Dr R L Bhat
Does an opposition have to criticize each and every decision of the Government? Of course, not; they all swear by healthy opposition. Yet, that is what the puny politicking has reduced democratic dynamics to. The Congress party brining out the former Defence Minister to spit upon the Government’s acceptance of OROP was nothing short of boorish bickering over something that they should have done earlier, after having accepted it in principle. Without explaining what exactly prevented their government from putting the principle into practice, the Congress has tried to cash on the small differences the ex-servicemen have with the announced package. It did earn the veterans a speedy inclusion of the VRS personnel. For the rest, it was crying foul over something the Congress itself had fouled.
As it is, all the words used in this war without a front are facile. The package may be disappointing to some of the veterans, but it can in no way be called ‘totally disappointing’. Coming from Congress the words were doubly dodgy. The congressman, generally oozing a wily outlook, actually dodged when asked if they favored extending it to the paramilitary, saying ‘we wait for the PM to take a stand’. Probably, to decide how to oppose it! So how was OROP package ‘totally disappointing’ save for the party’s own prospects? Equally foxing is the fact that the former Defence Minister called the package a betrayal. A betrayal of what and whom? Their own hope that the issue would simmer for the next three years and they would point to ‘BJP betrayal’ and make a fresh promise to wean the veterans over! There was also a juvenile attempt by another former UPA-ally and chief minister to do silly sums over the demand and declare ‘OROP fail’.
Thankfully, the schools now do not fail students in primary classes. Else there would be casualties in the language course too. For, the former Defence Minister whose hallmark has been sobriety said that the package mocked the forces. How, sir? As it is, the package was not something of a birth right. It was a demand. In a setting where governments are giving in to all types of undeserved demands by their employees to humor them, forces are the group that deserves whatever easement the nation can offer. The people of this country would be collectively happy, and better served, if all the petrol pumps the politicians keep garnering are given to the veterans , by law, on their service merit. Keeping the veterans in limbo was not any honorable act. There, the present government too has not shown wonted sensitivity towards the force, it so often capitalizes on. The promised ‘within 100-days’ dragged to hundreds of days, with seventy-two of agitation half of which was a hunger strike by the veterans. However, Congress is hardly the one to complain here, much less talk of mocking the forces.
Of course, there was evident hyperbole on the government side. It is too much calling your final bowing to the protracted agitation for implementing the long-made promise anything ‘historic’ save in an ironical sense. Had the new government announced OROP on taking over, or soon after, it’d have been something historic in decision-making. Like the BJP president getting his post on the quick! Probably, the only good this war of words has done is tell the oft invoked word clutch ‘after 40-years’ for its truth. India was not discovered last year nor did it attain greatness, respectability, clout and the standing in the comity of nations after 60-years. Like the mangalyaan, the Prime Minister talked of so well over his US visit last year, India of 2015 has been long amaking. This country, how so hoary, may still have been a land of shamanistic gurus and snake charmers had not Nehru laid the foundations of modernism so earnestly and so deep, sixty years and more ago. The development everybody is today enamored of, takes off from that founding.
‘After 30-years’ applied when Vajpayee took to power, in 1977, as a part of Janata government. Today, it is simply incorrect. The 40-years since, which would be completed in two years hence, include regularly changing governments at the center through which almost every political party from BJP to CPM has held power at the centre, at least thrice. During the 40 years since 1977, BJP was in power six times. It was a major partner in three ruling coalition’s and practically overturned two of them, directly or indirectly. Leaving aside the symbolic 13-day rule when Nitish Kumar hailed Vajpayee as a ‘Bihari’ for having the word in his name, BJP has been the ruling partner in another three formations, including the present one with full majority. Clearly pasting the last 40-years on Congress does not stand the scrutiny with facts.
Those facts tell that BJP dithered over OROP as much as did the Congress and all other parties. All of them paid lip service to the demand of veterans and none implemented it. That the present government too delayed it as long as it could, tells that there were potent, if not material, impediments there. Probably, they were bureaucratic spanners tripping the works, but all they tell is the lack of political will. All parties at one time or the others bowed to the irrational fears and inchoate calculations. At long last the present government has overruled them. It must get the credit for that, though not of the hyperbolic variety its loquacious drum beaters are claiming. At the same time, it is churlish of the opposition, particularly the Congress, to grope at the stray straws sticking out of the OROP package to eke out a living.
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