All governments keep some pretty little secrets which never come out in the public domain. These are sacred secrets. Those who try to infringe on these, are made to go in the oblivion without any news reports covering them. It is pretty common like this, in most parts of the world. But such schemes were never threatened in the way they are being made so thanks to the Wiki Leaks and one brave man called Julian Paul Assange.
Recently, WikiLeaks has made a very important revelation which raises the curtains from over the way govt of India works. Here is what the Telegraph India writes in its news title “CPM smirks at US pressure ‘leaks’”.
A cable the US embassy sent to Washington in 2005 described M.K. Narayanan’s appointment as national security adviser as an addition to the “Keralite mafia” in the PMO. Narayanan is now Bengal governor.
“Along with principal secretary T.K.A. Nair, Narayanan constitutes what is now a Keralite ‘mafia’ in the PMO,” the cable said.
It added: “In a bureaucratic culture dominated by north Indian Hindi speakers, this Keralite lock on the PM’s inner bureaucratic circle represents something of an anomaly, which could in the long term create new fault lines around the Prime Minister.”
The controversy over the appointment of chief vigilance commissioner P.J. Thomas, who too is from Kerala, has had many in government circles talking about how some of India’s top bureaucrats, particularly in the PMO, are from Kerala.
Among the Keralites in the PMO are current national security adviser Shiv Shankar Menon and additional secretary R. Gopalakrishnan. The other senior bureaucrats from the southern state include foreign secretary Nirupama Rao and home secretary G.K. Pillai.
Also read: Narayanan plays down Wikileaks revelations: ET
In a way these revelations are not new to the political analysts. It has long been observed how Keralites were given priority in key roles in governments. To some extent I think it was happening because of the very talent, skills and character which Keralites brought on the board. Even though it is a generalization, but Keralites are always appreciated for their professionalism, and unbiased nature on most of the politically sensitive issues, apart from being intelligent and headstrong. But things as it seems didn’t remain unadulterated for long. When you generalize or label one particular group with some quality, the worst among the lot take advantage of the labeling to get some selfish motives fulfilled. As it happened in the case of CVC Mr. Thomas, on which Dr. Singh relied without even slightest doubts, all leading to his own humiliation by the Supreme Court (also remember my blog post challenging Kerala IAS Association of supporting tainted CVC Mr. Thomas all as a display of regional chauvinism and bias). If people are granted critical positions on the basis of something other than pure merit, the system degrades.
So the the US embassy’s observations indeed hold water. In my opinion there is no doubt on that. But I am actually worried if India and Indian media would miss the case because of the provocative title given to the lot: “Keralite Mafia”. (Reminds me of ‘Italian’ Mafia). Even the true mafia doesn’t want to call them a mafia, and to call someone so is now almost politically incorrect. So if the embassy chose some other term to describe the phenomenon, may be a nexus, group, or whatever – it would have made a stronger case to shake the polit-circles. (But in personal communications, which never imagine to be made out in the open by WikiLeaks, we are bound to be ‘honest’ and choose whatever fits our thinking better
So all I want to say at this stage is: forget the provocative term “mafia”, and think over the pattern!
