India Uncut
This blog has moved to its own domain. Please visit IndiaUncut.com for the all-new India
Uncut and bookmark it. The new site has much more content and some new sections, and you can read about them here and here. You can subscribe to full RSS feeds of all the sections from here.
This blogspot site will no longer be updated, except in case of emergencies, if the main site suffers a prolonged outage. Thanks - Amit.
Friday, September 16, 2005
Plainspeak from Rahul Gandhi
Rahul Gandhi says about Bihar and Uttar Pradesh:
I don't quite know what to make of the man, one who is likely to be India's prime minister one day because of the dynastic set-up of our largest party. From what one sees of him in the mass media, he seems plainspoken and honest. How far he can move away from the legacy of his elders will determine the role he plays in transforming India. His grandmother, Indira Gandhi, created much of the licence raj that continues to cripple India. And his mother, Sonia, is a driving force behind the Rural Employment Guarantee Bill, which is a Wastage Guarantee Scheme more than anything else. How much of an independent thinker is he? Will he stay true to the misguided policies of his family and his party, or will he be true to the welfare of his country? These are the questions to which we eagerly await answers.
You can travel right across these two states but you won’t find a trace of governance here. There is no functioning government in UP and Bihar; and so there is no governance. There is a total collapse of the administrative system… Nothing happens here.That's from a Tehelka interview, which is behind a subscription wall, so I got the quotes from a Telegraph report of the interview. In it, Gandhi also says that he could have been prime minister at 25 if he wanted to be, but chose to bide his time and gain some experience.
I don't quite know what to make of the man, one who is likely to be India's prime minister one day because of the dynastic set-up of our largest party. From what one sees of him in the mass media, he seems plainspoken and honest. How far he can move away from the legacy of his elders will determine the role he plays in transforming India. His grandmother, Indira Gandhi, created much of the licence raj that continues to cripple India. And his mother, Sonia, is a driving force behind the Rural Employment Guarantee Bill, which is a Wastage Guarantee Scheme more than anything else. How much of an independent thinker is he? Will he stay true to the misguided policies of his family and his party, or will he be true to the welfare of his country? These are the questions to which we eagerly await answers.
