CM in waiting

The chief minister-in-waiting is fuming and increasingly becoming restive with each passing day.  Despite being a towering Dalit leader and having a rare distinction of being elected to the assembly for eight times in a row he cannot make it yet to the third floor of the Vidhana Soudha.

Yes, we are talking about Congress leader and KPCC President Mallikarjun Kharge who is by and large considered to be the next Congress CM.

The irony of progressive Karnataka is that it cannot not have a Dalit as its CM even after six decades of its linguistic statehood. After B Basavalingappa and K H Ranaganath it is only Kharge who has the chief ministerial stuff among the Dalit leaders of consequence.

With the state under president’s rule some ambitious Congress leaders are already at their tricks to form a government by hook or by crook.

But Kharge wants a clear mandate for the party. Being KPCC president does not necessarily make him an automatic choice for CM’s post. Like in cricket nothing is predictable in Congress politics.
- There are reports that the AICC was thinking of a revamp of state Congress. It may be kite flying also by mischief mongers for whom there is no dearth in Congress.

Unfortunately Kharge is not the only one sitting in the waiting room. Cooling their heels with him are Siddaramaiah, H K Patil and R V Deshpande.

One doesn’t know whether could be another dark horse. The Congress is also known for a unique culture in which leaders are born out of envelopes dispatched from 10 Janpath. Highhandedness has no bounds in the high command centric party.

All said and done, Kharge’s admirers insist it could be now or never for him.

Lost to Maharashtra!

The outcome of the border dispute between Karnataka and Maharashtra pending in Supreme Court may be immaterial because border rows don’t have full stops. But what really matters is that Karnataka has already lost one of its greatest assets to its rival state. The living legend Hindustani vocalist Pandit Bhimsen Joshi, a great son of Karnataka, has settled in Pune for the rest of his life.

What made this ‘Karnataka Ratna’ choose Pune as his old age destiny may be a personal matter. But Kannadigas feel that the State government could have made efforts to retain him in the Karunadu. The State could have offered everything possible to persuade Panditji to stay at a place of his choice in Karnataka.

Bhimsen Joshi who has performed a number kaccheris is Gulbarga is a phenomenon for music lovers. Although artists are beyond borders there is a risk of history recording wrongly after few decades that Panditji was a Marathi. It’s also true that Joshi is a rage in Maharashtra than in Karnataka and Maharashtrians have already accepted him as a priced possession. Now it’s too late. One could only hope that Panditji could remain as a harmonial link between the two warring states. Another legendary Gandgubai Hangal has done a wonderful gesture by conferring Bhimsen Joshi with ‘Sangeet Kalanidhi’ from the Hangal Foundation. Let the duo keep singing for long wherever they are.

Doctors’ deeds

Opportunity seldom knocks on the doors of doctors to make them celebrities through their unparalled deeds. It appears opportunity keeps liberally knocks the doors of doctors of OPEC Hospital of Raichur. After Dr Deepak Bolabandi it’s now the turn of Dr Pushpanjali Malipatil to make a majestic entry in to the prestigious Guinness Book of World Records for their splendid performance through their rarest surgeries.

Uro Surgeon Dr Bolabandi hailing from Gulbarga began the legacy of OPEC fame in 2005. In a surgery on 18-year-old Mohammed Irfan of Yadgir Dr Bolabandi removed not 20 or 30 but 130 stones from his kidney achieving the distinction of removing maximum number of kidney stones anywhere in the world. Now Dr Pushpanjali Malipatil has achieved the rare distinction by successfully operating a mammoth 30 kg weighing tumour from the stomach of a woman. This is the highest weighing tumour to have been removed anywhere in the world. In the process both have relieved their respective patients from perennial pain and sufferings which is the ultimate satisfaction for a surgeon.

The Sun-city has its share in the laurels. While Dr Bolbandi hailed from Gulbarga, Dr Pushpanjali although hailing from Bijapur did her post graduation from M R Medical College, Gulbarga. May their tribe increase.

Govt functions!

The government is ruthlessly omnipresent and omnipotent. Not a single day passes without the government. There may be a government holiday but the government cannot be on holiday. By the by, how fast does it function? The question is absurd. It should rather be how slow it works. There is no meter to measure the working speed of the government but an illustration may help.

Our sister Prajavani had carried a story on the dearth of teachers in colleges on August 3 and we got a clarification to it on October 17 -- two and a half months latter.

The Collegiate Education department apparently thinks that water had not flowed down under Bhima all these 75 days. For outsiders Karnataka has made big strides in e-governance but the reality check gives a horrible picture.
The information department sent the clipping one month after the report was published and the collegiate authorities took another month to give a clarification. And it took just a fortnight to finally land in our office by crossing through all the notorious proper channels.

Kumaraswamy was very fond of receiving petitions and grievances. He had also ordered to take cognisance of whatever had appeared in print media.

The bureaucracy did follow it in letter throwing the spirit to winds. The government is government. Even during slumber it keeps functioning.