The best way to know the self is feeling oneself at the moments of reckoning. The feeling of being alone, just with your senses, may lead you to think more consciously. More and more of such moments may sensitize ‘you towards you’, towards others. We become regular with introspection and retrospection. We get ‘the’ gradual connect to the higher self we may name Spirituality or God or just a Humane Conscious. We tend to get a rhythm again in life. We need to learn the art of being lonely in crowd while being part of the crowd. A multitude of loneliness in mosaic of relations! One needs to feel it severally, with conscience, before making it a way of life. One needs to live several such lonely moments. One needs to live severallyalone.

Tuesday 30 April 2013

ONCE, THERE WAS A PERCEPTION CALLED MANMOHAN SINGH

Manmohan Singh’s biography on the official website of the prime minister of India says about him: India’s fourteenth Prime Minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh is rightly acclaimed as a thinker and a scholar. He is well regarded for his diligence and his academic approach to work, as well as his accessibility and his unassuming demeanour.

There is nothing much to decipher about Manmohan Singh. There is nothing left to decipher about Manmohan Singh after his absolute fall from the ‘high of the apolitical and honest brand name of 2004’, during his second term as the prime minister of India.

Still, let’s see him and his integrity in the context of today’s developments; an integrity that is more fragmented than ever before.

A television news channel broke the news at around 1:55 PM that Manmohan Singh was studying the Supreme Court’s observations against his government on the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) affidavit on sharing the Coalgate probe status report with the government and would later come up with his response.


The Coalgate, a mammoth coal block allocation scam, in making over the years but precipitated during the United Progressive Alliance (UPA)’s regimes with maximum coal block allocations, is being probed by the CBI. A Public Interest Litigation (PIL) in September 2012 involved the Supreme Court in the ongoing case. In March this year, the SC asked the CBI not to share the Coalgate investigation reports with the political executives.

And today’s observations by the SC that made the ‘thinker’ in Manmohan Singh to say that he was studying the apex court’s observations, is just the tip of an iceberg that, no doubt given the developments in the case till now, is going to throw big dirt on the sham of the UPA government and Manmohan Singh when the CBI submits its detailed affidavit in the SC on May 6 furnishing full details, naming persons and footnoting the changes describing the level of intervention by the political executive (Manmohan Singh’s government) in a clear case of vested interests and law-subversion.

But, beware, though you are already aware, that we are going to have a similar response from Manmohan Singh even then, shirking every responsibility, belittling the norms of democracy and shattering the notions of personal integrity and political sanctity.

So, the ‘thinker’ in Manmohan Singh pushed him to say, at 1:55 PM today, that he was studying the SC observations.

But the ‘scholar’ in him has got stuck somewhere in the ‘thinking’ mode it seem as it is over nine hours, while writing this, and we are yet to see what the studious assignment of Mr. Manmohan Singh has resulted in as Mr. Manmohan Singh is yet to come out with his ‘observations’ on the SC observations directly questioning his moral grounds putting him and his government in the dock. This all is happening on a day when there is a need of immediacy in responding to the SC’s remarks.

It simply tells us Manmohan Singh doesn’t bother about such questions of ‘moral sanctity’ and he is like any other politician of the political class that just doesn’t care for the values of democracy.

The prime minister’s website describes his academic credentials from Cambridge to Oxford but we need to find the source institution where this sort of ‘scholarship’ is a norm making the students immune to every criticism even if it is rightly targeted at them and intended to push them to take the corrective measures.

It is not a sad and black day for Manmohan Singh. It is a sad and black for the Indian democracy and its common man.

No politician is easily accessible in India. It cannot be said what does the website mean by ‘well regarded for his accessibility’? It has been written about a person who chooses not to speak when the whole country expects him to speak on a day like this after the highest court of the land makes scathing remarks against his government.

The country had expected in 2004 that the apolitical Manmohan Singh would prove a genuine politician and would serve the country differently, honestly. But all that is shattered now. Before becoming even a politician, he drifted to become one among the insensitive political class mascots of the day.

On political level, even after today’s development in the SC, nothing would move. Reports at the moment say that the government is firmly behind the Minister of Law and Justice Ashwani Kumar who is the front of the government’s manipulation machinery in the Coalgate probe by the CBI. Even on April 26, when the CBI Director Ranjit Sinha had admitted in the apex court of sharing the probe report with the political executives despite SC’s restrictive orders, Manmohan Singh was very prompt in defending his minister saying there was no question of his resignation.

The country had not expected this ‘diligence’ and it is certainly not an ‘unassuming behaviour’.

He is at the centre of criticism. He has been at the centre of whirlwind criticism. He is at the centre of political satire and jokes. His silence and selective responses on the monumental corruption cases by the colleagues of his government implicate him fairly. And this all is a well established line of discussion now.

Once, reading stuff on Manmohan Singh like that in the initial lines of his personal profile at his official website sounded good. But who knew then that it was driven more by the perception of yore. It started fizzling out as Manmohan’s term in the prime-ministerial office changed the calendar dates with rising corruption of unimaginable scales.

Manmohan Singh is failing India. Manmohan Singh is failing its common man.

Once, there was a perception called Manmohan Singh.

©/IPR: Santosh Chaubey - http://severallyalone.blogspot.com/