By M D Nalapat
The
Rashtrapati Bhawan complex ought to house the offices and residences of
the Prime Minister and Ministers of Home, Finance, External Affairs
and Defence.
It
is doubtful that Mahatma Gandhi would have approved of the first
President of India and his successors taking up residence in what had
been christened by its builders as the Viceregal Palace. The colonial
masters of India wished to overawe the natives, hence the magnificence
of the Viceregal abode. However, a post-colonial Head of State ought to
reside in quarters that are more congruent with the reality of India
being among the poorest countries of the globe in per capita terms. This
columnist welcomes the naming of Bihar Governor R.N. Kovind as the NDA
candidate for President of India. The only stone thrown at him is that
he was reported as opposing the effort by some within those communities
to allow “Christian Backwards and Dalits” as also “Muslim Dalits and
Backwards” to compete for the quota reserved for Backward Classes and
Dalits. Such protagonists insult the Christian and Muslim faiths,
neither of which stands for the scientifically unsound notion of “caste
due to the accident of birth” within their theologies. Governor Kovind
must not be faulted for pointing this out.
However, choosing a proper successor to
Pranab Mukherjee is not enough. What needs to also get done, and indeed
what ought to have been done on 15 August 1947 was to ensure that the
Head of State of free India make as his or her official residence a
complex of structures, other than what was till then the hub of
Government of India. It is incorrect to say that the Viceregal Palace
was the residence of the Head of State, for that role belonged to the
British monarch. If the native successors to the British colonial
authorities wanted the incoming Head of State to reside in the same
accommodations as used by their predecessors in the UK, they ought to
have put in a bid for Buckingham Palace. The fact is that the present
Rashtrapati Bhawan was the seat of the Government of India, and in a
democracy, this is led by an authority elected by the people, rather
than chosen in an indirect manner the way the President of India has
been and will be. The function of the complex of structures known
collectively as Rashtrapati Bhawan should, therefore, be to serve as the
hub of governance in the country. This implies that the complex ought
to house the offices and the residences of the Prime Minister as well as
the Ministers of Home, Finance, External Affairs and Defence. The Big
Five of the Government of India should live and work in the present
Rashtrapati Bhawan complex, so that it functions 24/7 as the vortex of
the administration. This would be on the lines of Zhongnanhai in Beijing
and the Kremlin in Moscow. Another sprawling government-owned mansion
could be set aside for the President of India. Whether by design or by
the tendency of the bureaucracy to abhor change, the former Viceregal
Palace has continued to be occupied by this country’s Heads of State
after the Mountbattens left, when its role ought to have been to house
the core of the administration in India, i.e., the Prime Minister and
his or her five key ministers.
"Rashtrapati Bhawan should function on the lines of Zhongnanhai and Kremlin. Another sprawling mansion could be set aside for President of India."
Such a move would of course be opposed by
the denizens of the Lutyens Zone, who would be concerned that their own
nests of privilege may be at risk, were such a change to get effected.
They have ignored the poverty of India in, for example, the conversion
into memorials of state-provided residences after the passing of those
residing in them. Certainly Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi and Lal
Bahadur Shastri merit memorials and even museums. However, these should
not be in their places of stay while in high office. There is no logic
in freezing the utilisation of pricey state assets in a manner
reminiscent of the Mughal fetish of dotting Delhi with tombs. Instead,
what needs to be done is for the memorials and museums to be located
elsewhere, and funded, not out of the exchequer, but from private
pockets. In the US, successive Presidents have established libraries in
their name, but these have overwhelmingly been privately funded. When
some VVIPs passed on, their official residences got converted into
memorials. Were that to be standard practice at the Vatican after the
demise of a pontiff, by now the whole of Rome would have been covered
with former papal residences. As in the US or the UK, the official
residences of the highest officials should be marked with permanence
rather than be as subject to change as they have been in India.
The Rashtrapati Bhawan complex could be
renamed Lok Kalyan Bhawan once it houses the Big Five in the Union
Council of Ministers, while the present residence of the Prime Minister
(7 Racecourse Road, now 7 Lok Kalyan Marg) could be converted into a
residential complex for other Cabinet-level individuals, while the Prime
Minister (for reasons of administrative convenience and security) and
his four key ministers stay and work within the present Rashtrapati
Bhawan complex, which needs to return to its original role of housing
the highest decision-making levels within the Central government. The
fiction that it is the President of India, rather than the Union
Cabinet, who takes the decisions issued in the name of the Head of State
is similar to the practice followed by Westminster. The beating heart
of the Government of India comprises the Prime Minister and his key
Cabinet colleagues, and it is they who ought to reside in the complex of
structures atop Raisina Hill that would once again form the core of
governance in India rather than remain a ceremonial abode.
No comments:
Post a Comment