UPA 2-third anniversary celebration

May 21, 2012, marked the completion of the third year of the United Progressive Alliance(UPA-2). Although this makes it the beginning of the Congress-ruled coalition's ninth year in government, but, if you look back to assess its achievements and moments of glory, the story is sad and depressing. Major terrorist attacks have taken place with some intervals despite the govt assertions of zero tolerance; the most gruesome massacre happened on November 26, 2008 in Mumbai when ten Pakistani murderers came through the sea at the docks opposite the Taj Mahal Hotel-the metropolitan's leading landmark. Thus, the internal security situation is as vulnerable as ever.

Then, we have had several corruption scandals, including 2G spectrum allocation, Commonwealth Games, etc., involving thousands of crores of public money in which UPA Ministers, other Congress leaders and bureaucrats were allegedly guilty. Initially, the govt defended them, but, thanks to the opposition and the media uproar, Anna  Hazare's anti-corruption movement and the Supreme Court intervention, the Telecom Minister A. Raja and the CWG chief Suresh Kalmadi were arrested and jailed for over a year. They have just been released on bail.

In other words, the UPA govt led by an economist-bureaucrat-turned politician, Dr Manmohan Singh who, in effect, was really acting as a deputy to the supreme leader, Mrs Sonia Gandhi, head of the UPA as well as the Congress party, hurtled the country from one crisis to another. By all accounts, we are in an economic mess and political chaos. The rupee has plunged to its lowest rate against the dollar: Rs.55. Consequently, the price rise at a unbearably high point, will worsen as imported goods and essential components will become costlier.Thanks to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's well-known silence, subservience, indecision, inaction, non-communicative and laissez faire attitude, his key constitutional office as the govt's chief executive head, has been compromised and diminished as never before. He is bound to go down in India's history as the weakest Prime Minister who was in office but not in power.

NCERT cartoon controversy

We witnessed a sickening drama in the Indian Parliament recently when excepting one or two MPs, including Mr Jaswant Singh, a senior BJP leader, members representing different parties-left, right and centre, condemned a political cartoon depicting Mr BR Ambedkar and Mr Jawaharlal Nehru that was published in a XI class text book of the NCERT, a govt body authorised to prescribe text books for the schools. The cartoon was done by Mr Shankar Pillai, a legendary and pioneering cartoonist, in 1949. He was highly regarded by the politicians of that time, including the then Prime Minister Nehru and Mr Ambedkar, the key player in the Constitution-making as the chairman of the drafting committee. The offending cartoon that had appeared in magazines and cartoon collections, had never come under any adverse notice or objection all these sixty-odd years. It seemed innocuously comic. New text books authors and advisors, obviously keen to introduce a humourous element to political science reading to make the subject more interesting, used political cartoons by well-known professionals, in the NCERT books. The said cartoon was published in 2006.

Hell broke loose when recently some dalit MPs happened to see the Ambedkar cartoon in the said text book. The Parliament proceedings were disrupted; all other important issues waiting to be discussed were sidelined and express the both Houses' sense of outrage at the "insult" of the Dalit icon-Mr BR Ambedkar. The cartoon showed Mr Ambedkar sitting on a snail with a rein and a whip in his hand and Mr Nehru at his back also with a whip. Most who viewed the cartoon dispassionately felt that the head of the Constitution-making body(Mr A) and the head of the govt(Mr N) were trying to egg on the snail with a faster pace.( Perhaps, there was a feeling in the country that the process of making the constitution was slow. Hence, the symbol of the snail. But, unfortunately, Dalit activists thought that Mr Nehru with his whip was threatening Mr Ambedkar to move fast. This was clearly ridiculous, knowing Mr Nehru's respect for Mr Ambedkar and his role. But bigoted Dalit ideologues and activists will have none of it. It was a convenient handle to malign non-dalits. It was a really shameful display of vote-bank politics at its worst.

SC amicus curiae's anti-Modi views

A controversy has arisen over a recent report of Raju Ramchandran, an amicus curiae appointed by the Supreme Court to assist it in the Gujarat riot cases. The report the extracts of which were reproduced in a section of the press, seemed anti-Narendra Modi(Gujarat Chief Minister). Another curious character of the report is that it disregards a comprehensive investigative report on the riots submitted by the Supreme Court-appointed Special Investigative Team(SIT), particularly its rejection of the suspended IPS officer of Gujarat-Sanjiv Bhatt's charges against Chief Minister Modi as "unbelievable". Here is "a friend of the court"-amicus curiae-who is acting more as a "friend" of  a discredited Police Officer who is currently facing multiple charges himself in the local courts and is under suspension. An amazing-and bewildering fact is that Raju Ramchandran, in his report, conceded that Bhatt's "statement" against Modi "has not been that of a detached police officer...I am left with no doubt that he(Bhatt) is actively 'strategising' and is in touch with those who would benefit or gain mileage"-a clear reference to anti-Modi elements, namely, the Congress party, Teesta Setalvad, Mukul Sinha, etc. Yet, Ramchandran insisted that "these factors cannot be grounds for ignoring it". Does it not sound incredible and clearly biassed that while recognising the motivated mindset of a leading player in the anti-Modi campaign-with conspiratorial undertones-Bhatt-and his political backers and anti-Modi compulsive bashers, the apex court-appointed lawyer-Raju Ramchandran, supposed to assist the court, is creating more complications, and, in the process, discrediting himself, instead of following a logical course of damning Bhatt's case?