The front-page report “Cong, Didi stick to their guns; BJP in no hurry to pull the trigger” (September 20) spells out the irony in our political situation succinctly. After all, early elections cost extra money — and not all the existing members of Parliament will get re-elected.
After the pre-independence generation of leaders, only those who could not get jobs entered politics in India – and found it profitable – as a result of which their family members and progeny jumped on the bandwagon. Is it a wonder, then, that the tendency to cut corners and look for short-term benefits has only increased — resulting in large and small monstrosities like the 2G scam, Karnataka and Goa mining scams, Coalgate and the most interesting case of Kolkata Municipal Corporation placing Rs 27 crore worth of orders for trident lamps by dividing the order value into 540 separate orders under a value of Rs 5 lakh permitted without tenders! No matter how hard Didi may protest, and however plainly she may dress, her own party has not done any better than others.
I cannot but wonder whether the investigation system and the judiciary are deliberately kept slow to help scamsters.
West Bengal has been doing far worse than the rest of India, some say since 1911 when the capital of British India shifted to Delhi, others say since Bidhan Chandra Roy agreed to coal and steel freight equalisation and still others say since the Left took over — but is Didi doing any better? The Left and Didi are locked in a “fight unto death” to prove who can be more populist — but is that helping Bengal? As a commentator said on TV, do we want a Bengal that has only paddy-fields and no jobs?
What the Bharatiya Janata Party is gaining by holding up eminently sensible reforms like the Goods and Services Tax, the Direct Taxes Code and so on is a mystery. Their and the Left parties’ call for a bandh is another monstrosity that does nothing but help these parties assess the level of enthusiasm of their supporters — at a heavy cost to the nation.
That is why we need more leading professionals as politicians. Here’s wishing Arvind Kejriwal and others like him much success in their struggle to build a better India.
Alok Sarkar Kolkata
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