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The President, Ms Pratibha Patil

Sharad Joshi

Ms Pratibha Devisingh Patil, the first woman President of India, had proclaimed her intention to be a very political President soon after she took up office in 2008. As if in reiteration of her intention, she wrote a very incisive article in her own name on the grave situation facing farmers in India, in general, and those in her native region of Vidarbha, in particular.

Not only the farmers but also the citizens at large of this country looked forward to benefiting from Ms Pratibha Patil’s extensive experience and wisdom in her address to the joint session of Parliament on February 12, 2009.

It is now more than a year since Ms Patil first addressed both the Houses of Parliament in the Central Hall, and a number of things have happened since then. The Government announced the very ambitious Debt Relief & Loan Waiver (DRLW) scheme for farmers in Budget 2008-09. But despite the scheme, some 1,154 farmers have committed suicide in Vidarbha alone. The phenomena of suicides that drove Ms Patil to write an article in a personal capacity have not only not ceased to exist but appeared to be worsening with the number of suicides continuing to rise by the day.

The farmers have the right to expectsome words of advice from the President, especially after the ineffective DRLW scheme, the anti-farmer market interventions and the restrictions on the futures market.

Unfortunately, Ms Patil has belied their hopes. Suddenly she has decided to return into the comfortable shell of Presidency and given up on becoming a political President even as on the economic front, the nation has experienced a rollercoaster ride of high inflation and sudden recession.

In her address to the joint session of the Parliament on February 12, 2009, she referred, as so many Presidents in the past have, to the acts and omissions of the Government. She repeated claims of the UPA government regarding its flagship programmes such as Bharat Nirman and the achievements of the DRLW scheme, which are highly questionable.

Her speech, in fact, was basically a preview of the Interim Budget speech of Mr Pranab Mukherjee. Both were an exercise in self-assessment of the UPA government’s performance, with more of self-congratulatory passages and very little by way of analysis of things that had happened and what the gathering clouds of global recession and terrorism portend for India.

The President of India gets to speak in his/her own name only on one occasion in a year and that is on the eve of the Republic Day. No President has really tried to exercise the freedom that the opportunity throws up. Before the next Republic Day comes around, the world situation might have changed for the worse. The political situation in the country would have also changed.

The fact is that the institution of President is now a far cry from what it was when adorned by the likes of Rajendra Prasad and S. Radhakrishnan.

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