O J’s Corner

How long will the farce continue?

Sonia Gandhi has said elections would be held when these are due, Prakash Karat has expressed relief about it in spite of spiting Congress about its gravitating towards the US.
The intention is to see through a few months of budget passing and completing other constitutional procedures.

How long this farce of covering up an impending election will continue? The Congress-led UPA Government has decided to befriend the farmers by announcing loan-waiver scheme, appeased the Central Government employees with scaled-up pay, and goes the whole hog to be seen as a popular entity. It is yet to be seen how many of the farmers will be actually benefited from the loan-waiver sops. The Indian enigma has been skewed execution of welfare schemes, not dearth of devising projects. Bureaucratic bungling has seen to it nothing works as desired. And political will has often been lacking to spruce up the administration to the level of efficiency. P V Narasimha Rao-style procrastination (otherwise there would not have been demolition of Babri Masjid when he was the Prime Minister) has penetrated the minds of many of the political masters. Not many are prepared to take risks. Therefore, without the propensity to take risks, the situation refuses to be seen as challenging.

I believe, now the Congress Party, particularly its leader Sonia Gandhi, is keen to call the bluff of the CPM controlling the UPA dispensation from outside without taking responsibility for any decision of the gpvernment and go in for elections at the earliest.

But the latest worry is the increasing prices of essential commodities. By the time the Central Government employees receive more cash from the pay hike, inflation would hit the roof resulting in a worsening scenario of price rise. Anyway, the Union Cabinet appears to be seized of the matter and can be expected to initiate some measures to contain the deleterious impact.

The people cannot be fooled around for much longer regarding the election guest waiting outside our front –door.