Monday, August 30, 2010

Tribune-Chatterati-Aug.30th.10

"Kids of politicos finding a niche in politics"

Politics seems to be the latest flavour of high powered youth in India. We thus have more sons and daughters of political leaders of all parties joining politics. We had a whole new youth brigade in the Congress which came in with first Sanjay and then Rajiv Gandhi. Some faded away while the charismatic ones stayed on, worked hard and are today India’s top leaders like Chidambaram, Gulam Nabi Azad, Ambika Soni etc. Now as the next generation of Gandhi’s- Rahul Gandhi has moved in he has also got new youth power with him. Witness Jyotiraditya Scindia, Jitin Prasad, Sachin Pilot and others. The difference though being that Rajiv’s youth brigade was not so much from the political class itself, he picked up youth leaders, some from his brother Sanjay Gandhi’s time and some that were totally new. In Rahul’s time the one’s seen in parliament at least are largely sons and daughters of already popular leaders. We now also have Jaivardhan Singh who has joined the Youth Congress. Jaivardhan is a member of a royal family from Guna district in Madhya Pradesh and the youngest child of Digvijay Singh the former Chief Minister and now U.P’s Congress General Secretary. Jaivardhan is a Doon School product and then went to Mumbai for his college. He is fondly called ‘J.V’ by his father. In Madhya Pradesh this is not the first time that a Congress leader has joined politics. Arjun Singh’s son is an MLA in Madhya Pradesh, Jyotiraditya Scindia, (Madhav Rao’s son) and Arun Yadav the son of PCC Chief Subhash Yadav are already in play.


"Checking Mamata's clout"

As the elections are nearing in Bengal all the political parties have taken it for granted that Mamta Didi is soon going to be the next Chief Minister. Karat and his party have more or less given up, the local Congress worker is not only demoralized but is also very upset with the kind of treatment Mamta has meted out towards them. That’s one reason why the Congress in Bengal is very keen to push in Pranab Mukherjee’s son. Abhijit Mukherjee who is the General Manager of the corporate social responsibility department of the Steel Authority of India. He is a low profile government servant and does not interact very often with anyone and shies away from the media. Abhijit is now being forced by the local Bengal Congress men to come and join politics now so that the Congress workers there will be a little more optimistic and strong in the coming elections.


"Games is holiday time for many"
Mani Shanker Aiyer has once again slammed the Common Wealth Games as a work of evil and has said that he will be leaving the country during the two weeks of the games. Well, Mani is not the only who is heading out of the capital during the games. Every Delhiite you meet is planning on leaving town for those days. Can’t blame them either. With rains creating havoc in the Capital and the Common Wealth Game’s work, there is an excess of rubble lying all over so the capital traffic has almost come to a stand still. The spread of dengue too has the blame squarely put on the digging going on in the city by none less than the Health Minister. On Sunday the games lane trial led to traffic jams on it. As the free loaders who are all guests of the CWG from the world over, start arriving in the city around 20th September Delhites are going to find it a big problem to even commute. The Common Wealth Game’s Chief Suresh Kalmadi, the MCD and the Lt. Governor’s office in the meanwhile are busy blaming each other roundly for the mess created. Last week as a not ditch effort Suresh Kalmadi got A.R Rehman to town for the launch of music CD of game’s anthem. But unfortunately for Kalmadi there was no song even ready but Kalmadi made sure that Rehman used the platform to portray a positive image of the country. The lyrics he lamely explained would be ready in the next couple of weeks. With no top athletes coming in, no hotel bookings coming in, corruption charges flying high the fed up Delhites would rather leave town than be stuck in traffic jams powerlessly during this time.

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