Is the UPA Government dead?
The signs are that the ruling coalition in India is dying if not dead and that the country may be drawn into another election if the government implodes
by: mehulkamdar
Some time ago, Indian Express editor, Shekhar Gupta, an open supporter of the BJP, gleefully taunted the current Government of India telling them that he had been told by friends in the government that they had not expected to win the last elections themselves. At a time when the BJP was squirming with multiple problems of its own including the murder of it's star organiser Pramod Mahajan by his own brother, it's huge internal turmoil over it's senior leader L K Advani's "secular" chit to Md Ali Jinnah on a trip to Pakistan etc, this cocky comment by Gupta underlined the fact that the BJP was confident that, whatever it's own problems, those of the Congress were greater.
There is no doubt that Manmohan singh sits in Delhi, 150 years after Bahadur Shah Zafar, as yet another soft ruler, incapable of any haed decision. While he is respected for his learning and his ability to think and plan ahead, few give him any credit for an ability to execute these very plans. A disinvestment proposal was shot down not just by his own coalition members but also by the grand dame of his own party, Sonia Gandhi, the woman who holds the strings that make Manmohan dance. Manmohan has also had to grin clownishly when his own party's rank and file has demanded that he be replaced by Rahul Gandhi, true to the Congress' attempts at a near monarchic succession. Indeed, it is possible that he knows that he is little more than a caretaker of the PM's position for Rahul Gandhi who may take it up whenever he chooses and his mother gives him her blessings. As a former bureaucrat who learned to dance to his political masters' tunes Manmohan is certain to stand to attention and obey whenever he is asked to stand down.
But this is not about an individual alone. The government in power has been a flop show in so many ways that it boggles the mind that such a government remains in power. Naxalite terrorists have managed to lay siege to prisons and free more than a thousand of their cohorts, making law and order a farce under the UPA. Individual liberties in the country have been threatened by rogue ministers whom the Prime Minister seems powerless to rein in. An example of this is Anbumani Ramdoss, Minister for Health, whose actions seem to combine fascist and lunatic tendencies. From sending his cadres to harass actresses to using a coterie of bootlickers to harass heads of medical institutions, the man has little to show except his own obnoxiousness. And, while he prances about on the national stage, the Prime Minister appears ever more clownish in his complete silence whenever his minister puts up a freak show.
And there is corruption - Dayanidhi Maran's thuggish attempts at bullying the Tata group are now famous, indeed. And what was the Prime Minister's response? Silence. Absolute, pin-drop silence. Common people anywhere in the world have the decency to alert their neighbours if they see a thief about to enter their homes. The Prime Minister of India lacks the power to check thievery at a national level when his own ministers go about trying to force leading industrial groups into handing over what is rightfully theirs. And, in addition to all of these problems, is the problem of stupidity - Arjun Singh, a man whose political career should have been buried an age ago, is allowed to hold national institutions from expanding abroad right through his own career rigor-mortis. Another gerontocrat, Priyaranjan Dasmunshi was almost allowed to get away with banning the Da Vinci code film in what was a blatant attempt at courting some religious groups and getting their support when the government was teetering on the brink. When Dasmunshi failed, Manmohan's state minions took over in Andhra Pradesh and Tamilnadu until the courts put an end to this madness. Considering the singularly inane pronouncements that Dasmunshi, Arjun Singh, Y S Rajasekhara Reddy and M Karunanidhi put out on the issue of the Da Vinci Code film, it would not be unreasonable to decide that none of these men had read it. It would be reasonable, in fact, to conclude, that even if they did read it, they would not figure out what it was really about. And yet, these people decided to throw their weight around and emulate the late Rajiv Gandhi whose inspirational value in banning the Satanic Verses seems to permeate their decision making these days.
The country has also seen fraud committed in the matter of agricultural policy. Wheat imports were organised in a manner that was closed, opaque and suspicious. What was worse was that whoever contracted the wheat that did finally land in India from Aistralia did not bother to insist on quality norms - it was found badly contaminated and unfit for human consumption when it did arrive. Now, the government plans to allow private companies to import wheat at a time when the coun try has a bumper crop. Advanced grain storage systems which would save at least 40% of the country's wheat and rice production from being consumed by pests is something that has been on the cards for many decades but is still not being implemented despite loud noises come budget time that this is, indeed, going to be done.
And there is the attempt at destroying the Right to Information in an attempt at guarding the incompetence and corruption of the neta-babu class. What could be a better example of the fact that this government is failing and fast than its own attempt at covering up its foul ups? If one were to compile a list of mess-ups by this government, it would assume encyclopedic proportions. <span style='color:red'>In India, over the past three decades, it has been evident that an active populace does not wait for things to get completely out of hand. In a country where the general public's enthusiasm for the democratic process is the envy of other democracies and where vast portions of the population comes out to vote come election day, the pressure to perform on governments is high. The fact that the present UPA government is unable to do anything positive in the country seems to point to its coming demise.</span> And, if that demise must come, it cannot come soon enough. Someone once described Parliament as a committee of village idiots with the devil for a leader - the description fits the present government better than it has any of the governments that India has seen over the past 30 years.
http://www.sulekha.com/blogs/blogdisplay.aspx?cid=79029
The signs are that the ruling coalition in India is dying if not dead and that the country may be drawn into another election if the government implodes
by: mehulkamdar
Some time ago, Indian Express editor, Shekhar Gupta, an open supporter of the BJP, gleefully taunted the current Government of India telling them that he had been told by friends in the government that they had not expected to win the last elections themselves. At a time when the BJP was squirming with multiple problems of its own including the murder of it's star organiser Pramod Mahajan by his own brother, it's huge internal turmoil over it's senior leader L K Advani's "secular" chit to Md Ali Jinnah on a trip to Pakistan etc, this cocky comment by Gupta underlined the fact that the BJP was confident that, whatever it's own problems, those of the Congress were greater.
There is no doubt that Manmohan singh sits in Delhi, 150 years after Bahadur Shah Zafar, as yet another soft ruler, incapable of any haed decision. While he is respected for his learning and his ability to think and plan ahead, few give him any credit for an ability to execute these very plans. A disinvestment proposal was shot down not just by his own coalition members but also by the grand dame of his own party, Sonia Gandhi, the woman who holds the strings that make Manmohan dance. Manmohan has also had to grin clownishly when his own party's rank and file has demanded that he be replaced by Rahul Gandhi, true to the Congress' attempts at a near monarchic succession. Indeed, it is possible that he knows that he is little more than a caretaker of the PM's position for Rahul Gandhi who may take it up whenever he chooses and his mother gives him her blessings. As a former bureaucrat who learned to dance to his political masters' tunes Manmohan is certain to stand to attention and obey whenever he is asked to stand down.
But this is not about an individual alone. The government in power has been a flop show in so many ways that it boggles the mind that such a government remains in power. Naxalite terrorists have managed to lay siege to prisons and free more than a thousand of their cohorts, making law and order a farce under the UPA. Individual liberties in the country have been threatened by rogue ministers whom the Prime Minister seems powerless to rein in. An example of this is Anbumani Ramdoss, Minister for Health, whose actions seem to combine fascist and lunatic tendencies. From sending his cadres to harass actresses to using a coterie of bootlickers to harass heads of medical institutions, the man has little to show except his own obnoxiousness. And, while he prances about on the national stage, the Prime Minister appears ever more clownish in his complete silence whenever his minister puts up a freak show.
And there is corruption - Dayanidhi Maran's thuggish attempts at bullying the Tata group are now famous, indeed. And what was the Prime Minister's response? Silence. Absolute, pin-drop silence. Common people anywhere in the world have the decency to alert their neighbours if they see a thief about to enter their homes. The Prime Minister of India lacks the power to check thievery at a national level when his own ministers go about trying to force leading industrial groups into handing over what is rightfully theirs. And, in addition to all of these problems, is the problem of stupidity - Arjun Singh, a man whose political career should have been buried an age ago, is allowed to hold national institutions from expanding abroad right through his own career rigor-mortis. Another gerontocrat, Priyaranjan Dasmunshi was almost allowed to get away with banning the Da Vinci code film in what was a blatant attempt at courting some religious groups and getting their support when the government was teetering on the brink. When Dasmunshi failed, Manmohan's state minions took over in Andhra Pradesh and Tamilnadu until the courts put an end to this madness. Considering the singularly inane pronouncements that Dasmunshi, Arjun Singh, Y S Rajasekhara Reddy and M Karunanidhi put out on the issue of the Da Vinci Code film, it would not be unreasonable to decide that none of these men had read it. It would be reasonable, in fact, to conclude, that even if they did read it, they would not figure out what it was really about. And yet, these people decided to throw their weight around and emulate the late Rajiv Gandhi whose inspirational value in banning the Satanic Verses seems to permeate their decision making these days.
The country has also seen fraud committed in the matter of agricultural policy. Wheat imports were organised in a manner that was closed, opaque and suspicious. What was worse was that whoever contracted the wheat that did finally land in India from Aistralia did not bother to insist on quality norms - it was found badly contaminated and unfit for human consumption when it did arrive. Now, the government plans to allow private companies to import wheat at a time when the coun try has a bumper crop. Advanced grain storage systems which would save at least 40% of the country's wheat and rice production from being consumed by pests is something that has been on the cards for many decades but is still not being implemented despite loud noises come budget time that this is, indeed, going to be done.
And there is the attempt at destroying the Right to Information in an attempt at guarding the incompetence and corruption of the neta-babu class. What could be a better example of the fact that this government is failing and fast than its own attempt at covering up its foul ups? If one were to compile a list of mess-ups by this government, it would assume encyclopedic proportions. <span style='color:red'>In India, over the past three decades, it has been evident that an active populace does not wait for things to get completely out of hand. In a country where the general public's enthusiasm for the democratic process is the envy of other democracies and where vast portions of the population comes out to vote come election day, the pressure to perform on governments is high. The fact that the present UPA government is unable to do anything positive in the country seems to point to its coming demise.</span> And, if that demise must come, it cannot come soon enough. Someone once described Parliament as a committee of village idiots with the devil for a leader - the description fits the present government better than it has any of the governments that India has seen over the past 30 years.
http://www.sulekha.com/blogs/blogdisplay.aspx?cid=79029