Optimist Shinde

But on coal, he may be wishful and a little out of touch in the age of the internet

Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde has had a run of bad luck lately, but it doesn't seem to have dampened his optimism. He left the power ministry under cover of a blackout, having presided over the worst grid failure in recent years, and he laughed all the way to the home ministry. His appointment coincided with a spate of low-intensity blasts in his home state, in the heart of Pune, in fact, where he was to preside over an award ceremony. He said that the government would take it seriously, and carried on regardless. Now he seems to have taken optimism a step further.

Shinde was back in Pune on Saturday for another award ceremony, in memory of the people's poet, Narayan Surve, who would have been physically upset if he had heard Shinde shrugging off the coal controversy, suggesting that though the hands of the Congress were blackened, they could always be washed. The home minister expressed strong confidence in public amnesia, which, according to him, had washed away all memory of Bofors. Shinde could be a little out of touch. Indians don't readily forget or forgive. And in the internet age, it may be even more difficult for them to do so, for crimes real and imagined.

The outrage of Bofors persists in living memory, which must fade over time. But contemporary events are permanently archived in the public domain in ageless digital repositories. They can be consulted at any time, without the paraphernalia of the library that impeded public access earlier. The internet has ended mass amnesia and despite Shinde's enduring optimism, it's possible that taints like those caused by the allegations on coal, can no longer be so easily brushed away.

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