INSIDE SIKKIM: IN THE NAME OF ‘DEMOCRACY’
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Inside Sikkim: Against
The Tide is a journalist’s record of a heroic attempt to keep
the flag of the Fourth Estate flying in a remote and difficult part of the
country. Jigme N. Kazi’s trials, tribulations and occasional triumphs afford a
remarkable test case for the “Freedom of the Press” in a natural environment
setting rather than in the hothouses of the metropolises. At the same time, it
brings into focus the carrot-and-stick mechanism to which media practitioners
find themselves subjected to in many developing democracies.
Democracy is a big word in Sikkim – in many
ways bigger than in other states of the Indian Union. For, it was in the name
of democracy that a protectorate monarchy was abolished and Sikkim absorbed
with so much fanfare in 1975. But, did the merger actually bring democracy to
Sikkim? If it did, it could not have come in any guise better than the travesty
which passes for that great ideal in India. In the event, every ill that
plagues the polity of the mother country is somehow exaggerated in Sikkim as if
in some burlesque.
Take corruption. Bureaucrats and politicians
get away with greased palms everywhere, but what happens in Sikkim has to be
seen to be believed. And if that government governs best which governs least,
Sikkim must be the worst governed of places. For its outsized government
overshadows everything. Big Brother-like, in a tiny State of some 400,000 souls
– comparable to many small towns. In their anxiety to make Sikkim India’s 22nd
State, the architects of the merger foisted entire ministries, secretariats, departments,
a High Court and every possible trapping of paan-stained babudom on the
unlikely setting of serene snow-capped peaks. Naturally, much of the Central
funding meant for development was swallowed up by the monster of an
unproductive government. As people sought sinecures, native skills such as in
woodcraft, weaving and horticulture died out, making dependence on the jealous
and unforgiving monster complete.
With little incentive to be productive the
government, instead of being a catalyst for development, became a mere
distributor of Central largesse – either as salaries and benefits to supplicant
employees or through contracts to the favoured. It did not take long for Sikkim
to turn into a breeding ground par
excellence for that pernicious sort of vested interest that both feeds and feed
on tyranny.
A case so bad that the Assembly elections of
November 1989 could be brazenly rigged to grab each and every one of the seats
and the results claimed as a sign of popularity of leadership entering its
third straight term. A lid was swiftly put on public protest. Representatives
of the National Press, who witnessed the farce, such as myself, were told to
leave in no uncertain terms. Jigme’s attempts to keep his highly credible
Sikkim Observer going in the months after such enormity was like the proverbial
battle between the elephant and the ant.
Inside Sikkim: Against The Tide is
much more than a journalist’s log. It is a status report on politics in Sikkim
half a generation into the merger. It chronicles the role of crusty old Indian
civil servants who, long after the departure of the British, got their chance
to do a Colonial Blimp on a helpless little principality, complete with the
bullying, obfuscation and “fair-play.” The mess they left behind is tangible in
the multi-storeyed buildings that crowd each other off the Gangtok hillsides as
the excrescence of diverted funds. Also in the abject misery of the people the
funds were diverted from – presenting Indian-style ‘development’ at its worst.
The book appears at a critical juncture in
the history of the Indian Union and in the shorter history of Sikkim as a
member. At a time when serious questions are being raised on Kashmir’s
legally-correct accession to India, the annexation of Sikkim does not even have
a fig leaf. China is yet to accord recognition for the merger of this strategic
trip of high ridges with which it has a border as also has two other countries.
More pressingly Sikkim has become a natural destination for millions of
uncategorised Nepalese-speaking people pouring into the North Indian terai,
Bhutan and the Assam valley and altering the demographics. What such a large
floating group can do to tiny Sikkim with its minuscule population does not
require any great feat of imagination.
But, forgotten in the games being played out
on the far Himalayan slopes are the interests of the indigenous Lepchas,
Bhutias, Limbus, Rais and genuine Sikkimese Nepalese, clamouring for what was
promised to them on merger – protection from being submerged. More than
anything else, Inside Sikkim: Against The Tide is the articulation of that
clamour.
Ranjit Devraj
Correspondent
United News of India
(UNI)
(Ref: Inside Sikkim: Against the
Tide, Jigme N. Kazi, Hill Media Publications, Gangtok, 1993.)
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