India’s Home minister has become an embarrassment.
By Rajiv Theodore
NEW DELHI: The dust has not yet settled after India sent a mission to Mars. The country is also planning to set up the world’s largest solar power system. But these achievements fall to pieces when we see the country’s top ranking ministers mouth inanities without even batting an eyelid. We don’t know whether to laugh or cry at such gaffes.
Leading this comedy of errors is none other than Sushil Kumar Shinde, the country’s Home Minister in charge of a critically important office owing to its responsibility towards matters of internal security.
Today, an unwritten code is being enacted that whenever Shinde speaks, listeners will have to brace themselves and maybe close an ear or two as if waiting for a mine to explode. We are referring to the series of faux pas that this minister, a former bailiff and a constable, makes, visibly embarrassing the ruling Congress party of which he is the member.
The latest one is that he wants to ‘’crush’’ the electronic media, the TV news channels which are conspiring against him and the government to spread negative news. On Sunday evening, addressing a Youth Congress rally in Solapur, in Maharashtra, where he happens to be an MP, he threatened to crush the electronic media as a section of these journalists were provoking the Congress through means of a ‘’false propaganda’’.
Shinde’s latest remarks were also timed with the outcome of a series of opinion polls in the media which projected dismal results for the Congress in general elections slated in a couple of months. It forecast a resounding win for the main opposition BJP under Narendra Modi. The video footage of his remarks along with his clarification was aired by news channels on Tuesday.
Shinde had made a bizarre statement earlier that the country would forget the coal scam just like it did the earlier Bofors arms imbroglio. The multi-million dollar Bofors gun deal scam has refused to die, and took the scalp of Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi – who lost the 1989 general elections. It had involved the late Italian businessman Ottavio Quattrocchi, who allegedly received kickbacks, and was discharged in the case in March 2010. And the Coalgate involved allocation of coal blocks to the lackeys of ministers and politicians at a time when the country is perennially hungry for energy.
Shinde also claimed to ‘’sort out’’ the Telangana issue along with the National Counter Terrorism Centre project during his tenure.
“What is happening in the electronic media largely I am aware of it. In the last four months there have been efforts by the media to provoke us (Congress). We will crush such elements in the electronic media, which are indulging in false propaganda, if it did not stop,” he said.
The home minister also left no one guessing when he said that he had got inputs from intelligence agencies about a section of the media.
“I have the intelligence department under me. I know who is doing such things. I know what is happening. Some forces are behind this,” he added but did not elaborate.
Shinde realized his folly a trifle too late, and on Tuesday, denied he said what he had said. Shinde said in his clarification that he aimed it at the social media.
“My comments were on social media. It was with regards to the issue related to the NE students who were being targeted in Hyderabad and Karnataka,” he said. “It’s totally wrong, they are maligning me. I have never said such things in my forty years as an MP. Why will I say it now? The media is my friend.”
Shinde tried to shift focus from the electronic media to the social media, but is it justified? The words he used were to ‘’crush’’ the (social) media and not even regulate or tighten the norms. Do these statements augur well from a leader of a democratic country which aspires to take a global leadership position?
In the past, the government’s relationship with the media has not been anything to write home about. For example, the government came under considerable flak after the I-T ministry issued a diktat that all user posts in social media sites need to be pre-scanned. And section 66A of the IT act, which has been put into place to avoid harassment, is being interpreted as a tool to snoop, censure and prosecute.
Shinde’s gaffes come in an election year, where every word and act counts. The ruling government has to introspect, real fast.
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