SHILLONG: Shashi Tharoor on Friday did something that is rarely witnessed in the political fraternity, praising his rival but not without the expected twist.
Addressing an election campaign rally in the city, Tharoor said he had appreciated Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s message of ‘sabka saath sabka vikaas’ after the Gujarat tragedy because he thought that was in the right direction.
“I had said we must respect and cooperate with the prime Minister” but “Modi did not practise what he preached”, he added. The former Union minister said within six to eight months of the government Modi was talking about development, but later, he was depending on people who had sectarian development agenda and the PM could not antagonise his political supporters.
Tharoor gave the example of a central minister who had asked people to elect “sons of Lord Ram” and not “illegitimate sons”. He was referring to a controversial remark by Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti in 2014.
He also stated the example of Bihar BJP leader Giriraj Singh, though without taking name, who had said if someone was against Modi, he could go to Pakistan. “I was ready to give the benefit of doubt to Modi but he failed to do the right thing and his failure will haunt him and the country,” Tharoor said.
Shifting burden
Tharoor criticised the BJP government at the Centre for reducing fund allocation in the education sector to shift the burden on states.
While appreciating Meghalaya for its achievements in the education sector, Tharoor said the Centre has to give money so that states can pay teachers.
“Unfortunately, I had only had a year and a half in that ministry myself and I was able to diagnose the problems but there was simply no time to deliver results and I certainly hope that my party will get a chance again because we have realised what was going wrong. RTE was the beginning but wasn’t the whole answer,” he said while replying to reporters’ queries on the plight of the sector.
Talking about the state’s performance, he said, “Meghalaya is doing surprisingly well. I am not saying that Meghalaya is ideal but it is better than most states in many of these indicators… there were a number of central schemes but the BJP government by creating the excuse of the 13th Finance Commission has tried to shift the burden more and more on the state.”
“So many schemes, not just in education, where the bulk of the payment was made by the central government, used to be 90:10 for the NE states but it has been cleverly shifted to 50:50. But it completely overlooks the fact that the number of resources is inadequate for the state government to do development work,” he added.
