It is shocking that Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar should place such an unreasonable demand as special status for Bihar as his price for joining the UPA or the NDA coalition. He may think it is morally all right since he is doing it for his state, but this will set the tone for demands for a similar special status by other states. How is this any different from what Mulayam Singh Yadav has done, when he said that he would join any formation that removed his rival Mayawati — Yadav would argue that removing Mayawati would be good for Uttar Pradesh. When this is the behaviour of top leaders, what are others to learn?
The lesson to be learnt is that you must strike when the iron is hot, and in all fields. The workers who have struck work in various automobile factories which were expanding their operations also did exactly the same thing — they realised the management of their companies would be desperate and so thought that this was the best time to strike. The Left parties thought Manmohan Singh and the Congress party were desperate to stay in power and so threatened to walk out if the Indo-US nuclear deal was inked — what they never accounted for was that no one really wanted to topple the government at that point in time.
Sanjeev Bhalla, New Delhi
