We are either searching for hidden bombs or hidden agendas. Both are of explosive potential and can blow up all and sundry if not handled and defused with care. While bombs deliver instant death, agendas may take time to achieve critical potency and when they do, they could be even more devastating than the bombs. Agendas and bombs sometimes also complement each other. For instance, the terrorists who bombarded Kovai last month were using the latter only to promote the former though we do not know what it was as they were hidden. On the other hand, the secular and minority agenda of the DMK, which was not hidden, ensured that the hidden bombs went off on time and to the desired effect. This is a classic case of agendas and bombs going hand in hand.
The rub lies in the fact that till discovery, either by concerted action or through sheer accident, both remain an unknown quantity. If you do not believe me, ask the TN police who would tell you how baffling it is to estimate the true amount of explosives that lies hidden in the State. At each count after every discovery, the bombs lying hidden remain constant. After the latest haul they would tell you that the entire cache has been unearthed and lo and behold, what happens next day- another huge dump offers itself for display. The pile that is unseen seems like a never-ending Kamadhenu of explosives. Either the police are weak in arithmetic, which could be corrected only at a heavy price in terms of lives and property, through trial and error, or they plainly lack Intelligence. Either way there is certainly more than what meets ‘their’ eye.
Similar is the plight of the opposition. So obsessed are they with the possibility of the BJP harbouring secret intentions under the facade of the national agenda, that they are ever busy frisking the party and the Prime Minister constantly in Parliament. Everyone in the Opposition, be it the Congress or the Left or what is left of the UF, are all engaged in a frantic pursuit of the BJP’s hidden agenda, as if it were McKennas Gold. Whether they strike gold or just dirt, the hue and din kicked up over the ruling party’s real intentions is keeping the whole nation on tenterhooks as the people helplessly watch their own representatives themselves holding their House to ransom.
This brings us to the moot question. Is the BJP really hiding anything under its fist that it would reveal only at the right time, right place and the right situation? Though it sounds like the voice of a superstar whose bomb culture agenda got blown up by the subsequent bomb civilisation agenda of his minions, the question uppermost in the minds of all is what happened to the founding tenets of the BJP that included Ayodhya, Article 370 and Uniform Civil Code. And the reason why the Opposition is keen on opening this veritable Pandora’s box is their firm belief that what comes out is certain to hurt the BJP’s allies to the end that they may even decide to back out.
Hidden or visible, veiled or apparent, it is quite evident that, given the diverse components of the coalition, it is well nigh impossible for the BJP to enforce its will on its partners who on their part have already had their say in the final document. This explains the inconsistencies between the BJP’s manifesto and the BJP-led government’s national agenda. Hindutva might be their long-term goal, but the realisation that, at present, their hands are tied, is enough to put them on a tight leash and prevent any kind of adventurism, which the Opposition keeps threatening the nation and its minorities with. One should really heave a sigh of relief that contentious issues have been rightly sidelined and it is a much tempered BJP and an even more mellowed Vajpayee, bereft of their original radical leanings, who are now at the helm. The BJP has nothing to hide because it has got nothing to show, too. But the Opposition on the contrary seems to be upset that there is no stick available to beat the BJP with. Hence the search and hue and cry over hidden agendas. Quite understandable. They can survive and live only if the bogeys are also kept alive and burning.
To be sure it is really the open agendas of the Opposition that are most worrying. Everyone knows what the Congressmen are upto as the bouquets and shawls on the doorstep of 10 Janpath would stand testimony. The once hidden, now on parade agenda of Sonia has struck up a beautiful rhythm with the Congressmen’s goal of achieving power, by crook and crook alone, which explains the sustained campaign of apprehensions about the BJP’s hidden agenda. The Sonia Congress’s shameless pursuit of its agenda – power for its naturalised leader and pelf for its leaders’ bottomless coffers- is the more distressing prospect than all the so-called invisible agendas. If such a day dawns, then it would be the turn of the nation as a whole to go into hiding owing to shame, leaving all their agendas: and of course the Congressmen, behind! You may call it the Italian agenda.
The fossils of the UF seem to have an agenda now. They never had any when they ruled for almost two torrid years, their common minimum programme turning out to be the political equivalent of zero. The UF ghosts whose tanks are poorer by a convenor and tens of MPs, are now trying to resurrect themselves after being stamped on by the feet of Lord Congress. It is their hope that they can hitch-hike with the Congress on the road to power and if the Congress is there they would also be there. They are never shy even if bitten a thousand times by the same Congress and in their foolhardy pursuit of their agenda for power for a few of their lot, they even tend to forget the Congress’s proclivity to shed the extra baggage once it reaches the destination. Of course what is left of the UF is only the Left and a few skeletons here and there in some States, yet they have also joined the Congress chorus to exorcise their opponents’ hidden agenda, contributing nothing worth the while except increasing the decibel levels inside Parliament. Their’s is a gambler’s agenda, based purely on chance and luck as they wait in the political graveyard for a repeat of 1996.
The people no doubt know the politicians of the land like the back of their hand. They are quite aware of all their agendas, hidden or not. They know that when a politician says something, he is hiding something else and when he does not say anything he is hiding everything. They also know that the politicians who keep pulling out skeletons from their opponents’ cupboard have in fact, truckloads of those in their own backyard. The people are least concerned about hidden agendas. Rather what is most disconcerting for them is the bad state of the economy, the plethora of problems that confront them daily, the never ending political turmoil that is laying the nation waste, all of which seems to remain permanently hidden from the myopic line of vision of the self-seeking politicians.
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