The country should take heart from the fact that it has a string of Chief Ministers who are working indefatigably for the betterment of their states by being outwardly mobile. Recently, there have been a rash of chief ministerly excursions -- all for perfectly legitimate, even socially important, reasons.

The Chief Minister of Kerala E.K. Nayanar with his strong atheistic credentials had a well-publicised meeting with the Pope recently, when he presented His Holiness with a copy of the Bhagvad Gita. Then there is Delhi's Chief Minister Sahib Singh Verma clocking time as head of the Indian delegation to the fifth Summit Conference on Major Cities of the World being held in Moscow. Even as Verma cooled his heels in the Russian capital, Orissa Chief Minister J.B. Patnaik was packing his bags for a 10-day visit to the United States like J.H. Patel, his counterpart in Karnataka, did some time earlier, for the ostensible purpose of attracting investments to the state -- his third in the past two years. Last month, Arunachal CM Gegong Apang went to the USA to study its tourism scene seriously.

Here are four stalwarts cutting across party lines carrying the interests of their State with them as selflessly as they would their suitcases. The only trouble is that the home territories of all the four are in dire straits. Kerala's power situation has reached such critical levels that there is 100 per cent load shedding in some areas. Worse, there seems little respite from the chronic shortage of electricity since the various projects on hand are all running behind schedule.

Meanwhile Delhi, as the Uphaar Theatre tragedy showed, is literally going up in smoke, thanks to faulty and corrupt regulatory practices that allow public utilities to function as fire traps. Orissa, as the whole world knows, is presently fighting a drought of horrendous proportions, yet Patnaik's US perambulations are estimated to cost the state exchequer a cool Rs 40 lakh. And while Apang spent time at an American national park, studying the trees, no doubt, the ones in his home state seem to be fast disappearing thanks to a forest mafia with strong political connections.

Have chair, will travel seems to have become the personal credo of many a head of state who will do anything to take wing, even if it is only to study the sewers of London, Paris and Amsterdam for two weeks as Chief Minister Verma and his entourage did so famously last November. Alas, despite the lakhs spent on the excursion, the sewers of Delhi are still clogged.

Similarly, trips to raise investments usually amount to a big zero, although they are conducted under a blitz of publicity on the number of MOUs signed. If further confirmation is needed on this score, a quick reference to Bihar Chief Minister Laloo Prasad Yadav's sojourn in the USA and the UK should clinch the matter. The trip raised visions of Bihar being flooded with NRI monies. Nothing of the kind happened. The only floods that have visited the state thereafter were the natural ones caused by the Ganga and the Gandak in spate. It's time that these worthies take a hint from their own good intentions aired periodically at Chief Ministers' conferences and work out a code of ethics for themselves that does not have travel allowance provisions.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.