Is the Prime Minister a teapot?

Authoritative sources, to whom this columnist has some access, say that the Prime Minister has decided not to let 2012 be a re-run of 2011. That is very good.

After all, even those with very short memories will recall that in the year just gone by, Dr Manmohan Singh saw his entire legacy dismantled by a buccaneer called A Raja of the DMK.

Probity and reform, the two legs on which that legacy walked, both took massively crushing blows at the knees.

The authoritative source refused to say whether it was already too late to restore the crumbling knees. But informed media opinion seems to think it is.

The general sense in the country is that Dr Singh should now hang up his boots after calling for a general election as soon as possible.

If things go well for the Congress in the forthcoming Uttar Pradesh Assembly election, this could happen as early as October while the BJP is still off-balance.

How to define “doing well” is a problem though. But if the Congress under the dynamic and enlightened leadership of Dear Leader Rahul even trebles the number of its seats from 22 now — in a house of 403 — it will be enough to give the lad a joyful shove towards the PMO.

Dr Singh, who is reportedly a very tired man, may then well find himself in Rashtrapati Bhavan. That will give him time to refurbish the legacy.

Mommy and Sonny

But then, imagine: Mummy as Congress President and Sonny as Prime Minister. The world will snigger quietly.

But the Congress — should it be so fortunate as to form the next government — will say it has solved the one-horse, two-riders problem.

Bad people will wonder who the PM really is, just as they used to do about North Korea when Kim squared ran the country.

For the record, it should be mentioned that just as Mummy has asked Rahul to earn his spurs in UP, Daddy (Kim Il Sung) asked Sonny (Kim Jong Il) to earn his spurs with the North Korean nuclear programme.

That Great Leader took his time and after two-and-a-half decades, Kim Jr managed a bang in 2009. How long will ours take?

Not a teapot

Jokes aside, the Prime Minister is an office of the Constitution, not a teapot to be passed on as a family heirloom. Nor indeed is Chief Minister. Indeed, the whole idea of the Westminster Model was to get away from monarchical practices. Yet, here, we are staring at the possibility of a Queen Mother and a King in just a few months' time. And it is only in the Congress — and that too at the level of the Prime Minister — that this inheritance thing works.

No other party has managed to make a go of it, though the DMK has been trying very hard, without much success.

So, here's a suggestion for Team Anna and TV anchors: Let them ask every Congress MP under the age of 50 the following question: “ In what way do you think you are worse than Rahul Gandhi .”

Not only will India's real scab (or scam) be scratched open, TRPs will also shoot up.

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