It’s said that a person is known by the company she or he keeps. It could be stretched further to say that the person also gets influenced by the company she or he is in. This adage most appropriately suits Delhi’s present Lieutenant Governor Vinai Kumar Saxena.
While Saxena did wonderfully well to put brakes on many a fake policy propaganda by the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government, first led by Arvind Kejriwal and now Atishi, he has however in the process of his interactions has also got, to put it very mildly, publicity savvy. Now let’s explain for the convenience of readers what’s being publicity savvy. It could mean about someone who is able to use media to attract attention or manipulate it to his or her advantage.
While Saxena could be safely said to be not manipulating the media as his present chief minister and her predecessor have done but he certainly got into the act of seeking attention from media.
Saxena’s predecessors, mostly hard boiled bureaucrats, kept a distance from media and even in the areas under their direct control they let the head of the department do the talking, be it the Delhi Police or the Delhi Development Authority (DDA). Saxena is not of the same genus.
While there isn’t much to talk about Delhi Police, given the abysmal law and order situation in the city, he has taken to talking frequently about the development work being done by the DDA. The most recent being the announcement of “his direction to DDA to undertake a surveying process on Yamuna floodplains to identify sites for the installation of cableways.”
Such ‘exotic’ information makes good news for the city starved of governance and administration for the past several years now. Issuing statements on a direction given to conduct a survey is startling since even if the survey were held at good speed and it gave a yes to the project, it would still be long time before it started getting implemented.
In government many such development projects surveys are underway at any given point of time but do they materialise into projects actually implemented. Soon after Delhi Metro became functional, it caught imagination of people to have monorails for the last mile connectivity. Surveys were done but it did not materialise into a feasible project.
In issuing media statements even before the maturity of the idea somewhat reduces the Raj Niwas into competing with the Ministers ferreting out bogus policy statements day in and day out. The latest being on the pension for women, which the government itself disowned.
The DDA as the owner of the Yamuna floodplains could pay its attention to checking on the state of existing projects than exploring the new ones. For example one of the best projects executed by the DDA on the floodplains was the development of the Yamuna Bio-Diversity Park.
The information of the park on the government website says, “Emerging as the capital’s most visited public place and prominent centre for learning and understanding the environment, the Yamuna Biodiversity Park has become a home for a diversity of forest communities, biologically rich wetlands, grassland communities, a wide variety of fruit yielding species and an abundance of medicinal herbs.”
As it showed on the website that it claimed to be the ‘most visited public place’, this writer last week decided to take a chance to visit the park to meet some of the Siberian guests (migratory birds) who make Yamuna their home during the winter months. On reaching the park, first one missed it most desolate looking gate. Next there was no trace of any public on this ‘most visited public place’.
The reason for the same was not very difficult to trace. On approaching the park, a stubborn guard firmly said in the case one wanted to visit the wetland, one would have to come after 3 pm. Now this is peak winter in Delhi and one looking for birds residing in a water body is denied entry in warm afternoon and asked to come after the chill starts to set in.
The whole atmospherics indicated that there was much to hide behind the tall hedges than showcase in the park.
Would the Raj Niwas also direct the DDA to survey why was there was no public at the ‘most visited public place’. Saxena could help Delhi retain last of its green lungs by checking on this, for which the citizens would be much thankful than dream for a cable car.
Sidharth Mishra
Author and president, Centre for Reforms, Development & Justice