We, the Living! Need to Revise Land Use Policies

Dr M N Buch (Visiting Fellow, VIF)

In Delhi along the Yamuna River a stretch of 371 hectares, that is, approximately 927 acres, has come under cremation ground, samadhi, etc., of people perceived as the leaders of the nation. These include Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Lal Bahadur Shastri, Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi and now IK Gujral. All these seemed to merit cremation at new sites, reserved individually for each, instead of at Nigambodh Ghat, also on the Yamuna River but meant for ordinary mortals whom Yamaraj has taken away from the world. Over 900 acres of land, therefore, now stands assigned to people who are no longer living and who do not have any use for the land. A samadhi for Mahatma Gandhi one can understand because he was truly unique as not only the person who launched our movement for independence but also as one who united this nation as has never been done before. The whole of India is his, whether or not we commemorate his memory through brick and mortar, by assignment of land or by any other means that this nation chooses. No one else, not even Jawaharlal Nehru, comes anywhere near the stature of Mahatma Gandhi. The irony, of course, is that this ascetic, this man who genuinely lived and died for India and who had no desire for anything material, is still honoured not by our practicing what he has taught us but rather by creating monuments in his memory. He who did not own a square inch of land when he was alive now virtually finds himself the owner of a huge chunk of land in Delhi.

Morarji Desai, Rajendra Prasad, Vallabhbhai Patel and Gulzarilal Nanda fortunately decided to die otherwise than in Delhi and it is to the credit of these leaders, their followers and the cities in which they cast aside their mortal coil that they have not transferred land to them in death which they did not aspire for in life. Of course we have a contrast in Tamil Nadu where first the Annadorai Memorial swallowed up a substantial portion of the Marina Beach in Madras, to be followed by the M.G. Ramachandran Memorial and no doubt with advance reservation for the present leaders in that State. The only parallel one can think of is the Pharaohs of ancient Egypt who, when they died, were buried in what are virtual underground cities in which the dead symbolically still live. These cities of the dead, these necropolises, are covered by pyramids, themselves built by slave labour, many of whom died in building monuments to the dead. Of course no one honoured them with a pyramid. Are we in modern India trying to emulate the ancient Egyptians in assigning large areas of land to the dead, not because they may come alive but because we cannot think of any other, more sensible method of perpetuating their memory?

In India we have two methods of disposing of the dead. The vast majority of the population being Hindu, cremation is the preferred method. Normally the funeral pyre is used, though besides the pyre we also see the emergence of electric crematoria which provide an advanced, scientific and technological method of quickly reducing the body to ashes, with minimum pollution. Whether it is the funeral pyre or the electric crematorium, cremation does not call for much space and the same platform on which the pyre is lit can be re-used after the remains are removed. In terms of use of land there is nothing more economic than cremation. The second method is burial, because both Christians and Muslims bury their dead. I suppose this is because the followers of both religions believe in the Day of Judgment for which purpose the body is resurrected, which would not be possible if it had been cremated and reduced to ash. Even here there is an anomaly because whilst the Christian invocation at burial is “ashes to ashes and dust to dust”, meaning that the body will go back to its constituent elements, in Islam the invocation is “Supurd-e-khak”. This means that you are consigned to the earth, to the dust from which you have been created. If you are reduced to dust, or to ash by burial do you have a better chance of resurrection than if you are reduced to ashes through cremation? If the Almighty can reconstitute a person’s body from dust, why not from the ashes of cremation? In Islam a burial ground as such has no sanctity and, for example, in Saudi Arabia it is considered legitimate after a certain period, say twenty years, to recycle the burial ground. Christians, however, consider a cemetery to be hallowed ground, which means that burial is final and the land cannot be recycled. Christian cemeteries are well maintained but they are by no means a necropolis of the Pharaonic variety.

Hindus seem to revel in perpetuating the memory of departed powerful politicians by monuments which are no less than the samadhis of saints. This seems to be a complete waste of time and money because it takes a Prince Siddhartha to live on as the Buddha, or the Enlightened One. No monument can enhance his glory, nor lack of monument retract from it. Our politicians are like the thousands of princes and kings whose memory is obliterated by time. None of them will be a Siddhartha and, therefore, the necropolis built for them on the Yamuna River front will not delay by a moment the day of forgetting. What we need, therefore, is to celebrate not the memory but the forgetting of the person in question because that is the reality of the “kaal chakra”.

We do not stop at building a city of the dead at the spot of cremation. We go much further and we reserve the houses once occupied by these celebrities as monuments to be preserved, but not used by those who are living and are entitled to a house of this category. The house at Tees January Marg, known as Birla House, is where the Mahatma was assassinated. He never wanted a monument to himself but we have converted Birla House into a monument in memory of the Mahatma’s martyrdom. I have already said that Mahatma Gandhi is unique and, therefore, a monument to him does not really call for any comment. Teen Murti House, once the residence of the British Commander-in-Chief of India, the second most powerful person in British India, was rightly taken over as the residence of the Prime Minister, the most powerful man in India, by Jawaharlal Nehru. After his death his successor did not occupy the house, in sharp contrast with the practice in Britain where 10, Downing Street is the official residence of the Prime Minister. The incumbent Prime Minister vacates the house prior to the new Prime Minister being sworn in so that his successor comes straight from Buckingham Palace to 10, Downing Street and begins his tenancy. Teen Murti House became the Nehru Memorial, a library and a major centre for academic studies and, therefore, one can perhaps overlook its no longer being the official residence of the Prime Minister. But look at what has followed. Indira Gandhi was shot at the boundary between 1, Safdarjang Road and 1, Akbar Road and both houses have now been pulled out of the official pool and have become a monument to the memory of Indira Gandhi. This has happened to the house on Janpath occupied by Lal Bahadur Shastri as Prime Minister. Babu Jagjivan Ram’s official residence is also reserved in his memory. 7, Race Course Road is the Prime Minister’s residence and I am amazed that on the death of Rajiv Gandhi at Sriperumbudur that whole complex of houses has not been converted into his memorial. Perhaps this is because he was not in power when he died, nor was the Congress Party. All these houses have been built with exchequer funds, duly voted upon as part of a grant of the Central Public Works Department. When the grants are discussed government has to give justification for every item included in the budget and I am absolutely certain that when these bungalows were built in British days the construction must have been justified as being necessary for housing senior officers and Members of the Council, the British equivalents of our ministers. Therefore, when these bungalows are converted to monuments the purpose for which they were erected is defeated, which means that in a way the approval of Parliament for their construction is bypassed and perverted. This is a clear misuse of public funds and the legitimacy of their conversion becomes highly suspect and open to objection.

Why do we indulge in such futile exercises? If the answer were to be in only one word, it would be “sycophancy”. Because those close to the departed person or related to him are in power or are likely to come to power, flatterers and sycophants hasten to gain favour by commemorating the memory of the departed in such a way that the heirs and successors feel pleased and, in this state of being pleased, they might throw a crumb or two to the flatterers. The Sanatan Dharma in its purest form is not idolatrous or polytheistic and there is belief in one God, by whatever name He is known. The ultimate goal of every human being of the Sanatan faith is to achieve a state in which one can be absorbed permanently into the God-head or Brahmatma. However, because the Sanatan Dharam gives the freedom of choice to select one’s own path to salvation, this has manifested itself in sects in which the Lord is worshipped in many forms, including devis and devtas, who are symbolised by idols. In the course of practice the basic tenet of there being only one God is forgotten, the symbolism of different forms of God is lost sight of and ritual becomes all important and, therefore, the artificial discipline imposed by ritual ultimately replaces the divinity of God by the artificial sanctity of idols. When the idol achieves an identity of its own we become idol worshippers and, therefore, slaves of empty ritual, which overtakes that which is sacred. This calamity seems to have overtaken us as a people. The true worth of our leaders is forgotten, invoking their name has become a ritual, being sycophantic to them has become worship and the balance that should exist in society is disturbed. If ritual becomes more important than religion, then we shall certainly believe that the idol of Ganesh drinks milk and, therefore, we insist on feeding milk to an idol. Our cupidity is fed by unscrupulous priests who convince us that the idol is actually drinking the milk. That piece of stone then become more important than Ganesh himself. That is precisely what is happening to us as a people when we build cities of the dead for departed leaders, a few of whom have been nation builders but the rest of whom have only been powerful politicians, a few being good in government and the rest being no better than Pindaris. Regardless of this we still build monuments, reserve huge stretches of land for their remains and convert houses for the living into mausoleums for the dead. I find this absolutely sickening.

Let us come to the living. About forty percent of the population of every city in India consists of the very poor who have come in search of a job and who cannot find shelter for themselves. These are the squatters or encroachers who, on the failure of administrators and planners to accommodate them, have used their native intelligence to build some sort of shelter on unoccupied pieces of land. In Bombay and Calcutta they have converted whole pavements into shanty towns and the self built homes of the poor have gifted to Bombay what it touts to be the largest slum in Asia at Dharavi. Anything between thirty to forty percent of every major town is either squatter colonies or unauthorised colonies. These people are looked upon as criminals because they have encroached on government land, dirty as they live in slums which have no services, intriguers because they try every tactic under the sun to retain the foothold that they have established in the city and potential crooks because every theft in the city is attributed to slum dwellers. The authorities, the middle class, the affluent all look upon squatters as people who have no right to shelter and for whose eviction the bulldozer was created.

These squatters are the very people who provide the city almost its entire unskilled work force, its construction workers, maintenance personnel who keep the buildings and services in good repair, most of its craftsmen, almost all the domestic servants and without whom the city would simply not function. These are living people who keep the city functioning and yet they are denied the very thing that we lavish on the dead, that is, a right to living space and shelter. This is a completely skewed approach to city planning and development. The dead who have no need become masters of acres of land and the living, who need it most, do not have access even to that much piece of land on which we can put the point of a needle. The Constitution mandates justice and equality, equal protection of laws and a social order which promotes welfare. Under Article 39 the State is directed to secure that the ownership and control of the material resources of the community are so distributed as best to sub-serve the common good. It also mandates that operation of the economic system must not result in the concentration of wealth and means of production to the common detriment. A system which concentrates land and housing in the dead to the detriment of the living can hardly promote welfare. The very act of setting aside in perpetuity large parcels of land for memorials for a few people hits both at the principle of equality and promotion of welfare.

The reservation of 927 acres of land along the Yamuna River front, including Rajghat, is an affront to the Constitution and directly aimed at the common man. Shivaji Park at Dadar in Bombay is meant for the citizens of Dadar, Matunga and perhaps a part of Mahim. This is a place for recreation, for future Sachin Tendulkars to fine hone their cricket skills, for the elderly to walk morning and evening and for the citizens of the area to give their lungs a chance to breathe in this open space. Not an inch of it is meant for memorials. If the Shiv Sena is so concerned about Maharashtrians and Bombay, it should come forward and remove whatever has been erected there in the name of Bal Thackeray and gift the park back to the citizens of Bombay, free of all encumbrances. But then we should remember that our priority is monuments to the dead and not land for the citizens. It has been argued that the Yamuna River front has been saved by reserving 927 acres as a monument to the dead, but it is not a monument to all the dead. It is a monument to certain leaders only and though it is claimed that the Yamuna River front has been beautified thereby, the fact remains that this is not a public park open to every citizen of Delhi. It is very much a closed and regulated monument to the dead, a new necropolis with restricted access. The lawns of the Central Vista along Rajpath are meant for the living because people congregate there in the evening and during holidays. Rajghat and its surroundings is not a place for normal public access and, therefore, it can only be defined as a necropolis. Therefore, the title of this paper,’ We, the Living!’ Do we not have some rights? I am not for a minute suggesting that we build housing along the Yamuna River front but just to give you an idea of the scale of this stretch of land, we could have accommodated approximately 50,000 houses on this much land and accommodated a population of about two and a half people. In the scales justice we have half a dozen leaders who have now deceased, occupying this much of land, on the other side would be two and a half lakh people, none of whom is given legal access to even one inch of land. In whose favour is the balance tilted? That is our real tragedy!!

Building a Self Cleansing Environment

Dr M N Buch 

(Visiting Fellow, VIF)

One of the defining moments in my life was when I was on deputation to Princeton University for a mid-career course. It was the height of the Vietnamese War and the United States was in ferment because many people, especially students, opposed the war because they did not feel it justified. Many liberals thought that the United States had taken over the colonial mantle of the French, who ruled Indo-China. The Americans, therefore, were fighting an unjust war in which, despite the fact that a major contender for power in Vietnam was the Communist Party; the South Vietnamese regime was not really legitimate because it was a puppet of the colonial rulers. This was the regime that was supported by the Americans. Lyndon Johnson, the President of the United States who was constitutionally eligible for one more term, made a public broadcast that his policies had split apart the nation and, therefore, he was not offering himself as a candidate for the post of President. I call this a defining moment because despite the fact that Lyndon Johnson was not a pronounced liberal or the best example of a principled politician, he was at least mature enough and responsible enough to realise that he could not offer America the kind of leadership it needed at this time of crisis and, therefore, he was voluntarily withdrawing from the field.

The King of England reigns but does not rule. Kind Edward VIII fell in love with a divorced American woman, Wallis Simpson and wanted to marry her. The Prime Minister advised that this marriage was not acceptable, even as a morganatic marriage, to the government, parliament and people at large and he advised the King not to enter into this matrimonial alliance. In many ways Edward VIII was a weak man, but rather than giving up the woman he loved he preferred to give up the throne of Great Britain. In doing so, in choosing the woman he loved above the Crown, Edward VIII did recover some of the character which a king should have. This is a case where principles and statecraft triumphed over a desire to hang on to a position. There are many countries in the world where politicians have stepped down because their conduct could no longer pass scrutiny. Yoshihiro Tanaka, Prime Minister of Japan, resigned when he was accused of taking a bribe of two million dollars from the Lockheed Corporation. The party demanded that he resign and he obliged immediately. He was ultimately convicted of the offence and given a jail sentence, but he did not stay in office a day longer than was justified by his conduct and he thereby saved the post of PM from public opprobrium and contempt. John Porfumo, a senior minister in Britain, resigned when it came to light that he had bribed a prostitute in order to buy her silence. Even Margaret Thatcher quit as Prime Minister when her party asked her to step down. She did not form a rival party in protest, as happens so often in India. In all those countries where politicians follow a code of conduct being in power is not the ultimate goal and losing power is not the ultimate shame.

It is not as if Indian politicians never followed a code of conduct or ethics which transcended the purely legalistic or the narrowly defined rules of propriety. T.T. Krishnamachari resigned as Finance Minister because of certain allegations relating to the Life Insurance Corporation of India. Lal Bahadur Shastri resigned as Railway Minster because he felt that he failed in his duty to ensure railway safety and an accident occurred killing a large number of passengers. There never was an allegation that the minister was himself in any way negligent or remiss in his duties, but he was a dead honest politician who felt moral responsibility for the way in which his ministry functioned. Madhavrao Scindia resigned as Civil Aviation Minister after the crash of a newly acquired Airbus 320 at Hyderabad despite the fact that an enquiry proved that the accident was caused by pilot error only. LK Advani also resigned from all public offices, including in the BJP organisations, because of the Jain Hawala case in which investigation later revealed that he had no hand whatsoever. These four politicians quit not because they were pressurised to do so but because they answered to a higher inner voice which reminded them of their moral duty. There have been other resignations also, such as two Chief Ministers of Maharashtra, but all these resignations followed proven wrongdoing, which forced the party in question to insist on such resignation. Today’s politician seems to be a breed apart from our earlier politicians who, perhaps because of Gandhian principles, did accept that conscience is also a factor in governance and that if they have done wrong, wittingly or unwittingly, they should accept moral responsibility for their acts of omission and commission. The present generation of politicians and, for that matter, bureaucrats, seems to feel that all that is needed is not to be caught in wrongdoing. Doing illegal or improper acts which benefit them personally are considered not only to be in order but almost to be a perquisite of office which they would be foolish not to enjoy.

How does the voice of conscience operate? A very good example would be that of the late Kaka Saheb, that is, N.V. Gadgil. He was Minister for Works and Housing at the Centre, he was a contemporary and close colleague of Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru and Sardar Patel and he was austere, hard working and honest. His Private Secretary was another outstanding Civil Servant called D.S. Borker. On a visit to Bombay Kaka Saheb Gadgil decided to inspect some of the CPWD works. In those days perhaps the highest ranking CPWD officer in Bombay was an Executive Engineer and he accompanied the Minister during the inspection tour. At lunch time he invited the Minister to eat with him at home. After the meal when Kaka Saheb and Borker Saheb departed, in the car the Minister told his Secretary that an enquiry should be held against the Engineer to ascertain how he was able to feed the Minister in silver thalis and whether the Engineer was honest or not. Borker Saheb turned to the Minister and asked whether he had read what was inscribed on the thalis. He told him that the thalis were shown to be the property of Mafatlal Group’s guest house and had been borrowed by the Engineer because he did not have utensils of a quality in which he felt he should feed the visiting dignitary. Kaka Saheb immediately ordered the driver to return to the Engineer’s residence. That gentleman was taken aback at the Minister’s return, but Kaka Saheb told him that he had come to apologise for having an unjustified thought in his mind about the integrity of the Engineer. Such was the conscience of the man, who refused to harbour an evil thought about his subordinate on account of pure conjecture. Perhaps we can not all be Kaka Saheb but surely our politicians can at least begin to distinguish between right and wrong and to behave accordingly. In this we do not need a lesson from the West.

It would be foolish to insist that there has been no erosion of values in India. We are no longer governed according to the principles laid down by Mahatma Gandhi. The change is best exemplified by a small article written for the Times of India by Shri Sriprakasa, a senior Congress leader, a Gandhian, a former Central Minister and Governor of Assam. He narrated an incident where after retirement he was required to travel from Bombay to Madras in order to attend a meeting. His granddaughter came to visit him in the evening and found him sitting morose. On being asked why grandpa was sad she was told that he had to cancel his visit to Madras because railway reservation and ticket were not available. The granddaughter said that she would get him the ticket, which she did next morning. When Sriprakasa asked her how she managed this miracle she blithely told him that she had bribed a ticket agent Rs. 50 and was able to obtain the ticket. Sriprakasa told her that he would have been unable to do this because he was born in the land of Gandhi and could not give a bribe. The granddaughter said that she, too, was born in the land of Gandhi but she had no difficulty in paying something extra for the ticket. Sriprakasa’s comment was classic. He said, “My child, my Gandhi was Mohandas Karamchand and yours is Indira”. I think this example amply illustrates how our value systems have eroded and that it is now considered quite legitimate to use even questionable means to attain one’s objective. This is a very dangerous thing to happen to any nation, more so to a country which has always prided itself on its sense of morality and decency.

For the first twenty years of independence our politicians were still guided by the principles of satya, ahimsa, austerity and impeccable personal integrity as taught by the Mahatma. The year 1967 saw the emergence of a new culture of purchasing legislators in order to gain power, thus awakening in them a sense of commanding a price and for this purpose to forego every principle of good conduct. The decline in public morality has been so rapid that it is difficult in India to point to an honest politician, official or businessman. Every field of human endeavour is now pervaded with a sense of selfishness in which personal gain has replaced any desire for national service. Jawans of the army are put to risk if their weapons are faulty, but there does not seem to be any qualm of conscience in buying defective weapons after taking hefty bribes. Hospital patients face the difference between life and death, depending on the quality of the drugs that are administered to them. Despite this drug manufacturers and retailers offer spurious drugs and doctors happily purchase them on account of large commissions received by them. Who cares for the patients? The Gwalior region and western U.P., both areas renowned in the past for the quality of milk and milk products, are today centres of production of synthetic milk which contains poisonous detergents, fertilisers, etc., and is positively toxic. Mawa, the base of so many Indian sweetmeats, is adulterated and we virtually eat poison when we consume sweets at festivals. Most food products are adulterated. The automobile industry, especially the service stations which maintain vehicles, is known for imitation parts substituting for the genuine at the time of repairs, which endangers the road worthiness of vehicles and is substantially responsible for so many accidents. Appointment in service is often done on the basis of bribes offered, contracts are sanctioned in a similar way, construction is defective because essential materials are either adulterated or stolen and are substituted by spurious materials, functions are organised on paper and the money is swallowed up and even in the matter of such items of national and international importance as the Commonwealth Games, the making of money illegally seems to supercede the need to complete the projects in time and of the quality and standard which is required of such construction. It is a horrifying tale in which ultimately the average citizen becomes the prey, politicians and officials are the predators, unscrupulous businessmen are the beneficiaries and the nation is the loser.

Where do we begin in cleansing of the system? The constitutional arrangement of government in the country is that policy decisions and broad rules and regulations for implementation of policy lie firmly within the domain of the Legislature, the elected members of the Legislature and, by implication, in the parties which support the legislators. Who will stand for election is determined by each individual political party. These parties, therefore, are a part of the overall system of governance that we have adopted. Because it is the party which chooses the candidate, it is of the very essence that the political parties themselves should be responsible, conscious of their national duty and with office bearers of impeccable integrity. Ministers and officials may be covered by the Prevention of Corruption Act, but one cannot expect honest politicians to come from a party whose office bearers are not themselves completely honest and who, therefore, cannot insist on high moral standards being adhered to by the representatives of the party in public office. If a minister, on account of holding public office, must accept a code of conduct which is more restrictive and stringent than what applies to an ordinary citizen, then the office bearers of the political parties to which the holders of public office belong have also to adhere to such a strict code of conduct. This code must not only lay down the rules for the party and its office bearers but also the moral values according to which the party and its members will work. By definition the head of the party has to be a person who can be respected, not only because he is politically astute but also because he is known to be a person of integrity and high moral principles. This puts political leaders a notch above even Caesar’s wife, because they have to be not only seen to be honest and above suspicion but also must be proactive in enforcing a code of conduct on their party members. It is against this benchmark that political leaders have to be judged.

There has been a spate of complaints by neo activists such as Arvind Kejriwal and professional complainants such as Subramaniam Swamy against Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi, Robert Vadra, Nitin Gadkari, the Ambani brothers, etc. Some people refer to these activists as crusaders. A contrary view could be what Mahatma Gandhi said about Katherine Mayo’s scurrilous book on India, which he described as, “A gutter inspector’s report”. However, there is no gainsaying that corruption levels are high. Because the highly placed are generally not touched by our investigating agencies, the political parties concerned themselves do not have a mechanism by which they watch and judge the conduct of their own office holders or prominent supporters and then take action suo motu against those who have fallen below acceptable standards. Robert Vadra is not a Congressman, but he is the son-in-law of the lady who is President of the Congress. Without in any way applying judgment to the allegations I would still suggest that the Congress Party should have had an inbuilt mechanism similar to an Ombudsman, which mechanism should have persons of universally accepted credibility, who could conduct internal enquiries into allegations made against the party’s leaders and then come out with a reasoned report of what they have observed. If the report is objective then where it finds the charges to have substance, it would set the public mind at rest either because the party has taken action against the guilty person or the party has found the person not to be guilty and made known publicly the reasons for the findings.

This would apply equally to BJP, where Nitin Gadkari, its President, is under fire. A credible enquiry which finds one way or the other about the charges would be in the interest of the party itself. If Nitin Gadkari has done no wrong then detailed reasons for arriving at this conclusion must be given. If, however, Nitin Gadkari has strayed from the straight and narrow then the party itself must take action against him. The present attitude of the party in which it has given a tongue in cheek clean chit to Gadkari is neither in the interest of Gadkari nor of the party.

The law defines the acts which constitute an offence. The Police, specially constituted investigating agencies, various administrative structures which can hold a proper enquiry are in place, but they have a limited role in that they come into play only when there is an offence, or there has been such a breach of administrative propriety that disciplinary action should be taken. This, however, will be restricted to persons in office. On the other hand the arrangement I have suggested for political parties would go well beyond that which is defined as an offence and will cover the entire gamut of the conduct of the person complained against or about whom there is suspicion. Here the party would take suo motu action. If the political parties are serious about building the internal mechanism which could give us a self cleansing environment of governance and politics, then we can once again create a new paradigm of moral values and join Sriprakasa in the land of Gandhi, whose name was Mohandas Karamchand.

Incidentally, the mechanism suggested is different from that of Lokpal, which would be in the official domain and, regardless of what Anna Hazare, Arvind Kejriwal and Prashant Bhushan say, would be vulnerable to pressure. Moreover, being a creation of an Act of Parliament the institution can be abolished or neutered by another Act of Parliament. The self cleansing mechanism of the political parties would be an internal creation and unless the party is bent upon being reviled in public, it would itself support its own creation and protect its credibility by acting firmly on its findings and recommendations. Given a fair chance the party Ombudsman may actually force the parties to become clean.