VOX POPULI
by
S Kamat
as
Aam Admi
Issue: 231 Date: 11.12.2017
Contents:
2. Was Ahmed A BJP Member?
3. Jerusalem As Capital Of Israel
4. Mani Shankar Aiyar's Expulsion A Hasty Move
Pushing Back India By 50 Years
The expectation from an effective government is that it will first take care of people's material needs. Like food for instance where prices have been randomly spiralling time and again with the frequency of the spirals increasing. Take for instance the situation on onion and tomato prices that have been going through the roof which situation is made more disturbing with Minister Ram Vilas Paswan saying lately that he cannot do anything about it. A few weeks back it was vegetables which across the board had seen phenomenal price rises with French beans selling at Rs. 160 per Kg. Now the question is that if the government is unable to tackle and minimise the randomness of the rise in food prices or show their unwillingness to do so then do they have the right to remain in power?
The other thing is that citizens look to the law and order situation being secure and safe. However, random incidents of killing, lynching and murder across India lead to a fear and anxiety in the common man. This more so when you look at crimes against women and children particularly rape, sodomy and murder that have been on the increase. And if you happen to be dealing in cattle you have to carry your life in your hands to transact business since mere possession of any kind of meat that looks like beef or transporting cattle could have you beaten up and/or strung up from the nearest tree. Last month a woman care giver of cattle had to seek help and police protection in UP to transport a sick cow to another town for treatment. The support was commendable but why is it required in the first place? Then we have just had a person hacked to death with an axe and then torched in the name of love jihad. The video of this incident was carried by TV channels and one suspects that it will not be long before we will have similar incidents happening across the country in the name of the emotive issue of love jihad.
The trend for making irresponsible comments scaling the heights of unreasonability and exhibiting a limited mindset continues with the furore being created lately on the film Padmavati. After lighting the fires of discontent among students in JNU & Osmania University by intolerance, then the violence by cow vigilantes, we are into the next phase. One does not understand why these needless tensions are created. Is it to seek the attention of the higher ups in the political establishment by ambitious party workers? These are questions to which answers are difficult to find. One feels that in the absence of a hard line being laid down by the top echelons of the party, those down the line take advantage of this silence and tend to play the fool.
The top leaders of the party in the meanwhile instead of concentrating on important issues of governance get overly involved in every election that comes up converting each into a prestige issue, like in the present case with Gujarat. With a comfortable majority in Parliament with which the government should have been passing legislation required for the country, this present government seeing the hurdles of not having a majority in the Rajya Sabha as an obsession has been chasing the States to control much needed votes. This has resulted in neglect of governance.
To avoid this stigma the government in its anxiety to show performance has gone for the Big Bang measures like Demonetisation and implementation of GST without fully grasping the impact of these on the people and the economy. What is disturbing is that the government is ignoring the human pain and suffering that is caused by these two measures. By wearing a halo that they are fighting black money and corruption the government wants to cover themselves with glory. At the same time they tend to ignore the lakhs whose livelihood has been affected by either businesses compelled to get closed or thrown out of jobs. In the context of GST the stated aim of government is to legitimise businesses, minimise the use of cash in trade and improve tax recovery. All these are laudable objectives but the way the government is going after them is to throw the scare into people and with so many changes being advised, people would temporarily halt their economic activity until the situation settles down. If so and with this trend continuing the tax revenues will drop. For collecting tax, you need people to continue with economic activity, right?
Thus if you put all this together which is runaway prices affecting people's day to day lives, no safety or security for life or limb when you go out, a medieval mindset prevailing overall and no incentive for pursuing economic activity, one would have to conclude that since the present government has come to power in 2014, India has been pushed back by about 50 years. There is a serious need to reverse that s retrograde trend.
Was Ahmed A BJP Member?
Narendra Modi & the BJP in the context of their utterances during the election campaign in Gujarat seem to be obsessed with the Mughals ranging from Babar to Aurangzeb whom they invoke at the drop of a hat. This is rather unusual considering the saffron brigade's anathema of anything Muslim. It also brings to the fore that the major city in Gujarat over 22 years of BJP rule continues to be named Ahmedabad!
Jerusalem As Capital Of Israel
Donald Trump's explosive announcement of the recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel will reverberate a long time in the Middle East and will kindle the fires of turmoil where a shaky, tenuous peace has been prevailing. For long the city of Jerusalem holy to Jews, Christians and Arabs has been thought to be kept as a common territory jointly administered by both Palestine and Israel in the final peace settlement if and when it happens. Trump's unilateral proclamation in this regard is going to stir things up in this region with people already taking to the streets in protest in Palestine and other Muslim countries. The announcement has also not been received well by the Western allies of the US like France and the U.K. among others. With the fires in North Korea not yet doused, Donald Trump one feels is taken on things which are more than that he can handle. One also fails to understand why the US President is stirring things up in places which are a lesser problem than concentrating on resolving matters which have reached conflagration point as in North Korea.
Mani Shankar Aiyar's Expulsion A Hasty Move
The Congress party one feels should show some more spine. A couple of days ago it expressed contrition for calling Narendra Modi a chaiwallah when he himself has admitted to being one on the current Gujarat campaign trail. There was no need for the Congress to express any regret considering the levels that Modi has been stooping with a new low by equating the Congress party to termites apart from other insults. Not only that he has been twisting history and re-interpreting the utterances of eminent Indian leaders of the past to show that they were against Gujarat and Gujaratis to seek the sympathy of voters. In actual terms whatever Modi claims in these instances has never been what has happened or is the truth.
Now the suspension of longtime leader, Mani Shankar Aiyar from the primary membership of the Congress party for calling Modi a 'neech admi' takes the cake. The riposte by Aiyar against Modi was absolutely in order and was probably done not to get Modi and the BJP get away with murder in slandering the Congress party and its leaders, both past and present. Modi has been fully deserving of this comment. Any sympathy that anyone thinks that Modi will get from the voters in Gujarat for this comment by Aiyar are all misplaced. It was important for the Congress to give back as much as it gets. There is also the situation that to get a message across sometimes you have to talk in a language that is understood by the other party. Modi and his BJP cohorts speak this kind of language and it seems that it is the only language they understand. In fact by such comments Narendra Modi has been devaluing and demeaning the office of the Prime Minister of India which is rather a sad state of affairs. Now that the Congress has taken this hasty step in removing Aiyar from the party, you will find that Modi and the BJP will go to more extremes in their actions and language for the remaining part of the Gujarat campaign hoping that the Congress will expel more of their senior leaders. They already have Kapil Sibal on the Babri Masjid issue in their crossfires. In this manner Rahul Gandhi has played into the hands of Modi and the BJP.
It is said that all is fair in love, war and in election times. Modi is playing this maxim to the fullest extent. There is no place for sentimentality and propriety at election times which is what Rahul Gandhi should understand and he should be giving back as much as he gets from the opposite party. Rebut them on every issue that they raise while remaining committed to the election plank that the Congress is pushing. With the impending elevation of Rahul as President of the Congress party, one could interpret the action of expelling Mani Shankar Aiyar as a show of strength. But if Aiyar wants he could make this action backfire against Rahul by laying the groundwork for a split in the Congress with the seniors going one way and the youth (below 60) remaining with Rahul. This scenario could be a flashback almost six decades back when Indira Gandhi put down her foot on who will run the Congress party. Testing times for Rahul Gandhi for sure. But Aiyar is too much of a Gandhi family loyalist to invoke this option though his feelings seem not to be equally reciprocated by the family.
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