Admittedly, she's not my most favorite politician and that's certainly not coz she scores nil in the personal grooming department. But when the Tabloid of India screamed out a half page ad announcing her govt's achievements in 100 days, I found the story too interesting to miss. The relevance of the aesthetically disastrous ad had also artificially heightened due to my touch & go visit to lucknow the previous day.
I was genuinely interested in giving the lady a fair chance-I'd just re-read my own crash post and decided against judging (or at least decided I'd judge less- with Mr Judge-ria & Ms. Judge-a-thon doing a relentless & tremendous job of doing that, I didnt miss it that much). I mean we did hear about Laloo and his IAS army doing a solid job of turning around Railways etc. So I did read the "ad" with all the objectivity i could muster.
There were some 30 odd points and I read through them all. An excerpt:
The grammar was as expected- abysmal-but so was the quality of the "achievements". To tell police officers to register FIRs and to decide to appoint school teachers takes 100 days?? Demanding crores from the central govt-Reserving more seats for SC/ST-transferring jails from one department to another because of increasing "anarchy"- This is the work a state govt accomplishes in 3 months and then boasts about???And then comes the news that Reliance retail and Spencer's hyper cant sell fruits and veggies coz it upsets the law and order situation in the state and since no one knows how soon the elections may happen-why annoy farmers-just ask retailers to shut shop coz they might just upset all those intermediaries who provide the moolah and muscle for the party.
And in the midst of all this, the Times of India is creating a ruckus about its Lead India campaign-it's seeking to be the Rang De Basanti agent of change. Quite good and positive-that move. Though it did pinch me- this blatant assumption of a man leading India (their recruitment ads are peppered with "he", "him" and "his", when describing potential candidates & expectations)-I just felt sad, not neccessarily agitated.
Maywati just proved how silly fighting a gender debate is-though she does make a fine case for equality- equally terrible , equally repulsive and equally avoidable as Mulayam!
