In a severest criticism, Surjit S.Bhalla, the Indian Express columnist who specialises on economic and financial issues, has indicted Mrs Sonia Gandhi, the President of the ruling Congress party and Chairperson of the UPA, for her "occult" policies which are proving disastrous for the country and the party. In his latest article:"Message to Sonia: reform or perish"(IE-March 30). Bhalla wrote that Sonia Gandhi's husband, Rajiv Gandhi had won three-fourth Lok Sabha seats in 1984 polls, for his prime-ministership. No Congress leader, including his grand father, Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first Prime Minister, had ever secured such a majority in the Lok Sabha; and , yet, Rajiv Gandhi lost the next elections in 1989, because of alleged corruption in the Bofors guns purchase, involving merely 64 crore rupees(40m dollars). In contrast, "the conservative assessment of cumulative corruption" associated with his wife Sonia Gandhi's "mistaken, misguided, misapplied, flagship MGNREGA(rural job guarantee scheme), is, at least, Rs.1,40,000 crores(out of Rs.1,70,000 crores) that went to non-poor". That is 14 billion dollars-or an amount 350 times of the Bofor amount, Bhalla added. As if this was not an enormous, unacceptable loss to the Indian exchequer, Mrs Sonia Gandhi is ready to impose another expensive project, similarly prone to huge corruption-Food Security Act.
However, my problem with Bhalla's critique is that while he is right in denouncing Mrs Sonia Gandhi's "authoritarian" policies, causing massive mess, he wrongly attributes her economic policies to "their origin in the creation of the Congress in 1885...founded by the occultist movement-Theosophical Society" of Annie Besant. In my view, Sonia's socialistic approach seemed to have been inspired by her grand father-in-law, Jawaharlal Nehru and her mother-in-law Mrs Indira Gandhi. Surjit Bhalla seems to have spared Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, supposedly an eminent economist, for his guilt to serve as an obedient bureaucrat-turned politician, and not asserting his supreme authority as the head of the govt. No wonder, he is regarded as the weakest Prime Minister in the history of independent India who has destroyed the prestige and great status of PM's office, by acting as a second fiddle to Mrs Sonia Gandhi, his boss. What is the worth of such personal intergrity and honesty when the key constitutional office-holder where the buck stops, who is accountable to the Parliament and the nation, is weak-kneed and spineless to stand up to an un-constitutional authority, even when he realises that the country and the economy are going to the dogs? Is Manmohan Singh not equally culpable, hence unfit to continue in the august office?
However, my problem with Bhalla's critique is that while he is right in denouncing Mrs Sonia Gandhi's "authoritarian" policies, causing massive mess, he wrongly attributes her economic policies to "their origin in the creation of the Congress in 1885...founded by the occultist movement-Theosophical Society" of Annie Besant. In my view, Sonia's socialistic approach seemed to have been inspired by her grand father-in-law, Jawaharlal Nehru and her mother-in-law Mrs Indira Gandhi. Surjit Bhalla seems to have spared Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, supposedly an eminent economist, for his guilt to serve as an obedient bureaucrat-turned politician, and not asserting his supreme authority as the head of the govt. No wonder, he is regarded as the weakest Prime Minister in the history of independent India who has destroyed the prestige and great status of PM's office, by acting as a second fiddle to Mrs Sonia Gandhi, his boss. What is the worth of such personal intergrity and honesty when the key constitutional office-holder where the buck stops, who is accountable to the Parliament and the nation, is weak-kneed and spineless to stand up to an un-constitutional authority, even when he realises that the country and the economy are going to the dogs? Is Manmohan Singh not equally culpable, hence unfit to continue in the august office?
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