Opinion: The accidental hero

Governments can’t be delinked from parties. You cannot suggest that once a person becomes a prime minister or minister, he or she should leave the party or forget about them. Party is not here to make you CMs or PMs and then allow you to do what you wish to do.

manmohan Singh
 
The propaganda machinery of the Sangh Parivar is in full swing. You are now being forced to consume loads of information about the ‘Accidental Prime Minister’ and both the government and BJP’s social media cell has gone into an overdrive to promote it.
 
Before readers assume that this is in defence of Dr. Manmohan Singh, Sonia Gandhi or Narendra Modi, a few things should be made clear about the accountability and responsibilities of elected representatives. As a person, Dr. Singh was far superior to Modi both in terms of knowledge and dignity that he brought to his post. Our humility shouldn’t be seen as a weakness. History will be kinder to Dr. Singh than his successor.
 
There is another issue of this overhyped Bollywood actor. Yes, I am talking about Anupam Kher, who has taken it upon himself to be the ‘champion’ defender of this government and perhaps competing with his wife for a seat in the Parliament. BJP is definitely looking for more stars from cricket and cinema to rescue them in 2019. Many of these failures and opportunists are looking for greener pastures and protect their business interests. They will happily contest the Lok Sabha polls. Anupam Kher nurtures, along with many others, a hope to be an ‘elected’ representative because they could not achieve much through their art except defending the Brahmanical disorder and rigid customs. He may be hailed as a great actor by many but he remains much inferior to both Om Puri and Naseeruddin Shah, both as actors as well as people who have taken a stand on important public issues. For me, except his initial ‘Saraansh’, there are not enough movies of him worth remembering.
 
Now, we come to the issue of the ‘Accidental Prime Minister’ and the questions being raised about it. The major theme of the film is that Congress President Sonia Gandhi was ‘advising’ the Prime Minister of what to do and what not to do. Now, these are laughing issues to say the least. In democracies, the party is bigger than the government and the party guides the government because ultimately it is the party which has to go to polls. Sonia Gandhi as a UPA chairperson was definitely entitled to write or guide to the government but it is up to the government to agree or not agree to her viewpoint.
 
Can the Prime Minister or BJP leaders ignore the advice of the RSS? If not, then what is the locus-standi of Ram Madhav on J&K. Was he an ‘expert’ on J&K?
 
In democracies, you cannot hand over the council of ministers to a few selected bureaucrats. Even those in the current dispensations hail from the Sangh Parivar background. The system is called political because it is politics which guides it. The Council of Ministers is actually accountable to the Parliament where questions are raised and answered. And it is the party which defends the government and its actions both in the parliament and on the street.
 
The argument that Dr. Manmohan Singh should not have listened or surrendered his position is absurd. A system cannot surrender. Yes, political leaders call the shots and this is a reality.
 
The problem of bureaucracy or corporate media in India was that it wanted to control Dr. Manmohan Singh like it is doing with Narendra Modi. Sanjay Baru kind of people could never have been appointed if Sonia was calling the shots on everyday affairs. Baru is a highly over-rated person and his book was a dishonest attempt to curry favour from Narendra Modi.
 
When Anna Hazare launched his Lok Pal movement, we opposed the entire premise because we still feel that the supremacy of the Parliament and assemblies must be restored. You cannot make Lok Pal a boss of parliament and everything. So, the issue is not merely whether Sonia was dictating or not. The clever media is making it seem so because they never want the parties to dictate the agenda for the governments. Governments can’t be delinked from parties. Today, BJP party is dictating the agenda to the government along with the business and corporate structure. Since the agenda is suiting the corporate hence they are silent otherwise they would have made noises.
 
You cannot suggest that once a person becomes a prime minister or minister, he or she should leave the party or forget about them. Party is not here to make you CMs or PMs and then allow you to do what you wish to do. Party cadres can’t be allowed to be just war horses during the campaign to defend the government. A government that does not listen to the party always loses. In our societies, if we allow the government and council of ministers to be just surrounded by the corporates and bureaucrats then one can never think of any pro-people policies. One must not forget that Dr. Singh, Chidambaram, Montek Singh Ahluwalia were the favourite people of media and corporates and Sonia Gandhi was being seen as too ‘socialist’ guided by the ‘jhollawallah’ economists and social activists and hence an obstacle.
 
These corporatized castes now enjoy immunity in the current dispensation but they also realise that an administration that has nothing to show to the people will ultimately boomerang hence attempts are being made to change the narrative. 2019 will be the ‘hisab-kitab’ year of Narendra Modi and BJP and not of what Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi did in 2009 as they have already been punished by the people. The government of the day cannot hide its failures by such diversion tactics as the ‘Janta’ knows well and will respond in time.
 

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