Mainstream Weekly

Home > Archives (2006 on) > 2009 > July 2009 > Contours of the National Scene

Mainstream, Vol XLVII, No 29, July 4, 2009

Contours of the National Scene

Editorial

Tuesday 7 July 2009, by SC

#socialtags

On the eve of Parliament’s Budget session the Union Cabinet decided to enhance the price of petrol by Rs 4 per litre and that of diesel by Rs 2 per litre while keeping the prices of cooking gas and kerosene unchanged. The decision, implemented from the midnight of July 1-2, was in response to the increase in the global price of crude oil. Officials, however, are of the view that state-owned oil companies would continue to suffer losses even after this hike. Hence there is every possibility of further oil price hikes in the coming days.

Whatever the merits of the latest oil price enhancement, that it will impose a heavy burden on the public at large is beyond question. It is, therefore, quite natural that all Opposition parties as well as the DMK and Trinamul Congress from the ruling coalition have voiced strong opposition to the price hike on the Budget session’s opening day in both Houses of Parliament.

Meanwhile even as the public anger over the double murder in J&K’s Shopian has somewhat abated, the aftermath of an alleged kidnapping of a teenage girl in Baramulla has resulted in the death of four young men at the hands of the police and CRPF thus rocking the entire State once again. The authorities have been hard pressed, in the wake of such incidents, to ensure the return to normalcy at a time when the alienation of the Kashmiri citizens from the Indian state appears to scale new heights causing legitimate concern among all democratic forces pledged to uphold, safeguard and defend human rights regardless of the attitude of the North and South Blocks in this regard and their approach to tackling the situation rapidly spinning out of control. Nevertheless, it is doubtless welcome that bowing to the growing popular outrage the authorities have belatedly pulled out 35 companies of the CRPF from patrolling duty in Baramulla.

The Centre and State’s joint operation continues in Lalgarh in West Bengal’s West Midnapore district with the same result: not a single leading Maoist figure has been apprehended as the joint forces “liberate” the area for the benefit of the CPM’s harmad vahini to resume their depredations. And even as this “liberation” takes place, the total neglect of the region and the abject deprivation of the tribals inhabiting it are unmasked with every passing day of the military action. The Marxist Government in the State cannot think of anything beyond such a military operation to “eradicate” Maoism totally unconcerned as it is of the cause of the people’s near-total alienation in the entire tribal belt (comprising the State’s most backward territory). Their incomprehension of the ground reality only heightens their colossal ignorance of their own rural hinterland. (No wonder the Left Front Government in West Bengal has suffered another major reverse in the State’s civic polls where it could manage to establish control over only three municipalities while the Trinamul Congress-Congress combine won as many as 13 thereby highlighting the Left’s increasing isolation from the people; and this is bound to grow so long as the CPM remains indifferent to the reasons behind this isolation and refuses to shed its innate arrogance while declining to take stringent action against the guilty in the party leadership both at the centre and in the State.)

In the midst of all these developments the Liberhan Commission, which was constituted on December 16, 1992—just ten days after the demolition of the Babri Masjid at Ayodhya—to probe the incident, has at long last submitted its report to the Union Government. But when the latter would be able to table the report (which has finally been produced after 17 years) in Parliament so that it is released for public consumption is anyone’s guess.

July 2 S.C.

ISSN (Mainstream Online) : 2582-7316 | Privacy Policy|
Notice: Mainstream Weekly appears online only.