Circumspect blame fixing

You don’t say!
By Darius Nakhoonwala

When a former press adviser to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh called his boss “spineless”, many stomachs churned at his disloyalty. But the truth is that he was right.

 

Dr Singh does emerge as an extraordinarily cowardly person in the letter written by his former minister for environment, Jayanthi Natarajan, to the Congress party president, Sonia Gandhi. In it, he tells her that he has been asked by Sonia Gandhi to dismiss her as a minister. I had thought the leader writers would spare at least two lines for this but none of them did.

 

That said, the Times of India, which has never been associated with courage and frankness in its editorials because it tends to take a ‘balanced’ view -- which means saying nothing much at all -- did the unexpected. Unlike the other papers that were calling for explanations from Rahul Gandhi and Sonia Gandhi, the paper said outright that the time had come for the duo to go. After angrily describing the goings-on between the Minister and the Mummy-Sonny duo, it ended the edit thus:

 

“Sonia and Rahul can’t expect to reboot Congress by remaining above accountability and playing puppeteers in party affairs. Having presided over massive electoral debacles, they must now step aside for more able Congress leaders to lead the party from the front. A new Congress must free itself of diarchic trappings and squarely address leadership infirmities.”

 

The Hindustan Times said the same thing but more circumspectly. It said the Congress “... has to shelve its high command culture and undertake a genuine look at its leadership issues. The dissatisfaction at the top will definitely percolate to the rank and file if it is not addressed in time.” Fat chance that there will any review of leadership issues.

Surprisingly for once, it was the Indian Express which wrote a waffly edit. It didn’t come anywhere near to calling for a change in Congress leadership or even a review of it. Instead it was content to rattle on about things like the role played by the National Advisory Council, the free run enjoyed by NGOs, the dual leadership of Sonia and Rahul, the timing of Ms Natarajan’s resignation, and so on. It didn’t even write a quotable line in the edit except maybe the last one: “Natarajan has specifically named Rahul Gandhi, and he must now come out and speak if he does not want to be made wholly irrelevant.”

 

The Hindu, which broke the story, refrained from preening, as indeed it would have done when N. Ram was the editor. It blamed Rahul squarely for the fiasco. The letter, it said, “only underscores what was long known in party circles. As heir apparent, Mr. Gandhi would sporadically interfere in policy decisions depending on his particular pet belief at a particular point in time. Worse, the positions he took were often inconsistent...The key problem for the Congress has been that while Mr. Gandhi was repeatedly entreated to join the government in a Ministry of his choice, he stayed away... Today, Mr. Gandhi’s spin doctors may question Ms. Natarajan’s timing, but if he does not draw the right lessons from her dramatic exit from the Congress, there could be more departures.”

 

The Economic Times focused on ‘larger’ matters. “One general issue she raises is the nature of the relationship between the government of the day and the ruling party. Should party leaders influence the government, by forwarding letters and offering advice or does that vitiate democratic propriety?... It is up to the minister to take a fair, non-arbitrary decision.”

 

The Telegraph and the Pioneer did not write edits. They probably will after the issue has gone cold.

 

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