A gentleman is also known by the people he shuns. Given some of the company the gentleman Prime Minister Manmohan Singh keeps, there is every danger of his own clean image going for a toss. For, it is not enough for the PM to be personally clean; the onus that his ministers too adhere to the minimum acceptable norms of good conduct clearly lies with him.
Singh’s continuous failure to discipline the wayward, nay, tainted lot of ministers is bound to reflect poorly on him. And would raise the vital question whether being a gentleman is qualification enough to be the PM of a diverse and always difficult to govern nation like India which is beset by myriad problems of lawlessness, poverty, insurrection, economic and social inequalities, et al.
Singh does not give the impression that he is in control of the Government of which he is but a mere notional head with the real power vesting in people outside the Government or with various group leaders who have cornered plum ministries inside.
Increasingly, the PM comes across as a meek and well-meaning head clerk who occasionally issues homilies on such relatively minor matters as the check on ministerial junkets abroad or a ban on reappointment of superannuated bureaucrats (with he himself retaining a retired bureaucrat as his principal secretary).
The point is that to be an effective PM he has not only to assert his authority but he is also required to be seen to be so doing in order for the people to feel reassured that he is not a prisoner of the dubious elements who dominate the UPA and his own Cabinet.
The latest affront to good sense and good governance from Singh’s esteemed Railway Minister, Laloo Prasad Yadav, in normal circumstances would have automatically led to his ouster from the Government. Even now were the PM to allow his gentlemanly considerations a full play, instead of adopting the opportunistic stance which his Parliamentary Minister did on the sordid matter, Yadav would find himself ejected out of the Cabinet.
It is, of course, specious nonsense to suggest that the actions impugned by the Chief Election Commission were those of the RJD chief and not of the Railway Minister. Did Yadav cease to be the Railway Minister when he hit the dirt trail in Bihar armed with wads of mint-fresh one- hundred rupee currency notes and was seen distributing them to emaciated men and women in a clear bid to buy support for his party for the forthcoming elections to the Bihar Assembly?
Should the inquiry into the FIR lodged against him at the express direction of the CEC result in his being imprisoned, can the gentleman PM persist with him as Railway Minister on the ground that the person jailed is the party president and not the Railway Minister?
Let us not delude ourselves with this arrant nonsense, this sophistry, and come to terms with the sobering thought that a person like Yadav is unfit to be a member of any civilised government. For, he is a law unto himself, saying and doing things which defy established norms of acceptable ministerial behaviour.
It is another matter that given the huge strides made by Bihar under the Laloo-Rabri raj in the last decade, there will be no dearth of simple but gullible people in that benighted State who might be willing to be fooled by his antics and brazenness.
Yadav’s riposte that he was only handing over money to Dalit women who wanted sweets to celebrate his rise as the Railway Minister might still fool the simple village folks who have been denied the fruits of good governance thanks largely to venal politicians like him and his wife, The two between them have misruled Bihar with a rare vengeance.
The pull of caste and community having become the sole determinant of electoral politics in the State, Yadav has done precious little to pull Bihar out of the morass of back-breaking poverty and backwardness. The belated announcement about the cancellation of the scheduled December 23 rally in Patna has, admittedly, come as a concession to good sense, albeit inspired by the tough attitude of the CEC who had ordered the dismantling of the RJD billboards appealing to voters to attend the rally and the cancellation of the special trains and buses which the party had commandeered to ferry people to it.
Notwithstanding its embarrassment, it is remarkable that neither the PM nor his boss, Sonia Gandhi, has uttered a word edgeways in disapproval of the antics of the RJD boss. Their silence is further testimony to the kind of forces which hold the gentleman PM to ransom almost daily.
This was the second time in a week
that Yadav had engaged the attention of Parliament for his misconduct.
Earlier, he had called certain railway employees murderers without caring
to come to the House to make a statement on the railway accident near Jallandhar
in Punjab. Yadav can be relied upon to cast his ugly spell on the Government
of gentleman-PM.