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Journalism of Courage
General S.K. Sinha is a man of strong and articulate opinion. He is also well-acquainted with the demands of life in Raj Bhavan, having held a string of governorships in his long and varied public life. Therefore, he must know the curbs on freely expressed interventions his office imposes on him. As governor in Jammu and Kashmir, the responsibilities that come with the office are especially complex. There exists in the state a particular arrangement of security and military agencies. As the Centre8217;s man in the state, he must keep an especially keen eye on governance and law and order. But as the governor of a state with a fully elected government, he must act upon his concerns within the bipartisanship of his office and without undermining the government8217;s primacy in making policy statements.
This week, by heartily echoing in public Chief Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad8217;s rejection of demands for troop reduction in the state, Sinha failed his duty. Troop reduction is the overt issue on which friction between Azad8217;s Congress and its coalition partner, Mufti Mohammed Sayeed8217;s PDP, is playing out in public. By calling the PDP8217;s demand for demilitarisation 8220;incomprehensible8221; and 8220;obnoxious8221;, Sinha has dived into a political issue. His intervention comes less than a week after his counterpart in West Bengal, Gopal Krishna Gandhi, appeared to criticise the state government for not only its handling of tensions in Nandigram but also for the quality of its economic policy.
