[HumJanenge] Fw: Singh and his Many Clowns- Article by Dr Jay Dubashi

*Singh and his many clowns**

By Dr Jay Dubashi

*
INDIAN newspapers and magazines are getting bigger and bigger – some as many
as 50 pages thick – and more numerous. There was a time I used to take 20
newspapers every day and ten magazines. Now we take only five or so, and I
finish them, with the exception of one or two, in five minutes flat. I
hardly read any of them, though many are very colourful, in more senses than
one, but most of them are boring, and carry the same stories.

I read them for professional reasons, otherwise who would want to read P
Chidambaram's outpourings day in and day out and Kapil Sibal's silly jokes?
Most of these Johnnies have a habit of holding forth on subjects about which
they know nothing. Chidambaram talks about terrorism and terrorists ad
nauseam, though he has not caught a single terrorist as far. Sibal thinks he
is a very witty man, but all he does is put the readers to sleep.

I have therefore devised a new index – I call it Trust Index or TI. Can,
these people really be trusted to tell us the truth? Or are they just
shooting the wind, as the Americans say? For instance, what Jairam Ramesh
knows about environment can be jotted on the back of a postcard, so why
should anybody read his monotonous stuff every morning? Pranab Mukherjee
goes on and on, in his inimitable Oxford accent, about inflation, on which
he must be quite an expert, considering that he has been talking about it
for the last thirty years. Everytime he says prices are going down, they
invariably go up, though never vice-versa. There was a time when Manmohan
Singh was a certified economist, and not a politician, and I used to read
whatever he said quite carefully, but since becoming a politician, he seems
to have forgotten his economics and many of us just turn the page and go to
the film section when his statements appear.

For those of you who wish to skip bogus statements on terrorism, corruption
and Kashmir, here is a useful guide:

*P Chidambaram: *The man would be more convincing without his cut-glass
Harvard – or is it Harlem – accent. He has nothing much to say and takes too
long to say it. The fellow gives the impression of reading out the same
prepared statement over and over again, which may be fun for junior
reporters who have not heard him before, but must be driving most readers
nuts. How many times can you repeat that you have sent yet another list of
terrorists to Islamabad, though everybody knows it is the same list typed on
a different typewriter? I try to avoid Chidambaram as much as I can, and so
should you. His Trust Index: 2, on a scale of 1 to 10.

*Kapil Sibal :* I often wonder whether even he knows what he is saying or
trying to say. He has a permanent grin on his face, like a man who has just
come out of a circus, just seen a Charlie Chaplin film. As far as I am
concerned, his Trust Index is minus 10, which means I turn the page
everytime I see his mug, and save a lot of time. The time I save I devote to
cartoons, except when he, that is, Sibal appear in cartoons too.

*Pranab Mukherjee : *The kindest thing you can say about our good friend
Pranabda is that he is totally predictable – so you can skip his statements
on inflation or investment without feeling guilty. Moreover, since I have
known him, off and on, for nearly thirty years, I know by heart what he is
going to say, for that is what he said ten, twenty or thirty years ago,
without changing a comma. I have a feeling he has the same steno he used to
have then, so all our friend has to do is say, File 112, and out comes the
old file on foreign investment, or inflation, or food prices, and you have a
ready-made statement before Pranabda has his morning rasgullah. Since the
economy has not changed all that much—farmers are still committing suicide
and Sharad Pawar is still purchasing land in Baramati – all you have to do
is revise a few figures and hey presto! You have your statement ready. I
rarely read Mukherjee's statements – all inflations are after all the same –
and, I suspect, so does Mukherjee himself. Trust Index : - 4

*Prakash Karat : *I feel sorry for this man, but I think he asked for it. He
will go down as India's Mikhail Gorbachev, who saw Soviet Russia collapse
under him but could do little about it just as Karat who saw West Bengal go
down under him, as he watched helplessly from Delhi. Karat belongs to the
new breed of urban cowboys who have never led a strike, never worked with
their hands and never shared a meal with workers. His party destroyed West
Bengal and now West Bengal has destroyed his party. This is the new law of
politics.

You destroy people, and people destroy you. Karat will hang around TV
channels as does Gorbachev, cadging money from capitalists who must be
laughing all the way to their banks. Trust Index: Zero.

*Lalu Prasad Yadav : *What a long name for a non-entity. Lalu is to Bihar
what Karat & Co are to West Bengal. Karat & Co were serious about destroying
West Bengal, for this is what communists always do when they find people are
turning against them. Didn't Joseph Stalin massacre millions of kulaks when
they disobeyed him? The Marxists did the same in Shingur and elsewhere. So
did Lalu & Co in Bihar, though it was a slow death by starvation. It was
after a decade of Lalu that the Biharis realised what was happening, that
the sweet-talking rustic was fooling them and taking them for a ride, while
lining his own packets. So they dumped him in the Ganga at Patna and made
sure he would never rise again. People always take their revenge on those
who betray them, whether it is communists in Soviet Russia or Lalu in Bihar.
Trust Index: Minus 5.

*Manmohan Singh : *And now the great Manmohan Singh. Never has
administration in India been so corrupt as under this Singh. I doubt whether
after what has happened in the various scams, there is an Indian who trusts
him. It is surprising how a man with such a clean image, would allow
thousands of babus and corporates under him – and politicians too—to go
berserk and loot the treasury with such abandon. A few years ago, before the
loot came to light, his Trust Index would have been quite high. But the man
has spoilt his copy-book so badly, he does not deserve anything but minus
two!
**