Paper War

The eight-day-long hawkers’ strike in Lucknow has forced the common man to go without the daily newspapers. More than the absence of newspapers with their morning tea, people are wondering at the indifference of the Akhilesh Yadav government on the issue.

If the state government has not taken any steps to resolve the crisis that has arisen over the issue of commissions for hawkers, it is because some overzealous officers have made sure that the chief minister and top officials do not miss their newspapers.

Cops from various police stations have been entrusted with the task of picking up newspapers from their respective offices and delivering them in police jeeps to the residences of the chief minister and other senior ministers and officials.

Since the VIP readers do not miss their daily newspapers, the government feels that there is no urgency on resolving the crisis, which is intensifying with every passing day.

When all is well for the people who matter, there is obviously no reason to bother about the common man.

FROM A LEADER TO LIABILITY Never did he know that members of the party he was controlling two years ago as its campaign committee chairperson would soon consider him an “unwanted” person in the organisation and publicly offend him. Former Union minister and senior Congress leader Srikant Kumar Jena encountered such an unsavoury situation at the Congress Bhavan.

When he came out of a meeting that discussed preparations for the crucial panchayat elections due early next year, some Youth Congress activists rushed to him and told him: “It’s because of you the Congress met its doom in Kendrapara and Balasore Lok Sabha seats. You are no longer an asset to the party.” Realising that the situation might turn uglier, the veteran Congress leader immediately vanished from Congress Bhavan.

The matter did not stop there. A journalist who witnessed this scene posted it on his Facebook page. Curiously, some Congress leaders “liked” the post and even shared it.