The Political Musical Chairs

The game of political musical chairs is at its peak within the Indian National Congress and guess makers too are busy who will occupy a new chair with a familiar old face? Of course, Sonia Gandhi, as the Congress President, was there and was destined to be there as all Congressmen and women knew too well. The leading players in the musical chairs game are the three Dalit leaders of the Congress including Meera Kumar, Kumari Shaila and Mahabir Prasad. Finally, who gets which post of prominence would perhaps depend on the decision of the Congress President but who can stop the guess makers and prediction pundits? Those who do not want Meera Kumar to hold of the party’s general secretary post replacing Ambika Soni simply indulge in the wishful syndesis, “Uski rajniti par pakad nahin” – she does not have a good grip on politics. Well, well! Indian politics is an extremely slippery game, who can have a firm grip on it? Mahabir Prasad, a man among Congress Dalit leaders is at war with the secretary of his ministry Das. How can he keep the party together? But then the party is not exactly like the government. Maybe he is there and maybe he is not. But some are too sure that he would be sent to adorn some Raj Bhawan to run a gubernatorial show. If Ghulam Nabi Azad, who is believed to know the potential of the various Congress hopefuls for plum posts had his way, Shailaja would be out and Krishna Tirath would be given an important rank in the party organization. Shailaja, young and bubbling with enthusiasm, might become the Haryana PCC President, in place of Bhupinder Singh Hooda, to compensate her for losing out in the race for the state Chiefministership. Mahabir’s place might be taken over by the sophisticated and pleasant young scion of the Zakir Hussein family, Salman Khurshid. Pure speculation my dear Watson, as Sherlock Holmes would say, but in Indian politics, Congress politics being no exception, speculation is more probable than reason, and truth stranger than fiction.

Seventy-five Not Out, But Why?

I beg your pardon, by what logic does a politician become younger and younger as he or she advance further and further in age? Watching the outbreak of birthday way of the Arjun Singh’s, Lal Krishan Advani’s and so on and so forth, who have celebrated their 7-5th birthday or are ready to celebrate it or in the near future, the same old question arises a new: why is there no age of retirement for politicians? Again, I beg your pardon, I mean why must they limp on and on in their stumbling, fumbling and crumbling career, running against time and age? Why? Oh! Why? Grandpa used to say that when one completed his 75th year it was time to renounce the wealth, power and material acquisitions he had piled up in a long career of love and life and seek salvation and solace by renouncing all these for those who need and deserve them more and better than he. It was time to explore the depths of the woods and sit down and wonder, “What good I ever do in this long career of arrogance and acquisition? Once again, I beg your pardon Mr Politician, I fear you might find it hard to grope for any good that you might have done to anyone, except for your own self. Then a wise person told me, “Stupid, you do not know even that. The politicians get tired and tire you out with their wicked ways, but they never retire. Even the Constitution does not prescribe an age of retirement for them? But I have the bad habit of being consistent, OK, OK, I say, I beg your pardon finally and ask ‘Why don’t you make a start by joining the organization called the super sixties when you cross the sixties barrier. By the time you are 75, Sir or Madan as the case maybe, you might be able to make up your mind to retire in public interest. I know politicians are very busy and have seldom time enough to make up their mind. Right?

So Many Birds With a Single Arrow

The good political Rajput archer, Arjun Singh, can shoot many birds with a single arrow-shot. He has demonstrated it again and again, and very recently through a statement endorsing 40 per cent reservation for Muslim students in the Aligarh Muslim University. Those ever crawling in the corridors of power were taken by susperise at the archer’s arrow-shot. What was the hurry? They grumbled and groaned. They did not know that was the way the great archer sought to observe his “Amrit Mohatsava” or the “Festival of Nectar” which the 75th birthday of a warrior and king is called in this country with great and hoary traditions. Was he aware that his real charioteer was none other than Sonia Gandhi who had her own Sudershan Chakra, which could rise above all political grand strikes to fix enemies within and enemies without. There were those who felt that according to their great tradition a man who had completed a rich and ripe lifespan of 75 years should move to the stage of renunciation and give up worldy acquisitions and hakerings and rise as a man above everything, a statesman rather than a politician. The leftists who love him and love him not, would not stop pin-pricking him for their own ‘revolutionary purposes”. The secularist leftists seemed to be anxious to convey the message that they were not overinflucned by Sonia and Manmohan Singh. But Arjuna seemed to have told them” But watch out, you cannot meddle with the leader of the minorities – or shall we say the Pandavas – the one and only Arjuna”. Will the message get across?

Money, Langoors And Vultures

In the South and Noth blocs of the Central Secetariate, the citadel of babus and higher bureaucracy, the shadows of the monkey menace are fast becoming darker and darker. There are too many monkeys invading the file-mountains and decicion blooking machines of the babudom. For protection, there is only one solution, to recruit the black-faced langurs to scare and chase away the red-faced, red-bottomed monkey brigades. Political cynics say that while there was no dearth of monkeys invading the bureaucratic and political corriodors of the nation’s capital, there was acute shortage of langoorrs to keep an eye on them. And those more acidic than these ones went a step further pointing towards the higher echelons of psycophantry and chamchadom and said : What about the vultures who were ever on the prowl to eat political carrion and small fish? Surely langurs alone could not deal with that menace, ever futtering around the corridors of power.