Who governs this nation?

By Swapan Dasgupta

Those familiar with the political history of India since the decline of the Moghul Empire in the 18^th century will easily detect a common thread that runs through to the present: the weaker the regime the greater the levels of intrigue and conspiracy in the courts. In Bengal, for example, the levels of intrigue reached colossal heights in the courts of Siraj-ud-Doulah, Mir Jafar and Mir Qasim—nawabs who combined impetuousness with eroding authority. And in western India, the term “Peshwai intrigue” became a stereotype for displays of purposeless cunning so much so that Veer Savarkar lamented the great Vedantist Baji Rao II’s inability to distinguish between a kingdom and a pension.

It may seem far-fetched to extend the mystical charms of oriental intrigue to the India of Manmohan Singh. Yet, occasionally, such a temptation is irresistible.  

Last Wednesday morning—before the Prime Minister intervened in Parliament to inform Italy of “consequences” if it persisted in harbouring the two fugitive marines—a bizarre story began doing the rounds of the political towns of Delhi. The PM had, the previous day, met agitated MPs from Kerala and had placated them with the message that he too felt found the attitude of Italy completely unacceptable. The PM’s assurance soon found its way into the newsrooms and some of the next morning’s newspapers even had a mention of it. Yet, it seems that late at night some media people were contacted by a Race Course Road functionary and told that there was no need to over-interpret the PM’s displeasure.

When the PM got to know of this spin-doctoring the proverbial excreta, it is said, hit the ceiling. According to those who claim to be in the know of the innards of the system, he posed a fundamental question: who controls the Prime Minister’s Office? It’s a question many have privately asked and now, it seemed, the PM had stumbled on the same query.

It is a matter of some solace that the PM did not budge from his original displeasure with the proverbial ‘nation-in-law’. His intervention in Parliament may have lacked delivery but its larger message was quite forthright.

At the same time, the question persists: why was there an attempt to dilute India’s outrage over Rome giving a new twist to the concept of “most favoured nation”? Was this a unilateral gesture by a courtier who was trying to second-guess the ‘real’ power centre? Or, was there some basis to the thwarted revisionism? In that case, from where did it originate?

These are questions that will never be satisfactorily answered. When it comes to the intrigues of the court, no absolute verification is really possible. What is important, however, is not whether an attempt was made to underplay the significance of Italy’s hostile action—if it was, you can be rest assured that Indian diplomacy will not pursue the issue relentlessly and, instead, allow it to fade away from public memory. To my mind, the significance lies in the fact that even in matters that involve national sovereignty and India’s place in the world, the preoccupation of the court is factional one-upmanship.

Those who narrated the supposed sequence of events to me were gleeful that the PM had “asserted” himself. But the mere fact that the PM did what the occasion demanded invoked a celebratory mood among those who still retain a soft corner for him is itself revealing. It suggests that the mind of the government is in a haze and systemic dysfunction so deep-rooted that the movements of the left and right hands are wilfully uncoordinated.

India’s stock in the world has fallen so alarmingly in the past year that Rome doesn’t think twice before flashing two fingers at New Delhi and Islamabad is brazen enough to pass a provocative resolution on Afzal Guru in its National Assembly. Nor does it stop here. Even Maldives doesn’t feel that Indian counsels amount to very much. In the game of international politics, India is precariously poised to become the football—an object that can be kicked around merrily because its rulers are busy settling factional scores and its functionaries are gleefully taking advantage of a prevailing power vacuum.

It is wrong to believe that the state of drift we are witnessing today is a function of incoherent economic policies. That one wing of the government wants to end its term with a colossal display of fiscal profligacy while another wing is pondering over the judgment of history is only part of the problem. The unpalatable truth, that we as Indians must recognise, is that we are confronted with a lame duck government that has lost both the will and the authority to function.

One pillar of notional authority is concerned with the legacy question; another, and more formidable, pillar is preoccupied with the question of inheritance; and the third is self-absorbed with evolving management information systems. Last week, on Times Now, a belligerent retired Pakistan Admiral mocked India for its hollowness. It made a lot of us very angry but there was a ring of truth behind his sneer.

The question is: who governs India? This is a puzzle that is awaiting a solution. From yearning to be a regional superpower, we have been left celebrating that we are at least better off than Pakistan. Some achievement! 

Sunday Pioneer, March 17, 2013

BITTER HARVEST - The Italian marines’ issue could be damaging for the Gandhis

By Swapan Dasgupta

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has often been mocked for his persistent refusal to speak on issues that warrant interventions at the highest level of government. It is a commentary on the potential consequences of the two Italian marines refusing to return to India for their trial on charges of killing two Indian fishermen on the high seas that he actually spoke on the subject in both Houses of Parliament last Wednesday. More to the point, he departed from his usual mealy-mouthed cautiousness and spoke sternly of “consequences for our relations with Italy” if the authorities in Rome persisted in violating a solemn assurance by the Government of Italy to the Supreme Court that the two accused would return to Kerala for their trial after the Christmas holidays.

The reason why the Prime Minister felt compelled to make an intervention, rather than leave it to External Affairs Minister Salman Khursheed, is obvious. For the Congress, Italy has always been a touchy subject—at least ever since the Bofors scandal broke in Sweden in 1988. Those with memories will recall that businessman Ottavio Quattrocchi fled India (or, rather, was allowed to flee) in haste on the night of July29-30, 1993, after the Swiss authorities had confirmed a Bofors trail to his bank accounts. And Quattrocchi was no ordinary Italian business representative of Snamprogetti; he was well-known in Delhi as a man who flaunted his social connection with Rajiv and Sonia Gandhi.

What the Congress legitimately fears is that any murky controversy involving either Italy or even an Italian citizen has the potential of being viewed in the bazars of India as—what former BJP minister Jaswant Singh slyly called—an “Italian Job”. The allusion was, of course, to the cult film of a wonderfully executed robbery of gold ingots. The 1989 election which saw Rajiv Gandhi’s steamroller majority crumble, for example, witnessed the explosion of evocative ditties alluding to the then Prime Minister’s special relationship with his sasural. Indeed, it became customary for Italy to be dubbed as the “nation-in-law” and for the mythical ideal of a Ram Rajya to be juxtaposed against the Congress’ Rome Rajya.

To be fair, there is very little to suggest that Sonia Gandhi consciously played up her Italian origins. Even Tavleen Singh’s best-selling Durbar which claims to provide a ringside view of Rajiv and Sonia from the time they were private citizens doesn’t dwell on Sonia flaunting her Italian-ness. Indeed, after the UPA Chairperson was badly singed for her association with Quattrocchi, she has taken exceptional care to leave her national origins far behind and project herself as an Indian bahu, a person who has imbibed the culture, traditions and ethos of her husband’s family. I have personally heard innumerable anecdotes from European journalists and diplomats indicating that she has invariably replied in English when addressed in Italian. Sonia can’t do much about her accent which continues to be decidedly Italian, but in everything else she has ensured that there is little overt traces of foreign-ness in her public persona.

It is this conscious attempt to Indianise herself that may explain why the ‘foreign origin’ issue has been carrying diminishing returns. In March 1999, the fact of her Italy-born status was certainly a factor behind her inability to muster the numbers to form a government after Atal Behari Vajpayee’s Government failed the floor test by a single vote. There is sufficient anecdotal evidence to suggest that Mulayam Singh Yadav’s reluctance and even the CPI(M)’s wariness to endorse a Sonia-led Government was in a large measure due to a larger national wariness over a “foreigner” occupying the top political job.

On her part, Sonia imbibed the lessons of the 1999 failure. Therefore, when she had the opportunity in May 2004 to become Prime Minister—despite Sushma Swaraj’s awesome threat to discard her hair in mourning—she allowed her “inner voice” to pass on the responsibility to Manmohan Singh. Today, Sonia remains the foremost political authority in both the Congress and the UPA Government. Additionally, Sonia has a keen sense of political calculation that is inspired by her mother-in-law: her political distance from Rajiv is marked. Yet, it is precisely due to the fact that she was born an Italian citizen that she has been unable to translate her status as head of the Congress dynasty to a Constitutional position.

Acknowledging this does not in any way undermine her pre-eminence in the present political Establishment. Nor does it diminish her responsibility for the overall performance of the UPA Government. In the public imagination at least, both the successes and the failures of the UPA since 2004 are attributed to her. In the more cloistered world of the political class, this extends to the UPA’s dismal record in controlling corruption. Even the controversial business practices of her son-in-law Robert Vadra have been pinned on her indulgence.

However, being a step removed from the day-to-day grind of governance has enabled Sonia to establish a distinct political positioning. In fiscal terms, the UPA’s expansion of the welfare net may well be grossly irresponsible. However, her pro-active role in establishing the MNREGA and getting the proposed Food Security Act passed has established her so-called ‘pro-poor’ credentials—something that appeals to Congress activists who believe in hand-outs as the route to electoral success. Although India is no longer a shortage economy bolstered by an inefficient public sector, Sonia stands out in the emerging market economy as the Lady Bountiful, doing ‘good works’ for the poor and the vulnerable.

If 2014 was going to be a ‘normal’ election with no apparent dominant theme and no star personality, this blend of Mother India and Mother Teresa may well have fulfilled the Congress’ desire to remain in the reckoning as the default party of India. Unfortunately, the slowdown of the economy, the well-publicised cases of mega corruption and the perceived sense of drift may well make the polls into something more significantly dramatic—especially if Narendra Modi emerges as the challenger. At this juncture, when the Congress appears so fragile and heir-apparent Rahul Gandhi presents himself as so uninspiring, the last thing the Congress would want is for some additional controversy to shake the first family.

The issue of the Italian marines seen in isolation would appear like an embarrassment. However, read with the investigations in Italy into the bribes given for the purchase of AgustaWestland helicopters and the real estate greed of Vadra, there is every danger that the Gandhi family could suffer huge collateral damage. The mood in Italy is dead against any return of the absconding marines to India. But Indian national pride could equally come to the fore if New Delhi attempts a workable compromise solution. Already there are dark hints of a quid pro quo that would involve the Italian authorities going very slow on the inquiries into the bribes allegedly paid by AgustaWestland.

Most conspiracy theories can ever be substantiated by hard evidence. However, electoral trials are based almost exclusively on perceptions. People, as Modi rightly pointed out in a different context last week, tend to forgive the lapses of a regime that is otherwise seen to provide good governance. The Congress cannot at this juncture hope for such generosity. On the contrary, the UPA may well be a victim to the perverse habit of believing the worst of anyone who is down. Sonia has so far escaped this onrush of spite. But unless the Government can resolve the present Italian muddle, the Congress President could well be its unintended victim. 

The Telegraph, March 15, 2013

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 

Why is ‘First Family' a hush-hush affair?

By Swapan Dasgupta

Dr Ram Manohar Lohia was one of the most outstanding politicians of post-Independence. At a time when the Congress was the dominant party he, along with other stalwarts such as Acharya Kriplani, Atal Behari Vajpayee and Minoo Masani, contributed immeasurably towards keeping anti-Congressism alive. Lohia was a profound and original thinker but his fame rested on the notoriety he earned as an unrelenting agitator and oppositionist.

In 1963, Lohia moved the first and only no-confidence motion against the Government of Jawaharlal Nehru. In his robust and flamboyant intervention, Lohia argued that the average citizen of India lived on three annas (roughly 18 paise) a day—a sum he compared to the Rs 25,000 spent on the upkeep of the Prime Minister each day. Nehru, otherwise a great one for the thrust and parry of Parliament was both livid and exasperated. Replying to the debate, he charged the Honourable Member of lowering parliamentary discourse to the “level of the bazaar.”

In the Nehruvian Establishment of the day, which, naturally enough, included the print media, Lohia was debunked as a lowly demagogue and even a vulgarian, abuses that Lohia took as compliments. So intense was his hatred of everything Nehru stood for that when the Prime Minister died in May 1964 and was accorded a grand state funeral, Lohia intervened with a cutting remark: “Nehru left his jewels to his daughter and his ashes to the country.”

In a week that has witnessed breathless talk in a section of the Lutyens’ Delhi aristocracy over “bad taste” in politics, it is pertinent to re-open the Lohia debate. Did Lohia indeed lower the level of political discourse by rubbishing the Planning Commission’s figure of 15 annas as the average earning and positing a three-anna figure? More to the point, was he guilty of astonishing bad taste by juxtaposing this paltry sum with the Rs 25,000 (a considerable sum those days) spent by the taxpayer keeping Nehru in the style he was accustomed to? Remember, in those days debunking Nehru was almost akin to cheering a bowler who had just taken Sachin Tendulkar’s wicket. Were those who debunked Lohia doing so because his imagery was stark or were they doing so because he had dared question the sincerity of a man who could do no wrong?

There is a grey area of subjectivity we must necessarily enter to find a credible answer. Was Mamata Banerjee completely out of order when she mimicked the whispering indecisiveness of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh—also a decent and honourable man—during the course of a TV interview? More to the point, was Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi being crude when he hollered the allegation that Rs 1,880 crore of taxpayers’ money had been spent on bankrolling the foreign visits of Sonia Gandhi whose only official position is Chairperson of the National Advisory Council, a body that has no locus standi in the Constitution?

It is always possible to see Modi’s intervention through the prism of TV talk shows. But frankly, whether the Gujarat leader wanted to use the dramatic revelation to trap the Congress into some tactical indiscretion is not a very interesting angle. Nor is the air cleared by the revelation that a Central Information Commissioner had ruled last May during the course of a RTI hearing that Sonia Gandhi had submitted no medical bills relating to her month-long treatment at some unknown hospital overseas. Having made this the official version, it will be difficult for the Government to renege on this position. In this age of openness, cover-ups can be very messy.

There was always an official cost to every foreign visit undertaken by the Congress President in the past eight years. If it wasn’t Rs 1,880 crore or Rs 235 crore annually, as the press report Modi quoted, what was it?

Even if the medical treatment was free or paid for by either the family or some unnamed benefactor, the fact is that the Congress President is always accompanied by a large SPG entourage whose air tickets, hotel bills and daily allowances have to be paid for by the government. How much did that cost?

There is a larger question at stake here which goes beyond Modi and the Gujarat Assembly election. Does the citizenry of India have the right to know how much public money is being spent on individual leaders, purely as a matter of information? Or, as Nehru perhaps imagined, is asking the question in the first place indicative of insolence? Will it also be construed as an unwarranted invasion of privacy if someone asks: who paid?

When it comes to the ‘first family’ there is a spectacular degree of non-questioning. No one asks why the Home Minister, the Defence Minister and even the Prime Minister are forced to undertake visits so that one special passenger can be accommodated and the official bandobast made? Why does this passenger carrying facility also extend to the backbench MP for Amethi? Why does the Congress President never offer herself for a non-scripted interaction with the media? Why is everything relating to that family such a big secret? After all, they are not private individuals but public figures.

Lohia made a nuisance of himself by asking impertinent questions that others were too inhibited or too frightened to ask. Isn’t it time India produced many more Lohias?

Sunday Pioneer, October 7, 2012

China and India: Same to same?

By Swapan Dasgupta

The Indian media, quite regrettably, doesn’t devote any time to China. Fortunately, the Western media is obsessed by it. And, in the past few days, impish Americans and European reporters are having quite a bit of fun—at China’s expense.

The amusement has been occasioned by the mysterious disappearance of Vice President Xi Jinping from the public stage. Xi, to the untutored, is not just any Vice President. In a few weeks he is scheduled to become the General Secretary of the Communist Party and the President of the People’s Republic.

Predictably, the web space—the only place where the irreverent can hope to smuggle in their subversive thoughts—has been buzzing with rumours suggesting, among other things, that he has been assassinated, that he is seriously ill with back troubles and that he has been abducted from a moving train. The official information-disseminators have put on their best inscrutable faces and have stonewalled. But that didn’t stop the Wall Street Journal from comparing Xi’s non-availability to Alfred Hitchcock’s legendary The Lady Vanishes. After suggesting that there could be a perfectly innocent explanation for Xi’s prolonged disappearance, the Financial Times observed, with just a hint of condescension, that “so opaque and anachronistic is the political system that people have nothing to fall back on but speculation. China’s leaders sometimes behave more like the imperial courts of old than guardians of a modern state.”

We in India, as we are so self-righteously inform every foreigner who complains about tardy decision-making and rampant inefficiency, are not China. We are, presumably, better. Our growth rate may no longer be anything to write home about. But as Amartya Sen has so often reminded us, we are a proud democracy, albeit an argumentative one. We have a free press that prevents cartoonists from being thrown into jail on charges of sedition; we have an activist press that hounds every minister who slyly conferred a coal block on a relative; and we also have a responsible media that doesn’t print tasteless photographs of a Prince Harry frolicking in the pink. Yes, we are superior—far superior than the self-righteous West and the over-regulated Chinese.

Or are we?

For the past week, the most important politician of the ruling coalition, the one who wields power without responsibility, has left the country on a health check-up. From all accounts, this is the fourth occasion in the past two years the supreme leader has left India for medical attention. In most democracies, such an occurrence would not have gone either unnoticed or unexplored. However, in a country where the notion of privacy just doesn’t exist, this absence is brushed away as a ‘private matter’, presumably as ‘private’ as Xi’s absence from the grand banquets in Beijing.

Maybe in matters concerning the health of an individual politician, squeamishness is in order—although this didn’t stop the Delhi Establishment from its bouts of endless (and quite non-informed) speculation. But what about the unofficially-designated heir apparent, the boy who was born to rule?

The Coalgate controversy has been raging for nearly three weeks. It has shaken the self-confidence of the Prime Minister and called into question the integrity quotient of ministers and politicians. Surely the event called for an intervention by the princeling who is expected to lead the ruling coalition into the next election. But where was the ‘youth icon’? Until he stepped into an IAF aircraft that took him to Kokrajhar—our armed forces have been reduced to the status of transport facilitators for the first family—there was little to differentiate our crown prince from China’s crown prince. Both were AWOL.

Yet, there was one crucial difference: in China, they asked “Where is Xi?” but in India leadership in purdah has become the new normal.

Last week, a book written by a young journalist trying to ‘decode’ the elusive icon was released. From all accounts she never got to speaking distance of the subject of her research. The farce inspired a venerable London-based weekly to attempt to decipher the man who doesn’t give interviews, doesn’t interact with the political class, who talks through his polished and polite minders and who is occasionally seen but rarely heard on matters consequential. The result was predictable: we know nothing about the man who may be king. Not even the number of days he stays in India.

In the bad old days of the Cold War, a large number of people built their reputations on the strength of being Kremlin-watchers. The order of precedence on the podium at the annual rally to commemorate the revolution, a cryptic reference in Pravda and even the music played on the radio provided the only clues to deciphering the workings of an opaque system.

It was the same in China. When Mao Zedong quite inexplicably smiled at the Indian Ambassador at some official function, it was taken as a powerful sign that Beijing wanted a thaw in bilateral relations. When the Great Helmsman suddenly launched into a bizarre attack on Beethoven, it was taken as a sign that Lin Biao was in disfavour.

What then are we to do in India to understand the minds of those who rule us from behind the shadows? Must we be reduced to finding out what they ordered for dinner at Wasabi? If it is Wagyu, it must mean …

Sunday Pioneer, September 16, 2012 

Sonia weakens, but is PM stronger?

By Swapan Dasgupta

Chief Economic Adviser Kaushik Basu is not your average technocratic hack whose political bias needs to be seriously discounted. Therefore, when he pronounced last Friday that India’s economic growth will be back on track by October, there was reason to feel hopeful. Unfortunately, thanks to the Government’s impressive record of bullish talk that is not complemented by realities on the ground—remember the talk of prices coming down within 100 days of UPA-II assuming power—Basu should not feel slighted if his optimism is not widely shared.

It is not that stakeholders are unreceptive to good news. It took the Finance Ministry, now under the direct charge of the Prime Minister, to promise a review of the more ridiculous facets of Pranab Mukherjee’s Budget for the Sensex to gain 439 points on a single day and for the Indian Rupee to appreciate in value. That it took so little effort to boost sentiment merely shows the extent to which the despondency over economic mismanagement was also accompanied by a feeling that many of the problems confronting India are self-inflicted. India is anxious for good news but the Government has given them so little to be cheerful about.

So deep is the dejection that the PMO’s tweet about the Government helping India to recover the “animal spirit” in the economy was accompanied by an innocent question: Is the mouse an animal?

It’s a question that will be uppermost in the minds of both Indians and all those with a stake in India. For too long, Manmohan Singh has given the impression that he has abdicated his larger responsibilities. He has watched passively as important Cabinet ministers took decisions and acted in a way that was inimical to the interests of the country. He probably knew that what they were doing was wrong and often unethical—the 2-G issue is a prime example. Yet, he did nothing to guide them into doing the right thing—thereby fostering the impression that he was too weak to intervene.

Are things different now that he is also wearing the hat of the Finance Minister? Is the troika of Manmohan-Montek Singh Ahluwalia-C.Rangarajan the equivalent of Douglas Jardine’s team that decimated an Australian side which included the legendary Don Bradman? With Bodyline bowling, Jardine displayed an “animal spirit” not hitherto associated with either the MCC or indeed cricket. Will Manmohan ruthlessly sweep away the bureaucratic inertia and the sanctions raj and make India an entrepreneur-friendly country? Will he complement the natural Indian desire to create wealth with purposeful governance?

The problem is that when the issue of ‘reforms’ is scrutinised for concrete details, last Friday’s stock market rally begins to look like a bout of irrational exuberance. There was a time when good politics and good economics meant government doing as little as possible and allowing market forces to do the needful. Unfortunately, that time is long gone.

The souring of the India story owes a great deal to malevolent governance. The fiscal deficit cannot be brought under control unless government expenditure keeps a healthy balance with revenues; the bottlenecks in production cannot be removed unless the government attends to the power deficit, speeds up work on the Mumbai-Delhi corridor, improves surface transport and improves the productivity of ports; and entrepreneurship cannot flower unless the number of official sanctions is sharply reduced, corruption is brought under control and environmental clearances stop being used as a political plaything.

There is, of course, another grave issue that the PM must address. For the past seven years, there has been a divergence of approach involving the political head of the government and the nominal head of the Cabinet. This has led to policy incoherence and drift. Sonia Gandhi wants to be India’s Lady Bountiful, doling out largesse to the poor and needy; Manmohan Singh wants to revive the “animal spirit” in the people. The two approaches just don’t converge—not even through the over-use of a meaningless phrase called ‘inclusive’ growth.

The issue that, therefore, has to be explored is simple: has the balance of power tilted abruptly against Sonia Gandhi after a series of embarrassments over the presidential election? Yes, there is no question that all the sophistry of Digvijay Singh hasn’t been able to dispel the belief that the Congress President is weaker than she was six months ago. More than being forced to select Pranab Babu over her preferred choice Hamid Ansari, it is the defeat in Uttar Pradesh and the decimation in Andhra Pradesh that have undermined the dynastic forces. Add to this the sorry spectacle of the heir apparent reduced to making sporadic appearances and performing item numbers that have no bearing on the main plot, and the demoralisation of the Congress will be apparent.

However, the weakening of Sonia hasn’t led to a corresponding enhancement of the PM’s political clout. That the PM still has to bank on Montek and Rangarajan to fulfil his economic agenda shows how clearly isolated he is in the political arena. Jairam Ramesh’s decision to both submit and publicise his job application as Finance Minister to 10 Janpath suggests that Manmohan’s continuation as Finance Minister is not a given. In any case, the PM will be loath to face up to insolent parliamentary interrogation in the Monsoon session.

To attend to India’s faltering economy, the country has to first address the political listlessness.


Sunday Pioneer, July 1, 2012

M&M forced Sonia to change the script

By Swapan Dasgupta

Mamata Banerjee may well be pilloried by many for defying the rules of ethnic solidarity and trying her utmost to prevent the election of the first Bengali President of India.

However, had she not stepped out of 10 Janpath last Thursday afternoon and announced Sonia Gandhi’s shortlist to the world and then joined Mulayam Singh Yadav to proclaim an alternative slate, it is entirely possible that Pranab Mukherjee would have remained exactly where he was: as the Number Two man in a tottering Government rather than India’s First citizen. Indeed, had it not been for both Mamata and Mulayam, the country may have been weighing the implications of either Meira Kumar or Hamid Ansari in Rashtrapati Bhavan.

To many people, over-exposed to the ways of Lutyens’ Delhi, politics is all about closed door parleys, intrigue and conspiracies. Occasionally, however, as many great events of the past testify, politics follows the laws of unintended consequences.

It is now apparently clear — despite the inexplicable reluctance of the media to pursue the point — that by blurting out the gist of her conversation with the UPA chairperson, Mamata did not show her wanton disregard of the Umerta (the code that guides some people in southern Europe) as Ambika Soni so imperiously suggested on TV. On the contrary, she had sought and secured Sonia’s sanction for blurting out the two names to the media.

Mamata’s claim has not been seriously contested by the Congress. Why, therefore, was Sonia willing to let Mamata make the shortlist public? The answer was self-evident. Mamata’s opposition to Pranab babu — a consequence of rivalries rooted in the politics of West Bengal — was well known. So was the fact that she viewed Vice President Ansari with suspicion, not least because she sees him as too closely associated with the Left. Mamata must have made her deep reservations of the two names known to Sonia. Equally, she must have blurted out her preference for former President APJ Abdul Kalam. Under these circumstances, why did Sonia not insist that the discussions in 10 Janpath remain confidential?

Was Sonia trying to be too clever by half? Was she setting the mercurial Mamata loose to indicate that there was fierce opposition to Mukherjee from within his home State? Would the confusion of Mamata and Mulayam demanding wider consultations have given her the necessary elbow room to smuggle in a third name and, in the process, negate Pranab? After all, many in the Congress president’s charmed circle had let it be known that the Finance Minister was not the lady’s first choice.

Unfortunately for the Congress, not everything can be pre-scripted. It would be fair to say that no one in the Congress ever expected the Mamata-Mulayam list to include Prime Minister Manmohan Singh as the second preference — a gesture that was tantamount to ridicule. Neither did they ever contemplate that Mulayam would give his endorsement to Mamata’s insistence on Kalam. The 16-hour delay in the Congress responding to the Mamata-Mulayam bombshell was not calculated. It was the inevitable consequence of the Congress weighing the consequences of a sideshow that had gone horribly wrong. More to the point, the M&M show had exposed Sonia to the charge that she had botched up her responsibility to manage the presidential election — a charge that loyal Congressmen could never countenance.

What really triggered a panic in Congress circles was a growing fear that, encouraged by Mulayam’s support, Kalam would actually contest and transform the presidential contest into a battle for the UPA Government’s very existence. The Congress was aware that Kalam had kept the question of his candidature open-ended — an impression bolstered by publicity-seeking loudmouths associated with the NDA.

The Congress machinery works best when entrusted with the responsibility of managing politicians. Consequently, it undertook two separate campaigns. First, it put its entire weight behind an operation to detach Mulayam from Mamata. Presumably, this was done with a blend of threats (and the better informed know what they are) and inducements. Mulayam, who, unlike Mamata, is not always insistent on maximalist positions, duly obliged. His prompt endorsement of Pranab after the formal announcement of candidature effectively put an end to Kalam’s candidature.

Secondly, faced with the possibility of a real challenge and the likelihood of an erosion of faith in her own capabilities, Sonia had to fall back on a candidate who was guaranteed to win the maximum support across the board. Meira Kumar was a possibility but this meant alienating a man who had set his heart on Rashtrapati Bhavan. This, in turn, had the potential of triggering a new set of problems which the beleaguered Congress could not afford.

It is interesting to note that whereas the enlarged CWC had delegated the selection of the presidential candidate to Sonia, the aftermath of the M&M drama led to the re-involvement of the Congress Core Committee in the proceedings. Faced with a possibility of a minor muscle flexing by two parties escalating into a larger crisis, the Congress president was compelled to revert to a collegiate style of politics.

The outcome was advantageous for Pranab Mukherjee who will soon be President. It was beneficial to Manmohan Singh who secured his party’s resounding vote of confidence. For Sonia Gandhi, however, the happy ending was dissimilar to the one envisaged in the original script.

And, by way of a footnote, there remained one unanswered question: where was Rahul Gandhi when it all happened?

Sunday Pioneer, June 17, 2012

At A Moment of Change: The UPA Government is remarkably out of sorts

It is striking that economists have joined hands with politicians to practise sophistry. Earlier this week, a British Treasury official, Sir Stephen Nickell, expressed hope that this year’s so far exceptionally mild winter in his country turns out to be as severe as last year’s. Sir Stephen’s wish had a tangential connection with the High Street retailers who have been frustrated by the slow sales of winter wear this season. In the main, however, his calculations had more to do with statistical jugglery. A severe winter invariably leads to slowdown and disruption which tell on the quarterly results. However, the wintry bedlam also leads to a rapid catching-up process once the snow melts and the sleet is washed away. What Sir Stephen was thus really hoping for was that one dreadful month of depressed or even negative growth is followed by a much better performance the following month. As The Daily Telegraph helpfully explained, the Nickell logic was based on the jugglery that “[O]ne dreadful month and the next slightly positive don’t count cumulatively as a recession”. The Indian economy, despite all its shortcomings, is nowhere as precariously poised as Britain’s. The awesome 8 per cent growth of the gross domestic product may have fallen to below 7 per cent, but we are far from uttering the dreaded R-word. At best, the effervescent deputy chairman of the Planning Commission, Montek Singh Ahluwalia, may have admitted to seriously miscalculating the persistence of high inflation, but hismea culpa was so discreetly buried in the inside pages that there was not even a token demand for his head to roll. Consequently, the need for economists and economic advisers to engage in statistical jugglery to show that they were right after all was less pressing. In India, economists are rarely, if ever, charged with quackery; the fall guy for economic mismanagement is inevitably the politician. The commerce minister, Anand Sharma, who was looking terribly self-important last week and choosing his words with a great deal of thought, is a much deflated figure this week after the Bengali Brahmin duo comprising the finance minister, Pranab Mukherjee, and the West Bengal chief minister, Mamata Banerjee, decided that foreign direct investment in multi-brand retail could wait a more favourable constellation of stars and planets. The prime minister, Manmohan Singh, emerged from the 10-day storm that exposed the vulnerabilities of his government with his maun vrat strictly intact. India must be a novel democracy for a political crisis to come and go with the three key figures of the dispensation — the prime minister, the United Progressive Alliance chairperson, Sonia Gandhi, and the designated heir apparent, Rahul Gandhi — to emerge without saying a word on the subject. Yet, lots of people said lots of things and the social media went viral with uncharitable remarks about the silent triumvirate that governs India silently. Was that the reason why the multi-portfolio minister, Kapil Sibal, entered the arena and, without any compelling reason, demanded that the anarchic social media be subject to political censorship? To many economists the logic may have seemed flawless: if you can’t outdo China in the economic race, you can at least start emulating it politically. To the less intellectually endowed, however, the timing seemed characteristically Sibal-esque. During the brief storm over retail trade liberalization, the Congress (if not the UPA as a whole) appeared to be recovering its composure and getting over its state of rudderless inertia. There was evidence to show that a section of the alienated middle classes welcomed the move to liberate the consumer from the distributional inefficiencies that contributed to exceptionally high food prices. The media, unrelentingly hostile since the Commonwealth Games scandal broke in August 2011, also seemed in a mood to be charitable towards the reformist impulses of the government. Even the letter-writing Eminent Persons Group seemed inclined to be supportive. And, more important, the principal Opposition party which had backed retail reform in its 2004 manifesto appeared cussed and blindly obstructionist and too willing to obliterate the difference between itself and the Communist Party of India (Marxist). In such a situation, in stepped Sibal with his dossier of grievances against netizens who are naturally irreverent and insolent. The result is that the Congress is back to exactly where it was before the cabinet met last month to approve FDI in retail with the added stigma of intolerance attached to it. Not since Charan Singh waged civil war against Morarji Desai and brought the Janata Party edifice crashing down in 1979 has India witnessed a government that is so utterly out of sorts. The problem stems only partially from an Opposition that is hell-bent on disrupting Parliament for the most trivial of reasons. At the heart of the growing dysfunctionality is the fact that the Congress no longer seems entirely convinced that the system of dyarchy that saw the UPA through in its first term is working. There is still personal respect for the prime minister. But his clumsy political management and his deadpan style of communication have convinced many of the party faithful that the next election is as good as lost unless there is a shake-up. By instinct the average Congress activist is wedded to the idea of dynastic succession. In 2004, when Sonia’s “inner voice” told her to refuse the prime minister’s post, the party accepted it grudgingly and with the realization that the ‘Regency’ would facilitate the political apprenticeship of Rahul, the chosen heir. Since Manmohan Singh had no political base and was disinclined to create one for himself, the interim arrangement was accepted. What has changed? First, the economic situation is no longer conducive to the mega-welfare style of governance that came with 9 per cent growth. The resources to fund Sonia’s lady bountiful act no longer exist, and the cost of uninterrupted profligacy is a mounting fiscal deficit, a declining rupee and a possible balance of payments crisis. The Congress is in a limbo between a preferred recklessness and the countervailing pulls of responsible governance. Its instincts favour rolling back the reforms initiated between 1991 and 2004, yet it lacks the political will to pursue the path of counter-revolution in a country where the majority of the electorate will be below the age of 40. Secondly, Sonia’s health problems — still a State secret — are a source of worry. This is a subject that is still not discussed openly but Congress leaders are aware that the issue of succession can no longer be put off indefinitely. Earlier it was imagined that a good showing in the Uttar Pradesh assembly elections next summer — by which is meant the Congress’s ability to finish third in the four-cornered race — would be sufficient to catapult Rahul to the top job. Yet, as the election approaches, there is insufficient confidence in the Congress’s ability to break new ground in India’s largest state. A bad result will leave the Congress even more disoriented. Finally — and this is the truth that dare not speak its name — Congress supporters are worried that there is nothing else going for Rahul apart from pedigree. His aloofness and unbroken banality has been masked by careful handling but doesn’t appear to be yielding the necessary electoral dividends —Bihar being a prime example. It is not that Rahul is without charm but he lacks charisma. His only hope in 2014 lies in the Bharatiya Janata Party scoring many self-goals and putting forward someone completely inappropriate as its prime ministerial candidate. Rahul can perhaps win but only by default. He is no longer the ‘youth icon’ as he is made out to be; he is merely the face of the dynasty. The Telegraph, December 9, 2011