| December 8, 1997 | ||
|
|
|
|
|
 Parody Parade By Swapan Dasgupta After six letters, an equal number of formal and "informal" Congress Working Committee (CWC) sessions and an even larger number of Core Committee meetings of the United Front (UF), the ordinary people of India are about as clear about the political crisis in India as those who triggered it. For nearly three weeks, the political class has disrupted Parliament, threatened retribution, abandoned governance and forced a virtual devaluation of the rupee. Yet, despite warnings of an imminent fall, the UF Government has lingered in a comatose condition, with neither its own constituents nor the Congress pulling out the life-support systems. It has been an amazing soap opera. Or, to use the imagery of an MP: "We are witnessing the spectacle of men getting into a huddle to compose a letter in one bungalow in Lutyens' Delhi to be despatched to another bungalow in Lutyens' Delhi." This spectacle was initially amusing, but with the leaders united in their resolve to let events take their own course, politics became an exercise in competitive buffoonery. A guide to how the main actors meandered their way through a crisis that everybody began and nobody wanted. Inder Kumar
Gujral: Short-Circuited |
|
© Living Media India Ltd |
 |
 |
