Rahul Gandhi: Bumbling Along
Editor-in-Chief of indiacommentary.com. Current Affairs analyst and political commentator.
View all posts by this Author
By Sunil Garodia
First publised on 2020-09-05 21:21:11
About the Author
Editor-in-Chief of indiacommentary.com. Current Affairs analyst and political commentator.
View all posts by this Author
As usual, Rahul Gandhi has jumped the gun without understanding the circular of the Department of Expenditure (DOE) under the Ministry of Finance. Taking the ban on the creation of new posts in any ministry or department to mean a ban on recruitment, Gandhi went on the offensive, as is his wont, and attacked the government is his now-famous taunting manner.
Rahul tweeted in Hindi to say that the Modi government is using minimum government, maximum privatization and the excuse of Covid to remove staff from government offices, steal the future of India's youth and propel his own friends forward.
A reading of the circular will tell most intelligent people that it does not ban recruitment. What it does is it disallows the creation of new posts in any ministry or department without the approval of the DOE. Is there anything wrong with that?
The circular states at the outset that there is a need to curtail non-development expenditure in order to ensure adequate resources for critical priority schemes. Everyone knows that most departments are now functioning with 50 or 75 percent staff. It is very difficult to judge if new posts are needed when the working is not at full strength. Is it wrong, then, to ban the creation of new posts and recruiting for the same?
Rahul Gandhi has been wrongly advised that his daily salvos at the Modi government and personal attacks on Modi will get him any dividends. If he were to conduct a survey, he will find that people are put off by his comments.
It needs to be remembered that Gandhi had narrowly escaped being hauled up for contempt of court when he had misread a Supreme Court judgment to say that the apex court had held that the chowkidaar was chor during the campaign for the general elections in 2019. Granted that this is the digital age and the first comments on any issue grab more eyeballs, but for a person who wishes to be the Prime Minister, Rahul Gandhi needs to be more measured in his criticism. He must first understand things properly and then open his mouth or hits the keyboard, if he does it personally.
Rahul and Priyanka accuse party leaders of having stepped aside while they are leading the charge against the NDA and Modi. If this the way they are going to go about it, it is better they stop and have a committee to whet all public announcements. In fact, a committee was formed some time ago with Manmohan Singh as chairman to guide the party on how to respond against the NDA government's policies. Nothing much was heard about it thereafter. In any case, Rahul Gandhi likes to be a lone ranger, a bad one at that.
