Sudheendra Kulkarni Analyses the Elections
Sudheendra Kulkarni has an insightful and candid analysis of what went wrong for the BJP and what it needs to next in the latest issue of Tehelka. We recommend reading the entire column. The conclusion: “The BJP can indeed bounce back. But it can do so only if it first renews and empowers itself comprehensively — in its ideology, its geographical-social spread, its own political strength, its mass activity, its alliance-building, its cadre-based organizational network, and its leadership.”
For Mumbai, a Film on Shivajigiri
by Sudheendra Kulkarni
In the just-concluded Lok Sabha elections, the BJP-Shiv Sena alliance suffered a 0-6 rout in Mumbai, which was for long deemed a stronghold of the Shiv Sena. The Congress-NCP combine, which has for the past ten years run the worst government in Maharashtra’s history, should thank only one person for its spectacular success: Raj Thackeray. His Maharashtra Navanirman Sena (MNS), established only three years ago as a breakaway from the Shiv Sena, managed to snatch away a huge chunk of votes of the Marathi-speaking people. “I am simply stunned by the massive support that Raj has gained in the Marathi-speaking community,” said Kirit Somaiya, my party colleague in Mumbai, a Maharashtrian of Gujarati origin, who too was defeated despite his popularity as a crusader for many a worthy cause. “We in the BJP must study this phenomenon in-depth and objectively before we can chalk out a future strategy. There are deep-rooted social, economic and cultural factors that have made even staunch BJP-Shiv Sena supporters get attracted by Raj’s message.”
As a half-Kannadiga and half-Marathi who, after spending the longest period of his life in Mumbai, is now working out of Delhi, I have observed Raj Thackeray’s rise with both trepidation and curiosity. Trepidation, because I detest and reject his campaign against outsiders, North Indians in particular, believing that Mumbai belongs to all, just as India belongs to all. Curiosity, because I want to know why he is able to strike a sympathetic chord in Marathi Manoos (Marathi-speaking person) of all classes-from common job-seeking youth living in Mumbai’s sprawling slums to highly qualified professionals in business and finance. Marathi Manoos is as nationalistic as any you can find in India. Yet, today he is nursing a sense of hurt and injustice at being marginalised in Mumbai, which is making him assert his regional and linguistic identity.
My curiosity was whetted by the posters I saw last week of a new Marathi film, provocatively titled as Mee Shivaji Raje Bhosale Boltoy—Himmat Asel Tar Adawa’ (I am Shivaji Raje Bhosale speaking—Stop me if you have the guts). A friend told me that the film, by far the most important political movie in Maharashtra’s 50-year-old history, made a major contribution to Raj Thackeray’s electoral strength in the Lok Sabha polls. As I came out of the movie hall after a three-hour riveting cinematic experience, it wasn’t difficult to see why. And if Raj Thackeray re-orients his politics according to the film’s positive and progressive message, it is also not difficult to see him soon emerge as the leader Maharashtra is waiting for.
The film has two heroes. One of them, Dinakarrao Bhosale, is an ordinary middle-class Marathi Manoos, whose job as a bank clerk condemns him to a life of relative deprivation and humiliation, both economic and cultural. His son, despite securing more than 90 per cent marks, cannot get admission in an engineering college because he cannot pay hefty donation that wealthy non-Marathi business families can for their non-meritorious children. His talented daughter cannot realise her dream of becoming a Bollywood actress because her name (Chandrakala Bhosale) is considered too “downmarket” by a director, who, it later transpires, has changed his own name from ‘Gaikwad’ to ‘Gidwani’ in order to gain a foothold in the film industry. Bhosale lives in an old part of Mumbai in a decrepit hundred-year-old chawl, which he owns, but a rich Gujarati builder has his eye on the property. The builder, well-connected with the city’s corrupt political class and the underworld, has plans to construct two spanking skyscrapers in its place, and offers to give Bhosale a lumpsum amount and a small apartment in a far-off suburb. Much of old Mumbai has seen such migration of middle-class and poor Marathi families, and the new commercial and residential towers that have changed the landscape of the erstwhile working-class areas of Lower Parel, Parel, Lalbaug and Worli have a distinctly non-Marathi character. Bhosale’s character typifies the angst of the Marathi-speaking population of Mumbai, which feels that it is being squeezed out of the city, both at the top and the bottom. More hurtful than economic marginalisation is the Marathi people’s realisation that the “outsiders” coming into the city look down upon Marathi language and ethos. In a moving scene in the film, Bhosale bemoans the current helplessness of Marathi people, in spite of being inheritors of the proud legacy of a galaxy of great men and women such as Raja Shivaji, Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar, Lokamanya Tilak, Jyotiba and Savitri Phule and many poet-saints.
The other hero, indeed super-hero, of the film is Emperor Shivaji, played superbly by filmmaker Mahesh Manjrekar, whose cousin Santosh Manjrekar has directed it. He appears in the narrative in the same surreal but didactic way that Mahatma Gandhi does in Lage Raho Munnabhai. Just as the Mahatma teaches Munnabhai ‘Gandhigiri’, Shivaji, who shares the surname Bhosale with the film’s protagonist, teaches him ‘Shivajigiri’ - “Don’t blame outsiders for your problems. Rather, develop a positive attitude and excel in all that they are good at. Be proud of your name, your language, your history and your ethos. Do not berate others, but never let others berate you. Shed fear and be brave and determined to fight for your principles and ideals, even at the risk of your life.”
In the end King Shivaji Bhosale transforms Commoner Dinakar Bhosale (a brilliant performance by Sachin Khedekar) and turns this self-pitying Marathi Manoos into a fearless crusader for justice and dignity. The best part of the film-and this is where Raj Thackeray can learn a lesson or two to emerge as a reformed and more widely respected leader-is that Shivaji’s message is inclusive and not exclusive. It is not “anti-outsider”; rather, it exhorts that all the people living in Maharashtra, belonging to all caste, religious and linguistic backgrounds, should be treated justly and equally. The flip-side is also true: all of them, especially non-Marathi people, should be proud of being Maharashtrians. Thus, Shivaji, the great fighter for India’s national liberation that he was, re-appears in the modern era as a messenger of unity transcending the diversity of Mumbai and Maharashtra. Frankly, as Shivaji stood atop his imposing fort in the last scene of the film, surrounded by the majestic mountains of the Western Ghat, I bowed my head before this great warrior in redoubled gratitude and admiration.
(This article was first published in the Indian Express on May 31, 2009.)
Why Stability won over Change
by Sudheendra Kulkarni
May 16 has reinforced my two inter-related beliefs about the behaviour of the Indian voter. First, there is nothing fortuitous about the outcome of an election in a democracy where elections are held in a free and fair manner. And Indian democracy, with all its obvious drawbacks, has a proud tradition of conducting elections in a largely free and fair manner. In other words, no party or alliance has ever won by a stroke of luck. There has always been a compelling inner logic to its victory, and this is also true about the Congress party’s victory in the polls to the 15th Lok Sabha.
My second belief is that there is something, which can most appropriately be called the ‘National Mind’, at work through which the nationally unifying logic operates. The concept of a group mind or a collective mind is one of the most complex subjects of study in mass psychology and organisational behaviour. Nation being a natural organising framework of human collectivities, the more so in a continuously living civilisational entity like India, this living being has a mind of its own which knows what is good for it under a given circumstance. It surveys the internal political situation, assesses the external scenario, weighs different considerations and arrives at a sound and rational judgment. Thus, transcending all the caste, communal and regional considerations that were being discussed threadbare in the run-up to the elections, the National Mind summoned a unifying rationale and made it assert itself in the final verdict of the electorate.
According to me, the National Mind was weighing between two options in the just-concluded elections: change and stability. Change was the need of the hour since there was nothing exceptional about the performance of the Congress-led UPA government between 2004 and 2009. Barring a few welcome initiatives like the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, the UPA government’s track record was average on some counts and dismal on most others. Judged solely on the basis of its performance, the government deserved to go. However, the voters rarely oust a government on the criterion of performance alone. They also look for a viable and stable alternative.
In some of the campaign-time television debates that I participated in, I had said that more than political parties and commentators, it is the people of India who have the highest stake in political stability at the Centre. They know instinctively, guided by historical memory, that political instability in New Delhi is hurtful to the nation and to themselves in their daily lives. In their eyes, the need for a stable government had become greater on account of the economic crisis, created partly by external factors, and the turmoil in India’s neighbourhood, especially in Pakistan. An unstable coalition government, whose attention would get diverted to managing its own internal squabbles and whose energies would be wasted in ensuring its own survival, would not, in the estimation of the electorate, meet the challenges before the nation.
The National Mind would have been the happiest if there was a strong possibility for a positive change with reliable stability. This is where the BJP and the alliance it led failed to meet the people’s expectations. In four big states—Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and West Bengal, which together account for 143 Lok Sabha seats-the BJP’s own strength was near-zero. Moreover, it had no allies in these states in 2009, and such allies as it had in the six-year NDA rule (1998-2004) had deserted it for fear of losing Muslim votes. It did nothing in the past five years to allay this fear. Furthermore, when the Biju Janata Dal parted ways with the BJP in March this year, the latter’s ability to lead a stable coalition at the Centre got seriously dented. It thus became obvious to the people that any future BJP-led coalition in New Delhi would be a hotchpotch arrangement, critically dependent for its survival on undependable non-Congress non-Left parties.
The BJP could have still performed much better on its own and won enough seats to reflect the people’s desire for change of government. But the internal fissures in this once disciplined and united party were so glaring, both at the central and state levels, that far from attracting new supporters, it disillusioned a significant section of its own committed voters. In contrast, even those who abhor the dynastic rule and the culture of sycophancy in the Congress could see that the party scored over the BJP in terms of unity of command. With the media highlighting the lack of cohesion within the BJP, the many positive aspects of its governance and development agenda took the backseat. Hence, the BJP failed to capture the imagination of the people either as an agent of change or as a guarantor of stability. The BJP’s failure was the Congress’s gain. Since the desired change seemed impossible, the National Mind rooted for stability. It chose the Congress as a default option, giving it enough parliamentary strength to ensure a stable government.
Difficult days are ahead for the BJP. It faces problems that are multi-dimensional. Its second consecutive defeat in parliamentary elections calls for honest and mercilessly self-critical introspection on issues relating to ideology, organisational health of the party, leadership at various levels, management of alliances, and much more. It must seek a fresh endorsement from the National Mind, which is possible if the BJP, instead of trying to take short-cuts to revival, reforms itself thoroughly as a party with an inspiring and inclusive transformational agenda. The BJP has come out successfully from many an agni-pareeksha in the past. It will certainly do so again.
(This article was first published in the Indian Express on May 24, 2009.)
A Karmayogi’s Last Marathon
by Sudheendra Kulkarni
In the last lap of the marathon election campaign, two wisdom-filled books, both by Japanese authors, helped turn the focus of my thoughts inwards. In the din of the election battle, when much of my energy was taken up in arguments and counter-arguments, I regularly felt the need for moments of quiet contemplation to know if I was doing the right thing the right way. Of course, it helped to have a session of collective meditation each evening along with fellow volunteers in the campaign office. But the dialogue with oneself was also aided by a remarkable book The Secret Life of Water by Masaru Emoto, who has written another best-selling book The Hidden Messages in Water. He presents a revolutionary theory that our thoughts, positive or negative, have a direct effect on water and, by implication, on all life and on the creation of our world tomorrow. “Water reflects the human soul,” he writes. “If you say ‘Thank you’ to water, it will be reflected in the formation of beautiful crystals overflowing with gratitude in return. If the hearts of those who live on the planet are contaminated, then the earth will become that way.” In other words, perform every action, including electioneering, with the right attitude if you want the right results.
The question that I frequently asked myself over the past few months was this: “Our party says that it wants to contribute to the building of a better India tomorrow. Are we, therefore, participating in this election campaign with the purest of thoughts, feelings and actions?” The honest answer is that many of us — above all, our leader L.K. Advani — tried with as much honesty as we could summon. True, we lost the election, and defeat always brings a terrible feeling of disappointment. But we have the satisfaction that we did nothing that would ever shame us or belittle us in our own esteem. If anything, we were elevated by working for a leader who motivated us with his selfless character, his indefatigable personal effort, which daily exceeded the limits of human capacity at his age, and his inspirational thoughts for the nation (“Let’s make the 21st century India’s century.”) Even in this moment of defeat, that is some victory in itself.
“The act of living,” writes Emoto, “is the act of flowing like water.” The life of our party will flow on. Our party, founded by a great brave-heart patriot like Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee, guided by a seer like Pandit Deendayal Upadhyaya, and built to its present level of strength by dedicated leaders like Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Advani, is not going to stop its journey because of this electoral setback. We’ll introspect, learn the right lessons, apply correctives, and move on, with purer thoughts, feelings and actions.
The second book that figured in my campaign-time reading was Haruki Murakami’s What I Talk About When I Talk About Running. Murakami, Japan’s most famous living novelist, weaves his stories with incredibly fine threads of imagination and insight, almost resembling laser-beams, into human psychology. This book is not a novel; rather, it is a memoir of his reflections as a long-distance runner. Murakami, probably the only novelist who is also a marathon runner, states that running is both a physical exercise and a catalyst for philosophical reflection about oneself. “Running day after day, piling up the races, bit by bit I raise the bar, and by clearing each level I elevate myself.” Murakami says that as a runner, and also as a novelist, he is not particularly competitive. “I am much more interested in whether I reach the goals that I set for myself, so in this sense long-distance running is the perfect fit for a mindset like mine.”
Advani’s life is also that of a long-distance runner. In his long political career spanning over six decades — longer than any active political leader in India — he has never stopped running. He has also never stopped looking within, in moments of triumph or defeat. He is one of the rare leaders who puts a very high premium on right thoughts, right expression and right action. He knows that it is very difficult to do so in politics, but he has never stopped trying, and never given up.
Advani’s weakness in this election was that he did not display enough of a winner’s instinct. There are, of course, many factors behind the BJP’s defeat, but one of them is that he did not take the several ruthless decisions that needed to be taken at different points after the BJP’s 2004 defeat. Advani proved to be too much of a gentleman to hurt others. In running the most important marathon of his life, he no doubt grew as an even better human being but, as a leader, he ought to have asserted himself more.
At a thanks-giving function at the BJP headquarters a few days ago, Advani, while addressing all the party workers who had worked on the campaign, said, “The people have voted. We will know their verdict on May 16. The right thing for us to do is to follow the teaching of the Bhagawad Gita. We have done our karma to the best of our abilities and with utmost sincerity. As far as the outcome of our karma is concerned, let us leave it to the Almighty. Whatever be the people’s verdict, let us accept it with humility.”
Advani, the greatest long-distance runner in Indian politics, has lived the life of a karma yogi. Sad he certainly is in this hour of defeat. But on many higher criteria that determine success in life, he has risen even higher in the esteem of all those who know him.
(This article was first published in Indian Express on May 17, 2009.)
From Tu-Tu-Main-Main to Tu and Main
by Sudheendra Kulkarni
This election saw me perform a new task for my party’s campaign. In addition to running L.K. Advani’s communication office, I started representing the BJP in television debates. I quickly realised how unprepared I am for this medium of communication, which makes two demands, especially during election time, which I find hard to fulfill. Firstly, unlike the written word, television gives little scope for reflection, reference, detailed analysis and amplification. Secondly, even before I could learn the ropes of TV debate, I was confronted with another demand, this one coming from my own party supporters. “You are not aggressive on television,” many of them said. “You are not attacking the opponents strongly enough.” Aggressiveness in speech or action is alien to my nature, I was quite at sea trying to satisfy my party supporters.
But I have often wondered, with an unrelenting sense of unease, if political debate is all about attack and counter-attack. The sound and fury of political opponents often puts off the general TV-viewing public, which does not like too much of tu-tu-main-main. The people expect debates to illuminate issues, clarify facts, offer diverse perspectives, and present them with clearly articulated arguments and counter-arguments, so that they are better informed and can make independent judgements. They also want to see if representatives of various political parties agree on any issue and are willing to explore common ground in the interest of the nation. After all, the basic principle of democracy, in a nation of immense diversities such as India, is cooperation despite differences, and not non-cooperation because of differences.
People desire to see cooperative politics goes beyond the realm of TV debates. Indeed, it will soon begin to impact the messy task of government formation. It is almost certain that news about the election results, when they are known on May 16, will read: “Hung Parliament again.” No single party or pre-poll alliance will get a majority on its own. There is nothing new about this news, since the last time a party secured a majority on its own was way back in 1984. Barring the Congress regime of P.V. Narasimha Rao, which was a minority government, every single government since 1989 has been a coalition. By definition, a coalition is a cooperative platform of political parties that agree to work together on a common agenda of governance. But what kind of a coalition government will the 15th Lok Sabha produce? And on what basis will political parties agree or disagree to work with one another? The verdict of the electorate will definitely be fragmented, although some party or pre-poll alliance will naturally have a larger tally than others. However, post-May 16, what the people want to see is less tu-tu-main-main and more of tu and main—namely, less of confrontation and more of cooperation among political parties in the interest of forming a stable coalition government.
It is my firm belief that the people of India will exhibit their democratic maturity in an amazing way in whatever mandate they give next Saturday. They will vote for change, that is for sure. Anti-incumbency, the bane of any non-performing government, will predictably ensure the defeat of the Congress-led UPA. But the people will also teach a lesson or two to every political party to shed its rigidities and learn to cooperate with others for the sake of giving India political stability, which is a crucial need both for our country’s development and security. This means that the BJP and the NDA, which are most likely to lead the tally, will have to construct an inclusive framework for attracting new allies to reach the halfway mark of 272. The legitimate concerns of Muslims and other minorities will have to be addressed in the agenda of the next BJP-led government. At the same time, the new allies in the NDA will have to discard the bogus terminology of “secular politics”, which is nothing but a byword for the Congress-Left combine’s blind and opportunistic anti-BJPism.
For far too long, the vigour and transformative energies of India’s democracy have been sapped by the phony ideological divide between “secular” and “communal” parties. On the one hand, this divide has been used by the Congress and communist parties to preserve their Muslim votebank without in any serious way trying to improve the lot of ordinary Muslims. On the other hand, the Congress-Left combine has time and again tried to use this divide to keep a large number of parties away from the BJP. This is what they did in 1996, when, in spite of the BJP winning the largest number of seats (162) in the Lok Sabha, they prevented Atal Bihari Vajpayee from forming a government. This patently anti-democratic effort, though temporarily successful, met its doom in 1998 and 1999, when the formation of the two BJP-led NDA governments created a big breach in the citadel of “secular politics”. The voters will want a similar fissure created again in 2009. In other words, the Congress-Left combine, which has built an entire ideology justifying political untouchability towards the BJP, could be in for a shock.
In NDTV’s Big Fight debate last week, I said, quoting L.K. Advani’s oft-repeated affirmation, that “if untouchability in the social sphere is wrong, it is equally wrong in the political sphere”. The anchor, visibly taken aback by my statement, asked: “Do you then mean that the Congress is not untouchable for the BJP?” I said, “No.” “Will the BJP ever agree to work together with the Congress?” he shot back. My answer: “Since we do not consider the Congress to be untouchable, the BJP will have no objection to working together with the Congress if national interests demand at some time in the future.” There was a big applause from the audience, a sure confirmation that the people of India want political parties to shun the tu-tu-main-main mentality and internalise the “tu and main” culture.
(This article was first published in the Indian Express on May 10, 2009.)
Why Flog a Dead Horse called Justice
by Sudheendra Kulkarni
One of the memorable experiences from my years as a journalist is associated with the centenary celebrations of the Congress party in Mumbai in 1985. Covering the event as a reporter in the late Russy Karanjia’s daily newspaper had given me an opportunity to get better acquainted with the party’s — and India’s — glorious pre-Independence history. Still vividly sketched in my mind is the frail figure of Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, the ‘Frontier Gandhi’ who was a special guest at the celebrations. Known for his non-violent struggle against the British and also for his strong opposition to the partition of India, this Pushtun leader’s deeds and words (“O Pathans! Your house has fallen into ruin. Arise and rebuild it, and remember to what race you belong”) carry a message even today.
This follower of Mahatma Gandhi from the land of the Pathans, then 95 years old, was in a wheelchair. But welcoming him graciously was another Gandhi, who, at 41, was already India’s Prime Minister. If Badshah Khan embodied the best ideals of the Congress movement from the pre-1947 era, Rajiv Gandhi personified the hope and idealism of a new generation, which had come to admire him as Mr Clean. Rajiv’s presidential address at the Congress centenary session must rank as one of the most important political speeches in the annals of independent India.
Political pundits were astonished at the candour with which Rajiv spoke about the ills that had corroded the Congress party after Independence. In a passage that hit out at power brokers within his own party, he said, “Millions of ordinary Congress workers throughout the country are full of enthusiasm for the Congress policies and programmes. But they are handicapped, for on their backs ride the brokers of power and influence, who dispense patronage to convert a mass movement into a feudal oligarchy. They are enmeshing the living body of the Congress in their net of avarice. They are reducing the Congress organisation to a shell from which the spirit of service and sacrifice has been empted. How have we come to this pass?”
What a sad irony that, within a couple of years after this stirring speech, Rajiv found himself at the centre of a controversy that quickly snowballed into independent India’s most explosive corruption scandal. More disturbingly, it soon became known that the leader who had lambasted power brokers in his party had somehow allowed a power broker, a foreigner at that, to operate with the patronage of his official residence. That power broker was Ottavio Quattrocchi, a Delhi-based Italian businessman, who, thanks to his close association with the Prime Minister’s Italian wife, enjoyed privileged access to the most important address in the capital. This in-house Italian connection proved extremely costly for Rajiv. It embroiled him in the Bofors corruption scandal. The people of India who had given Rajiv’s Congress more that 400 MPs in the 1984 parliamentary elections, dethroned him by defeating his party in 1989.
It is a law of history that those who espouse high ideals are made to pay a higher price when what they practice violates what they preach. This is what happened to Rajiv Gandhi. But so strong is the influence that the Italian power broker has continued to wield at the highest level in the Congress party that 22 years after the Bofors scandal broke out, he still gets the party and its government to do his bidding. It is impossible to draw any other conclusion from the shocking disclosures, made in the investigative reports published in this newspaper last week.
The Congress leadership first assisted Quattrocchi to flee India in 1993, just a couple of days before he was required to appear before the Supreme Court. He later stated that he was not coming to India to face trial because “I have no faith in India’s justice system”. The person who made this arrogant and disparaging remark was publicly defended by Sonia Gandhi, who said in 1999, “The CBI has said he is a suspect. But we have never seen the papers naming him in the deal. They should show the papers establishing that he is guilty.” She had conveniently forgotten that four courts (three in India and one in Switzerland) had already established Quattorocchi’s involvement in the Bofors scandal.
But it was not enough for Quattrocchi to remain safely away from the long arm of India’s justice system. He wanted total freedom through an official burial of the Bofors investigation. And this is the wish that the UPA government granted him through a step-by-step subversion of justice. In 2006, it defreezed his account in a London bank. In 2007, after he was arrested in Argentina, the CBI put up such a marvelously collusive show that he escaped extradition to India. And now, with only a few weeks to go before its term ends, the UPA government has granted Quattrocchi, an absconder for 12 years, his wish. No less a person than Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh has sprung to the defence of this scamster, further devaluing the high office he holds. If ever there was a case of government-assisted acquittal without trial of an accused, it is seen in the Congress leadership’s brazenly executed ‘Operation Save Quattrocchi’.
In the past few days, Congress spokespersons, ably assisted by their friends in the media, have been heard asking, “Why is the opposition flogging this dead horse called Bofors?” They are wrong. The Bofors case is not the horse that is dead. What has been flogged to death is a horse named Justice. It is painful to see that even the higher judiciary in India has remained a passive observer as this hapless horse has been done to death with the whole world watching.
My thoughts go back to the Congress centenary event. And the words of Rajiv Gandhi haunt me — “How have we come to this pass?”
(This article was first published in the Indian Express on May 3, 2009.)
The Congress Quartet’s Political Morality
by Sudheendra Kulkarni
The kid-glove treatment that much of the media reserves for the Nehru dynasty and its nominated Prime Minister is one of the many troubling lessons in what is wrong with our democracy. First, for almost the entire stretch of the UPA government’s five years, the press was rarely given an opportunity to question Sonia Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi or Dr Manmohan Singh on relevant issues. Did you read or watch a single probing, hard-hitting interview with any of them?
But has the situation really changed even after compulsions of the election campaign have forced the trio to be more accessible to the media? I should say ‘quartet’ instead of ‘trio’, because another scion of the dynasty, Priyanka Vadra, has suddenly become the Congress party’s star campaigner. Her campaign is confined to only two constituencies. Yet, a fawning section of the media has elevated her to the status of a national campaigner, giving her more time on TV and more space in print than veterans in her own party. The moot question is: Has the Congress quartet been asked a single uncomfortable question so far? For example, has Sonia Gandhi been asked to explain what is undoubtedly the most outrageous statement in the current election campaign-namely, her assertion that “some people inside our country calling themselves desh premis” (an indirect reference to the BJP) are more dangerous than “foreign terrorists entering India”? Since all four in the quartet have raised the Kandahar issue, has the media questioned any of them what the UPA government would have done if it had faced a Kandahar-like crisis?
India’s self-styled First Family believes in the Orwellian adage that although all families are equal, some families are more equal than others. Its attitude towards mediapersons is: “Don’t forget that we are doing you a favour by letting you talk to us.” No wonder, most journalists are happy doing feel-good interviews, designed to protect the carefully cultivated super-celebrity status of Sonia Gandhi and her children. To these journalists, I can only commend the exhortation, in a celebrated poem, by Faiz Ahmed Faiz, one of the greatest poets to have sung the virtues of freedom, democracy and equality:
Bol, ki lab aazad hain tere/Bol, zaban ab tak teri hai… /Bol, ki sach zinda hai ab tak/Bol, jo kuch kehna hai kehle.
(Speak, your lips are free. Speak, it is your own tongue… Speak, because the truth is not dead yet. Speak, speak, whatever you must speak.)
The one question the media was duty-bound to ask, and the Congress leadership was duty-bound to answer, was about the shocker of a statement last week by Dr. M. Karunanidhi, the DMK chief and a key Congress ally. In a TV interview, he called V Prabhakaran “my friend” and said he did not see the LTTE chief as a terrorist. His partial backtracking the next day (”No one can forget the gruesome killing of Rajiv Gandhi”) did nothing to hide his pro-LTTE sympathies. Yet, the Congress party did not dare criticize the Tamil Nadu chief minister, much less severe its ties with his party. Its spokesman’s lame response was: “These are Karunanidhi’s personal views.”
Contrast this with the way the Congress had trained its guns on the DMK in 1997, when it pulled down the seven-month-old I.K. Gujral’s United Front government. The Justice Milap Chand Jain Commission, appointed by the Narasimha Rao government in August 1991 to probe the “larger conspiracy” behind Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination, submitted its interim report in August 1997. It indicted the DMK for having patronised the LTTE in Tamil Nadu, where the party was in power at the time of the crime in May 1991. The Congress hastily withdrew its support to the UF government, when Gujral refused to sack three DMK ministers in his cabinet on the plea that the Jain commission had only submitted its interim report and that the final report was yet to come.
Ironically, the same Congress party that destabilised Gujral’s government on the ground that its demand for sacking DMK ministers was not met, had no qualms about including DMK ministers in Dr Manmohan Singh’s government! Its record of political immorality does not end here. In February 2004, when the Congress entered into a poll alliance with the DMK, a courageous journalist asked Sonia Gandhi about her party’s withdrawal of support to Gujral’s government on the DMK issue. Her reply: “There were no negative comments in the final report. Since the final Jain report had exonerated him (Karunanidhi), how could the interim report stand?”
True, the Jain Commission’s final report did not indict the DMK. But till date Sonia Gandhi has not been asked why her party withdrew support to Gujral’s government on the basis of only an interim report.
Her silence on another related development is also eloquent. The NDA government tabled the Jain Commission’s final report in Parliament in July 1998, along with an Action Taken Report (ATR) on its findings. The Congress MPs created a furore saying the final report and the ATR were not acceptable to them. Accordingly, the NDA government agreed to set up a Multi-Disciplinary Monitoring Agency (MDMA) under the CBI to continue the probe into the “wider conspiracy” and also bring the accused, including Prabhakaran, to trial.
Three weeks later, the Congress party further upped the ante on the DMK. On August 19, 1998, a delegation of Congress leaders, including Dr Manmohan Singh, Arjun Singh and Pranab Mukherjee, met the then Home Minister L.K. Advani and complained that they were not happy with the Jain Commission’s final report, “especially as regards the probe into the role of Dr Karunanidhi”. In a detailed seven-page letter, they demanded: “The Congress insists that the agency (MDMA) be directed by the government to investigate all matters relating to Mr M. Karunanidhi as adverted by the Commission and proceed against him in a court of law, if warranted by the evidence which will be uncovered.”
Two conclusions flow from the above facts. Firstly, the Congress party could not have submitted this memorandum without a green signal from Sonia Gandhi, just as Gujral’s government could not have been pulled down on the DMK issue without her approval. Secondly, and more importantly, the Congress leadership continued to suspect the DMK’s role in the plot behind Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination even after the final report of the Jain panel had cleared Karunanidhi and his party.
The Congress leadership suspended its suspicion as soon as it smelled an electoral opportunity in allying with the DMK in 2004. Five years later, its political immorality over the Rajiv assassination issue is even more glaring. But so is the fact that the Congress quartet is under no pressure to answer uncomfortable questions from the media.
(This article was first published in the Indian Express on April 26, 2009.)
The Prime Minister’s Ersatz Bravado
by Sudheendra Kulkarni
For a conscientious politician, honour is a greater adornment than power. He values honour more than the office he holds. However, it can be said of some politicians that they lose their honour before they lose power. Dr Manmohan Singh, an essentially honourable man (I say this on the basis of my interaction with him before he became Prime Minister), has allowed his personal integrity suffer a serious dent by, among other things, the reckless manner in which he has attacked L.K. Advani, the prime ministerial candidate of the BJP and the NDA. An objective assessment of what Advani said about Dr Singh, and how the latter hit back at the BJP leader, would reveal that the PM put his personal honour at stake and emerged a loser.
The harshest word that Advani has used in describing
Dr Singh’s performance is that he is a “weak” Prime Minister. He has only articulated what most Indians know—that the PM has allowed his high office to be “devalued” by making 7 Race Course Road subservient to 10 Janpath. There was no personal prejudice or animus in this description. It was in the nature of legitimate political criticism coming from an opposition leader. Advani is incapable of harbouring personal hostility towards anyone. On the contrary, he has on many occasions discarded constraints of political correctness to publicly shower praises on his political opponents.
Recall how he publicly eulogised P.V. Narasimha Rao, in the first year of his premiership, as India’s “best prime minister after Lal Bahadur Shastri”. Recall how both Atal Bihari Vajpayee and he supported several economic reforms initiatives of Dr Manmohan Singh when he was the finance minister in the Rao government. Recall how, when Advani represented the Vajpayee government at the funeral of E.M.S. Namboodiripad in 1998, he lauded the “idealism” of the CPI(M) leader. Recall also how, during his chance encounter with Rahul Gandhi at the airport lounge in Delhi in 2007, he told the young Congress leader that he did not consider the Congress an “enemy” of the BJP but only a “political adversary”, implying that the two national parties can, and should, cooperate on major national issues.
Although there was nothing abusive in what Advani had said about Dr Singh, the latter deliberately misrepresented his criticism as “abuse” in order to gain public sympathy and attacked Advani with a fusillade of highly personalised barbs. That he was not acting on his own became clear when he was seen to have synchronised his show of aggressiveness with the equally intense personalised attack on Advani by Sonia Gandhi and her son. It was as if the Congress leadership was stung by the fact that the people of India were seeing the ongoing parliamentary poll partly as a battle between a “majboot neta” and a “weak and proxy PM”.
“What is Mr Advani’s contribution to national welfare?” asked Dr Singh, in a mocking style that smacked of arrogance. The answer can be found in a presentation titled ‘Educating Dr Manmohan Singh’ prepared by an online volunteer working with me in Advani’s campaign office (see www.lkadvani.in). It brings alive a traumatic period in independent India’s political history—the dictatorship imposed during the Emergency Rule (1975-77) by the then Congress government—and describes Advani’s significant role in the struggle for the restoration of democracy. Under the saintly leadership of Jayaprakash Narayan, Advani and other opposition leaders participated in what came to be described as India’s “Second Freedom Struggle”. Along with tens of thousands of pro-democracy activists, he spent 19 long months in jail during the Emergency. Dr Manmohan Singhji, is this not a “contribution to national welfare”? And will you please tell the countrymen what you said or did during the Emergency—and whether you ever showed the courage of criticising it after you entered public life?
In another dig at Advani, Dr Singh said, “When Mr Advani was the Home Minister, the government handed over terrorists to the Taliban in Kandahar.” The entire country knows the extraordinary circumstances in which the Vajpayee government took the painful, unpleasant but unavoidable decision of releasing three terrorists in order to secure the release of 155 passengers aboard the hijacked Indian Airlines plane in December 1999. The action was in consonance with the unanimous decision taken by an all-party meeting convened by the Prime Minister on 27 December, in which the Congress was also present. The meeting had authorised the Vajpayee government to take “whatever decision keeping in mind the interests and safety of the passengers who were on board the aircraft”.
Let us also scrutinise Dr Singh’s words of ersatz bravado: “My government does not release terrorists when attacked. My government responds with commandos.” The hijacked Indian Airlines plane, when it reached Kandahar airport, was ringed by the tanks of Pakistan-controlled Taliban army. Moreover, the terrorists had placed explosives in the aircraft itself. It was on the sound advice of the Indian Army and Air Force that Prime Minister Vajpayee decided not to risk a commando operation in Kandahar and endanger the lives of 155 passengers. It is, therefore, foolhardy on the part of Dr Singh, who proved himself incapable of sacking his own utterly incompetent home minister for four-and-a-half years because the latter had the protection of 10 Janpath, to now say that he would have sent commandos to battle the terrorists in Taliban territory.
Dr Singh’s bravado has been busted by the candid words of his own new Home Minister. In a recent interview to NDTV’s Barkha Dutt, this is what P. Chidambaram said: “I do not know how I would have reacted if 150 families came to my doorstep and pleaded that the lives of their loved ones in that aircraft must be saved. It is easy to criticise but if one is in that position, it is a very difficult decision to take.”
Undoubtedly, the most outrageous comment in the Congress vs Advani face-off was made by Sonia Gandhi. Indirectly referring to the BJP, (those who “put on masks of desh prem”), she said at an election rally in Khunti (Jharkhand) on April 11: “We are in greater danger from people inside our country than from foreign terrorists entering India.” Congressmen are distinctly uncomfortable when asked if they would defend their foreign-born president’s shocking statement. After all, no responsible politician belonging to any party in India would ever say of his adversaries that they pose a greater danger to our country than “foreign terrorists”. Be it Dr Singh or Sonia Gandhi, they must be held accountable for what they say.
(This article was first published in the Indian Express on April 19, 2009.)
Why is India’s ‘Regent’ PM Angry?
by Sudheendra Kulkarni
Of late, our soft-spoken Prime Minister has begun using harsh language—not about the enemies of the nation but about the leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha. And it’s not just him, his leader too is doing that.
Sonia Gandhi does not like Dr Manmohan Singh being called a “weak” Prime Minister. At an election rally last week, she angrily declared that BJP leader L.K. Advani’s description of Dr Singh as a “weak” PM amounts to showing disrespect to the nation. It is baffling how a critical assessment of Dr Singh’s performance as PM can invite this grave charge. A few days later, Dr Singh himself termed Advani’s criticism as “abusive”. I wonder if Dr Singh really doesn’t know the difference between criticism and abuse. Either he thinks any criticism of him is necessarily an insult or he has deliberately used a harsher word in the hope of winning public sympathy.
Both Advani’s criticism of the PM and the latter’s diatribe against Advani need to be dissected. Dr Singh’s partymen and supporters may think he is a strong PM. They are entitled to their judgement, just as his critics are entitled to theirs. The only way this can be debated meaningfully is by foregrounding the debate against the PM’s actual performance in the last five years. Take, for example, the most recent episode of the Congress Party having been shamed into withdrawing Jagdish Tytler and Sajjan Kumar as its candidates for the Lok Sabha polls in New Delhi. The PM says he was neither informed nor consulted in the matter of the CBI’s clean chit to Tytler for his alleged involvement in the carnage of Sikhs in 1984. Mr Prime Minister, the CBI functions directly under you. Were you similarly kept in the dark when the CBI allowed Ottavio Quattrocchi to go scot-free with the Bofors booty?
Let’s come back to Tytler, who was a minister in the UPA government. After the Nanavati Commission indicted him in 2005, Dr Singh’s position became so untenable in the face of the combined Opposition’s demand for the tainted minister’s dismissal that the PM not only conceded the demand but also had to apologise in Parliament for the 1984 riots—the first Congress PM to do so after 21 long years. If Dr Singh was a strong PM, did he put his foot down when the Congress president chose to give Tytler the Congress ticket? Or was he again not “informed and consulted”? After the CBI gave a clean chit to Tytler, did he seek an explanation from the CBI director? Why did he wait for journalist Jarnail Singh to force the Congress president to resort to a belated act of damage control? For Dr Singh to congratulate his party for being “sensitive to the sentiments of Sikhs”, and further to say “better late than never”, smacks of disingenuousness.
One expects a strong PM to be both principled and decisive. Has Dr Singh displayed either of the two qualities in the matter of massive influx of Bangladeshi infiltrators into Assam, which has grave implications for India’s security and unity? He has been a Rajya Sabha member from Assam for the past 18 years. Hence, both as MP and PM, he is duty bound to pay heed to the Supreme Court’s warning in 2005 that unchecked infiltration of millions of Bangladeshis constitutes “external aggression”. The Court had directed the government to take “effective action” to save Assam. Dr Singh’s government took no action whatsoever. Indeed, when Sriprakash Jaiswal, MoS (Home), told the Rajya Sabha in July 2004 that there were 1.2 crore illegal Bangladeshi migrants living in 17 Indian states, Dr Singh publicly questioned the authenticity of the information provided by his own minister.
The matter is not unrelated to the unabated internal subversion in Assam. After all, the state has witnessed over 30 terrorist acts in the past five years by Bangladesh-based and ISI-supported terrorist groups. Yet, there is not a word about infiltration from Bangladesh in the Congress manifesto, which Dr Singh himself released, along with Sonia Gandhi, a fortnight ago. Is it the sign of a strong PM to be silent on such a vital issue? And is he a strong PM who does not pull up his ministerial colleague for demanding Indian citizenship to all illegal Bangladeshi migrants? Who has not taken action against a single corrupt minister in his government? Who kept mum when his party’s manifesto chose not to mention the word ‘corruption’ even once?
One last question. What kind of prime ministerial candidate is Dr Singh who has not presented himself as a candidate in the Lok Sabha elections? It is amusing that he has invoked the name of Indira Gandhi, who too was a Rajya Sabha member for some time after becoming PM. But she soon fought a Lok Sabha election and won. Technically, even a Rajya Sabha member can become PM. But in the scheme of parliamentary democracy that our Constitution has drawn up, the Lok Sabha has superior powers. Moreover, the Prime Minister of India is not a CEO reporting to his chairperson. He is the country’s highest political leader, whose executive power derives from the political authority vested by the people. Dr Singh had no direct contact with the masses when he was a bureaucrat. What is not justifiable is the fact that even after becoming PM, he never tried to establish a rapport with the masses.
In the Congress scheme of things, Dr Singh is nothing more than a stopgap arrangement in the dynastic succession, a modern-day regent. In ancient and medieval times, whenever the simhaasan fell vacant, and the yuvraj was too young and inexperienced to occupy it, a trusted aide of the royal family used to be made the temporary ruler, who would relinquish the throne as soon as the prince came of age. The only difference between then and now is that a prince in the past used to be placed under the tutelage of a regent when he was 10 or 20 years of age. Rahul Gandhi is 38 and still remains inexperienced. So much for projecting him as the “Hope of Young India”. And so much for Dr Singh as a strong PM.
(This article was first published in the Indian Express on April 12, 2009.)
Why India is turning to Populism
by Sudheendra Kulkarni
Not being an expert in etymology, I do not know how the word ‘populism’ originated. However, keen observers of and participants in the discourse on India’s political economy know that ‘populism’ has travelled an interesting journey in our country. From being reviled as ‘bad economics’ since the advent of liberalisation in the early 1990s by a section of the intelligentsia that had embraced the credo ‘West is Best’, it has now been honourably enshrined as an indispensable part of ‘good politics’ by mainstream political parties.Populism can be understood as popular pro-people, especially pro-poor, governmental measures with direct benefits to individual citizens or families unmediated or less mediated by market forces. However, it did not find favour with the high priests of free-marketism, who insisted that liberalisation and globalisation as defined by American capitalism were a model to be adopted by the rest of the world. Known as the Washington Consensus, its votaries frowned upon populist measures. Like socialism, populism too came to be equated with outdated thinking. What was hailed as ‘Manmohanomics’ in India was not free of this intellectual arrogance either, although it must be said to the credit of Dr Manmohan Singh that the reforms he introduced as finance minister freed the Indian economy from many shackles of the licence-permit-quota raj.
Now that the Washington Consensus is dead in Washington itself, benign populism is back with a bang. Look at the election manifestos of the BJP and Congress. The Congress promised 25 kg of rice or wheat a month at Rs 3 per kg to families living below the poverty line. The BJP has gone several steps further. It has promised 35 kg of rice or wheat a month at Rs 2 kg to all BPL families. The scheme was first mooted in the early 1980s by the late N.T. Rama Rao, the superstar of Telugu cinema who became the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh. It has taken 25 long years for it to travel from provincial politics to national politics. At the very least, this proves that national political parties are not the sole repositories of knowledge about good governance. In a diverse country like India, regional parties, headed by responsible leaders, can contribute a good deal to the emergence of a pro-people governance paradigm.A comparison between the manifestos of the Congress and BJP clearly shows that the latter has given a far broader populist thrust to its governance agenda. It has made specific promises to almost every section of society—kisans (farm loans at 4 per cent interest rate), jawans (complete exemption from income tax plus one rank, one pension for ex-servicemen), income tax payers (exemption limit raised from Rs. 1.2 lakh to Rs. 3 lakh), students (education loans at 4 per cent interest rate), and senior citizens (IT benefits to be made available at 60 years, instead of 65 years as is the practice now). Women’s economic empowerment has received special focus: Ladli Laxmi Yojana to reduce school dropout among girl children; a universal financial inclusion scheme to make every BPL woman have a bank account with an initial governmental deposit of Rs. 1,500; and a promise to double the abysmally low wages of 28 lakh Anganwadi workers and helpers, who are the backbone of the Integrated Child Development Scheme.
Why did the BJP give its manifesto such a strong populist focus? The reason is simple: learning from past mistakes. After the party’s unexpected defeat in the 2004 parliamentary elections, a committee was set up to study the reasons for electoral defeat. I was a member of the committee. Based on the feedback from a large cross-section of the party’s grassroots workers, the committee identified several factors. Amongst them was the paradoxical response that, although all sections of the people appreciated the long-term benefits that would accrue from the Vajpayee government’s thrust on infrastructure development, the poor and the middle classes felt that it did not promise anything specific for their benefit. This finding was truly an eye-opener for me.
When the poor go out to cast their vote, it is perfectly understandable if they ask themselves: “What’s in it for us?” Don’t businessmen and professionals do the same? The difference is that, whereas the rich get from the system all that they want even without voting, the poor, who vote almost as if it’s their religious duty, get very little in return. Thus, it is the aam matdaata (common voter) in India’s increasingly maturing democracy who is forcing political parties to learn what good politics is and, by implication, what good economics is. While pressure for pro-poor economics is building from below, there is also growing responsiveness at the top. Today there are many people in the BJP, Congress and other parties who realise that it is the moral and Constitutional obligation of our governance system to first bring immediate succour to the poor.
Having said this, I must hasten to add that populist promises by themselves are no proof of the maturity of a political party. By and large, our voters are becoming astute enough to judge parties and their leaders on the basis of their performance and not promises alone. Performance depends on parties’ and leaders’ commitment to the canons of good governance.
Three different political formations are making a bid for power in the coming Lok Sabha elections—BJP-led NDA, Congress whose UPA arrangement has collapsed, and an amorphous Third Front. Parties in all the three formations have made populist promises. It is now up to the voters to give a decisive mandate to that configuration which is most committed to the requirements of good economics, good politics and good governance.
(This article was first published in the Indian Express on April 5, 2009.)