Amit Kushari IAS (Retd.)
After the huge electoral drubbing that the Congress party received on 8th December, it seems that Congress party is now a much better, reformed party. They must have done some serious introspection and must have realised their mistakes and blunders which alienated them from the Indian voters. They have realised the gravity of the personalities of Shri Arvind Kejriwal (the ‘chela’ of the ‘guru-chela’ duo—Anna and Arvind) and of course the roaring lion in an orange turban roaming across the length and breadth of India. This roaring lion must be haunting the Congress leaders even in their dreams since every roar of that lion is being lapped up by the common masses of India. It is good that the Congress has realised their short comings and are making strategies to counter these two massive opponents. To counter Kejriwal, they are trying to befriend Anna Hazare, who being a non-political faqir is not so dangerous as Arvind Kejriwal, who is already a successful politician, having swept away the Congress completely from Delhi state with his ‘broom’. He could win 28 seats in Delhi state reducing Congress to a mere figure of 8, whereas BJP could manage to enhance its seats by only 20% although it was normally expected that they would have a 50% gain. Shri Kejriwal could achieve this miracle of restricting the BJP numbers to only 32 (although, normally a figure of 40+ was expected) —- despite the roaring of the Orange lion. Congress understood that they could no longer push the anti corruption law Lokpal under the carpet and to win the elections they had to pass the law in some form or the other and get the nod of Anna Hazare to make some electoral gains. Better late than never. BJP had understood this reality one year ago when Congress intoduced a weak and ineffective Lok Pal in the Lok sabha last year. BJP protested against this hotch- potch inadequate LokPal, but they realised that opposing it would be suicidal for them.Besides they do not have enough numbers in the Lok Sabha. So when the matter went to the Rajya Sabha ( where BJP is stronger) they pressed for a number of amendments to make the Lokpal stronger and the issue was referred to the select committee which accepted a number of amendments which made the Lokpal more effective. Congress kept this under the carpet in the Rajya Sabha for full one year and Rahul Gandhi took no interest. But after seeing the electoral feat of Kejriwal he realised that the improved Lokpal had to be introduced in the Rajya Sabha and Lok Sabha without any further delay since Kejriwal was threatening to take AAP to Haryana and Uttar Pradesh. Suddenly Rahul Gandhi became a champion of Lokpal taking credit for the passing of the bill. BJP gave the credit to Anna Hazare. Last year, when Anna Hazare was almost dying after a prolonged fast, Congress did not budge an inch and left the faqir to die.He broke his fast himself to survive. The faqir did not realise that fasting was not a good weapon for making our corrupt leaders realise their follies, but Kejriwal understood that the Congress leaders will understand only the language of electoral defeat. So he parted ways with Anna to bring the Congress down to their knees, electorally. The credit for the Lokpal bill actually goes to Kejriwal partially and partially to BJP for prodding Congress in the parliament. Neither Anna nor Rahul deserve any credit. Even now Kejriwal is fighting for a stronger Lokpal bill which may become a reality after 5 or 10 years if AAP can spread its wings to the bigger states of India. The recent incident of Devyani Khobragade has shocked the Indians immensely. I don’t know when India and USA can become friends again. Now the Government of India has taken quite a few effective steps to send a strong message to USA. This could not have happened before 8th December 2013, which is a landmark date in Indian history. Indians were used to having a weak govt. of India mewing like a pussy cat. But the fear of the lion with the orange turban has forced the pussy cat to stand up and imitate the lion. If govt. of India had not taken strong steps, the lion would have torn them to pieces, come March-April when Indians would be pressing the EVM buttons. However it would be inappropriate not to acknowledge the very good role played by our Home Minister, Shri Shinde—who like a good Indian and Maratha responded adequately to the grave injustice done to a Maratha girl (Devyani Khobragade). His actions were highly praise worthy.
It is now refreshing to see that the arrogance is now gone and the Congress ministers are speaking politely and with humility. Kapil Sibal is a better person now and Manish Tiwari’s and Mani Shankar Iyer’s silence is most welcome. Digvijay Singh’s silence is also note worthy. Anyway, all is well that ends well and the end of this incident will be good if USA apologises and drops the charges against Devyani.
Feedback to the author at 09748635185 or at amitkus @ hotmail.com
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