Wordsmiths & Newsplumbers

BY R.K. MISRA What you get free invariably costs too much. Cotton farmers, facing ruin  due to plummeting prices, are realizing that  sugar in the speech may be sweet. But the proof of the pudding is in the serving when the critic becomes the cook. Not long ago when ensconced in Gujarat as  chief minister, Narendra Modi riled at the Congress- led UPA government  when the minimum support prices (MSP) for cotton  went down from Rs 1500 to Rs 1200. Now, the chief minister is the Prime Minister and the  support prices are down to Rs 800. “What can we say”, is all that his one-time agriculture minister, Dilip Sanghani asks, adding that a farmer forced to commit suicide is  more like a clarion call for urgent action. The first woman chief minister of Gujarat  manfully struggles,  with the farmers up in arms and both the Congress and her critics within her own party pouring oil on  the troubled waters. It was the   RSS-affiliated Bhartiya Kisan Sangh (BKS)  which lit the fire earl

  BY RK MISRA Leaders rise by selling hope and fall trading it with despair. In power, each manufacturers its own brand of nemesis. This is as true of Indira Gandhi and son Rajiv as with Morarji Desai and Atal Bihari Vajpayee. If the first two fell to multiplying expectations, the last two were done in by  divisions  and subtractions. Divisions in their own ranks and subtractions in popularity caused by the falsity of India shining. The Desai- headed Janata Party government was an amalgamation of diverse opposition groupings including Jan Sangh, which broke away on disintegration to form the BJP thereafter. The Vajpayee government was a BJP led coalition (NDA). Both Desai and Vajpayee governments withered  lotus- like as strident hindutva took precedence over objective governance. Now Narendra Modi’s full- bloom saffron government is  beginning to show  signs of the same contagious distraction within the first six months of its rule. While Modi led BJP came to power as a ba

BY RK MISRA Spoken at will, words return to haunt at leisure. There is a familiar ring around  chief minister Mamata Bannerjee’s blistering attack on the BJP- led NDA government at the Centre on misuse of  CBI against the interests of West Bengal. Also, there is the instance of  finance minister Arun Jaitley slamming the West Bengal government for it’s harsh criticism of  the Centre. Again, of BJP president Amit Shah’s frontal assault, saying Saradha scam money funded Burdwan blasts and that Mamata was  blocking the  NIA probe. Yet again, the BJP, December 7, attacking the lady for keeping away from the CMs’ meet convened by the Prime Minister. And, so it goes on…. Was it not very long ago that the  three honourable worthies-Narendra Modi, Arun Jaitley and Amit Shah-were mouthing from Gujarat what’s today the  ‘Mamataspeak’, from West Bengal?. For over a decade, then Chief Minister Modi, his Rajya Sabha MP from  the state Jaitley and  minister of state for Home, Shah were

BY RK MISRA Governments either placate people or subjugate them.The prerogatives of the powerful often override the wishes of the weak.The Gujarat Local Authorities Laws(Amendment) Bill,2009 which makes voting compulsory in elections to local self-government bodies falls in this category.Cleared by Governor O.P.Kohli,it was gazetted by the Gujarat Government on November 5 this year.Thus voting in civic elections is now compulsory in the state by law.But will it be? A process initiated by the then chief minister Narendra Modi  as part of his brand building exercise in 2009,the Bill is now the law and the man who set the ball rolling is now the Prime Minister.However his successor,Anandiben Patel on whom the responsibility of implementing  it  rests is now realizing the enormity of the task at hand. According to highly placed sources,the present Gujarat government has no intention of  opening the can of worms that could add to it’s woes and has decided to put things on hold.”The