The GOP and its neglected four legs
By: Amit Bhushan Date: 6th Mar. 2018
A big animal needs four legs. It balances itself on its four legs and needs/uses them to walk or to run or even to dance. However it should have adequate awareness about the capabilities of each of these legs. Those watching politics are however amused if GOP seems to be aware about these legs or the Italy charge has some strength. This is because of a rather weak understanding of the ongoing affairs connected with people and the government seem to being allowed to escape by shouting ‘systemic failures of the past’. In fact the ‘news media’ (drop of commercial term to be noted) seem to playing a rather much more matured role in bringing these up. However the GOP Netas or even the larger opposition Netas seem to be having a rather timid response.
Let’s look at these four legs each of these have a people connect but the opposition response to the same seems less than adequate. They seem to be following the media whereas they should have been rather ‘leading the charge’ to sustain leadership. Let’s go into these one by one and let start with one where the news media actually led. This is pertaining to Educational Institute or the much touted ‘skilling’ industry which is also one of flagship schemes/projects of the government. I want to be clear that these articles did raise some noise here but the news media raised it in much more systematic manner to highlight the plight of the youth/students. Even when the opposition unity seems to be on cards, it seems to be boiling down to ‘caste unity’ rather than the ‘public issues’ around the quality of education/skilling or others and the issues remain everywhere whether Phulpur, Gorakhpur and elsewhere. There has been little effort to arrest this decline but a rather big budget of ‘noise spend’ on this pet scheme while ‘common people’s party’ easily gets the blame for such misdemeanors with the ‘media’ in cohorts. If there are systemic failures here, what has been efforts to arrest and reverse this decline? If there are none then why should public not look for alternatives.
The second leg is where these articles have been quite systematic and this is around the issue of jobs. Some of the heft and in particular, the controllable of the Center and the State government under their direct budget as well as supervision has been picked and highlighted in the media. This again has implication for the youth but the Netas seem to be shy even as they continue to loose in a string. There are no question in parliament and legislative assemblies regards how many ‘selection exams’ are pending results in government and their undertakings. Once such a data including respective number of candidates is out, at least the size of the issue could be estimated. But unfortunately, the Reps would not be ‘paid’ for such a question and they would rather loose meekly than ask such tough questions. Of course the decline of the private sector job growth due to demonetization would take years to compile and the lack of data to estimate jobs is simply not there although we would have accurate surveys on which party or Netas is winning elections and there would not be any dearth of information on the same in our democracy.
The third leg is again the Banking NPAs. With the government’s ‘recent embarkation’ on rounding up drive of the banking ‘seniors’ to re-assess/scrutiny loans above a certain cut-off say 50 Cr., we again are in a situation where fresh NPAs and frauds are likely to come up. Even the news media would agree on the much superior role of social media in bringing this up. That cleanliness needs an external trigger including some tough hauls from the media as well as social media seems to be the mantra rather than ‘opposition’ role for this. This is while the ‘agents’ of the systemic fraud remain in shadows and we only have some top villain on runaway drive while the rest celebrating within their ‘homes’. Again this seems quite concentrated to select cases rather than some large drive to cleanse the system though being regarded as systemic fraud where expectation is that for a large number of cases as well as players.
The last of the four legs is healthcare. We have a huge over-capacity in power where we need to import the machinery as well as fuel. However in the healthcare we might be the net exporter based on heath tourism, we can’t even train adequate number of people to serve our own population well. And this doesn’t even sound like a fraud. This is in spite of epidemics like bird flu, dengue, child-deaths (in a city likely to undergo polls), mis-management of the government health spends as well as private sector billings amongst many of the ills. In fact government with its noise rather than any solid action seem to leading rather than on the defense. What has been the actions to arrest/reverse the systematic decline in the sector and plans for its revival? Please note that the socialist logic of adequate wages and cost is not being looked at but a 'supply' of professional and services so that cost decline to allow more people to afford the healthcare and the same might also be true for education/skilling, sports and many other manpower based services and we are expecting a reasonable but systematic expansion with sound management only.
With tough question politics, the Netadom should understand that any blame on systemic neglect/decline can be given up to first two years in government or else status quo is an endorsement of the past policies on account of the new Netas which then needs to be explained. With ministers being touted to be working day and night in pushing public interest, getting to be aware of such huge holes after four years is then likely to be challenged and quite rightly so. It may be noted than in the above analysis quite a few rural issues like farm-produce or rural industry sector has not been touched upon as of yet. Otherwise the tentacles of octopus would be falling short and the issue list would be larger. Let the ‘Game’ evolve…
PS: Aside of the above, my severe criticism for pulling down of statues of historical personalities, whatever ideologyies they represented. May and hope this is put back on its pedestal unless it was in contraventions to some well defined rules