Just when one was beginning to think that with the exit of Ashok Vajpayee from the helm of affairs of the Lalit Kala Akademi, all would be well; it seems the saga of wrongdoings continues. To begin with, the appointment of acting chairman Balan Nambiar.
He is a competent sculptor, but it is not his fault that he has been thrust on the LKA despite the fact that at 74, he is way above the upper age limit of 70 prescribed by the rules of the Akademi. There have been innumerable insta-nces when institutions have suffered hugely by being handed over to artists – the Bharat Bhavan in Bhopal being a case in point. My contention is, if the rules had to be broken, then there were many more who could have been possible contenders.
For the same reason, why was vice-chairman K.R. Subbana, who had been democratically elected by the 69-member council, and had been appointed acting chairman after Vajpayee’s exit, removed within 23 days? It is humiliating for a person to be instated and then removed for no reason. After all, Nambiar was only a board member and Subbana’s seniority of vice-chairmanship of four years was undermined and overlooked. Subbana went to court to seek justice for the peculiar situation in the Akademi, but it was not taken into account and ping pong has become the name of the game.
If a proper chairman was put in place, then there would be no problem, but surely, an elected vice-chairman is a better option than another overage chairman nominated by the ministry — especially since LKA is an autonomous body. But the ministry of culture doesn’t seem to think so.
Even in the case of the alleged wrongdoings of Ashok Vajpayee in the last month of his five-year tenure, the ministry took its own sweet time to set things right. They waited for him to exit and after that moved to reinstate the secretary he had sacked arbitrarily.
In fact, the list of his arbitrary decisions is endless. It seems just two days before he was to leave, he wrote out 15 names of general council members who he felt should be removed as they were too vocal and not falling in line. He wrote: “The most dominant and troublesome element in the LKA General Council is the elected members. They are elected on the basis of politicking and invariably none of the elected are artists of any consequence or eminence. They are very aggressive, sometimes abusive…”
This has fuelled the unrest in the general council. Did Vajpayee forget that he was not the headmaster of a government school? On the other hand, Nambiar, himself is on a weak wicket, he is not being able to forge ahead with the investigations into several cases of financial bungling and other acts of omission and commission against Vajpayee. This is rather unfortunate as with the passage of time many footprints might get erased. What I fail to understand is when autonomy has been given to an organisation, why must the ministry interfere in every decision? Many organisations have been subverted by such interference and care should be taken that the fragile eco-system of such organisations is protected rather than torn asunder.
Another international level organisation, the National Museum is still reeling under something so frightening that I start foaming at the mouth when I think about it.
Unbelievable, but true is the fact that since almost before 2009, there has been no regular Director General. The post was taken out of the purview of the UPSC. Seven departments including numismatics, pre-history, central Asia and miniature paintings are headless, many of them for as long as over a year. In some cases the heads have retired, one of them met with a fatal accident, and there was no one to take charge, the collections remain locked in a peculiar jam. Collections will start disappearing like this. Bureaucrats were given additional charge and the UPSC was given the go-by. Now, it seems the post has gone back to the UPSC. Hopefully with the new secretary things will change for the better.

Dr Alka Raghuvanshi is an art writer, curator and artist

(The views expressed are of the columnist and do not reflect those of the newspaper)