Kalam146;s touchdown

A VIP touchdown at the site of disaster is always shortlived but President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam8217;s visit to Gujarat is likely to resonate a while longer. In all probability, the makeshift stages that were hastily put up by the state administration to welcome him have been dismantled already and the debris is collecting again in the pathways cleaned up for the presidential eye only. Many survivors and victims at Naroda Patiya may even be feeling more than a little cheated, the day after. After all, only a handpicked few were allowed to get within speaking distance of the president, and even those who got up close were heard out mostly in silence. Yet the president8217;s visit will live on in the mind of the nation as a powerful symbol 8212; of sensitivity and compassion. At a time when the political class in Gujarat, across the ideological spectrum, government as well as opposition, has tragically abdicated its responsibility to reach out to the suffering people of Gujarat, and when all that the governing party wishes to do is to encash the carnage at the hustings, the president8217;s going to Gujarat on his first visit outside the capital is important for just that simple, unadorned reason 8212; that he went there.

Chief Minister Narendra Modi hadn8217;t. In all the months after the communal conflagration consumed as many as 91 innocent lives at Naroda Patiya on February 28, Modi did not think it fit to go there. In this context, some would say the presidential gesture even becomes a rebuke. There is need, the president reminded the Modi administration in a statement released after his visit to Naroda Patiya, the Haj House relief camp and the Widow House at Juhapura, for the administration to give 8216;8216;immediate attention8217;8217; to the affected people and for action to be taken 8216;8216;with alacrity8217;8217;. He also spoke of the urgent need for an 8216;8216;intensified movement to eliminate totally communal and other forms of strife8217;8217; and to bring about 8216;8216;unity of minds8217;8217;.

The president8217;s message is bound to be furiously and variously decoded. But if there is one unmistakable meaning of his Gujarat visit, it is this: even as political parties squabble over when to hold elections in Gujarat, we need to guide the focus back to the people who breathe there, in those towns and localities beyond Gandhinagar that seem to have fallen off our maps.