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By S.P. Nayar
How strange that a person who would reasonably be accused of having trans-national hues should be made the head of an unconstitutionally designed forum like NAC (National Advisory Council), an improvised body to flatter the ego of the incumbent. How shameful that the Congress should deify a character, attributing qualities which the character can never possess, leave alone the educational or familial background, of the prima ballerina.
The recent upswing in that party'sfortune was only a windfall. It was only due to a circumstantial change of the tide very shallow and unsubstantial, that the Congress could pull off the coup. While the BJP scored 37.38 per cent of the votes polled, the Congress could get only 35.38 per cent in the election. Yet they could make it to the front, as the party has ridden piggy-back on regional parties, who could effectively exploit the anti-incumbency factor, as was evident in Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh. If Chandrababu Naidu had shown the political sagacity to tackle the emotive issue of Telengana, with flexibility, by making the T.R.S. chief, a Cabinet Minister and by creating a ministry to address the Telengana issue, the dramatic fall, reminiscent of Greek tragedy could have been avoided. Likewise the mercurial character of a Jayalalitha who had overplayed her cards had taken the NDA down a peg or two. Thus it was only due to a freak of fate that the tables were turned on the NDA. The cronies who eat out of the hands of Sonia are making much of her persona, just as the Tartars, in Goldsmith'sessay on Lama, went about conferring divinity on the Lama. These men of straw go about trying to curry favour with her, playing the poster boys.
Sitaram Kesari'sCongress, all by itself, had won 141 seats while Sonia'sCongress with all the faustian covenants with spurious parties could score only a few more seats. All these hullabaloo is nothing but a flash in the pan, and the day of reckoning is not far off. It looks so ludicrous that the prima donna is riding her high horse with all the fervour and flourish of a Joan of Arc. The palanquin bearers who swarm round her in various shapes and sizes are still groping, not knowing how to go one up on others who are equally obsessed under the maelstrom of same emotions. In this hysterics they forget that they are undermining the spirit of the Constitution.
How a man of eminence like Manmohan Singh could allow, himself to be so short-changed as a ventriloquist'sdummy, is what baffles the right-thinking persons?
The media that play second fiddle to this kind of ballooning of small minds is doing a positive disservice to the nation. Equally worrisome is the studied silence of the Left parties and other props who are usually so loud-mouthed about political morality, probity, and virtuosity. They are probably trying to make capital out of this Greek tragedy, by midwifing a non-BJP-led government at any cost. How far it furthers their ideological interests are a moot question and a nettling one since the acclaimed ideology had parted company with that party long back.
