Bharat Ratna for the masses

According to Sagarika Ghose, the "furore" over Bharat Ratna began when a CNN-IBN reporter proposed Sachin Tendulkar's name for the award. Of course, the secular journos can never write a simple article without putting a bizarre spin on it. Google search reveals that the "furore" over Bharat Ratna is pretty much an annual ritual. Every year there is intense lobbying for the award. The award is withheld on those years a politically viable candidate (meaning politically convenient for Congress) is not found.

What really started the "furore" this year was a letter from Mr. Advani to the PM, recommending Vajpayeeji for the award. It is not clear if the letter was released to the press from BJP or leaked by the PMO.

Sagarika Ghose's article is full of misinformation and pedantic assertions that we have come to expect from her. For instance, the plain vanilla knighthood is not the highest British civilian honor, hence the reasoning that since Bob Geldof got knighted, Sachin Tendulkar should get Bharat Ratna - does not work. Sachin already got the Padma Shri. She laments that in India we can never expect to have a 42-year old cabinet minister. This is very surprising, Dr. Ramadoss' name immediately comes to mind. She places the number of awardees till date at 41, although it looks like the actual number is 40. Of course she could be counting Netaji, that's another story.

These bloopers aside, she manages to display her extreme contempt for BJP in a few lines. Apparently Advani wrote a thundering letter to the PM. Since we don't have the text of the letter, we have no way to judge if the letter was thundering or humble in tone. Also, the letter had 11 points justifying the award for the ex-PM, not just for being the longest serving parliamentarian.

Sagarika Ghose pretends that she is making an impartial case for rewarding merit and aspirational factors and thus has a better moral case than the lobbyists. Unfortunately it is pretty obvious that she is not really making a strong case for Sachin Tendulkar in that rambling piece as much as trying to preempt Vajpayee. This sentence is a dead giveaway:

A day after the reporter's story, came Advani's thundering letter to the prime minister: A Bharat Ratna for Vajpayee please.

Actually the sequence of the events would have been somewhat different.

• CNN-IBN, being privy to inside sources, learns that the dynasty is considering the Bharat Ratna
• The New Delhi Political grapevine wisens up pretty fast, such things can't stay hidden
• Several groups start their lobbying process
• CNN-IBN hastily starts a campaign for Sachin
• Co-incidentally Advani's letter is sent the day after
• Sagarika Ghose writes a cringe inducing article, spewing venom on political lobbying

The fact that Mr. Advani chose to write a personal letter to the PM with 11 thoughtful points shows that this was a genuine and personal appeal to the goodness of Mr. Manmohan Singh. This is the dignified way to do such things. He didn't first announce it in a press conference amid cheering supporters.

There is a very strong case for Vajpayeeji for the award. Before his tenure, we just didn't have a viable opposition that could provide good governance and make our country take strong leaps towards modernity. He put together a coalition that actually provided solid governance and stability, in addition to launching several reforms, economic as well as social. We would argue that Vajpayeeji was instrumental in completing our democracy. Prior to him we really had no alternative (as some socialists still claim we don't have), opposition Governments quickly degenerated into circus like performances.

Perhaps the best contribution of Mr. Vajpayee to the Indian people is the injection of a sliver of objectivity into our mind numbing politics of horse trading. When the BJP Government came about, commies started churning out numbers, stats and data they had never deemed was necessary for decades prior to that. For the first time people were actually looking at poverty statistics and various human development indices seriously. Before that poor people were supposed to sing Raghupati Raghava and feel happy under the designated monarch.

Mr. Vajpayee truly deserves the award for this paradigm shift in our democracy. Actually, conferring the Bharat Ratna on him would really be rewarding the masses for their willingness to venture away from decades of personality cult and dogma.