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Journalism of Courage
Union Minister for Communications Ram Vilas Paswan plays the politics of patronage in a far more successful manner than most other politicians on the national scene today. When he was the Union railway minister in the I.K. Gujral Cabinet, hardly did a day go by without the honourable mantriji announcing some scheme or other to appease one lobby or the other. Indeed, rough calculations made by critics at that juncture revealed that if each one of Paswan8217;s proposed schemes were to actually fructify, it would require the outlay of several decades. Of course, the fact that many of his schemes did not measure up to the ground realities in no way derailed Paswan8217;s penchant for the grand gesture.
Old habits die hard. If the railway minister of yore was generous to a fault, the communications minister of today is raring to live up to that open-hearted/open-handed legacy. On Monday, a circular from Paswan8217;s ministry let it be known that, come June, the 3.2 lakh employees of the Department of Telecom DoT and the Department for Telecom Services DTS 8220;all serving, eligible regular employees8221; will be entitled to telephone services without having to shell out the usual registration, rental and installation charges. Further, they can each make 150 free calls during the bimonthly billing cycle. Playing Santa Claus comes for a price.
Exercises in pampering and patronising does not, in any case, necessarily lead to greater professionalism, just as ministerial largesse is quite distinct from legitimate perks. The sorry state of a public sector behemoths like Air-India testifies to this. It has been estimated that Air-India8217;s average cost per employee, which includes freebies like airline tickets and so on, is over Rs 5 lakh and over-inflated wage bills was one of the cardinal reasons why the national carrier found itself with accumulated losses to the tune of Rs 1,004 crore over the past five years.
Indeed, it would not be irrational to argue that uncalibrated generosity of the kind that Paswan seems to revel in, can often harm the people they are meant to help. After all, if the financial viability of state-run enterprises flounder, it is the employee that stands to suffer the most. For Paswan, being generous is really no big deal.
The money that makes his various acts of philanthropy possible does not come from his pocket and, besides, they help a great deal in the political popularity stakes. But a good minister must necessarily be more than a good politician. He must be an administrator too who abides by the strictest norms of accountability and husbands limited resources for the greater good of the various departments that come under him.
