Khaakee Bathukulu (part-2 of 2)
Sitaramayya Ari (ari@Oakland.edu)
Wed, 28 May 1997 13:24:28 -0400 (EDT)
This part contains a review of the novel by Sri Chowdary Jampala and a
commentary by Sri K. V. Bapa Rao.
A review of Khaakee Bathukulu by Chowdary Jampala
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The book, in graphic detail describes the long career of
prakaasam, a police constable, from the day in early 1940s when he gets
encouraged to join the police force to the time in emergency when he
receives compulsory retirement. The author, in the preface, says that the
book is based on his father prakaasa raavu's career.
Prakaasam was an illiterate 'lower-caste' servant in a remote
village. After a particularly hard day, he joins a friend who was going
to see a police recruiter. The shirtless, penniless, and clueless young
Prakaasam gets seduced by the availability of regular wages (in real money
too) and a vague promise of caste-blind equal treatment and readily joins
the police force without evn informing his family.
He endures a rough training camp and begins finding out that
castesim exists in the police force. With the help of a fellow recruit
and a kind spouse of an instructor, he learns to read and write. After
training, he is posted as a probationer and begins to realize the various
realities of the lowly policeman's life. They are poorly paid; their
superiors treat them as dirt (same as they in turn are treated by their
supervisors); they are unpaid servants in their superiors' homes;
their working conditions are horrible; corruption is a way of life and
manifests in several forms; use of 'force' is routine and civil rights
do not exist neither for themselves nor for their 'prisoners'. Theirs is a
life of utter poverty with the only escape being petty corruption. The
real upper brass are unconcerned about the common policeman's plight.
What we have is really a rotten to the core police system which is not
conducive to the preservation of law and order in a modern democratic
society.
Prakaasam struggles hard to maintain his honesty and self-respect
and pays dearly for it throughout his career. He gets many a raw deal for
standing up for himself, and in the end gets retired involuntarily. His
own son, who Prakaasam owed will never join the force, is forced to join
it as his only means of escape from unemployment.
The novel paints a comprehensive picture of the various aspects
of a policeman's life in AP, and, in that process, damningly indicts the
AP police force. No wonder that the police brass are upset about it.
This very long book (804 pages) covers the period from early
1940s to 1975, and many incidents that happened in AP in that era (freedom
movement, the telangaaNa communist struggle, later events) are covered as
seen through Prakaasam's eyes.
I found this to be a gripping account of a real person. I picked
it up late in the night, and could not put it down until I finished it. It
gets a little redundant and repetitive at times and could have been even
better with a little editing. But the compelling, realistic description of
the protagonist's life keeps the book interesting.
I am not surprised that the author is being persecuted by his
superiors in the police department. It paints a very poor picture of that
department in an authentic fashion and in a way that is difficult to
refute.
THE CASE OF CONSTABLE MOHAN RAO--AN OPPORTUNITY FOR THE A.P. GOVERNMENT?
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a commentary by K.V. Bapa Rao
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[ Copyright 1997 by K.V. Bapa Rao, all rights reserved.
Permission to copy and circulate is hereby granted. ]
At first glance, it looks like the case of Constable G. Mohan Rao is just
the latest episode in a depressing but predictable saga of official
ineptitude and mindless bureaucratic persecution.
For too long now, resident and expatriate Telugus have despaired at a
witless official culture that has ignominously failed every test,
putting paid to the ideas of the state's visionaries for realizing the
considerable potential of its people. Now, it looks like the Mohan Rao
affair, which is gaining worldwide attention, might do its share of
damage to the aspirations of Chief Minister Nara Chandrababu
Naidu. Yet, with the right attitude and the requisite degree of
courage, Mr. Naidu could well turn the unhappy situation to his
political benefit and to the overall betterment of his benighted
state.
The facts of the case are these. Mr. G. Mohan Rao is a Head Constable in
the AP Police (stationed at Tenali in Guntur District), as was his father
before him. While discharging his duties as a policeman and a family man,
Mr. Mohan Rao found time to write a Telugu novel based on his father's
life, and his own; it was the story of an ordinary family draped in
the livery of law
enforcement. Titled "Khaki Batukulu" (Lives in Khaki), and published
by Pratyusha Publications (Post Box no. 8, Tenali 522 201, Andhra Pradesh,
India, Rupees 79.00) the novel proved explosive--less due to the story
itself, than due to the fact that the story was told
at all. The story itself, alas, rings at once true and familiar: the
khaki uniform of an ordinary police jawan, far from being the raiment
of the sombre majesty of a just law, is no more than the drab symbol
of peonage and servitude--to the superior officers and to a system
cruelly biased against those very like the jawan himself. There is no
advancement, and few rewards, only danger, and the derision and
contempt of a public who will not see a live human beneath the
enveloping khaki shroud. The ultimate horror of a llfe in khaki is the
erosion of the spirit, the descent into despair and corruption and the
final damning acceptance of oppression.
All this we know, and have known, for a long time. And we turn our
eyes and go about our business. For Mr. Mohan Rao's superiors
in the A.P. Police Department, however, turning away is not an
option. They are, after all, Mr. Mohan Rao's comrades in khaki
despair. That must hurt. Enough to visit instant retribution on the
teller of bitter truth. Mr. Mohan Rao has been suspended, demoted, and
administrative action has been instituted against him under the
section of the official code that prohibits government servants from
publishing government matters. It appears that, for Mr. Mohan Rao, the
price of telling the truth (albeit through the medium of fiction) may
be the loss of his job, and who knows what other suffering.
It is all absurd of course. The case can have no merit even under the
terms of the archaic and near-totalitarian rules that bind government
servants. These rules don't prohibit works of fiction. The officials know
this. But the rules, and the law, have never been at issue here. The
idea is to mete out deterrent punishment to the boy who dared shout
out in public that the emperor is stark naked.
The whole sorry affair would be a pathetic joke, if only there were
not so much at stake for the state of Andhra Pradesh and its leader
Mr. Chandrababu Naidu (who is doubtless appraised of this matter by
now). The state has been flat broke for some time now, and is in
desparate need of foreign investment to ensure its viability. This
necessarily means getting the state into the eye of the global
(meaning predominantly Western) public. What with globalization and
the internet, the average global investor has been growing
increasingly sophisticated in his understanding of India, and
specifically about Andhra Pradesh. There has been considerable outrage
voiced by the diasporic Telugu community at the cavalier treatment, by
the Andhra Pradesh government, of the fundamental right of free
expression. It can only be a matter of time before knowledge of this
disgraceful episode spreads to the Western investor community. For a
promoter of investment in Andhra Pradesh and India, the consequences
should give significant pause.
Above all things, an investor looks for stability in the society, and
integrity in the administrative machinery. The diligent overseas
investor of today is sophisticated enough to understand the spiral
destabilizing effect of an oppressive and dysfunctional bureaucracy on
the one hand, and an impoverished, despairing population on the other
hand. And who can believe in the objectivity of a balance sheet or a
stock report or government assurances, when that very government
acts as though it were a crime to openly express of any ideas
offensive to official sensibilities? When faced with such a system, cautious
investors flee in droves, leaving behind only the small segment of the
investor community that is risk-prone and hence greedy for huge
profits.
And then, there is the matter of exports. Persecuted writers have a
way of galvanizing Western public sympathy (remember Rushdie?). For a
proud democracy like India, the ugly human rights implications of the
Mohan Rao debacle have all the makings of a global public relations
nightmare, raising (yet again) the spectre of non-tariff barriers
against Indian products. It would be a mistake for the Andhra Pradesh
administration to nurse fond delusions that no one of significance
will care what happens to an obscure Telugu writer; already "Khaki
Bratukulu" is a cause celebre, and the sizable number of Telugu
idealists living abroad can be expected do their bit to ensure that
Mr. Mohan Rao is not forgotten.
Which brings us to Mr. Chandrababu Naidu and the opportunity
confronting him. Here is a leader who has displayed a certain degree
of political competence at the national level. At home, he has been
struggling to articulate a vision of growth for his state that will
extract it from the present quagmire. He is sensible enough to realize
the importance of globalizing and modernizing the state economy and
making the administration transparent. Presumably with the latter end
in mind, he has recently commissioned an unprecedented opinion poll in
Andhra Pradesh to ascertain public perception of the police
force. (Unsurprisingly, most people said they thought the police
corrupt.) His greatest political challenges are to harness the
bureaucracy to his vision, and to manage the pressures of intense
and widespread poverty, of which the present spate of Naxalite
activism is a symptom. Both challenges demand true, statesmanlike
leadership for success; failure, on the other hand will doom all Mr. Naidu's
good intentions to the realm of wishful thinking.
It is in addressing these challenges that Mr. Mohan Rao has, perhaps
unwittingly, presented Mr. Naidu with the proverbial golden
opportunity. By moving decisively to quash the baseless proceedings
against Mr. Mohan Rao, Mr. Naidu would have liberated his
administration and the whole state from the thrall of a discredited
state bureaucracy. The message would be sent loud and clear that the
state's administrative machinery is to be used as an engine for
positive change, and is no longer to be an instrument of official
vendetta. For a citizenry fed up with an inept officialdom
obsessed with secrecy and cavalier in their treatment of the
fundamental rights of citizens (who are their masters, lest it be
forgotten), dropping the action against Mr. Mohan Rao will send the
message that the administration is, at last, serious about freedom, social
justice and economic growth. (At the very least, it would help take the wind
out of the sails of the Naxalites and their spokesmen, who have been
such a thorn in the administration's flesh.)
And let us not forget the bureaucrats themselves, as distinguished
from the bureaucracy as an institution. It requires courage for
Mr. Naidu to exert his authority and reject the bureaucracy's attempts
to hide from its own problems, but the payoff would be worth it. This
could be the start of an institutional cleansing process that would
elevate the state's officials to a hitherto-unknown professionalism
and genuine respect, at last investing the "khaki" with the dignity it
deserves.
The choice is Mr. Naidu's to make. For the state he presides over, his
decision on matters like the Mohan Rao affair could make the
difference between severely limited investment under extortionate
terms, or free and open investment under globally equitable terms.