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Editorial

The politicians with a difference

February 06, 2016 04:14 PM
Y.S.Rana

By Narinderjit Singh
Long back in the late sixties, when I was a school student the opportunities to have a glimpse of our political leaders were quite limited. From the school master we got the news that a minister of the government of India was coming to our town to inaugurate a newly constructed railway station. The Ludhiana- Ferozepur railway line was passing near to our school and a small station for train halt was constructed, which was named as Model Gram Railway Station .

This station is still there and is situated about 3 kms from Ludhiana railway station. On the day of the inaugural event about two hundred people assembled at the venue. Around 3 pm we saw a track maintenance trolley being driven by the rail staff, coming from Ludhiana station side. The railway minister was sitting on that push trolly.When the minister alighted from the trolley he was personally carrying two garlands and a small box of sweets in his hands. Soon after the arrival of the minister a train came from the Ferozepur side and halted at the new station. The minister garlanded the driver and the guard of the train and distributed sweets to the passengers who got small size yellow tickets for travelling in the train and made a brief speech announcing the train timings .After national anthem sung by the minister, The also boarded the class III compartment of the train and the people disbursed after some clapping. There was no slogan raising, no banner, no hoarding and no press advertisement. Soon we learnt that the minister was Shah Nawaz Khan.

Later on I came to know that Nawaz joined the INA in 1943 and was tried for waging war. He joined politics on the invitation of Jawaharlal after dissolution of the INA.He contested the first Lok Sabha in 1952 from Meerut and became Deputy Minister of Railway and Transport and then worked Minister of Food & Agriculture, Minister of Labour and Minister of Steel & Mines. I still remember his humility, simplicity and dedication to his duty which he performed without any fanfare.

The other such incident happened when I was serving as the Deputy Commissioner of Amritsar. After two days of my joining I went for a visit to the walled city in the morning. The areas of the walled city have been marginalized in the process of urban growth and needed attention and support for repairs, cleanliness and civic services. When I was walking through a street a saintly lady clad in a white saree and wearing a chappal came in front of me. My PSO whispered in my ears that the lady was the local MLA. After the greetings she started telling me the problems of the walled city. We continued travelling through the streets listening the difficulties of the residents and the visit ended at about 5 pm after we had walked about 10 kms and met more than a thousand people. We had missed our lunch and before departing the MLA invited me to her residence. We walked to the chowk tunda talab as the vehicles could not go to that area and went to a small one room house in the first floor of a very old building. The MLA herself served us homemade katchories and sweet halwa and thanked us for the visit. The lady MLA was Laxmi Kanta Chawla. She has been MLA three times and has also worked as minister. She retired as a lecturer from BK DAV College in Amritsar. She holds three masters degrees in English, Hindi and philosophy.

During my stay in Amritsar I found her always working as an energetic, aggressive and inspiring politician with complete dedication but full of humility and simplicity. I would always remember her as a great politician with high moral values. The famous Italian author Niccolo Machiavelli had written that “Politics have no relation to morals”. It is not always true as sometimes the politics is totally related to morals.
(The author is a former IAS officer of Punjab cadre)

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