08-07-2006, 03:30 AM
Is Ajoy Bose a commie???? Interesting artcile in pioneer
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--> Singh-song goes life
Ajoy Bose
One wonders why there are such tall tales being told by our politicians, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing ---- Two non-issues with little contemporary relevance hijacked the Monsoon session of Parliament last week, and may do so again. <b>Interestingly, both concern former Foreign Ministers famous for their exaggerated sense of self-importance. It is a sad commentary on today's political scenario that the controversies raging around this pair of superannuated windbags have been allowed to push aside far more genuine problems and challenges facing the nation.</b>
<b>First came the ridiculous hullabaloo arising out of Mr Jaswant Singh's verbal acrobatics on the alleged mole in former Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao's office. The veteran BJP leader, who also leads the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha, succeeded in confusing everyone in the House and deeply embarrassed his own party by persisting with a farfetched story about moles and leaked nuclear secrets that ultimately went nowhere. Even by the dubious standards of irresponsible behaviour set by our politicians, Mr Jaswant Singh's performance in the past fortnight will be difficult to surpass.</b>
<b>All those familiar with Mr Jaswant Singh know his penchant for bombastic phrases and general incoherence, painfully evident in his new book</b>. But even they were not prepared for the veteran leader to actually send to the Prime Minister and also table in Parliament, an absurd document purportedly recording the exchange of top secret information on the Rao Government's nuclear plans between two senior US officials, whose authenticity was palpably in doubt. Not only did the two officials flatly deny the letter but the document itself was full of spelling and grammatical errors. Not surprisingly, Mr Jaswant Singh's claim that this was his clinching proof of a mole in the PMO became an absolute farce.
<b>
Worse, he tied himself up in knots by repeatedly contradicting himself on the mole story. After making a mysterious reference to the mole in his book along with excerpts from the controversial letter, he overreached himself by making wild charges in pre-publication publicity frenzy. Challenged by the Prime Minister to prove his allegations, he first blustered, and then tried to cover up before finally confessing that he did not have a clue about the mole. Of course, as per standard practice by political leaders, the BJP leader blamed the entire fiasco on misreporting by the media!</b>
The Jaswant Singh farce has been now replaced with the equally trivial controversy about Mr Natwar Singh and the Oil-for-Food scandal that has once again erupted after leaks in the media on the Pathak Commission report. <b>Despite the huge public clamour about Mr Natwar Singh helping his son and his friends to get oil coupons from the Saddam regime in Iraq, it is difficult to understand how this violated any law. After all, it is normal practice for parents to use their connections to advance the interests of their progeny within legal parameters.</b>
In this particular case, Mr Natwar Singh did not even occupy any public office when he used his contacts. Clearly, he himself is above any kind of prosecution while the only charges that his son and business associates may face relate to the tax they should have paid for foreign remittances received. <b>The real 'crime' committed by the Congress leader and long time retainer of the Gandhi family was that he kept his party supremo Sonia Gandhi in the dark</b> YEAH RIGHT!!!], which of course becomes a matter of party indiscipline concerning the Congress alone not Parliament or public.
Mr Natwar Singh compounded his problems with 10, Janpath by belligerent denial of the expose that suddenly came in the shape of the Volcker Report. His subsequent removal from the Cabinet has to be seen in the light of his problems with his party boss and not because he had committed a major crime. Unfortunately, such is the competition between political parties over who can occupy the moral high ground, the UPA Government has already spent vast amounts of public money on the Dayal mission across the world to collect material on Volcker report, as well as on the Pathak Commission, on what should have been dismissed with a disciplinary action by the party high command.
The problem is that although everyone in Parliament knows that the current controversies raging around the two Singhs are quite needless and inconsequential, it suits the political agendas of different parties and groups. For instance, the Jaswant Singh mole controversy was extremely handy to the Congress which used it to deflect the heat it was facing from united onslaught on the nuclear deal with US by the Right and Left. <b>Similarly, the BJP, watching with increasing panic as the noose tightened around Mr Jaswant Singh's neck, quickly jumped on the Natwar Singh bandwagon to push the Congress back on the defensive.</b>[Yeah, thank god for Pathak commision report leak!]
Such political charades that create a lot of noise about things that don't really matter are becoming a routine ploy of both the ruling coalition as well as the Opposition. It is this cynical approach of the political class as a whole to parliamentary democracy that has become the main obstacle to tackling the real issues.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--> Singh-song goes life
Ajoy Bose
One wonders why there are such tall tales being told by our politicians, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing ---- Two non-issues with little contemporary relevance hijacked the Monsoon session of Parliament last week, and may do so again. <b>Interestingly, both concern former Foreign Ministers famous for their exaggerated sense of self-importance. It is a sad commentary on today's political scenario that the controversies raging around this pair of superannuated windbags have been allowed to push aside far more genuine problems and challenges facing the nation.</b>
<b>First came the ridiculous hullabaloo arising out of Mr Jaswant Singh's verbal acrobatics on the alleged mole in former Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao's office. The veteran BJP leader, who also leads the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha, succeeded in confusing everyone in the House and deeply embarrassed his own party by persisting with a farfetched story about moles and leaked nuclear secrets that ultimately went nowhere. Even by the dubious standards of irresponsible behaviour set by our politicians, Mr Jaswant Singh's performance in the past fortnight will be difficult to surpass.</b>
<b>All those familiar with Mr Jaswant Singh know his penchant for bombastic phrases and general incoherence, painfully evident in his new book</b>. But even they were not prepared for the veteran leader to actually send to the Prime Minister and also table in Parliament, an absurd document purportedly recording the exchange of top secret information on the Rao Government's nuclear plans between two senior US officials, whose authenticity was palpably in doubt. Not only did the two officials flatly deny the letter but the document itself was full of spelling and grammatical errors. Not surprisingly, Mr Jaswant Singh's claim that this was his clinching proof of a mole in the PMO became an absolute farce.
<b>
Worse, he tied himself up in knots by repeatedly contradicting himself on the mole story. After making a mysterious reference to the mole in his book along with excerpts from the controversial letter, he overreached himself by making wild charges in pre-publication publicity frenzy. Challenged by the Prime Minister to prove his allegations, he first blustered, and then tried to cover up before finally confessing that he did not have a clue about the mole. Of course, as per standard practice by political leaders, the BJP leader blamed the entire fiasco on misreporting by the media!</b>
The Jaswant Singh farce has been now replaced with the equally trivial controversy about Mr Natwar Singh and the Oil-for-Food scandal that has once again erupted after leaks in the media on the Pathak Commission report. <b>Despite the huge public clamour about Mr Natwar Singh helping his son and his friends to get oil coupons from the Saddam regime in Iraq, it is difficult to understand how this violated any law. After all, it is normal practice for parents to use their connections to advance the interests of their progeny within legal parameters.</b>
In this particular case, Mr Natwar Singh did not even occupy any public office when he used his contacts. Clearly, he himself is above any kind of prosecution while the only charges that his son and business associates may face relate to the tax they should have paid for foreign remittances received. <b>The real 'crime' committed by the Congress leader and long time retainer of the Gandhi family was that he kept his party supremo Sonia Gandhi in the dark</b> YEAH RIGHT!!!], which of course becomes a matter of party indiscipline concerning the Congress alone not Parliament or public.
Mr Natwar Singh compounded his problems with 10, Janpath by belligerent denial of the expose that suddenly came in the shape of the Volcker Report. His subsequent removal from the Cabinet has to be seen in the light of his problems with his party boss and not because he had committed a major crime. Unfortunately, such is the competition between political parties over who can occupy the moral high ground, the UPA Government has already spent vast amounts of public money on the Dayal mission across the world to collect material on Volcker report, as well as on the Pathak Commission, on what should have been dismissed with a disciplinary action by the party high command.
The problem is that although everyone in Parliament knows that the current controversies raging around the two Singhs are quite needless and inconsequential, it suits the political agendas of different parties and groups. For instance, the Jaswant Singh mole controversy was extremely handy to the Congress which used it to deflect the heat it was facing from united onslaught on the nuclear deal with US by the Right and Left. <b>Similarly, the BJP, watching with increasing panic as the noose tightened around Mr Jaswant Singh's neck, quickly jumped on the Natwar Singh bandwagon to push the Congress back on the defensive.</b>[Yeah, thank god for Pathak commision report leak!]
Such political charades that create a lot of noise about things that don't really matter are becoming a routine ploy of both the ruling coalition as well as the Opposition. It is this cynical approach of the political class as a whole to parliamentary democracy that has become the main obstacle to tackling the real issues.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->