13 April,2010 09:31 AM IST | | Dilip Cherian
After the Maoist attack in Dantewada, a clearly shaken Dilli saw the return of the old familiar blame game. The babble of voices that arose in the aftermath initially would confuse even the most astute followers of desi politics. While the BJP said it would support Chidambaram's Naxal policy, other
parties, including the Left, decided to lambast the government for failing to contain the Maoists.
Will Chidambaram eventually call in the Armed Forces? Even Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has left the question open-ended as he left for the US, though the air force chief has ruled out use of air power in the anti-Maoist operations. However most agree that with the Maoists continuing to raise the stakes, the government will have no option but to retaliate swiftly to reinforce its battered image. The Maoist attack has at least doused the voices of some dewy-eyed romantics who've been advocating a softer approach. The hardliner camp is baying for blood. The Maoists may have upped the ante, but it remains to be seen how Chidambaram responds to this challenge.
The most controversial, of course, is the heavily overloaded price for the Admiral Gorshkov aircraft carrier, but equally liable to controversy, buried beneath the weight of ladies in the Rajya Sabha, were the arrangements for the construction of up to 16 nuclear plants in India. The question that Dilli is asking is whether Putin and the top UPA leadership had plotted both sets of baits appropriately. Either way the magic of the moment worked in Putin's favour. Who else also benefited is still a matter of quiet conjecture.
Traffic blues
To each its own. But both Mumbai and Dilli are still wrestling with traffic. In Dilli, two years on, the much hyped Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) corridor on one of the capital's main arteries still remains a bit of a mess with nightmarish traffic jams and frequent fatal accidents. The government though, encouraged by passenger feedback from buses, is now planning to open the second phase of the Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) corridor to traffic. It is also dreaming of a light rail system for Delhi. But will these 'solutions' end the confusion or merely add to it is something Dilli's commuters are not even thinking about. They already have enough to deal with.
Meanwhile, in Maharashtra, Ashok Chavan is planning to review the status of several delayed projects in Mumbai such as the Mumbai Trans-Harbour Link (MTHL), Navi Mumbai Airport and the monorail. Still with trial runs of the Mumbai Metro now underway, they can perhaps look forward to easier commutes in the days ahead. In Dilli, we still haven't a clue, even after huge mega projects now come to fruition.
