News&Views Feb 2010 Congress Budges
News&Views Feb 2010
Feb 10 2010
Congress Government Budges a little
(see links below for the news)
Congress government budges a little. It has decided now to put Shiv
Sena a little bit on mat It has arrested more than 1000 Shiv Sainiks and has talked
about withdrawal of security to its leaders.
This is to be expected. By and large governing style by Congress
party in India is to allow things to function quite ok, at a minimal
level so that no extreme chaotic situation is created. It has mostly
worked for last 50 years. As a result most things in India involving
government function at a minimal level of management, just a little above
the chaotic situation.
For this to happen and for making still secure its vote bank, the main tool used by Congress is to compromise informally
with small extreme parties where ever possible. Parties like Shiv Sena,
MNS, communal Muslim parties, community and regional identity based
extreme small organizations are quite suitable for this purpose. It
compromises with them, supports in many cases part of their
extreme agendas for its vote bank politics. With all this formally Congress claims to be
secular and at the same time does not allow administrative affairs to
go below a minimal level.
Almost a feudal rule set up. Only escape for we ordinary citizens is
that India is so diverse and complicated country with even so called
uneducated voters also quite aware of what is in their interest. Thus
with all this, still there is a very little chance of a complete feudal structure being created in India.
With economic changes, there seems to be no option but for the country
to go into administrative management via institutions independent of government with an over all control
by the political machinery of Government. These changes have already
occurred in several sectors. Number of such sectors will increase and
should happen at a very fast pace. With this both Congress and BJP
will have to change their style of governance.
It looks like during
Bajpeyee time BJP did see at least partly this phenomena. One big difference between BJP and Congress is that BJP or NDA allow good managers like Modi, Nitish Kumar to function smoothly, where as feudal structure which Congress has build to manage itself leaves very little scope to give such freedom to its managers.
I wonder whether Congress bosses see that they need a new strategy? In the country now even a small movie or a cricket match
also has so much turnover that disturbing such events results in
chaos. Compromises Congress makes currently create practically every day in
some part of the country a situation threatening to create a chaos. I hope
Congress rethinks its strategy. It does have enough talent to run the
country properly if it opts for the a changed strategy looking at
changed reality of the country and world.
The budging by Congress also looks to be strategy suitable for another
purpose. Its partner in the state government NCP, who run the home ministry
and police set up in Mumbai, seems to be bent on helping a new mirror
image of Shiv Sena, MSN being created. Perhaps strategy is that, with
two parties devoted to same issues, both of which will continuously
disrupt law and order situation in Mumbai, both will very soon get
into marginalizing each other and Congress will be able to control
both. This also helps them to weaken BJP's hold in Maharashtra. What
it overlooks is that such strategies never work. Compromises behind
the scene, very soon get into creating unruly monsters, which can not be
controlled by any one. The number of parliamentarians and MLA's with
violent criminal records in India is a reflection of this style of
governance.
It is interesting that while Congress and communist make all these
compromises behind the screen, they and their ideological support
channel bosses and anchors in media and press claim themselves to be
most secular and accuse practically every body else of being communal. To me
these above mentioned strategies look to be most communal and very harmful.
