Seedhi Baat / Aajtak, May 02, 2010

Radiation leak is serious: Sibal

Union Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal on the show Seedhi Baat says after the radiation leak incident in Delhi he has asked the UGC to write letters to all the colleges about the safety norms.
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Power & Politics/ Mail Today, April 26, 2010

WHAT do you do when things are not going as planned, or worse, show signs of falling apart? Order a cabinet reshuffle. That’s what Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh seem to have decided and I understand that once the current session of Parliament is over, they will order a reconstruction of the Union cabinet to show that there is a lot left in the UPA tank.

By any yardstick, this has been one of the most embarrassing Parliament sessions that the UPA has faced in its second term, where not even one major legislation has been passed. The Sania Mirza saga and the IPL drama have turned out to be blessings in disguise for the government. But for these events, the morning headlines and prime time entertainment after sundown would have been all about the government being mercilessly hauled over the coals. The unexpected reprieve saw Sonia and Manmohan undertaking a review of all the ministers and the functioning of their departments.
Their conclusion, I gather, is summed up in one word: pathetic. In a minority government like the UPA, any reshuffle can involve only ministers belonging to the Congress, since Sonia and Manmohan can barely risk rocking the boat by tossing around ministers from alliance partners like the DMK, Trinamool, NCP and others. M.K.

Alagiri may not come to his office, the Parliament or meetings of the Union cabinet, but his truancy has to be tolerated. Changes must therefore be limited to the Congress. Of the 33 ministers of cabinet rank, 27 are from the Congress, as are six of the seven ministers of dtate with independent charge and 25 of the 37 junior ministers, so there’s lots of scope for chopping.
The rationale for the impending exercise cuts both ways. There are too many ministers who are quite unhappy with their portfolios, while a whole lot of others have plum assignments but don’t have the calibre or the dedication to do justice to their jobs. In the first category fall Ambika Soni, Jaipal Reddy, Subodh Kant Sahay, Ghulam Nabi Azad, Vayalar Ravi, G.K.

Vasan, all of cabinet rank, Dinsha Patel (MoS-Ind) and Harish Rawat, who is one of the senior party men but sadly enough, serves as a minister of state. Then there are ministers like K.H. Muniyappa and Sachin Pilot who are so stifled, they feel it’s better being jobless than work under the likes of Mamata and A. Raja. The ebullient Ambika Soni who did an admirable job as tourism minister in UPA(I) somehow seems out of sorts in the information and broadcasting ministry and is said to be looking for a change, preferably to the party, where she has already had stints as the AICC general secretary.

Overseas Indian affairs minister Vayalar Ravi, still recovering from a nasty road accident in Liberia, is said to be looking for a less gruelling assignment. At the other end are a handful of ministers on whom the party is likely to wield the axe. Topping the list is Pawan Kumar Bansal from Chandigarh. Otherwise an efficient administrator, it is his misfortune that he is saddled with the parliamentary affairs portfolio at a time when ties between the treasury and opposition benches are at their frostiest. I understand that Bansal will be relocated to the party. The only non- Congressman who is likely to come under the purview of the reshuffle is E. Ahamed, the MoS, railways, who has always kept an eye on his former job at the ministry of external affairs which has now fallen vacant after the exit of Shashi Tharoor.

After its seamless victory in last year’s elections, the UPA has of late begun to resemble a rudderless ship. Ministers like Pranab Mukherkjee, P. Chidambaram, Kapil Sibal, Kamal Nath and Anand Sharma and a few others have brought innovative ideas into administration, but the rest have been like wind- up toys, doing merely what they are programmed to do by their bureaucrats.

Many of the latter are likely to be shifted and who gets what portfolio will depend more on performance in the ministry and implementation of promises made in the UPA manifesto and less on winnability, factional clout or parliamentary histrionics.

Manmohan realises that his government needs a new face and for that he will need many more Pranab da s, Chidambarams and Sibals. From the talent available at his disposal, it is a tough task.

Snippets / Mail Today, April 26, 2010

The case of the missing ministers

THERE are some people whose actions — or lack of it — never cease to amaze. M. K. Alagiri, the Union fertilisers’ minister and the DMK supremo M. Karunaidhi’s son is one such. He is an embarrassment to the UPA government, but since he has a doting father, there is nothing Manmohan Singh or Sonia Gandhi can do but grin and bear the nuisance. Last week, he again caused red faces in the government by failing to turn up in Parliament for the question hour.
That he doesn’t attend cabinet meetings, even when matters concerning his department are up for discussion, is well known. Alagiri of course is not the only one. Mamata’s truancy is legendary as is A. Raja’s and so many other ministers, all belonging to alliance parties.

Some months ago, the India Today magazine had invoked the RTI to find out the attendance record at cabinet meetings after we learnt that at some sittings, it was less than 50 per cent. Our request was thrown out, almost as if we were seeking a state secret. In December, Sonia Gandhi had sent a missive to Congress MPs after the question hour in the Lok Sabha fell through one morning because of lack of quorum. Delinquency among ministers and MPs is nothing new but is rising alarmingly by the day. The latter can be dealt with by their respective party chief whips, but who is to rein in delinquent ministers? In the current coalition setup, the Prime Minister does not have the power to change even a junior level assistant to a minister from an alliance partner.

What is worrying in all this is that in a parliamentary democracy, collective responsibility reigns. What happens to the concept of collective responsibility if half the cabinet is on perpetual leave? The people have a right to know what their ministers are up to. The cabinet secretary would do the country a great favour if, after every cabinet meeting, his secretariat issues a circular that tells us who attended and who did not. The people will then know about the rotten apples.

Lotus fails to bloom in the Delhi heat

SINCE its ouster from power six years ago, the BJP has been bumbling from one blunder to another. The election of its youngest president hasn’t changed its fortunes and the litany of disasters continues. Last week’s anti- inflation rally in the Capital was the latest. It was to have been the party’s biggest rally in the Capital in more than a decade and was meant to signal the main opposition party’s new found vigour and a fresh offensive against the government.

That it turned out to be a damp squib was partly because it was ill- timed and partly because the well- planned but badly executed event was overtaken by other events. The party had threatened to unleash one million protesters on the Capital’s streets, but on the day, less than two lakh turned up. The reason was that in its catchment areas of Haryana and Uttar Pradesh, the party faithful were too busy harvesting. The oppressive heat in Delhi ensured that barring the hardcore, its substantial middle class supporters in the Capital stayed indoors. The party had hoped that the rally will monopolise TV airtime and print space, but thanks to Lalit Modi, the only pictures that newspapers carried and the only clips news channels showed were that of the party chief Nitin Gadkari, unable to bear the scorching sun, fainting towards the end of his speech and being helped to his feet by party colleagues who put wet towels on his overheated head.

The Delhi summer could take its toll on the fittest of men. But the sight of the man, who was brought in to inject fresh life into the party, collapsing, while others around him including 83- year- old Advani braved it out, has done no good to the morale of the party.

IN NORMAL times, the visit could have been dubbed as just one more foreign jaunt by another bunch of babus. But next week’s tour to Australia by a team led by Arun Mathur, director ( Enforcement) at the department of revenue, has attracted unusual attention from both the top echelons of the government and the corporate world. For the record, they will be participating in a meeting organised by the Financial Actions Task Group ( FATG) to monitor real- time money laundering by suspected terror outfits and drug smugglers.

India is just an observer for such meetings and has been lobbying hard for formal membership of the FATG. For the past week, the ministry of finance has been in a tizzy over Mathur’s agenda at the FATG. The government is already under attack for not making serious efforts to track the black money which is stashed in Swiss banks. The goings on in the IPL has added another dimension to the visit. The government is mulling over whether IPL should be added to Mathur’s agenda. It fears that if it does and gets a negative report, the entire investigative process will collapse. Thus, there is a suggestion for detailed but informal discussions with the top brass of the FATG before proceeding further. The government wants to be cautious now rather than regret later.

Power & Politics/ Mail Today, April 19, 2010

THE MESSAGE to both the Congress and the Prime Minister appears to be stern, loud and clear: your foes are known, now choose your friends. Last week when the railway minister, Mamata Banerjee, directed her 19 MPs, six of them ministers in the UPA government, to avoid sittings of the Lok Sabha and return to their constituencies, she was merely reiterating what she had all along been saying: political friendship is not a one - way street.

With the government appearing to be faltering on several fronts, the Congress will have no option but to reciprocate. And Mamata wants the Congress to respond not by merely handing out a few cabinet berths to her party but standing shoulder to shoulder with her in her ‘ bloody’ battle against the Marxists.

She has made it clear that the MPs from her Trinamool Congress will return to Parliament only if the Centre serves an ultimatum to the Left Front government to improve the law and order situation in West Bengal and refrain from attacking her ministers and cadres.

Her latest ire against the UPA leadership was triggered by violent attacks on Union ministers Mukul Roy and Sultan Ahmed. A senior TMC Lok Sabha member asked me: “ Will the Congress leadership keep quiet if a Congress minister is attacked in Uttar Pradesh or Gujarat? Why hasn’t the Centre sought an explanation from the state government so far?” The Trinamool feels that the Congress is using its allies to stay in power but is not joining the battle of the regional parties against their common enemies in the states. Since her eyes are set on occupying Writers’ Building after the assembly elections that are due next year, Mamata has been mounting pressure on the UPA government to keep a wide distance from the West Bengal government. She is particularly upset with both the Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, and home minister P. Chidambaram, who, for maintaining cordial relations with the state government, have done nothing more than observe protocol in their dealings with the Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee government.

Mamata’s antics after Jyoti Basu’s death last year, which left even her ardent supporters red- faced, were shameful. She boycotted the funeral because she thought Manmohan Singh was getting too close to Buddhadeb when all that happened was that the two stood next to each other at the state funeral for the late leader. Protocol dictates that when the Prime Minister visits a state, the chief minister be present at all public functions. Yet Mamata seemed Buddhadeb convinced that the Prime Minister and the chief minister were hatching something.

What Mamata fails to understand is that in a federal set up such as ours, both the Centre and the state governments have to operate within the Constitutional framework. Mamata nevertheless wants the Modi treatment to be extended to the Marxists too. Shun them, shame them, call them all things vile for their anti- poor policies. She routinely boycotts the visits of senior Congress leaders to the state and even as she stays in the Union cabinet, has been opposing most of the policies of the UPA. So obsessed is she with dislodging the Marxists from Writers Building that she has not attended even 25 per cent of the cabinet meetings held so far. Asked once about her chronic absenteeism, she retorted: “ I am not Delhi- based, am I?” Her habitual absence from cabinet meetings poses no danger to the stability of the UPA. But her defiance could turn out to be ominous for the Manmohan regime. Other UPA allies such as the NCP and the DMK are already upset because they suspect that the Congress is unleashing various central government agencies to keep a tab on them. The NDA and the non- UPA parties in the Lok Sabha have decided to move a cut motion on the Finance Bill during the current session and the Congress will need the collective strength of all its allies to defeat it as well as to ensure the safe passage of important government Bills. True, at this point, none of the allies would want to topple the government.

But Mamata’s posturing has sharpened the debate within the UPA. If the Congress wants the government to be strong, safe and stable, it must lend strength to its allies, give them the feeling that it values their support and will in turn stand by them.

Snippets/ Mail Today, April 19, 2010

Now tatkal clearance for Games

IN THE old days when a telephone was a luxury and owning one involved a waiting period that often took years, you could opt for a Tatkal scheme and acquire a connection. Ditto for the railways where if you had to travel and didn’t have a reservation, you could opt for a ticket under the tatkal scheme. But ever heard of a tatkal clearance for the cause of sport? With the 19th Commonwealth Games now less than 200 days away, among the many things that cause headaches to cabinet secretary K. M. Chandrasekhar is the woeful shortage of accommodation for the thousands of visitors who are expected to visit the Capital for the 11- day event.

Delhi, rising India’s shining Capital, has fewer hotel rooms than many small cities in the US or Europe. The government came up with a scheme to bridge this shortage by offering fully furnished DDA flats at reasonable rates for visitors. Plans were afoot to offer about 2,700 such flats, but there were hitches. Green activists planned to petition the environment ministry against clearance for the flats. In Jairam Ramesh, they saw a friend who would sympathise with their cause and give the government a thumbs down.

Last week, the matter came up for discussion during a meeting of the standing committee of the CWG, chaired by the cabinet secretary. Faced with several imponderables, Chandrasekhar called Ramesh who promised to get back later in the day. The minister promptly reviewed the situation with the mandarins of his ministry and within hours called back the CabSec to assure him that clearance for the project had been okayed and the necessary notifications would soon be issued. Like everyone else, Chandrasekhar knows that Ramesh is a very efficient minister, but the minister’s lightning reflexes have now prompted the CabSec to rechristen Ramesh “ the Tatkal Minister”.

Nitish could mar prospects of BJP, Cong in Bihar

NITISH Kumar may have failed to get special status for his state from the Planning Commission, but during his tenure, the socialistturned- free- marketer chief minister has himself acquired a special political status in the state that goes to polls in a few months’ time. In the once lawless state, now there is more than a semblance of law and order. Yet, Nitish’s political arrogance and highly individualistic rule has not only created mayhem in his own party, the JD( U), but has paralysed the BJP, its ally.

On the eve of elections, the divide between the two is widening by the day and there is no clear agenda or chain of command to steer the NDA. While Nitish cocks a snook at his “ high command” in Delhi, the local BJP appears to be a house of cards which could collapse any moment. Five months after his appointment, BJP chief Nitin Gadkari has not chosen a state party president nor named a central leader to oversee the party’s election strategy. This is crucial, because the Bihar polls will be the first after Gadkari’s elevation and therefore could make or mar his own career.

The state BJP is being managed and manipulated by Friends Of Nitish Kumar ( FONK) based in Delhi and Patna. The Congress seems to be in a deeper crisis as state chief Anil Sharma is unable to carry the cadres with him. Jagdish Tytler, the AICC’s point man for Bihar, is spending sleepless nights in the heat and dust of the backward state, but his efforts may come to nought because the caste and community- ridden party consists of many invisible Nitish admirers.

Rahul Gandhi's resolve to revive the party in the state is unlikely to yield dividends unless he takes direct command. The only beneficiaries of the confusion are the regional satraps such as Lalu Prasad Yadav and Ram Vilas Paswan. The fate of the two national parties will depend on how quickly their central leadership rids their respective parties of the virus called FONK.

THE CURRENT BJP leadership may believe that there is no matter of national importance more pressing than the shenanigans of Lalit Modi and Shashi Tharoor, but the parent RSS obviously thinks otherwise. A resolution passed by the Akhil Bharatiya Prathinidhi Sabha of the RSS, which met last fortnight, was as much an indictment of the Centre and the state government in Jammu & Kashmir for the drift in the state as of the BJP leaders for nitpicking over trivial issues. The resolution was passed just a few days before Manmohan Singh left for the United States where he had a scheduled meeting with his Pak counterpart.

In the past, before any such meeting, the BJP president or the Leader of the Opposition called on the Prime Minister to convey the Opposition’s mood on important bilateral issues. No such meeting was sought this time, which the RSS feels, is an indication that the BJP had got its priorities all wrong. The new party president who hasn’t allocated work responsibilities to his office bearers despite being at the helm for nearly six months now, is busy hiring second grade management doctors to cure the party’s ills. Nitin Gadkari came to office promising to take the BJP back to its roots. So far, he has nothing to show and time may not be on his side for long.

Seedhi Baat / Aajtak, April 18, 2010

My career began with Mast: Sunidhi

Singer Sunidhi Chauhan, on the show Seedhi Baat, talks about her big break in Bollywood and her new innings as a judge in a reality show.

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