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Great
Leap for Reforms The failure of the transporters' strike is good news for the economy
Even more heartening for the protagonists of economic reforms was the reaction of the common man. Despite a temporary flare-up in the prices of vegetables and fruits and the prospects of an all-round increase in passenger fares, people seem convinced of the imperatives of raising diesel prices. In fact, attempts by certain leaders of the Congress and Left parties to mobilise a mass movement against the price hike were met with frustrating indifference. Clearly, people have understood better than politicians that good economics makes for good politics. The realisation couldn't have come at a better time than now when the economy has run out of soft options and needs an urgent dose of a second-generation bold reforms. Hopefully, the Vajpayee Government will deliver just that in the coming days. Culture of Indifference The ruling regime lacks vision and human resource in the arena of arts
So one cannot but sympathise with the situation that the new Union Minister for Culture Ananth Kumar must find himself in. Beginning with the national scandal involving the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, he needs to act on several fronts-and fast. But before he does so, he needs to inform himself of the many, rather complex and layered issues involved with the various cultural organisations and programmes that come under his charge. The new minister will have to balance the ambitions of mofussil mediocrities trying to find a space on the national platform on the one hand and the metropolitan fashionable elite that with dazzling alacrity manages to attach itself to the coat-tails of anyone who comes to power in Delhi. Contrary to popular political perception, culture is not a peripheral portfolio. If handled right it can pay rich dividends to both the country and the minister in charge. Only it should not be treated as a punishment posting. |
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When Surface Transport Minister Nitish
Kumar signed an agreement with transporters at 11 p.m. on October 27, it signified
something far more than an end to the week-long truckers' strike. It was a major victory
for economic reforms in India. For once a non-populist but much-needed price hike by the
Government was allowed to be implemented without even a partial roll-back. Seldom had in
the past administered price increases of this dimension been allowed to be implemented in
totality. In his last stint as Union finance minister, Yashwant Sinha had earned the tag
of a "roll-back minister" for the series of price withdrawals he was forced to
undertake on products ranging from urea to petrol. In January this year too, the
long-pending hike in the prices of foodgrains sold through the PDS had to be rolled back
partially to pacify an agitating opposition. The refusal to give in to the threats of
transporters and the Opposition on diesel price hike signals a great leap in the
Government's ability to undertake bold reforms. Especially since that ability has been
displayed by a 25-party coalition Government. 
For a party that pays so much lip
service to "our cultural heritage", the bjp Government headed by poet-Prime
Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee now needs to get its cultural agenda in place. Much as it
may decry and attempt to dismantle the self-perpetuating coteries that had entrenched
themselves in national cultural bodies under successive governments since the time of
Indira Gandhi, the fact remains that the present regime lacks vision and human resource
when it comes to the arena of arts. Something that the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty used with such
finesse to win for itself an image perhaps rivalled only by that of the Great Moghuls.
Proffering the blinkered and simplistic viewpoint of the rss-vhp variety as an alternative
will neither address this lacuna nor provide the Government any brownie points with even
those who do not belong to the Congress-Marxist combine.