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Salil Tripathi has a great piece on Narendra Modi’s summon by the SIT. This particular bit stands out in the summary :
If Modi appears before SIT, he could say: “It was my responsibility to protect all the residents of my state. I failed. I should have defended the vulnerable; my police turned them away. For that I am sorry. I should have prevented violence; I did not. But in the eight years since, I have learnt. I have created jobs, improved social development indicators, and there hasn’t been violence. I want to atone for what happened by making Gujarat peaceful and prosperous.”
Or he could say: “I had nothing to do with the deaths. It is sad that so many people died, but Gujarati Hindus were provoked, and they reacted. I have stood against forces of terror and destabilization. Look at Gujarat today—we represent what India is capable of doing. This is a politically motivated inquiry and the people of Gujarat have re-elected me twice since 2002.”
The same applies to Modi’s fans and haters. (Detractors and defenders are noble titles; fans and haters seem apt.)
There are some basic facts that everyone — haters and fans — can and should agree on : That the Modi government failed miserably in its responsibility. If you consider maintaining law and order as the primary function of government, then it failed in its primary responsibility. Both in the Godhra incident, and the aftermath.
To the fans, two rights and a wrong don’t add up to a right. They shouldn’t, not when law is concerned. People are conditioned to judging deeds by what happens in hypothetical heavens, and they find it easy to pardon a Modi because of his post-Godhra resume and Roman Polanski for his Oscar winning films. It is also arrogant to suggest that Modi did a favour by heeding the SIT summon when he could easily find loopholes to avoid it.
The Congress has been equally immature. Vir Sanghvi nails the Congress well for sidelining Amitabh Bachchan because he agreed to be the brand ambassador of Gujarat. I am hardly a fan of the current Amitabh Bachchan, but I will concede that it is none of my business to question his views and victimize him for disagreeing with me. As much as I dislike him, Amitabh Bachchan deserves respect and he has earned every bit of it. It is sad to see the way he and his family are repeatedly being treated by the Congress administrations in the state and center.
The mention of Modi seems to bring the worst in people. Both the far-right and left-of-center voices are hardly trying to be constructive. Right now, they are only aiding their own rhetoric.
Have a look at this headline :
As a hardcore feminist, I am wholeheartedly with the PM on this one. In fact, women need education more than men, so they can read magazines or access the internet in the afternoons. So kudos to this new scheme.
Now I admit that not all women sit idle at home. There’s buying groceries, serving in-laws, cleaning the house and a couple of other things I might be missing here. The point being, in their free time, they can read and write. I assume that is the main purpose of the above scheme.
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But seriously, doesn’t that amount to gender profiling ?
On a related note, whenever Mr. Narendra Modi proudly announced the 3% dropout rate of girls in Gujarat, I am puzzled that no one grilled him on the overall dropout rate.
Guess what stalled the Orissa assembly yesterday ?
A debate on some bill ? A walkout by the opposition ? Chair/mic fight ?
An elusive, three-feet cobra that slithered into the Orissa assembly on Thursday led the proceedings to be stalled for the entire day.
The serpent was spotted near Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik’s desk by Bhisma Nayak, an assembly employee, when he entered the House to clean it in the morning, assembly sources said.
The cobra must be swelling with pride at the “elusive, three-feet cobra” description.
Either way, I know from sources that the tiny opposition BJP has immediately sprung into action and demanded tougher terror laws, “This incident again proves that the state government is toothless when it comes to attacks on the parliament and assemblies.”
The BJP is now just one away from the record for maximum repeats of a sentence.
Gujarat Chief minister Narendra Modi was quick to cash on to the news, “Gujarat is the first state to have an act against rogue cobras. We have already renamed the Gujarat Control of Organised Crime Bill (GUJCOCA) to Gujarat Control of Organised Cobra Bill. Did I also tell you that Gujarat is the number one state in India ?”.
Meanwhile, the Sena chief has asked for a public hanging of the cobra. When reminded that it wasn’t a Brahmin they were referring to, he kept mum, a personal first.
Elsewhere, the VHP finally understood the meaning of the word ambivalence. They couldn’t say anything against the cobra, as snakes are worshipped in Hinduism, but they wanted to say something.
Orissa Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik again proved that he is foreign returned and watches Hollywood movies by mouthing the famous line, ”Enough is enough. I’ve had it with these mother******* snakes in this mother******* assembly.“
I do agree with the last couple of words.
Link separately by Nachiket D.
Kumari Mayawati in a recent campaign :
Voicing her prime ministerial ambitions, Bahujan Samaj Party supremo Mawayati has said that a ‘Dalit’s daughter’ should be made the prime minister to ensure the uplift of the backward and minority communities in the country.
“If you make a Dalit’s daughter the Prime Minister, then UP will be famous in the entire world. If the BSP comes to power at the Centre, UP will occupy a special place,” she said.
This sums up everything that I find wrong with Mayawati as a potential Prime Minister. Her reason for wanting to be the PM never goes beyond the fact that she is a Dalit (and it would be cool, not historic or constructive, for a Dalit to be the PM, I assume). No community would be uplifted just by making a member the Prime Minister. All this is excluding the corruption charges and the huge disparity between the ‘development’ of her party members and the general poor whom she claims to represent and work for.
(Why does she keep repeating Dalit’s daughter ? She could just use Dalit if that helps her cause.)
It is obviously debatable how much better the other candidates are on similar scales, but this was about Mayawati. If Advani plays divisive politics, so does Mayawati, do does the Congress. It is only that the BJP’s brand of divisive politics is more likely to lead to killings; to put it very bluntly.
On that note, I do think that Narendra Modi as a Prime Minister in the future might be an interesting option (background music : ‘orch hit‘ tone; the one at the end of soaps). I hope to write about it in detail sometime in the near future.
Joining the list of useless PILs is this one :
Shruti Singh, a lawyer of the Patna High Court, filed a case against Tata in the Chief Judicial Magistrate’s court here Monday as, according to her, the launch could influence poll results and therefore was tantamount to violating the model code of conduct during elections. She has sought an injunction against the commercial launch of the Nano.
“I filed the case against Ratan Tata to expose his attempt to help Modi in the elections by commercially launching Nano to send (the) message that it was possible thanks to Modi,” Singh told IANS.
This is so silly that it is not even funny. For one, the Nano was planned well in advance and if not for Miss Mamta, it would have rolled well in advance, from a different state, ruled by a different party, crediting a different Chief Minister in the process; which discredits her logic in the first place. By filing the PIL, I believe she is trying to influence the poll results too; hence, someone can file a case against her. I really hope there are stricter laws against attention seekers and silly PIL filers. Also, notice the case being filed against Ratan Tata, which makes as much sense as the PIL itself. Well, atleast she is consistent I must say.
Soon I am going to file a PIL against PILs. And then a PIL against that PIL against PILs. And then a PIL against that. Then I will be famous one day. And I shall write a post on myself.
