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| Nehru |
New Delhi, June 8: As Manmohan Singh strives to curtail ministers’ and officials’ air-travel and foreign-trip costs, he might do well to turn to a predecessor much of whose legacy he has been compelled to dismantle over the past two decades to usher in liberalisation.
Singh, who has sent an austerity directive to his ministers, can then buttress it with copies of notes Jawaharlal Nehru wrote nearly 60 years ago on foreign travel expenses.
For instance, in a letter dated August 4, 1949, India’s first Prime Minister said: “Regarding my journey to London and New York, I do not think that any sleep accommodation should be reserved in Air India from Bombay to London.”
The principle applied not just to him but to everyone. On August 19, 1949, Nehru wrote in a letter to be forwarded to the then Indian high commissioner in London, V.K. Krishna Menon: “Krishna Menon might be simply informed of the time for her (Indira Gandhi’s) arrival. It is not necessary for expensive rooms to be engaged. As I have informed you previously, no sleeping berths should be arranged for by Air India.”
Letters such as these are now available with the National Archives after their de-classification, offering glimpses of Nehru’s strict austerity compared with present-day standards.
Singh travels abroad with an entourage of 60-70 people, including his security. Nehru, however, took along only two officials from the Prime Minister’s Secretariat (the equivalent of today’s Prime Minister’s Office) during his 1948 London trip.
The following year, as Nehru was preparing to fly Pan American to the US from London, Menon suggested he book seats on a Strata Cruiser aircraft, fitted out with special safety features but more expensive than ordinary airliners. The Prime Minister dismissed the idea.
“From what the high commissioner writes, it appears that the Strata Cruiser is preferable for crossing the Atlantic. I do not know why special reference is made to the margin of safety. I have expressed no anxiety about that,” he wrote on August 20, 1949.
During another trip to the UK, the US and Canada, Nehru got a directive issued saying officials’ daily allowances would be slashed if some of their everyday expenses are borne by the host country.
The daily allowance was “free bed, breakfast plus 15 shillings each per diem (per day) in London and free accommodation plus $8 each (in the US and Canada)”, according to a circular sent by the foreign ministry deputy secretary-general to the accountant-general’s office.
A note appended to the circular, dated October 3, 1948, says: “The daily allowance in the USA and Canada will be admissible at the above rate provided the governments of these countries do not bear any of the expenditures which the daily allowance is intended to cover.… If both accommodation and meals are provided, then the officers will be entitled to draw only a cash allowance of $4 each per diem to meet incidental expenses.”
If an official demanded extra cash – as M.. Mathai, the all-powerful private secretary to Nehru, did – the Prime Minister knew how to deal with it.
A note from the Prime Minister’s Secretariat says: “Should shri M.. Mathai require $200 for expenditure in the United States, the embassy of India in Washington is requested to advance this money to him and debit it to the Prime Minister’s Secretariat (which)… will recover the amount from him.”
Nehru was no less particular about domestic travel. A telegram that the Prime Minister’s House sent to the Mumbai governor on September 29, 1949, says: “My stay in Mumbai on October 17 is only for two hours no special arrangements appear necessary.”
Shorn of official verbosity, the telegram would not have cost much, either.