Janata Aberrations

Janata Aberrations?
Romesh Thapar IT'S a merry mess' and dangerous too'. At one point we have Cabinet Minister Raj Narain at his most irresponsible and deliberately raking up the embers of the North-South battle over Hindi. At another, Jan Sangh operators parading as Janata democrats are able successfully to lobby with the Prime Minister to withdraw text-books currently prescribed by NCERT, which are out of step with a narrow Hindi viewpoint. Appointments to key positions in the bureaucratic and academic set-up are being manipulated to instal persons with dubious reputations. And everyone now knows that the chief ministerships in the northern states were divided by the Jan Sangh and the BLD as a result of co-ordinated moves to isolate the Cong(O), the CFD, the Socialists and the Young Turks. Clearly, a Janata party cannot hope to grow on practices such as these.