What a good ruler must do

I am impressed, at least for the moment, by the President of Malawi, Joyce Banda. Reports say that she is ready to give up the spiffy cars and a multi-million dollar jet bought by her predecessor, Bingu Wa Mutharika. After he died, Banda took over, and has said that she plans to get rid of the Mercedes Benz fleet and the Presidential airplane. She is willing to travel by commercial airlines. For a head of state to make this sort of decision is significant for a country depending on foreign aid and struggling with infrastructure needs.

Infrastructure and colonialism make me think of Lord Dalhousie. I read recently that he built the Grand Hindustan Tibet road in 1850. According to the Himachal state tourism website, amongst other reasons for building the road, one was that the former Governor General of India was upset to see the system of ‘begaari’ – bonded labour, effectively. “Unpaid labourers were pressed into service — including for the transport of timber and files to Shimla,” the website says, adding that Lord Dalhousie wanted to improve the road upon which these men trudged.

Getting around in the hills meant riding mules or horses, and the journey was fraught with danger. Of course, Lord Dalhousie himself needed travel in the Himalayas. He also wanted to create trade ties with Tibet and the road was important. So, as the website puts it, “the immense machinery at the disposal of the East India Company was pressed into service”; but it doesn’t say whether or not the labourers were paid. That’s the question I’m interested in. Did the labourers who created colonial infrastructure get paid?

If they were paid, I must acknowledge a tiny bit of grudging respect to Dalhousie. To my mind, a good administrator is one who intervenes in a bad situation. A good ruler sees people suffering and does something about it.

One of my favourite stories about rulers relates to former nawab of Awadh, Asaf-ud-daula, who moved the capital from Faizabad to Lucknow. Certain chroniclers have described him thus: “He used to laugh unseasonably, fling derisive abuse at others and desire derisive abuse in return. He delighted in meaningless amusements...”

He was known to have been indifferent to governance, but I can forgive all his “meaningless amusements” if only one story about him proves true — the story of the Bada Imambara being a charity project. In 1784, famine hit Awadh. Lucknow was suffering. Asaf-ud-daula, it is believed, hired over 20,000 people to build a complex that houses a palace, a mosque, a maze and a step-well. However, this wasn’t an ordinary food-for-work program. What was built during the day was demolished at night. Rumour has it that even ‘noblemen’ worked at night, so they wouldn’t be jeered at for being reduced to starvation.

As long as the famine lasted, the project went on. Some called Asaf-ud-daula mad. The treasury was being emptied with nothing to show for it. But I think he had something more precious than sanity. He had priorities. Rulers who don’t have such priorities, well, perhaps they have money in the treasury. But they die and they don’t take the treasury with them.

Ponds and wells and roads are never the point. To build solid infrastructure is good, but not at the cost of the person who builds the road, digs the well, or grows the cotton. People do not work just because the nation needs infrastructure. They work mainly because they must eat, and because their self-worth suffers if they do not. A good ruler remembers that, and he shapes his dream projects accordingly.    

Annie Zaidi writes poetry, stories, essays, scripts (and in a dark, distant past, recipes she never actually tried)