Should UP Chief Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav have gone to Nithari immediately after the ghoulish crime was laid bare? Why doesn’t he go there now? That these questions are raising their head above the horror of the revelations of the evil at Nithari, and the systemic corruption that allowed it to flourish, speaks of a syndrome. The problem is not that we expect the physical presence of our elected leaders at the scene of crime or disaster. It is, instead, that we invest the gesture with such excessive importance that it begins to look like the primary response that we demand from politician or government. The syndrome is completed when the politician flourishes the pious photo-op at the site of crime or disaster to cover up his or her failure to deliver a more meaningful response. Nithari demands a systemic correction, no less. It is irrelevant whether or not Mulayam Singh Yadav visits that village.Nithari demands, as our columnist today argues, a concerted investigation into the many complicities that allowed it to happen. The criminally corrupt police force which refused to register the FIRs. The unscrupulous politician who winked at a force that did not perform its duty as long as it was compliant to his agenda. The alienated and apathetic people who lived in the large bungalows in which the poor residents of Nithari worked but to whom they could not turn to for help when their child disappeared. While the politics of gestures has a place in a democracy, it would be belittling Nithari’s tragedy to suggest that weak palliatives like VIP visits can make a difference.Then there is the sheer inconvenience and disruption that any VIP visit causes to people who are trying to pick up the pieces of their lives in the aftermath of tragedy, and worse, to the investigation that may still be afoot. At Nithari, it is suspected that many vital pieces of evidence may have been lost already because of police callousness and ineptitude. More must not be overlooked or lost because the energies of the administration are taken up with the management of the terrific paraphernalia that accompanies even the minor VIP in our country. Nithari needs Yadav to get on with his job as chief minister, the photo-op must wait.
