Saturday, December 31, 2011

Lollipops won't pacify Mamata


By Swapan Dasgupta
The failure of the Congress-led UPA Government to negotiate the passage of the Lokpal Bill in the Rajya Sabha has been blamed on an obstructive BJP. Such an assessment is needlessly flattering to the BJP which found itself out of sorts in the Lok Sabha but managed to recover its composure in the Upper House. The question therefore arises: what did the BJP do right in the Rajya Sabha what it didn’t do in the Lower House?

The difference does not merely lie in the behaviour of the SP and BSP which obliged the Government in the Lok Sabha but demonstrated greater independence in the Rajya Sabha. The Government was far more bothered by the obstreperous conduct of its ally Trinamool Congress that wanted to press its amendments in the Rajya Sabha. The TMC managed to secure endorsements from all the Opposition parties. And this meant that the Government was bound to lose on the floor of the House had the vote actually been taken.

This was the third time in rapid succession that the TMC had scuttled the Government’s initiatives. It negated the Teesta Waters Treaty that Manmohan Singh wanted to sign during his visit to Bangladesh. The TMC chief Mamata Banerjee put her foot down on the ground that she had not been properly consulted. This embarrassment was followed by Mamata’s unbudging veto of the decision to allow foreign direct investment in multi-brand retailing. The TMC was concerned about the impact foreign investment would have on the millions of petty retailers who have few other means of sustainable livelihood in the state. And now there is Mamata’s unrelenting opposition to the Lokayukta proposals that have a direct bearing on how the state government fights corruption.

Mamata has been painted by the Government as a difficult customer and an incorrigible populist who is unmindful of larger national concerns. It is being whispered that intra-Bengali rivalries have prevented Mamata from obliging the otherwise obliging Pranab Mukherjee who has a reputation of being a crafty consensus builder.

Is Mamata as bad as she is made out to be by the Government’s spin doctors? That she is mercurial, pugnacious and prone to flying off the handle are well known. In fact, it is precisely these attributes that were well appreciated by the people of Bengal. You had to be something a little out of the ordinary to persevere for three decades—through many ups and downs—in the fight against a well-entrenched and ruthless Left Front.

Yet, I think the Congress has grievously miscalculated by imagining that Mamata is merely a spoilt child who can best be placated by doling out lollipops in the form of Central grants to her. Yes, Mamata does like the lollipops and is not averse to accepting freebies and sops. But, at the same time, like the mercurial J. Jayalalithaa of Tamil Nadu, her tantrums are not born out of impulsiveness alone. There is a great deal of calculation behind each of Mamata’s moves. It is these calculations that the Government has failed to understand when they view her as a petulant child.

The most important of Mamata’s objectives is her quest to establish a regional space for herself and her party. The TMC was born out of Mamata’s revolt against the High Command culture of the Congress. She could not countenance the fact that despite being the united Congress’ main mass leader in West Bengal she was being constantly stymied by rivals whose only claim to fame is that they had better connections in Delhi. Having established herself as the main anti-Left party in West Bengal and having overshadowed the Congress, her main thrust now is to transform a regional party into a party that epitomises West Bengal. Despite operating under the discipline of the Politburo, Jyoti Basu succeeded in positioning himself as the great Bengal consensus. Now Mamata wants to fill the void by taking up some of those issues.

Till the United Front Governments of H.D. Deve Gowda and I.K. Gujral gave the CPI(M) a stake at the Centre, the Reds in West Bengal had fought long and hard to rectify the imbalances in Centre-State relations. Fulminations against a discriminatory Centre formed an important part and parcel of the Left’s armoury.

Mamata’s battles should be rightly seen as an aspect of the battle to rectify federal distortions in the polity. In the past few years, Narendra Modi had fought these battles. But Modi was thwarted by both a political and image problem. Being in the BJP he did not have the requisite strategic clout to influence decision-making in the UPA—a problem that has plagued Nitish Kumar and Naveen Patnaik as well. In addition, the baggage of the 2002 riots made Modi a contentious figure and the UPA exploited this cynically.

With a total of 23 MPs in both Houses and representation in the Cabinet, Mamata has taken the battle inside the government where it is heard loud and clear. She has consciously abjured all patronage—she has not claimed a governership, any ambassadorships or quango jobs for her favourites—to focus single-mindedly on the principle that West Bengal must be consulted and its opinions taken on board on all matters that touch West Bengal, including foreign policy. She has contested the notion of an exclusive Central prerogative.

Mamata has initiated a principled battle for federalism. Other Chief Ministers could do well to emulate her.


Sunday Pioneer, January 1, 2012

Hope back in Calcutta

By Swapan Dasgupta


There was a time, somewhere in my distant childhood, when the 'season', beginning with Christmas and culminating in the New Year, was centred, not on Goa, but on Calcutta. It was 'burra din', the time when Park Street (now renamed Mother Teresa Sarani) was lit up to resemble Oxford Street in the only other city the elite of Calcutta identified with. It was the time of the Test match at Eden Gardens and the races on New Year’s Day. And it was the time of roasts and plum puddings laced with a dollop of brandy butter. 
Alas, that was before the Reds stepped in and turned Kolkata into a city of gloom. By the time the Left Front was removed last year, the spirit had been squeezed out of the second city of the Empire. Instead, Kolkata became a city with a glorious past and an uncertain future. The reality was symbolized by the imposing buildings in varying stages of dereliction. 
Returning to the city for the ‘season’ this year after more than 15 years, what was striking was the revival of hope. The Tourism Department of the state government had organized a Christmas festival on Park Street which was brightly lit and the restaurants were crowded and buzzing with activity. There was a gaiety that had earlier been missing. On Christmas Day, the temperature was a degree below London. And while the sahibs took out their tweeds and ties, the wags were quick to comment that ‘Didi’ Mamata Banerjee had done one better than the city that she holds as the ideal for Kolkata. 
What came as a bigger eye-opener was how little the conversations in the clubs or ‘athome’ drinks parties focused on either Anna Hazare’s show in Mumbai or the Lokpal debates in Parliament. It is not that West Bengal doesn’t have its share of graft and bureaucratic sloth. It is just that a city that had got back a glimmer of hope was too busy celebrating the likelihood of a better future.
From the perspective of the metros, the elements of hope may be woefully modest and even flaunting in Kolkata is sober by the exacting standards of Delhi and Mumbai. But the point to note is that Kolkata didn’t feel the political acrimony and the gloom-and-doom story that has overwhelmed much of India. 
The young Indian Civil Service recruits were taught in Haileybury that “whatever is true of India the opposite is equally true.” The lesson was worth remembering. Only too often , generalizations are made about India on the strength of a partial reality in Delhi. If Delhi shivers, the rest of India is also thought to be in the midst of a cold wave. 
The more we gauge the Indian reality, the more we realize that the ‘idea of India’ — a phrase so favoured by over-concerned TV anchors — is just another of those expedient myths we love to bandy about. There is undoubtedly an India that exists during war and cricket matches, but the idea varies from place to place and from city to city. This diversity is something that neither the Planning Commission nor the architects of mega welfare schemes have been inclined to accept. 
For the Delhi-based pan-Indian elite, political power emanates from the national capital and filters downwards. The reality, however, is that the country is made up of clusters of regional elites whose aspirations and priorities are very different, and why not? 
A simple Christmas celebration in Kolkata , Navratra in Ahmedabad and Ganesh chaturthi in Mumbai tells us more about the different Indias than all the proceedings of the Delhi-centric National Advisory Council. It tells us that a dysfunctional India doesn’t become a reality when the Centre loses its way. It happens when a paralysed Centre prevents the regions from achieving their true potential by concentrating too much power in Delhi. 
These days the talk is about democratization and accountability. These lofty goals become far more meaningful when Indian federalism becomes what it was intended to be: a Union of states. When Kolkata smiles and Delhi is gloomy, not least because some Bengali politicians are flexing their muscles, you instinctively know that something right is happening, somewhere.Street (now renamed Mother Teresa Sarani) was lit up to resemble Oxford Street in the only other city the elite of Calcutta identified with. It was the time of the Test match at Eden Gardens and the races on New Year’s Day. And it was the time of roasts and plum puddings laced with a dollop of brandy butter. 
Alas, that was before the Reds stepped in and turned Kolkata into a city of gloom. By the time the Left Front was removed last year, the spirit had been squeezed out of the second city of the Empire. Instead, Kolkata became a city with a glorious past and an uncertain future. The reality was symbolized by the imposing buildings in varying stages of dereliction. 
Returning to the city for the ‘season’ this year after more than 15 years, what was striking was the revival of hope. The Tourism Department of the state government had organized a Christmas festival on Park Street which was brightly lit and the restaurants were crowded and buzzing with activity. There was a gaiety that had earlier been missing. On Christmas Day, the temperature was a degree below London. And while the sahibs took out their tweeds and ties, the wags were quick to comment that ‘Didi’ Mamata Banerjee had done one better than the city that she holds as the ideal for Kolkata. 
What came as a bigger eye-opener was how little the conversations in the clubs or ‘athome’ drinks parties focused on either Anna Hazare’s show in Mumbai or the Lokpal debates in Parliament. It is not that West Bengal doesn’t have its share of graft and bureaucratic sloth. It is just that a city that had got back a glimmer of hope was too busy celebrating the likelihood of a better future.
From the perspective of the metros, the elements of hope may be woefully modest and even flaunting in Kolkata is sober by the exacting standards of Delhi and Mumbai. But the point to note is that Kolkata didn’t feel the political acrimony and the gloom-and-doom story that has overwhelmed much of India. 
The young Indian Civil Service recruits were taught in Haileybury that “whatever is true of India the opposite is equally true.” The lesson was worth remembering. Only too often , generalizations are made about India on the strength of a partial reality in Delhi. If Delhi shivers, the rest of India is also thought to be in the midst of a cold wave. 
The more we gauge the Indian reality, the more we realize that the ‘idea of India’ — a phrase so favoured by over-concerned TV anchors — is just another of those expedient myths we love to bandy about. There is undoubtedly an India that exists during war and cricket matches, but the idea varies from place to place and from city to city. This diversity is something that neither the Planning Commission nor the architects of mega welfare schemes have been inclined to accept. 
For the Delhi-based pan-Indian elite, political power emanates from the national capital and filters downwards. The reality, however, is that the country is made up of clusters of regional elites whose aspirations and priorities are very different, and why not? 
A simple Christmas celebration in Kolkata , Navratra in Ahmedabad and Ganesh chaturthi in Mumbai tells us more about the different Indias than all the proceedings of the Delhi-centric National Advisory Council. It tells us that a dysfunctional India doesn’t become a reality when the Centre loses its way. It happens when a paralysed Centre prevents the regions from achieving their true potential by concentrating too much power in Delhi. 
These days the talk is about democratization and accountability. These lofty goals become far more meaningful when Indian federalism becomes what it was intended to be: a Union of states. When Kolkata smiles and Delhi is gloomy, not least because some Bengali politicians are flexing their muscles, you instinctively know that something right is happening, somewhere.

Friday, December 30, 2011

A game of thrones

By Swapan Dasgupta


Saturday, December 24, 2011

A divisive agenda in guise of Lokpal


Author:  Swapan Dasgupta
If the Congress had chosen to emulate the Samajwadi Party, the RJD and the Shiv Sena and declared itself against the very idea of an all-powerful Lokpal, it would have earned the grudging respect of many Indians.
That the heart and soul of the Congress is not with a truly draconian Lokpal Bill as favoured by Anna Hazare and his sanctimonious claque is an open secret. It is also understandable that the Congress doesn’t want to take any effective steps that would make its use of discretionary powers answerable to some empowered ombudsman. Having exercised power for too long, the Congress genuinely believes that it is the natural party of Government. It is wary of curbs to its authority and, worse, an injection of the principle of accountability.
Subterfuge has been the Congress’ signature tune in dealing with the unexpected euphoria around Anna Hazare and his Jan Lokpal proposals. From trying to intimidate Anna, to launching its dirty tricks campaign, the Congress did its utmost to see that the movement against corruption didn’t become a prairie fire. In this endeavour it was partially successful: Thanks to unending prevarication and foot-dragging, the Lokpal issue became somewhat of a bore.
The Congress’ manoeuvres against the Lokpal proposals were a part and parcel of politics. People may or may not have liked it but few could deny that it was part of a normal political game — and the reason why politics is regarded as ethically suspect. Last Thursday, however, the Congress went a step too far. In seeking to divert attention from the inadequacies of the Lokpal Bill introduced in Parliament, the party proffered the mother of all distractions: A quota-based Lokpal.
Those familiar with history will recall that VP Singh announced the implementation of the Mandal Commission report in 1990 because he wanted to puncture a mammoth kisan rally that Devi Lal had convened in Delhi. A momentous decision with far-reaching consequences was taken for the flimsiest of reasons. This time too, the founding fathers’ abhorrence of organising public life on religious lines — they had just experienced the devastation of Partition — was casually discarded because the Congress wants to come in third place in the Uttar Pradesh Assembly election.
The results of springing the quota rabbit from the top hat were exactly as the Congress intended. The focus shifted from corruption and the ways to fight it to identity politics, particularly the issue of religion-based reservation for minorities. The BJP went ballistic over the minority quota whereas Mulayam Singh Yadav and Lalu Prasad Yadav forgot their objections to Lokpal and embraced the return of the Communal Award. Read with the introduction of the 4.5 per cent quota for minorities from the 27 per cent OBC share of reserved jobs and college admissions, last Thursday was a landmark in contemporary history. It was the day the political assumptions of the 1950 Constitution were thrown overboard by a cynical political class.
It is possible that the formal introduction of religious quotas may take a while. There is certain to be a judicial challenge to the Cabinet decision and this in turn will have a bearing on the final shape of the Lokpal Bill. The Mandal Commission too took many years before the implementation got under way and the Muslim quota (let’s face it, it’s really about a Muslim quota) will probably be the subject of prolonged litigation and, maybe, even a Constitution amendment.
The passage of the proposal will be protracted but what is not in any serious doubt is that a clear majority of MPs favour minority reservations and will be reluctant to oppose it in public. In short, the ideological and political battle over religion-based quotas has been lost even before the battle has begun.
The reasons are well known. For the past decade at least politicians in the Muslim community have mounted a spirited campaign for Muslim reservations on the grounds of natural justice. Regardless of the merits or otherwise of the proposal, what is extremely clear is that those who favour it are better organised to leverage their numbers during elections. Tactical voting has given the Muslim community a clout disproportionate to their numbers.
On the other hand, there is nothing that can actually be called a countervailing Hindu vote. Although the Ayodhya years were an exception, Hindus by and large are disinclined to vote as Hindus — they vote along class, caste and other lines but not on the basis of their Hindu identity. This naturally means that canny politicians don’t have to really bother about any reaction to minority appeasement strategies. The Muslim vote is far more purposeful.
Unless nationalist India awakens from its slumber, the country is faced with a potentially divisive agenda. If the religious quota secures judicial and political approval, it will only be a matter of time before there are demands for religious quotas in the judiciary, the UPSC, Comptroller and Auditor-General’s office and even university departments. To talk of the balkanisation of India is woefully premature but it would be safe to assume that the emotional balkanisation process is in an advanced state. There is an Indian identity that still holds its own, but it is only a matter of time before particularist identities overwhelm it.
I hope I am horribly wrong, but for India, the Lokpal Bill may turn out to be a costly misadventure.

Thursday, December 22, 2011

KITH AND KIM - Why does the buffoonish regime continue in North Korea?

By Swapan Dasgupta


One of the enduring memories of life in an English university in the late-1970s was the collective enjoyment in leafing through and, occasionally, reading aloud the pamphlets helpfully left behind in the common room by functionaries of the North Korean state. Wonderfully printed on glossy paper, much like the ones sold for a song by the propaganda houses of Moscow and Beijing, these offerings from Pyongyang were a class apart.

Devoted mainly to the heroic achievements of their beloved leader Kim Il-sung, the booklets were the alternatives to the (still unborn) cartoon channels on television. We learnt how grandfather Kim — now the “President for eternity” in the world’s necrocracy — swam across seas and lakes to singlehandedly take on the fascist, militarist Japanese invaders. And, over purposeless pints of beer, we imbibed the profundities of the ‘Juche’ ideology which, The Times this week helpfully described as a “quasi-mystical farrago of turbid platitude and ferocious xenophobia”, but which we mistook for a Monty Python skit.

Of course, as happens with all disorganized readings of what the comrades still insist on describing as “scientific socialism”, we often missed out on the best bits of the popular culture associated with the doctrine. For example, my Maoist friend, also a great friend of North Korea, but blessed with a wicked, self-deprecating sense of humour —next to the Red Book he loved P.G. Wodehouse — never secured for me either the recording or the sub-titled version of the song, “Oh how I love to carry manure up the mountain while singing praises of Chairman Mao and denouncing the Gang of Four”.

Also, since we had gone our different ways by 1980, many of us missed out on the remarkable story of the birth of Kim Jong-il, the “Dear Leader” who was anointed successor to the “Beloved Leader” Kim Il-sung in 1980. While the wicked imperialist version is that he was born in some remote corner of the Soviet Union in 1943, the authentic North Korean version is far more compelling. The “Dear Leader”, it would seem, was born near the peak of Mount Paektu — the mythical birthplace of the Korean people — in 1941. As he entered the world, a swallow descended from heaven to proclaim the coming to earth of “a prodigious general who will rule all the world.”

As a ‘progressive’ alternative to the Christmas tale, this story is worth a look.

We also missed out on some of the childhood tales of the man who ascended to the other world earlier this week, having helpfully passed on the baton to the “Great Successor”, the 29-year-old Kim Jong-un. Kim Jong-il, it is said, was destined for greatness since childhood. George Washington merely cut down a cherry tree and spun a moral tale but the wrath of Kim-II knew no bounds. As a three-year-old, he daubed a map of Japan with black ink and, lo and behold, that traditional enemy of Korea was rocked by gales and typhoons of astonishing ferocity.

It is worth considering if it was the hand of Kim that was responsible for last year’s tsunami that decimated Japan.
The fairy tale rendering of North Korea’s recent history may have provided mirth and amusement to some bored students, but it wasn’t all that funny for the estimated two million people who died from a man-made famine in the mid-1990s. So horrific was the suffering that there were credible reports emanating from that closed society of cannibalism.

Not that the suffering of his own people bothered Kim-II, who became famous in the luxury trade as the world’s single-largest purchaser of Paradis cognac produced by Hennessey. Kim-II loved the good life and, like all communist tyrants, indulged himself without restraint. A film buff whose personal collection of Hollywood and Hong Kong films was awesome — it is said that James Bond and Daffy Duck were among his favourites — he secured the abduction of the South Korean film director, Shin Sang-ok, and his wife to coerce them into making films for North Korea. There was, it seems, something of Dr No and Goldfinger that rubbed off on Kim-II.

More ominously, he was so captivated by the glamour he witnessed in Hollywood films that he maintained a troupe of 2,000 dancing girls, recruited from poor peasant families across the land. The girls were further classified into three groups. At the lowest end was the “dancing and singing team”, which entertained; this was followed by the “happiness team”, which specialized in massages for the privileged few in the party hierarchy; and finally there was the “satisfaction team” that existed to give pleasures of the flesh to Kim-II.

Presumably, the “Dear Leader” saw these as creative endeavours. If the official biography is any guide, he devoted the time spent as a culture czar in the politburo composing six operas. These works, it was modestly suggested by the Juche chroniclers, were “better than any mankind had created.”

To regard North Korea as a rogue regime controlled by a family of megalomaniacs out to prove the prescience of George Orwell’s 1984 is stating the obvious. The 20th and 21st centuries have had their share of evil, beginning from Hitler and Stalin and extending to Idi Amin, ‘Emperor’ Bokassa, Pol Pot and Saddam Hussein. But few have managed to withstand the winds of change as successfully as the Kim dynasty, which has endured for more than six decades — nearly as long as the Soviet Union.

Does the answer lie in what the North Korean propagandists suggest: that “The Korean people are too pure-blooded and therefore too virtuous to survive in this evil world without a great parental leader”? Or is it that extreme tyranny coupled with extreme deprivation snuffs out imagination and aspiration from the oppressed, making them impervious to normal human responses?

Whatever the reason, North Korea is not a primitive society. The Kim regime spends nearly one-third of its gross domestic product on defence, making it the most militarized country in the world. Yet, the level of its military preparedness is awesome. The country demonstrated its nuclear potential in 2006 and 2009, and its missile technology that it sells on a regular basis to Pakistan is sophisticated and dangerous. They suggest that far from being a society of supine bumpkins living under the military jackboot, Pyongyang actually boasts a critical mass of extremely efficient scientific talent. Such people can be tamed for a period of time but to keep them in a state of permanent docility requires superhuman control.

Perhaps that is what the Kim dynasty perfected as their response to, first, de-Stalinization in the 1960s and, subsequently, the ignominious collapse of the Soviet Union.

Today, China is finding it impossible to combine its extreme nationalism with rigid control of society. There are uprisings all over challenging state authority and regimentation, such as the ongoing one in Wukan. Why hasn’t North Korea, a far smaller country, experienced a similar churning? It can hardly be the case that Koreans are temperamentally docile and more so if the rhetoric of the State is couched in extreme nationalism — a case of another Burma. South Korea, for all its remarkable economic progress, remains politically very volatile.

Kim Jong-il, the obituaries in the West were unanimous, “was among history’s most monstrous tyrants” who left his people “impoverished, incarcerated and broken.” That’s obvious. What is not so obvious is why such a buffoonish regime continues in the 21st century. Is it because any relaxation of tyranny presages the end of an unhappy chapter?

Telegraph, December 23, 2011

Saturday, December 17, 2011

Maharani's durbar and a blinkered view of history

By Swapan Dasgupta


Apart from newspapers that commemorated the event and an agreeable party on the lawns of Ambassador Hotel where the cultural elite drank to the occasion, the centenary of the transfer of the Capital and the foundation of New Delhi was largely unobserved. ‘Official’ India which otherwise loves to organise tacky commemorations by producing unappealing postage stamps gave this event a wide berth. And, while no one was forthcoming about the reason, the rationale was inescapable: the 1911 Durbar was a ‘colonial’ event and, therefore, only worthy of sneer.

The Hindu sense of history has at the best of times been rather feeble. However, when it comes to the 190 years of British rule, the disdain for a recorded past is coupled with a spurious political correctness and hypocrisy. Even after six decades of Independence and flamboyant assertions of national sovereignty, India has yet to develop the necessary self-confidence to view history as history. Instead, the past has been sought to be tailor-made to view the prevailing political fashions of the present.

It is not that the ignominy of being ruled by a ‘foreigner’ has weighed heavily on the national consciousness. In the past thousand years or so, predators from the west have repeatedly overwhelmed indigenous kingdoms, particularly in northern and eastern India, and combined ruthless vandalism with innovations. Turks, Mongols, Persians and Afghans made India their happy hunting ground, and ruled with a mixture of raw coercion and cultural co-option. The conquerors always took care to maintain a discreet distance from the conquered peoples without creating a closed system based on ethnicity and religion. Of course, post-Akbar many of these barriers broke down but never sufficiently for the hapless Dara Shukoh to become a trendsetter. Not enough of the conquerors went ‘native’ although enough of the conquered peoples appropriated facets of the Persian and Turkish ways of life.

Many of these changes stemming from conquest and subordination were also dutifully played out in the two centuries of colonial rule. The British steadfastly maintained their social distance from the ‘natives’, particularly after the uprising of 1857 and the influx of the memsahibs into the Civil Lines and cantonments. The Indians were socially wary of the British but there were enough ‘collaborators’ (as in Moghul times) who sought to bridge the cultural and emotional gulf between the West and the East.

More to the point, there were enough Indians that genuinely believed (particularly after the demise of the East India Company in 1858) that British rule constituted a significant advance on anything the country had hitherto experienced. At one level the 1911 Durbar was a spectacular show of imperial might—as evident from the grovelling genuflection of the Indian princes (barring Baroda and Udaipur) to the King-Emperor. But it would be imprudent to forget that until Mahatma Gandhi captivated the nation with his simple message of swaraj, the common Indian was genuinely enamoured of the “Queen’s peace”. The choreography of the 1911 Durbar was thrown out of gear when the Indian crowds broke the cordon to kiss the ground on which the King and Queen had walked. Were they victims of ‘false consciousness’?

“Maharani” Victoria wasn’t Indian and nor did she ever visit India. Yet, this diminutive frump became as much a part of India as any distant Moghul. In 1911, when the New Delhi project was inaugurated by George V on December 15, the British Empire was the most world’s most decisive power; by 1931, when New Delhi was finally ready to function as the seat of government, the imperial sunset was approaching.  

This is not revisionist history. It is the history that was itself cynically revised as part of the nation-building project of India’s post-imperial rulers. But history isn’t rewritten by removing the George V statue from its canopied pedestal opposite India Gate or by renaming Connaught Place as Rajiv Chowk. Unless India is overcome by perversity, there will be a Lutyens’ Delhi distinct from a DDA Delhi, a Kingsway called Rajpath, the North and South Blocks and a Parliament House built for an India where democracy was conceived of as the future.

The British Raj wasn’t quite the dark ages the sloganeers make it out to be.


Sunday Times of India, December 18, 2011 

Middle class fed up with coalitions

By Swapan Dasgupta


As 2011 draws to a close, this may well turn out to be the year the Indian Establishment lost faith in itself. The unwavering optimism of the past decade and particularly the self-confidence that marked India’s upward economic trajectory has yielded way to a sense of dejection and nervousness. The reasons are more than the worrying GDP statistics, the boo-boos of the Reserve Bank of India and the UPA Government’s political drift. 

There is a growing feeling, echoed in all the drawing rooms during the festive season, that India has shot itself in the foot once again — aiming, a high Government functionary put it to me so evocatively, not merely at the feet but at each individual toe. There is a growing feeling, echoed in all the drawing rooms during the festive season, that India has shot itself in the foot once again — aiming, a high Government functionary put it to me so evocatively, not merely at the feet but at each individual toe.
In moments such as this there is the irresistible temptation to explore the roots of the growing dysfunctionality. In the US, there is a raging debate about the need to make the fat cats pay a larger share of their wealth in taxes; in Europe there is concern that a centralised Eurozone will squeeze out the last vestiges of national sovereignty from the member states; and, in China, the lessons of the ongoing Wukan uprising may well be an indication of the things to come. In India, apart from a growing sense of disgust with politicians, some old chestnuts are being drawn from the fire in the form of a revival of the debate on a presidential system of Government.
The features of the debate are still hazy. But underlying the disgust with coalition politics is the desire of a section of the metropolitan elite to usher a regime dominated by a no-nonsense strongman (or woman) that can take decisions in the national interest and inject purposefulness into governance. It is felt that the disproportionate influence of regional satraps such as Mamata Banerjee has to be curbed and the smaller parties shown their place in the larger India. No one wants to formally attack democracy because that is politically unacceptable. Yet, the chaotic underbelly of one billion arguments is sought to be tempered by identifying minimum standards of responsibility.
The demand for a presidential system to replace the parliamentary shambles is not anti-democratic per se. But in today’s context it assumes that too much democracy is bad for the country and an impediment to India fulfilling its Great Power destiny.
A presidential system can also be said to contain a measure of exasperation with India’s political federalism. Why, it is asked, should Mamata Banerjee with 20 Lok Sabha MPs be in a position to veto decisions that have a bearing on the entire economy? The assumption is that she should confine her interest to West Bengal and the Railways and not threaten the Government’s survival with her opposition to foreign investment in multi-brand retail.
The discomfiture with Luddite politics may well be warranted. There is, after all, a similar sense of foreboding with the smaller coalition partners in the United Kingdom and Australia. The question is: Why would Mamata, or for that matter the DMK, relinquish its strategic clout at the Centre voluntarily? What does it get by way of compensation?
The answers are awkward. A State Government in India has limited powers and, more important, a limited revenue base. Even these limited powers to govern and tax are constantly under threat from a Government whose political signature is best seen in gigantic, one-size-fits-all Centrally-dictated schemes such as the MNREGA and the proposed Food Security Bill. Even in the relatively non-contentious area of national highways construction, States ruled by the non-UPA parties complain that they are discriminated against by a vengeful Centre. In the sphere of environment, there is a new clearance raj that has been put in place by the Centre and used selectively to target projects — as happened in Lavasa.
During Indira Gandhi’s time, non-Congress State Governments used to complain against the misuse of the overriding political powers of the Centre, notably its power to unilaterally dismiss unfriendly regimes in the States. Today, almost all the non-Congress Governments in the States complain bitterly about the lack of powers and financial shortfalls — at a time when the Centre is flush with funds.
These are complaints that are insufficiently heard and appreciated in New Delhi. Unlike the Centre where a majority Government has been tottering since the Commonwealth Games scandal erupted in August 2010, most State Governments are relatively stable. Indian democracy is not dysfunctional at the State level. And yet, ironically, the States are unable to reach to their full potential because the constitutional division of powers is heavily weighted in favour of the Centre.
This is an anomaly that is yearning to be redressed. There should have been no earthly reason why a State should have to take the Centre’s approval to undertake a policy on, say, roads, retail and environment. These are areas which are best resolved locally and keeping in mind local interests.
The excessive centralisation of India was a product of socialist planning — an idea that no longer finds favour. Why, in that case, should the principle of a redistributive Centre be allowed to remain as an instrument of political discretion?  If Gujarat has the potential of growing at above 10 per cent per annum, should it be thwarted for the sake of priorities dictated by the nominated National Advisory Council?
India is better served as a Union of States, a federation with a common market and a common currency.

Friday, December 16, 2011

United we vote, divided let's shop

By Swapan Dasgupta


In one of the few meaningful interventions on the state of the economy in this disrupted Winter Session of Parliament, Leader of Opposition (Rajya Sabha) Arun Jaitley imagined he put Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in a spot by referring to his expressed opposition to foreign direct investment (FDI) in multi-brand retail in 2002, when the Atal Behari Vajpayee government was in power.
In stressing that Dr Singh is as governed by expediency as any lesser being, Mr Jaitley was undoubtedly making a powerful debating point. Yet, in his speech he deftly avoided a more obvious question: Why do politicians across the board behave one way in government and the opposite way in Opposition?
The question is relevant in the context of both the Congress and the BJP. The idea of opening up India’s protected retail sector to some form of foreign competition was an idea that was first mooted by the DMK’s Murasoli Maran when he was minister of commerce in the NDA government.
It wasn’t an idea that found enthusiastic support from everyone: the Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh led by the uncompromising RSS leader Dattopant Thengdi was vocal in its public opposition, as were politicians belonging to the “swadeshi” camp in the BJP.
But the idea was sufficiently attractive to be included in the 2004 election manifesto of the NDA — although not in the BJP’s vision document. If it was the coalitional imperative that scuttled the scheme this month, it was coalitional enthusiasm that put the scheme in the NDA manifesto.
The inconsistencies don’t stop here. Mamata Banerjee was viscerally opposed to FDI in retail and was even willing to vote against the government in Parliament if it came to the crunch. The Congress in Kerala was similarly discomforted by the government’s initiative.
At the same time, the Shiromani Akali Dal, which has experienced the benefit to farmers from organised retail, was enthusiastic in its support. So apparently was Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi who, however, bowed to the party line and put his preferences on hold.
It also seems that many BJP MPs were dismayed by the party’s unequivocal opposition and preferred a more nuanced position. They were struck by the absence of any discussion within the parliamentary party before the BJP firmed up its position. Congress MPs would doubtless have the same complaint about its government’s unilateralism.
The point I am emphasising has, however, less to do with the lamentable secrecy and lack of consultations that surround most executive decisions — the retail liberalisation may well have gone through had it not happened in the midst of a Parliament session.
What I find interesting is that, political considerations apart, the government’s decision had supporters and opponents cutting across the political divide. More significant, the broad support for corporatising retail trade appears to have come from states which are either relatively better placed in the GDP — states such as Punjab, Haryana, Delhi, Gujarat and Maharashtra — or smelt gains from an efficient cold chain — as, say, Himachal Pradesh, Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh.
For West Bengal, Ms Banerjee’s unrelenting opposition was quite understandable. Having lost its manufacturing base during the 34 years of Left Front rule, the unorganised retail sector is one of the largest sources of livelihood for a large range of people from the very lowest strata of the middle class to the rural poor.
The relative lack of other opportunities has made retailing the only possible source of livelihood for many people. A shrewd politician, Ms Banerjee would not meekly have handed over such a large and vocal community to the Left. For her, opposition to organised big retail made a lot of economic and political sense.
The real problem that the government faced was a conceptual one. There was just no way in which a momentous decision over retail trade would have a uniform effect throughout India. In certain states the benefits to both farmers and consumers would far outweigh the threats to the local kirana shop or middlemen. In other states, however, there would be disruption of local communities which had the potential of triggering social unrest.
The question that needs to be asked is: should, say, Gujarat or Punjab be denied the opportunity of becoming more integrated with the world market for the sake of West Bengal and eastern Uttar Pradesh? The concentration of power in the Centre makes this inevitable and forces absolutely local considerations to become pan-Indian impediments. Logically speaking, it seems absurd that the decision to allow a Tesco to operate a chain of supermarkets in Delhi should invite a veto from a Tamil Nadu-based regional party.
But that is how India has organised its politics and separation of powers. In a genuinely federal state, such decisions should be taken at the state level and be governed by mundane considerations such as municipal planning permission. Instead, it became a test of the Union government’s credibility.
The simple truth is that the idea of a redistributive Centre which was at the heart of the socialist planning process has run its course. In today’s India, it is the centralisation of power on crucial issues such as labour, power, infrastructure and environment that constitute obstacles to growth.
Uneven development is a fact of life that cannot be controlled by bureaucrats and politicians. There is often talk of a twin-track Europe. In India, we need to acknowledge the necessity of a multi-track, federal India.

Sunday, December 11, 2011

History is ignored


By Swapan Dasgupta
The British Empire was above all a celebration of protocol and pageantry-what the historian David Cannadine has called “ornamentalism”. This would explain the somewhat perfunctory treatment meted out by King George V and Queen Mary to the Viceroy, Lord Hardinge of Penshurst, when he stepped on board the Medina in Bombay to welcome the only visit of a reigning King-Emperor to India on December 2, 1911. According to convention, the Viceroy of India was the direct representative of the Crown in India: he governed in the name of the King-Emperor. With the monarch now physically present in the Empire’s prize possession, the Viceroy was automatically relegated to the status of a mere Governor-General.
Bruised vanity wasn’t the only hiccup governing the visit. The British Cabinet, in the throes of a vicious encounter between the House of Commons and House of Lords over a high-tax Budget, was most reluctant to have the monarch away from Britain for such a long time — there was just no precedent. The King overruled the elected government peremptorily. “It was”, he said, “entirely my own idea”.
Queen Victoria, the original maharani, would have loved her grandson for the defiance. To her, India was the Jewel in the Crown. The government wasn’t pleased and flatly refused to pay for the costs of a new, bejewelled crown that would symbolise the King’s symbolic anointment as King-Emperor on Indian soil. There was a scheme to make the Indian princes pay but ultimately the bill for the £60,000 crown from Garrard, the Crown Jeweller on Regent Street, was footed by an ever-obliging government of India.
It wasn’t the Asquith government alone that was not amused. The Archbishop of Canterbury threw a minor tantrum when it was suggested that the crown be placed on his head by three princes — one Hindu, one Muslim and one Sikh. As Kenneth Rose noted in his biography of George V, “he argued that coronation implied consecration, and that in a land of Moslems and Hindus, any such act of Christian worship would be misplaced. It was therefore agreed that the King should arrive at the Durbar with the crown already on his head.”
So it was that at noon on December 12, 1911, that the King-Emperor and the Queen-Empress rode in state to the grand domed tent, flanked by Sir Pertap Singh, the Diwan of Jodhpur, and by reputation the wisest guardian of princely India. His carriage was preceded by a contingent of the 10th Hussars that trotted in to the venue where the band played the robust notes of “See, the conquering hero comes.”
Actually, it was an unlikely “conquering hero”. Two days before, there was a spectacular state entry of the King into Delhi and the 25 square mile tented township complete with ornate princely pavilions, metalled roads, railway lines, electricity and post offices that had been put into place in record. Based on the diaries of the 23-year-old Lilah Wingfield, an Anglo-Irish aristocrat who travelled to India to experience the Empire in all its glory, writer Jessica Douglas-Home has provided an unflattering description of the first impressions of the King: “Curzon’s (1903 durbar) had been a show fit for the representative of the greatest sovereign on earth. But now, the first time a reigning British monarch had arrived in person on Indian soil, the Emperor of Emperors appeared as an insignificant, virtually invisible, figure, seated uneasily on a small bay horse surrounded by taller, more imposing and better mounted military men.”
“As the lonely figure of the King rode anonymously down the processional route into the mile-long Chandni Chauk, the crowds looked at the Queen in all her glory and came to the conclusion that she must have left His Imperial Majesty behind in England.”
Unfortunately for Hardinge, possessed by a fanatical desire to demonstrate that Lord Curzon’s 1903 Durbar wasn’t the last word in awesome pageantry, there was another boo-boo in the offing. In the ceremonial genuflection of 475 Indian princes before their King-Emperor, Gaekwad of Baroda deviated from the script. Minutes before he was to appear, he took off his ceremonial jewels and dressed as a Maratha gentleman, walked up to throne, bowed and then — horror of horrors — instead of taking the mandatory seven steps backward, turned his back and walked away, “nonchalantly twirling a gold-topped walking stick”. There was, wrote Douglas-Home, “a murmur of dismay” from the crowd.
An equal gasp of surprise greeted the King’s announcement, kept a fiercely guarded secret, that the capital would be transferred to Delhi from Calcutta. “The Times correspondent visited 10 of the camps and informed his readers that the announcement of the new capital was being received without enthusiasm. Some blamed the Calcutta monsoon, others suggested that it was a reflection of a British intention to remain permanently in India. It was believed by some that Calcutta had been chosen as the seat of power because it would be easy to leave by sea in case of an uprising.”
An uprising, however, was the last thing on anyone’s mind. The only show of people’s power occurred when, after the King had departed to his tent “rather tired after wearing the crown for three hours” and a 101-gun salute. A huge crowd of Indians broke the cordon, rushed to the durbar tent and were seen kissing the ground on which their raja and rani had walked. A Tibetan Lilah Wingfield encountered said he had travelled four months to be in Delhi to get a glimpse of the King!
The next day the foundation stone of New Delhi was lowered into a plinth by the King in front of a small audience of 500. “To loud applause the Maharaja of Gwalior offered to give the plinth a statue of the King Emperor.” From faraway London, Lord Curzon decried the move to shift the capital to Delhi — “the graveyard of empires”.
The Durbar was the most important event in India a century ago. It was a great moment for a Raj that would not endure for more than 36 years and which would never really settle down to a New Delhi that was formally inaugurated in 1931. But it was also a moment in India’s history that will live on despite the contrived derision of the “post-colonial” mind. The Raj’s Delhi is as much a show of India as is Shahjehanabad, the creation of rulers who came from Central Asia.
The latter is celebrated; the former isn’t even commemorated. That’s why India has no sense of history, only an overdose of hateful politics.