The main objection is because it’s still pandemic time and the coronavirus is refusing to retreat into the hole from where it popped out though the hole is not that far, just the other side of the northern border. As expected the people pointing fingers the most and angry the most are the Congress, which says bluntly that the Central Vista redevelopment project is “misplaced priority.”

Even the “whimsical autocrat” pearl of wisdom is the Congress’s contribution to the bitter debate as it is turning to be. Deputy leader of the Congress in the Rajya Sabha Anand Sharma, whose baritone is as good as another second person’s, tweeted that he was “saddened” by the Supreme Court’s automatic okay to the project. He did not say it but he could have very well added if the Supreme Court had applied its mind to the issue at all? Many will agree that of late the apex court has, for reasons that one cannot pinpoint, come out as if blank in the head!

And it’s not just in this case of the Central Vista though one would have thought the Central Vista project was one vista that was spread out in plain sight for the Supreme Court to have seen the waste of it all. If spending Rs 13,450 crore of public money on a central redevelopment project at the time of rampant Covid-19 pandemic and economic downturn is not splurging, what then is an awful waste of money? Even a child would have got the answer correct. And the Supreme Court is packed with superannuated grey-heads with more grey cells between them than two Great Walls of China grey!

The ‘bhoomipujan’ for the Central Vista took place on December 10. Of course, the Opposition boycotted it. But those of us among the Great Unwashed do wonder, what if the Central Vista idea was an idea of the Congress, would the rest of the opposition rejected it? Of course, along with the Bhartatiya Janata Party, which would have surely cried foul! It’s a study in perplexity to study reactions when the shoe is on the other foot! It’s only when the project’s not yours that the “objection” raises its ugly head. Otherwise, it’s like “what a great sight!”

Anyway, returning to Mr. Sharma, he thought it was a “time to reflect” on the Supreme Court’s “endorsement” of the Modi Government’s “misplaced priorities.” It was Sharma who laid it out in plain sight that the project was a colossal waste of unnecessary waste of public money. There are those who will flog him for such dark dissection, ask him what’s so wrong in leaving a stamp of India’s own at the centre of India’s own? For such people, Lutyens Delhi and Lutyens’ monuments are a plague on the eye which should have become history long ago!

The “State of the Republic”, according to those who share thoughts with the “whimsical autocrat”, cannot be thwarted by anything, much less a piddling pandemic that’s here today, and gone tomorrow – a nation is above a million pandemics and a Central Vista unique and all our own is priceless! Mr. Sharma and the Congress party pooh pooh such wasteful thoughts. Asking the Modi Government to “reflect”, Mr. Sharma tweeted, “We are living in strange times. No relief for the migrant labour, no Justice for India’s farmers fighting for their rights in bitter cold. Pouring rain, tear gas and braving lathis. As we approach ‘Ganatantra Diwas’ need to reflect on state of Republic.”

The Congress diatribe is that Modi, an autocrat if ever there was one, and mere flesh and blood one at that, was “seeking to etch his name in the annals of history with cement & mortar.” The repeated usage of “whimsical autocrat” to Modi was Congress’s way to convey to the hoi polloi that Modi more often than not is used to thinking without putting on his thinking cap, if he had one to put on. Remember Modi refused to accept a skullcap once, and that is a cap the Congress and most of the rest of the Opposition are very familiar with.

The Opposition is also peed off that in these times of the coronavirus and Covid-19, Prime Minister Narendra ‘Splurge’ Modi will waste Rs 8000 crore on aircraft for himself, which is more than half the spend on the Central Vista! The same BJP Government, “imposes cuts of Rs 37,530 crore in allowances of 113 lakh armed forces’ and central government employees and pensioners,” he tweeted. In an aside to the Supreme Court, the Congress also spoke of “values to bolster democracy.” Congress leader Adhir Ranjan Chaudhary said, “An Atma Nirbhar Parliament isn’t made just by brick and mortar. It is made by the spirit of questioning, discussing and debating inside the House. It is built by promoting Constitutional values that bolsters democracy.”

You & I, we and they, all of us know that nothing is going to make Prime Minister Narendra Modi change tack, now more so after the Supreme Court go-ahead. Delhi will soon present a scene of dug up chaos. The piled up dirt and building material lying around will be signs of a Central Vista that none of us imagined about in our wildest dreams. Modi and his bhakts will attempt to erase all traces of colonial rule from around and inside-out all of us. The question is: How much of yourself will you have to erase to erase the collective? Our Prime Minister has hardly any answer. (IPA Service)