That files relating to a serious multi-crores scam can go missing from that ministry’s archives is itself sinister. But the lost files point to a larger loss: Missing character of the rulers, as a consequence of which people’s trust in public individuals and institutions have also gone missing. The nation indeed has lost something more valuable than money. The depletion in values and confidence levels beats the depreciating rupee hands down!
But what we have lost in terms of hope and trust has been more than made up by rising immunity and scepticism. A numb nation is now game for anything, expecting the worst at every tick of the clock and turn of the calendar. Scam figures no longer stagger us. Spiralling prices of commodities have forfeited their shock impact. The fast slipping purchasing power of the currency has ceased to surprise. If Parli is silent, may be it is not in session. If it is all quiet on the LoC front, then obviously Pak army has run out of ammunition. Terror strikes are to be endured and dealt with caution in full deference to secularism. If terrorists are struck, however, it must certainly be a fake encounter, to be covered under human rights. Really, there seems no end to what we will be called to swallow or stomach. And with self-deprecation having replaced self-respect, black humour is now a favoured national pastime.
Why not? When the country’s Prime Minister, Sardar Dr MSingh himself is the butt of all kinds of jokes, can’t the people ‘ruled’ by him despite not electing him, at the least laugh at themselves? Also, when stony silence and blank stares are all you will get even if a nuclear explosion were to happen in his vicinity, should not you too take the cue and shore up the insulation levels with thicker skin? After all, all the provocations listed in the previous para have evoked absolutely no response from the PM. That there is a PM comes to our notice not by his visible presence but through missives to media, which again come about only when he is personally targeted by the opposition, and not when some event of distress happens, which presently, means ‘always’. For instance, when accusations over missing coal files reached a crescendo in Parli this week, the PMO declared ‘it has nothing to hide’. It certainly had files to hide and of course, the PM to hide. Or probably that ‘nothing’ referred to the PM!
It would be no exaggeration to say that MSingh personifies all the rot that currently gnaws at the nation. His honesty lid was blown off the moment he heeded Sonia’s ‘order’ – a straight man would have thought twice before accepting an assignment from someone with Bofors in the past, Qs dogging the present and Vadras visibly in the works. His honour committed suicide when he willingly pledged it to become a puppet. His Constitutional oath to hold office ‘at the pleasure of the President’ was distorted to mean ‘Congress President’. He openly shamed the high office of the PM, the keystone of the arch of cabinet, by keeping it warm for a dubious prince-in-waiting. He cocked a snook at democracy by remaining PM for a decade without getting elected ever. He betrayed his careerist slyness by entering Parli via distant Guwahati. On the national security front, he permanently damaged India’s position by equating it to Pak as victims of terror. His credentials as a celebrated economist now lies in the company of the Re. All the greatest scandals of independent India have happened under his helm. Ones like spectrum and coal actually passed through his office as also his line of vision and were actually blessed and passed by him. Indeed, I see no difference between active connivance and criminal negligence when a duty-bound custodian fails to safeguard public assets vested in his custody.
So what if a few files go missing from a ministry that he headed? Or for that matter if a few crores worth of coal, land, sand, spectrum or any national resource under his watch vanish? Have not Msingh and Co sapped more than just our material wealth? I dread to think that there are nine more months of this bleak, cold UPA winter! And wonder what is left for this marauding mafia to decimate!
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