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| May 29, 2000 | ||
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| Price
of Power Why a Congress-BJP detente on subsidies would work
That economic lesson apart, there is the question of the Congress' responsibility of not jeopardising the economic reforms its government set in motion a decade ago. Singh's colleagues in the party, men and women with no sense of reforms and an even more economic sense of responsibility, will argue that it is not the Opposition's job to facilitate governance. True -- but with no major elections due for at least a year, with a larger national goal in mind, surely the Congress and the BJP can do business together? The precedent of the Insurance Bill -- passed by the Lok Sabha because the two major parties wanted it to be -- is there for all to follow. Such a collaboration will also rid India of a perverted face of federalism -- the tyranny of small parties. Today they torment the BJP; tomorrow it could be the Congress. Blackmail by subsidy cuts both ways. The big two can save themselves by being alone -- together. The Beauty Myth An anatomical adjective to women's empowerment Beauty
shall save the world. Yes, Dostoevsky, it should. But you were too
aesthetic, too metaphorical, to provide us with the anatomical size of
beauty. Ah, you were not an Indian, and O, really? No Lara, we are not tarnishing your beautifully painted image, we are only refusing to stalk you, as Nabokov in Lolita, with breathless La-Lara-Dahling. And true, Lara, we are not unaware of your singular contribution to the market, even if it's just cosmetic. We have a problem with the sociology of Lara Dutta Our Beautiful Lady of Salvation, our beautiful rejoinder to the stereotype of Indian womanhood -- burning bride/widow. Lara as an alphabetical reduction of emancipation is phony sociology. When we say this, mind you, we are not echoing the high-mindedness of the anti-beauty antiquarians on the street. You are a beautiful diversion, the delight of a nascent industry dominated by the brand manager, the body manager, the embalmer, the hairdresser and the tailor. But when these new industrialists say beauty shall save India, sorry, we miss Fyodor Dostoevsky. |
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It
is easy to see Manmohan Singh's passionate criticism of India's
"unsustainable" and "unmerited" subsidies as further
evidence of the Congress' lack of cohesion. After all, on the very day the
former finance minister said his piece in the Rajya Sabha, the rest of the
Congress brass was trying to
persuade the prime minister to reverse subsidy cuts. India's annual
subsidy bill is an astronomical Rs 1,30,000 crore. As Singh himself
pointed out, if this were to be equally distributed among the 300 million
people living below the poverty line, each of them would get Rs 4,000 a
month. It is patently obvious, particularly after the report on wasteful
subsidies commissioned by P. Chidambaram in 1997, that this internal drain
of wealth pampers only an affluent class and contributes to India's
abysmal social development indices. Every time the man from Matunga buys a
discounted train ticket, a village in Darbhanga spends another day without
water.
Russians,
figuratively speaking, liked big size with substance, like the good old
Russian novels. Still, beauty couldn't save Mother Russia from the wrath
of history. But Mother India -- or, Daughter India? -- is hopeful. Her
hope: beauty shall save her from the inherited social wretchedness, and
place her in the vital centre of the marketplace of appearance. The latest
universal synonym for beauty, Lara Dutta, only reinforces her hope. There
she is, queen of the newsprint heart, her crown desperately trying to
achieve a perfect harmony between sociology and economy, staring at us
with the confidence of the one who has conquered. Move over American
Beauty, the Third World Beauty is in -- that too offscreen.