Public Servant

I created this blog for myself to write about "people, events, places, things that may move me and might move others also ....."

By that criterion, the events in Mumbai certainly qualify.

I do not want to write about those aspects that have been covered so much - courage, senselessness, intelligence failure, etc.

In addition to all this, what also struck me is the almost total meaninglessness of the term "public servant" as applied to politicians, particularly the ruling politicians.

Just one look at R R Patil and his swaggering walk and talk to the media, and others like him convinces you that they are not what the term public servant was supposed to mean. They are their own personal servants and they do that well.

Could something be done using technology to bring our politicians face to face with this aspect in a manner that would embarrass and shame them as much as it is possible to do that to shameless people? Would a Public Servant Index ( PSI ) created out of voluntary web poll work if it lists all our CMs, and MPs along with how they have fared as a public servant? I recall that years ago the courageous N. Vittal, in his capacity as the Chief Vigilance Officer, had put up the names of politicians with the most disproportionate assets and that had worked for sometime - worked in the sense that suddenly some of the politicians had to face what they could not hide from the public - then of course they learned how to shrug that off.

Let us also point out that there have been and there are great public servants; unfortunately, the ministers and the MPs and MLAs seem to have forgotten how to be that.

One of the reasons Manmohan Singh still maintains his equity with a lot of different types of people, is regardless of whether you think of him as incompetent, indecisive, weak or not, he does project the image that he is there as a public servant and that he spends more time thinking of how to serve the public than how to serve himself.

At least for that I thank him - it would be a real pity if the Prime Minister looked and behaved like the deputy CM of Maharashtra.

a death anniversary comes alive

Yesterday morning the gandharva music channel on worldspace kept playing the Shenai. My wife suddenly realized that it must be Bismillah Khan's birth or death anniversary.

Indeed Ustad Bismillah Khan passed away two years ago on 21st August, 2006.

He was a genius who did not allow his achievement and fame take him away from his roots. This is what made him so special in this era of hype and rootless cosmopolitanism.

Almost by definition, genius do not replicate in a routine manner. It is unlikely that we will have another like him in our life time, but who knows? In the mean while, we can listen to his shenai, and feel blessed.