news details |
|
|
| What 'netas' want? | | |
M L Kotru |
The audience might love the funda of Gandhigiri but the netas of this era not only enjoy all the benefits that lie in their post but also seem to get away with the deals made under the table.
It costs the nation a fortune to keep him in poverty. These, or words to this effect were very fondly spoken by Sarojini Naidu, the late freedom fighter and “nightingale” of India to describe the cost of “maintaining” Gandhi and his very, very simple life style.
Sarojini Naidu who had worked and known Gandhiji for years, she was once the President of the Indian National Congress, was obviously speaking in jest and clearly as an ardent admirer of the Father of the Nation.
But in post-independence India, we have been face to face with the problem of keping our “leaders”, in various stages of physical decay, alive at astronomical cost to the nation, a nation where one third of the population still finds it difficult to get two square meals a day or have little or no access to medical attention.
I know many would find it distasteful if I were to name the men and women for whose physical survival, we the people are expected to pay regularly, ungrudgingly. We have to send them to foreign lands to get the kind of treatment which perhaps may not be available within the country. This, at a time when we are also told of many Indian institutions becoming health destinations for the sick from foreign lands.
Our ailing leaders, those long past their prime or long retired from active political life, routinely find their way to hospitals, clinics, rehab centres in the West or wherever. Funds are never a problem. The Government has ways of addressing the needs of all such Ex-es. One such Ex-who comes to mind is Mr. V.P. Singh, the Raja of Manda, who also served as Prime Minister for a while. Mind you, I wish him well and would certainly not accuse him of getting the State to spend crores annually on keeping him among us, which it has anyway been doing for a number of years now.
The thing with V P Singh is that, even with his grave illness he manages to keep himself in the public eye. He may one day turn up in a cluster of jhuggies threatened with demolition by the civic authorities. He may join a bunch of protesters in Mumbai or even routinely address public meetings between his unending sessions of dialysis. Even in declining health, he is at least trying to actively identify himself with issues considered worthy of his support.
His logic has been simple. To be a leader of men you don’t need any special skills. Like, he told a small group of us at lunch, when he was the PM: “Do you know how one becomes a leader. Take the village well. It serves, say, some 200 households and everyone wants to be the first to draw water before its level falls. They jostle one another; they start fights.
Then along comes a man or woman who decides to do something about it. He or she asks all to stand in a queue and wait their turn to get one or two bucket full of water. Everyone seems satisfied having got his need of water-water for every household. The man who made them stand in a queue is the leader”. End of the story.
If the same leader uses the Bofors scandal to unsettle Rajiv Gandhi’s government and then promises answers to the Bofors riddle within 15 days of his becoming the Prime Minister, without ever delivering on it, that is another story. It is much bigger than the crowd at the well.
But there is no denying Singh. Trust him to find causes and the latest one which he has found and which is bound to earn him a lot of public support in UP is the Mulayam Singh’s government’s allotment at a throwaway price of 2,500 acres of fertile farmland, at Dadri on the outskirts of Delhi in Uttar Pradesh to Anil Ambani.
Singh, the doughty survivor has chosen Raj Babbar, the disenchanted Samajwadi Party MP to spearhead his movement against Mulayam Singh. Babbar already in a tangle with the SP is now nailing against the iniquitous deal struck by Mulayam Singh and his mascot, Amar Singh with “younger brother”, Anil Ambani. Anil incidentally resigned his Rajya Sabha membership, a seat won by him courtesy Amar Singh.
The problem, as Singh, Babbar and their newly floated Jana Morcha see it is that 2,500 acres of fertile land worth Rs.15,000 crores has been given to Anil Ambani for setting up a 3,600 MW gas-based power plant whose gas supplies are still in doubt.
Gas-based power plants it is pointed out, are not land intensive. The National Thermal Power Corporation operates a 440 MW plant in Faridabad and is set to increase its generating capacity to 900MW. It occupies an area of just 50 acres. The Anil Ambani project would at the very best have needed some 200 acres for a plant the gas supply to which is not assured at all.
The question that Singh asks is why did the Mulayam Singh government choose to allot 2,500 acres of fertile land abutting Delhi to Anil Ambani when much less valuable non-agricultural land is available at many places within UP. And the price tag attached to it by Mulayam and Amar makes the deal a virtual steal.
At about Rs 120 a square yard against the market rate of Rs.15,000 per square yard, Anil Ambani can make his gas-based plant virtually at no cost to the company. Genuine valuation of the land alone should set cash flow in motion for Anil Ambani to get his plant rolling, that is if he has assured gas supply to fall back on.
Given his sharp political instincts and Babbar’s robust attacking skills the twosome have chosen a line of attack against the discredited Mulayam-Amar Singh regime in UP which can only add to its embarrassment in an election year.
Babbar, who has run an unrelenting campaign against Amar Singh for several months, after the actor was suspended from the Samajwadi Party, is bound to highlight the Anil-Amar-Mulayam nexus in the allotment of Dadri land causing serious financial loss to the cash-strapped State government apart from the severe loss suffered by the farmers whose lands were acquired.
And the other question that will figure high on his and Singh’s agenda is why was Dadri chosen as the place to be given away to Ambani. There is talk around that given its proximity to Delhi the Anil Ambani group may use a substantial area of the land “purchased” by it for constructing glitzy malls, multiplexes et al on the periphery of Delhi.
Ambani is already into the multiplex business elsewhere. May be with his latest acquisition of land on Delhi’s outskirts he may be wanting to provide competition to the malls and multiplexes of Gurgaon or who knows even in Noida or may be in Delhi itself.
Mulayam may be coincidence have provided V P Singh a chance to hone his known political skills. With a younger man, Babbar, the MP from Agra, beside him he may even figure in the electoral equations in the upcoming elections to the State Assembly.
You cannot deny the Raja of Manda his share of political sunshine however much you may disapprove of the man’s sanctimonious posturing.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
