Opinion Bumbling power

Sir Antony Jay, co-creator of the iconic British comedy Yes Minister and its sequel Yes Prime Minister passed away on August 21. The programme, which has been playing intermittently on televisions across the world since it was first telecast through the 1980s, found resonance, including in India, because it managed to present the politician as we had never seen him before — as hapless underdog.

The trials of Jim Hacker, MP, as he tries to get the job done as the minister for administrative affairs despite the machinations of Permanent Secretary Sir Humphrey Appleby, tell us a truth about power. It need not lie with the politician, who is after all just one of the people, but rather with the babu, who is guaranteed a job for more than an election term and has a permanent stake in the status quo. Sir Humphrey manages, more often than not, to control Hacker through a combination of jargon and the conviction that politicians are not too bright. “Why can’t ministers go anywhere without briefs (from civil servants)?” asks a frustrated Hacker in one episode. “It’s in case they get caught with their trousers down,” replies his secretary. In the world of Antony Jay and his co-creator Jonathan Lynn, the corridors of power are not filled with conspiracy and villainy, but the studied inaction of the old boys club that is the civil service and politicians desperate not to upset any of the multiple interests that could cost them an election. The theme of the babu controlling the mantri, unsurprisingly, found resonance in India and we had our own version of the show — Ji Mantriji — starring Farooq Sheikh and Jayant Kriplani.

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Now, in the age of chest-thumping figures like Donald Trump, the idea of a soft, malleable politician may seem like an anachronism. But at least in India, Sir Antony’s image of the officious civil servant resistant to reform will still get laughs for some time to come.