Why do politicians talk so much? It could be that their running commentary on every subject under the sun is their chief stock in trade. For what is a politician worth without his sayings and doings being widely reported to the public? Still, being vocal and voluble are not at all the same thing. Soon after one minister, Shashi Tharoor, has lost his job, with his verbal indiscretions exacerbating more serious misdemeanours, we have another, Jairam Ramesh, who could lose his because of shooting from the lip.
Political capitals like New Delhi have always thrived on loose talk. It used to be that yesterday’s rumour or off-the-cuff remark took time to develop into a juicy front page headline; but the age of the ubiquitous TV camera, the condensed, crunchy, 30-second soundbite and raised decibels of studio debates, has loosened tongues promiscuously.
It is not merely what politicians say but how they say it — and the speed with which their utterances are conveyed to a vast public via the new media — that has changed the rules of the game. Consider Jairam Ramesh’s use of hyperbolic adjectives, from Beijing to Bhopal: he thinks the home ministry is “paranoid”, “alarmist” and “imagining demons” about security clearance for Chinese investors in India; he thinks convocation gowns are “barbaric” and “colonial relics” at university ceremonies.
For a man of remarkable and multiple talents (an IIT and management graduate, an experienced Planning Commission and ministry technocrat, a key election strategist for the Congress party, assured columnist and wit credited with coining the term “Chindia”), where did Ramesh lose the art of understatement? And after all these years of regular interaction with the media, for him to argue that his remarks to journalists in China were “off the record” is like a born-again virgin claiming an immaculate conception.
When political leaders make challenging remarks about party colleagues, there is often a strategic motive. When Digvijay Singh accused P Chidambaram of being “extremely rigid” and “intellectually arrogant” after the Dantewada Maoist massacre, his purpose was clearly to guard his turf in Madhya Pradesh and Chattisgarh and pander to a large tribal constituency. But Jairam Ramesh, a Rajya Sabha member from Andhra Pradesh, has no such constituency, and with a re-election due next month, should have known better, in the context of Tharoor’s ouster and the prime minister ordering his Cabinet to hold their tongues. (Mani Shankar Aiyar’s assertion that he agreed with Digvijay Singh “one lakh per cent” was okay because, having lately been elected to the Rajya Sabha, he has but little to lose.)
Why, then, do ministers like Ramesh and Tharoor talk so much and out of turn? There can be two possible answers. One is overweening confidence. The false sense of security and comfort that high office induces must have an emboldening effect: that you can dish it out and get away with it as and when you please. For instance, it is widely assumed in Delhi that the departure of diplomat Shyam Saran, the PM’s adviser on climate change, after the Copenhagen summit was principally due to differences between him and Ramesh. Ramesh may have won that round but could he go on winning?
And there is another thing, and that is the ethos known as “Congress culture”. It is a mode of political practice that is essentially conservative, sternly hierarchical and often hypocritical. It adheres to a pecking order and style defined by subservience; everything else is liable to be construed as dissidence. Like a Victorian dinner table, Congress culture prefers that younger members be seen and speak mainly when spoken to. However much we may personally agree that gowns and mortarboards are obsolete or that Gandhi would have liked us to work on his birthday rather than take the day off, it’s not what Congress party elders like hearing from Ramesh and Tharoor.
