Showcase for Sonia

Showcase for Sonia

It was not the Prime Minister who was going to be in town for the day. It was Sonia Gandhi, Congress president and the appointer of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. As an elected Congress MP of the Lok Sabha, Congress president and member of the dynasty, it is she who commands the allegiance of all Congressmen — not the Prime Minister of the country. It is to her that all chief ministers run to have their problems solved and to make exaggerated claims of their achievements. And it is she who tells them when to drop which minister for crimes small and big — not the Prime Minister. Had Manmohan Singh got elected to the Lok Sabha, things may have been somewhat different. But his having to rely solely on our State to remain a member of the Rajya Sabha without really belonging to this State has not exactly endeared him to the people. Be that as it may, Sonia Gandhi had to begin her election tours a trifle early for the Lok Sabha elections next year, and there was every reason to begin with Asom not merely because she was going in alphabetical order, but also because there are so few Congress-run States left in the country. It made sense to begin with a Congress-run State rather than with a State where the Congress was in the opposition. Besides, had the Congress in Asom not hit the headlines recently with Ripun Bora trying to bribe a CBI investigator? And had not Sonia Gandhi advised Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi to drop all ministers in his cabinet against whom there are criminal charges? The fact that the Prime Minister rarely sends instructions on disciplinary measures to Congress chief ministers could not have escaped anyone's notice. Be that as it may, Sonia Gandhi's presence was badly needed in Asom now because the Ripun Bora affair has come as a huge black mark for the Congress. This is not to suggest that the Congress has great respect for the eternal values that our ancestors swore by. The truth is that the Congress has created a new value system for itself. Put in a single sentence it is: Whatever you do, for God's sake do not get caught. There are so many others in the Congress who have committed crimes and bribed investigating officers. But they have been careful not to get caught red-handed. Ripun Bora's crime (as far as his party is concerned) is that he got caught while paying a hefty bribe and thereby shamed his party. He has set the alarm bells ringing for some other ministers of Mr Gogoi's cabinet who also have charges of serious crimes against them. He has made matters extremely difficult for a chief minister who promised a transparent government and lost no time in introducing the Right to Information Act. It must be very hard on him that his ministers have let him down. As such Sonia Gandhi's arrival at this juncture was a windfall of sorts, considering that she is thought to be such a vote-reaper in Congress circles. It did not matter one bit to the Congress that hundreds of buses had to be requisitioned to get enough people for the farmers' rally causing great inconvenience to commuters, or that the failure to get enough farmers for the rally resulted in the farmers' rally being converted to a women's rally. Nor did it seem to matter that people were stopped for about an hour by policemen along the route that her convoy was supposed to take. But what took one's breath away was the half-page advertisement in some newspapers about Asom being on the ‘‘fast track of progress and development’’. As an attempt to showcase the Tarun Gogoi government, it was a record of all the inconsequential things that the State government had done but there was no mention of the total collapse of law and order in North Cachar Hills district where the Black Widow left a gory tally of soft targets, or of the huge chunks of Asom's territory ceded to Nagaland, or the rapid increase of flesh trade in the State, or government-induced alcoholism among the youth or of the deplorable state of education and health care in the rural areas. Obviously, no one expected this government to talk about the large-scale illegal infiltration of Bangladeshis into Asom, and it did not. How thoughtful of a transparent government! Source: sentinel assam editorial 15.06.08