Tomato Tales & Hypocrisy : Preaching Virtues While Practicing Vices !

 BY R.K.MISRA

Tangy tomatoes spice both kitchens and ketchups. Yet this peppy part of taste and tables hogged a front page banner headline in a prominent Gujarati daily  recently when its price  smashed the vegetable ceiling, clocking past  Rs 150  a kilogram. While the price continues to rise over the Rs 200 mark, as if competing with the  flood waters  of the Indo-Gangetic plains, a national daily  devoted its Sunday magazine main page to ‘Tomato travels’ with the additional offer of scanning the code for a  ‘cooking  without it’ recipe video.

 India’s rulers, who were just about resting after coaxing out the stashed two thousand rupee currency  found themselves faced with another hoard to handle even as  the country’s burger kings sought  an easy way out, dropping it from their menu. ”Seasonal cycle, will cool down soon”, said the government but wiser counsel prevailed thereafter and it stepped in with discount sale through national cooperative bodies. On the other hand ,loyalists among the converts soon had one state elected head find reason enough  to blame muslim vendors for rising price of vegetables. In the meantime, if tomato prices are chasing the Chandrayan, onions are plumbing the depths in their quest for oil. The same worthies when in the Opposition, had a diametrically opposite take on both the rise and the fall. And therein lies the rub of forked tongues, faked distractions and contrasting realities !.

So you have a scenario where it takes a rap on the knuckles from the Gujarat High Court to curb the free reign of stray cattle on Ahmedabad roads. Last week the court had hauled the civic body and the state government over the coals for this growing menace. In Ahmedabad the stray cattle policy was revived, elsewhere  in the state nothing moved.  The Gujarat government  announced  stringent steps to curb  cattle menace on city roads in December 2021, passed a Bill in the Gujarat Assembly in April next year  but it being an election year ,the Bill was withdrawn . The exigencies of election opportunism prevailed over the road users wellbeing.

This is not a scenario restricted to Gujarat. Walk into any town of India and you will find bovines  ruling the road while humans skirt and swerve at their beck and call. Also woe-betide if you are not a part of the majoritarian echo-system !

With elections on the anvil in the key states of Madhya Pradesh ,Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and Telangana this year to be followed by the magnum opus general elections next year, the ruling BJP has ‘unleashed’ the Uniform Civil Code(UCC) as a weapon of distracting choice . Tribals are up in arms as are other religious groups . Society is thrown into avoidable turmoil as it debates the conundrum but the purpose has been temporarily served for it has distracted attention from trouble- torn Manipur.

Contradictions abound. While the ruling BJP, both in the country and the north-eastern state remains tightlipped on the fratricidal warring, it is shouting itself hoarse on the local self-government body elections in Trinamool Congress (TMC) ruled West Bengal. Again, no less than the Prime Minister Narendra Modi guarantees action against NCP leaders in Maharashtra involved in a Rs 70,000 crore scam. Within days the NCP leaders  led by Ajit Pawar, under the glare of corruption charges, breakaway to join the Shinde-Fadnavis government with the blessings of the BJP national leadership. There is not a word from the fount on the mount.

Opposing any leniency to the convicted ,the Gujarat government had in February this year sought the death penalty from the Supreme Court for 11 of the 31 persons convicted in the Sabarmati bogie burning incident  of 2002 after their death sentences were commuted to life term by the Gujarat High Court in  2017. They were seeking bail after being incarcerated in jail for  over 20 years. Fifty nine people had perished in the train carnage.

Months earlier in October ,2022 the Gujarat government told the Supreme Court that it had decided to release the 11 convicts in the Bilkis Bano case as they had” completed 14 years and above in prison… their behaviour was found to be good and the Centre has also approved. In its affidavit filed  in response to a petition challenging the remission granted to the prisoners the state also conceded that the CBI as well as the Special Civil Judge(CBI),City Civil and Sessions Court, Greater Bombay had opposed the earlier release of the prisoners. The CBI’s stance was that the offence committed was “heinous, grave and serious” and hence they cannot be released prematurely and no leniency may be given” to them. Bilkis was gang-raped and her  three-year -old daughter was among  14 killed by a mob during the post-Godhra riots. She was pregnant at  the time. The CBI judge had lots more to say but  so much should suffice to make the point of contrasting realities.

In the  pursuit of power politics, hypocrisy, as they say, is the art of preaching virtues while practicing vices.

http://epaper.lokmat.com/articlepage.php?articleid=LOKTIME_NPLT_20230718_6_4

http://odishapostepaper.com/edition/4574/orissapost/page/9