Listing “six surprising facts about spiderwebs”, former finance minister P Chidambaram used the the metaphor to draw a comparison with the various challenges India faced in terms of our border conflict with China, the coronavirus pandemic and the political crisis brewing in Rajasthan.
With the attributes of spiders being that they “have a design sense and replace their web daily”, along with being sneaky and thinking big, Chidambaram said that the facts were appropriate to “the luxury tussle in Rajasthan that the two principal political parties are locked in,” in an article in The Indian Express on 26 July.
While addressing a press conference on Monday, 27 July, Chidambaram also said that, “placing obstacles in calling assembly session will undermine fundamental basis of parliamentary democracy.”
He also added that governors appointed by BJP had “violated the letter and spirit of the constitution, gravely impairing parliamentary democracy”, PTI reported.
Chidambaram said that “no one can stand in the way of a CM who wants to prove majority” and that he was “entitled to call session”.
‘Timing of Pilot’s Strike Wrong’: Chidambaram
Noting that former Rajasthan deputy chief minister was a “young man with big ambitions”, Chidambaram said that the timing of his strike “has WRONG written all over”.
He also added that the nation, including Rajasthan, was facing a “triple challenge” of the pandemic, floundering economy and the Chinese threat.
“Mr Pilot is not cut from the same cloth as the BJP is, or so we believed. He should have channelled all his energies to help the people fight the pandemic as well as get the state’s economy back on its feet. He had before him the example of the unflappable Mohan Lal Sukhadia (he became the Rajasthan Chief Minister at the age of 38, and remained the CM for 17 years). Mr Pilot should have prepared to run the marathon – and he could have been chief minister for as long as Sukhadia was,” he wrote.
Adding that Pilot, uncharacteristically of spiders, did not seem to have a design sense and had not tried to intercept his prey.
“As a result, he is in mid-sea not knowing toward which shore he should row his boat.”P Chidambaram in The Indian Express
(With inputs from Indian Express and PTI)
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