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| Only miniscule moves, ‘grey areas’ bigger | | | Kunal Shrivatsa
JAMMU, May 21: Rattled by the crushing defeat in Lok Sabha polls, the Omar Abdullah led National Conference-Congress coalition government, in a last ditch effort to repackage itself, has introduced a slew of measures including lifting of four year ban on the Short Message Service (SMS) on prepaid cell phones and scrapping of two and a half year old Recruitment Policy but it could be termed as a case of 'too little and too late'.
While the Short Message Services on pre-paid as well post paid connections were banned in the state at the peak of 'pro-azadi' agitation in June 2010 to plug-in rumour spreading, the new recruitment policy was implemented after a Cabinet Decision on October 19, 2011, prescribing the fixed salary mode for the recruitment of Class-III, Class-IV and other Non-Gazetted categories of staff in the government and other terms and conditions of employment.
However, by lifting ban on prepaid SMSes and doing away with the Recruitment policy, the Chief Minister Omar Abdullah and his colleagues within NC and Congress have inadvertently admitted that they had committed a mistake by going ahead with such decisions and now they are repenting.
But they seem to forget that 'much water has flown' and the anger of the people will not vanish into thin air in one go with these minuscule steps as there are other 'grey areas' which need to be attended immediately.
Issues like rampant corruption, ill-planning and delay in execution of development works be it incomplete roads in rural areas, shabby government school buildings, poor infrastructure in hospitals and several other areas also affected the day to day life of people and which added to the annoyance of general public. Such matters of public importance must also draw present regime's attention but where is the time to resolve these as only four to five months are left for the next Assembly elections.
Had the Parliamentary elections held a year earlier, the Government's damage control exercise could have bore fruits but this is not the proper time to reconnect with the people and soothing them at this stage could only be described as an act of desperation and nothing else.
A little first aid here and there simply will not bring the voters back to the National Conference and Congress camp. Both the alliance partners are seemingly in decline mode, needs a major surgery to recover from this cataclysmic defeat at the hands of the Peoples' Democratic Party in Kashmir valley and Bharatiya Janta Party in Jammu and Ladakh regions. |
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