This Week Madhya Pradesh

China atmosphere stifled chouhan

Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan had lots of questions to ask during his recent visit to China but failed to satisfy his curiosity. He wanted to know about the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 and how many students had lost their lives. Everyone from the guide to officials simply refused to talk about the issue. Now back home,Chouhan has declared that the atmosphere was stifling. He was impressed by the fast pace of development but disappointed by what he called the lack of freedom of speech and expression. The CM,who attended the World Economic Forum meet,liked the ease with which land is acquired in China and wondered whether votebank politics would allow such decisiveness back home.

Gandhi revisited

More than a century after Mahatma Gandhi wrote Hind Swaraj,the BJP government organised a weeklong programme in the state capital to read and discuss the book. Education Minister Archana Chitnis,the brain behind the programme,claimed it was the first such exercise by any government. The session began on the birth anniversary of BJP ideologue Deen Dayal Upadhyay on September 25 and ended on Gandhis birth anniversary on October 2. Chitnis said there were many similarities between Upadhyays idea of integral humanism and what the Father of the Nation stood for. Incidentally,early this year,RSS Chief Mohan Bhagwat and Gujarat CM Narendra Modi had jointly released a Gujarati-Hindi-English version of the book in Ahmedabad.

Swamys latest cause

Janata Party president Subramanian Swamy,who has been taking up issues ranging from the 2G scandal to terror,has now resolved to bring back to India a Saraswati idol that is believed to have been taken from the disputed Bhojshala/Kamal mosque structure in Dhar. The town has occasionally gone through communal tension over the disputed structure. Swamy announced at a recent visit to Dhar that religious leaders had asked him to make attempts to bring the idol back from the London Museum. He visited the disputed structure before asserting that the site was that of a Saraswati temple. Even the NDA government had initiated a move to bring the idol back,but without success.

CM impresses governor

The new governor has begun his innings with praise for Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan. The CM threw a welcome party last week and left Ramnaresh Yadav impressed with his oratory skills. The governor felt the CM was a clever craftsman of his trade and attributed his election victories to such skills. Yadavs immediate predecessor Rameshwar Thakurs two-year term was free from controversy. The previous decade,however,had seen successive,stormy tenures for governors Bhai Mahavir and Balram Jakhar. Mahavir had a running battle with the Congress government headed by Digvijay Singh while Jakhar,after initial bonhomie,had become overtly critical of the BJP government.