We haven’t commented on the Finance Minister for long!
Let us make him the Deputy Prime Minister at once!
Don’t burden him with the routine finance minister’s job!
He can serve the nation much better with his vast experience in the government!
He can be a real asset for better governance today!
The time has come for some radical change in our governance. The successful resolution of the Anna Hazare demands perhaps solely owes to the negotiating skills of Mr.Pranab Mukerjee, the longest serving minister in the Indian government.
We have only clearly saw how the Congress party and the Congress-led government collapsed in the wake of Anna Hazare’s mass agitation. However unpalatable this subject would prove to be in the coming days, it is a bitter experience for those in New Delhi, who would be continuing to serve in the ruling party as well as in the government.
Very plainly, the Sonia Gandhi-selected persons proved to be unequal to their tasks. Be they the party lights or the government lights, they proved for they are really worth.
First, the ministers. P.Chidambaram and Kapil Sibal were really over-rated. They simply proved this assumption. They were at best, yes, very clever lawyers; we don’t know how their legal acumen would have helped their clients in a court of law. In the political sphere their peoples’ management skills, the y proved disasters! So, very soon they went off the limelight and they had to chew their bitter arrogance of power and poor judgments they made of the emerging political scenario.
Poor men, indeed! As for others like Ambika Soni and others, they were very soon nowhere!
As for the Prime Minister, we saw a pathetic figure; he was coming down every step with a pathetic climb down!
Anna’s demands were “misconceived”, he said. He also exposed himself when he put out his understanding of the Constitutional and other Parliamentary principles. His speech writers led down the PM, they led his astray. Yes, this has to be recorded for posterity! How can the PM say that he had had no knowledge of the Constitutional and Parliamentary principles when he knows or should have only known or asked for briefing on the subject. There is enough history, enough principles. We saw how eminent Constitutional experts and lawyers (Names we leave out here) who were reminding us, the people, about Parliament being supreme! As though people under the Constitution were not! This was the real reason why the PM was misled to say the things and line he needn’t have done. Very soon the situation changed, the tides changed and the PM had to come out with lauding the agitators and even “saluting” Anna!
It was at this stage that Pranab Mukerjee was brought in and once the FM came into the scene the negotiating team had a sensitive and flexible negotiator. So too, Salman Kurshid and Sandeep Dixit and other voices from the party and the government lent some healing touch.
Mr.Mukerjee is a seasoned persona and his soothing touch made a big change. So too the negotiators from Anna side and also the role of others like Vilasrao Deshmukh made a big difference.
So, the point we want to make here is this.
The finance minister presides over a crucial portfolio.
Unfortunately ,the FM’s power and his hold on the portfolio ,while remain intact, there are very many areas under his grip, like, say bank lending to farming sector, to the micro sector, to the marginal and small farmers segment, for instance, all call for deeper concentration and greater thinking for some very radical innovations.
Unfortunately, under the Singh regime, the agriculture sector, why even the rural sector has various critical small scale sectors, like artist and, weavers and other farm and non-farm rural sectors and segments which are feeling great uncertainties and insecurities.
The agricultural sector had been thoroughly submerged under various pulls and pressures from the very banking sector’s own challenges and new business expansion opportunities.
Every bank, why, even the very banking sector faces new challenges, from outside world.
Everyone thinks of the big picture, bigger the better is the motto.
In this scenario, with the PM surrounded by experts, there are too many advisory committees, too much thought about rates of growth every day!
These are all too confusing for the average citizen, more so for the farmers and the villagers.
Don’t the government realise that there is a very different mood today?
The government and the party stands to lose today if they don’t take proactive and also very radical steps to reach out the people.
As for the Sonia Gandhi’s stewardship of the party the less said the better.
So, there is a need to unburden the FM’s workload and so he can concentrate where his energies are badly needed.
Let us make Pranabda, as he is affectionately, called the Deputy Prime Minister at once.
So that the separate and independent minister of state, again we need a well-thought out person to work exclusively for the farm banking sector to accelerate and concentrate focussedly on the farm lending sector.
Many states have now announced, almost interest free crop loans or one percent or two percent loan. These are much better subsidies rather than foolish free TVs and wet grinders or free cows and goats!
All shee4r waste of tax payers money!
Time, we effect changes in the mass sector that is farm sector indeed!
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