Opinion Bad Omens

How much India has regressed since those good days. In a secular state,we light lamps—a Hindu ritual (and a fire hazard) at every public meeting. Leaders visit temples and dargahs,though not Christian churches,I notice. Iftar parties are a must for conspicuous secular consumption though again Christmas or Easter are not celebrated. In every aspect of public life,religious practices,and indeed even superstitions such as astrology and numerology,dominate. During my young days when we moved to Bombay from Baroda,we moved house four times in ten years but I don’t recall a single time doing vastu or feng shui. My mother never once observed karwa chauth,though she was a good Hindu wife. The resurgence of superstitions bodes ill for India though I am sure much money is made by making the gullible swallow such stuff.

My dismay is because of the almost 100 per cent certainty that the reshuffle will be timid and ineffective. At first,we heard that the PM could only reshuffle his Congress colleagues and not the other coalition partners. Now it seems not,yet things are hardly better. The Trinamool will be given more posts! That I presume is a reward for threatening and uncooperative behaviour within the Cabinet and open association with the Maoists. But then,West Bengal elections are around the corner and Mamataa (a respelling,thanks to numerology) must have her pound of flesh.

A serious and thorough reshuffle is needed. The UPA-II wagon is out of control and out of joint. The last twenty months have seen a total inability to control inflation. Perhaps it was a clever political ploy to test the public’s inflation tolerance while there was no election to fight. But it has backfired and now with industrial growth slowing down,India faces stagflation. What is more,global forces are reinforcing inflationary tendencies in commodity markets. This will give the government yet another alibi for its failure.

The two-tier arrangement whereby Sonia Gandhi has power but no responsibility and Manmohan Singh has responsibility but no power,is not working any more. It worked very well in UPA-I but then some of the coalition allies had principles unlike in UPA-II. The last two months since US President Barack Obama’s departure have been traumatic for the body politic. The response has been narrowly political partisan and neglectful of the public’s concerns.

The Congress has veered uncomfortably between being the party in power while denouncing the BJP and then suddenly turning coy and asking the government to do something it does not wish to be associated with. No one is admitting the breakdown in public trust as a result of the denial the Congress is in. If not corruption,there has to be some admission of oversight and inefficiency if things have got to such a bad level.

My reshuffle would involve lowering the average age of the Cabinet from 70 to 45. Rahul Gandhi can no longer escape responsibility by wandering in the dusty backyards of UP. He has to take a post and I would suggest deputy prime ministership. He has to learn the job sometime. His age cohorts in the Congress should all move up to full Cabinet position. That will mean sacking around ten existing Cabinet ministers. We all know who they are. They have failed to perform in UPA-II. It’s time they went.