Cong campaign is all bark, no bite

Two comments caught my eye last week because they made such an interesting study in contrasts. One came from the Prime Minister and the othe...

Two comments caught my eye last week because they made such an interesting study in contrasts. One came from the Prime Minister and the other from the daughter of his Italian challenger. Vajpayee, addressing an election meeting in Uttar Pradesh, contested the Congress allegation that his government has destroyed the country. 8216;8216;Destroyed what? Where? How? And, if we were destroying the country what were you doing? Was it not your duty to stop us? Politics is not a game children can play.8217;8217;

Meanwhile, back in the Gandhi family nursery a.k.a Congress we had Mrs Priyanka Vadra express her views on the Prime Minister to Mumbai8217;s Midday newspaper. Answering a question on what kind of Prime Minister she thought Vajpayee was, Mrs Vadra said, 8216;8216;I think he is too old and physically weak. He is not maintaining good health. The Prime Minister of a nation should be a young person bubbling with energy. A leader of a nation should be a physically fit person. Everybody knows Vajpayee is an old man undergoing treatment.8217;8217;

Clearly, the Gandhi babalog were brought up with Western values that permit this kind of disrespect of elders. In India it is the height of bad manners but let us leave that aside and try and understand what the Prime Minister meant when he said 8216;8216;politics is not a game children can play8217;8217;.

As I understand it, he probably meant that during the course of this campaign we have not heard a political attack from a single Congress leader. We have heard many hysterical allegations and much whining about India not shining but not once from either Sonia, the babalog, any Congress leader or those legions of spokesmen have we heard what policy of the Vajpayee Government they think was destroying India.

The Vajpayee Government takes credit for holding fair elections in Jammu and Kashmir in 2002 and bringing that troubled State back on the road to peace. Does the Congress Party think this is going to destroy India?

The Vajpayee Government claims that it has initiated a peace process with Pakistan. Does Congress think this will destroy India? The Vajpayee Government claims that it has achieved a GDP gross domestic product growth rate of 8. Does Congress think this will destroy India? It claims that agricultural production has exceeded all previous records and foreign exchange reserves now exceed 110 billion. Which of these two things will destroy India? It takes credit for building eleven kilometres of road a day compared with 11 kilometres a year in Congress times? Is this going to destroy India?

If these can be counted as achievements for the Vajpayee Government it is quite easy to list an equally long list of failures. No serious attempt has been made to improve India8217;s disgraceful record in such vital areas of human development as healthcare and education and it is horrific that millions of Indians still lack that most vital of human needs, clean drinking water. In these areas we have seen no initiatives that can be considered serious. There are other failures. Our Railways desperately need to be modernised as do our airports and ports and all we have seen in the past five years is talk. On the power front we have another area of darkness in which all we have heard is talk about reform.

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Administrative reform has not even been talked about so we still govern a country the size of a continent with an outdated colonial system that has been decrepit for years. The result is we waste valuable resources on doing utterly useless things. Just take a look at your passport renewal form and you will see what I mean, just try filling your 8216;8216;Saral8217;8217; Income-Tax form and you will understand. As for reforming a criminal justice system so stagnant it will take more than 300 years to clear the backlog, let8217;s just say that the Prime Minister appears not to have noticed.

With so much ammunition that could have been used effectively to attack the Vajpayee Government, I have found myself constantly intrigued by the sort of campaign the Congress has run.

First we had Soniaji conducting 8216;8216;road shows8217;8217; in the wilds of rural India whose main message was 8216;8216;India is not shining8217;8217;. Then, there was that tired old 8216;8216;secularism8217;8217; card. Only Congress can save India because only Congress is secular, surely even Sonia cannot believe this any more? Then, we were told that the Prime Minister was a traitor because as a student during the Quit India movement he sucked up to the British to stay out of jail. Then, bringing the foreign origin issue to its most absurd point we had senior Congress leaders charge Lal Krishna Advani with being a foreigner because he was born in Karachi. Does nobody in Congress remember that it was an Indian city then?

Meanwhile, to return to Mrs Vadra8217;s assertion that a Prime Minister should be a 8216;8216;young person bubbling with energy8217;8217; it is appropriate to remind her that Daddy was this young person with the added advantage of more than 400 seats in Parliament, the largest majority in Indian parliamentary history. He could have ordered the sun to rise. And yet, by the end of his five years as Prime Minister we had problems with Sri Lanka and Pakistan, an insurgency in Kashmir and economically we had not even begun to realise that it was time to dump socialism and start opening up. That happened under two very old men, Narasimha Rao and Atal Behari Vajpayee. The Prime Minister is right when he says 8216;8216;rajneeti bacchon ka khel nahin hai8217;8217;. But, who will explain this to the babalog?

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