Elections, politics and black money

According to one estimate, till February 5 in UP alone, the EC nabbed Rs 32 crore of unaccounted cash, Rs 12.3 crore from Punjab, R1.35 crore from Uttarakhand, R47 lakh from Manipur and R36 lakh from Goa.

Elections now do not mean the spending of crores, but of multiples of crores.

When I read those figures, I was reminded of an election episode in UP of 75 years ago.

It has been recounted by Lal Bahadur Shastri in a 1959 tribute to Jawaharlal Nehru:

“The general elections under the new Government of India Act took place in 1937; they were of great significance. In these elections Nehru played a very important role. I remember his visit to the district of Allahabad. It was about 8.30 pm when he finished his speech…

Nehru had taken no tea in the afternoon and… he was feeling very hungry. He asked me whether there was any restaurant in the city… I remembered the railway station where some tea could be got. He said: “Let us go there.” We motored to the railway station and went to the railway restaurant…

After having taken the tea we were asked to pay the bill. Everyone of us searched his pockets and found that none of us carried sufficient money. Between us we could collect about R2.50. Nehru had about a R1.25. Purnima Banerjee another rupee and I gave the few annas to complete the full amount required.

How awkward would it have been if we had failed to make up the amount among ourselves!” 

Seventy-five years is not all that long ago. That is, we are not talking of the 1800s. And we are talking of people whose names are invoked in today’s election campaigns.

Money played a part in elections even then, but by and large it was licit money, modest money. It was money, not the monster called black money.

Gopalkrishna Gandhi in Hindustan Times. Here

A Prime Minister who paid when sons used official car

At a time when Indian politicians make news for corruption and misuse of power comes a book on Lal Bahadur Shastri, the country's second prime minister who was so upright that he deposited money in government coffers because his sons had used his official car.

The incident has been captured in the book 'Lal Bahadur Shastri: Past Forward' (Konark) by his son Sunil Shastri, a Congress politician and a former minister in Uttar Pradesh.

Sunil Shastri says he used to imagine having a big luxury car commensurate with the status of his 'babuji'(father) and Lal Bahadur Shastri did get a Chevrolet Impala for official use.

"One day I told babuji's personal secretary to ask the driver to bring the Chevrolet to the residence. We asked the driver for the keys and went for a drive," he says in the book.

Lal Bahadur Shastri later confronted the driver, saying, "Do you keep a logbook with you?" "When he nodded, babuji asked him to note the distance the car had run the previous day. When the driver said 14 km, he advised him to note it 'for private use' and then asked amma to give his personal secretary the amount applicable to be deposited in the government account."

Lal Bahadur Shastri ruled from June 1964 to January 1966, dying in Tashkent where he had gone to sign a treaty with Pakistan after the 1965 war.

The book is replete with instances of how the late Shastri lived - and the values he embraced and preached.

The son recalls how Lal Bahadur Shastri had shed tears upon meeting an Indian soldier badly wounded in the 1965 war with Pakistan.

"I don't have tears in my eyes because my death is near ... but despite being a major I am not able to stand up and salute my prime minister," the younger Shastri quotes the soldier, who was on a hospital bed, as saying.

And then it was the prime minister who could not control his own emotions. That was the only time he saw his father cry, says his son.

There are many interesting anecdotes on Shastri in the book.

Lal Bahadur Shastri was told by his mother of his marriage in May 1928 only after he reached Varanasi. "He was surprised and told his mother that she should have at least asked him once before finalising it. Anyhow since his mother had decided, he said he would abide by her wishes."

When Lal Bahadur Shastri's wife decided to learn Hindi, she paid the tuition fees by dispensing with the domestic maid and doing the household chores herself.

Lal Bahadur Shastri often handed over to his wife his khadi kurtas when they became unusable and asked her to make handkerchiefs out of them. "He lived on the simple philosophy of 'waste not, want not'."

In true Gandhian style, Lal Bahadur Shastri travelled like a commoner in trains even when he was railway minister. "He lived according to his principles."

During the independence struggle, Lal Bahadur Shastri protested when his wife smuggled two mangoes to him when he was in the Faizabad prison. He was angry because it was illegal for prisoners to have anything other than jail food.

Despite his preoccupations as prime minister, Lal Bahadur Shastri was a family man who devoted time to his mother and others when he returned home. It helped him get over the day's fatigue and worries.

A report in Deccan Chronicle. More Here.