In the end, Madam again decided who would be her Chief Puppet in the state, after testing the strength of the strings attached

All the Congress president's men

In the end, Madam again decided who would be her Chief Puppet in the state, after testing the strength of the strings attached. The strings have to be just right. Too loose and the puppet does not respond properly to manipulations from the top, but too taut and strong and it becomes a problem cutting off the strings when the puppet is to be dropped suddenly.

In the Congress, bowing and scraping before The Family is a tradition as old as the stars, but the frequency with which our chief ministers have been rushing to explain their actions, or lack thereof, to Madam in a bid to keep their chair is just too disturbing for a democracy. It gives the not-too-incorrect impression that elections are the least important part of the process of forming a government. The real mandate is not got from the people, but from Madam. Pass thatu00a0 small test of winning the polls, and then come to Madam for the real thing.

For chief ministers theseu00a0 days, there is so much coming and going happening between the state and Delhi that it may not be a bad idea to make an allocation for this expense in the annual state Budget; as the Centre is also ruled by the Congress, it could even decide to bear half the expenses and make an allocation in the Union Budget and the Railway Budget for it.

One would think the most progressed state in the country would have a major role to play in deciding the prime minister, but it can not even decide its own CM. The sad, upside-down reality of democracy is that the least progressed and most incompetent states decide who leads the nation. A party that ran out of ideas four decades ago, if not more, wantonly removes and appoints CMs in the state, and once in a while accepts people's resignations from posts that have nothing to do with the CWG corruption.

Nepotism allegations in connection with a controversial housing society did Ashok Chavan in, but Suresh Kalmadi survived even stronger corruption allegations and remains at the helm of sporting affairs in the country.
The party clipped his feathers while sparing his wings, all for visual effect. A clinically handled operation, it must be said, to cause minimum injury or discomfort to the sporting MP from the city.

For Chavan, there is something to learn from Kalmadi here. To begin with, he should say Sonia Gandhi more often in public. The culture of sycophancy in the Congress, which is the party's only permanent achievement since Independence, keeps not only its flock together but also lets you survive a little longer, even when the party deserves a gold medal for sheer non-performance in the over 10 years it has continuously been in power in the state.

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