In his railway budget speech, railway minister Pawan Kumar Bansal suddenly quoted revolutionary Hindi poet Dushyant Kumar to demonstrate his sincerity of purpose. "Sirf hangama khada karna mera maksad nahi, meri koshish hai ki ye surat badalni chahiye (My objective is not to create commotion, I strive to change the situation)." He picked these lines from his book "Chhaye me dhoop", a collection of his poems. 

In the age to which the young Bansal belonged, the 1970s, this poem became the rage but caused a great deal of discomfiture for a leadership which characterised authoritarianism, callousness and chicanery to achieve power. It was Indira Gandhi who symbolised these traits then. Dushyant Kumar's poems were an anathema for the Congress leaders then. But as the time passes, these poems have gradually become political idioms of practitioners of most pernicious politics. One or two lines of these verses come in handy for these politicians to justify the unjustifiable.

Bansal only followed the trend. How else would you explain his love for the poet? That the railways is virtually in tatters became evident recently at Allahabad, during the stampede tragedy. But most of our leaders are blissfully ignored of reality as they rarely travel by train. Of late, leaders' success in career is measured by frequency with which they hire chartered planes. In such a situation, Dushyant Kumar comes in quite handy for Bansal and the people of his ilk.