We Remember

KC PRADHAN
Three years have passed since we lost some of Sikkim’s finest souls in Tashi, Wangchuk and Chukie to a terrible road mishap on 06 April 2009. Years pass, but memories linger and the feeling of loss deepens as I mull over some of the vexed issues that confront us so frequently and so often. They were analysts in the truest sense of the word and understood with rare clarity where the destiny of Sikkim lay. Both, Tashi Tobden and Wangchuk Barfungpa, worked with me as able lieutenants cum facilitators for long years in the administration. They were always by my side when I had to confront any hassle in the administration. Their help was always readily available whenever called for and at times even without being asked. They dropped by the moment they sensed a situation developing. If we managed to steer away from some of the worst financial tangles, it was Tashi who put forth his considered thought and put the situation on the rail.
Temperamentally, they were poles apart. But in times of crisis, when the situation needs to be grasped clearly and immediately, their minds met and in their free and forceful deliberations, unfailingly delivered clear and simple solutions. Such occasions were many during my long tenure in service, and after their passing away, I consider, and do so very strongly, a void has been created which remains very difficult to fill. Their reservoir of knowledge on all matters Sikkim is now lost forever.
They were the real custodians of Sikkim’s rules and regulations and knew precisely how to position Sikkim in the national context. Their erudition fired a forthrightness which expectedly led to misunderstandings, but they remind upright in their thinking and never minced words or held back if they had to speak out against any issue which was detrimental to Sikkim. Such confidence and commitment does not come so easily. They belonged to families which go back as long as Sikkim’s written history; this rootedness to the land, backed by education in the best of public schools and colleges in India, and then being scions of ace diplomats of the times of the British Raj, infused in them an inherent strength to speak loud and clear, without fear or favour. They were men of substance and I had high admiration for them always.
Petite Chukie was a real fighter, an environmental activist with a clear vision. Even she was misunderstood and misrepresented, but what she was crusading for, we are realizing only now to the right issues. It was her relentless fight that finally got through to people at large and eventually, four of the five hydroelectric projects proposed for Dzongu were abandoned. She was the Daughter of Dzongu in the real sense.
Sikkim is progressing on all fronts in a rapid - rather hurried - pace. What the State desperately needs at present is an intelligentsia which can point out where things are going wrong and suggest course corrections in time. But where is this intelligentsia? This is the dilemma that we find ourselves in. There are many arm-chair critics, but none with the commitment or depth to point out, with well studied reasoning, not just what is wrong, but also what the right option is. This will greatly help the policy-makers to give a considered thought - rather re-thinking – to the path charted out for the future. As our Chief Minister often reminds us, if the intelligentsia does not speak, it will be fools who occupy the public domain and influence public opinion. Needless to add, the whole State will then become a fool's paradise.
On this rather somber anniversary, it would be advisable for the people of Sikkim to remember the three we lost on 06 April three years ago from the perspective of what Sikkim has lost with their passing away and pay them a homage they have earned because of how they lived their lives.
[The writer is a former Chief Secretary, Sikkim]