The importance of timing in politics

It is said that politics is all about lying low when in crisis and striking when the time is right. Former chief minister Ashok Chavan appears to have gone wrong on both counts.

The Congress leadership is not pleased with his use of lunch diplomacy to mount pressure on the party — that too at a time when the Central Bureau of Investigation has named him as an accused in the Adarsh first information report. A Chavan sympathiser in the party said, “He has repeatedly made the wrong moves and has often had to pay a heavy price for them.”

State leaders who are now at the Centre could have helped him plead his case before the leadership. But he only spoilt his ties with the likes of Vilasrao Deshmukh and Sushil Kumar Shinde through the course of his chief ministership. Thus, his argument that Deshmukh and Shinde, too, played a role in the construction of the controversial building only ended up compounding his misery.

Pawar’s tirade
Union agriculture minister Sharad Pawar recently wondered how he can be held accountable for the steep rise as well as fall in onion prices. Hitting out at the media, he said, “I am questioned when prices come crashing down, and I am held accountable when they soar.”

Irrespective of who is answerable, one cannot deny that Indian farmers have been at the receiving end both when prices escalate and when they drop. In distress, they are bound to turn to people who are at the helm of agricultural affairs in the country. There is something wrong in the way markets operate and calls for policy corrections at the level of the state and the Centre. Pawar may not have a remote control to keep prices in check, but farmers expect him to intervene on their behalf and tighten the laws against middlemen who exploit crises to their advantage.

RPI looks for partners
Republican Party of India chief Ramdas Athavale appears to have shed his secular tag, signalling he is willing to realign with new political forces ahead of the 2012 BMC elections. The Shiv Sena and the BJP, too, are desperate to consolidate their vote base by seeking new partners. BJP leader Gopinath Munde and Athavale were recently seen together at a public function, where they spoke in one voice about the welfare of dalits. A fortnight ago, Athavale held a meeting with Sena chief Bal Thackeray at his residence.

The saffron alliance clearly hopes to bank on his dissatisfaction with the Congress-NCP combine for not giving him a Rajya Sabha seat after he lost the 2009 Lok Sabha elections.