Vilas Rao Deshmukh calls it a game of ‘Kho-Kho’. Some others call it ‘Musical Chairs’. To me it does not look like a game or sports at all!!!! It is pure business. Yes friends, I’m talking about the Cabinet Re-shuffle, which happened yesterday in New Delhi. It was purely a business act. And don’t get me wrong, it was not for betterment of the nation. Rather it was aimed at increasing the profitability or sustainability of a few individuals or as our Ex-Law Minister says ‘vested interests’.
It was touted as a face saving exercise by a Government, which many perceive as the most corrupt and worthless Government to have ever administered this country. A Government that, in the past few weeks, has a seen a bee-line of its Ministers going to Jail, and many waiting in the queue. A Government which has recently behaved in the most desperate and irrational manner, as witnessed at Ram Lila grounds, or in the exercise of replacing Attorney General by a private lawyer to represent itself at Supreme Court. It appeared that the Government was just hanging by the thread and this exercise will actually pull it up and restore it at a stable ground in the eyes of common man. That common man, who had lost all faith from this Government, yet was unable to do anything to remove it before 2014.
Then there were few who expected the tainted to go. People like Chidambaram, Sibal, who incidentally are the most corrupt but are amazingly in the Joke-Pal Drafting panels. They had to go just like Rajas, Kalmadis, Kanimozhis and Marans did over the past few weeks.
We thought that this was one moment when the Government would show us intent of rectifying its mistakes. It would confess to the Nation that ‘guys we goofed up, but have faith in us, we will rectify those one by one’.
But the mega-event, if you might like to call it, turned out to be a damn squib!!! More than a squib it even enhanced the fears in the minds of common man that this Government is not serious about handling corruption or corrupts. In fact, it will go to all ends to protect those.
Just look at a few changes and you will know what I mean.
Jairam Ramesh was one of the Congress Ministers who was sincere in his job. He was the Environment Minister and he did put his foot down and stamp his disproval to a lot of projects which, he considered a threat to the environment. Personally speaking, I don’t like Congress guys. To me all of them are corrupts. But there are some like Ramesh, Mani Shankar Iyer and Pranab Mukherjee, who are quite honest and they do their job exceptionally well and sincerely. So now all the big corporates saw Ramesh as a threat to the mega-bucks projects. And what does MMS do to lessen their worries? Ramesh is replaced by Gandhi Loyal – Jayanti Natrajan as Environment Minister. Now expect all the big projects, which were struck down by Ramesh, like Vedanta, Lavasa, Pedder Road flyover, Navi Mumbai airport to be cleared in no time and Congress king (read queen) pins to share the humble-pie from the corporates.
Another curious case here is of Veerappan Moily. Extremely corrupt by character and having a criminal background in the past, he was made the Law Minister in UPA 2. Don’t know what happened after his induction, but the important cases started getting processed in an urgent manner. He must have been doing something good there. Too good in case of the ‘Black Money’ case. Within a few weeks of filling of the case, there were 2 hearings and even Supreme Court started questioning the Central Government on its actions or inactions. That did not suit the Queen-Bee. Moily was removed promptly from Law Ministry and another Gandhi loyalist – Salman Khurshid was brought in. Yes the same Salman Khurshid who is said to have put all the misdeeds of ‘The Yuvraj’ in Amethi back in Dec 2006 under the carpet. He is back doing that now and trust me, he’s quite good at it. Don’t be surprised if ‘Black-Money’ case goes into a back burner in a few months’ time!!!
Murli Deora was removed. He will be facing some strict actions from Supreme Court by the end of 2011 for all his glorious deeds during his stint as Oil Minister. Nevertheless, they did a favor by making his son a Minister. So the pie remains in the house-hold.
Railways went to TMC as if it is their ‘jaagirdaari’. Expect a sorrier state of Railways in the days to come!!!
And then there were a lot of changes on the basis of representation of states as put by MMS himself. All this, I guess, with an eye on Assembly Elections.
In a nut shell, Ministries allocations were meant to improve the working of the Ministry but in the end they were done to please and turn things in favor for a chosen few. MMS says that this might be the last re-shuffle in UPA2. Yes Sir that’s right, I don’t think your Government will stay long enough for another re-shuffle!!!
So UPA 2 has played another round of ‘Kho-Kho’ and the Referee ala the Queen-Bee has got her peace of mind – at least for the time being!!!
