Alas, that was not to be, and the opposition parties must be sighing deeply with profound satisfaction. Another foot forward, for no crafting of theirs. The two sensible appointments were those of Salman Khurshid and Jayanthi Natarajan. For the rest, even the shuffling made no real sense. When the ‘government' maintained on television that governance will improve with this readjustment, there were peals of laughter from some viewers. Finally, the many dentures and wigs, stuck in a time warp, prevailed.
With this game of non-musical chairs, one positive signal has gone out — early elections are bound to be announced towards the end of this year, because, as it stands today, the Central Team is not strong enough to pull it off till 2014. It cannot hang in for three more years and work towards ensuring that an honest corrective kicks in. That does not appear to be the intention. Sadly, no change of the faulty operating grid was enunciated. No induction of squeaky clean fresh faces in the council. No professionals as lateral entries anywhere. Nandan Nilekani, for example, would have made a great human resource development minister, thereby allowing Kapil Sibal the opportunity to devote his full attention to the telecom ministry, which needs to be restructured with deft precision.
This tamasha was merely more of the same, non-transparent past. There was no attempt at sending ‘strongmen' back to the states to conquer back Madhya Pradesh, a Maharashtra that is on the edge, and Andhra Pradesh that brought in the numbers to tilt the balance in favour of the Congress. Had that been the motive of the reshuffle, the general elections would have been in 2014, heralding the possibility of a clear victory for a single party. Alas, political thinking and the laying of a strong base for the future have been overtaken by denial and intellectual inertia. Read the full report here.
Source: Malvika Singh, The Telegraph, Kolkata.
