Sense and senescence

This indifference can go too far. As it has in the case of the health of Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. But the curtailment of his forthcoming US visit now raises questions that cannot be ignored any longer. Surely, unlike the Americans or the British, we don’t expect our leaders to jog or produce babies while in power. But if the prime minister, at age 76, keeps making last minute cancellations and adjustments in his schedule, the nation has the right to know a little bit more about the state of his health. For the record, all is well with him except a bad, arthritic knee which is only to be expected at his age, particularly as he has never been a lightweight, in any sense of the term. But over the past year there has been so little transparency about his health that the current explanations for his problems are sounding even less convincing than the RBI’s explanations for the falling rupee.

The incompetence of his many spin doctors who specialise in proffering advice to the media instead of information doesn’t help. Typical responses go something like, arre bhai, he is after all an old man, who doesn’t love to exercise. Or, he is OK, his health has given him a few problems for a decade now because, unlike Mr Advani, he doesn’t exactly suffer from good health. Or, the plain old lectures that the media should be more responsible. Do you realise the consequences of rumour-mongering on the prime minister’s health for the stock markets?

That, precisely, is the problem with lack of transparency where all rumours are believed to be true and the worst rumours obviously must be the truest. If the prime minister stumbles on one Independence Day because his foot has gone to sleep and on another because of a locked knee, and curtails two tours within a fortnight of that, you can’t blame the stock markets and the rest of us for suspecting that there is more to the PM’s problems than orthopaedics.

Those working close with him say he is as alert as ever, except he tires a bit more easily. He is, after all, not young like Blair, Putin, Clinton, Gore or Bush Jr. He has been managing with one kidney for years and the need for public visibility, which forces him to attend political weddings, parties, minor inaugurations and felicitations, puts him under enormous strain. All of this could possibly be true. But the nation, and those worldwide with an interest in India, need more convincing. At a time when transparency is the buzzword in corporate governance and the world of global investment and finance, it can’t win India much goodwill if it is seen to be more secretive over the state of its prime minister’s health than the Soviets were with Andropov or Chernenko. Or the Chinese with Deng.

Whatever his health problems, though, it is still entirely uncalled for and unfair to compare Vajpayee with Deng’s latter, sickly, reclusive but decisive years when he lent weight and momentum to the younger, reformist national leadership from behind the scenes. Vajpayee is still leading from the front, as the Indian prime minister must, but is it really fair that our system subjects people so old to such strain? Which brings us back to the old question: Why can’t Indian politics produce younger leaders? Why are we Indians so distrustful of younger politicians?

Three of our last four prime ministers have been from the 75-plus age group. If the Dynasty hadn’t planted Indira and Rajiv in the job in their respective forties, the average age of all our prime ministers in the past four decades would have been over 75, topped indeed by Morarji Desai. Many of our chief ministers and political leaders are long marchers of the same vintage. The state governors tend to go happily into the 80s and beyond but that is perhaps OK since they have so little work to do. Also, if they were younger, they’d be even more profligate and pompous. Look at some of our most important chief ministers. Parkash Singh Badal (73) had a serious liver surgery last year. Keshubhai Patel (71) has been off and on on wheelchair. Ram Prakash Gupta (76) acknowledges he cannot even remember the names of many of his own ministers. Jyoti Basu (87), if you believe the comrades, is as youthful as he was at 18, even if he is therefore a bad advertisement for teenagehood. Nayanar (81) is not even worth talkingabout. Karunanidhi (77) has defeated many serious ailments and is now fighting some more. How does this India then relate to a world changing at such a fast pace, where a Clinton would retire at the age of 53 as a two-term president almost in the same week as Vajpayee celebrates his first anniversary as prime minister in this term?

In public life, you certainly can’t hold people’s age against them. They are fit to rule as long as the voters think so. Nor is age the only determinant of good health. Far too many of our politicians nurse diabetes, coronary heart disease and hypertension from the 40s onwards. The issue, therefore, is also of fitness. For most of our politicians, exercise means, at best, a leisurely stroll in Lodhi Garden and who doesn’t know that this is more about networking and exchanging gossip with hangers-on and power-brokers rather than aerobic workouts. Even at the popular level fitness is confused with frivolity. We never stopped making fun of "babalog" Rajiv Gandhi for running down Rajpath in an ill-fitting jogsuit in the `I run for my nation’ melee. If poor Vajpayee decided to order a salad or dalia to avoid the usual, rich, banquet fare, he would be exposed to similar derision. In any case, the BJP politicians make a particularly bad case for fitness as they are constantly seen feeding one another mithai and thecustomary once-a-year picture in ill-fitting khaki shorts only compounds the irony.

It is unlikely that in most other democracies overweight, slovenly politicians would ever be voted to any office of responsibility. In India, the thickness of your medical file becomes an added qualification. Today no political party, with the exception of the Congress for obvious, dynastic reasons has any leader of national stature still in his/her fifties. There couldn’t be a sadder thought against the backdrop of the untimely death of Kumaramangalam and Pilot, two of our brightest young politicians.