Congress' umbilical chord with price rise

A vast section in India is reeling under unprecedented price spiral of the food items along with goods of daily use. No on in the political establishment gets moved. Rather the price rise as a political issue is dead and is ready to be buried for ever. Purchasing power of a large section of  the middle class has gone up, which makes them apologetic to complain. The fact still remains that the galloping prices of essential commodities, particularly the food items, is threatening to not only eat away the savings of a large number of people but could push the Indians into an American life style of perennial debt.

The Parliament will be rocked in the coming week on the issue of price rise. The Opposition parties in India are still groping in the dark on whys of the Congress coming back into power despite unprecedented price rise. Samajwadi Party's youth icon and Parliamentarian, Akhilesh Yadav, was quite shocked at the people voting for Congress despite the fact that they were buying potato at Rs 25 a kg. The prices of the pulses are beyond the reach of the commoners and the list is quite long.

Drought this year is a omnipresent explanation of the Congress. The party, however, does not exceed that its coming to power at the Centre rockets the price rise of essential commodities without any failings. Interesting food for thought is the association of the party with a large number of mill-owners be the of rices, pulses, sugar or of any other commodities. They share an umbilical chord and each survive at the expanse of the general mass.

The top bureaucrats in the government concede that the mill-owners started stocking their items just before they sensed that the country was not going to have a good date with Monsoon. They stocked and fueled the price rise is understood by the top bureaucrats but the remedial action is not taken. This is perplexing and is hugely against the interest of the country.

Why the issue of price rise is no more a political issue in India? Former UP chief minister and erstwhile BJP leader Kalyan Singh has a long answer but sounds quite logical. "The upper class is least bothered with price rise and same is the case with the middle class. The lower class has also nothing to do with this, as they consume what they grow and manage their affairs with the bare minimum foodgrains. The middle class should have been affected but the Sixth Pay Commission bonanza silenced them as majority of them are government servants. Rest of the middle class employed with the corporate sector do not vote," Mr Singh told this author, after the verdict of the May Lok Sabha elections this year.    

Congress wins election on slogans of Garibi hatao (bash poverty) not mehangai hatao (bash the price rise). The Opposition parties have much to ponder on how to mobilize the people on the issue which hits them at their belly.

Manmohan's absurdity

Lakhs of farmers particularly in the western UP have been agitating for over a month now against the government's ordinance on fair and remunerative prices for the sugarcane. The Parliament was forced to be adjourned on the first day of the session amidst the Opposition, including some of the UPA allies, raising the farmers' distress. Still, the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh played to the propaganda of the "heir" of  the Congress Rahul Gandhi as the messiah of every suffering people in the country. Mr Singh chose not to assure the Parliament but the young Gandhi, that the government would look into the grievance of the farmers. Nothing could be more explicit zeal on the Prime Minister in building the profile of Mr Gandhi than this, though the Union Cabinet also approved the "political" demand of the young Congress leader for over Rs 7,000 crore for Bundelkhand region in UP and Madhya Pradesh, despite a long standing demands from the two state governments in this regard.  

It appears that a heavy and well oiled propaganda war is being unleashed by the Congress in tandem with the Manmohan Singh led Indian government to project Mr Gandghi as the eligible heir to the top post of the country. The media is playing to the gallery for their own reasons.

An error to regret for long

Amidst the fast roller-coaster unfolding in the battered Samajwadi Party, I landed up with a stunning news that the party would dump former BJP leader Kalyan Singh on Friday evening. The plot was told with all details but I  sat on it to do the story for Sunday, a lean day generally. Though tipped off the boss about the development, it was decided to do it for Sunday. The decision is now to be regretted for a long time until I land up with something bigger, as on Saturday SP chief Mulayam Singh Yadav peeled off the details in a media interaction in Lucknow. My heart had sunk the moment when I saw from a distance Mr Yadav on a TV channel, while shopping in the narrow bylanes of Lajpat Nagar.

The big lesson for a political journalist, which I learnt now with a pinch of salt, is never to sit on any story, when the party you are covering is on a roller-coaster drive, where a herd of frenzied media men is waiting for  any new development, that too in the days of excessive electronic media. It appears that now we are in days of latching on a story and dashing off to the boss to say "look, I have this and we can not delay it any further".

The lesson has now been taken well.

Now on Mulayam and Kalyan, one having lost his plot completely and the other in the winter of his career but still thinking that he can turn the tide with his minuscule Lodh vote base. The UP politics is all about castes. No Rahul Gandhis and L K Advanis can change this fact. You have to hammer out the right caste equation to be on the winning side, else you will be wallowing in the abyss like the BJP and Samajwadi Party. Nothing remains your fiefdom, as even Yadavs this time deserted Mulayam Singh Yadav.

Rahul Gandhi is sitting on a great UP plot to get the Congress an unassailable domination in the Indian politics. As the Congress men not so much in the limelight in UP say that people gather in large numbers to listen to Rahul Gandhi but they do not vote for the party, there is a big disconnect to find out and that is micro-managing the polls. Raj Babbar won from Firozabad, as people had teach a lesson to Mulayam Singh Yadav, who had put his faith among the land grabbers in the place. UP chief minister Mayawati is having everything politically right but she is at the peak of her career and there is no more peaks but only decline.

The Congress has to climb a mountain in the state though the party does not have too many good climbers. The BJP is battered but has everything to gain and has its cadre intact who has been shifting from one party to another, while the party is waiting to get medically fit to reckon on in the political warfare.

UP is set for an extraordinary political battle in the two years time and much more churning process will unfold. I wish I hold on to the pulse of UP politics and its main characters.      

Kundun's last vow

Dalai Lama, also addressed as Kundun, made media take note of him during his trip to Tawang in Arunachal Pradesh. Despite four decades having passed by since the defeat at the hands of Chinese, India remains apologetic of its territorial boundary. The curbs on media to cover Kundan's visit is not only shocking but also bewildering. It is interesting to wonder if the Indian dispensation can really safeguard the interests of the country for any kind of Chinese aggression. The saying that if Chine sneezes, India catches fever, still remains true, given the kind of lack of clarity on the part of the political leadership of the country.

"Kundun", a 1997 film written by Melissa Mathison and directed by Martin Scorsese on the life and writings of Dalai Lama sheds great light on what happened preceding to the historic flight of Kundun from Tibet to India. The last vow of Kundun to return back to Tibet remains incomplete, though the World does not tire of calling him the greatest man living.

There were a few speculation that Dalai Lama could have retraced his steps back to Tibet during his visit to Tawang. Such speculations have been quite off the mark given the thoughts of Dalai Lama. His misfortune is that he can not win freedom for his people if he does not go back to Tibet. Compounding his situation is the state of his host, India, which shivers even at the thoughts of China's domineering postures.

India did a great injustice to the peace loving people of Tibet by not protecting it when they faced the Chinese aggression and rather chose to trade its strategic geographical positioning for the misplaced friendship with the Red Dragon. Innumerable historical blunders of India's first Prime Minister JL Nehru has condemned the country to perennial sense of insecurity. No wonder why India can not help Dalai Lama to reclaim his country for his people.

With age catching up with him, it will be only essential that Kundun goes back to Tibet and let the world, the US in particular, guarantees protection of his life from any attack by the Chinese. Else, in India he will become just another Indian, with his vow and promise to his people remaining incomplete.

Mahatma Gandhi had also returned to India to lead its freedom struggle from the British. Others, including the adoring West, will not help unless Dalai Lama takes the first step to reclaim the freedom of his people in Tibet.

(The photograph has been taken from the web.)  

PM's shame: A death

Notwithstanding an apology by the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, the death of a young man, Sumit Verma, is a shame, condemnable in strongest of the words. The media showed its spine by giving it a good coverage, otherwise the VVIP security around the country has been causing hardships to many on a daily basis.

The death of the 32 years old man must act as a wake up call for the VVIPs, including the Prime Minister and other ministers, who have been in the habit of obnoxious display of their power to the helpless people that they own this country. Now onwards it would be in the fitness of the commonsense of the administration to just ban the visit of the VVIPs to the hospitals of the country, which are supposed to help the patients and not kill them by turning their access into a fortress during the visit of the high ones.

It is an irony that the public exchequer is spent on the clamour of the VVIPs to showcase their gun-wielding commandos to the public even if they do not have any real threat to their lives. The spineless Home ministry appears not to have the spine to withdraw their security. Just in contrast look at the foreign VVIPs who do not shy away from mingling in with the public without the glare of their security men.  

The death of Verma in Chandigarh is unpardonable and the Prime Minister must ensure that the police men just get a little bit of commonsense, though it's known in the common parlance that the police men in the country are just brainless or rather "latthmar".