Long long ago, the Chief Minister of a southern state of India got a complaint from his one of his party leaders about the police chief. He immediately called the police chief and this leader and had them sit across each other to state their respective views. It became abundantly clear that the party leader was wrong and the police chief was right. The Chief Minister immediately asked his party leader to apologise to the police chief and get out of his office to do his work !! Just imagine the scene in today’s world :):)
Another police related incident, was when his party workers were creating a ruckus and the police didn’t take any action because there were senior party officials involved. He asked the police why they were hesitating and was told that senior folk from his party were involved, to which he said, go ahead and follow the law, put whoever it is behind bars if they violate the law .. Sounds strange, right ?
The same Chief Minister willingly gave up his post after 9 years because he wanted to work for the people and his party as a regular functionary and someone else to have a chance to be the Chief Minister. Infact he suggested to the then Prime Minister to implement this as a plan in all places so that people don’t get stuck to the trappings of power. Unbelievable in today’s context !
The same man was the President of the largest national party at that time and had to meet the President of India for some work. He does his meeting with the President and comes out to find his driver out for lunch. Not wanting to disturb his driver, he looks around and finds a gardner’s cycle and requests him to loan it to him for sometime, pedals off back to his office….. Arvind Kejriwal should adopt this man as his mentor 🙂
The book called “Team of rivals” became very popular as President Barack Obama spoke of it when he became the President of the United States of America. The book talks of how Lincoln put his strong detractors in positions of power because he knew they had the right skills for the job and the country needed them. I don’t think the book got published during this Chief Minister’s time, but he got two of his arch rivals to hold important portfolios in his government because they had the necessary skills for the job.
When this leader died, they realised that he owed a couple of month’s rent to the landlord and the then Chief Minister paid off the dues… No Swiss accounts and no one could dare use the word corruption even from miles away for this leader.
This Chief Minister and tall leader is very much an Indian, did not enjoy formal schooling but was a truly educated man, spent nearly 8 years in all in jail during the freedom movement, was a “Kingmaker”, helped elevate the current Congress President’s mom-in-law to the PM’s post, 44 years old when India became independent and will forever be a hero amongst men is K.Kamaraj.
All that the current Congress party has to do is turn the pages of its history and look inside it’s forgotten archives to find role models like Kamaraj, but it won’t. Yesterday the Delhi CM sat in protest on the roads, yes, dramatic actions are needed to shake our system out of its deep sleep, but read our history, learn other ways of bringing about change as well. I do want to thank a reader of my other blog for inspiring this blog by saying South Indians are usually not nationalistic – I didn’t take offence, because our history has been re-written incorrectly and we do tend to go with recent impressions.
The foundation of India is filled with the bones of such men as Kamaraj – now we are just looking for architects and masons who can build the tallest possible nation the world had seen, it will just be reclaiming our rightful position in the world. Jai Hind.
Read more about Kamaraj on these links –
Good one… I would Ask Mr Kejriwal also to look at these aspects and drop his activist hat and put on his governance hat.
Madam I think it’s not fair to compare politicians with the kind of exposure we have now which was beyond imagination back then. It’ll be good to consider their lifestyle as a benchmark to work,as you have suggested but it’ll not work as all the politicians are driven towards their development than the country. Forgive me if am wrong