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By M.V. Kamath
India in Slow Motion by Mark Tully; Viking, an imprint of Penguin Books, Delhi; pp. 302; Rs 450
In the living rooms of middle-class homes in Delhi, Mark Tully is a name quickly and easily recognised. For long, Tully was the BBC'sman in India, one who was born in the country and knew it as much as any foreigner could. As reporter, he was considered to be both knowledgeable and objective; Tully was to resign his job, prestigious as it was, but his decision to stay on in Delhi has endeared him to Indians who have accepted him as one of them.
Even after his ?retirement?, Tully continues to work as a journalist, making a living as a writer. India in Slow Motion is his latest work, written in cooperation with his colleague and partner Gillian Wright. It is a highly critical study of India at various levels. In order to write it, Tully and his colleague travelled widely throughout India to observe life at first hand. In the course of their wanderings, Tully and Wright were to visit Ayodhya, Goa, Hyderabad, Gujarat in western India and also to meet a varied list of people including princes, priests and politicians.
This book registers their findings. The stories in this book says Tully in his introduction, ?tell not just of bad governance, but of the reasons for it and also of those who are battling against it. We do not suggest that bad governance is the root of all India'sproblems but, unlike so many of the more exotic diagnoses, there can be no doubt that it'sa brake, slowing down a country with enormous but unrealised potential.? Briefly put, that is the main theme of the book and if it makes painful reading, one supposes it is because Tully and Wright are telling the truth as they see it.
Tully reports what he sees and hears. And he hears a lot from a varied set of people that include a professor at the Indian Institute of Technology in Delhi, a pujari in Ayodhya, a chairman of a Mirzapur-based carpet manufacturing company, an ?investigative journalist? working for Tehelka, a Catholic priest in Goa, Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh Chandrababu Naidu, none less than the distinguished Muslim scholar Maulana Wahid-ud-din Khan, farmers in Karnataka, Sant Bux Singh, a Congress MP and the brother of an ex-Indian Prime Minister, the editor of a Gujarati daily and some politicians in Jammu and Kashmir?in sum, a motley lot, probably as representative of India as anyone can possibly be.
Tully'saccount is descriptive and factual. He is both the camera and the tape recorder. He seldom goes behind what he sees and hears. Statements are sometimes made with no conscious efforts at backgroun-ding. For the RSS, Tully writes for instance, India'spast is a story of humiliation by foreign rulers and the future lies with a united militant Hinduism. Right? Wrong? The reader is left to arrive at his own conclusion. Some quotes Tully repeats are banal. He is told: ?In India no one likes to see anyone going ahead. They will always try to pull him down.? Stuff and nonsense. On another occasion Tully writes: ?But gratitude is not a stable currency in Indian politics.? Really? Is the currency any different in England or France or Italy or anywhere else? On yet another occasion, Tully has a gentle dig at Indian customs: A guest retires to his bedroom immediately after dinner. Tully'scomment: ?This is not discourteous but just normal practice in India today?drink hard, eat late and then leave.? Yet another gem: ?In India, words often don'tmean quite what they appear to mean…? Yet another gem of wisdom: ?In Indian politics, the enemy within is often more dangerous than the enemy without.? Tully has a whole lot to say about Indian administration and administrators. Though Tully considers Chandrababu Naidu as a ?humourless man? and not a patch on Rajiv Gandhi who ?had all the charm in the world?, he nevertheless is all admiration for the youthful (former) Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh for bringing hi-tech in the running of the administration.
For the Indian Administra-tive Service, however, Tully has no kind word. And no doubt quite justifiably. Of the IAS in Andhra Pradesh, he writes: ?Not surprisingly, the problems with the senior staff, especially the members of the elite Indian Administrative Service, were mainly to do with saving face.?
And what about intellec-tuals? Says Tully: ?Their contribution to the sense of inferiority which has led so many Indians to expect nothing better of their country than the present corrupt and moribund system of governance is considerable.?
And probably no truer words have ever been said of them. The chapter on Water Harvesters: the place Gujarat?is revealing in many ways. Tully writes about a village called Rajsamdhiyala and how the Gram Panchayat functioned there. It is great reportage. One gets an intimate knowledge of grass-roots government, of how villagers, left to themselves can run their affairs efficiently if somewhat ruthlessly. One chapter is devoted to Jammu and Kashmir. Tully spares no one. He writes: ?But the mistakes India has made in administering Kashmir have been force multipliers.? According to him, ?Indira Gandhi didn'tbother with any pretensions to secularism.? Disapprovingly Tully writes how ?she made an all-out bid for the Hindu majority in Jammu region? where she ?mounted a blatantly communal campaign?. Of Sheikh Abdullah, Tully says, that while ?it would be naive to deny that the ?Lion of Kashmir? had proved an easy man to deal with… there was no hard evidence to prove the allegations that he had changed his mind about Pakistan or intended to demand total independence.? In this matter, Tully is either poorly informed or does not want to face the truth.
What, in the end, are Tully'sviews on India? India, says Tully, ?is often likened to an elephant lumbering along, unstoppable, but never going anywhere fast.? But does that mean that the elephant has to be shackeld to the neta-babu raj? Tully feels that the neta-babu raj ?may well gradually wither away? but sounds not too sure about it, considering that ?politicians don'ttrouble to hide the links between office and money? and ?in India there is almost no aspect of life which has not been corrupted by the neta-babu raj?. A depressing thought. Tully does not have the robust optimism of a Gurcharan Das, primarily, one suspects, because he does not know how to stand apart from life around him and look beyond facts into the future. A pity. Reporters seldom make good assessors of the political scene. Tully is a great reporter; this work gives ample evidence of it. His concern for India'swell-being is unquestionable. But he suffers from the same malaise as others of his kind in Delhi: defeatism. A sense of failure. Tehelka, it seems, has bitten Tully badly. In the midst of darkness, Tully sees little light. He should stay away from the Indian capital.
(Viking, Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi-110017.)
For the RSS, Tully writes for instance, India'spast is a story of humiliation by foreign rulers and the future lies with a united militant Hinduism.
