When Democracy becomes a family run business
The RTI (Right to Information Act) enables the Indian citizens to query the government about ANY information they want excluding the personal information of citizens and information related to security matters and defense.
It is a well known fact that the dynastic politics of Nehru family has ensured that on the birth day and death anniversary of every member of this family (Nehru, Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi, etc), the government spends tax payer’s money to advertise about the greatness of these Nehru family members and what not.
But the fact is that India has also had a number of great leaders outside this family, who have done an even greater service to this country. Take for instance Lal Bahadur Shastri, who succeeded Nehru, who was one of the rarest honest politicians India has ever seen. He used to skip one meal everyday saying I will continue to do this as long as there are poor people in this country. He provided the greatest slogan of independent India, Jai Jawaan Jai Kisan. When he was the central railway minister there was a railway accident and he immediately took moral responsibility for it and resigned from his ministerial post. He brought back the nation’s security moral back on track, with his strong political decisions by giving a fitting reply to Pakistan when it tried a misadventure with India in 1965 assuming that India was then a weak country due to the recent lost war with China in 1962 (which was obviously thanks to Nehru who was in power in 1962).
Now for Shastriji, a person of such a great stature, who was so humble, honest, patriotic, down to earth great leader with scores of achievements, and who died a suspicious death at Tashkent, how has been the government of India remembering this great personality?
Dev Ashish Bhattacharya filed an RTI application with the central government asking, how much has the government spent on advertisements to spread the messages and achievements of Lal Bahadur Shastri, to remember him on his birth and death anniversaries?
Directorate of Advertising and Visual Publicity in the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting responded to his query saying, the government has spent ‘ZERO’ rupees to commemorate Lal Bahadur Shastri till todate. And it is not him alone. I am sure the same treatment is being mented out to other great political leaders like Jayaprakash Narayan, Ram Mahohar Lohia, Sardar Patel, Netaji, etc. Even P V Narasimha Rao was a prime minister, how much is he remembered by the Congress party today?
In other words, the Nehru family is running the country as if India is an empire ruled by the emperors from this dynasty!
It is a matter of utter shame that the prime minister Manmohan Singh recently said that “Rahul Gandhi is the future of you people“.
How dare he speak this sentence? Who is Manmohan Singh to dictate who
or what our future is? It is a shame that no other leader outside the
Nehru family is allowed to reach the top rungs in the Congress party.
Mr. Singh himself was made the puppet prime minister after Sonia’s
efforts were watered down.
Mr. Manmohan Singh himself has never faced people in a direct election, he is a member of Rajya Sabha not Lok Sabha, and that too from a state where he has never resided in, Assam! Today he has completely lost the respect which he had earned when he was the finance minister in the PV Narasimha Rao’s government.
Look at his repeated recent statements like “Minorities, particularly the Muslims, have first right over the national resources”. I would like to ask him, Mr Singh, the party of yours which was in power for more than 50 years of Independent India, what has your party done to the minorities of this country except using them as vote banks? Isn’t 50 years enough to bring up a community in the country? For how many centuries will your party be crying this slogan of “Minorities should be uplifted, backward classes should be taken care of, Garibi Hatao”, etc?
Mr. Manmohan Singh who “lost his sleep” when Hanif was arrested in Australia, the same Mr. Singh was rolling under his rugs in deep sleep when scores of people got killed in Mumbai, Hyderabad, Varanasi and Ajmer blasts! Isnt there a limit to this appeasement politics?
Mr. Prime minister, Where has all those crores and crores of rupees that were allocated to various programs (meant to the development of minority and backward classes) gone over the past 50 years? If it has been used properly then why are these people still backward?
I wish there was a legal system in India where one can sue these politicians when they dont keep up their promises.
It is high time that minorities and other sections of the society stop voting for this party, for they have only been used as vote banks by Congress and its dynastic politics.
Appeasement politics has been at the heart of Congress and its governance. They never want to uplift the minorities and other backward sections in the country, but only use them as votebanks. They appease the minorities by giving Haj subsidies, but do nothing to uplift their status in the society (like education, employment etc, except for the lip service) for they know that they cant get any votes if there are no backward sections in the society. Sachar committee report is a failure report of Congress led governments for the past five decades. The irony is that the same report is today again used by Congress to get more votes!
Either there is no leader in Congress party outside the Nehru family, or there is no internal democracy in that party, in either case this party is not for a “Better India”
The dynastic fever of Congress has also spread to some of the state level parties! DMK of Tamilnadu, JD(S) of Gowda & co in Karnataka, Laloo Yadav’s RJD in Bihar etc are the mini Congress parties in these states.
If Gandhiji were alive today he would have started another “Quit India” movement to oust dynastic politics from this country.
Politics as of now continues to be a process where we elect somebody whom we dislike the least