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year ,the Bill was withdrawn .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
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