TEST OF GOVERNANCE
We have been told incessantly by our powerful and supposedly well-informed media – and a few leaders of India Inc – how the nation is suffering from a complete absence of governance, and how the Congress simply doesn’t know how to govern [and should supposedly learn from their hero in Gujarat].
As if governance merely consists of mouthing abuses, taunts, sarcasm, hitting below the belt, pulling one another down, castigating, showing the muscle, throwing the weight around et al. [The adversaries’ worst failure lay in not being able to set Sonia against Manmohan or Rahul against someone else. They just couldn’t believe that these leaders could sustain such a complex relationship for a decade without public spat!]
Men who watch these posts know that I am no Congress-man. But it was against my understanding of the truth of the day that this was so. Those who evaluate the BJP and the Congress ALIKE seemed rather unjust to me, if for nothing, for the completely divergent world views these two share. [Even if the Congress was more or as corrupt as BJP, communalism clearly seemed to me to threaten the fabric of the nation far more seriously.]
Notice how two landmark pieces of legislation have been passed in three days, at least at the Loksabha. Notice how the ‘Congis’ have been able to take parties along [or how they fell in line!].
I don’t worry too much for the falling rupee. I have seen it rise by the dexterity of this same team.
I count RTI, RTE, FSB, Land Acquisition Bill, et al. and feel happy for my nation. I am satisfied that in the face of a very unhealthy and opportunist opposition the ruling dispensation has been able to do something tangible for the aam aadmi – and for the nation. That they are eyeing the 2014 votes makes it entirely sensible and worthy. I would rather they did this than go kill innocent Indians or destroy mosques.
At least the facts that they also hung Ajmal Kasab and Afzal Guru, caught Kareem Tunda and Yasin Bhatkal should weigh with the hardcore self-proclaimed nationalists!
At the end of the day Congress [as a governing party] has a hundred times more to show to the people of India than the BJP [as an effective, healhty opposition] for the 2014 polls.
Yet which way the voters can be swung is anybody’s guess. The young urban middle class ‘educated’ voter – with her/his weird notions about nationhood – appears the most dicey voter for now.
