The Plastic Roses

BUDGET

THE PLASTIC ROSES

Scrubbing off taint through a toyboy teleconference

So much so, that the Manmohan Singh-led Government appeared to have come to believe that the public too could have possibly outsourced some of its anger to this august yet select group from TV stations. So select not just because of keeping off the proverbial barefoot reporter, or Jhola Chhap Patrakar, but also some of the Padma award winners-turned-lobbyists in the media, courtesy Nira Radia and the tapes of intimate, friendly chats with her, find out ABID SHAH in NEW DELHI

BUDGET

THE ONLY saving grace about Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s televised rendezvous with the select media bosses on February 16th forenoon was that the event was held on a holiday. Had it been a working day, scores of OB - Outside Broadcasting - vans that travelled all the way mostly from eastward NOIDA, the suburb that houses the film nay TV-city among other things, to the Central Vista to take reactions of other parties leaders after PM’s talk distributed by Doordarshan could have added up to the frequent traffic jams on the route and also to the workaday woes of many Delhiites.

So choosing the day of a Chhutti to counter the outcry for Government’s Chhutti amid widening spectrum of scams turned out to be not a bad idea.

Instead, this passed off leaving heaps of dope for political pundits to ponder over through the days to come. And since, Budget session is under days’ countdown, the people’s court has been set abuzz, albeit via TV, in the fervent hope that this may end up in humming up the hallowed precincts of Parliament once again in the days to come.

Whichever way the events may turn to from hereon, Manmohan Singh’s teleconference could not betray the touch of conviviality that turned out to be rather collegiate. The sequence of his long journey from so noble academics to cutthroat bureaucracy and finally to the less said the better public life somehow started blurring through the screen even before his referring to this during his about hour-long quite a decent defence mounted over television.

And somehow, it looked like a vice chancellor taking a university committee meeting with delegates from agitating campus crowds sitting before him and trying together to find a way out of the trouble and have peace necessary to save a semester rather than a Parliament session.

The delegates confronting the don of the days now long gone by too looked like a thoroughbred bunch of Oxbridge ladies and gentlemen with a few exceptions because of their Hindi or accent veering towards it. They were egged upon to raise issues dogging the country with the Prime Minister on behalf of a public thought to be miffed by corruption and or price rise before its turn comes as electorate to deal on its own with Prime Minister and his Government who are thought to be father, originator and prime mover of wonders like outsourcing among other distinctions.

So much so, that the Manmohan Singh-led Government appeared to have come to believe that the public too could have possibly outsourced some of its anger to this august yet select group from TV stations. So select not just because of keeping off the proverbial barefoot reporter, or Jhola Chhap Patrakar, but also some of the Padma award winners-turned-lobbyists in the media, courtesy Nira Radia and the tapes of intimate, friendly chats with her.

Thus, taint was confused with another tint in Manmohan Singh’s interaction with television editors who politely nodded on being told that facts while reporting ought to be sacred and conclusions based on them by the media should be minimal so as to serve the best interests of the country. The group was concerned about Prime Minister being targeted from sections of his own party besides a belligerent Opposition.

A reference to the Egypt crisis and the possibility of its enactment back home was promptly dismissed by Manmohan Singh. This went without inviting a supplementary to remind him that he had called West Asia as India’s extended neighbourhood when he visited Saudi Arabia last besides his countless reminders that how in a fast globalising world the country was affected by events in distant lands and climes. Instead, on the day that brought him together with media higher ups Manmohan Singh was worried about the country’s image elsewhere because of the incessant media campaign focusing on scams alone.

Yet, his Wednesday’s live interaction with media inevitably brought back the images of a besieged leader talking to famed journalist Christina Amanpour to assert that his stepping down could lead to anarchy throughout Egypt. Though New Delhi is no Cairo, nor Manmohan Singh has slightest trace of Hosni Mubarak’s flamboyance, yet the Prime Minister indicated of elections every six months in case he was to follow propriety and conventions thereof in the literal or classical sense.

Similarly, the reference to a Gujarat Minister by Manmohan Singh as a reason behind stalling of Goods and Services Tax (GST) too went without being followed up until the demands of the TV trade turned the OB vans on at nearby Ashok Road BJP office where the top brass of the main Opposition party were for days practising the art of anticipatory news and moves that this may warrant.

After months of megabyte campaign for a Joint-Parliamentary Committee to look into 2G Spectrum scam, the BJP higher ups warmed up for a truce with the Government that feigned to be giving in after the bitterness left by Parliament’s last wasted winter session. BJP preferred silence over the issue of JPC for a few days after Union Finance Minister Pranabkumar Mukherjee called on L K Advani. BJP leaders kept on mulling until Prime Minister’s media event was announced. Soon the party bigwigs were in poll bound Kolkata again chiding Manmohan Singh on the penultimate day of his media interaction to demand multiple or scam-wise JPC.

Obviously, such change of heart that gave courage to demand more than one JPC probe took place amid the fears that investigations in Telecom alone could lead to looking at things retrospectively, extending back to the period when Atal Behari Vajpayee-led NDA was in power. Thus, the party thought it best to cover its tracks well before by focusing on other scams too like the Commonwealth Games and Adarsh Housing Society besides also questioning S-Band Spectrum deal through ISRO’s nod; and of course without forgetting to take on the Government on black money.

As it had to be leader versus leader, Nitin Gadkari’s turnout before cameras from formidable live channels that immediately followed PM’s appearance was no less impressive. And the shadowboxing thus played out through the idiot box reminded of big brother from rival parties - Nitin looked as jovial as sombre was the PM. Together they tried out the might and skills of the art of their propaganda against corruption to beat the Orwellian Big Brother in the masterpiece 1984.

AN OPEN LETTER TO THE PRIME MINISTER

What a fall was there,

My countrymen

By B RAMAN

LIKE MILLIONS of ordinary Indians, I too watched from the beginning till the end your televised interaction with selected journalists from the electronic media on February 16, 2011.

You had never spoken to us, the ordinary people of India, on the various scams which have rocked the country one after another since August last year. Our only source of information has been the media.

As the citizens of this country who put your party in power, we had a right to expect that you will talk to us and explain to us what is the truth and how you intend arresting and reversing the rot that has set in and the continuing decline in the credibility and image of India as a result of the stories of these scams.

These stories - whether correct wholly or only partly - have brought out one thing loud and clear - the ineptitude and incompetence of your Government, the poor supervision which seems to prevail in many Ministries and offices, including the Prime Minister’s Office, and the insensitivity of many senior members of your Cabinet to public concerns over these alleged scams.

Corruption is nothing new, but the magnitude of it as seen since you came to power has been highly disturbing. What is new is the ineptitude, the incompetence and the lack of supervision which seem to prevail since you came to power - the like of which one had not seen under any other Prime Minister of India since we became independent in 1947.

You try to blame your difficulties and embarrassments on your having to run a coalition. You are not the first Prime Minister having to run the country at the head of a coalition. V P Singh, Chandrasekhar, Deve Gowda, Inder Gujral and Atal Behari Vajpayee headed coalitions too. Despite this, they gave us a government which worked as a team and which did not pull in different directions. I can’t recall any instance under the previous coalitions where a Minister repeatedly circumvented the instructions of the Prime Minister, without fearing the consequences of his action.

All the previous Prime Ministers, who headed coalition Cabinets, made it clear to their political associates who the boss was and who would take important decisions. They never tolerated anyone who sought to circumvent their instructions. They never let their political allies dictate terms to them.

This is the first time we are seeing a Prime Minister, who tries to earn not the confidence of the people by projecting himself as a strong leader who will not tolerate any nonsense from his coalition partners, but the pity of the people by projecting himself as a helpless leader, who has nothing but to do what his coalition partners ask him to do.

We watched in utter amazement for one hour on February 16 not the rallying cry of a leader, who has realised the magnitude of the rot and who is determined to set it right whatever be the consequences to his position as the Prime Minister, but an exercise in self-pity of a leader who is at the mercy of his coalition partners and does not have the courage to call them to order.

This was the first time we had an opportunity of listening to you on the State of the country in the light of these scams. We were looking forward not to excuses and pretexts to explain away the sins of commission and omission of your government, but to a bold re-assertion of your leadership as the Prime Minister of this great country, who has the courage to face the people of this country in their eyes and reassure them: Thus far and no further.

I have no doubt in my mind that many right-thinking people of India, like me, must have felt ashamed and enraged as they saw the Prime Minister of this country giving out one excuse after another for not being able to govern effectively and for not being able to prevent blatantly wrong decisions and corruption.

You let us down badly, Mr Prime Minister. You let us down badly.