I recently watched a few of Dinesh Trivedi’s interviews on several new channels. In all of them he was asked the question which everyone wants to know — did Mamata Banerjee knew about the fare hike? Though he did not say it directly, Trivedi did cleverly explain that a senior bureaucrat in the Trinamool Congress not only discussed but also suggested the fare hike to him; moreover this unnamed bureaucrat was not just a party worker but holds a very significant position in the TMC. He definitely would have informed the TMC leader.
As expected, the next day TMC leaders said Trivedi was lying and no one knew about the hikes.
Alright, let’s accept that Dinesh was lying and Mamata was not aware of fare hike. Let’s also agree that fare hike was not necessary and the common man was against it. But in a logical situation, a party leader would simply telephone his/her Union minister and discuss the matter. However, for Mamata, logic has a different definition which no one can understand. Not even Trivedi.
The actual reason behind sacking of our nation’s last rail minister is still unknown. And meanwhile we have a new rail minister, who, like a good boy, has rolled back the hikes that had invited Didi’s wrath. Now, since no political party in our country can really oppose a rollback in hike — because of the populist games they all are given to playing — the hikes are history, at least for the lower classes. I will not even get into whether the hikes were warranted and how much damage to the Railway coffers the rollback would now cause.
I have only one issue — the Dinesh-Mamata episode is a direct attack on our democracy. And the dirty political game is taking place in our — the common man’s — name and yet we have no say in the whole issue.
I would like to ask our Prime Minister who voted him to power? Was it we the people or Mamata Banerjee? So, before changing the railway minister and rolling back the hikes in our name, did he think of asking us for once? I would also like to ask Mamata and her supporters why Trivedi wasn’t given a chance to explain. The budget which he presented was set of suggestions and not the writing on the wall. There could have been a rollback but what was the reason behind his sacking?
But then, most of us know the truth — sacking of Dinesh Trivedi had nothing to do with the fare hike. It was used as a tool to make the resignation look rational. Our Hitler Didi just doesn’t know when to stop. She not only suggested Mukul Roy to be the replacement for Dinesh but also visited Delhi to make sure there was no glitch. Everyone knows about Mukul Roy and how he defied Prime Minister Manmohan Singh last year. As the Minister of State in the same railway ministry, he preferred a trip to Jangalmahal with Mamata rather than travel to Assam where two major rail accidents had taken place.
Should we safely assume that the people who died in those train accidents were elite and not common men, and hence they were not important for Didi and his partymen?
Time and again, Mamata has proved that she is not only a troublemaking ally who no one would like to have in a coalition, but also a bad administrator of her own state. She termed the increasing rape cases in Bengal as Left conspiracy, the deaths of infants were blamed on their mothers stating that they were conceived during the CPM rule, she recently cancelled the SEZs for IT giants… the list could just go on. The money being wasted in painting Kolkata blue could have been used in some other fruitful project. The wasteful expenditure of electricity by trident lights is another excellent example of resource mismanagement.
But Didi claims innocence and sees the ghost of conspiracies in everything. She just wants respect. Recently, in some interviews she said she would leave the UPA only if she was humiliated. We should all be thankful to have such an innocent minister. We should hate our business community, economists, innovators, professionals, as they are elite. They have better command of English than her; they all are born with “golden spoons”. We should understand that money is evil, stop working hard and stop making so much money.
But before all that, I would again like to ask Mamata and her supporters, she was demanding respect in all her interviews but what about the respect of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh? What about Dinesh Trivedi? What about the respect of those rape victims? Or the hapless mothers of the infants who died? If her party is a common man’s party and common man is in their DNA then why didn’t she question Kakoli Ghosh for travelling in First AC? Why Mamata hasn’t commented yet on the incident of Ghosh’s guard urinating on a passenger on Rajdhani Express and pulling out a gun to threaten him?
Or is it that anyone asking her questions about her ridiculous stands is an elite and or a CPM supporter?
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