Travails of this Jugaad government of UPA

[Guest dada_rocks]

http://www.indianexpress.com/story/331961.html Last week was without question the worst week in the life of the Sonia-Manmohan Government. The stock market crashed again. Inflation continued its ominous rise. Jammu and Kashmir went back on the boil. Hindu-Muslim riots broke out in Indore and Naxalites massacred 40 police commandos in Orissa and got away. It should have been a week for the Prime Minister to go on national television and reassure the aam aadmi that things were not as bad as they seemed. This, too, shall pass, he could have said borrowing from Indian philosophy. Or don’t worry be happy from that popular song. He did neither. He could do neither because he was too busy ensuring that his Government stayed alive. Commissar Karat and his ideologically atrophied comrades had gone too far even for our gentle Dr Manmohan Singh. When the Commissar took to appearing daily on national television to boss the Prime Minister about as if he were a junior member of the Communist Party, it was too much even for Shrimati Soniaji. Her political inclinations, copied from mama-in-law, veer to the Left but commie intransigence, forced her finally to stand by the man she appointed to the highest office in the land on your behalf and mine. In a public exhibition of eating crow she had to go on her knees to two men for whom she has so far shown open contempt. Amar Singh whom she insulted at one of her private dinner parties by saying loudly ‘what is HE doing here?’. And, Amar Singh’s boss Mulayam Singh who once caused Shrimatiji’s worst humiliation by abandoning her when she brought the Vajpayee Government down in the summer of 1999. Counting on Mulayam’s men she announced gaily that she had “272 and many more coming†only to be publicly let down — first by Mulayam and then by the aam aadmi when later that year she led the Congress Party to its worst defeat. But that was years ago and a week, as the aphorism informs us, is a long time in politics. To the dismay of their ‘succular’, lefty friends Messrs Amar and Mulayam showed they were willing to being wooed. They changed their position on the nuclear deal after summoning the National Security Adviser to brief them personally. The result is that battered, bruised and mostly useless the Government could survive its worst political crisis. The question is in what shape? Its state brings to mind that wonderful Hindi word jugaad. In English, very loosely translated, it means improvised. In Hindi, it means much for Indians of my generation who grew up in socialist times when everything from cars and air-conditioners to ordinary items of daily use were held together by jugaad. Now, we have our first jugaad government. The nuclear deal may or may not go through if Mulayam’s men stand by, but other than this we can hope for little more than the sort of nonsense that is being passed off as governance by Dr Manmohan Singh’s ministers. Last week, even as the political crisis deepened his Health Minister launched a website to offer nutritional advice to Indians with access to the Internet. Unaware that even middle class Indians can barely afford vegetables at today’s prices, he urges people on www.healthy-India.org to eat “200 gm of green, leafy vegetables (one cup of raw spinach), 300 gm of other vegetables, 200 gm fruit (one big apple), 500 gm milk†and much else. If the Health Minister did not have such cynical contempt for the aam aadmi he would have noticed the horrifying fact that more than half of Indian children suffer from malnutrition. They would eat all the things he recommends if their parents could afford to buy them. If the Health Minister’s foray onto the worldwide web drew inadvertent attention to his insensitivity, college admissions drew attention to the Manmohan Government’s abysmal record on reform in higher education. As happens, every year students with more than 90 per cent found themselves rejected by colleges of their choice because the ‘cut-off’ point was impossibly high and competition impossibly stiff. The Government’s own Knowledge Commission has recommended that we work towards building at least a thousand more universities, but its report has been ignored by a Minister for Human Resource Development whose only concern has been reserving caste quotas for college seats that do not exist. Governments are elected to deliver governance. At the best of times Dr Manmohan Singh’s Government gave us little by way of governance even in areas so vital as health and education. What will it be able to do now that it is the worst of times? Nothing better could happen than for the Prime Minister to dissolve the Lok Sabha and give us an early election.

[sandtest]

Tavleen Singh is refreshing, worth a read in the crowd of leftist, JNU jholawalas and PC stooges passing as "journalists". How I wish to send such articles to IBN and Rajdeep Sardesai whose lust for a Padmashree award has turned him into a disgusting licker of Sonia Manio and Rahul baba. UPA was a jugaad the vey day they formed an opportunist alliance with ChinCommies. A PM who was literally installed by the order of Manio madam, heck, MMS is not even elected directly through an election - go figure. Those who portray Manio as some sort of "image" of tolerant and "sikoolar" India are really not aware or willfully ignorant that Madam is communal to core, only difference that she has deep influence of Vatican Christianity. I am suprised when it comes to Chritian propagated subtle communalism, noooo Indian media even cares to highlight?? What are the financial forces behind Indian media??