The article below written by M J Akbar makes lot of sense.
Worth spending a while.
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*Why there is no Amethi model*
*MJ Akbar*
Have you ever wondered, amidst the manufactured debate about the Gujarat
model of development, why there is never any talk of an “Amethi model”? No
mystery there. There is no development in Amethi. Congress cannot talk
about something that does not exist. When your track record is regression,
the only choice is pre-emptive aggression.
In the same decade when Amethi was wallowing in stagnation despite having
the second most powerful person in India as its Member of Parliament,
Gujarat was lifted from agricultural growth of around 2% to 10%. A few
simple facts should suffice, without any overdose of statistics: with 5% of
India’s population, Gujarat now soaks up 18% of national investment and
contributes 26% towards its exports. Most important, a substantive portion
of the meagre growth in employment during the arid decade between 2004 and
2014 has come from Gujarat. If Rahul Gandhi had done a quarter as much for
Amethi as Modi has done for Gujarat, he could have offered a far more
credible bid for leadership. Instead, his only option is silence on Amethi
and diversionary tactics on Gujarat.
If anything, non-UPA parties have so much surplus ammunition that they do
not quite know what to do with their reserve arsenal. In any other
election, observations made by the Supreme Court on Tuesday 22 April would
have made headlines. The highest court asked counsel of the Government of
India, in sharp and even acerbic terms, why UPA had refused to obey a Court
order to reveal names of Indians who had secret bank accounts in that
convenient state known as Liechtenstein. Refusing to buy the Congress’ limp
excuses for delay, the Court noted, “The direction to share the information
forthwith cannot be understood as after completion of investigation by SIT.
The Court said forthwith disclose…The language of the Court is clear. The
directions are crystal clear when it said disclose forthwith…From July 4,
2011 till now, the revenue secretary and the joint secretary in the
ministry of finance had kept our orders in cold storage.”
Such flagrant disobedience of a Supreme Court order is as astonishing as
the complacent reaction to such a cover-up. Why did UPA hide these names?
You can rest assured that if the list contained names of Opposition leaders
this would have been lead story on Doordarshan and All India Radio for
three years, and Congress spokespersons would have had a great deal to say
on each day of this election campaign.
Government protected these names only because they include either those at
the top of the present establishment pyramid or those within that charmed
circle.
If media has missed this message, then the people have not. Now that
voting machines have shut for nearly 350 Lok Sabha seats, it is quite
evident that the Congress game plan for 2014 has gone belly up. Its very
hinge, a total dependence on minorities, has been dislocated. Reports from
Mumbai indicate that Catholic voters, for instance, refused to follow any
diktat from a religious leader and went where their minds took them. A
significant proportion of Muslims in the city refused to vote at all,
rather than tread the traditional route to a Congress button.
The heart-warming reality is that a rising share of the electorate is
voting for its stomach, for its welfare, and for the nation’s economy,
rather than out of fear or emotionalism. It matters less who the voter
trusts than that it trusts a party for the right reasons. The young are
turning out to be the most mature voters within the demographic pattern,
for they have the most to lose from a lost economy. Their anger might have
been sufficient to push any government out, but their rage is now laced
with hope that Narendra Modi will restore the vision and horizon that has
faded.
Modi will have to deliver both as Prime Minister and as Member of
Parliament. In Varanasi, for instance, the tremendous enthusiasm of the
people, across all traditional fissures, is based on the conviction that
the massive ills within and around this ancient city, one of the great
intellectual capitals of world civilisation, will be healed and the region
nourished back to health. The phrase is not in use at the moment, but
within five years Narendra Modi will have to create a Varanasi model of
development, just as he has ensured a Gujarat model. That should become the
template in 2019 against which other constituencies will be measured.
If the vote is at an all-time high for Narendra Modi on the banks of
Ganga, and across the varied expanse of the Indian compass, then
expectations are even higher. It has been a hard slog towards the Lok
Sabha, but once he reaches that apex of democratic achievement, Narendra
Modi will have to turn his energies and mind back to the India that sent
him to Delhi.
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With best wishes
S Chander
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