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Humor / Satire
A Minister�s Lament
by
Kannan Kasturi
Are, yaar, the
last month has been just full of bad news. Every two bit Government babu
is out to disgrace us.
Charges have been framed against Dayanand the Law Minister of Goa in
what the newspapers like to call the �fake ticket scam�. These include
charges related to cheating, criminal conspiracy, forgery, etc �. a long
list. If you can�t remember the details, let me tell you. Fake tickets
were sold during the India-Australia ODI back in April 2001 and some
people with genuine tickets who could not get in into the stadium
created a ruckus and were lathi charged. Dayanand was then the President
of the Goa cricket association. This case really smacks of persecution �
after all, that was such a long time ago and only a matter of a few
tickets and a cricket match. Hopefully, all will still end well.
Taking about law, there is Jamuna Prasad who has been accused of taking
the law into his own hands. He was only trying to get justice for a
member of his constituency when he visited the police station with 60
supporters (the newspapers called it a �mob� attack). A constable
attached to the police station died and Jamuna Prasad resigned his job
as the UP Fisheries Minister. To add insult to injury, he has been
arrested now.
Ajai Ji�s case is most unfair. The Health Minister of M.P. was known for
taking good care of his larger family and even treating the department
and its contractors and suppliers as an extended family. Just think of
his plight, being forced to resign just because of income tax raids on
his brother, wife, father and various present and former health
department officials, businessmen engaged in the supply of medicines and
health department contractors.
Even women ministers are not being spared embarrassment. Take Shrimati
Poongothai of Tamil Nadu. I am not saying she did anything wrong, but
what was wrong if she did ask a vigilance department official over the
phone to go easy on her cousin in a corruption case? How will a minister
be able to hold up her head if she cannot defend her own family? And
that too, she is responsible for social welfare! But some good may yet
come out of this. The Tamil Nadu Government is, rightly, probing how the
minister�s phone conversations with officials are being tapped and made
public. Hopefully, lessons will be learnt and all state governments will
make their ministers� communications more secure.
As you see, all in all, the last month has been really bad.
However, the one incident that upset me deeply dates back to August of
last year. My dear colleague, Bishnu was confronted with allegations
that he ordered his son Bijoy�s high school exam marks to be increased.
School Board officials found discrepancies between marks awarded and
those recorded in the mark sheet - 89 in Oriya in place of 39, 80 in
English in place of 50, 54 in Social Science paper II instead of 45 and
so on. Bishnu denied the charge and attributed the increased marks to a
computer error. (Very clever of him, wasn�t it?) But being a thorough
gentleman, he accepted moral responsibility for the computer error and
resigned as the Minister for School and Mass Education, Orissa. Poor
Bishnu!
There is no job security anymore, yaar. How in heaven are we expected to
meet our obligations to family, friends, constituency and country?
June 22, 2008
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