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S M Krishna and his image-obsessed clones

M D Riti in Bangalore

Chief Minister S M Krishna's ministers in Karnataka are losing no time in following in the footsteps of their boss. If their boss is making news, walking around with a palmtop and talking cyber jargon, the Karnataka ministers are trying their own image-building exercises. Like Krishna, their intentions might be genuine. But it has now become quite obvious that enhancing their own public images and projecting their government as a proactive one is one of their primary aims.

Health Minister Nafees Fazal, a first-time minister who is known to be close to both Krishna and the Delhi high command, went undercover during her first week in office. She disguised herself as a social worker and spent a couple of hours in the burns ward of Victoria Hospital where women who suffer fire accidents or dowry-related violence are admitted. Not unexpectedly, she found callous nurses, truant doctors and unused equipment.

Transport Minister Sageer Ahmed hopped on to a city bus and asked surprised commuters to list their problems and complaints. They promptly told him their tales of woe and he lost no time in taking stringent action against the errant bus employees.

They barely stopped short of taking camera crews along but both ministers achieved their objective of getting a lot of favourable media coverage for their sorties. And vis-a-vis their less enterprising colleagues the duo managed to score some brownie points.

But the question that the people have now begun to ask is did they really uncover anything new? Was it necessary for them to indulge in such gimmicks? Their ministries are already flooded with complaints and if they were earnest they could have quietly started acting on them.

More than a decade ago, Ramakrishna Hegde's ministers like R L Jalappa made news by attempting similar gimmicks. And Hegde himself was the darling of both the national and the state media for at least a couple of years, to the extent that his party even chose him as their spokesman on television before the parliamentary polls. However, Hegde soon fell from grace with the local media publishing exposes about various land scandals and the telephone tapping incident implicating him.

Meanwhile, Krishna has established an excellent public image for himself. Some weeks ago, he advised officials and party functionaries not to abandon ongoing programmes or public functions just to receive him or send him off. And when he actually had to leave such a ceremony early, he ordered organisers who rose along with him to please sit down again and not scurry out behind him, as that would show disrespect to the other senior ministers and celebrities still seated on the dais.

This week, it was Small Savings Minister Baburao Chinchansur's turn. The over-enthusiastic Chinchansur had organised a ludicrous mega-reception for Krishna, who was just making a routine visit to the minister's home district of Gulbarga. He had arranged for Krishna to be taken on elephant back from the state government guest house, where he was staying, to the local Congress office. Another elephant would then garland him at the office before he alighted. Gun salutes were to punctuate the political meeting that followed, and the local party would present Krishna with a silver mace and sword, after crowning him with a special silver crown.

But Krishna refused to have anything to do with this, saying quite simply that it was in poor taste, what with neighbouring Orissa yet to recover from the ravages of the super cyclone. He told Chinchansur diplomatically, but firmly, that he had already declared himself against any pompous display. However, Bangalore journalists do remember the huge crowds that met Krishna at the airport and clogged traffic throughout the city when he returned from Delhi this March, after being named state Congress president.

At that time, Krishna had refuted the ruling Janata Dal's accusations that the crowds were paid hirelings, saying to rediff.com: "If they were hired, would they have waited without lunch or tea in the airport until after 8 PM to hear what I had to say as soon as I alighted from the aircraft?"

Ironically, Krishna's predecessor J H Patel, who never had a good public image but kept the media happy with his witty one-liners, is in the news now for the wrong reasons -- he lost his Rs one million worth Rolex watch and had all his domestic staff picked up and 'questioned' by the police, without actually making a formal police complaint of theft. The watch has reportedly been found. But this entire unsavoury incident has raised several questions about whether the watch was a personal gift to him or the property of the state because he was given it in his capacity as chief minister. Moreover, rumours doing the rounds even say he was given it by an American company in appreciation of his approving a contract for them.

Meanwhile, the Congress has lost no time in using the opportunity to make a few snide remarks about Patel and his party. When someone asked Information Minister B K Chandrashekar about it -- he used to be the Congress spokesman before the elections -- he quipped : "These are the kind of gifts people give their fiancees; I don't know who gave it to Patel and why!"

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