It has unfolded like a Greek tragedy. This whole scandal of the gold medals turning into dust. And for the first time the UPA government has me frightened. Narendra Modi and the NDA government used to spook me at one time especially after Godhra and what happened in Gujarat subsequently. Now I feel like that about Manmohan Singh, Sonia Gandhi and the heir in waiting, Rahul Gandhi. The violence they have unleashed in the system is far more dangerous and potent than a riot engineered by the Hindu right wing fundamentalists.
The BJP brand of violence is explicit and we can easily condemn it...take out protest rallies, slam the party in our writings and in our films but the Congress brand of manoeuvring is far more lethal, more dangerous and when the sorry spectacle of their manipulations unfold we feel we can’t do anything about it, because unwittingly we have been party to it. Like we too cheered the athletes who won the medals in the commonwealth games last year and now it is like what right do we have to ask any of the sports officials how did the timings of the athletes improve so dramatically for the games? They can always turn around and tell us like you did, we also got carried away, and never asked them this question. See how implicit they have made us in their crime.
I am sure everyone in the system knew what was going on including the Prime Minister. We live in times when one minister is tapping the office of another so it would be foolish to believe that the PM comes to work just to read files. I am sure he is briefed on a daily basis about what is going on with his cabinet mates and he has clearly instructed his colleagues to adhere to three basic norms.
1. So long as they are contributing to his one point agenda of ‘growth’ he doesn’t care what they are doing to get there. Much like a CEO who barks ‘Get me results. I don’t care how you get them.’
2. The individual citizens are unimportant in the larger scheme of things as long as our cities look like Singapore or Hongkong with plush malls and roads that seem they will burst with all the traffic on them.
3. He wants history to record that he is the one who laid the foundation of this new affluent India and Rahul Gandhi can take off from where he left. Nothing should be allowed to taint his personal ‘brand’ or the brand of the government he heads.
No wonder Suresh Kalmadi looked so smug during the Commonwealth Games despite one scandal after another tumbling out against him. He had adhered to the brief...pumped all the athletes with steroids and uppers so that they ran, jumped and did cartwheels like they were possessed and scored more than a century when it came to the medals. He had delivered in the end, never mind the means and the only time the PM had sounded annoyed was when the venues looked as if they couldn’t be completed on time. But he had more than made up with the Indian victory laps. He was expecting to be hugged by the PM. But unfortunately for him and Singh, the Supreme Court decided to play party pooper.
Now we are given to understand that Kapil Sibal has behaved just like Kalmadi. He should have known that with all the media glare on the 2G scam, anyone who took over the telecom portfolio would be under constant scrutiny but that did not stop him from doling out all that largesse on Anil Ambani. Everyone else in the system was screaming, teach the man a lesson no Ambani will ever forget but Sibal did not listen. He must have thought he didn’t need to, as long as he was on Singh’s good books. After all Sibal took care to dress the part of the suave politician who’s equally at home air kissing in a socialite party as he is reciting bad poetry to Barkha Dutt. But once again the courts have turned into kabab mein haddi.
As for Dayanidhi Maran, I feel sorry for him. His rotund frame and a rounder face make him look like a character from a Charles Dickens novel but that may be only be for the well read Singh. For the rest of us he looks like a man who loves his thair sadam. From what we have read and heard, Tihar serves only North Indian food like roti and dal. How will our man survive there? Besides with Raja also present in Tihar, Maran will have to constantly watch his back.
With all this going on, a friend has found time to share a morphed picture of Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi on FB with the caption ‘Hep Couple.’ Singh is in a psychedelic T Shirt and jeans and Gandhi is wearing a mini-skirt. He may have meant it as a joke but like every piece of fiction this too may have its roots in reality. They say Nero fiddled while Rome burnt. So what’s wrong if Singh and Gandhi party while all this havoc is being wrecked on the nation? I have only one question. What does Rahul Baba throw a tantrum about when he joins the party?
Does he demand they dance only to the songs of Justin Bieber?
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Its always a treat to read your blog...so very well said. Kapils poetry has hit you very badly it seems....was it the poetry, the sham or the person. Cant stand him for a second after his zero sum loss theory.
ReplyDeleteAccurate description of the shameful state of our country.I am hoping for a great debacle of Congress this time. But also worried because we as a nation suffer from a disease called amnesia, which is a mental disorder and is also known as memory loss. We tend to forget things very fast. Everything will be decided at the time of election - hopefully someone will be there to remind people to use their right to vote righteously.
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