Dr R L Bhat
Does a wider chest girth make a better PM? Though 56-inches is not the widest possible, it makes a pretty wide gun` barrel. Draped in kurtas, cut to half-sleeves because the wearer found washing the full-sleeved ones wearisome, the barrel appeared just the answer to the intransigent neighbor, a year ago. A year down the time-line, the neighbor is even more garrulous, more adventurous and openly querulous. It is said that the garrulity is getting a fitting response. That may well be so,……. jangal meen moor naacha … naachaa hoogaa – the peacock may still be dancing out there, but it has not brought any respite in infiltration, intransigence or the garrulity. Another proverb would say that the pudding has not shown any improvement in eating.
Within the week of the svachh bhaarat, the T.V channels showed how the municipality workers brought garbage in their carts, spread it upon a lane for a photo-op with long brooms in hands of colorfully attired adhikaariis! Today the campaign, garbage, dirt and dust all live happily together. As they always did! So does the relation with Pakistan. The NSA level talks are on, even as Kasab-II undergoes serial interrogations with lie-detectors to reveal the true face of Haafiz Sayyid. Lest anyone should forget, it is the same Haafiz Sayyid whom the known right- winger Vedanti went to meet in Lahore within the month of the BJP Government being installed, presumably on the initiative of the Pak-bashing, ‘truly patriotic’ Government.
While, the PM prayed at his expectedly promise-ful but quickly-scheduled visit to Dubai, the armymen in Delhi are rued the faith they put in this loud promises of OROP. In fact it was an assurance arising from the party’s long-term support to the longstanding demand of the army men for one-rank-one-pension. The support had been there before the Vajpayee-government. It was left unfulfilled during six years Vajpayee ruled, while the most-patriotic-of-all party milked the ‘pro-active’ attitude for all it was worth. Yet Vajpayee did not go for OROP during his two technical-terms nor did Manmohan Singh over his two full-terms. BJP should have thought of the reasons or even noted the fact, before riding the slogan at Rewari. And once promised, it should have implemented OROP on coming to power. That is plain thinking. But the party with a difference does not think. It does not encourage thought. So, it took the full-majority-party-after-thirty-years a full year to know about OROP. Rhetoric has limitations which pit you before the gun you have jumped.
It is not right to suggest that any party is per se opposed to or dismissive of army. Nor is it correct to say that armymen are living a hand to mouth existence because they are denied OROP. As it is, Armymen are taken good care of. And, deserve every bit of it. They also deserve another relief. When the government can easily throw huge monies aft and pro, why not give the army what they have been demanding for so long? The pay commission would soon be recommending hefty hikes for babus, from lowly to majestic ones. Thousands of crores would be paid out. Kashmir floods would still take tens of thousands of crore. Elections have got Bihar one lakh crore. All unplanned and unbudgeted. OROP would not cut any hole in Government coffers that the Government is not used to drilling there. Think of the single ten-lakh suit and you get the picture. It is no big deal for the Government and rulers who rarely think of prudence. But again that takes thinking, not rhetorical tatter.
Two thousand years before democracy, the Greek had whole tribes of rhetoricians, who would mount a podium and inundate people with their loquacious harangues. They were called sophists. They were masters of declamation, as they had no responsibility to walk their high-sounding talk and could say anything and make any claims. Over decades of powerlessness, BJP perfected the art of rhetoric. From black-money to reservations they mouthed whatever would enthrall people. If people wanted AIIMS, they shouted AIIMS. If people cried over black money, they supported the call. In J&K they supported Ladakh, Jammu, Kashtwar, Ramban, Riyasi, Border, Hill People, Kashmiri Pandits, West-Pakistan Refugees, PoK Refugees – each one who had a cause, without a serious thought. With mission 44+ in view, they finally supported the Kashmiri majority, against whose overbearing rule all the groups had been crying.
Indeed they did it so ardently that the groups turned enemies of one another, even as they are victims of the same force and fount. For half-a-century BJP and its antecedent avtaars, probably sure that it would never gain power in J&K, became an assiduous Jammu supporter and Kashmir baiter. Even as the individual leader broke bread with NC and then PDP, the party proclaimed that the two valley-based parties were not only stooges of Pakistan and supports of separatists, but the real enemies of the state and its people. The party rhetoric reached the highest pitch, as the PM castigated-the leaders of these parties by name. Today, some in the valley may say that Mufti Sayyid refused the viable support of Congress and allied with BJP only to make the PM eat each of the expletives he spat out during the rhetorical campaign. To be sure, he let the spit hit the roof on the very day of swearing in, by thanking Pakistan and separatists. If any rhetoric has even been fully flattened, it was that assertion of Mufti in ringing Urdu.
One year after the historic mandate the air has gone cold. The rhetoric has come to touch the reality and found the rhetoricians unequal. The antagonistic planks are causing the inevitable attrition to the promise that rose high a year ago. The reactionary takes find they have limited efficacy as the lack of a solid basis in policy, leaves the bottom virtually open underneath. As the Government settled to work, each balloon of the high proclamations was punctured and fell. The first flat budged was forgiven, but fallacy in the second could not go unseen; it deflated all hopes. The rhetoric carried the first few months with Pakistan, but was shown to be a non-starter. China, like Mufti, showed its teeth even as the Chinese president came to the jhuula-jhuulan. After the China visit, the nasty reality has hit the roof. The thin papering over is all in tears; the calm of Indian Ocean stands broken; the unholy associations are speaking out at international forums; the permanent membership campaign appears to have floundered, finally. The corruption law is all there is to show, while corruption continues in Government, officialdom and elsewhere too. The seams of a single year cannot be expected to shadow the big ghottaalaas even if they were lurking deep down, but the party has had a stunningly clear start from Rajasthan to MP to Maharashtra, with the Union government in good lead. Last year the civil service aspirants raised a very crass demand by refusing to test for efficiency. This year they got their way. How all this augers for the nation, is something the nation cannot postpone pondering!
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