The two musketeers
by
AJ Philip |
Smart one-liners not the stuff which go to make a leader
Two of the smartest ministers of the Manmohan Singh government are undoubtedly Home Minister P Chidambaram and Telecommunications Minister Kapil Sibal. Ordinarily, they should have been the pillars of strength of the United Progressive Alliance government. Far from that, they are often creators of problems for the government.
The two have many things in common. They are blessed with the gift of gab. Sibal shot into limelight when in the nineties he took up the case of a Supreme Court judge facing impeachment proceedings in Parliament. He was at his eloquent best when he addressed the joint session of Parliament and presented the case of his client.
Even those who were convinced that the judge had not maintained the best traditions of the judiciary when he served the Punjab and Haryana High Court could not have but appreciated Sibal’s arguments. It’s a different matter that the impeachment move fizzled out when the Congress developed second thoughts on the subject.
For Sibal, it was indeed a stepping stone for a successful political career. The Congress saw in him a good spokesman for the party and fielded him from the smallest Chandni Chowk parliamentary constituency in Delhi.
Soon enough, he was made a minister and given such an important portfolio as science and technology. His department was totally unprepared when tsunami struck the southern coasts of the country. He had the honesty to admit the government’s un-preparedness but that did not deter him from taking steps that brought succour to thousands of victims.
When his predecessor in the Telecom Ministry A Raja was forced to quit for his alleged involvement in the multi-billion dollar 2G Spectrum scam and sent to jail, he was given the telecom portfolio. Sibal shocked the country by claiming that there was no corruption in the Spectrum allocation while the Central Bureau of Investigation was busy building up a water-tight case against Raja and company. Overnight, he became the butt of public ridicule.
The minister caused a sensation this month when he told the media about the government’s plans to control social networking sites like Facebook, Orkut and YouTube. He showed some postings on such networks, which were definitely unacceptable in a civilised society. They showed morphed pictures of political leaders like Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh in compromising positions and caricatures of some religious icons.
However, Sibal could not have imagined that his comments would evoke widespread public ridicule as when a popular national newsmagazine put his picture on the cover page. He was shown sporting a Hitler-style moustache. Some of his ministerial colleagues were forced to deny that the government had any plan to impose censorship.
Probably, Sibal forgot that his party had to pay a heavy price for imposing Press censorship during the Emergency in the seventies. In the late-eighties when the Rajiv Gandhi government introduced an anti-defamation Bill, dubbed anti-Press Bill by the media, it aroused a nationwide protest that forced the prime minister to make a hasty retreat.
Chidambaram, like Sibal, is an able lawyer who used to charge astronomical fees for his services. But he, too, has a proclivity to land in unnecessary controversies. He is one of the most ambitious Congress leaders for whom nothing less than the prime minister’s post will be satisfying. Small wonder that the Opposition BJP has been relentlessly attacking him.
However, a fellow Tamil Subramaniam Swamy of the Janata Party has been after him claiming that he was as guilty as Raja in the Spectrum scam. If he has his way, Chidambaram will have to quit his post, sooner than later. The role his ministry played in the withdrawal of some cases against a prominent hotelier in the capital, who was once his client, is now under scanner. And to cap them all, he has taken a stand on the contentious Mullaperiyar dam issue which can only be described as chauvinistic.
Worse, Chidambaram said the Supreme Court will turn down the Kerala plea for a new dam in place of the endangered 116-year-old gravity dam. Was it not contempt of the court for the home minister of the country to claim that the judgment would be favourable to Tamil Nadu? A discernible problem the two suffer from is the lack of humility.
One reason why former prime minister Lal Bahadur Shastri is still remembered was his humility, a quality Mahatma Gandhi too had in abundant measure. Smartness tempered with humility is what makes a political leader dear to the people. Kapil Sibal and P Chidambaram will do well to remember this.
Oman Tribune |
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