How much weight can you lift? If you are strong, you may
lift 50-100 Kgs. Even Hossein Rezazadeh of Iran who holds the world records for
lifting weight could lift only 472 kgs.
Now suppose you wish to lift a weight of a ton (1000 Kgs) or may be a hundred
tons? If you commit the mistake of lifting the entire weight alone, you are
likely to be totally crushed under the weight.
Yet any amount of weight can be lifted if you have the
support of a large number of people and you have the powerful machines like
cranes with you for assistance.
Sometimes, political leaders, in order to reach to the
people try to lift the entire weight of the administration on their shoulders which is other held by thousands
of people in the Government. Recently, Arvind
Kejriwal government organized ‘janata durbar’ (public hearing) on the streets
across the Delhi Secretariat where many thousands people gathered to submit their
complaints to the Chief Minster directly. The result was a scene of utter chaos
with uncontrollable crowds thronging the venue. The Chief Minister had to
disappear on the advice of the Delhi Police, leaving his Cabinet colleagues to
handle the swelling crowd.
Great works can never
be performed by a single person. An old Hindi song says “Sathi hath badhana. Ek
Akela Thak Jayega, Mil Kar Jor Lagana” (Friends extend your hands for support.
One person will get tired. Let’s all work together).
However, in order to ensure many people to work together,
you need trust. If you believe that other people are not trustworthy, corrupt and inefficient; you can never take
them along with you and perform great task. A Chief Minster (CM) is supported
by a large number of officers and staff and many of them are competent and
willing to work with the CM for the welfare of the people.
It would be better that each person is made responsible for
his job and each Head of Department must take responsibility of his/her department.
They may conduct public meetings every day or every week to listen to grievance
of the people. They may be directed to solve the problems within stipulated
time of say 15 days- 1 month. If the problems are not solved within the period,
the aggrieved public can appear before the public meeting of the concerned
Minister. When even Minister is not able to solve the problem, then the citizen
must approach in the Janata Darbar of the Chief Minister. In the process, it
should be ensured that the officers/staff who deliberately delay the work or
refuse to do the work as per the law are punished severely.
A prudent approach is required to solve the problems of
people, which is enormous. It may be dangerous to increase the expectation of
people to a level which can’t be met by any human effort.
Why does a chief minister of a city-state like Delhi need to sit in the middle of the road to hear the public? Is the CM a beaucrat who has to deal with applications? Or does he consider himself the final court of appeal capable of dispensing justice at the push of a button? If the answer to any of these is yes, we need a re-poll in Delhi. In a thriving democracy, with a huge executive, if an aam aadmi has to travel right up to the chief minister, it indicts the entire system for failure. It shows that every tier of executive has become dysfunctional. Frankly, what is it that Kejriwal is trying to achieve except some publicity and TV time? It would be insane to believe that he would be able to solve every petitioner’s problem just by personally hearing him. Instead of forcing people to jostle with each other for a minute with him, Kejriwal should ideally work on strengthening the existing system. The focus should be on ensuring that problems are solved at the lowest level of the administrative hierarchy. Instead of making people come to his door, Kejriwal should create a system where the administration goes to the aam aadmi to solve his problem. Kejriwal needs to repair the existing pyramid, instead of turning it upside down. Even if he is keen on interacting with his janata, Kejriwal should use technology—heard of emails, text messages, helplines?—instead of sticking to ideas that looked innovative 500 years ago.
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