The Hindu : The politics of travel

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Thursday, Jun 26, 2003

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The politics of travel

THE CONTROVERSY OVER the Rajasthan Chief Minister, Ashok Gehlot's three-day visit to New York may have blown over with the Centre finally giving him permission to make it an official tour. But it remains a mystery why the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA), which had earlier refused permission for an official trip, allowed the matter to attain the dimension of a political controversy before tamely giving in at the end. Earlier, Mr. Gehlot — who has been invited to attend the International Rajasthan Sammelan on July 4 — had declared he would not travel to the United States in his personal capacity, something that the MEA had recommended he do. A petty squabble seems to have broken out about the nature of the trip with the MEA maintaining it was a response to an invitation from a private organisation and the Rajasthan Government stressing its public purpose — namely, that of conveying first-hand information about the investment climate in the State and of receiving a tidy sum of money collected by the Sammelan for drought relief. One result of the controversy was the Rajasthan High Court's decision to treat newspaper reports about it as public interest litigation and seek explanations from the Centre and the State Government about whether spending public money on Mr. Gehlot's trip was justified in these financially difficult times.

The general principle that official trips must be underpinned by official purposes is unexceptionable, but it is odd that overseas visits of some Chief Ministers have suddenly come under such rigorous Central scrutiny. Clearances of such visits of high-ranking politicians in power, whether in the States or at the Centre, have been pretty much a matter of routine. Approvals of such visits have hardly been preceded by subtle or painstaking calculations about whether the public money incurred on them is commensurate with the public benefit that will accrue from undertaking them. Given the generally lax or lenient attitude in granting permission for overseas official visits, it is hardly surprising that the Congress feels that the Centre is trying to play petty games and interfere with the proposed foreign trips of Chief Ministers belonging to the main Opposition party. Apart from that of Mr. Gehlot, the proposed visits of the Maharashtra Chief Minister, Sushil Kumar Shinde, and the Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister, Digvijay Singh, had come under a cloud. The basis for objecting to these trips was of course different. Mr. Shinde's visit met with opposition from the Union Finance Ministry, which felt the meetings he had scheduled to conduct direct negotiations with World Bank officials were out of place. Mr. Shinde has since proceeded abroad after suitably modifying his programme.

The fact that approval has come smoothly for many others is partly responsible for the Congress spokesman's charge that a blatantly discriminatory attitude is being adopted by the Centre in granting permission for official visits by party Chief Ministers. For instance, the BJP-propped Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister, Mayawati, returned only recently from a three-week tour of the United States and Europe. And several NDA politicians and parliamentarians, if not already abroad, are either packing their bags to leave or unpacking them having just returned from one foreign destination or another. While public money should not be squandered on profitless foreign trips, it is also important to avoid evaluating each proposed visit through the framework of a harsh and miserly cost-benefit analysis. Whether it is really in the public interest for Mr. Gehlot to officially travel to New York (and that too with a 12-member delegation) is a question that can and perhaps will be asked. But the point is that the Rajasthan Chief Minister can hardly be portrayed as a parasitic freeloading junketeer — this being his first official overseas trip since he assumed power in 1998. There was no official communication from the MEA about why it refused permission for the visit just as there was no explanation about why it finally decided to approve it. The result of this has been a political controversy over something there should have been none about.

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