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Journalism of Courage
A party in search of political relevance must choose its national agendas wisely. But wisdom was not particularly conspicuous in the Bharatiya Janata Party8217;s decision to first endorse and then join the Vishwa Hindu Parishad-sponsored national campaign against the Sethusamudram Shipping Canal Project. On Wednesday, the VHP8217;s agitation kicked up a fair amount of dust, creating traffic jams, disrupting trains and generally spreading chaos in places as far apart as Jalandhar, Indore and Coimbatore. By participating in it, the BJP has only betrayed its own lack of focus and political imagination.
With a mid-term poll a distinct possibility, it is simply unbelievable that the country8217;s main opposition party should choose to waste its time, attention and energies by clambering on to a revanchist bandwagon. It could well have done this in the belief that such a campaign would help fuel its way back to power in New Delhi, but that would be a serious misreading of the national mood. Are voters to assume from its latest preoccupations that the BJP has no other serious and substantive concerns at this point in time? Are they to presume that the UPA is doing just fine, apart of course from pushing ahead with a multi-crore shipping canal project? Is the party not perturbed about government8217;s policy record? Does the shabby state of infrastructure 8212; given its own avowed commitment to bijli, sadak, paani 8212; not provoke the party into political action? What about large-scale corruption in social welfare projects? Are none of these issues worthy of the BJP8217;s attention?
