Modi fuels this bizarre convergence

By SWAPAN DASGUPTA

The excuses the Congress and the BJP are making for the business dealings of Robert Vadra and Nitin Gadkari seem driven by a shared fear of Narendra Modi

Even before the brutal nature of the Stalinist regime was formally admitted by Nikita Khrushchev in 1956, many well-meaning socialists throughout the world were aware that what existed in the Soviet Union was a travesty. Yet, a great many of these idealists chose to look the other way in the belief that criticism would weaken the socialist state, encourage “counter-revolutionaries” and weaken the bigger fight against fascism and imperialism.

Having to choose between upholding what the British philosopher Roger Scruton termed “common decencies” and endorsing the lesser evil has confronted political activists for long. In the past year, this hoary debate has surfaced in India following a spate of corruption scandals that have seriously undermined the credibility of the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance-2 government. Far from being celebrated as a mildly progressive dispensation concerned with nurturing socio-economic entitlements for the poor and the marginalised, the magnitude of corruption has created a widespread impression that the apparent concern for the aam aadmi is a cover for riotous crony capitalism.

VADRA AND THE CONGRESS

Matters have come to a head following the flood of disclosures of the dodgy business practices of Robert Vadra, the son-in-law of Congress president Sonia Gandhi. Media reports indicate that Vadra leveraged his privileged relationship with the Gandhi family to circumvent rules and procedures and make a fast buck for both himself and DLF, one of India’s largest listed real estate companies. It is also alleged that Vadra cleverly anticipated crucial decisions by Congress-controlled governments in Haryana and Rajasthan to make windfall profits — what in common parlance is called insider trading.

The details of Vadra’s entrepreneurship are revealing for what they tell us about the realty business in India’s boom towns. Politically, however, the issue is far more consequential. For the first time since 1974 when the CPI(M) MP Jyotirmoy Basu infuriated Indira Gandhi by raising awkward questions about Sanjay Gandhi’s Maruti project in Haryana, the Gandhi family has been directly hit by a money scandal. Sonia Gandhi may have reportedly brushed away the allegations by asserting that Vadra is a “businessman” but that hasn’t insulated her from the charge that she did nothing to prevent her exalted family name to be used for disreputable advantage. Since the tone of a government is set by its leadership, the first family of the Congress may well be accused of embellishing the architecture of India’s all-pervasive crony capitalism.

Without doubt, the business ethics of Vadra, not to mention his sneering sense of entitlement, has created a large hole in the moral edifice of the Congress. This, in turn, is certain to shape popular perceptions in the run-up to the general election unless, of course, the UPA is spectacularly successful in shifting the attention of voters away from sleaze.

For the Congress, unflinching loyalty to the Nehru-Gandhi family is an article of faith and, as such, it occasions little surprise that party leaders have fiercely protested Vadra’s innocence. For opinion-makers who are loosely supportive of Nehruvian values, the kerfuffle over corruption has raised awkward questions. While they are not inclined towards encouraging venality in public life, there is concern that the erosion of the Congress’ credibility will benefit the principal Opposition party. In particular they are petrified that the disgust over economic mismanagement and cronyism will trigger a fascination for Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi, a leader who, at least BJP supporters believe, combines decisiveness with fierce personal integrity. Since, in liberal eyes, Modi personifies an “authoritarian” mindset, if not outright fascism, prudent politics demands that the fight against corruption — the proverbial lesser evil — be shelved till another day.

GADKARI AND HIS DEFENCE

Paradoxically, this is a position that has cast a shadow over the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) which, as the principal parliamentary Opposition, stands to gain most from the erosion in the Congress’ support. The plethora of questions over the seed capital of BJP president Nitin Gadkari’s business empire, and the lack of credible answers to these, have both embarrassed and outraged his party. Since the BJP doesn’t have dynastic pretensions and still sees itself as favouring “value-based politics,” there has been less inclination to rush to Gadkari’s defence with the same passion that the Congress demonstrated in the case of Vadra. Even those who have proffered the template defence of Gadkari having offered himself to an impartial inquiry can scarcely conceal their disquiet over the “immoral” equivalence being drawn between the BJP and the Congress. It is significant that apart from L.K. Advani and Sushma Swaraj, few of the BJP’s front-ranking leaders and no chief minister have spoken up for Gadkari.

Yet, the scepticism in the ranks over showcasing damaged goods hasn’t succeeded (so far) in removing Gadkari. On the contrary, emboldened by the bewildered ambivalence of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), Advani’s mystifying distinction between business practices and public life, and Swaraj’s unequivocal support, Gadkari has taken recourse to brazenness — as was evident in his show of strength in Nagpur last Monday. To the outside world, Gadkari has successfully managed to convey the impression that, never mind the accompanying ridicule and potential loss of a political plank, the “parivar” and party are behind him. The BJP president has wilfully overstated the quantum of backing for himself. But he has been able to get away with this hype by craftily exploiting the prevailing uncertainty over what follows a possible resignation. Actually, it is more than uncertainty. There is considerable fear in a small but powerful section of the BJP that the failure of the Gadkari experiment will facilitate a hegemonic role for Modi — assuming he wins the Gujarat Assembly election conclusively. The Gujarat leader is unquestionably the man most BJP activists and BJP-inclined voters believe is best suited to both taking on the Congress and stealing the thunder of the anti-corruption crusaders. Whether unattached voters who are disgusted by the moral decline of the country also agree with this faith in his leadership is still untested. But what isn’t in any doubt is that Modi threatens the cosy somnolence of bipartisan deal-making involving the main political parties. For many in the BJP, Modi isn’t merely a challenge; he constitutes a threat.

There is an unholy convergence of interests between a Congress determined to put a lid on the corruption issue by simultaneously creating a hype over economic reforms and establishing moral equivalence between Vadra and Gadkari, and that section of the BJP which wants to deny Modi a national role. As of now, the battle lines are confined to the opinion-forming industry in which the intelligentsia and the middle classes play a disproportionate role. In the coming months, as the general election approaches, the issues are going to percolate the social ladder. Will the aam aadmi also choose to overlook corruption as something inherent in the Indian way? Alternatively, will there be an angry vote, perhaps even for a different way of doing politics? In that case, which is the lesser evil?

The Hindu, October 31, 2012

Cornered netas great for TRPs

By Swapan Dasgupta

Just as cinema viewers (or least they did so in the old days) clap and cheer the hero as he delivers devastating blows to the villain and his flunkeys, today’s TV audiences really get turned on at the sight of political leaders and their spokespersons squirming as they try and field embarrassing questions.

The past month has been great for TV anchors. They have competed with each other in hurling sharp questions at politicians and then smirking in triumph. The audiences have delighted at the spectacle of silver-tongued netas tie themselves up in knots trying to defend the indefensible and getting needlessly aggressive as credible logic evades them.

By and large it has been the Congress which has at the receiving end of the media’s politician baiting. But last week was open season on the BJP thanks to the innovative business practices of its President Nitin Gadkari. As someone who isn’t inimical to the BJP, it was painful to watch its representatives who, only the other day were thundering against the slippery practices of a Robert Vadra and Virbhadra Singh all flustered over seemingly incontrovertible evidence of dodgy practices of Gadkari’s companies—and yet doggedly insisting that it is best to reserve judgment until an inquiry.

It is entirely possible that Gadkari and his Purti group of companies have a convincing explanation for its investors providing dubious addresses and the source of their funds that were invested into the trust of a ‘social entrepreneur’. As of now the inquisitors haven’t been enlightened and have come to believe the worst. Yet, the obvious pitfalls of a trial-by-media apart, there is an issue that bothers me. When Gadkari took his business decisions on behalf of the Purti group, did he do so in accordance with a mandate given by the party? Were his investments an extension of his political responsibilities, as an MLC in Maharashtra, as a president of the Maharashtra state BJP or as the BJP’s national President?

If the answer is a resounding No, why is it incumbent on the part of the BJP to come to the defence of Purti’s business practices? That is the responsibility of Gadkari, his accountant, his chauffer, baker, astrologer and others who were pillars of the Purti group. Surely the BJP doesn’t believe that it should act as a protective shield for the private concerns of all its leaders. Will the party, for example, now take it upon itself to defend its Rajya Sabha MP Ajay Sancheti, a friend of Gadkari from Nagpur, who has been accused of many wrongdoings?

There was consternation in the country when Robert Vadra was put into an isolation ward and the top guns of the Union Cabinet were wheeled out to speak in his defence. The competitive rush to defend the Gandhi family’s errant son-in-law was attributed to the Congress’ slavish culture of dynasty worship. Was it really necessary for the BJP to emulate this disagreeable culture?  

The entire controversy over Purti’s sources of funding has done incalculable damage to the standing and reputation of its party President. Regardless of the meaningless speculation over who ‘leaked’ the story, the fact is there were some skeletons in Gadkari’s cupboard and thse have come tumbling out. In the public perception what matters is not whether or not there was a ‘conspiracy’ to defame the BJP but that he is now regarded as damaged goods.

Unfortunately for the party, the damage is not confined to Gadkari the individual and his business associates. There has been considerable collateral damage caused by the unthinking display of loyalty. Take the case of L.K. Advani who came out in Gadkari’s defence and tried to make a distinction between his role as a businessman and his public life. This is the same Advani who in 1996 resigned his seat in Parliament after it was suggested that he was a recipient of tainted money. Advani made it clear that he wouldn’t contest elections until he was fully cleared and he stuck to his word. This is the same Advani who undertook a nationwide yatra last year to highlight the distortions created by the black economy. What has occasioned this shift from an insistence on the highest ethical standards? Advani may have an explanation but these may seem less credible than Arvind Kejriwal’s insistence that the Congress and BJP are two sides of the same counterfeit coin.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that those who constitute the BJP’s loyal vote bank are disgusted by the leadership’s unwillingness to confront reality. The ‘informal’ BJP group that met last Friday night and backed Gadkari may have done so on the ground that the party must not be browbeaten into a decision. But that was only part of the story. A more pressing fear was the belief that Gadkari’s exit will facilitate a takeover of the BJP by Narendra Modi.

For once their fears weren’t misplaced. Recent events have reinforced the belief at the grassroots that it is only the Gujarat Chief Minister who can mount a credible challenge to the faltering Congress-led UPA. For the moment a cabal of the collusive may have prevailed but it is only a matter of time before the popular will breaks down the resistance. Till then, India’s principal Opposition force is destined to suffer the ignominy of being mocked as the Bharatiya Janata Purti.

Sunday Pioneer, October 28, 2012 

BLACK SHEEP IN ALL PARTIES - For the people, Vadra and Gadkari symbolize the political class

By Swapan Dasgupta

In this exhilarating season of allegations and counter-allegations against public figures and their relatives, there have also been a plethora of silly statements that have helped lighten the overall mood of disgust, despondency and cynicism. Union Minister Beni Prasad Varma has led the pack with his assertion that the charges against his colleague Salman Khurshid are ridiculous because the alleged misuse of some Rs 74 lakh of public is a piffling amount. A disoriented Virbhadra Singh added to the mirth by threatening to break the cameras of journalists who dared ask him about the remarkable coincidence of alleged payments to one ‘VBS’ by a corporate and his sudden fascination for high-value insurance policies. And even the otherwise suave, Oxford-educated Khurshid provided entertainment with his filmi-style dialogue about replacing ink with blood.

The farcical element apart, there are two statements that stand out, not least because they have been made by people who are at the very top of the political pyramid. The first was by Congress President Sonia Gandhi on October 5, a few hours after Arvind Kejriwal charged her son-in-law Robert Vadra of leveraging his privileged position to make windfall gains in the real estate business. Vadra, she claimed “is a businessman”, adding that he had not misused the name of the Gandhi family.

The second statement was by Bharatiya Janata Party leader and National Democratic Alliance chairman L.K. Advani on October 25. This came a day after the media carried detailed reports of the shell companies run from apparently fictitious addresses that had invested in the Purti group of companies run by BJP president Nitin Gadkari. To those familiar with business practices, the implication was that a significant portion of Gadkari’s businesses were funded through the black economy. This in turn raised questions about Gadkari’s role in mobilising this funding. Was this, it was asked, another example of ‘political equity’?

In his defence of his party president, Advani first claimed, quite predictably, that the BJP was victim of a Congress-sponsored conspiracy “to paint the entire political class with the same brush to minimise…and neutralise the unprecedented charges against the ruling UPA.” However, this was coupled with a curious assertion: that the allegations were about standards of business and not misuse of power or corruption.

There is a similarity between Advani’s expression of solidarity with Gadkari and Sonia’s defence of her daughter’s husband: both implied that sharp practices were part and parcel of business, and that somehow was a far lesser offence from unethical politics. In other words, if it could be demonstrated conclusively that Vadra’s cosy relationship with DLF and his ability to fast-track land sales in Haryana were unrelated to his political clout, the Congress would have nothing to answer. Likewise, by Advani’s logic, there was a Great Wall dividing Gadkari the BJP President and Gadkari the entrepreneur. If Advani is to be believed, for the allegations to stick, the ‘conspirators’ would have to demonstrate that Gadkari’s businesses grew and prospered owing to benefits he accrued as a politician.

It is understandable that Sonia would want to detach Vadra’s reputation as a flashy businessman with an astonishing sense of entitlement from the political image built up by her family over decades. At the same time, she was also fully aware that the assault on the tactless Vadra was a proxy attack on the entire structure of dynastic politics that has become the mainstay of the Congress. It is unlikely that she was unaware that the mere mention of Vadra opened many doors and fast-tracked transactions (including land transfers at prices below the circle rate) that would have, in the normal course, taken an inordinately long time to complete.

Sonia’s fire-fighting strategy was based on two calculations. First, it was absolutely imperative to prevent an official probe by the Department of Company Affairs and other agencies into Vadra’s businesses. Fortunately for her, both Veerappa Moilly and Finance Minister P.Chidambaram obliged with suo moto certificates of innocence to Vadra. The peremptory midnight transfer of IAS officer Ashok Khemka from a crucial land registration department in Haryana served as a warning to other conscience-stricken bureaucrats to come to the aid of the dynasty or face the consequences.

Secondly, the Congress calculated, perhaps quite cynically, that public memory is short and that unless Vadra himself did something silly like display his intellectual prowess on Facebook yet again, the issue would subside before the General Election. The Congress is also anxious to combine its faith in public forgetfulness with moral equivalence—the 21^st century version of Indira Gandhi’s infamous assertion that corruption is an “international phenomenon”. In this endeavour, the BJP’s embarrassment over Gadkari has come as a bonanza.

In defending its President, the BJP appears to have got itself into an almighty jam. The initial revelations of Gadkari’s alleged corruption by Arvind Kejriwal in his much-publicised press conference last week left most people underwhelmed and there was a basis for Arun Jaitley to claim that India Against Corruption was making a mountain out of a molehill. Yet, by the time the time the media, taking its cue from Kejriwal, conducted its own investigations into the Purti group, the charges could no longer be dismissed as insignificant. Prima facie, Gadkari certainly had a case to answer.

If the logic of Advani’s contrived distinction between business and politics had indeed been pursued, the BJP should have left the defence of Gadkari to the man himself. Since the business dealings of Gadkari were undertaken independent of his party, there was no earthly reason why Sushma Swaraj and Jaitley should have appeared before the cameras to defend him. Most surprising of all was Advani’s intervention on behalf of Gadkari the politician. Popular memory may well be short but BJP workers at least may not have forgotten that last year Advani expended a huge amount of the party’s resources organising a nationwide yatra against corruption and black money. At that time Advani did not care to make a distinction between unethical business practices and corrupt politics. To him, at that time, both fed on each other. Why should the ground rules be changed for Gadkari?

This is a question that must also be addressed to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh whose chief Mohan Bhagwat devoted a large part of his annual Vijaydashami address to attacking corruption. The RSS has long felt that its swayamsevaks had imbibed the necessary samskaras to become good citizens and emerge as leaders of a resurgent India. This is the reason why it has preferred the leadership of the BJP to vest with those who have a strong background of involvement with the Sangh. Gadkari was picked up from provincial politics and thrust into the national stage because it was felt that he had the right values and priorities. Now this belief has been called into question. Should the RSS go into denial and fall back on an individual’s long-standing loyalty to an organisation? Or should it be worried that the presence of Gadkari at the helm of the BJP will give a handle to the Congress and allow it to shift the agenda away from corruption and thereby sap the nation’s inner vitality?

Kejriwal and his associates may not get far in electoral politics but their contention that the entire political class has become venal has struck a chord. For the BJP, the political cost of Gadkari and Vadra being put on par will be more damaging than for the Congress.

The Telegraph, October 26, 2012 

BJP in search of a message

By Swapan Dasgupta

Many decades ago a distinguished British parliamentarian remarked that Opposition was more about principles in a way that Government with its preoccupation with compromises never can. The gentleman, who spent most of his career in the backbenches as a political untouchable, was a rarity. In real life, the quest for the opposition space has also involved expedience, inconsistency and, even duplicity. Apart from moments of crisis such as war or an imminent national breakdown—as in Greece and Italy—the Opposition has been content to use parliamentary politics as an arena of one-upmanship.

The underlying belief is that in most general elections, the electorate votes out a government rather than vote in an opposition party to power. This is generally true as far as India is concerned although, in the post-liberalisation era, governments (particularly in the states) have shown an uncanny ability to secure repeated re-election.

In the past 12 months, as the UPA Government has staggered from crisis to crisis and progressively lost both direction and moral authority, the largest Opposition grouping has acted on the assumption that victory awaits it whenever the electorate is given a chance to express itself. Those who had a dejected, hang dog expression after the 2009 verdict have suddenly acquired an extra spring in their steps. They have acquired new hangers-on and their gift haul this Diwali turned out to be full of rich pickings.

It is the illusion of inevitability that may explain why the BJP has become so purposelessly active in recent months and why it has lost sight of one of the main functions of political existence—to deliver a message. Last week, as the UPA Government finally woke up from its prolonged spell of helpless inactivity and announced a reform-oriented legislative programme for the winter session of Parliament, the BJP reacted with astonishing incoherence.

The reason is not far to seek. Since the election defeat of 2004, the BJP has been in a state of denial and distraction. The process of denial, which contributed to the most unproductive five years in opposition, ended after the election results of 2009 and the removal of L.K. Advani from the post of Leader of Opposition. However, the process of distraction has persisted since the UPA-2 came to power and it has been fuelled by an unresolved leadership tussle.

The net effect is that issues have lost focus inside the BJP. The BJP no longer has any real idea of what it believes and what sort of India it would like to build after replacing the UPA with its own coalition government. The impulses that propel individuals and communities to favour the party over the Congress are very much there: nationalism, business-friendly economics, deregulation and oodles of cultural symbolism. How this translates into the globalised world of the 21^st century is, however, left vague and unstated.

At one time the party loved the ideologues it inherited from the RSS; today, a crass philistinism rules the roost. Under Nitin Gadkari, an enormously successful, self-made businessman from Nagpur, the BJP has junked its earlier obsession with austere living and simple thinking. Today there is a belief that politics is about the timely deployment of resources—and plenty of it. Gadkari himself typifies the belief that political messaging is an incidental add-on: money is the key to securing political influence. In Maharashtra, Gadkari opposed Pramod Mahajan but in Delhi he has replicated his adversary’s style.

The BJP, for example, must have spent a staggering amount of money in the arrangements and mobilisation of the three yatras undertaken by three veteran leaders. Yet, there the political return on monetary investment is certain to be pitiful for the simple reason that there was a mismatch between the feeble message and the choreography.

The BJP is no longer sure of what it believes in—not in foreign policy which appears to be decided by embassy liaisons and junkets, not in economics which appears to flow from corporate lobbying, and certainly not in the negotiable moral economy of politics. The party has designated a working group to forge a Vision Document of sorts to educate the party about its core beliefs—after all, Deendayal Upadhyaya died some 47 years ago. But in the true traditions of those who write books without reading them, the project has actually been ‘outsourced’ to a Karnataka-based entrepreneur.

This is fairly typical. Having grown from a modest-sized party to a challenger to the Congress in a remarkably short period of time, the BJP has been unable to put into place alternative systems of self-regulation. While abusing the Congress system of patronage and cronyism, it has allowed the same system to take hold of the party’s nerve centres, with disastrous consequences. Karnataka is by far the worst example but recall that it was the opposition to cronyism that led to B.C.Khanduri’s removal as chief minister in 2009. Khanduri was restored once it became clear that his successor’s rampany cronyism was likely to be rejected by voters.

What has been happening in the BJP constitutes a betrayal of all those who believed in the creation of a wholesome non-Congress alternative. Fortunately, the rot is only skin deep and hasn’t affected the party’s vitality. But it is important that something is done now, well before the 2014 elections, to restore decorum and integrity. There is a good second-tier leadership that is capable of undertaking a spring cleaning.


Sunday Pioneer, November 20, 2011