Opinion Diwali Doubts

On the Anna Hazare front,yet again,the scorched earth strategy tried before in last August and earlier last April is being resumed. Perhaps no single person exists who meets the demanding standards that the Congress expects in every other party but their own. But the notion that the five or ten people around Anna Hazare being discredited will redound to the advantage of the government is somewhat fanciful. The corruption issue is alive and well in Tihar Jail. This saga will keep the corruption issue in forefront and there is no way people are going to credit the government for having tackled it. The subtle difference between Raja/Kanimozhi and Kiran Bedi is not lost on people. The difference is that one is dealing in hundreds of crores and the other in hundreds,perhaps thousands.

The lucky thing for the Congress is the BJP. They should stop attacking the BJP and praise them as without the BJP the Congress would look much worse. Every day,Advani marches around in his Rath Yatra,BS Yeddyurappa gets free publicity along with the rest of the Karnataka ministers in jail. The RSS is clearly adamant on being seen to be in charge. Hence the early unveiling of Narendra Modi as PM candidate followed by the hasty recruitment of Nitin Gadkari to a potential Lok Sabha seat so he can dream of being the stop-Modi candidate. If one did not know better,one would suspect that the Congress was bribing the RSS to wreck the BJP. But as we all know,the RSS can do such things without any prompting.

There is a frightening vacuum in Indian politics. Gossip among the Indians wandering around London is all about the dismal present and the even darker future. It may seem over the top for a country growing at seven per cent plus with a programme for nuclear reactors and a totally ineffective Pakistan government on its borders. The fear is because of the high expectations Indians are beginning to have for their country. This is what was evident in the Rs 32 a day debate. Indians no longer root for the Lefty posturing which wants to show that more people are poor after every round of an NSS survey. They may be extravagantly rich and even be tax evaders but it offends their sense of Indian pride when they see numbers like Rs 32 a day. They want their country to perform much better and somehow feel that the shortfall is someone’s responsibility. After all these years of being told how the State takes the lead in development,they can only blame the sarkar mai-baap.

But if the government is to improve,the citizens ask how will it be and what better personnel can they see over the horizon. Had the Congress not destroyed internal party democracy and discouraged anyone with leadership qualities to emerge,we might have had a few more contenders for leadership in the Congress than the BJP has. If that is not to be and if Indians are to get used to the idea of succession of Rahul Gandhi,so be it,they say. What they cannot understand is the pretence that there is no issue to be addressed here except who takes the chair at Cabinet meetings when the PM is out of town.

Silence sometimes is not golden. It is deathly.