| by
B.Raman
( December
25, 2012, Chennai, Sri Lanka Guardian) The Government of Prime Minister
Dr.Manmohan Singh and the Congress Party headed by Smt.Sonia Gandhi continue to
be clueless on how to deal with the situation arising from the mass outrage of
the youth of the country in the wake of the gang rape of a 23-year-old girl in
New Delhi.
There
are multiple causes for the mass outrage----
·
The failure of the police to prevent repeated crimes against
women,
·
the shockingly inept and brutal manner in which the police dealt
with crowds of youth protesting against the incident,
·
the inability of the Delhi State Government headed by Smt.Sheela
Dikshit to understand the seriousness of the situation and the magnitude of the
public anger and respond to it appropriately,
·
the lack of unity of action between the Ministry of Home Affairs
of the Government of India, which controls the Delhi Police through the
Lt.Governor, the Lt.Governor, who is responsible for law and order and crime
control in Delhi, and Smt.Sheela Dikshit, who, as the Chief Minister, is
responsible for the proper governance of Delhi,
·
the total lack of command and control over the functioning of the
Police,
·
the insensitivity of Shri
Sushil Kumar Shinde, the Home Minister, who lacks the ability for sophisticated
communication and portfolio management,
·
a Prime Minister, who neither rules nor governs nor controls and
who is devoid of any warmth in his interactions either in Parliament or with
the public,
·
a Congress President who exercises vast powers without a proper
understanding and appreciation of the feelings and sentiments of the people of
this country, specially the youth, and
·
the absence of competent political advisers to the Government, who
could make good the deficiencies of the political leadership and provide the
necessary correctives in dealing with internasl crisis situations.
Mechanisms
like the Political Affairs Committee of the Cabinet, the Cabinet Committee on
Security, the Secretaries’ Committee,
the Joint Intelligence Committee, the National Security Council Secretariat
(NSCS) and the National Security Advisory Board (NSAB), which were set up over
a period of time to provide a continuous flow of crisis-management,
strategic-thinking and policy-making inputs to the Prime Minister and his
Cabinet have not been functioning as they used to do under the previous Prime
Ministers.
The
de jure power and decision-making vacuum in the Prime Minister’s office and the
de facto accumulation of power in circles close to Smt.Sonia Gandhi have added
to the command and control confusion. During a discussion on the current
situation among retired government servants who had served under previous Prime
Ministers, someone posed the questions: Who is taking the key decisions? Where
are the key decisions being taken—in the Congress headquarters or in the PMO? Who
is responsible for ensuring the clarity and sophistication of public
communications and interactions? Who monitors the developments and suggests
action and policy options to the PM? There were no answers available.
There is a paralysis of governance in New
Delhi. Unless the existence of this paralysis is admitted and rectified, things
are not likely to improve. The Government and the Congress do not seem to be
unduly concerned over the public anger and the paralysis because the opposition
has not been able to come out with an alternate policy frame-work. The BJP
itself is in a state of semi organizational paralysis.
Shri
Narendra Modi, the Chief Minister of Gujarat, has come out with an alternate
style of governance in Gujarat, but his party and its present leadership have
not been able to give this alternate style of governance a pan-Indian
projection.
This state of affairs is unlikely to be
rectified by fresh elections to the Lok Sabha, whether held now or in 2014. The
country is in for a long period of misgovernance and administrative
paralysis till there is realization in
the Congress and the country over the evils of dynasty rule and over the need
to get out of its grip .
(
The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt of india,
New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai,
and Associate of the Chennai Centre for China Studies.E-mail:
seventyone2@gmail.com and Twitter : @SORBONNE75 )
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