The latest farce being enacted by the government at the Centre is structured around ?courier services?. The government, in its non-democratic draft bill to be placed in parliament, would like to disallow all courier services and revert to the postal service alone. This, in 2006. Why is Manmohan Singh?s government, with all that endless talk about growing the service sector, restructuring the economy, bringing in FDI in retail et al, reverting to the past when addressing courier services? What do we have to do to ensure that India does not slide backwards into the days when runners carried missives? Is this how the government wants to handle the problem of employment? This surely is the theatre of the absurd.

Instead of bringing in legislation that compels courier services to adhere to some norms, this ?progressive? cabinet is regressing by trying to ban private communication. It is akin to those distant days in the former Soviet Union when travel and tourism were organized by a state-run agency, inefficient and corrupt. Scary. Doctor sahib, please ensure that your state-run postal service is efficient and can compete with private courier companies. Please do not kill competition to protect ineptitude, or impose the burden of non-function upon us just when we were beginning to operate normally. Because we pay for the services we need, we will make demands on that sector. Just leave the service sector alone. Regulate it sensibly. Learn that lesson from the United States. It is less political than some of the recent influences that are being brought into play and far more constructive for growth and development. Please concentrate on building the infrastructure for India and her exploited people. That is the role of government.

Leave services alone

If this foolish draft act goes through the parliament it will be yet another example of how unthinking our elected representatives are. Why not consider banning cell phones and revert to paying bribes to get a landline, discontinuing all private television channels and turning Doordarshan into the only black-and-white mouthpiece of the ruling party, putting everyone back into the Morris car, ordering women to cover their faces, stopping all secular marriages, but endorsing bribery, corruption, murder, rape, molestation, harassment, lunatic driving, pissing publicly at every wall, stealing of electricity, encroachment on forests and in the city, only because the authority benefits from all that? How? Because all wrongdoing leaves an open door for extortion.

Many of us believed that the coalition, led by a great man and some highly accomplished colleagues, would put their money where their mouth is and resume the process of cleansing. Instead, they seem to take instructions from those who they believe are ?all powerful?, succumb to extraneous pressures in their desperation to remain in power, are unable to stand by what they claim they believe in, and have now begun to tinker with all that works without them and their needling. Is this what the new millennium has in store for us? Why is this government destroying the ethos of Rajiv Gandhi and all that he wanted to put in place to make India a contemporary power? Why indulge in false adulation of an erstwhile leader who wanted to break loose and move ahead, particularly in the service sector? Why the hypocrisy?

This speaks of insecurity. Rather than move backwards and damage this nation and its population of young, energetic, under-40 Indians, it makes more sense to dissolve the parliament and go to the polls. The Congress should free itself from constant ?blackmail? and have faith in itself and ask the people for a stronger mandate. State elections will be won by regional parties. Jayalalithaa will sweep Tamil Nadu, the CPI(M) will retain Bengal and so on. The Congress should make a bid for Central rule.