The Hindu : Opinion / Editorials : Tiger Thackeray in Congress robes

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, May 11, 2005

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Tiger Thackeray in Congress robes

The Congress, in theory, is liberal, secular, and socially enlightened. In practice, it is a party of many moods — and many avatars. Not only do the staunchly secular and the ideologically hazy co-exist in the party; Congress Chief Ministers sometimes act as if they were appointed by the Opposition. Take the case of Maharashtra where Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh and his deputy, R.R. Patil of the breakaway Nationalist Congress Party, have gone about seeking solutions to the once progressive State's problems with authoritarian mindset. Worse, they have defended their actions in language that found Balasaheb Thackeray cheering. Mr. Deshmukh's justification for razing more than 80,000 homes in the slums of Mumbai was that the city no longer had "any room for guests." The Chief Minister argued in the State Assembly that slum-dwellers were a burden on taxpayers, and warned prospective migrants against building slums. Mr. Deshmukh also admitted that his demolition squads might have flattened more slums than was originally intended. It took a sharp rebuke from Sonia Gandhi for the Chief Minister to call a halt to, and then officially abandon, this inhuman mission.

Even as the controversy raged, Mr. Patil announced a State-wide ban on dance bars on the specious plea that they corrupted "the moral fibre of our youth and culture." The State Cabinet unanimously resolved to make the running of such bars a non-bailable offence punishable with rigorous imprisonment up to three years. Mr. Patil also spotted a "security threat" in the bars, which he said, employed Bangladeshi women in "large numbers." The culture cops of the Shiv Sena could not have done better. Then there is the draconian Maharashtra Water Resources Regulatory Act (MWRRA), which requires farmers with more than two children to pay one and a half times more for irrigation water. Paradoxically, Messrs Deshmukh and Patil have targeted their own support base. The Congress-NCP combine earned a second term in 2004 not on the strength of its performance — which was widely judged to be abysmal — but because of fears surrounding the Shiv Sena's return. Mumbai voted largely for the Congress in the 14th general election as well as in the Assembly election because the poor and migrant population of India's friendly and hospitable business capital saw the Sushil Kumar Shinde Government as a bulwark against the Thackeray clan. They could have hardly anticipated that events would take such an anti-climactic turn. The United Nations Special Rapporteur on Adequate Housing has condemned the demolition of slums for being brutal and executed without advance notice. Linking family size to water entitlement is a cruel and undemocratic move aimed at the poor. The ban on dance bars, when enforced, will put out of work more than 75,000 bar dancers. The Maharashtra Chief Minister and his deputy have wilfully betrayed a mandate given to them in good faith and trust.

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