New Delhi

April 15, 2004

HEAD FOR SIKKIM TO BE LAKHPATI IN TEN YEARS

Every political party is selling dreams to entice voters but the ruling Sikkim Democratic Front of the border state has surpassed all, promising every Sikkimese to become a Lakhpati by 2015 and a crorepati by 2050. The promise comes in the 90-page glossy manifesto released in Gangtok giving handsome promises by way of a set of economic, social and political reforms to boost the per capita income of the people.

Money is no problem for the political parties in giving the promises as every party believes the government has the capacity to generate the resources to fulfil such promises. The Congress made a lot of noise over the Vajpayee Government spending crores on the "India shining" campaign
for the political gains to BJP and allies in the Lok Sabha elections, but it found nothing wrong in wielding out promises that would mean the government spending more and more money just to fulfil them. The money, of course, does not grow on trees but comes from our pockets and yet the
voters get so much influenced that they do not realise that every scheme means either more taxes or the indirect tax of deficit financing that shoots up prices of everything.

The voters should be, however, disillusioned when Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee tells them in an interview telecast by Doordarshan Wednesday night that no concrete achievement could be made during six years of his tenure that can be satisfactory. If all the money spent by his government on various schemes does not satisfy him, what more does he want. His dream of success lies in connecting all the rivers of the country, a dream that can certainly not be completed in the next five years if he is back as the PM but that matters little to him since it will be not his money but our money that will vanish from our pockets to fulfil his dream.

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Chattisgarh Politics

Former Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Ajit Jogi would not like his arch enemy Motilal Vora, the AICC treasurer and PCC chief, to supervise electioneering for him in Mahasamund and so he has got his wife Renu to resign from the Government job, paying a hefty amount of Rs 85,000 to waive the 3-month bar on a government servant getting involved in politics. Renu, who is a doctor by profession, rushed to the constituency
on Thursday to take charge of her husband's campaign after satisfying herself that his condition was improving. She even talked of the possibility of bringing Ajit Jogi, who has suffered a serious spine injury in a road accident, to the constituency by a helicopter on the last day of campaigning on Saturday.

Jogi's son Amit is also organising meetings of the party workers in the constituency but he may have to lay off because of the objection raised by the state BJP that he cannot meddle in the elections. Amit happens to be an American citizen and he is in India on a tourist visa. As such, the BJP questions whether a foreigner can play any role in the elections at all.

There should be nothing exceptional if the Orissa chief minister addresses an election rally in Oriya but it turned out to be a very big event when Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik tried his Oriya in an election meeting in Sambalpur on Wednesday. Having remained abroad most of his life, Naveen
did not know own mother tongue and this was the handicap when he entered the political arena seven years ago to fill the vaccuum caused from the death of his illustrious father. Every sentence he spoke in Oriya was, therefore, greeted by the people with clappings and whistles as his supporters pointed out that nobody can find fault with Naveen for the
handicap of not knowing the state's language. It is another matter that still he is not that fluent in Oriya.

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Where Dancing Girls are Political Acceptable

Former Bihar Chief Minister and RJD supremo Laloo Prasad Yadav used to be criticised by his rivals for making use of "Baijis" or the dancing girls in his election meetings. He has, however, made dances by these girls so popular, particularly in the rural areas, to pull crowds that even Railway Minister Nitish Kumar has sanctioned money to his campaigners to organise a series of programmes by these dancing girls to gather crowds that he can subsequently address.

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