Confidence and confusion: Hemant’s first show
VIJAY DEO JHA
RANCHI
The House this morning was commodiously chilled of temperature but only Finance Minister Hemant Soren seemed to sense the heat. Putting tilak on his forehead, Soren had visited God and deity, probably, to gain strength to deliver humdinger in his maiden shown as FM.
His opponents believed him to deliver a dud. Soren chose not to remain on either side and read his budget speech that had no patina except several blushes to Hindi, he gave quite expectedly.
Those who had drafted his speech probably thought that as per convention FM speech must carry at least couple of verses, never mind, how bad the FM could be in handling those fine lines. “Sarkar ki Kaman yuvaon ne sambhali hai, Sadan ka lekar viswas, Vikash ki jyoti jalani hai, (Youths have taken rein of the government, taking the House in confidence we will bring development).”
Hemant looked both his sides, expecting some praise from CM Arjun Munda and Deputy CM Sudesh Mahato. So prosaic a deliverance, they could not understand; was it poetry, was it a prose or an interpolation.
Opposition’s boo-boo brigade was ready to tear his confidence and as soon as Hemant rose to speak the front benchers—Pradeep Yadav, Samresh Singh, Annapurna Devi and Bandhu Tirkey raised the issue of the leak of the budget.
“You must take moral responsibility of the leakage of the budget report before it was tabled.” Opposition’s first assault flummoxed Hemant to read his speech at super fast speed.
His forehead was constantly dehydrating, his hands constantly reaching out for repair and re-hydration. He was nervous in the manner of a rookie conductor asked to lead a philharmonic concert who has just got only rudimentary training at a music school.
“Samresh Da, Hemant ji Naye hai, sikhenge bolne dijiye inhen,” leader Opposition Rajendra Singh interrupted. The king of blusters had not subsided, only Hemant was pleading for an audience. Samresh often made faces and led his thumbs down to rattle so were other Opposition MLAs who termed budget a finely worded fraud.
Hemant’s speech was interrupted by frequent interruption by the Opposition with number of anonymous grunts of protest from the Opposition. At one point Pradeep Yadav did get up to question or to contradict something but he wasn’t able to go a long way after the Speaker CP Singh intervened to let FM to finish.
Yet, there were occasions when Hemant appeared bedeviled by critical opposition flipping over a critical section on concessions to minorities and dropping and slashing some of welfare programmes.
When questions were raised for dropping ‘Atal Bihari Vajpayee Rural Electricity Programme’ former FM Raghuwar Das was shuffling thick budget documents to ascertain the fact.
“Listen please. I have taken care of the interest of every section. You need to listen first,” he begged for audience.
Hemant was a probationary practitioner of the thankless art of budget presentation, of course, but here too was a man who was ministering not only the political fortune of his government but also trying to prove himself fit for the job.
During the speech Hemant nearly lost confidence several times but collected soon after. Reading measure after measure pouring data and detail he left the Opposition taxed. In between, Hemant tried to gain consensus over key and critical issues. One such he said: “Jharkhand is facing drought but the Centre has not given us desired help. Let us unite on this issue.”
“Such appeals could easily fetch tears and not rain and support. See agriculture sector has remained neglected so the farmers nothing substantial,” Pradeep Yadav said after the budget.
But in between Opposition’s fiery attack and jeer and Hemant’s own desperate bid to complete the show he was trying to shield himself by poking humour.
The day showed humour not as the essential mien of Hemant, though it can safely be said that he tried, poorly.