Manmohan’s Interaction with media<
‘Culprit’ but not that much
Caught in adharma of ‘coalition dharma’
By Amba Charan Vashishth
Prime Minister Dr. Manohan Singh went in for an interaction with editors of electronic media. In sum, he made the following important points.
Dr. Manmohan Singh admitted that he is “a culprit but not that much” as is being painted by the media.
He thinks that his duty ends with attending only to those matters that are brought to his notice by the ministers or his office. He has nothing to do with what goes on below his nose in various ministries of the government over whom he presides.
He doesn’t feel responsible for what right or wrong goes on in the PMO or the department of space research (ISRO) directly under him. He admits that he received a letter in July 2010 regarding S-spectrum and if he failed to take action, to guide the department how to act and to prevent a wrong that was committed and for which the nation, according to one estimate, is to be made to cough up a loss of about ` 2 lakh crores is not his business.
On 2G spectrum scam he forgot that he had given a clean chit to his former telecom minister A. Raja and even publicly patted his back after Raja resigned. He admits that he told Mr. Raja to do everything in a transparent manner according to his government’s policy and according to rules. He further said: “f the ministry of finance and ministry of telecom both agree…I did not feel I was in a position to insist that auctions must be insisted” an admission of helplessness. Yet he is the prime minister.
As per Press reports (The Times of India, February 17) Finance Minister P. Chidambaram wrote to Prime Minister that “…if a licensee sells his licence (including spectrum) to another person, it could be stipulated that the licensee should share with govt a part of the premium/profit gained…through the sale”.. If not PM, who was to do it? Why did PM not act and issue any direction to Mr. Raja?
Dr. Manmohan Singh did confess that a number of scams did take place under his regime but tried to explain these away as “aberration”. So many scams, yet these are all ‘aberrations’.
He refused to accept responsibility for what went on in his council of ministers. The council of ministers is individually and collectively responsible for all the acts of omission and commission. He tried to feign ignorance about the provisions of Article 75(3) of the Constitution which says: “The Council of Ministers shall be collectively responsible to the House of the People”.
Some time back Dr. Manmohan Singh did take pride in comparing his government to that of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru. But he forgot that in Nehru’s cabinet ministers resigned the moment a finger of suspicion was raised at them. But Dr. Manmohan Singh himself is bold to declare that nobody can be held guilty till convicted by a court of law. Whether it was the then finance minister T. T. Krishnamachari and others, they resigned the moment their names appeared in a bad colour. Late Lal Bahadur Shastri resigned in 1956 when 144 people were killed in a train accident. Late Shastri was not driving the railway train himself, nor was he a station master or the signal man. Yet he resigned taking moral responsibility for the mishap. But here is the Manmohan government where none, including the prime minister, has the courage to take moral responsibility for the numerous scams that have taken place under this government. Yet Dr. Manmohan Singh compares his cabinet with that of Pandit Nehru.
Dr. Manmohan Singh said that opinions can be different but “facts are sacred”. But he, or his government, did not treat the facts pointed out by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India on 2G spectrum scam. His ministers and party imputed motives to the conduct of CAG, an institution of the Constitution.
More surprising was his comparing the loss calculated in the issue of 2G spectrum with the food subsidy. Was his government extending a subsidy to those whom it gave spectrum licences at the cost of the nation? The food subsidy helped the poor to have if not two, one meal, a day. What did the 2G spectrum favours do to the aam aadmi, except filling the pockets of the rich? And that is the allegation against Raja and his government. Only thing he has so far not admitted is that a part of the ‘subsidy’ granted by Raja has percolated to the accounts of some leaders.
He was very aggressive when he put the blame on the opposition for not allowing the two houses of parliament to function during the last winter session on the issue of JPC. He tried to wipe out the impression that he stood in the way of JPC formation as he feared appearing before it. He declared he is ready to appear before both the PAC and the JPC. But now that the Congress seems to have almost conceded the opposition demand for JPC, does it not mean that had the Congress party not been that adamant and unrelenting, the whole winter session would have been saved and parliament functioned normally?
It is difficult to say how proud he felt as a prime minister when he said he did not differ with his Home Minister Chidamabaram who had said that Manmohan government suffered from a “governance and ethical deficit”.
Dr. Manmohan Singh declared that no wrongdoer shall be spared. But when did he not say that? But during the last about seven years of his prime ministership, how many people who did “wrong” have been punished?
He said that “some compromises have to be made in managing a coalition” which conduct he labeled as coalition dharma. But what is important – the interests of the nation or “compromises” to stick to power? Does his “coalition dharma” preach to follow Mahatma Gandhi’s legendary monkeys who speak no evil, hear no evil and see no evil? Does this “dharma” require promoting corruption and promoting the corrupt?
To a pointed question, Dr. Manmohan Singh said he had no plans to quit. He admitted that things were “not entirely what I would like them to be”, yet he had had a job to do and would “stay the course”.
But in May 2010 he is on record having praised Rahul Gandhi saying he had all the qualities to be a prime minister and he expressed his readiness to vacate his chair for Rahul. Dr. Manmohan is not ready to quit accepting moral responsibility for being cornered from all sides from corruption indulged in by his colleagues, but meekly surrender. ***
Thursday, February 17, 2011
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
INDEPENDENT INDIA suffering under a SLAVE GOVERNMENT
By Amba Charan Vashishth
The various UPA constituents, including the Congress, drew satisfaction from the fact that Congress General Secretary Rahul Gandhi did not name any particular ally when he said that UPA government was “not able to control inflation and corruption as his grandmother and late prime minister Indira Gandhi could do” because of coalition compulsions”.
The new Maharashtra chief minister Prithviraj Chavan echoing Rahul remarks said that coalition politics was sometimes a hurdle in decision making. “Coalition can be a hindrance and one has to find a way out to make things happen”, he said on January 12.
Never did the country have a government as paralysed and as benumbed to act as we have today, particularly since May 2004, called UPA-II under which the Prime Minister is not able to exercise the kind of authority and leadership he should, in the normal course, on the council of ministers, particularly those belonging to the allies.
It is an accepted principle of the parliamentary democracy that it is the unchallenged prerogative of a prime minister to choose his team in the council of ministers and to allocate portfolios. But that is not the case under the present UPA-II government wherein it is not the prime minister but the alliance party bosses who decide who should be the minister (and of what rank) and which portfolio he/she should hold. The prime minister just faithfully abides by the wishes of the allies on whose support his government subsists.
Even in the case of recalcitrant ministers, like the union minister of chemicals and fertilizer M K Azhagiri, the former communications minister A. Raja, railway minister Mamta Banerjee, agriculture minister Sharad Pawar, the prime minister has found himself helpless to act. Mr. Azhagiri has played truant from the parliament and his office for unusually long periods. Despite reports of wrongdoings in communications ministry, Dr. Manmohan Singh and Congress President Mrs. Sonia Gandhi continued to defend him till the last. Even after Manmohan government was left with no alternative but to show the door to Mr. A. Raja on the eve of presentation of CAG report, Congress had to continue to defend him, even after CBI registered a case and conducted raids on Raja’s residence and interrogated him. The question remains: If Mr. Raja was not even a distant suspect in any crime, why at all was he made to resign? Why was he humiliated by conducting raids on his premises and those of his aides? If we go by the stand of the Congress and the DMK, it appears he has been made a scapegoat and punished for no crime of his.
Whatever explanation the Congress Party may proffer, the message has been well read and taken by the people: In independent India we are at present sufferings the pangs of a government that is slave to the circumstances.
Not in control
About a year back when prices started skyrocketing unusually and the aam aadmi was crying aghast, in irritation the Agriculture and Food Minister, Mr. Sharad Pawar, shot back that “I’m no astrologer” when a media person asked Pawar when he expects the prices to fall. But he did behave as an astrologer whose predictions always go wrong when he said a number of times that prices of particular commodities will continue to rise “for another three months” or ease after some time. Our Finance Minister has, on a number of occasions, predicted that inflation and prices will come down in “three-four months” or by the end of the year or so. But each time that didn’t happen.
On January 16, 2011 Mr. Sharad Pawar said that there was a wrong perception (created by media) that the agriculture ministry was responsible for rising prices. In reality, he added, the ministry had no role to play, and that it was entirely dependent on market conditions.
People of the country have voted this government to power to govern and administer and not just to volunteer excuses for non-performance, non –functioning and failures. People are eager to see it work to make their life convenient, easy, safe and secure; they are not interested in excuses.
To rule is easy, said Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, to govern difficult. Messers Rahul, Sharad Pavar or Prithviraj Chavan have only sent out a message loud and clear: this government is not able to perform and is just drifting by various forces beyond their control. A government must anticipate things and takes corrective steps in advance to meet the situation. If price rise and inflation are “entirely dependent on market conditions”; if UPA government was “not able to control inflation and corruption” because of coalition compulsions; if “coalition can be a hindrance (in taking a decision) and one has to find a way out to make things happen”, does it not mean that at the moment there is no a government worth its salt in power in the country? If not those in power who else “has to find a way out to make things happen”?
A government irresponsible
The stance of the UPA government amounts to the government virtually abdicating its authority, right and capacity to govern and administer “entirely” to “market conditions”. Our democracy too seems to have drifted to being a government by the aam aadmi, of the “market conditions” and forces, and for everybody else except the aam aadmi.
Democracy, good governance and modernity, Emile Lahud has rightly said, cannot be imported or imposed from outside a country. And the words of Thomas Jefferson apply aptly to the present Indian conditions when he said: “Experience hath shown that even under the best forms (of government) those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny”.
The confusion has further been worse confounded by the scenario of utter sense of irresponsibility prevailing in the government. Everybody, the prime minister included, washes his hands of the responsibility for everything wrong taking place under their nose.
Atheist turns believer
About thirty years back, a joke was widely quoted in India A leader from the then USSR which being a communist country did not believe in god, on return from a visit to India told his fellow citizens that he had now come to believe that god does exist there. Curious people asked, “How?” He replied: “There was no government worth the name, yet the country was going. God must be running the government and the country”.
Coalition adharma
Of late, we have come to hear of a new terminology of ‘coalition dharma’ which means taking every constituent of the alliance along, giving weightage to each one’s point of view and respecting their feelings which many a time are in conflict with each other. But what is of supreme importance – the ‘coalition dharma’ or the need to govern and perform in the interest of the people for which they had been mandated? Whether it is fighting corruption or terrorism, bringing down prices and inflation or the like, it is the ‘coalition dharma’ that appears to be a stumbling block for any action by the government. It cannot be a dharma but only adharma that can stand in conflict with the interests of the nation and ushers in sufferings for the common people.
Government for what?
If the present UPA dispensation is not to work to solve the burning problems of the country; if it has not to help the aam aadmi come out of his present state of suffering, and the administration has just to drift on its own, what for do we need an army of ministers at the Centre and in States -- just to enjoy the fruits of power at the cost of the people for whom they are not working? In that case a political system without a government would be much more desirable, as it would, at least, save the people of thousands of crores of money which they can spend on themselves to usher in their own prosperity.
The various UPA constituents, including the Congress, drew satisfaction from the fact that Congress General Secretary Rahul Gandhi did not name any particular ally when he said that UPA government was “not able to control inflation and corruption as his grandmother and late prime minister Indira Gandhi could do” because of coalition compulsions”.
The new Maharashtra chief minister Prithviraj Chavan echoing Rahul remarks said that coalition politics was sometimes a hurdle in decision making. “Coalition can be a hindrance and one has to find a way out to make things happen”, he said on January 12.
Never did the country have a government as paralysed and as benumbed to act as we have today, particularly since May 2004, called UPA-II under which the Prime Minister is not able to exercise the kind of authority and leadership he should, in the normal course, on the council of ministers, particularly those belonging to the allies.
It is an accepted principle of the parliamentary democracy that it is the unchallenged prerogative of a prime minister to choose his team in the council of ministers and to allocate portfolios. But that is not the case under the present UPA-II government wherein it is not the prime minister but the alliance party bosses who decide who should be the minister (and of what rank) and which portfolio he/she should hold. The prime minister just faithfully abides by the wishes of the allies on whose support his government subsists.
Even in the case of recalcitrant ministers, like the union minister of chemicals and fertilizer M K Azhagiri, the former communications minister A. Raja, railway minister Mamta Banerjee, agriculture minister Sharad Pawar, the prime minister has found himself helpless to act. Mr. Azhagiri has played truant from the parliament and his office for unusually long periods. Despite reports of wrongdoings in communications ministry, Dr. Manmohan Singh and Congress President Mrs. Sonia Gandhi continued to defend him till the last. Even after Manmohan government was left with no alternative but to show the door to Mr. A. Raja on the eve of presentation of CAG report, Congress had to continue to defend him, even after CBI registered a case and conducted raids on Raja’s residence and interrogated him. The question remains: If Mr. Raja was not even a distant suspect in any crime, why at all was he made to resign? Why was he humiliated by conducting raids on his premises and those of his aides? If we go by the stand of the Congress and the DMK, it appears he has been made a scapegoat and punished for no crime of his.
Whatever explanation the Congress Party may proffer, the message has been well read and taken by the people: In independent India we are at present sufferings the pangs of a government that is slave to the circumstances.
Not in control
About a year back when prices started skyrocketing unusually and the aam aadmi was crying aghast, in irritation the Agriculture and Food Minister, Mr. Sharad Pawar, shot back that “I’m no astrologer” when a media person asked Pawar when he expects the prices to fall. But he did behave as an astrologer whose predictions always go wrong when he said a number of times that prices of particular commodities will continue to rise “for another three months” or ease after some time. Our Finance Minister has, on a number of occasions, predicted that inflation and prices will come down in “three-four months” or by the end of the year or so. But each time that didn’t happen.
On January 16, 2011 Mr. Sharad Pawar said that there was a wrong perception (created by media) that the agriculture ministry was responsible for rising prices. In reality, he added, the ministry had no role to play, and that it was entirely dependent on market conditions.
People of the country have voted this government to power to govern and administer and not just to volunteer excuses for non-performance, non –functioning and failures. People are eager to see it work to make their life convenient, easy, safe and secure; they are not interested in excuses.
To rule is easy, said Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, to govern difficult. Messers Rahul, Sharad Pavar or Prithviraj Chavan have only sent out a message loud and clear: this government is not able to perform and is just drifting by various forces beyond their control. A government must anticipate things and takes corrective steps in advance to meet the situation. If price rise and inflation are “entirely dependent on market conditions”; if UPA government was “not able to control inflation and corruption” because of coalition compulsions; if “coalition can be a hindrance (in taking a decision) and one has to find a way out to make things happen”, does it not mean that at the moment there is no a government worth its salt in power in the country? If not those in power who else “has to find a way out to make things happen”?
A government irresponsible
The stance of the UPA government amounts to the government virtually abdicating its authority, right and capacity to govern and administer “entirely” to “market conditions”. Our democracy too seems to have drifted to being a government by the aam aadmi, of the “market conditions” and forces, and for everybody else except the aam aadmi.
Democracy, good governance and modernity, Emile Lahud has rightly said, cannot be imported or imposed from outside a country. And the words of Thomas Jefferson apply aptly to the present Indian conditions when he said: “Experience hath shown that even under the best forms (of government) those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny”.
The confusion has further been worse confounded by the scenario of utter sense of irresponsibility prevailing in the government. Everybody, the prime minister included, washes his hands of the responsibility for everything wrong taking place under their nose.
Atheist turns believer
About thirty years back, a joke was widely quoted in India A leader from the then USSR which being a communist country did not believe in god, on return from a visit to India told his fellow citizens that he had now come to believe that god does exist there. Curious people asked, “How?” He replied: “There was no government worth the name, yet the country was going. God must be running the government and the country”.
Coalition adharma
Of late, we have come to hear of a new terminology of ‘coalition dharma’ which means taking every constituent of the alliance along, giving weightage to each one’s point of view and respecting their feelings which many a time are in conflict with each other. But what is of supreme importance – the ‘coalition dharma’ or the need to govern and perform in the interest of the people for which they had been mandated? Whether it is fighting corruption or terrorism, bringing down prices and inflation or the like, it is the ‘coalition dharma’ that appears to be a stumbling block for any action by the government. It cannot be a dharma but only adharma that can stand in conflict with the interests of the nation and ushers in sufferings for the common people.
Government for what?
If the present UPA dispensation is not to work to solve the burning problems of the country; if it has not to help the aam aadmi come out of his present state of suffering, and the administration has just to drift on its own, what for do we need an army of ministers at the Centre and in States -- just to enjoy the fruits of power at the cost of the people for whom they are not working? In that case a political system without a government would be much more desirable, as it would, at least, save the people of thousands of crores of money which they can spend on themselves to usher in their own prosperity.
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