Art of bluffing people

Media Eye

The politics in India has come of age and so do the bootleggers, bootlickers and law-twisters. Democracy has been reduced to ‘demoncracy’ now. The political class of the pre-independence era seldom smacked of debauchery and chicanery. Sixty seven year down the lane, we find everything in chaotic state.

‘If we grab power, we will free the state from its ninety-eight thousand crore debt,’ bluffeda prominent Maharashtra politician, seducing millions of hoi polloi a decade ago.The debt has multiplied and reached an astronomical figure now. Their ramblings, rantings, musings and utterings are all to keep the people in good humour.

Many development projects kick-started by the government promised to rehabilitate the people dislocated by it, but alas! Years after year disappeared like snowflakes but no sops reached them. Dushyant Kumar, a poet who died at the tender age of 32, wrote, ‘Yehantakaateaatesookhjaateinhainkainadiyan, hameinmaloomhaipaneekahanthehrahuahoga’ (Numerous rivers dry up prior to reaching here we know where the water has stuck). In Bihar, infamous for charlatans and political chicanery, during 80s work of a hydroelectricity project – called Subernrekha Project - on Chandil River in Ranchi district (now in Jharkhand) was in full swing. The area, which was surrounded by lush green overarching mountains, serpentine streams and dense forest (now, it is on the verge of extinction), was the home to distraught tribals and adivasis who were displaced and more than a quarter of century had passed since they are languishing behind uncertainty and yet not rehabilitated! A cruel joke played on them by the power that be. A scribe of an English tabloid Amrit Bazar Patrika who was trying to bust the racket was showered with bullets on Chandil highway! It is the political cannibalism at its worst.

Even our comrades are trying to dust every single grains of ‘Marxian truth’ from their totalitarian attire! Laissez faire has shoved aside the centralized economy. Kolkata will no longer portray a familiar picture of trade unionists holding placards with lustrous red sickle-hammer chanting monotonous ‘Band karo’ (shut down) mantra. Now the poor artists and scribes are soon to shut down their business. Thanks to the didi and her megalomaniac ways.