Politics-To Market, to Market ...

Punjab To Market, to Market ...
THIS has been a week of some major political developments, none of them particularly surprising or unexpected. The Congress(I) working committee met on Monday and appointed Rajiv Gandhi the party president, thereby formally replicating the concentration of government and political authority which his late mother had enjoyed. The next day elections to the Lok Sabha were announced. This again was expected. Whatever uncertainty there might have been about the precise timing of the elections so long as Indira Gandhi was there had been removed with her assassination. Congressmen at all levels in the party and across the length and breadth of the country appeared unanimous both about the wave of mass sympathy for the murdered Prime Minister and about the need to exploit it for electoral gain. The protracted funeral rites, with both the governmentowned media and the press pulling out all stops, were tailor-made for the purpose. Even while the country was still formally in mourning, a member of the Union Cabinet was already unveiting for the benefit of newsmen in Bombay some of the slogans invoking the martyrdom of the late Prime Minister which the Congress(l) proposes to use in its election campaign.