India That is Bharat Sleeping on job is not all that bad

India That is Bharat
Sleeping on job is not all that bad
Satiricus

Once upon a time, long, long ago, a communist was a communist and a capitalist was a capitalist, and never the twain did meet. Unfortunately for this simpleton, those simple days seem to be over. Not long back he saw a newspaper photograph showing a long, long queue in Moscow. And for what were all these ex-communists queuing up? According to the photo caption they were waiting for a Macdonald hamburger shop to open. And equally recently Satiricus had read that the biggest advertisement in Beijing, the capital of communist China, displayed along the wall of a multi-storey building, was of Coca Cola, which the Wall Street Journal had once called the symbol of American culture. Does that mean there is to cultural contact between Coca Cola and communism? That might explain why a recent Indian Express article on Indian communists was titled ?Cola Communism?.

Personally Satiricus does not fancy Cola drinks, so he would not know how this Cola Communism tastes, but the cadres are thirstily guzzling it in both West Bengal and Kerala. In fact Satiricus now finds it difficult to say if Indian communism is not more capitalist than Chinese communism. And if at all our Marxists are a step or two behind their Maoists for the time being, looking to their Americanised ideological zeal Satiricus feels confident they will forge ahead sooner rather than later. For look at the tremendous progress they have made so far. In Kerala, the CPI(M) is now a Rs. 4,000 crore business group. The party runs a TV channel, owns rubber factories and tobacco units, is building an amusement park, and even has NRI partners.?Incidentally but interestingly, one of these foreign partners is a Muslim who managed to be elected a Muslim League Member of our Rajya Sabha despite being an NRI, while another director of the channel is a hooch baron who had been arrested for selling illicit liquor.

Oh well, what is wrong with a small peg of illicit ideology? And if Kerala owns a TV channel, can West Bengal be far behind? Naturally not, so they too have one. TV channels apart, the West Bengal Marxists have a privately-owned village school, built at a cost of

Rs three crore (only), which has cormade Jyoti Basu as President, and which will charge its pupils a monthly fee of Rs 1,150 (again only). To cap all this communism, the five-floor Ganashakti corporate HQ is one of Kolkata'smost fancy newspaper office, where the gana-shakti, People'sPower, comes from MNC advertisements. So what does Satiricus say of such fancy communism? All he can say is that he would not recognise it if he met it in the street. Oh Marx, thou shouldst be living at this hour?instead of lying dead in a capitalist country.

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One thing Satiricus must admit about the Congress. It is very generous hearted?especially when it comes to gifting away Indian territory. Apart from the stupendous gift of half of Hindusthan, the home of the Hindus, to anti-Hindus, the Congress has been ever willing to give away chunks of the country to friends, neighbours and virtually to whoever asks for them?at times even when not asked.

Satiricus recalls that during the olden golden days of Prime Minister Gujral there were people (obviously friendly neighbours) who claimed that an Indian island in the south and some Indian villages on the Bangla border were not Indian but belonged to them. Satiricus also remembers that there were some silly souls who thought at least partitioned India belonged to Indians and had raised a narrow-minded hue and cry in both cases. Now Satiricus does not exactly recall the outcome of the claim, but, if he remembers right, the outcome was an out go.

Against this liberal background it is in the fitness of things that the Congress Government of Delhi should have an official website showing India without Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, and a Congress Minister of the Jammu-Kashmir Government saying the state is ?disputed territory?, which should be made a ?federal? state ?under joint Indo-Pak control?. What does this mean? It means it is time for yet another Congress gift?of Kashmir to Pakistan. Is this one of the ?confidence-building measures? Satiricus hears about so often these days?

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As a law graduate Satiricus would not like to say that the law is an ass. But he must say that often times the law does not make horse-sense. For instance a few months back the Supreme Court ruled that sleeping on the job could be a valid reason for dismissal. With due deference to these legal luminaries, are they not ruling against an inviolable right of Government employees? Are they not aware that at least half of the Government work-force is paid precisely for sleeping on the job?

In the considered opinion of Satiricus, the only sensible consideration would be that no sleeping Government employee should snore?lest he disturb another sleeping employee. And as with Government employees, so with Government employers, that is, our MPs, including ministers. In Parliament one routinely sees our elected representatives dozing off while some important legislation concerning the nation'swelfare is being debated.

How can the court bind down these five hundred-odd bits of sovereignty with such a repressive ruling? Why, had not Dev Godwa become justly famous as India'ssleeping Prime Minister? Could and should the President have dismissed him for sleeping on the job? Certainly not?especially when sleeping was itself his job.