KTWV Volume 15 Issue 1: Ineffective Stephanian at the helm

 When Manmohan Singh was the Prime Minister of India, we had a whole lot of Stephanians who were in positions of power as well as an enormous number of bureaucrats who were Stephanians.

Here is a shortlist of those who were in the top echelons of Government at the time of Manmohan Singh:

1. 68er Kapil Sibal - Minister Telecom

2. 73er Salman Khurshid - Minister External Affairs

3. 72er Ashwani Kumar - Minister Law & Justice, Rajya Sabha (Parliamentary Affairs)

4. 74er R. P. N. Singh - MOS Home

5. 76er Shashi Tharoor - MOS HRD

6. 90er Joyti Scindia -  MOS (i/c) Power

7. 97er Sachin Pilot - MOS Corporate Affairs  

What did these Stephanians achieve globally to positively touch the lives of ordinary Indians?

When I attended the Founder's Day event in College in 2014, where the chief guest was Supreme Court Judge Justice Madan Lokur.

(Madan Bhimarao Lokur (born 31 December 1953) is an Indian jurist. He is a judge of the Supreme Court of Fiji. He is former judge of the Supreme Court of India. He is also a former chief justice of the Andhra Pradesh High Court and Gauhati High Court and judge of the Delhi High Court. Lokur was educated at the Modern School, New Delhi. He later attended St. Joseph's College, Allahabad for his ISC examinations. For his university studies, Lokur graduated in history from St. Stephen's College, Delhi University with honours. He obtained his law degree from Faculty of Law, University of Delhi.

Justice Lokur said that many consider Stephanians to be elite, but he countered this by saying the largest number of Stephanians in civil service were those who served in the field, influencing the lives of ordinary Indians. 

Both ends of the spectrum are true as when these Stephanians climb the ladder, they lose their touch with the common man and become elitist, something they usually have day to day contact with when they are serving in the lower rungs of the Administration.

I did an entry somewhere on one of my blogs taking to task this group of 7 for not being true Stephanians. 

If I was in their position, I would have had a clear strategy as to how to be effective, Stephanian style.

When I was elected President of the JCR in my second year in college, I formed a team of advisors and we changed the face of our activities in residence by making it totally inclusive.

However, none of these 7 were Trumpian type Stephanians who would do chamchagiri to their political masters. I can accuse them of being ineffective. That is very harsh criticism of our college education!, 

However, when I listened to Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, our current Minister of External Affairs, deliver the first MRF Foundation lecture in the College last year, I was shocked to hear a political speech from the podium.

Later, I have heard him speak on several occasions on several subjects and he praises his Master, oblivious that we Stephanians are watching his antics as a chamcha. I have tweeted him several times on his behaviour!

I do not equate him to Jyoti Scindia who threw his political "principles" to the winds to change his political loyalty.

Watching the spat of Sachin Pilot in Rajasthan with his chief minister is equsally embarrassing for a Stephanian.

Many years ago I did do a blog entry telling Shashi Tharoor not to stand for the Lok Sabha as his character was far above that. Sadly he did not take my advice. 

He had the courage to stand for the position as head of the Congress Party. However, I still hold my view that a person of his calibre would have been far more effective outside of main stream politics.

 I am not concerned with Indian Politics and neither am I likely to visit India again because of age and health issues. 

But I do watch the general deterioration of politics in India with no one willing to change the track.

iIn this sort of situation, we will soon see democracy vanish in India as the sort of behaviour seen by Trumpian type Indian politicians is growing day by day. 

God help My India.

KTWV Volume 13 Issue 13: First time

Dr. S. Y. Qureshi

In my almost 70 years and over 48 years as an adult with deep interest in politics, this was the first time I actually spent a few hours, in Finland, watching an election process in India.

In the 70s I was close with many politicians of all parties and knew exactly how corrupt all of them were. So I kept my distance.

Votes appear to have been cast this time in 5 States over a period of time and today was the counting and declaration of the results.

Results were announced from Goa (1.5 million), Manipur (2.7 million), Punjab (28 million), Uttar Pradesh (200 million) and Uttarakhand (10 million).

Over 240 million people were choosing their local politicians to serve them for the next few years.

It was a mixed bag of results with the National Parties less successful than the regional parties.

Watching on an Indian internet TV Channel, NDTV 24x7, I was quite intrigued by the mixture of languages being used by the participants.

Since I know English, Hindi, Punjabi (a bit), I wondered whether this channel was watched by the majority of Indians who are only familiar with their regional language.

Obviously not.

Quite a few of my juniors from my alma mater, St. Stephen's College in Delhi, were on the box, either as politicians in different parties, as tv anchor men or women, or as "experts". It was quite easy to recognise them as they had a different air about the way they handled the subjects.

I thought to myself whether I was the same!

I hope not, as I consider myself as individualistic rather than moulded by my alma mater characteristics, especially with regard to politics!

On the whole, following the election was an interesting experience, especially as I could view it from a distance and not be involved with it in any other way.

The main thing that struck me was that several corrupt politicians fell by the wayside.

The independent Chief Election Commissioner, Dr. S. Y. Qureshi, is also a product of my alma mater, about 10 years my junior. His interview on NDTV was very interesting as he has to keep his head above the murky waters of Indian Politics.

This experience was also followed by an interesting news item I noted in an Indian internet newspaper which said that the top two jobs in the Indian Administrative Service and in the Indian Police Service were also filled by Stephanians. These are IAS officers Pulok Chatterjee, the Prime Minister's Principal Secretary, and Ajit Seth, the Cabinet Secretary, and IPS officers, Nehchal Sandhu, Intelligence Bureau Chief and A. B. Singh, Central Bureau of Investigation Chief.

Many of my classmates and those who were in College during my years there, have served in very senior Government positions (62ers Mani Shankar Aiyar, Rathikant Basu, Ashok (Tony) Jaitly) and also as Ambassadors (62er Niranjan Desai, 63ers Siddarth Singh and Aftab Seth, etc.) in different parts of the world. They have also served in the United Nations, 74er Sashi Tharoor, the Commonwealth Secretariat, 62er Kamlesh Sharma, the World Bank, 63er Montek Singh Alhuwalia and 62er Sarwar Lateef, the Asian Development Bank, 63er Karthik Sandilya, and many many more such world bodies.

It would be interesting to compile a Who's Who of Stephanians!