Conspiracy of silence covers up fissures in the CPI (M)

 

Surprisingly senior CPI (M) leader Prakash Karat’s not-so-veiled attack on his successor party general secretary Sitaram Yechury has attracted scant notice.

 

Politicians and the media have allowed his lament in a recent newspaper article about the unwholesome direction the party has taken  to  go unchallenged. Nonetheless, the spotlight on the sharp fault lines within the CPI(M) by one of its own senior ideologues requires wider notice.

 

In fact, someone in the BJP ought to have picked up and run with the clear chit  Karat  gave when he countered  the oft-heard charge that it is a fascist party. The ruling party’s critics, when they run out of every other brickbat, invariably fling that ill-merited charge against it.    

 

But what is of bigger significance is Karat’s clear anguish at the pro-Congress turn taken by the CPI(M) under Yechury. Virtually equating the Congress and the BJP as bourgeoisie, neo-liberal  parties serving the interests of  big business and finance capital, Karat expressly disapproved of the recent CPI(M)-Congress tango in West Bengal. 

 

The unity of `all democratic and secular forces’ is needed to fight the communal BJP and the Congress, while capitulation before the Congress by a defeatist CPI(M)  ran counter to the party’s core ideology. Meanwhile, since a pragmatic Yechury has prevailed over an ideology-driven Karat,  isn’t it time the CPI(M) and the CPI, parties’ whose best is well behind them,  merged and  became the B-team of the Congress? 

 

What a biographer the Mother chose !

 

Former Chief Election Commissioner, the highly controversial Navin Chawla, has drawn enough mileage  - and earned over at least a crore of rupees in royalty  ---  as an `authorised’ biographer of Mother Teresa.

 

The  buzz over her recent canonization by Pope Francis again saw  Chawla also make a splash in the media. In fact, it is an unresolved puzzle as to why of all the people they chose Chawla, a particularly unwholesome  character, to write her official life-story.

 

Maybe the Gandhi family connection that Chawla  flaunts at the drop of a hat helped but the truth is the choice of the biographer  reflected  poorly on the subject’s  judgment. Wanting to counter the charge of proselytisation,  he wrote   on the occasion of her canonization that to the Mother it mattered little as long as you were 'a good Hindu, a good Catholic or a good Muslim’, etc.

 

Someone should have told him, who, exploiting the Gandhi connection, has built himself a huge land bank in several States in the name of a trust, that you do not have to be religious at all to be a good human being. 

 

Now, is it a sign of a good human being to raise high boundary walls in complete violation of the municipal building by-laws for residential properties ---  even if Chawla himself is paying for the job?

 

Inveigling Congress governments into providing cheap land for trusts, coercing them to provide  free fencing, State security at private residences, a police escort, etc., are hardly gentlemanly acts.

 

But then Chawla has shown scant respect for norms and proprieties all through, though, it must be admitted, he is the authorized biographer of Mother Teresa. Wish some of her much proclaimed saintliness  had touched him too. 

 

Meanwhile, the elevation of Mother Teresa on the basis of dodgy miracles does appear jarring, particularly in the rational/scientific age. Instead, the Catholic Church should consider changing the way it bestows sainthood a la the Nobel selection process depending on the known and proven contribution to the welfare of the people or service to the humanity. 

 

Given that Pope Francis has displayed a willingness to  reform the Church from within, rooting out corruption and sexually-deviant bishops, he should be willing to modernize the anachronistic system of canonization.

 

Their Modi phobia

The other day a well-known anchor of a television news channel  tweeted approval of the recent introduction of flexible pricing of  passenger fares on Rajdhani, Shatabadi and Duronto super fast trains.

 

Immediately, the Deputy Chief Minister of Delhi, Manish Sisodia, countered, saying that the surge pricing was anti-people and predictably criticized Prime Minister Modi for the proposed hike. Soon, Sisodia’s boss and Chief Minister of Delhi Arvind Kejriwal joined the argument, calling the anchor `an agent of Modi.’ 

 

Not to be cowed down by such abuse, the anchor stood his ground, arguing that if passengers want efficient service they should be ready to pay for it. In any case, the increase was proposed only on premium trains and that too for higher-cost fares.

 

But Sisodia was not ready to reason, he defended Kejriwal, which only brought the retort from the anchor that neither Kerjiwal nor Sisodia had mentally evolved. 

 

By the way, Indian Railways loses  upwards of Rs. 26, 000 crores on passenger services annually. It seeks to recoup some of the loss through higher freight rates, which is partly responsible for slower growth in  goods haulage by the Railways.

 

Also, higher freight charges hurt the poor whereas passengers of premium trains have the option of travelling by slower trains or by a lower class of travel. 
     

 

Crooks waiting out the Modi Sarkar

 

A number of Congress leaders who are now being made to account for their illicit money-making rackets while the party was in power for ten years have deliberately resorted to delaying tactics in the hope that the 2019 parliamentary poll might end their woes.

 

That explains the refusal to accept summons,  to  seek repeated adjournments, to evade appearance before the Enforcement Directorate, to plead illness or some such excuse for putting off interrogation by the ED, etc.

 

In fact, even when the ED manages to summon the underlings  of someone who had made tonnes of money due to his powerful ministerial connection, the effort is made to thwart their appearance.

 

And on occasion  when the accomplices of the main suspect were unable to avoid the ED, his mother has sought to disrupt the proceedings, barging into the room screaming and shouting at the officers and threatening them of reprisals upon their certain return to power in 2019.  

 

Small wonder then the investigators are unable to make much progress, though the main suspect had used his powerful connection to make big money on the stock market, and from  dabbling  in the telecom sector.  If you believe the realtors in the capital, the fellow owns over a dozen properties in South Delhi’s up-market Defence Colony alone.  
 

 

Virendra Kapoor is a Delhi-based journalist. The opinions expressed in this article are the author's own and do not reflect the view of Asianet Newsable.