PM fails to impress

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh8217;s defence of the Indo-US nuclear deal in Rajya Sabha last week may have earned him a lot of admirers and silenced both BJP and the Left...

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh8217;s defence of the Indo-US nuclear deal in Rajya Sabha last week may have earned him a lot of admirers and silenced both BJP and the Left, but Organiser is clearly not impressed. In a front page article titled 8216;Obfuscation!8217;, M D Nalapat insists that the PM8217;s address 8220;can best be described as an exercise in point-wise obfuscation in order to conceal the reality of surrender.8221;

Relying more on John Rood8217;s testimony at the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on August 2 to confirm his nomination as the new assistant secretary of state for international security and non-proliferation, Nalapat says it revealed that the July 18, 2005 Joint Statement 8220;is itself a camouflage and that Manmohan had effectively subscribed to the stringent NPT-like conditions applicable to non nuclear weapons states.8221;

The Organiser article also laments that the Left parties had swallowed the PM8217;s 8220;line of deception in toto8217;8217; and had given up efforts to introduce a binding sense of the House resolution 8220;although this is the only way to prevent the Sonia-Manmohan sellout of the country8217;s energy security and strategic future.8221;

DMK8217;s about turn

The Organiser is not impressed with the 8220;new found love of DMK ministers for temples and community feasts in temples8221; either. The sudden religous turn taken by the avowedly atheist Dravidian party is attributed to vote bank politics.

This week8217;s editorial notes that ever since the DMK came back to power in the recent polls, it has started wooing Hindus 8212; prompted by the party8217;s surprising victory in a number of Brahmin dominated seats.That, it contends, came about because the upper castes had turned against Jayalalitha after she arrested the Kanchi Shankaracharya.

With voters largely polarised between the DMK and AIADMK, elections are won on the floating vote. 8220;The octogenarian DMK leader must have realized that this was as good an opportunity as any to swing some of that vote base to his DMK. Especially if the mantle has to be passed on to his son,8221; the editorial suggests.

Taking on Montek

In the column 8216;Economy Matters8217;, Dr Parakala Prabhakar criticises Planning Commission deputy chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia for advocating 8220;a shift of the work-force from agriculture to non-agriculture to raise the per capita income of workers.8217;8217; At a Delhi seminar co-sponsored by the World Bank, Montek reportedly said mere expansion of employment wouldn8217;t make a dent on poverty since the two weren8217;t necessarily corelated.

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Dr Prabhakar sharply disagrees. Referring to the crisis in Indian agriculture leading to thousands of farmers8217; suicides, he writes: 8220;The solution is not to drive them out of the farm and into the wretched urban slums8230;It should be done by changing the farm ownership patterns and improving farm practices. Shifting work-force out of agriculture can kill both the farmer and the farm.8217;8217;

On Montek8217;s employment-poverty correlation, he says: 8220;If you look only at heartless bar-charts and faceless statistics, you will not find a correlation between unemployment and poverty or unemployement and prosperity. But look at the people in flesh and blood. Understand the misery of a jobless farmer8230;The correlation between poverty and unemployment is inescapable.8217;8217;

8212;-Compiled by Manini Chatterjee