The Voice
of the Free Indian
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Sonia's scapegoats
January 21, 2003 : rediff.com
In 1991, it took United Nations forces precisely 100 hours of
fighting on land to expel the Iraqis from Kuwait. Narendra Modi
has taken a little under 72 hours for one of his opposing numbers
to be given marching orders. Shortly after the Bharatiya Janata
Party staged a hugely successful rally in Mumbai to felicitate
Modi on his victory in Gujarat, a nervous Congress (I) high command
had summoned the chief minister of Maharashtra to Delhi, informing
him that he was on his way out.
The after-shocks of the political quake in Gujarat last month
are just beginning to be felt. Nor, I predict, shall poor Vilasrao
Deshmukh be the last victim as Sonia Gandhi and her advisors look
for scapegoats. The current chief minister of Rajasthan, Ashok
Gehlot, is almost certainly going to be asked to put his head
on the chopping block sooner rather than later. And what happens
after that? I doubt that Madhya Pradesh's Digvijay Singh will
be moved in a hurry -- after the Vidhan Sabha election perhaps
-- but the vultures are circling over Karnataka...
I am not quite sure that I understand why all these changes might
be rung in. Both the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Congress (I)
have tried chopping and changing chief ministers on the eve of
polls -- the Congress (I) in Punjab and the Bharatiya Janata Party
in Delhi. Both attempts were remarkably unsuccessful. Nor, more
recently, did the National Conference succeed in its ploy of presenting
the voters with a new face, Omar Abdullah, in place of his father,
the outgoing chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir, Farooq Abdullah.
That is not to say Vilasrao Deshmukh was doing a wonderful job
in Maharashtra. He was clearly out of his depth as head of a multi-party
coalition. Last year, he barely managed to quash a rebellion in
the ranks, when the Shiv Sena all but pulled off a coup by inciting
dissidents. If the Congress (I) were serious about leadership
changes, it would have been wiser to effect one shortly after.
Instead, the Congress (I) has, stupidly, put itself in a position
where it is hard-pressed to explain why it has shunted out Vilasrao
Deshmukh. 'He was doing a very good job,' says his successor,
Sushil Kumar Shinde, 'and I welcome the opportunity to work in
the state once again with my old friend.' 'He was doing a very
good job,' Shivraj Patil announced on television shortly after,
'and I am sure his talents shall be put to great use in Delhi.'
Both of them cannot be right. (Is Deshmukh going to be confined
to Delhi or to Mumbai?) But the point is that neither is an adequate
explanation for why he was kicked out in the first place.
For the record, I believe Deshmukh did not, in fact, do a good
job as an administrator. Maharashtra, once the economic engine
of the nation, is drowning in a sea of red ink, its budget deficits
ballooning at an alarming rate. In Vidarbha, cotton farmers are
committing suicide because the Deshmukh ministry was utterly inadequate
in giving them any kind of support. And the less said of the law
and order situation, the better! So, there were reasons aplenty
to get rid of Deshmukh, but not one that the Congress (I) can
admit.
If Deshmukh's record does not stand scrutiny that of his Rajasthan
counterpart is an utter disgrace. It may be true that the state
has been hit by the worst drought in half a century, but that
does not condone the callousness of Ashok Gehlot and his ministers.
The administration tried its best to pass off media reports of
starvation deaths as due to natural causes. Gehlot went so far
as to claim that rotis made of grass were some kind of a local
delicacy!
(I hate to make such a comparison, but neighbouring Gujarat was
hit equally hard by drought, not to mention the devastating earthquake
of January 2001. Yet have there been any reports of starvation
even in Kutch or Saurashtra? You can be sure that the dedicated
Modi-baiters in the media would have gleefully leapt on any such
story had there been one!)
As with Deshmukh, the right time to ease Ashok Gehlot out of
office would have been six months ago. The message would then
have gone out that the Congress (I) high command cared more for
the starving people of Rajasthan than it cared to stand on its
own dignity; today, the conventional wisdom is that it is doing
so for fear of Narendra Modi.
Of course, a chief minister or two is not the only thing to be
sacrificed. At the Pachmarhi session, the Congress (I) high command
had vowed to go it alone in all future major polls. In the post-Gujarat
era, it has jettisoned that ideal, saying the door is open to
alliances. Principles, like chief ministers, are nothing more
than fodder at the altar of expedience as far as Sonia Gandhi
is concerned.
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