis for all things good. What neither he nor Sonia noticed was that when you are given charge of running a government, unquestioning loyalty is usually a serious handicap.

 

If the good Dr Manmohan Singh had been less loyal, he would have told Sonia long ago that her economic advisors in the National Advisory Council (NAC) were giving her bad advice. He would have told her that the centralised welfare schemes they imposed upon him had been tried in the past and failed. He said nothing so the NAC do-gooders were allowed to squander vast amounts of taxpayers' money on schemes of dubious merit. He said nothing either when corrupt ministers started using their discretionary powers to make private fortunes out of licences and contracts. They took full advantage of the infrastructure of crony socialism that continues to give officials the powers of life and death over private investors.

 

When the investment climate became poisoned and the economy started to collapse, another Sonia loyalist in the Ministry of Environment used his discretionary powers to block major projects. According to the government's own figures, recently given by the Finance Minister, public money worth Rs 10 lakh crore lies stuck in projects that have stalled for want of clearances of one kind or another. When the Prime Minister finally put his foot down and 'promoted' Jairam Ramesh, he was replaced by another Sonia loyalist who has been as obstructive. The Environment Ministry still has not drawn up measureable standards and norms, so every project has to be assessed individually. Is it any wonder that even tiny Southeast Asian countries like Thailand have roads, ports, airports and railways that are 50 years ahead of ours?

 

In this week, when we mourn the shocking, tragic death of Sarabjit Singh, it is important to remember that he died because Indian diplomacy failed. Indian diplomacy has become such a feeble thing that our smallest neighbours treat it with contempt. So why should it surprise us when China and Pakistan behave badly? The ministers in charge of national security are all Sonia loyalists. Such grateful loyalists that they are given to declaring publicly that they would die for her and that they would do anything she orders them to. Sycophancy makes them talk this way and the knowledge that they have been chosen for high office not because of their ability but because of loyalty to the leader.

 

There is a cautionary tale here that other political parties would do well to pay attention to. Democratic feudalism worked well in another era and it was this that gave the Gandhi dynasty such power. It no longer seems to work so those political parties which, in careful emulation of Congress, have created their own dynasties and whose leaders surround themselves with their own caboodle of sycophants need to tread carefully. Not just because sycophants are nearly always useless when the going gets tough but, because most Indian voters appear to be sick and tired of feudal methods of governance.

 

Young Indians are inclined to be irreverent, impatient and not as easily fooled as their parents were. They want leaders who can make India a better country and give them the opportunities that will enable them to make their own lives better. Political leaders of the feudal kind who live behind high walls of security through which only sycophants find access can never deliver these things. This is because the one thing that sycophants do very, very well is shelter the object of their devotion from people who would dare to tell them the truth. So, between the leader and reality, the chasm widens and widens.