SATURDAY, APRIL 20, 2024
Srinivas Kamat
The present government at the Centre has this penchant for bringing people out onto the streets. Where normally the Opposition political parties or activists are expected to exhort people to hit the streets, this government has the knack to get people to come out voluntarily.
First it was the students, starting with JNU and then other universities mostly in the South, came out in protest. Second, it was demonetisation, when people had to form serpentine queues in front of banks to exchange the demonetised notes in which process many died across the country. Third, it was the CAA protests that started in Delhi and then went around the country. Fourth, it is the farmers who at many times during the current administration have come out but against the new agriculture policy the current protest is their second sequence of protests. And these are in the times of COVID and when Delhi was peaking with its so-called 3rd wave of infections.
The government instead of defusing the crisis and trying to resolve it, is trying to put across needless conditions which will make the task of finding a solution all the more difficult. If there is a massive upsurge in infections like after the Tablighi mosque incident, the government will have no one to blame but itself. The problem with this government is that its leaders particularly ministers are so much filled with their own importance, the reason being that they have given assignments beyond their normal competence, that they more often than not forget the mandate given to them.
Another thing that you see in TV footage of the protests at any time is that the government barricades itself against the protesters in the first instance, then uses water cannons and later lathicharges the people. This is done irrespective of there being women in the crowd. It is very sad to see this in a democracy where the leaders and government have to barricade themselves from their own people. The police are seen to discharge these duties with rare enthusiasm which you normally do not see when anyone visits a police station with a problem. Like water cannons were being used against the farmers at this time when Delhi has had the coldest November in close to two decades and the majority of the farmers are senior citizens.
The government, the police and political parties of the ruling dispensation should at least have had the sympathy and compassion not to use water cannons at this time. The leaders of the political parties should additionally know that these people are voters and they are in a position to make or more likely break their future during the next elections. Where efforts should be made as much as possible to take a consultative approach in implementing any measure and involve people in discussions in the spirit of true democratic principles, we find this process being given the go-by and instigate people to come out in the streets.
Then apart from adopting a confrontationist stance, start the blame game with the protesters being the first target, then the Opposition parties, then Nehru and even Mahatma Gandhi sometimes! This government has to learn the first principles of governance otherwise it will go bumbling along as it is doing now.
