The United Progressive Alliance government at the Centre has announced a Rs 6,234-crore package for 1.3 million weavers in the country. This will directly involve about 200,000 weavers in poll-bound Uttar Pradesh. The move was an immediate follow-up to the letter written by Congress General Secretary Rahul Gandhi to Commerce and Industry Minister Anand Sharma, who holds additional charge of the textiles ministry. Interestingly, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee had announced a Rs 3,000-crore debt waiver package for weavers in his Budget speech in February this year. It took Mr Gandhi’s letter to actually implement the promise made by the finance minister.
This has sent out a clear signal: Mr Gandhi is your leader and he can get things done for you. It may be recalled that Mr Gandhi’s support for the national rural employment guarantee scheme was needed in ensuring its expeditious enactment. Similar things happened during the impasse over the Lok Pal Bill and now it has happened again for the weavers. There is nothing in the public domain that suggests that Mr Gandhi had proposed these as his original ideas; but there is enough in the public domain to suggest that it helps to have him on your side. Was Mr Sharma waiting for Mr Gandhi to publicly ask for the loan waiver, already announced by the finance minister many months ago, to implement this largesse so that the Uttar Pradesh weavers would know that it was Mr Gandhi and not Mr Mukherjee who was responsible for them getting what they got? Surely it must have been noticed when the Budget speech was being written that the weavers were in trouble. The obvious question, then, is, why the delay? Moreover, why did Mr Gandhi have to act as the trigger?
This incident could be a good example of why an increasing number of people have come to distrust the motivations of even well-meaning politicians. If the weavers’ community was in crisis in February, and the government knew it, why should it wait till November for a letter to implement something that has already been promised? Mr Sharma insists that it is not a political gimmick timed perfectly before Uttar Pradesh goes into election mode; however, for people to accept that explanation, it may be more important for him to explain why the implementation of the package took so long. This event is actually a pointer to why many feel that the government is in recess. Senior and important ministers, along with their well-trained and well-meaning officials, are unable to do something for more than six months; a particular person says something and it takes less than 48 hours to be implemented! What one needs to do, therefore, is not waste one’s time in public debate but simply spend time and energy to convince Mr Gandhi of what one thinks must be done. If Mr Gandhi agrees, one can be reasonably sure that his wishes would be fulfilled. The added bonus, of course, is that it also makes Mr Gandhi a leader, something towards which everyone seems to be working. Business schools offer a lot of courses on how to be a leader. Our politicians and upholders of democracy need to give lectures on how to make a leader.