REFORMS – A Master Stroke ??

When someone is cornered and left with no option, he fights back tooth and nail, because it is the only win – lose situation left to him. Since, he has nothing to lose further; he fights with a hair – thin hope of survival or victory. Have you seen a street dog caught in a web of other stray dogs cornered in an unknown territory? He puts his tail in and tries to run away and when that fails, he fights. Well history is not depleted with such cases. Remember Israel war?

The UPA – II ensemble has done something like that. Since its tenure began, the government has been caught on the wrong foot time and again. Scams after scams kept on surfacing and the troubles were unending. The latest one, the COAL GATE , is presumably the biggest Tsunami of sorts to hit them. All their efforts are not rescuing them at all. The economy was in doldrums for a year or so. The media was haunting them, the news from their foreign allies were also not very encouraging.

So how to get out of it, was a thought which was on top of their agenda for quite some time.  Pranabda is no more in a position to bail out them. Only a couple of years are left for the next polls. Team Congress Captain – MMS opened a Pandora box and took out the PAPLU ( JOKER ) from the box and that was – REFORMS CARD.

The Industry has gone agog, but almost all opposition parties opposed it. The merits and demerits of the decisions are debatable. I for one am in favor of opening up the Aviation Sector, Rationalization of prices of diesel & cooking gas, but not in favor of FDI in Retail in its present form.  

Congress has played a double game. It has asked its ruled states to increase the subsidy from 6 to 9 cylinders / year. Then, why the center has restricted it to only 6 for other states? It could well have done that and absorbed the losses. Why the government could not increase the price of each cylinder instead and keep increasing it every year or so and thus give a clear signal that it did not favor the SUBSIDY.

Anyway, that is a separate issue all together. Team MMS wanted a shadow boxing mechanism to divert the attention from the SCAMS, and it has achieved that to the TEE. 

Is it therefore a master stroke? I do not agree anymore. The people do not have such a short memory, as Mr. Shinde felt the other day, when he said that the people will forget Coal gate as they have forgotten the Bofors. Has anyone forgotten Delhi of ’84 & Gurat of recent past? Now the Media wants some news item to keep on their TRPs on a high. Hence, come next elections, they will find out ways and means to bring these issues to the front once again. The people will decide then.

Till then let us enjoy the Games Parties Play.