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MAIL TODAY COMMENT(Mail Today (India) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) A deeper message in election outcome AT one level the outcome of the state assembly elections in Maharashtra, Haryana and Arunachal Pradesh has been predictable. The Congress was expected to retain all three states, and it has. At least in Maharashtra and Haryana, the victory is as much an achievement of the Congress, as the failure of the Opposition. Conventional wisdom would suggest that the biggest loser, by far, is the Bharatiya Janata Party which does not seem to have recovered its equipoise after its defeat in the Lok Sabha elections earlier this year. Its bankruptcy is apparent from its persistent attempts to blame the electronic voting machines for its election losses. The Opposition's real problem has been its inability to jell together. In Maharashtra, it has been undone by the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena, the breakaway group of the Shiv Sena. But the real problem was with the senior partner of the alliance, the BJP. Its performance has been, to put it politely, subpar. The party lacks the esprit de corps it had in the days of Pramod Mahajan. But the BJP's weakness as an ally was manifest in Haryana as well. The party's inability to play the junior partner led to the collapse of the alliance with the Indian National Lok Dal. The result indicates that the BJP was the bigger loser there by far and that it had grossly overestimated its capabilities. Even so, the victory must be sweet for Bhupinder Singh Hooda, the first chief minister to win two successive elections in the state since 1972. The victory of the Congress in Arunachal was expected, as that of the Trinamool Congress, many of whose candidates were Congress MLAs denied tickets. But the election may also be sending a deeper signal. After nearly a decade in which the BJP's Hindutva brand defined the politics of the country, it is returning to the path of secular neutrality. There are only signs as yet, and it is up to the party leadership to press on and make secularism the country's dominant paradigm. Mamata's failure BEFORE she took over as Railway minister in the middle of the year, Mamata Banerjee had given enough indications of her lack of interest in helping India's premier public transport organisation, and indeed its biggest employer, grow. Therefore, Ms Banerjee's absence from the accident spot in Mathura where India's worst rail tragedy of the year took place on Wednesday, should not be surprising; it was, in fact, true to form. She was holed up in Kolkata for more than 18 hours after the accident, thus broadcasting her insensitivity to a shocked nation for the entire day. It is evident that the demand for this key ministry was merely a bargaining chip that Ms Banerjee sought following her party Trinamool Congress' status as a powerbroker in the UPA- II government. In terms of real progress, there has been hardly any; indeed if anything, there has been a gradual regression and the Ministry of Railways now resembles a badly- managed headless organisation with no regard for safety. Though the Railways had earmarked thousands of crores to buy world- class safety equipment, only 10 per cent of India's rail network has anti- collision devices fitted. As the Railway minister, it is Ms Banerjee's prime responsibility to ensure this target is met. If not, her tenure will prove to be a sorry failure. Nehru's image UNIVERSAL Studios may have decided to scrap its film on the Jawaharlal Nehru- Edwina Mountbatten romance for budgetary reasons. But the controversy has left us with some uncomfortable questions about the role of the government in defining just how the former prime minister ought to be depicted. With what authority is the present government seeking to effect the changes to the script? There is nothing in the law of the land that says the image of a former PM remains the property of the country. The objections, if any, could have been made by Nehru's family. But even there, you would have to consider the fact that Nehru was a public person and his life and actions are open to interpretation by satirists, artists, writers and filmmakers. (c) 2009 India Today Group. All Rights Reserved. Provided by Syndigate.info an Albawaba.com company |