Reasons And Excuses For BJP's Loss

[ramana]

And another article on the family cabinet led by MMS

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->CHAPTER II AND LAST
3 yawns, oath rush & sparkle of solitaire
SANKARSHAN THAKUR
 
<b>Farooq Abdullah flanked by son-in-law Sachin Pilot (right) and son Omar Abdullah after being sworn in cabinet minister. Congress MP Pilot has become a minister of state while Omar is Jammu and Kashmir chief minister.</b> Picture by Rajesh Kumar


New Delhi, May 28: The inauguration of Manmohan Singh’s second term a week ago was abbreviated by late-hour hiccups within and outside the Congress; its full unfurling at the Rashtrapati Bhavan this afternoon was robbed of rapture by the patina of intervening labours and fatigue.

<b>This was less the investiture of a government handed a rousing mandate, more a cabinet expansion whose enigma had been foretold the previous evening — only the initiated and the interested came.</b>

None from the Opposition, Left or Right, none from among the UPA’s many supporting parties, not even Lalu Prasad and Ram Vilas Paswan who continue to press their loyalty to the ruling alliance. <b>As one prominent absentee later remarked, “Once is enough for attendance, this was only a continuation of what they couldn’t finish at one go.”</b>

Besides, the office and secrecy formalities probably went on too long even for those who this event was made for — close to two hours of monosyllabic lead-ins from President Pratibha Patil — the first personal singular “main” and then “main” again — followed by a double oath repeated 60 times over.

 
By the time they came to the third of the six serried rows of those to be sworn in, Mamata Banerjee had treated herself to the abandon of the first of at least three yawns. And when the first of her nominees to government, <b>the veteran Saugata Roy, was called to the podium, he seemed darting ahead of patience — he began to swear himself in before President Patil had even risen. </b>But in the process Roy had afforded the occasion a rare relief from routine.

The only other, perhaps, was that the Rashtrapati Bhavan chefs actually did a decent job of their “Fish Amritsari”; but with Manmohan Singh, Amritsari himself, at the helm of the show, they had probably strained to please. It couldn’t be ascertained if <b>the Prime Minister </b>partook of the offering; what he <b>made certain was that he himself was offering little.</b>

“The President’s address to the joint session of Parliament and the budget will indicate the course my government intends to take,” was all he said to a slew of questions on the UPA’s policy direction in its second innings. “This government is a mix of experience and energy and we expect many good things from it.”

Trailing in the Prime Minister’s wake, as he trawled the sparkling corridor between Ashoka Hall and the ornate first-floor tea rooms, was a merry procession of mutual congratulation — those that had stayed on and those inducted anew had equal cause for elation.

<b>None seemed more pleased than the oversized Karunanidhi contingent from Chennai, turned out rustling crisp, whether it was khadi or Kanjeevaram; and you couldn’t have missed the sparkle of solitaires. But then, unlike ministries that come and go, diamonds are reliably known to be for ever.</b>

<b>Never perhaps has one clan grabbed two cabinet berths in New Delhi.</b> Despite Dayanidhi Maran’s protestations that too much was being made of the DMK family show, he and M.K. Azhagiri together make a first.

And should you include A. Raja, godson to Rajathi, third wife to Karunanidhi and mother to Kanimozhi, they’ve probably scripted history tough to match in the future. No wonder they populated the occasion as well they could — Azhagiri’s mother Dayalu, wife and brother Stalin, cousins and nephews and their wives and kin. Kanimozhi was nowhere to be seen, but her arrival is probably only a turn of mood away with the old man of Gopalpuram.

<b>Karunanidhi’s was not the only family celebrating multiple hits. There were the Abdullahs from the other end of the country, scoring their own first of sorts — father-in-law (Farooq Abdullah) and son-in-law (Sachin Pilot) in the same government;</b> Abdullah was Nehruvian in his white rose-in-the-buttonhole achkan, the young Pilot deferentially Rajasthani in a flaming red plume of a saafa.

This wasn’t a stage they were going to let go without grandstanding Kashmir style — prodigal son and J&K chief minister Omar Abdullah was there with wife Payal and two bubbly sons, so was elder sister Safiya and her husband on a rare break from their zealously preserved privacy on the peripheries of Srinagar.

<b>For Purno Sangma, it seemed like an overwhelming second coming. He’s been there, seen it all, several governments and cabinets, the Lok Sabha Speaker’s chair, but this afternoon he seemed to revel afresh in daughter Agatha’s reflected glory. Agatha was the last to be sworn in but she too scored a first today as youngest Union minister ever; the elder Sangma wasn’t permitting anyone to leave without that uniqueness underlined.</b>

<b>But the family that really seduced most interest and attention was the one that had no podium moment today —Congress and UPA boss Sonia, resplendent in violet crepe, and her most sought after general secretary, Rahul, sporting a stylised post-poll stubble, four days or so old.</b>

One has made a creed of her renunciation of office, the other has decided to take more time mulling an open invitation from the Prime Minister. There was nothing in it for the Gandhis today. <b>Yet all of it was only theirs.</b>

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There we have an elected moanrchy!