Thursday, June 29, 2006

Mulling over Mittal (June 30, 2006)

Is this India's achievement or the achievement of an Indian?

By Swapan Dasgupta

For reasons that have as much to do with ethnicity as with national pride, Lakshmi Mittal’s doughty success in effecting the merger of the Luxembourg-registered Arcelor SA with his Mittal Steel has been widely celebrated in India. Apart from being seen as a glorious chapter in the annals of Indian entrepreneurship, Mittal’s triumph is also perceived as a successful assault on European prejudices. The gripping story of an Indian entrepreneur, who dared take on an entrenched establishment and win, is the stuff legends are made of.

The five month saga that began with Mittal’s hostile bid for the European steel giant Arcelor on January 27 was in many ways akin to a clash of civilisations. It is not that Mittal’s credentials in the steel industry were in any doubt—even before the bid for Arcelor his Rotterdam-registered company had already made a mark as the largest producer of steel in the world. Nor was it the case that Mittal’s earlier experience was confined to turning around dilapidated steel plants acquired at knock-down prices in countries of the erstwhile Warsaw Pact. Mittal Steel has a substantial stake in the United States too.

As the richest man in Britain, and the third richest in Europe, with a net worth of some £14.9 billion, Mittal was already a known figure in the European Union. His generous donations to the British Labour Party, his acquisition of a mansion in London’s Kensington Palace Gardens and the lavish reception he hosted in the Palace of Versailles for his daughter’s wedding had already made him a celebrity. To those with old money, Mittal may have seemed a trifle too flashy and comparable to some of the louder Texan billionaires who are routinely denied entry into some of the snootier gentleman’s clubs in Pall Mall and St James’, but at least he was not an unknown entity. Neither was Mittal some lesser-known Arab sheikh and nor was he mysteriously low-profile like the Barclay brothers who took over The Ritz in London and The Daily Telegraph. If analogies are to hold, Mittal was almost in the same league as the then Australian Rupert Murdoch when he bought The Times from the Thompson family.

Guy Dolle, the outspoken CEO of Arcelor, who led the robust resistance to the takeover of Arcelor was indiscreet enough to identify the problem with Mittal Steel as being too “full of Indians” but the fact remains that race was only a subliminal factor in the ugly corporate battle. Regardless of his assertion that Mittal was blessed with “monkey money” and was “incompatible with European cultural values”—a disqualification which did not hold true for Alexey Mordashov, the Russian owner of Severstal, the suitor favoured by the old Arselor management—political correctness ruled out dwelling too much on Mittal’s national origins and the colour of his skin. In any case, as President Jacques Chirac discovered during a visit to India last February where he was dogged by the Mittal controversy, the collateral damage of playing the race card was too much for the French economy to digest. With France hoping to sell commercial aircraft and nuclear reactors to India, screaming “bloody Indians” was plain untenable.

The fear of Mittal was actually centred on management style. Arcelor was in many ways one of the last vestiges of what is called “gentlemanly capitalism”. Blessed with a fine wine cellar and its own resident cheese expert in its Luxembourg headquarters, Arcelor epitomised the relaxed, high-cost and protectionist style of traditional European business. The Arcelor management viewed Mittal’s low-cost style of steel production—unlike Arcelor, Mittal Steel operates out of rented accommodation in London’s Berkeley Square—as a threat to a languid way of life. Dolle’s assertion on January 30 comparing the “perfume” produced by Arcelor with the “Eau de Cologne” churned out by Mittal was an evocative expression of the sharply contrasting styles. His reacted in exactly the same way as the pampered printers of Fleet Street and the clubbable journalists to Murdoch’s acquisition of The Times.

It is a tribute to the business environment of Europe that neither political pressure from the governments of France, Luxembourg and Spain nor contrived xenophobia could ward off the cold logic of capitalism. The Arcelor management tried many tricks—from announcing a company buyback of shares to proposing a merger with Russia’s Severstal—to beat back Mittal. They failed, not least because of a revolt of ordinary shareholders—a rebellion that was said to have been orchestrated by both Adam, an organisation of small French investors, and Goldman Sachs, one of the advisers to Mittal Steel. Finally, after Mittal raised his bid from the original 18.6 billion Euros to 26 billion Euros and lowered his family stakes to 43.5 per cent in the merged entity, even the Arcelor management succumbed, leaving only the Russians crying foul.

Of course, there was a final diplomatic compromise by Mittal. The new entity, which will control some 10 per cent of the world’s steel output will be known as Arcelor Mittal, rather than Mittal Arcelor. As one commentator put it, for the man who has travelled a long way from a Rajasthan village and Kolkata, “it was not worth risking the derailment of a world-domination strategy because of quibbles over whose name comes first.”

Viewed in totality, Mittal’s achievement is awesome and India is right to feel very proud of him. Yet, the question remains: is this India’s achievement or the achievement of an Indian? The answer seems clear-cut. Mittal’s meteoric rise in the world of steel began from the day he branched away from his family’s steel business in India. Mittal could leap into the big league and dream of global domination only after he extracted himself away from the suffocating business environment of India. He could achieve in a decade what the Tatas haven’t been able to manage in a century, not because his business acumen was more formidable, but because he wasn’t dragged down by an environment where there is a glass ceiling put on entrepreneurship and growth. He could succeed because he was not hemmed in by protectionism and could operate globally.

It is indeed ironic that the triumph of Mittal, who still holds an Indian passport, constitutes an indictment of India and a ringing endorsement of the West. Why is it that despite its high taxes and class biases, an immigrant entrepreneur can end up as the third richest man in Europe? Why is Indian entrepreneurial talent unable to find full expression in India? Why are there limits to the growth of Indian corporate houses operating from India?

The answers, without doubt, lie in the business environment of the West. Mittal had to fight prejudice and stomach a lot of gratuitous insults from native Europeans. In addition, he had to counter the resistance of a powerful section of the political class. He could overcome these because at the end of the day Europe allows full play, much more than, say, the US, to the logic of capitalism. Would a hostile takeover that encounters political resistance be allowed to succeed in India? Can India overcome its own xenophobic instincts as effortlessly as the European did?

These are questions that Indians need to mull over in the wake of Mittal’s spectacular business success. By gloating over Mittal showing the white man his place, India will be clutching at the wrong end of the stick. For India, the Mittal story suggests that Indians can come into their own—outside India.

(Published in The Telegraph, Calcutta, June 30, 2006)

Wednesday, June 28, 2006

Will Tharoor's UN loss be India's gain?

By Swapan Dasgupta 

For a civilisation that is yet to fully overcome the disabilities of prolonged servitude, the importance attached to international recognition is exceptional.

Rabindranath Tagore was widely regarded as an accomplished upper class dilettante in Bengal until the Nobel Prize catapulted him into a national sage. Likewise, it was Dr S. Radhakrishnan 's election to a Fellowship at All Souls in Oxford that facilitated his scholastic deification at home and his eventual move to Rashtrapati Bhavan.

Judged by these precedents, Shashi Tharoor 's curriculum vitae is, as yet, not all that awesome. A distinguished international bureaucrat who has served the United Nations all his working life and written novels and commentaries in his spare time, Tharoor has offered himself as a candidate for the post of UN Secretary-General. After months of quiet, behind-the-scenes lobbying, the UPA Government has signalled its decision to back his candidature, not least because convention deems that Kofi Annan 's successor should preferably be from Asia.

We are also informed that, in a bid to forge a national consensus, Tharoor has also succeeded in securing the backing of an extremely gullible BJP leadership. He, unfortunately, has not been able to secure the unequivocal backing of the CPI(M). The Left, for a change, appears to have asked all the right questions.

If Tharoor does indeed make it to the top UN job with India 's active backing, there is certain to be widespread jubilation in the country at yet another great Indian achievement. Regardless of the fact that he has lived overseas since the time he graduated from St Stephen 's College in 1975, Tharoor is in every respect an Indian, in the same way as Amartya Sen is. The Indian political class must not hold his non-resident status against him.

It is necessary, however, to introduce a caveat at this stage. The job that Tharoor seeks is no ordinary one. The present Secretary-General may have contributed more than his fair share to bringing the top job into some disrepute but the fact remains that the CEO of the UN is a position of exceptional importance. Along with the five permanent members of the Security Council, the UN is the sixth pillar of the global order. By listing his impressive career achievements, the Ministry of External Affairs spokesman made it sound that Tharoor was bidding for membership of the Athenaeum Club or staking his claim to be President of Harvard University.

Important as these positions are, Kofi Annan's job is a league apart. To be fair, Tharoor has avoided playing to the gallery. He has said that, if elected, he would be an Indian Secretary-General but not India's Secretary-General. In other words, it would be unrealistic of India to expect him to do its bidding from New York. Shorn off diplomatic niceties, it is a proclamation that India will be sponsoring Tharoor but not its own man.

Detachment from national origin is imperative if Tharoor is to secure wider backing for his nomination. At the same time, the issue of neutrality prompts a larger question: if the beneficiary of the Tharoor campaign is only Tharoor, should India not look to its larger diplomatic interests? If Tharoor succeeds Annan, India 's claim to be made a permanent member of the UN is certain to be shelved for an indefinite period. It is an unwritten convention that the UN Secretary General is not from a country that has a stake in the Security Council.

Does the Government want India to jettison its Security Council claims to back a person who, despite being in a UN job, had never shied away from taking positions on domestic Indian politics?

Tharoor, for example, became a secular preacher during the Ayodhya movement. Those with long memories may like to recall the role of Annan 's secretariat in badgering India after the 1998 Pokhran-II blasts. Can Tharoor seriously deny that his neutrality was not impaired by his profound antipathy to the non-Congress Government that was in place between 1998 and 2004? Did Tharoor's certitudes determine Annan 's profoundly unhelpful attitude to India in this period? Tharoor 's right to hold strong opinions on Indian politics should not be denied. However, if he was fearless enough to express them while holding a UN job, what will he do if he is elevated to the UN Secretary-General's job? If the ruling arrangement in Delhi changes in the short-term, will Tharoor 's view of India remain as rosy?

It is understandable that a section of the Congress leadership is keen to reward Tharoor for his proximity to the stalwarts of the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation. Tharoor, for example, once described the now-discredited former External Affairs Minister K. Natwar Singh as an inspiration. He was also one of those who defended Sonia Gandhi during the "foreigner " controversy. All these stands call for recognition.

The question is: can this be done in a way that does not compromise India 's long-term strategic interests? As things stand, the prospect of a Tharoor victory is as compelling as Ecuador winning the FIFA World Cup. That, however, is not the point. What will be the collateral damage to India by persevering with someone's flight of whimsy?

Would it not be more prudent if the Congress Party took into account Tharoor's untenable position in a post-Annan dispensation and appointed him to the vacant post of External Affairs Minister? I get the feeling that events are moving in that direction. If nothing, it would establish the precedent that people need to be taken seriously at the age of 50.

Tharoor is a good Indian asset. Let us use him productively to benefit India. As for the Secretary-General's job, let India use its good offices to elect someone who can both win and be kindly disposed to India. As things stand, New Delhi seems hell-bent on making a fool of itself.

Free Press Journal, June, 2006

Sunday, June 25, 2006

Of Tharoor and collateral damage (June 25, 2006)

By Swapan Dasgupta

For a civilisation that is yet to fully overcome the disabilities of prolonged servitude, the importance attached to international recognition can hardly be overstated. Rabindranath Tagore was widely regarded as an accomplished upper class dilettante in Bengal until the Nobel Prize transformed him into a national sage. Likewise, it was Dr S. Radhakrishnan’s election to a Fellowship at All Souls in Oxford which facilitated his scholastic deification at home and his eventual move to Rashtrapati Bhavan.

Judged by these precedents, Shashi Tharoor’s curriculum vitae is, as yet, not all that awesome. A distinguished United Nations bureaucrat who has written novels and commentaries in his spare time, Tharoor has offered himself as a candidate for the post of UN Secretary-General. His candidature has been backed by India’s UPA Government. In a bid to forge a national consensus, Tharoor has also succeeded in securing the backing of the BJP but not the unequivocal backing of the CPI(M).

If Tharoor does indeed make it to the top UN job, there is certain to be widespread jubilation in the country at yet another great Indian achievement. Regardless of the fact that he has lived abroad since he graduated from St Stephen’s College in 1975, Tharoor is in every respect an Indian, in the same way as Amartya Sen is. To hold his non-resident status against him would be an act of cussedness.

Yet, it is necessary to introduce a caveat. The job that Tharoor seeks is no ordinary one. The present Secretary-General may have contributed more than his fair share to bringing the top job into some disrepute but the fact remains that the CEO of the UN is a position of exceptional importance. Along with the five permanent members of the Security Council, the UN is the sixth pillar of the global order. By listing his impressive career achievements, the Ministry of External Affairs spokesman made it sound as if Tharoor was bidding for membership of the Athenaeum Club or staking his claim to be President of Harvard University. Important as these positions are, there was nothing to suggest that Tharoor is the right man to be Secretary-General.

To be fair, Tharoor has avoided playing to the gallery. He has said that, if elected, he would be an Indian Secretary-General but not India’s Secretary-General. In other words, it would be unrealistic of India to expect him to do its bidding from New York. Shorn off diplomatic niceties, it is a proclamation that India will be sponsoring Tharoor, but not its own man.

Detachment from national origin is imperative if Tharoor is to secure wider backing for his nomination. At the same time, the issue of neutrality prompts a larger question: if the beneficiary of the Tharoor campaign is only Tharoor, should India not look to its larger diplomatic interests? If Tharoor succeeds Kofi Annan, India’s claim to be made a permanent member of the UN is certain to be shelved for an indefinite period. Is this what the Government wants?

Those with long memories may like to recall the role of Annan’s secretariat in badgering India after the 1998 Pokhran-II blasts. Can Tharoor seriously assert that he was neutral to the non-Congress Government that was in place between 1998 and 2004? Or did Tharoor’s certitudes determine Annan’s profoundly unhelpful attitude to India in this period?

It is understandable that a section of the Congress leadership is keen to reward Tharoor for his proximity to the stalwarts of the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation. The question is: can this be done in a way that does not compromise India’s long-term strategic interests?

As things stand, the prospect of a Tharoor victory is as compelling as Ecuador winning the FIFA World Cup. That, however, is not the point. What will be the collateral damage to India larger diplomatic standing? Wouldn’t it be more prudent for the Government to consider Tharoor for the post vacated by K. Natwar Singh? That way loyalty is rewarded, accountability ensured and diplomacy unimpaired.

(Published in Sunday Pioneer, June 25, 2006)

Sunday, June 18, 2006

Politics is on a dead cat bounce (June 18, 2006)

By Swapan Dasgupta

The turbulence in the global equity markets has, if nothing else, helped add to our collective vocabulary. A ghoulishly evocative term used these days to describe the all-too-brief recovery before the inevitable downhill slide is “dead cat’s bounce”. The expression, as someone gleefully explained, stems from the belief that even a dead cat is certain to bounce if dumped from a sufficiently towering height.

It is a shame to confine this wonderful expression on the inexplicable roller-coaster ride of the stock markets. As I see it, the course of contemporary Indian politics is beginning to resemble a dead cat’s bounce. We have a well-meaning Prime Minister who gets all excited by equally well-meaning ideas centred on GDP growth rates, investments in infrastructure and the pricing of petroleum products. Regardless of your voting preferences, there is not much in Manmohan Singh’s platitudes we can seriously object to. Some even admire his single-mindedness in the face of distractions. The problem is that each time the good Sardar tries to focus public attention on what is called “development” issues”, in walks bear operators like Arjun Singh, Prakash Karat and A.B. Bardhan with their antediluvian proposals. The Prime Minister being too weak and unsure of himself to tell the bear pack where to get off, the government’s confidence ratings fall steeply.

A small piece of good news, like some item girl being kissed by someone we have never heard of before or Sonia Gandhi telling the nation that she is not amused by the new Saral tax form, triggers a distraction and leads to a dead cat’s bounce. Then, with an air of dreary resignation, the nation resumes its downhill trot.

It’s actually remarkable how effortlessly the UPA Government has managed to make the Great India Story look jaded. In presiding over the most Left-wing government for a very long time, the UPA is heralding the colossal mismanagement of public finances, rising interest rates, the growth of Islamist and Maoist terrorism and drift in foreign policy. From being a showcase of democracy and entrepreneurship, the Government has in just two years successfully squandered a rich inheritance. The world is still not willing to write off India but if the country persists with its present state of rudderless drift, it will only be a matter of months before the focus reverts to China—a state of affairs which will not displease the Left.

The mood wouldn’t have been so depressing had there been evidence that the UPA is a passing show and that, sooner rather than later, the firm of Singh, Singh, Karat and Bardhan will become another footnote in history. Between 1996 and 1998, India went through an equally dismal patch—we even had a Prime Minister who couldn’t look beyond the Punjabi quarters of South Delhi—but at that time there was at least the reassurance that the coming election would herald change, and change for the better. Today, there is no comforting faith in the future. One CPI(M) leader has even suggested that those Indians who want to vote with their feet, in other words emigrate, should be charged a punitive tax.

If the Government is rudderless and self-destructive, the disease has rubbed off on the opposition. Confronted with prize pickings and, to use a football analogy, almost nothing between its forward line and the other side’s goalkeeper, the former ruling combine has repeatedly ensured that it is ruled off side. Part of it owes to the fact that some members of the team seem hell bent on scoring self-goals but the more important reason is that the NDA forward line resemble a Veteran’s XI playing a charity match. Obviously, if you don’t have the wherewithal to withstand the rigours of a 90-minute game the question of tactics and strategy become notional. So dismal is the NDA’s track record that it has repeatedly failed to convert penalty shots into goals. If you exclude Narendra Modi, who appears to be the last man standing, there is not even the reassurance of a dead cat’s bounce.

(Published in Sunday Pioneer, June 18, 2006)

Friday, June 16, 2006

It's time to despair (June 16, 2006)

The World Cup and the rediscovery of Englishness

By Swapan Dasgupta

You can always rely on the Letters column of The Daily Telegraph to reflect the healthy minority view in an England that is changing too fast for comfort. “I do hope”, wrote Andrew Lewis from Warminster in Wiltshire, a part of England which, hopefully, remains frozen in time, “England reach the final (of the FIFA World Cup). Walking the dogs on Saturday afternoon was a joy—not a soul in sight.”

It wasn’t a joy to those hundreds of non-European passport-holders who landed in Heathrow airport last Saturday afternoon and who weren’t blessed with the bright pink access card to the fast track immigration desk. Never in more than three decades have I ever seen the S-shaped queue extend as far back as the very entrance to the gigantic arrivals hall of Terminal 3. The reason: too few manned counters. Like most of England, a bit too many of Her Majesty’s immigration service had taken time off to guzzle large quantities of beer and watch England narrowly beat Paraguay.

Soccer, or football as it is better known, has enthralled the drinking classes of the United Kingdom since late-Victorian times. If “going to the football” on Saturday afternoons was once an affordable leisure option for the working classes in the Midlands and the North, predicting the no-score draws in the pools became the favourite gambling option of the elderly—before the National Lottery arrived. Football pools were such a popular fix that the betting agencies got together to form a pools panel of experts which would identify notional no-score draws in case the weather, or something else, forced an unexpected local cancellation.

English league football was always extraordinarily popular but I don’t think the game was ever as much of an obsession as it has become in the past two decades. Football has not only snuffed life out of other competitive sports—cricket experienced an all-too-brief revival in the summer of 2005 after England won the Ashes unexpectedly—it has captured the soul of England. Courtesy the 20-year-old Wayne Rooney, the most popular Englishman alive today—yes, he is more celebrated than even the 31-year-old legend David Beckham—England must boast the largest number of non-medical metatarsal specialists in the world. So compelling is the national obsession with the World Cup campaign that the whole of public life is being looked at through the unlikely prism of football.

Take national outrage as the starting point. A week ago, a politically-correct head-teacher of a state-run comprehensive school “banned” students from flaunting the Cross of St George—the national flag of England, as opposed to the Union Jack which is the flag of the United Kingdom—on the ground that the flag symbolised the British National Party, an extreme, xenophobic, “White Britain” party. The backlash was swift and quite decisive. The head-teacher was universally denounced as a narrow-minded bigot, taught a few lessons in history and told to take the slow boat to China till the victorious team returned from Germany.

Today, the windows of the less salubrious parts of London are draped with the Cross of St George—I was shocked to notice a couple in a leafy by-lane of Hampstead, only to realise that they had been put there by jolly builders on a refurbishment job. To accommodate national sentiment, the flag is even being flown in Downing Street—though, in deference to protocol, there is also a Union Jack. It’s a far cry from 1966 when, the only visible manifestation of support for England was the Union Jack. This time there is not even the pretence that the masses of Scotland are with the people of England. In a remarkably imaginative editorial “On balance, God probably is English”, The Daily Telegraph put a charitable spin on this departure from good neighbourliness: “Had Tottenham Hotspur played CA River Plate at the height of the Falklands (war), we suspect that a fair number of Arsenal fans would have been cheering the Portenos; but that wouldn’t have meant that they wanted to lose the war.”

Maybe not, but for the land which only a hundred years ago believed that to be born English is to win the first prize in the lottery of life, it’s been a steep journey downhill. It’s being called a “benign patriotism”, considering the good behaviour of the crazies who are camping in Germany indefinitely—so different from the London mob which cheered the victory at Mafeking and torched Italian shops in 1940. To me, an outsider, it looks more like a case of commercially-led patriotism where the flaunting of identity is coupled with confusion over who or what to hate.

The local branch of Sainsbury’s supermarket is selling England jerseys and every conceivable Coach and Horses is advertising a giant screen and happy hour rates for all the lager louts who couldn’t make it to Germany. And McDonald’s, that epitome of un-Englishness, is advertising a larger-than-usual burger which the non-salad eaters can happily devour with their pints while they swear at the TV screen. I didn’t have the insolence to ask the Ritz if they are laying out a special World Cup high-tea, not after being told that the Indian summer will not lead to any relaxation of the dress code. At least there was the reassurance that there are institutions that stand gloriously above Beckham and Posh Spice.

“The rediscovery of Englishness”, claimed high-Tory columnist Charles Moore optimistically, “is beginning…” I wish it was true but the evidence of a revved-up Albion emerging from pickled renderings of “Jerusalem” just isn’t there. Resurgence demands pride and a garnishing of hate. There is no evidence of either. There is an Archie Bunker-type Englishman who is apparently driving round the streets of Hamburg playing the “Dam Busters March” on his ghetto blaster. This pathetic improvisation of John Cleese’s farcical don’t-forget-the-war act in Fawlty Towers has been greeted by bemused incomprehension. Today’s German’s are about as familiar with music from British war movies as they are with Horst Wessel lied. “Don’t let’s be (too) beastly to the Germans”, advised the writer Simon Heffer, even as he defended those English fans who taunted the hosts with Nazi salutes: “The Nazi salute is a way of humorously expressing tribal feelings about a people who were, in living memory, behaving rather badly.” It’s a novel argument but begs the immediate question: why are English fans the badly-behaved of today?

Keen to be the perfect hosts, the Germans have apparently been told to avoid releasing their lovely Alsation dogs on the yobs and not get provoked when a demented fool shouts “Sieg Heil”. So far they have been models of restraint. But the real reason why English fans haven’t been set upon is not because the travellers are less obnoxious but because in no other country is football the driving force of nationalism. I wouldn’t like to be in England the evening it is knocked out of the World Cup.

In most countries, waving the flag in football matches is bit of old-fashioned fun. In England, it’s not a case of nationalism hijacking a sport, it is sport being appropriated by a patriotism that has lost all other resonance. England has an attractive football side. Its fans love the game quite genuinely. Many more are knowledgeable about football in England than they are about cricket in India. Yet, every popular sport must bear the burden of a claque. But imagine if footballer’s wives became social celebrities and the chants of beer-soaked individuals became national songs?

It’s time to despair about England.

(Published in The Telegraph, Calcutta, June 16, 2006)

Sunday, June 11, 2006

Spin doctor's manual (June 11, 2006)

By Swapan Dasgupta

I have not heard of any book entitled “The Spin Doctor’s Manual” penned by some of the redoubtable backroom political strategists in the democratic world. In all probability, such a book is yet to be written. There are, as most of its practitioners will tell you, no prescriptive norms in politics. Ritualised responses inevitably yield diminishing returns.

It is ironic that despite this understanding of what constitutes good politics, Indian spin-doctoring remains mired in the predictable. Look back to the NDA regime. Every now and then the Atal Bihari Vajpayee Government hit air pockets and encountered political turbulence. There was the spectacular defeat in four Assembly elections in 1998, the scandal of the Tehelka tapes, the 2002 Budget fiasco and, of course, the period attacks on the Prime Minister by either the RSS or one of its constituent organisations.

The responses to these crises invariably followed a pattern. First, events would overwhelm the government. Second, there would be a spate of feeble denials followed by the mandatory search for a fall guy. Third, there would be a torrent of adverse publicity in the media. Finally, the Prime Minister and his office would wake up to the devastation and formulate the most predictable of all predictable responses. The “plantation sector” of the media would be summoned and reports would gradually emanate about how enough is enough and the Prime Minister would now show who is boss. Some of us may recall that after a particularly damaging crisis for the NDA, one leading magazine projected the new-found “assertive” Vajpayee as Shivaji on horseback.

No supine flatterer has yet painted Prime Minister Manmohan Singh as the new Maharaja Ranjit Singh. However, in the past few days, reports have appeared suggesting that a determined Prime Minister has patted Petroleum Minister Murli Deora on the back and told him that tough decisions, once taken, cannot be reversed. Others have put out that an exasperated and “assertive” Manmohan has now deemed that it will be reforms, reforms and more reforms. The “assertive Vajpayee” spin has been repackaged into the “assertive Manmohan” spin.

Actually, no amount of spin can distract from the mounting woes of the Prime Minister. When he was catapulted to the top job by Sonia Gandhi’s “inner voice”, Manmohan had only two things going for him: personal integrity and a modern outlook. These, coupled with the natural propensity of the electorate to give everyone a fair chance, ensured he had a two year honeymoon.

Whether the honeymoon ended the day Arjun Singh declared that his Human Resource Development minister was no longer under the overall control of the Prime Minister, or the day the Congress Party felt it could no longer afford to back government decisions, is a matter for historians to consider. For the people of India, what matters is that the end of the honeymoon was immediately followed by the precipitate deterioration in the quality of governance. It is bad enough that it took the government more than three months to put into effect an overdue price rise in petroleum product. What is worse is that the terms of the increase couldn’t be negotiated with any finality.

The Congress Party’s unhappiness with the price hike and Sonia Gandhi’s displeasure with the new Saral form may be inconsequential and purely for the record. However, coupled with the unending whispers of a dramatic deterioration of relations between 10 Janpath and 3 Race Course Road, they suggest that Manmohan’s Government may be at the slog overs stage of his innings. Rashtrapati Bhavan’s reported intransigence on the cynical Office of Profit Bill, which stands to benefit fat cat Leftists, may constitute the denouement.

The Government is fast running out of steam. In the tug-of-war between populism and reform, populism has prevailed with the full backing of the Italian Lady Bountiful. The non-productive Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme is fast bankrupting the country. Reforms, if not bad news, have been deemed to be politically unrewarding. With the Opposition in disarray, the Congress is exploring ways to jettison both the baby and the bathwater of anti-incumbency.

(Published in Sunday Pioneer, June 11, 2006)

Tuesday, June 06, 2006

Pramod's sordid legacy (June 6, 2006)

By Swapan Dasgupta

If what took place in Delhi’s 7 Safdarjung Road last Thursday night had happened a week later, the Bharatiya Janata Party leadership would have found no hospitable corner of India to hide their faces. According to the choreographed script, Rahul Mahajan was to travel to Assam on June 3 to immerse his father’s ashes in the Brahmaputra. On his return, he would have announced his decision to perpetuate Pramod Mahajan’s legacy and formally join the BJP. A day or two later, he would have been appointed a vice-president of the party’s youth wing. Rahul would have been honoured for his greatest asset—being his father’s son.

By hosting a small rave party before his initiation was completed, Rahul blew his chances. However, the mistimed celebrations provided the BJP a small face-saver. At least Sushma Swaraj could claim that the death of Bibek Moitra and the hospitalisation of Rahul was a “family tragedy” that had nothing to do with politics and Atal Bihari Vajpayee could loftily blame it on “bad company” and youthful indiscretion.

The disclaimers are unlikely to wash. The latest misfortune of the Mahajan family has destroyed the posthumous halo conferred on Pramod and brought into the open the decadent underbelly of an organisation that once claimed to be the repository of ethical politics. The sordid tale of reckless indulgence is not merely an indictment of a lifestyle centred on easy, unearned money. It is also an indictment of an entire leadership that chose to be either willing participants or mute spectators to a grotesque perversion of public life.

There is no question that Pramod had many things going for him. Intelligent, articulate, witty, innovative and, above all, pragmatic, he was among the brightest sparks in the BJP. He fitted into a leadership role almost effortlessly. Unfortunately, all these attributes blended with a ruthless disregard for ethical niceties.

Pramod first undertook fund-raising for the party because, as he once explained, “someone had to do the job.” But money devoured him and became almost an end in itself. He institutionalised a regime of quid pro quo with leading donors on the pragmatic plea that “if you sleep with someone at night, you can’t treat him as a whore in the morning.” The colourful imagery wasn’t a Pramod original; he was echoing a prominent Mumbai industrialist who was generous in his contributions to the BJP.

The second distortion was triggered by what he called “cadre building”. It involved an elaborate network of private subsidies to individuals who were either fiercely loyal to him personally or were deemed useful in the long. In blunt terms, he converted a section of the BJP and even functionaries of fraternal organisations into paid personal retainers. The individual sums involved weren’t necessarily staggering—a little help with household expenses here and help with securing an agency there. These were old Congress techniques and Pramod grafted them on to the BJP. This process naturally meant that the party treasury became detached from a private war chest controlled by Pramod.

It is not that Pramod’s parallel economy was unknown to the BJP leadership. Indeed, many of them gleefully plugged themselves into the network. Pramod had an uncanny of identifying human weaknesses and turning these into political opportunities. He was ruthless and unsparing in his attitude towards those who he identified as obstacles in the path of his political advance. Even the top leadership didn’t want to get on his wrong side. He ran what at least two senior BJP leaders have described to me as a “mafia” operation.

Pramod ran a system which was prefaced on money. Everything, he believed, had a price and everything could be “managed”. Once an astute political mind, he ended up reposing all faith in Mammon. Even elections, he believed, could be won by the necessary deployment of resources—a misreading that cost the NDA the 2004 election and contributed to the party’s dismal showing in Assam in April this year.

Money overwhelmed Pramod. It warped his vision and it distorted his lifestyle. An atmosphere of unwholesome recklessness permeated into the heart of the system he created. It may or may not have triggered his own murder but it has certainly ensured that his son’s political career is still-born.

Last December, Pramod was anointed Lakshman by the BJP’s most towering leader. Six months later, the entire party stands dishonoured by his epic legacy. What went wrong is well known. The BJP needs to ask why the wrongs were knowingly condoned.

(Published in DNA, Mumbai, June 6, 2006)

Sunday, June 04, 2006

Admit follies, get redemption (June 4, 2006)

By Swapan Dasgupta

A thousand years ago, the Arab traveller Al-Biruni noted presciently that Hindus lacked a sense of history. He was, of course, referring to the Hindu disdain for chronology, documentation and antiquity. Yet, he could just as well have been referring to a common Hindu failure to separate history from either eulogy or demonology—a failure that is at the root of many contemporary controversies.

As a self-confessed upholder of the Hindu inheritance, the BJP is particularly prone to the national inability to cope with the past. Since that terrible tragedy in Mumbai, a distraught party leadership aided by a cynical media, went completely overboard in projecting the late Pramod Mahajan as a political Superman. By a resounding voice vote, the former general secretary was crowned the best king the BJP never had.

That Pramod was a dynamic functionary, adept at networking and improvisation was never in doubt. Every political party needs someone like him. Yet, it is a commentary on the intellectual bankruptcy that has afflicted the party that qualities of expediency, sometimes verging on skulduggery, were elevated into godly virtue. There were a lot of things about Mahajan and his political style that were morally and ethically suspect—and these were known to the party and RSS leadership. In deifying everything about the man, the party leadership wilfully put a seal of approval on everything Mahajan epitomised.

So blinded was the leadership that it even chose to inject dynastic inheritance into the party’s organisation. It is hardly a state secret that Rahul Mahajan would have been anointed a vice president of the party’s youth wing sometime in June as a reward for being his father’s son—a process that would also have legitimised the inevitable induction of some of his father’s more suspect associates into positions of influence. It is also whispered that the Rahul Mahajan precedent was to be cited to foist other sons and daughters into leadership positions.

The deification of Mahajan was not an act of innocent simple-mindedness. It was symptomatic of a larger rot that is destroying the BJP. The lifestyle deficiencies of Rahul that led to a former residence of Atal Bihari Vajpayee being turned into the venue of a very unwholesome gathering last Thursday night was not exactly unknown to those who mattered. Yet, these awkward issues were conveniently brushed under the carpet. Was it a simple case of honouring Mahajan by accommodating Rahul? Or were there other considerations?

Some of these questions cannot be answered conclusively but the public mind has been poisoned. The saturation TV coverage of the unnatural death of Bibek Moitra and alleged eyewitness accounts of how a Rs 500 note was used to snort some lethal white powder, the night before Mahajan’s ashes were to be ceremonially immersed in the Brahmaputra, don’t amount to an indictment of one spoilt brat. They amount to a vote of no-confidence in an entire body of individuals who had wilfully brushed uncomfortable questions aside for reasons that can best be described as collateral.

What we have witnessed in the BJP in recent times is the institutionalisation of duplicity. It is this distortion that has led to the party leadership refusing to read the lessons from the party’s debacle in the four Assembly elections, putting astrology before common sense and hoping that a natural process of anti-incumbency will see the BJP back in power in Delhi before too long. In his speech to the national executive, the party president stressed the importance of inner-party democracy. But how can you have a healthy democracy if every sceptical note is accompanied by charges of disloyalty and every hint of media criticism leads to the shooting of the messenger?

An organisation can only redeem itself if it acknowledges that it is in need of redemption. It has taken the sordid Rahul Mahajan controversy to bring out the extent of the rot. But surely things won’t get better if the BJP deludes itself into believing that coke is just the name of a soft drink.

(Published in Sunday Pioneer, June 4, 2006)

Friday, June 02, 2006

Ruthless merit (June 2, 2006)

A glimpse of the hazy contours of a brave, new India

By Swapan Dasgupta

There is an English disease, peculiar to a particular class, of using language to mask feelings rather than express them. Indians are different. Our political class is naturally prone to hyperbolic disorders. The past few weeks have, however, been an aberration. We have witnessed the novel spectacle of Indian politicos falling back on diplomatic understatement and even reticence to avoid the ignominy of incomprehension.

When Human Resource Development minister Arjun Singh played out the factional war in the Congress by peremptorily adding 27 per cent to the existing quotas in central universities and specialist institutes, the initial reaction of the affected classes was one of disgust and despondency. Yet, the opposition was uncharacteristically mealy-mouthed and cautious, so unlike the outrage that greeted another Thakur’s equally cynical attempt to redraw the political mosaic in 1990.

The official discourse has been distressingly predictable. Social justice, everyone agreed, is a good idea but shouldn’t some thought also be given to merit, particularly now that India’s economy is far more globalised than in 1990? Shouldn’t the announcement of new reservations have been preceded by consultations with all political parties? And isn’t the time ripe for a “creamy layer” exclusion clause?

For lack of application and originality, take the BJP as a case in point. As the premier opposition party it had a natural obligation to respond to the UPA Government’s initiative. Yet throughout the ill-fated Bharat Suraksha Yatra when leaders proffered their opinions on a variety of subjects that are not even remotely linked to national security and terrorism, neither L.K. Advani nor Rajnath Singh said a word on the mounting controversy over reservations. Indeed, it was not until last week—nearly six weeks after the HRD Minister made his move—that the top leadership of the BJP met to formulate a coherent response. The party was paralysed by the fear that any response which revealed its inner disquiet would alienate the substantial OBC support it had built up over the years. Its leaders fell back on inanities about social justice and social consensus. Language became the instrument of obfuscation.

It was the spontaneous revolt of medical students, first in Delhi and subsequently across the country that changed the rules of engagement. Unlike the anti-Mandal protestors in 1990 who enjoyed the surreptitious backing of both the Congress and the BJP, today’s agitators were not blessed with political tutoring. Apart from cricketer-turned-parliamentarian Navjot Singh Sidhu, who is not exactly a political heavyweight, no politician of consequence came forward to embrace the Youth for Equality. At best the agitation that finally compelled the Supreme Court to intervene was complemented by the angry resignation of two members of the Knowledge Commission, a largely decorative body dominated by friends of the present regime.

The political innocence of today’s protesters was very revealing. Whereas the conventional wisdom in the national parties that depend on cross-caste appeal was that nothing must be done to trigger a backlash of the beneficiaries of the new reservations, the protestors were not bound by electoral calculations. Indeed, most of those who participated in the street protests, hunger strikes and public meetings probably nurtured a healthy disdain for the prevailing political culture of India. In a country where most legislators don’t even know how to handle a personal computer, the anti-reservationists took the aid of SMS, email and blogsites to link disparate groups across the country. With finite resources, modern communication methods became the instruments of forging solidarities and creating new pressure groups and political communities across India.

In time to come, historians will look back on the protests of April and May 2006 as the first modernist upsurge against a decrepit political consensus. The nature of the demands put forward by the Youth for Equality point to a heartening freshness, particularly when contrasted with the tired rhetoric of India’s elected representatives. The demand for equality of opportunities was once the signature tune of progressives throughout the world. Unfortunately, the discovery of affirmative action by the Sixties’ sociologists had relegated this republican aspiration to the dustbins of political activism. The youth revolt has resurrected this forgotten ideal. It is a plank that now awaits political adoption.

Second, whereas Hindu social reformers of the 19th century and nationalist stalwarts of the 20th century had made eradication of caste identity a symbol of an emerging modern India, the practitioners of electoral democracy have banked on caste-based mobilisation. By once again positing an aggregative Indian identity, the protestors have implicitly questioned one of the central assumptions governing political mobilisation. Viewed in totality, the anti-reservations stir has been one of the most cosmopolitan movements witnessed in recent times. It has been defined by a vision of India as a modern, dynamic capitalism. There is none of the angst-ridden, anti-imperialist and counter-culture piffle which characterised the student movements of the Sixties. This was a movement which symbolised the determination of a section of India to face the world on terms of equality, minus controls and crutches. This was a movement of a vanguard, not a class. No wonder there was a striking mismatch between their aspirations and the mindset of a government hell-bent on creating a nation on doles and crutches.

Finally, this was a movement which successfully broke through the hierarchies and inhibitions of gender. The sight of highly motivated young boys and girls joining hands for a common objective went contrary to a stereotype surrounding women’s participation in public life. This movement demonstrated that a separatist agenda prefaced on shrill feminism is not imperative in bridging the gender divide. In the emerging India, women have as much of a vested interest as men in ensuring a level playing field for all.

A movement which breaks the mould of existing politics is bound to draw flak. However, the political class has been uncharacteristically restrained in their criticism. This is partly because there is a tacit recognition that a 49 per cent reservation could have a long-term debilitating effect on the competitiveness of India’s knowledge economy. At the same time, there is a belief that the anti-reservations stir is ephemeral, elitist and selfish. CPI national secretary D.Raja’s charge that it was an “upper caste stageshow” reflecting “the greed of the new generation in an unequal society” will find an echo in populist circles.

That a movement based on the principles of ruthless meritocracy is going to be confined to a few economically vibrant enclaves is obvious. Even assuming most of the participants were nominally upper caste Hindus, it was no more an upper caste movement than the early nationalist movement was a Brahmin conspiracy. The self-image of the movement was markedly anti-caste rather than upper caste. This may explain why its reach was limited to the centres of academic excellence and the citadels of the new economy.


As an electoral force the anti-reservations stir is unlikely to make an immediate impact, except perhaps contributing to the decimation of the Congress. Yet, the movement has a larger significance. This is the first movement conceived and conducted by a generation that has come into its own after the process of economic liberalisation began in 1991. This explains its sharp rupture with past student movements. Given India’s demographic profile, political parties will be signing their own warrants of obsolescence if they don’t internalise the emerging trends. In the anti-reservations stir we have glimpsed the hazy contours of a brave, new India.

(Published in The Telegraph, Calcutta, June 2, 2006)