Rank trouble

The Indian electorate,expecting from this government a quick start,and not privy to what was or was not promised before or after the swearing in of the cabinet,has been treated to the unedifying sight of a member of the council of ministers throwing what is instantly recognisable as a temper tantrum,refusing to do the job he swore an oath to perform,and marshalling demands from across the world that the wrong implied in his being granted “mere” minister of state status be righted. And the electorate has also had to bear witness to the unfortunate spectacle of the authority of the prime minister and the president of the ruling party being,in essence,undermined,by their apparent refusal to bring this tantrum to an end.

Like so many parts of India’s east,Orissa forever labours under the apprehension that its concerns are rarely given a fair hearing in distant Delhi. That,as much as the internal dissension and reputation for venality that have plagued the Orissa unit of the Indian National Congress,caused it to be one of the strongholds of the Janata Dal in decades gone by. Of course,much of that is also due to the towering presence of the anti-Congress leader Biju Patnaik. One of the anti-Congress stalwarts that Biju Patnaik mentored was Srikant Jena,who went all the way to the Union cabinet; when Naveen Patnaik went to Orissa after his father’s death to found the Biju Janata Dal,Jena was one of those somehow left out in the cold. Much has changed,Jena’s political orientation included.

But his willingness to play the regional card in pursuit of his goals apparently has not.

The consequences of giving in to public demands of this sort are obvious: rewarding bad behaviour always carries with it the risk of encouraging the next aggrieved person to press his claims similarly. But even more so,once the DMK was effectively stared down,the process of cabinet formation — involving just one party,after all,not an unwieldy coalition — was not supposed to take any more time or political capital. That’s an argument the Congress makes,and it should back it up. Jena’s resort to regional sentiments — and refusal to assume office after being sworn in as a minister of state — shouldn’t hold up the process.