A couple of days after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh hit out at Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi,Union Telecom Minister Kapil Sibal said Modi should get a few lessons in tehzeeb (etiquette) if he desires to be taken seriously. In an interview with The Sunday Express,the minister said the BJP leadership should be charged with guilt by association and in the absence of Vajpayeeji even Advaniji could teach him a lesson or two. Sibal,who earlier held the charge of the HRD Ministry,said,My only regret is the use of an academic institution as a platform for a national political launch. It does not augur well for academics. He was referring to Modis speech at Sri Ram College of Commerce in Delhi University. The mantra of development of which Modi is a self-anointed poster boy is also suspect. Other acts that suggest a mission is the building of the Modi brand Modi masks,Modi bags symbols of a cult. Television channels also got into the act. I cannot imagine all this happening without the use of enormous money power. How else can you explain all television channels covering a speech in a college where certain favoured persons are influential? Narendra Modi is trying to gather wind with the help of spin doctors,in an era when perception matters more than reality, Sibal said. Referring to Modis address in the BJP executive where he had compared the commission-seeking Congress and the government as termites and Prime Minister as nightwatchman of the Gandhi family,the Union Minister said,Modi talked of mission and commission. He presided over a state that brooks no dissent. that discriminates without compunction. The termites of a sick state reflect a sick mind eating into the vitals of the body politic. a subversion of democracy. The mission was to raise the spectre of engineered threats. Some of the police officers could well be described as the commission agents. Taking a swipe at the recent arrests of senior police officers for alleged fake encounters,Sibal said it suggested the lawlessness that prevailed in Gujarat where threats were manufactured adding that 61 alleged accused in the riot cases were acquitted after nine years in jail while despite incriminating evidences the real accused roam freely. All this in a state which perhaps produced the greatest son of India the Mahatma. Scams which expose the corrupt must be dealt with firmly and we must not show any mercy to those involved in public loot. But scams which involve a series of conspiracies to snatch away lives without cause is a far more serious phenomenon. It reflects the mind of a sick state machinery which revels itself in vilifying members of a particular community, he said. Sibal also contested the Gujarat Chief Ministers claims on economic and development indices,saying Gujarat was a leader among industrialised states even in the 80s and the 90s,and various data show that rate of growth under Modi is only marginally superior to other states in India. Sibal cited the Gujarat State Rural Development Commissioners figures to argue that poor families in the state has increased by 30 per cent during his tenure as chief minister. He said only 15 per cent of the investment proposals have materialised from the first four Vibrant Gujarat Summits. The Human Development Report 2011 names Gujarat the worst among high per-capita states in fighting malnutrition,he added.
