Introduction: Sonia Gandhi has understood the psyche of her adopted country very well
The Hindu among English daily newspapers and Economic and Political Weekly (EPW) enjoy probably the highest reputation among publications in each category. That is why they command almost unquestioned credibility. The Chennai-based The Hindu has always been held in high regard because of its alleged 'conservatism', though, in its own way, t can be as 'revolutionary' and hard-hitting as any responsible daily can be.
Last month, on three successive days (June 26-28) it published a three-part series on its front page exposing the Lashkar-e-Toiba that has not been taken note of either by other dailies or by the various television news channels. Authored by Praveen Swami, the paper's correspondent, in effect the report says: "An investigation by The Hindu has found that the group (Lashkar-e-Toiba) was indeed engaged in reconnaissance for a suicide attack on Hindu fundamentalist leaders - but the mission was monitored by intelligence agencies at each stage and infiltrated from its outset".
Covert operation
Among other things the report said: "Last week's encounter on the outskirts of Ahmedabad.... was the outcome of a four-month long covert operation by the Intelligence Bureau... like the Lashkar operatives who carried out the earlier attack on the Akhshardham Temple in Gandhinagar, the terrorists probably hoped to reach Ahmedabad just days or hours before the intended assault". Notably on Narendra Modi. This is a fact that our secular press refuses to acknowledge.
The second article is even more damning. It deals with Ishrat Jehan and the recruiting policy of the Lashkar, noting: "Ishrat's neighbourhood, the Thane ghetto of Mumbra, has a strong subterranean tradition of support for the Lashkar, underpinned by the influence of the local Ahl-e-Hadis seminary - the sect from which the terrorist groups derives its religious legitimacy". This is no place to reproduce the three-part series but those interested surely can access The Hindu in any library or the Internet. Incidentally, one can cruise the Internet, as Praven Swami obviously did, for more interesting information on the Lashkar.
Economic and Political Weekly is in a class in itself. Generally believed to be Left- oriented it has a high reputation for probity. That such a journal should have some unkind things to say about Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy, the Congress Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh commands attention. In its June 12 issue it carries a 5,300 word article by one K. Balagopal that is shocking in the extreme. It says inter alia: "Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy, the new Chief Minister has given the impression of being a man who cares for the classes neglected by Chandrababu Naidu's model of development. Whether that is really so, is extremely doubtful".
Writes Balagopal: "It is so easy to clothe Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy, MBBS, with the image of the good doctor who has turned to politics to cure society... The man is anything but a vendor of humane visages. His rise in politics has been accompanied by more blood-shed than that of any other politician in this state. Not bloodshed for some avowed 'higher cause' but bloodshed for the narrowest possible cause: the rise of one individual to political power and prominence". According to Balagopal, if Chandrababu Naidu was a man "who would find nothing too crooked if it is in his political interest", Reddy is a man "who would find nothing too brutal" for both the goal being the same: Power.
Balagopal adds: "Today YSR wishes to be seen as a politician who has responded to the needs of farmers and is determined to do well by them but in the nearly three decades of his political life, he has not been instrumental in adding one acre of assured irrigation to the parched lands of his constituency... He got converted to Christianity in the days when even upper castes thought there may be material benefit in doing so and was ostracised by the Reddys of his native village, Balapanur. He shifted to Pulivendula, the tehsil quarters. He quickly made a name for himself 'as a rough and violent man with whom one had better not get into a quarrel'. YSR apparently has many interests.
Balagopal writes: "For many years in the later half of the 1980s and the early half of the 1990s, YSR's barytes mining operation was the subject of one scandal after another... YSR continued with the mining (when a case against him was in the court) and took away mineral worth Rs. 5 crore... Given the peculiar nature of Rayalaseema society, brute force served YSR's purpose in the initial stages, much as unscrupulous manipulation did in Chandrababu's case... And as for Telengana, YSR has made no secret of the fact that he has neither any understanding of nor sympathy for that cause".
The article has to be read to be believed. Had it been published in a journal edited and published by any constituent element of the Sangh Parivar, one might have dismissed it as motivated. But the EPW has a high reputation among 'intellectuals' especially of the Left variety. Perhaps Dr. Manmohan Singh may not have read the article. One does not expect Sonia Gandhi to read EPW. But she should. It would tell her the kind of person YSR is whom she has appointed as Andhra Pradesh's Chief Minister. May be she would feel that YSR is not 'tainted'. But in Dr. Manmohan Singh's cabinet being tainted is not a sin. After all Laloo Prasad has not been tried and proved guilty of any misdemeanour, has he?
According to The Indian Express "Laloo Prasad is on a roll - from one controversy to another" now having "unwrapped a Rs. 1,000 crore gift for Chapra, his constituency in Bihar" and a "wheel and axle plant that the railways don't really need".
Tainted minister
According to The Times of India (June 26), in 'the eleventh train dacoity' ever since Laloo Prasad "took over as railway minister, armed criminals looted at least 45 passengers in an AC coach... about 130 kms. from Patna". So what? What's wrong with an ordinary dacoity? And what's wrong with gifting one's constituency with some railway plant that the railway itself does not want? Besides, what's wrong with being tainted anyway? Dacoits loot trains. A railway minister tries to take public money, which is what railway revenue is, to provide jobs for his constituency. How can one call that loot? We have a person who exercises power without any accountability or responsibility.
"It is unprecedented" wrote The Statesman (June 24), which said: "It is unprecedented for any government to form a separate Council for running a government programme and that someone like Mrs. Gandhi... is heading the National Advisory Council has led political observers to wonder whether another power centre isn't being set up".
So what if another political centre
is set up? What is wrong with having a Super Prime Minister? Sonia Gandhi
has renounced power, hasn't she? In India the best way to have power is
to claim that one doesn't want it. It is clear that Sonia Gandhi has understood
the psyche of her adopted country very well.