03-18-2005, 12:49 AM
Man! Look at the spin by leftist COMMIE and India hating SCUM BAGS!
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->http://www.hindu.com/2005/03/17/stories/...131000.htm
After the Jharkhand mess
By Harish Khare
It is incumbent upon the entire UPA establishment to infuse a new sense of purpose and priorities at the Centre.
THE UNION Law Minister, Hans Raj Bhardwaj, has the reputation of being a nuts-and-bolts man. Over the years he is believed to have sorted out the equations between successive Congress Governments and the judiciary, but he has rarely been credited with jurisprudential creativity or political insightfulness. He surprised everyone by his forceful intervention in the recent Jharkhand crisis after the Supreme Court's March 9 directive on how and when the vote of confidence was to be conducted in the State Assembly. Even though the United Progressive Alliance's political establishment was agitated over what was seen as the apex court's overreach, Mr. Bhardwaj was unequivocally against any confrontation with the Supreme Court. His contention was that Shibu Soren was hardly the cause for which to pick up a quarrel with the apex court. His reasoning was essentially political: he argued that a couple of senior Ministers within the UPA Government were interested in instigating a confrontation with the intention of weakening the authority of the Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh. He argued firmly and forcefully. Given the all round confusion and uncertainty, his "no-confrontation" line prevailed.
<b>Now the Bharatiya Janata Party has grabbed the baton. L.K. Advani and his comrades are trying hard to create a confrontation between the Lok Sabha Speaker and the judiciary. Somnath Chatterjee is a seasoned a parliamentarian and a knowledgeable a student of constitutional law; he can be trusted to frustrate this NDA design.</b>
At the same time he is rendering a useful service by reminding one and all that all three branches of the government â the executive, the legislature and the judiciary â need to be mindful of institutional boundaries.
<b>
Whatever its calculations, the BJP's sudden protestation of concern for the Constitution is a welcome development After all, here is a political party that had reaped electoral harvest by first cocking a snook at the Supreme Court (in the matter of the Babri Masjid demolition) and later by arguing that the courts could have no say in the matter of faith. And, later, when in power, it tried to rewrite the Constitution; it appointed a "Constitutional Review Commission." It was only public opinion and a vigilant President (K.R. Narayanan) that check-mated the BJP's design. Even if political expediency rather than convictions are prompting the BJP now, its invocation of constitutional values will deepen the polity's resilience.</b>
Irrespective of the ups and downs in the partisan political fortunes of the National Democratic Alliance, the Jharkhand, Goa, and Bihar developments have once again brought into sharp focus the lack of coordination between the Government and the Congress party. Curiously enough senior party leaders share this perception as do various politically tuned in Ministers; but there seems to be a marked reluctance to do anything about the problem. There is a feeling among the party leaders that the Government is merely "coping" and is not in charge of the nation's political agenda. The problem is structural: ways and means have not yet been found to work in an effective communication between the Prime Minister's Office and the Congress party managers.
After nearly nine months, the crux of the problem can be easily diagnosed: there are no designated interlocutors to keep the party and the Government on the same wavelength. The "Friday Core Group" arrangement continues, whereby the Prime Minister and four other senior Ministers (Arjun Singh, Shivraj Patil, Pranab Mukherjee, and Gulam Nabi Azad) meet with the Congress president, Sonia Gandhi, and her political secretary, Ahmed Patel. But these interactions have failed to address the problem, because there is no structured agenda and no structured follow-up.
<!--emo&
--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/rolleyes.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='rolleyes.gif' /><!--endemo-->
(--- The genius identified the reason for the problem  of the bad publicity. NOT POWER HUNGRY SONIA and GOVERNOR. It is just communication issue. --)
<!--emo&--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/rolleyes.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='rolleyes.gif' /><!--endemo-->
<b>Part of the problem is that the Congress president herself is extra cautious and does not want to give any cause for anyone to allege that she is crowding the Prime Minister. In fact, she has gone out of her way to show institutional respect to Dr. Manmohan Singh and his office. And taking a cue from the Congress president, her political secretary too has opted for an extremely low-key interactive relationship with the Government. Mr. Patel is even more reluctant than the Congress president to be seen as wanting to press for any kind of political priorities.</b>
<!--emo&--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/rolleyes.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='rolleyes.gif' /><!--endemo-->
(---The genius found another problem. She is SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO NICEEEEEE and GOOOOOOOOOD. That is the problem.)
<!--emo&--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/rolleyes.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='rolleyes.gif' /><!--endemo-->
On the other hand, the experiment to have a Minister of State in the PMO has not yielded the requisite results. Everyone respects the incumbent Minister of State, Prithvi Raj Chavan, as a very decent man but does he carry much political weight within the AICC hierarchy? Also, the Prime Minister and his senior bureaucratic aides are quite clear that they do not want to replicate the earlier versions of an omnipotent PMO. Nor is there any place for an M.L. Fotedar or an R.K. Dhawan in Dr. Manmohan Singh's scheme of things. The situation is further compounded by the fact that the Manmohan Singh Government does not know how to tell its side of the story. The Ministry of Information of Broadcasting has strangely become indifferent to the modern government's need to join the battle of perceptions. Another key player, the Union Home Minister, too, has yet to graduate to the byte-age.
More than an effective synergy between the Government and the party and more than a hands-on communication strategy, there is need for a re-affirmation of basic constitutional decencies and political niceties, which mark the Prime Minister apart from the other run-of-the-mill politicians. Perhaps the most serious loss in the recent political turmoil is the Prime Minister's USP as the man with nice and noble instincts. By total default the Prime Minister was seen as going along with baser calculations in Ranchi. <b>As the recent developments in Jharkhand have shown, an absence of prime ministerial guidance would encourage political operatives of the unattractive kind to ply their tricks of the trade. This reticence in fact eroded the Prime Minister's capacity to invite the nation's attention to the BJP's grab-the-MLAs strategy.</b>
<!--emo&--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/rolleyes.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='rolleyes.gif' /><!--endemo-->
(-- Another problem: INCOMPETENT PM. DYNASTY is SOOOOOOO GOOOOD and Indian guy is incompetent)
<!--emo&--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/rolleyes.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='rolleyes.gif' /><!--endemo-->
However, decency alone is not enough. Decency at the top is a desirable proposition in any governing arrangement, but in itself it is not a sufficient compensation for absence of purposive politics. After the bruising and inelegant political battles in Bihar and Jharkhand, it is incumbent upon the entire UPA establishment to infuse a new sense of purpose and priorities at the Centre. Mere sharing of power and the spoils of office among the coalition partners is the surest way to keep encouraging the unwholesome impulses, and individuals, that came into the play.
As the largest partner and the leader of the UPA alliance, the Congress has the prime responsibility for defining the larger purpose. It will mean enunciating certain operative principles and policies that will not be subject of constant bargaining and negotiations, either within the Congress or outside. The Congress leadership, in and out of government, has to find a more positive purpose to stay in power than to keep communal elements out of office at the Centre. As long as the UPA chooses to function only as a negative alliance, it will remain vulnerable to innumerable demands from within and from the supporting Left parties. Already the limits of this negative bonding are evident, with the allies flexing their muscles. Cumulatively the allies and the supporting parties have weakened the Centre's efficacy and in the process encourage the communal crowd to recover ground.
It is not that the UPA arrangement has run of out its political relevance or organisational steam. It is that the arrangement is not geared to maximise its advantages. The purpose of alliance politics has necessarily to be the creation of a new defining passion in the national polity. The national passion must invite â in fact, force â all to rise above sectarian distractions and petty obsessions. Secular leaders would do well to remember that communal voices and forces have gained ascendancy only when the Centre was seen to be indifferent to noble instincts and decent values. Six years of the Bharatiya Janata Party-led regime were sufficient to show that these self-styled nationalists did not have answers to correct our collective ills. Now another set of politicians has been give a chance to help the country discover a new collective passion. But this is the job for a leader, not an administrator.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->http://www.hindu.com/2005/03/17/stories/...131000.htm
After the Jharkhand mess
By Harish Khare
It is incumbent upon the entire UPA establishment to infuse a new sense of purpose and priorities at the Centre.
THE UNION Law Minister, Hans Raj Bhardwaj, has the reputation of being a nuts-and-bolts man. Over the years he is believed to have sorted out the equations between successive Congress Governments and the judiciary, but he has rarely been credited with jurisprudential creativity or political insightfulness. He surprised everyone by his forceful intervention in the recent Jharkhand crisis after the Supreme Court's March 9 directive on how and when the vote of confidence was to be conducted in the State Assembly. Even though the United Progressive Alliance's political establishment was agitated over what was seen as the apex court's overreach, Mr. Bhardwaj was unequivocally against any confrontation with the Supreme Court. His contention was that Shibu Soren was hardly the cause for which to pick up a quarrel with the apex court. His reasoning was essentially political: he argued that a couple of senior Ministers within the UPA Government were interested in instigating a confrontation with the intention of weakening the authority of the Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh. He argued firmly and forcefully. Given the all round confusion and uncertainty, his "no-confrontation" line prevailed.
<b>Now the Bharatiya Janata Party has grabbed the baton. L.K. Advani and his comrades are trying hard to create a confrontation between the Lok Sabha Speaker and the judiciary. Somnath Chatterjee is a seasoned a parliamentarian and a knowledgeable a student of constitutional law; he can be trusted to frustrate this NDA design.</b>
At the same time he is rendering a useful service by reminding one and all that all three branches of the government â the executive, the legislature and the judiciary â need to be mindful of institutional boundaries.
<b>
Whatever its calculations, the BJP's sudden protestation of concern for the Constitution is a welcome development After all, here is a political party that had reaped electoral harvest by first cocking a snook at the Supreme Court (in the matter of the Babri Masjid demolition) and later by arguing that the courts could have no say in the matter of faith. And, later, when in power, it tried to rewrite the Constitution; it appointed a "Constitutional Review Commission." It was only public opinion and a vigilant President (K.R. Narayanan) that check-mated the BJP's design. Even if political expediency rather than convictions are prompting the BJP now, its invocation of constitutional values will deepen the polity's resilience.</b>
Irrespective of the ups and downs in the partisan political fortunes of the National Democratic Alliance, the Jharkhand, Goa, and Bihar developments have once again brought into sharp focus the lack of coordination between the Government and the Congress party. Curiously enough senior party leaders share this perception as do various politically tuned in Ministers; but there seems to be a marked reluctance to do anything about the problem. There is a feeling among the party leaders that the Government is merely "coping" and is not in charge of the nation's political agenda. The problem is structural: ways and means have not yet been found to work in an effective communication between the Prime Minister's Office and the Congress party managers.
After nearly nine months, the crux of the problem can be easily diagnosed: there are no designated interlocutors to keep the party and the Government on the same wavelength. The "Friday Core Group" arrangement continues, whereby the Prime Minister and four other senior Ministers (Arjun Singh, Shivraj Patil, Pranab Mukherjee, and Gulam Nabi Azad) meet with the Congress president, Sonia Gandhi, and her political secretary, Ahmed Patel. But these interactions have failed to address the problem, because there is no structured agenda and no structured follow-up.
<!--emo&
--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/rolleyes.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='rolleyes.gif' /><!--endemo--> (--- The genius identified the reason for the problem  of the bad publicity. NOT POWER HUNGRY SONIA and GOVERNOR. It is just communication issue. --)
<!--emo&
--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/rolleyes.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='rolleyes.gif' /><!--endemo--> <b>Part of the problem is that the Congress president herself is extra cautious and does not want to give any cause for anyone to allege that she is crowding the Prime Minister. In fact, she has gone out of her way to show institutional respect to Dr. Manmohan Singh and his office. And taking a cue from the Congress president, her political secretary too has opted for an extremely low-key interactive relationship with the Government. Mr. Patel is even more reluctant than the Congress president to be seen as wanting to press for any kind of political priorities.</b>
<!--emo&
--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/rolleyes.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='rolleyes.gif' /><!--endemo--> (---The genius found another problem. She is SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO NICEEEEEE and GOOOOOOOOOD. That is the problem.)
<!--emo&
--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/rolleyes.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='rolleyes.gif' /><!--endemo--> On the other hand, the experiment to have a Minister of State in the PMO has not yielded the requisite results. Everyone respects the incumbent Minister of State, Prithvi Raj Chavan, as a very decent man but does he carry much political weight within the AICC hierarchy? Also, the Prime Minister and his senior bureaucratic aides are quite clear that they do not want to replicate the earlier versions of an omnipotent PMO. Nor is there any place for an M.L. Fotedar or an R.K. Dhawan in Dr. Manmohan Singh's scheme of things. The situation is further compounded by the fact that the Manmohan Singh Government does not know how to tell its side of the story. The Ministry of Information of Broadcasting has strangely become indifferent to the modern government's need to join the battle of perceptions. Another key player, the Union Home Minister, too, has yet to graduate to the byte-age.
More than an effective synergy between the Government and the party and more than a hands-on communication strategy, there is need for a re-affirmation of basic constitutional decencies and political niceties, which mark the Prime Minister apart from the other run-of-the-mill politicians. Perhaps the most serious loss in the recent political turmoil is the Prime Minister's USP as the man with nice and noble instincts. By total default the Prime Minister was seen as going along with baser calculations in Ranchi. <b>As the recent developments in Jharkhand have shown, an absence of prime ministerial guidance would encourage political operatives of the unattractive kind to ply their tricks of the trade. This reticence in fact eroded the Prime Minister's capacity to invite the nation's attention to the BJP's grab-the-MLAs strategy.</b>
<!--emo&
--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/rolleyes.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='rolleyes.gif' /><!--endemo--> (-- Another problem: INCOMPETENT PM. DYNASTY is SOOOOOOO GOOOOD and Indian guy is incompetent)
<!--emo&
--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/rolleyes.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='rolleyes.gif' /><!--endemo-->However, decency alone is not enough. Decency at the top is a desirable proposition in any governing arrangement, but in itself it is not a sufficient compensation for absence of purposive politics. After the bruising and inelegant political battles in Bihar and Jharkhand, it is incumbent upon the entire UPA establishment to infuse a new sense of purpose and priorities at the Centre. Mere sharing of power and the spoils of office among the coalition partners is the surest way to keep encouraging the unwholesome impulses, and individuals, that came into the play.
As the largest partner and the leader of the UPA alliance, the Congress has the prime responsibility for defining the larger purpose. It will mean enunciating certain operative principles and policies that will not be subject of constant bargaining and negotiations, either within the Congress or outside. The Congress leadership, in and out of government, has to find a more positive purpose to stay in power than to keep communal elements out of office at the Centre. As long as the UPA chooses to function only as a negative alliance, it will remain vulnerable to innumerable demands from within and from the supporting Left parties. Already the limits of this negative bonding are evident, with the allies flexing their muscles. Cumulatively the allies and the supporting parties have weakened the Centre's efficacy and in the process encourage the communal crowd to recover ground.
It is not that the UPA arrangement has run of out its political relevance or organisational steam. It is that the arrangement is not geared to maximise its advantages. The purpose of alliance politics has necessarily to be the creation of a new defining passion in the national polity. The national passion must invite â in fact, force â all to rise above sectarian distractions and petty obsessions. Secular leaders would do well to remember that communal voices and forces have gained ascendancy only when the Centre was seen to be indifferent to noble instincts and decent values. Six years of the Bharatiya Janata Party-led regime were sufficient to show that these self-styled nationalists did not have answers to correct our collective ills. Now another set of politicians has been give a chance to help the country discover a new collective passion. But this is the job for a leader, not an administrator.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->