Prime Minister of India - Dr. Manmohan Singh

PM's speech on releasing the book " No, My Lord " by Hari Jaisingh's

"I am very happy to associate myself with today's function which marks the release of another important book written by our dear friend, Hari Jaisingh. I am told, that these are his select writings in the last two decades and I am very happy that he had the time and inclination to put his writings in a consolidated form.

We are living in an age where human knowledge is increasing at a speed which was unthinkable even two decades ago. We all know that facts can be organized in many ways. The journey 'from facts to knowledge, from knowledge to wisdom', as T.S. Eliot once said, 'is not easy' and as I look upon the role of mass media, as a communicator of ideas sifting good ideas from bad ideas and doing so with a sense of professional ethics should be the role of mass media in a democracy. We are very fortunate that we have this institution of a free press. I recall reading once in an obscure journal in the London School of Economics, an interview that the late President Ayub Khan of Pakistan gave to a student of the L.S.E. who asked him "Mr. President, tell me one thing which you would not do if you were to get back into power?" Ayub Khan's answer was, 'I would not gag the Press. By gagging the Press, I close myself into a circle where I was hearing all the time my own voice because the bureaucracy has the tendency to let the top people hear what they would like to hear rather than to see the reality as it is.' If the Free Press has to play that important role, then I think what Walter Lippman once said it is very important, we should have the maxim that facts are sacred, opinions are free. And I am very happy that Hari Jaisingh lives up to those exacting standards. The ideas and the commentaries contained in his book bring out a very sensitive human being. A human being who is concerned about the state of our polity, who would like our country to move in a direction which the founding fathers of our Republic wanted us to move. We all know that we are falling behind the implementation, if the criterion is to judge us by those Olympian standards.

But I think social scientists have also to recognize that politics or economy does not function in a vacuum. There are social forces which shape the course of human evolution, and when I look at Indian politics today and the Indian politics in the first two decades of our Independence, we are very fortunate that we had a class of leaders who grew under the inspiring leadership of Mahatma Gandhi with deep commitment to liberal human values and ethical standards but they were a byproduct of a very limited group of people - the middle classes, the professional people who dominated the Indian political scene in the first few years. Since then, a churning has been taking place, more forces have been unleashed by the onward march of the democratic process and we have today groups of people, they are in important positions, who do not draw this distinction between public interest and private interest, who do not recognize that the State exists to promote social good. This distinction between public good and private good does not come easily. Our political system has to pass through this phase which I regard is probably an essential component of our polity growing to maturity.

There are then challenges we often see in public life. A vibrant discussion is now taking place about who should be a Minister, who is a tainted Minister. In all these matters ultimately our country has to devise new guidelines, new standards and we have all to work to realise that goal. I would say the same thing about most of the other issues that have been touched upon. I think Hari Jaisingh has dealt extensively with our relations with our neighbours and I think we need to do a lot more work both in our research institutes and in our media coverage in matters relating to what is happening in our neighbourhood. We know a great deal of what is happening in America, we know a great deal of what is happening in Europe or United Kingdom, but not what is happening in our immediate neighbourhood - the social, political and economic forces which are shaping the course of evolution in these countries. We all know, for example, that in Pakistan, the Armed Forces play a very important role. Yet when I look at what is our perception of the role of the Armed Forces in a country like Pakistan, we have to draw heavily on what the Americans write rather than indigenous scholars in our own country. It is therefore essential that our research workers, our media barons, should devote more attention to coverage of what goes on in our immediate neighbourhood and I congratulate Hari Jaisingh that this is one area I think he has written about and commented upon extensively. He has said a lot many things on processes of governance, on corruption. All these are issues of contemporary importance and I do hope that his book will inspire a lot of younger people, journalists and scholars to further analyse some of these ideas as to how we can, as a country, get over the strains that are so visible in the body politik, how we can workg together in a spirit of evolving national consensus, design a new pathway to peace, progress and prosperity, while remaining committed to ideas and ideals enshrined in our Constitution. Not all ideas triumph. Sometimes, expediency takes over. But I am convinced, as Lord Keynes once pointed out. In the long run ideas are far more important than vested interests. That is the faith which sustains all intellectual works and if one is to look at this feast Hari Jaisingh has provided us, a very rich feast of ideas. May his tribe flourish!"