Palace loyalties do public dis-service

We often want to believe that India is changing.  We take great pride in diving deep into the images of our society and sift through them to find those hints of change - that we don't hang from the trees our forefathers grew. We pride in our sense of maturity and impartial judgment to say that we form our opinions on the basis of context.  We want the world to believe that India is neither personality centric nor is a society of irrational old loyalties.  And when we try to paint the picture of change, we present proudly the agents of change like the media.

But a careful observation defies this bold projection of ourselves as an impartial, impersonal and ingenuous society that implicitly falls in line with the imperative change.

This phenomenon is more evident in the way the old guard of Press and some stalwarts of the media have behaved in the post May 16 Parliamentary Elections and Oct 19, Maharastra & Haryana Assembly  electoral results.  The whole world has noticed and accepted that the royalty of India, exemplified by the heir to the throne and his mother regent have been thrown into the dust bin of history and their palatial political party has been disregarded as irrelevant by the people of India.  But yet, there are senior journalists in the country, mainly based in Delhi and few in Mumbai, who have not shaken off their palace loyalties.  They refuse to recognize the change.  They fall deaf to the voice of people.  They continue to eulogize and empathize with the Congress Party which brought the Nation to its lowest low, its sublime masters and the glory of that old era. During result day debate, they were looking totally shattered, not ready to believe that People of India have voted for the change. These journalists use all powers in their disposal, the television channels they own, the newspapers they print and the platforms they coordinate to keep alive the glory or Congress that only exists now in their distant memory.

By all means, this is betrayal of the public desire for change.  This mindset of old faithfulness is an insult to the voices of democracy and in defiance to the popular will.  At a time when the vehicle of nation is trying to roll smooth on the boulevard of time, these irrational old loyalties are an irritant spoke in the wheel of progress.

V K SAXENA
PRESIDENT
National Council for Civil Liberties,
 Ahmedabad.

Twiter:@VKSaxena26

Land'ing an untenable argument: Priyanka's crash landing

What a pity! And what a comparison Priyanka is making between the land grabbing of her husband with the land development by Adanis in Gujarat.  What Robert Vadra did was something that the Sicilian Mafiosi does in the homeland of his mother- in-law.  He bought the land without making payments and passed on to someone else for a profit, coercing the administration to oil the deal.

 He did not develop the land nor employ people nor show any social orientation, but in turn increased his earning and increased the land cost. And in trying to defend this sleazy deal, Priyanka is comparing it to a case of land allotment, development, employment generation, overall growth and social upliftment.  She has nose dived and crash landed her plane of political argument.

Mr Adani has already clarified that most of the land to his company was allotted by the Congress Govt in 1993.  Modi Govt has allotted only 5000 acres of land in 2006 for SEZ project, which was sanctioned by the current UPA Government after due diligence and observance of necessary procedures.

What Priyanka and Congress should note is that more than Rs 40,000 corers of investment came to Mundra during the last 10 yeas.  The project has generated more than15000 direct and indirect employment , over Rs 5000 to Rs 6000 corers of annual revenue generation to the Govt of India through excise and custom duties and above all, with  the development of a barren and marshy area,  the land cost benefit has directly accrued to local villagers. 

 Further, as recent as on 24th April 2014, the Gujarat High court refused  to interfere with the industrial policy of the Gujarat Government and rejected a PIL challenging the 'soft loan' and “land  allocation” to Tatas for the Nano plant  project in Sanand near Ahmedabad. The bench of Chief Justice Bhaskar Bhattacharya in its order stated that "State's industrial policy has not been found inappropriate in connection with the land allocation for the establishment of Tata's Nano car plant, in which this court shall not intervene,"

Priyanka's love to keep her family peace is understandable. But her comparison of her husband's land deals with a national development plan is deplorable. In fact, she is drawing more attention to her husband's shady deal and is making him further infamous by taking the line of argument that she has.

VK Saxena

NCCL

Ahmedabad