HAVE YOU no­ticed that there has not been any con­tro­versy in Pun­jab about any par­tic­u­lar min­is­ter be­ing given a port­fo­lio com­pletely dif­fer­ent from his known area of ex­per­tise?

Whet­her we agree with his ap­proach or not, but Man­preet Singh Badal has some claim over a cer­tain un­der­stand­ing of fi­nance, rev­enue, ex­pen­di­ture, mon­e­tary, fis­cal con­cerns; him get­ting the Fi­nance/​Tax­a­tion/​Gov­er­nance Re­forms makes sense.

But why is it that there were no de­bates in the me­dia about what par­tic­u­lar de­part­ment a Sukh Sarkaria would get, or a Rana Gur­jit will land, or a Bharat Bhushan Ashu will bag?

Be­cause not one of them has any known area of ex­per­tise. Not a sin­gle soul in Pun­jab had guessed that Rana Gur­jit has a spe­cial affin­ity to­wards Hor­ti­cul­ture or Tech­ni­cal Ed­u­ca­tion!

Were you aware that we had among us a Gurki­rat Singh Kotli (Ke­tia?) with a pas­sion for In­for­ma­tion Tech­nol­ogy or Sci­ence or a Bharat Bhushan Ashu dy­ing to bring rev­o­lu­tion­ary changes in Con­sumer Af­fairs?

Were you aware that we had among us a Gurki­rat Singh Kotli (Ke­tia?) with a pas­sion for In­for­ma­tion Tech­nol­ogy or Sci­ence or a Bharat Bhushan Ashu dy­ing to bring rev­o­lu­tion­ary changes in Con­sumer Af­fairs?

In a state where labour wages are a huge po­lit­i­cal is­sue, where agri­cul­tural labour­ers of­ten re­ceive far be­low min­i­mum wages, where politi­cians seem to be di­vorced from how MGN­REGA could be used, where a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of mi­grants com­prise the labour force, where the dis­pute-re­dres­sal mech­a­nism to ad­dress labour-re­lated is­sues in the in­dus­try is all but miss­ing, why were we un­aware of the spe­cial skills of San­gat Singh Gilz­ian to grap­ple with these in­tri­cate mat­ters? Was he writ­ing about these is­sues in some ab­struse off-shore Amer­i­can or Eu­ro­pean re­search jour­nals that his ex­er­tions on the mat­ter es­caped us all to­gether?

The fact is that had it been a gov­ern­ment of a dif­fer­ent party, we would have had the same prob­lem. There is an ar­gu­ment to be made that you do not nec­es­sar­ily need do­main ex­per­tise to run pol­icy for­mu­la­tion or a par­tic­u­lar min­istry. But the fact is that if you have ex­per­tise in a cer­tain do­main, and still you are put in charge of a com­pletely dif­fer­ent min­istry, you bring in a lot of new per­spec­tives, and you learn the ropes quickly. By the very na­ture of their jobs and vo­ca­tion, we ex­pect our politi­cians to be at least in­ter­ested in pol­icy for­mu­la­tion and pub­lic ser­vice, but they are so adept at hid­ing these tal­ents that we only come to know when the list of port­fo­lios is out.

I have heard a ru­mour that Gur­preet Singh Kan­gar now plans to write a much-ref­er­enced pa­per in the Eco­nomic & Po­lit­i­cal Weekly about what must be done to trans­form the power sec­tor in Pun­jab and the gaps be­tween com­plaint lodg­ing and fi­nal re­dres­sal in case of a power out­age. How true do you think that ru­mour could be?

We re­cently saw the lamen­ta­tion by Bal­bir Singh Sidhu who was ask­ing his High Com­mand, via the ‘Break­ing News’ fo­rums, about the rea­son why he was re­moved. Why are we not ask­ing the right ques­tion — Why was he made the Health Min­is­ter? Why was Sadhu Singh Dharam­sot made a min­is­ter? 

I have heard a ru­mour that Gur­preet Singh Kan­gar now plans to write a much-ref­er­enced pa­per in the Eco­nomic & Po­lit­i­cal Weekly about what must be done to trans­form the power sec­tor in Pun­jab and the gaps be­tween com­plaint lodg­ing and fi­nal re­dres­sal in case of a power out­age. How true do you think that ru­mour could be?

Few peo­ple will have a prob­lem with Brahm Mo­hin­dra get­ting the Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment de­part­ment or Par­gat Singh get­ting the Sports port­fo­lio be­cause these are the peo­ple who have ei­ther put in the years or have been in­sid­ers and know what they will be deal­ing with. But a lot of them are new­bies now on a mis­sion to set every­thing right in about 90 days or so. What else do you need to have a per­fect mess?

The so­cial me­dia is agog with a young turk of Con­gress talk­ing about get­ting a de­part­ment ’jis naal swaad aa jaave’ and his suc­cess in ac­tu­ally land­ing that de­part­ment. Con­sider your­self thrown un­der a bus.

The min­istry-for­ma­tion ex­er­cise in Pun­jab un­der any gov­ern­ment is no more a case of de­ploy­ing the right tal­ent. It is now a naked pub­lic ex­er­cise in dis­trib­ut­ing the spoils of power. The so­cial me­dia is agog with a young turk of Con­gress talk­ing about get­ting a de­part­ment ’jis naal swaad aa jaave’ and his suc­cess in ac­tu­ally land­ing that de­part­ment. Con­sider your­self thrown un­der a bus.

It is one rea­son the politi­cians find them­selves be­com­ing the tar­get of ire of com­mon peo­ple. But will the pedes­trian war cry of ’Mera Neta Chor Hai’; trans­form it­self into get­ting the right tal­ent into pol­i­tics? The ar­gu­ment about stuff­ing the As­sem­bly or the Cab­i­net with tech­nocrats or do­main ex­perts is as fool­ish as hav­ing one with­out any kind of do­main knowl­edge.

Even­tu­ally, peo­ple get the gov­ern­ment they de­serve. We must show that we de­serve bet­ter. Oth­er­wise, our pol­i­tics is ready to find 16 Sadhu Singh Dharam­sots.

Even­tu­ally, peo­ple get the gov­ern­ment they de­serve. We must show that we de­serve bet­ter. Oth­er­wise, our pol­i­tics is ready to find 16 Sadhu Singh Dharam­sots.

How many in the Cab­i­net will make you move your, let me use my do­main knowl­edge here, fat ass? Check the list and find out how many have you got.