Manmohan Sing And His Press Conference

Mr.Prime-Minister let me clear this at the outset – You disappointed again with your so called press conference with the editors of reputed media houses. In fact you disappointed to a great extent with your opening statements alone where you blamed all (including the media for exposing the scams) but yourself or your own party people; giving us a trailer on what we should expect to unfold. God knows why you named it as a press conference when the best you did was having a little chat with who’s who of media fraternity. In the pretext of making your stand clear on various fronts (read scams) you best managed to cover them under one excuse or the other and your countrymen were left more confused than what they were to begin with. In one line– “Your press meet was weak, uninspiring and downright disgusting”. When the newspapers struggled to come up with a proper headline to describe your press meet the next day, you can always guess how bad a non-starter your whole effort was. Little talked about the vigor and excitement in your response is better. With a stubborn and expressionless face (trademark of yours’) you best deliver the excitement quotient closely similar to what one gets from a world cup match between Afghanistan and Namibia. For heaven’s sake – what that media adviser Mr.Khare or something was doing there? Can’t you for once defend yourself all of your own?

Having said that; I must admit – I felt pity on you. Pity not because being a prime-minister you end up clarifying the scams but because being an honest person (I am second to none in not doubting your credentials) you were left to clean up the mess created by others. Even though you were far from getting benefited by a penny from these scams you were held responsible and irony that you were too helpless to admit your weakness and compulsions to anything but tolerate the thugs and crooks to your left and to your right. If the press meet is a pointer to anything then you were absolutely bang on the mark when you said there is a huge governance deficit. If that’s the actual case then with all respect – if the dictionary meaning of ‘governance deficit’ is taken half of its seriousness then I doubt if you really have any moral ethics left to stay in the office for one more day even.

Now let’s ponder on what you said, you didn’t said, wanted to say or conveniently avoided during that one hour torture which unfolded on TV yesterday. Before we go in details, let me assure you with some authority – it was equally torturous for those present in the room as well as the general populace glued to their TV sets.

On Corruption

Honestly corruption is part and parcel of any governance and more so when it is of democratic nature. No nation in the world is immune to it and we neither expect ours’ to be any different. But to search for excuses to justify yourself being corrupt is certainly not what one can appreciate. Definitely not, if one finds his own prime-minister furnishing the excuses. What is that ‘Coalition Dharma’ nonsense that you tried to explain is beyond the pea size brain of mine. Did you by any means tried to tell us that when the government is running on coalition then we should accept corruption as an inherent gift with it as any objection to the corruptions of a coalition government is anything but against the so called ‘Coalition Dharma’ ? Let me decide whether to laugh or cry on this utterance of yours’. The best was when you said you were not in a position to act. If you were not in a position to act then may I just ask who else then? The lazying idiots at India gate or the black ticket selling touts? This is helplessness overdrive when the man at the top of the affairs can’t just ask one of his ministers to behave properly and refrain himself from nefarious activities just because he happens to be a minister from the coalition partner.

A.Raja was unchecked, unquestioned and was given a free hand to loot the nation just because he is from the coalition partner DMK and any such obstruction on his path of loot would have gone against the ‘Coalition Dharma’. According to you these minor adjustments are nothing but for stability as we can’t afford elections in every 6 months. I want to ask why not? More so when we see it is nothing but a pack of jokers and crooks are governing us then it is always better to set things right by having fresh elections and getting rid of the thugs. The dilemma of our prime-minister for not having elections in 6 months’ time is not well understood to me. Was he worried for that 10K odd crorers that we spend for a general election to conduct or something else that is hunting him? If so then let me give a bit of mathematics. Raja has looted enough money which could have covered 15 such general elections, build statues of Mayawati in every city of India and still be left with enough change to conduct 3 Panchayti-Raj elections and buy out an IPL team. Now Mr.Prime-minister, it is your discretion to decide if it is better to have an election in 6 months’ time or to continue with rascals like Raja and tolerate his looting spree in the name of ‘Coalition Dharma ’?

Even if we are to agree with your Coalition nonsense, a certain bearded individual’s face forces us not to. If Raja is given the benefit of doubt being the illegitimate child of the coalition government, then what about a certain Suresh Kalmadi? Why that individual was never questioned until he syphoned a good 90K crore from the government’s coffer? Why all were as silent as statutes on this mass loot in the name of National pride till a media house exposed the filthy rot flowing under the CWG mess? Why Kalmadi and his cronies were arrested and later released ceremoniously without even having a charge sheet filed? Why Kalmadi is still at the helm of affairs and why he isn’t been taken to task yet? Now please don’t come-up with your ‘Coalition Dharma’ explanation this time also. Kalmadi being your own man from your own party should have been handed exemplary punishment if you are that serious about curbing corruption, which you pertained to be. So where is the intention Mr.Prime-minister? I don’t see it anywhere – be it your party men or be it in the name of ‘Coalition Dharma’; you seem least interested to catch the corruption bull by its horns. So better you stop giving us excuses in this front.

On JPC

That was a relieving sign when you said you are OK with the JPC or any of that nonsense. Relief on account of two fronts. First – At last, we can expect the budget session to take off. Second – Finally there is a very good chance of the real culprits getting unearthed by the JPC. As the stature of Raja in this whole 2G scam is pretty much clear, I don’t tend to give him anything beyond the rank of a pawn in the whole thing. Raja is no better than a Dolphin in front of all those whales of this 2G Ocean. So the need of a JPC was always a legitimate demand to bring the real big fishes into the light of the day. It is better that you finally realized the importance of having one for the 2G scam.

Having said that; it was equally surprising of your sudden decision for accepting JPC as was when you were dilly-dallying and dragging your feet from the day the opposition started demanding for it. Now out of the blue you came out and announced to the world that you were never afraid of a JPC or were never against it. In fact you went ahead and confirmed, you were never afraid of appearing before any committee – be it JPC or PAC. Oh really? If so then why didn’t you accepted it at the first place itself, which could have allowed us a fully running and productive winter session of parliament than just the wastage of Tax payer’s money? Now please let us know who stands accountable for that colossal loss of public money? You, your party, the over inflated ego of many of your senior party members or the ‘Coalition Dharma’? Or were you plainly giving enough time to thugs like Raja and alike to settle down properly with the loot before the eyewash investigation starts?

I virtually laugh off my sofa when you almost said (sense prevailed and you just stopped from bringing further humiliation for yourself) that how the arrest and actions against Amit Shah made the top brass of BJP turned psychotic and started blackmailing you to stop the action or else face the stalling of parliament. A person like you should be least complaining when it comes to blackmailing or getting blackmailed. A person whose day starts with a blackmailing phone call from a certain Karunanidhi and followed by getting blackmailed through the day by a mother-son duo shouldn’t have too much of reservation if few BJP chaps (if at all it is true) think to implement Karunanidhi’s tricks.

Miscellaneous

To my relief you seem to agree to one common wish list of all the Indians. But sadly it is India winning the world cup but not eliminating corruption. When you say our laws are most frustrating to show your helplessness, one wonders – why you don’t just change the bloody laws then. Your mere utterance of the word frustration shouldn’t in anyway be an excuse to why Afzal Guru is still alive or why thugs of CWG or 2G or Adarsha are not properly dealt with. Being an economist you scared the hell out of me when you virtually admitted of having no idea on how to control the inflation. Your high growth brings a higher inflation theorem scared me even more. If a mere 8.5% growth can bring food prices to this level then I just don’t want to imagine the scenario when we actually manage to have a 13% GDP, as promised by you. Hope we don’t end up buying our food items in milligrams from jewelry shops.

Overall - Your unwanted display of helplessness brings a sense of dejected feeling among us Indians. Dejected because; like the ceremonial position of the President in our democracy, the position of Prime-Minister seems to have turned one ceremonial position during your tenure as well. This is not a healthy sign for our democracy when we see our Prime-Minister is being used as a rubber stamp and entity to do the dirty clean up job when needed by a mother-son duo. Thankfully none of the journos seems too keen (or intentionally out of a gag order) and refrained from asking the Pakistan related question or your stand on the behavior of Rascals like Shayed Ali Shah Ghilani and team. I am sure you would have brought a laughing riot with your misplaced and displaced answers.

As an epilogue Mr.Prime-minister – I must be thankful to ICC for arranging a warm up match for India so that I could see Men-in-blue bat handsomely and was able to unwind a bit from the torture inflicted by you via your press conference. This could be one of those occasions when you absolutely get peanuts against huge expectations. Just when I thought the occasion to be nothing less than one watershed event with skeletons tumbling out of the closets of various individuals; you turned up on TV and made a mockery of all those who were there to question you and millions others who were in front of the Tele-vision. When Mr.Khare did reprimand Arnav Goswami and reminded him to show curtsey to the PM by not behaving as if PM is being interrogated, I wished if it were be so. I wished if the general populace could one day get a chance to interrogate our Prime-minister and demand explanation for his inaction against everything that is bad for our nation. Be it Raja, Kalmadi, Adarsh, Corruption, Inflation, Terrorism and last but not the least – minority appeasement and vote bank politics. Hope Mr.Prime-minister, you would show respect to the wishes of your fellow countrymen and show respect to their votes which made sure you are re-elected to the top post again. Not there to support and cover a colony of thugs but to govern and govern with all fairness for the betterment of people who voted you. Hope some sense of belongingness prevails!!