Ambani over Aam Aadmi: Our govt downplays common man's agony

New Delhi, April 22: Union Home Minister

's recent gestures have been contradictory. While he ordered to provide Z-plus

cover for business tycoon Mukesh Ambani two months after he had received a threat letter from terror outfit Indian Mujahideen (IM), he trivialised the agony of the common people by saying that rapes occur at other places in the country and not just in Delhi.

Ambani's security is also important but what did Shinde mean by saying rapes happen elsewhere in India? It is not something new that the minister has said and we also know that the national media focuses more on the rapes at the heartland than those at the fringes. But why will a minister make a sort of surrendering gesture on this crucial issue? Is he trying to say that rapes are innumerable and hence can be tackled at ease while the security for a VIP is more significant?

Shinde should speak little about rapes in other parts of the country for his government has done little to strive for improvement in women's security. The UPA government can not deny that it was because Nirbhaya was brutally raped and assaulted in Delhi that a massive protest had followed and the task to rattle the government was shared also by the media. Little would have materialised had the rape took place in a remote north-eastern state.

Hence, the point is: It does require a rape to occur in Delhi to move the political class and yet it is trying to divert the focus on rapes at other areas to find an escape route.

And it is not only rape. If Ambani is given a better security fearing an attack from the terror groups, then why isn't there any plan in place to improve the general security situation in the country. The government has failed to proceed on the question of the NCTC and the political bickering hasn't helped the cause of the commoners.

The Indian government has virtually acknowledged that it can do little to protect the common people's lives, both from the enemies without and outside the country. The only concern for it is to somehow cling on to power for the remaining few months and then project itself to be the best possible option for the Indian electorate in the next polls. The rattled opposition has made its task a tad easier.

But is election the only hope for Indian democracy? It is time that the helpless commoners get a better treatment. Ambanis' life counts but not the only one that counts.

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