Rekindling romance

By Swapan Dasgupta

Sometime in the late-1970s, I read a tribute to one of the iconic Communist intellectuals of Bengal—an academic who shaped many impressionable minds during his long tenure at Kolkata's Presidency College. As evidence of his determined attachment to the then undivided Communist Party, the article narrated an anecdote dating back to the late-1940s centred on P.C. Joshi, a former party General Secretary.

Joshi, it is now recognised, was one of the most innovative Communist leaders. A cerebral man, he carefully targeted bright young men and women, particularly from elite families, for conversion to the cause. His success was most marked during 1942-47 when the Congress leaders were in jail and when the Soviet Union was in the forefront of the anti-fascist war. Many of those who embraced Communism as the only alternative to barbarism regarded Joshi as their mentor.

Shortly after Independence, thanks to an abrupt change in Moscow, the CPI was compelled to disavow the 'united front' approach and jump into a silly and abortive insurrection against the government of Jawaharlal Nehru. In a proverbial palace coup, Joshi was summarily removed from his post, expelled from the party and replaced by B.T. Ranadive. He became a 'non-person'.

It was during this period that a harried Joshi dropped into the home of the venerable professor who he presumably viewed as a friend and comrade. It is a commentary on the human priorities of the party that Joshi was brusquely told that he wasn't welcome any longer.

In the demonology of Communists, 'revisionists' and deserters have occupied a special place. Some of the choicest and most colourful polemical invectives have been reserved for those who deviated from the 'party line' and were turfed out for 'anti-party' activities. To the faithful, hateful outpourings against former comrades reinforced the party as the living God; to the heretic, dissociation from the church involved mental agony and the loss of a social support system.

Six decades of living in an argumentative democracy hasn't really changed the Communist repudiation of humanity and the worship of the party as the epitome of 'scientific' evolution. The world is replete with Reds of different shades who can no longer maintain a civil relationship with their former political associates. No wonder former Speaker Somnath Chatterjee lamented that his abrupt expulsion from the CPI(M) was one of the most unhappiest episodes of his life. In his imagined world, there was no meaningful life outside the party.

It is in the context of the troubled relationship of Communist parties with ex-Comrades that the decision to invite Chatterjee to speak at a public meeting in support of the West Bengal CPI(M)'s rising star Gautam Deb acquires significance. It is not that Chatterjee is a resident in Deb's constituency or that a Local Committee has extended the invitation without any application of mind. The fact is that Chatterjee's inclusion in the CPI(M) has been publicly endorsed—albeit as a purely one-time, election-centric issue—by Politburo members such as Sitaram Yechuri and Biman Bose. The former Speaker hasn't been rehabilitated; his existence has been acknowledged by the party.

The cautious re-embracing of a heretic has followed two paths. Firstly, it is being suggested that a desperate Left Front facing the prospect of ignominious defeat needs to garner all the support it can muster. Since Chatterjee has moved on from being Comrade to 'eminent citizen', he can, arguably, play the same role as those artists and intellectuals who have flocked to support Mamata Banerjee. Secondly, it is being argued that the invitation to Chatterjee is the Bengal CPI(M)'s way of snubbing General Secretary Prakash Karat whose stubborn 'anti-imperialism' forced the withdrawal of support to the UPA in 2008 and facilitated the anti-Left mahajot in West Bengal.

Both explanations are valid but there appears to be another dimension. The CPI(M), it would seem, is reconciled to defeat in West Bengal on May 13. It hasn't abandoned the fight but it is realistically battling to ensure that the Left Front tally doesn't fall below 100 seats. What worries the CPI(M) is not merely the loss of power after 34 years of pampered existence. Equally important is their concern for the physical safety of their cadres.

The fear isn't exaggerated. For three decades the CPI(M) has attempted to exercise total control of both the state and society. This has led to institutionalised intolerance and the perpetuation of a million petty tyrannies. There is huge, pent-up anger against the 'cadres' who walked with a swagger, ensured the harassment and social humiliation of all those who dared disagree and probably enriched themselves through petty corruption. If the party loses on May 13, not even the best intentioned government will be able to stop the wave of recriminations against local tyrants.

The CPI(M) knows that it cannot tame a Mamata who has fought an often-lonely but always unrelenting war against it. Its best hope lies in souring the awkward relationship between the Congress and the Trinamool Congress. This can best be done at the national level by pandering to the likely disquiet in the Congress over two issues.

First, there is certain to be a lot of heartburn at the Congress being an infant partner in the Mamata-led alliance. Secondly, for Congressmen who have no stake in West Bengal, the defeat of the Left in West Bengal and possibly Kerala could signal the emergence of political bipolarity—a possible straight fight between the UPA and the NDA in the next general election. This, in turn, would involve other anti-Congress parties such as AIADMK, Telugu Desam and BJD moving away from the Left and re-establishing a relationship with the NDA.

The Congress has no real stakes in a Mamata-led Bengal, and neither has the CPI(M). The CPI(M)'s cautious re-recognition of Chatterjee as a Bengali notable isn't guided by a new spirit of enlightenment; it is dictated entirely by the need to re-establish a bridgehead into the Congress.

Asian Age/Deccan Chronicle , April 22, 2011

Congress opts for confrontation

By Swapan Dasgupta

Politics resonates with leaders and apparatchiks who not only have inordinate faith in their own cleverness but simultaneously believe the rest of the world is made up of fools. The Communists have traditionally based their conceit on their profound insights into a mysterious commodity called "scientific socialism"; the smugness of many RSS functionaries can be traced to their exaggerated sanctimoniousness; and the arrogance of Congressmen owe almost entirely to the conviction that only they know the art of 'managing' politics.

In the immediate aftermath of Anna Hazare's fast, an event that took it by surprise, the Congress has chosen to display the entire range of its skills in political management. From its perspective, there was a desperate need to send out a SOS, call in accumulated IOUs and invite all its good men to come to the aid of the party. Having been at the receiving end of a torrent of corruption-related scandals since August last year, the party was despondent and dispirited. So profound was the sagging morale that at this rate it would have been impossible for the UPA Government to complete its full second term—an ignominy calculated to have devastating electoral consequences.

After the government's abject capitulation before Anna on the evening of April 8 and suggestions of a possible defeat in Tamil Nadu and the loss of momentum in Kerala, the Congress could wait no longer. Even as the last voter was entering the polling booth in the southern states, the Congress unleashed its dogs of war with a very clear two-point brief: first, to dissipate and eventually destroy the groundswell of support for Anna and, second, to blunt corruption as a political issue.

To the person of average intellect, the best way to cope with the national concern over corruption was to tackle the problem headlong, with a combination of firm administrative action and, where necessary, additional legislation. To the clever Congress managers such lateral thinking was 'non-political'. The 'political' way, as they saw it, lay in out and out subterfuge—a game the Congress believes it has unrivalled skills.

First, it was necessary to discredit the leading lights of the operation. Anna himself was a difficult target—although some dirt has been heaped on him—but some of the 'civil society' nominees to the Lokpal Bill drafting committee have been chosen to be at the receiving end of a campaign of vilification. The campaign is very reminiscent of the St Kitts operation of 1988-89 when it was alleged that V.P. Singh's son possessed unauthorised offshore bank accounts.

In the St Kitts case, the operation was outsourced to a godman of dubious reputation; today's operation, targeting Shanti Bhushan and Prashant Bhushan and using the tapes of an alleged phone conversation, has been outsourced to an orphaned politician who proved useful in the past. It is understood that a Leader of Opposition is being targeted by this politically-approved rogue operation.

Secondly, latching on to a statement by Anna complimenting Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi's administrative acumen, there is an attempt to show that the entire anti-corruption movement is being remote controlled by the RSS. An elaborate conspiracy theory linking the Jantar Mantar show with Baba Ramdev and Sri Sri Ravi Shankar has been built up to hint that the future of parliamentary democracy is under threat. More theoretical versions of this theory have resurrected Karl Marx's writings on France to argue that the middle classes are veering towards undemocratic Bonapartist solutions—a hint that Modi may be the only beneficiary of an anti-corruption upsurge. Harsh Mander of the National Advisory Council has even asserted that Anna's anti-corruption movement lacks compassion!

To play the anti-communal card in times of distress is a time-tested ploy. Faced with a people's challenge, the Congress has chosen to inject sectarian divisions into the movement. 'Secular' commentators have invoked memories of movements led by Jayaprakash Narayan and V.P. Singh to argue that these invariably pave the way for an onward march of the BJP. Secularist crusader Javed Anand of Communalism Combat even explained why as a Muslim he couldn't identify with Anna.

Thirdly, a panic-stricken Congress has been unnerved at way a section of the NGOs (which the party believed was a captive constituency) turned on the Government. Its response is the all-too familiar divide-and-rule approach. Digvijay Singh gave the game away by making personalised attacks on those chosen by Anna to be in the committee. He was indiscreet enough to openly say that Aruna Roy and Harsh Mander, both members of the Sonia Gandhi-led NAC, should have been chosen—a certificate that speaks for itself.

Finally, the Congress has decided to withdraw all cooperation from all the bodies either inquiring into cases of corruption or suggesting legislation to fight it. The proceeding of the Public Accounts Committee was disrupted last Friday; the Joint Parliamentary Committee is certain to be bogged down by procedural and turf battles; and there is little likelihood of the drafting committee being able to agree on a common Lokpal Bill.

The Congress has chosen to a path of confrontation towards the movement against corruption. It seems to believe that brazenness is a sign of cleverness. This was precisely the mistake Indira Gandhi made after 1973 and which Rajiv Gandhi repeated in 1988-89. The consequences are well known.

Sunday Pioneer, April 17, 2011

Time for a reality check

Was the Jantar Mantar drama a wake-up call or an air-raid alert?

By Swapan Dasgupta

It is a commentary on the fragility of the dispensation in Delhi that it took barely 72 hours of sustained media indignation, a patchy show of flag-waving solidarity by the middle classes and the obstinacy of a 71-year-old Gandhian busybody to expose the moral nakedness of the Manmohan Singh Government. Last week's drama at Delhi's Jantar Mantar centred on Anna Hazare's fast and the appointment of a committee to draft a Lokpal Bill to check governmental corruption was a much-needed reality check for all those who had somehow assumed that India was on the cusp of greatness. The resilience necessary to cope with periodic political turbulence appear to have deserted the system.

In the coming weeks, particularly if the present round of Assembly elections fail to give solace to the Congress, the phenomenon of 'weakness' is certain to be clinically dissected. Is the vulnerability of what Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi loves to call the "Delhi Sultanate" a problem peculiar to a Congress party that is never fully comfortable with a Prime Minister from outside the 'dynasty'? Or, as India's 57 varieties of Right and Left radicals would no doubt argue, do the tremors created by Hazare point to the larger systemic rot in a tottering First Republic? Was the Jantar Mantar drama yet another wake-up call or an ominous air-raid alert?

From the perspective of those alarmed at the ease with which the Government wilted, it may be heartening reassuring to know that a jolted Sultanate will try to contain the damage. The reassurance becomes less robust on the realisation that the fightback will centre on the only available weapon: subterfuge.

First, Cabinet members such as Kapil Sibal have begun decrying the belief that the Lok Pal legislation is a wonder drug for all of India's ailments. The idea is to paint Hazare as a Don Quixote tilting at windmills.

Secondly, Congress General Secretary Digvijay Singh has demanded the extension of the Lok Pal's jurisdiction to include both the private sector and Non-Government Organisations, the repository of 'civil society' virtuousness. Although the suggestion is ridiculous, it is calculated to create concern within corporates and NGOs at the dangerous consequences of unbridled populism.

Thirdly, the perceived shortcomings of the five-member panel chosen by Hazare to provide the 'civil society' perspective on the Lok Pal legislation have been sought to be highlighted. Lok Janshakti Party leader Ram Vilas Paswan has lamented the absence of a Dalit face in the committee; activist Mallika Sarabhai has criticised the absence of a woman among the 'civil society' representatives; and umpteen people, not least Baba Ramdev, has referred to the preferential treatment accorded to the father-son duo of Shanti Bhushan and Prashant Bhushan. In the coming days, more such fissures will emerge.

Finally, the 'secular' bush telegraph has been used to spread the theory that the Jantar Mantar show was masterminded by shadowy figures in the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. The overuse of slogans such as Bharat Mata ki jai and Vande Mataram and Hazare's praise for the integrity and administrative acumen of Modi have been cited as proof of deep saffron involvement in the movement. It is being whispered that Hazare is actually a convenient front and that the real muscle for the anti-corruption stir comes from the poster boys of evangelical Hindutva, notably Baba Ramdev and Sri Sri Ravi Shankar.

The Congress' attempt at some form of counter-mobilisation is understandable. The Hazare bomb, which the Government never anticipated, has damaged the party in two crucial ways.

For a start, Hazare has crystallised the middle class disquiet over growing corruption into an angry, anti-politician mood. Although the mood is momentarily against all politicians, it is certain to have the greatest effect on the credibility of the Congress. Unless a new force abruptly emerges to harvest the popular fury electorally, past precedent would suggest that it is the principal opposition party that invariably stands to gain from a wave of anti-incumbency. In other words, the Congress is wary that the middle class disappointment with Prime Minister Singh could facilitate the electoral rehabilitation of the BJP and even the emergence of Modi as a possible national saviour.

Secondly, the speed with which the Hazare movement was able to ride roughshod over all obstacles and dominate the national imagination for a week suggested a breakdown of the Congress system of political control. Since 2002, more or less coinciding with the Gujarat riots, the Congress has institutionalised its relationship with the NGO movement and used it successfully as a battering ram against the BJP. The establishment of the National Advisory Council, with disproportionate representation from the community of so-called 'activists', enabled the UPA Government to involve the voluntary sector in legislation such as the Right to Information Act, the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, the Food Security Bill and the proposed anti-communal law. The Lok Pal Bill which has now been referred to a 10-member committee was initially supposed to have been vetted and approved by a supra-Cabinet comprising select members of the NAC. A reason why the Government could not press the constitutionalist argument centred on the supremacy of the elected representatives in decision-making was that it had already ceded a lot of this space to an unelected NAC chaired by the Congress President.

The Hazare-led upsurge has upset all these calculations. By favouring one set of NGOs and extending official patronage to one set of 'activists', the Government unwittingly set in motion a countervailing response by those who felt left out of the process. Last week's spectacle in Delhi was their revenge on the co-opted NGOs. The Congress may, arguably, retrieve lost ground and even create a deep schism within the NGO movement as a result of its rearguard actions. However, there is no doubt that in the process the UPA's image as the only political force that is receptive to the urges of 'civil society' has suffered immeasurably. It will now have to cope with a parallel army of the virtuous, including a formidable brigade linked to quasi-religious gurus.

A second pillar of the Congress' political management was TV. The remarkable ease with which the feel-good effect of India's World Cup victory evaporated didn't owe merely to the emergence of yet another army of the indignant equally determined to impose its whimsical agenda on a functioning democracy. The near-spontaneous revolt of a middle class driven by consumerism against corruption put many otherwise 'liberal', loosely pro-UPA national news channels in a dharma sankat. They could have opted to exercise restraint in their coverage, perhaps seeing it as just another tamasha rather than as an Indian version of Cairo's Tahrir Square. But their decision to join in the hyperbolic outpouring was dictated by commerce. Swimming against the tide and upholding lofty constitutionalism meant going against the prevailing sentiment in their middle class target audience—a decision that would ultimately be reflected in diminishing viewership figures. Additionally, they had to also cope with the parallel attraction of social networking—a force that has been deified despite its potential as an unguided missile.

The week-long Hazare show that stirred urban India has wounded the Congress grievously. The party will no doubt try to extricate itself from the mess through an elaborate process of manipulation. But it will have to undertake the exercise amid the larger realisation that its capacity to stage a moral recovery has been eroded. Hazare has also crippled its shock absorbers.

The Telegraph, April 15, 2011

Anna Hazare fills the void in corruption battle

By Swapan Dasgupta

For the past week, India has been trying to come to terms with a phenomenon they neither understood nor anticipated. The abrupt emergence of Anna Hazare as the symbol of a largely middle-class outburst against the insincerity of the war on corruption has been puzzling. In many ways this 71-year-old self-professed Gandhian from rural Maharashtra is a total antithesis of what modern India apparently stands for. He is neither young nor tech-savvy; he doesn't talk the 'development' jargon of well-travelled NGOs; and his politico-cultural symbolism—Chhatrapati Shivaji, Swami Vivekananda, Mahatma Gandhi, Bharat Mata and Vande Mataram—is seemingly at odds with modernist impulses of India's aspirational classes. Yet, Anna has become the unlikeliest symbol of a movement that may well end up unseating a government, even if it doesn't succeed cleansing public life.

Perhaps the lionisation of another diminutive man with an infectious smile is an indication that the more India changes the more it remains the same. Nearly four decades ago, Professor W.H. Morris-Jones had observed that Indian leadership follows three idioms: the traditional, the modern and the saintly. The last fits uneasily into perceptions of Indian modernity or, for that matter, the caricatured view of its conservatism. But in the past 100 years, the most significant movements for change have been propelled by people who lived in a world of their own imaginations and were driven by exacting ethical standards.

Frankly, you had to be a bit crazy in 1919 to dream of unseating the Raj. You also had to be very other-worldly to believe in 1973—barely a year after Indira Gandhi's anointment as Durga after the Bangladesh war—that the corrupt edifice of the Congress could be brought down. Maybe it is too rash as yet to place Anna on par with either the Mahatma or 'Loknayak' Jayaprakash Narayan—the two saintly crazies who reshaped 20^th century India. Yet, it is important to recognise that being impractical has never been a deterrent to inspirational leadership, at least not in India.

There are many features of the alternative Jan Lokpal Bill proposed by Anna and his supporters that are either outrageous or quirky. The belief that a Lokpal appointed by a committee of the great and good should have overriding powers over an elected government is at best utopian and at worst anti-democratic. And the proposal of who should constitute the electoral college of the virtuous is, to say the least, eccentric. Why should all those of Indian origin honoured by the Nobel committee in Sweden and Norway and the last two Magsaysay Prize winners—chosen by a committee in the Philippines—be ex-officio members of a desi Star Chamber. Why not the recipients of the Padma Vibhushan and Bharat Ratna? Or for that matter, why not everyone honoured by the local Rotary Club?

The issue, fortunately, is neither the Lokpal Bill nor even the principle of 'civil society' representation in the drafting committee—a characteristically NGO-ish demand. The overwhelming majority of those inspired by Anna's fast don't seem all that preoccupied with the minutiae of a proposed legislation. What has excited them is the fact that someone of unimpeachable integrity has chosen to take a stand and confront a decrepit and smug system on the issue of corruption.

In 1921, when Mahatma Gandhi asked people to abandon schools, colleges, law courts and resign from government service in the quest of swaraj in just a year, only a small handful actually did so. Indeed, many of India's foremost intellectuals, including Rabindranath Tagore, were disturbed by what they saw as Gandhi's reckless manipulation of impressionable young minds. But Gandhi's larger moral appeal outweighed the shortcomings of his political strategy. The Mahatma became a national inspiration in the struggle for independence; Gandhism always remained a fad. A similar distinction marked JP the symbol of resistance to Indira Gandhi's authoritarian misrule and his woolly Total Revolution.

In the coming weeks, there will be fierce assaults, not least by rival 'civil society' activists, on the implications of Anna's Jan Lokpal proposals. Some of these will be couched in lofty constitutionalism such as the sovereignty of Parliament; others will be blended with competitive self-righteousness; and still others will see Anna as an unwitting tool of the anti-Congress opposition, just as the Communists saw 'fascist forces' in JP's movement.

A clinical dissection of what Anna actually represents and the forces backing him will not, however, divert focus from the growing groundswell against corruption. There is a political space for a credible, even angry, movement against the rot in India's political system. Circumstances have allowed a venerable, gutsy and untainted outsider to fill the void. It's the sentiment behind his anointment that is relevant, not the fine print of a law to make India virtuous.

Sunday Times of India, April 10, 2011

Anna’s fast leads to panic in the Congress

By Swapan Dasgupta

Reflecting on events 37 years ago, I must confess that my youthful support for the Jayaprakash Narayan's movement was based on perverse considerations: more than I agreed with Total Revolution, I despised those who opposed JP. These included: an insufferably arrogant Congress establishment which believed it was destined to rule forever; a smug clique of "progressive" politicians and academics who imagined they ruled India through the reflected glory of Moscow; and a flotsam and jetsam of babus and journalists who just wanted to play safe. The shrill charges of being CIA dalals, fascists and disruptionists levelled against the JP movement by this unwholesome bunch proved sufficient to transform my neutrality into support for JP.

It is remarkable how eerily history has repeated itself. Anna Hazare's fast resulted in a spectacular outpouring of public support for an unrelenting war on corruption. Although the fast was ostensibly to press for the inclusion of 'civil society' activists in the committee to draft a more meaningful Lokpal Bill, it was reflective of the larger disquiet against the government's complicity and lack of seriousness in fighting corruption.

But there was a larger and unstated feature of the public support for Anna. What the country witnessed last week was a middle class revolt in which social networking played a significant. Electorally, the middle class anger against the Congress and the UPA Government may not prove decisive. The ruling coalition, for example, still believes its support in rural India is intact thanks to the large number of state-funded welfare schemes.

The belief that anti-corruption is essentially a middle-class issue which carries diminishing electoral returns (because the middle classes don't vote in sufficiently large numbers) isn't a scientific rule; it is merely a working assumption. Ignoring middle class sentiment constitutes an enormous political risk. What tilted the balance towards the UPA in 2009 wasn't a rural sweep but its ability to carry urban India. Particularly relevant was the image of decency and progress associated with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. The PM captured the essence of middle class aspirations far more successfully than did the BJP. This was quite a contrast to the 1990s when an emerging BJP encapsulated the feelings of Middle India, not least the young.

The significance of last week's excitement over Anna's fast lies in the formal withdrawal of middle class support from the Congress and Singh. The enthusiasm for a new icon was directly connected with the disappointment with a PM in whom so much faith was reposed. The PM was shown to be a man of straw and the middle classes have rejected him unequivocally. It is striking how little those who backed Anna with an infectious enthusiasm were moved by arguments that the sovereignty of Parliament was being undermined and that India was witnessing the tyranny of the non-elected.

It is not that the misgivings over the exaggerated self-righteousness of some of Anna's chief backers lack any basis. The likes of Swami Agnivesh, Medha Patkar and Prashant Bhushan have often conveyed the impression of being activists in search of causes to latch on to. Their presence doesn't enhance the quality of any movement, especially not a rooted, middle class stir. However, what is also relevant is the credibility of those levelling charges against the wild, anarchist streak in Anna.

In politics, timing is everything. The Congress has conceded most of Anna's demands, much to the discomfiture of Kapil Sibal who, as is his wont, overstated the extent of the Government's contempt for hare-brained, utopian schemes. In doing so—apparently a result of the PM and Sonia Gandhi's magnanimity—it hasn't been able to dispel the impression that it has grudgingly bowed to fierce public pressure. The Government was desperate to move national attention away from Anna's fast because it was fearful of its impact in the Assembly elections. It had to either subvert the movement from within or concede defeat. It is interesting that until last Friday afternoon, the endeavour was to fuel internal rivalries and pit the fractious NGO activists against one another—an exercise that also involved the intelligence agencies. The stubbornness of Anna prevented this from happening and by Friday evening the Government decided to concede this battle in the interests of a larger war that will be fought out in the committee rooms.

For the UPA, being upstaged by a 71-year-old Maharashtra rustic with no deep knowledge of the byways of national politics was a bitter experience. One of Sonia Gandhi's more astute moves after 2004 was in creating the National Advisory Committee as a Praetorian Guard in 'civil society'. The co-opted activists have played a valuable role in channelling youthful idealism in a safe, political direction. The NAC activists were particularly useful in managing the English-language and media discourse, conferring respectability to the dynasty and painting the other side as forces of darkness.

By refusing to be tamed, by widening the orbit of anti-corruption activism to the likes of Baba Ramdev and by incorporating nationalist symbolism (Bharat Mata and Vande Matatarm), Anna has managed to effect a separation of 'civil society' from a decrepit and failing government. Hence the intense nervousness in Lutynens' Delhi that is reminiscent of the panic in 1974-75. The future depends on how well he succeeds in pushing through the process.

http://www.dailypioneer.com/330633/Anna%E2%80%99s-fast-leads-to-panic-in-Congress.html Sunday Pioneer, April 10, 2011

Paying for the past

By Swapan Dasgupta

Every clever politician is only too aware that a clever diversion is a wonderful way to shift attention from the issue at hand. Earlier this week, on his first visit to Pakistan after assuming office, British Prime Minister David Cameron craftily exploited the huge reservoir of 'anti-imperialist' sentiment in the subcontinent. Speaking to students of the Islamabad Institute of Technology, no relation to the IITs across the border, he was asked what role the United Kingdom should play in resolving the Indo-Pakistan dispute over Kashmir. "I don't want to insert Britain into some leading role", he replied, "As with so many of the problems of the world, we are responsible for their creation in the first place."     

Predictably, Cameron's reply was greeted by generous applause by young Pakistanis who, like young Indians, have been brought up to believe that regional conflicts—whether in Palestine, Tibet or along the Durand Line—are a legacy of perfidious Albion. Such as assertion may or may not stand historical scrutiny. Indeed, within the UK, Cameron's "politics of apology" has been trashed by both the Right and the Left.

Unless I am horribly mistaken, the shelf life of this abstruse discussion on imperial responsibility is unlikely to last for more than a day. That is enough time for Cameron to sign a meaningless agreement for "enhanced strategic dialogue"—not 'partnership' mind you—and attend to the residual anger in Islamabad over his harsh assessment of contemporary Pakistan during his visit to India earlier this year. By blaming it all on long-forgotten ancestors, Cameron delivered the crucial part of his message: the UK isn't interested in getting its hands dirty in Kashmir.

Pakistan has routinely scoured the world trying to collect endorsements for some form of third party mediation to solve the Kashmir dispute. It is Islamabad's version of the India's hunt of testimonials for the elusive UN Security Council permanent seat. Cameron didn't oblige his hosts (unlike the earnest David Miliband who soured Indo-British ties with a monumentally tactless speech on Kashmir). He was content with a suitably clever one-liner.

This is not to suggest that Cameron's all-too-brief visit to Islamabad was a meaningless charm offensive aimed at enhancing the profile of his Cabinet colleague Baroness Syeda Warsi in Pakistan. Accompanying the British Prime Minister was an extremely high profile delegation comprising the chief of defence staff, the head of MI6 and the National Security Adviser. The details of what they discussed as part of the 'enhanced strategic dialogue' is unlikely to be made public but a few trends are discernible.

First, the importance of Pakistan to the UK is, of course, in relation to Afghanistan. But equally, Pakistan is of considerable relevance to the national security of the British mainland. Nearly half the terror plots targeting Britain are thought to originate in a Pakistan where jihad is the biggest growth industry. It is therefore in Britain's self-interest in both Afghanistan and at home to engage with Pakistan and secure the cooperation of its security establishment.

Secondly, it is increasingly apparent that neither the United States nor the UK has the stomach to secure a military defeat of the Taliban in Afghanistan. The growing distaste for President Hamid Karzai's regime—accused of being the fountainhead of both corruption and drugs trafficking—have led to a section of the British security establishment discovering virtues in the Taliban. It is being suggested that the Al Qaeda component of the Afghan Taliban are holed up in North and South Waziristan fighting the Pakistan army. The ones taking on the NATO-led forces in southern Afghanistan, on the other hand, are said to be freedom-loving, conservative Pushtuns with no appetite for global jihad.

Coming to terms with this "good" Taliban, not least to facilitate an early exit from Afghanistan, necessitates working through Pakistan's infamous ISI. Already, a Taliban front office is said to be functioning in Turkey and a more purposeful back office is set to be established in the United Arab Emirates. Taliban-friendly mullahs are discreetly making their appearance at talks and seminars organised by think tanks and academic institutions in the West.

Thirdly, for reasons that may be grounded in either fact or convenience, a section in Whitehall has concluded that the ISI has had a change of heart and is actively engaged in fighting the hardline Islamist terrorists—those responsible for the blasts and the suicide bombings inside Pakistan and plotting attacks in the West. Some members of the British strategic community also appear to hold the belief that a group such as the Lashkar-e-Tayyiba can be tamed, in the same way as the Provisional IRA was defanged in the 1990s, and transformed into non-violent Islamists. This assessment conflicts sharply with Cameron's own espousal of "muscular liberalism" as an alternative to extremism, both violent and non-violent. Whether this optimism stems from voyages of discovery undertaken by US and UK intelligence or is a piece of received wisdom from the ISI isn't known. What is evident though is a desire on the part of the ISI to ensure the LeT remains an 'approved' overground player.

Finally, a strategy of engagement with the ISI-approved roster of non-violent Islamism involves making demands on India. It is remarkable how in recent months the linking of Afghanistan with Kashmir has made a comeback. Although it is being said that this linkage is strictly 'non-official', it will come as no surprise if pressure is put on India to do its bit to make the Taliban re-conquest of Afghanistan as painless and non-confrontational as possible. Simultaneously, there will be attempts to ensure that India is more accommodating to Pakistan's aspirations on Kashmir. At an officially-sponsored seminar last week at King's College, London, a participant baldly stated that "India has to be generous—otherwise it faces another summer of discontent in Kashmir."

The Great Game, it would seem, never stopped—not even after Cameron recognised the role of yesterday's imperialists in leaving an awful mess for posterity to clean up.

Asian Age/Deccan Chronicle, April 8, 2011

 

 

Endgame begins for Manmohan?

By Swapan Dasgupta

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh should thank the ineptitude of the Pakistan cricket team for allowing his Mohali sideshow to be treated with relative indulgence by the Indian people. Had Shahid Afridi's side held on to the first of the four chances offered by Sachin Tendulkar in his uncharacteristically scratchy innings, the outcome of World Cup semi-final may not have been dissimilar to the earlier exercises in cricket diplomacy. Yet, to be charitable, the Prime Minister's long spell of political misfortune had to end sometime. And it was just as well it happened in Mohali.

This is not to endorse Pakistan Prime Minister Yusuf Gillani's assessment that the so-called 'spirit of Mohali' is a win-win for both sides. For Pakistan, the whispered exchanges before the slog overs and the interactions over tandoori chicken marked a great step forward. In India's case, the jury is still out.

To begin with, it reinforced the Pakistani success in getting India to deepen its faith in a resumed 'composite' dialogue under a different name. In short, India's post-26/11 stand that the composite dialogue was on hold until Pakistan took "credible and verifiable" measures against cross-border terrorism, was shown up to be empty bluster. Pakistan had always insisted that the adventurism of non-state players must not hold diplomacy to ransom. After Thimpu, Islamabad can afford to gloat quietly in the realisation that not only do Hindus not have a sense of history; they are also incapable of withstanding sustained pressure. India, it is aware, is so unlike the Pakistan establishment that still nurtures unhappy memories of the ignominious surrender in Dhaka, 40 years ago.

Of course, Pakistan always knew that India's PM and its National Security Adviser were inclined to turn the other cheek. For the duo (or so it seems), conflict is abhorrent not least because it diverts attention from the more worthwhile business of economic growth and because it makes the international community edgy. This is not an irrational position and suggests a certain nobility of purpose. The problem is that India is confronted by two difficult neighbours: one which is moving purposefully towards recreating the Middle Kingdom and another that conducts itself as both a clever rogue and a habitual delinquent.

Coping with the challenge of the first requires guile, tact and oodles of resilience—attributes that the India doesn't naturally possess. Handling Islamabad is, however, even more problematic. The erosion of the West's self-confidence in Afghanistan has resulted in growing pressure on India to somehow accommodate Pakistan. The underlying assumption is that the easing of Indo-Pak tensions will encourage Pakistan to play a more constructive role in Afghanistan and act meaningfully against Islamist terror groups without "looking both ways"—David Cameron's telling phrase. Although the West doesn't openly advocate India conceding ground in Kashmir, it constitutes a hidden pillar of its larger AfPak policy.

The extent to which pressures from the West played a part in creating the Thimpu and Mohali spirits will always remain in the realms of conjecture. The NSA's comment to an American diplomat in February 2010 (as revealed in the cables released by WikiLeaks) that "A peaceful, stable Pakistan is in our interest; we will work at it even if they make it hard for us" may well suggest a home-grown doctrine based on lofty asymmetry. It certainly governed the infamous Sharm-el-Sheikh declaration that triggered a domestic furore and led to even the Congress distancing itself from the high-minded PM. The question, however, remains: if India takes two steps forward, can Pakistan reciprocate with at least one step?

The answer isn't encouraging. For a start, the balance of power between the civilian government and the Pakistan military is still being negotiated. The optimism that an onrush of democracy in Pakistan had made it difficult for the military to wield real power has turned out to be premature. Under General Kayani, the military has clawed its way back to recover much of the ground it lost in the last days of General Musharraf.

There is also precious little to suggest that the ISI has disowned the terror groups it nurtured for action in both Afghanistan and India. Some of the groups may have outgrown its military patrons—just as the LTTE outgrew India. It is also possible that the growth of Islamism in civil society makes it difficult for the ISI to exercise total control over the genie it unleashed. Whatever the details of this shifting relationship, it has made it extremely difficult for Pakistan (assuming its intentions are above board) to deliver on its commitments. The scope for institutional duplicity has, in fact, been considerably enhanced by the state of flux within Pakistan.

It is highly unlikely that India's PM is unaware of the pitfalls of dealing with an unstable Pakistan. The plodding approach that seemed written into the U-turn at Thimpu was perhaps a way of testing the waters. At Mohali, however, the PM pressed the accelerator and quite inexplicably raised the profile and the expectations from a fragile Indo-Pak bonhomie.

Was the decision governed by diplomatic calculations? Or, was it an attempt by a beleaguered PM to somehow regain the domestic initiative by showing his capacity for bold, decisive action? If it was the latter, we may be seeing the beginning of endgame for Manmohan Singh.

Sunday Pioneer, May 3, 2011

 

The Middle Kingdom

The challenge for a new order in West Bengal will be daunting

By Swapan Dasgupta
In 1971, shortly after writing my final school examinations, I decided to abandon Calcutta for Delhi. My reasons were pragmatic: I wanted to complete my degree in three years. In Calcutta, then in the throes of competitive political violence, completing a BA degree took at least an extra 16 months which, in effect, meant wasting two academic years.

A venerable grand-uncle was horrified by my plans. “Are there colleges in Delhi?” he asked superciliously. To him, there was only one place — apart from Oxbridge — for a student wishing to read history: Presidency College. He had neither heard of St Stephen’s in Delhi nor did he care to be enlightened. For him, as with generations of proud Bengalis, it was Bengal über alles.

It would be interesting for a historian to try and locate the moment the Bengali bhadralok first started viewing itself as the intellectual master race of India. Did it follow the collapse of the Maratha confederacy and the decline of a culture patronized by the Peshwas? Was it an offshoot of Raja Rammohun Roy’s varied theological interventions and, particularly, the outpouring of pride over his journey to England to parley on equal terms with Englishmen? Or did it have something to do with the accident of having the longest exposure to Western culture and civilization?

Whatever the origins of this cockiness, it is undeniable that Bengal entered the 20th century with an enhanced notion of self. Even the Partition of 1947 didn’t puncture Bengali pretensions. Dispossession and hardship did, however, contribute immeasurably towards a change in intellectual priorities and fashion.

Just as the Spanish Civil War and the Nazi triumph in Germany radicalized British intellectuals and drove some of them into an alternative barbarian camp in the east, the famine of 1943 and the subsequent loss of East Bengal unsettled bhadralok intellectuals. The drift to what is called ‘progressive’ politics may have been a global current but it led to two fundamental distortions in Bengal.

First, with their innate distrust of capitalism, Bengal’s intellectuals detached themselves from the wealth creation process. During the nationalist movement, there was a conscious attempt to inculcate the virtues of swadeshi entrepreneurship in Bengalis. After the 1950s, intellectual consensus gradually swung to the other extreme. While socialism was projected as the preferred alternative, the reality was less appetizing. The romance attached to deprivation and even squalor by the ‘creative’ Left meant that ‘progressive’ social attitudes were often dictated by a profound sense of envy. Ashok Mitra’s notorious description of gentlemanly conduct as un-communist was eerily reminiscent of Gibbon’s observation that “the decline of genius was soon accompanied by the corruption of taste” in classical Rome.

Secondly, it wouldn’t have been that damaging had ‘progressive’ thought been just one of the significant intellectual currents in Bengal. The final decades of the raj, for example, witnessed a lively engagement among loyalism, nationalist conservatism, Hindutva, Muslim separatism, Gandhism, revolutionary terrorism and Marxism. After 1967 and the steady erosion of support for the Congress, the debate became a tussle between shades of either socialism or Marxism. This Left stranglehold created an ideological straitjacket and contributed to an intellectual ossification.

Siddhartha Shankar Ray, who led the ephemeral Congress fightback between 1971 and 1977, didn’t paint himself as an inheritor of B.C. Roy’s no-nonsense conservatism. He sought to outflank the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and the Naxalites through a combination of muscle power and ‘progressive’ posturing. Such posturing was also the hallmark of Mamata Banerjee’s disastrous 2006 election campaign. In the ongoing election campaign, the Trinamul Congress has tried to regain some of the middle ground she abandoned during her opposition to the Tata Motors project in Singur by promising political sobriety and development with a human face. But the mere fact that she had to genuflect before Left populism to achieve her electoral breakthrough in the 2009 parliamentary election is indicative of the communist movement’s success in making the political culture of West Bengal drearily monochromatic.

A consequence of the Left stranglehold over all facets of present-day Bengal was the state’s insulation from both national and global developments. In its first term, the Left Front did succeed in transforming power equations in the countryside. Operation Barga, which granted security of tenure and de facto ownership of land to erstwhile sharecroppers, did lead to the empowerment of the poor. This was complemented by militant trade unionism — a phenomenon that triggered the nervous flight of capital from 1967.

The irony is that developments in the Left bastion coincided with the deregulation of the economy nationally. Whereas the rest of India jumped at the new opportunities offered by market-friendly policies and provided meaningful avenues to satisfy the explosion of entrepreneurship, Bengal basked in the self-fulfilling glow of empowerment which, more often than not, meant the freedom to be insolent and play street cricket during enforced bandh holidays.

The Left Front’s belief that the establishment of a more equitable rural society would trigger a new wave of industrialization turned out to be utterly misplaced. Bengal was left far, far behind in the race because the environment for investment was not thought to be conducive. The marginalization of Bengal wasn’t due to any ethnic prejudice: at an individual level, Bengalis benefited from the resurgence of India. The problem was Bengal.

Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee wasn’t a reincarnation of Hare Krishna Konar, the man who provided muscle and organization to peasant militancy. In another environment, he would have been perceived as a Left social-democrat, maybe even Bengal’s Kautsky. But his inability to persuade a party wedded to the cholbe na culture made his courtship of corporate India seem less persuasive.

What is particularly bewildering is that Bengal’s unending economic slide took so incredibly long to be realized. For nearly three decades, Bengal lived in denial. When Rajiv Gandhi described Calcutta as a “dying city” he was being both prescient and politically imprudent. But the anger which greeted his flippancy was an outburst of a sub-nationalism that was cocooned from a larger sense of reality. Jyoti Basu’s sneering description of Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s government as “barbarous” wasn’t a simple rhetorical flourish; it was based on an assumption of innate superiority. For the Bengali Left, West Bengal was indeed the Middle Kingdom. It may have been deeply aware of what was happening in the wider world, but was the least influenced by it.

Maybe it was the departure of Tata Motors to Narendra Modi’s Gujarat that marked the moment of realization. Maybe it was the visible lack of opportunities coupled with rising consumerist aspirations that made the penny drop. Whatever the trigger, it is significant that the popular discourse is now centred on the grim reality of a stagnant Bengal in a country that is banking on a nine per cent annual gross domestic product growth. Those committed to the regeneration of Bengal may find it reassuring that the Trinamul Congress manifesto has documented the decline of the state in relation to the progress of Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh and even Orissa.

As voting day approaches, Bengal seems to be in a state of readiness for change. If that change does happen, the challenge for a new order will be daunting. An over-politicized and inept administrative apparatus, a sharply fractured society, accumulated anger at three decades of ‘cadre’ tyranny and an intellectual culture still wedded to a spurious ‘progressive’ consensus are formidable obstacles to progress. The reshaping of Bengal will necessitate enlightened political leadership. But it will also necessitate a full-fledged counter-revolution — at least in the mind of Bengalis.


The Telegraph, April 1, 2011. http://www.telegraphindia.com/1110401/jsp/opinion/story_13791183.jsp

Diplomacy hostage to PM’s politics

By Swapan Dasgupta

There are many politicians who, after attaining a measure of public standing and glory, become convinced that a visible show of independence from their own political party is necessary for career advancement.

Forever the patrician, Jawaharlal Nehru took exceptional care to be both politically and aesthetically apart from his colleagues in the Congress. In the first Prime Minister's charmed social circle, if the contemporary testimony of an Australian diplomat published in 1966 is anything to go by, most Congress politicians were regarded as "provincial mediocrities, untravelled, ill-educated, narrow-minded; not a few were lazy; some were cow worshippers and devotees of ayurvedic medicine and astrology; some were dishonest."

Nehru's disdain for the 'dhotiwallah' was partly a class problem. In the main, however, it arose from his frustration at not being able to ride roughshod over powerful, provincial party bosses. Indira Gandhi didn't need to be disparaging about the Congress because as far she was concerned, she was the Congress. No one else mattered.

However, there was a visceral antipathy to the BJP that was discernible in the PMO and the other buildings of Race Course Road during the tenure of Atal Behari Vajpayee. The "right man in the wrong party" label, it would seem, convinced many of Vajpayee's associates to believe that the PM stood so much taller than the party that it was an embarrassment to even suggest he was a BJP leader. Indeed, many of the NDA Government's decisions seemed calculated to both spite and disorient the party.

The absurd lengths to which the courtiers of Vajpayee went to demarcate him from the BJP hasn't been as ridiculously replicated in the Manmohan Singh dispensation. However, there must be something in the vaastu of the three buildings on Race Course Road that makes PMs believe their power stems from a presidential-cum-monarchical system. "Singh is King" is just a song, and not a terribly good one at that. The fun and games start when some people in authority equate its title with a profoundly political portent.

For the past seven months, the UPA Government has been subjected to fierce artillery fire from the Opposition on one corruption charge after another. The scandals have claimed three ministerial scalps and even called into question Singh's ability to control his own Ministers. Perhaps for the first time in his formal political career, the PM has been subjected to both criticism and ridicule. For a person who first made his mark in public life on the strength of his education and knowledge, Singh has made "not knowing" into an art form. The buck has always stopped a little short of him.

More to the point his Teflon coating hasn't been eroded completely. Singh came under sustained bombardment last week in Parliament over a WikiLeaks cable on the cash-for-votes scandals of July 2008. Apart from a straight-faced denial that neither he nor the Congress was involved in bribing MPs, the PM had no credible answer to the charge that his interpretation of the Kishore Chandra Deo committee report of Parliament was a shade too selective.

Yet, ironically, the PM emerged from the fierce battle in Parliament triumphant. That, at least, was the view of the average Congress activist—in the mid-term it doesn't really matter how the proverbial Man from Matunga read the situation. That's because he deftly focussed his retaliatory fire on the weakest link in the BJP defences. By taunting L.K. Advani for his apparently unceasing prime ministerial ambition, Singh made the BJP benches appear like a band of desperate usurpers. It is significant that he didn't target the Leader of Opposition in either House for personal attacks: he fired single-mindedly on the man who lost an election but is unreconciled to the verdict.

No electorate likes being told it made a wrong choice. By insisting on the I-told-you-so approach, Advani has unwittingly diluted the effectiveness of the Opposition attack on the Government. The Congress Party has suffered grievously from the unending corruption scandals but the PM has somehow insulated himself from too much harm. Indeed, after the WikiLeaks debate Singh has emerged much stronger than he was a week before.

The respite may well be very temporary for there are just too many skeletons tumbling out of the UPA cupboard. But for the moment it makes sense for the PM to push ahead with his advantage—both in relation to a rampaging opposition and his own party.

The invitation to the Pakistan President and Prime Minister to join him at Mohali for the Indo-Pak semi-final next week is, of course, a gesture of courtesy by Singh. But the manner in which it has been packaged suggests that, seizing an unexpected opening, the PM is anxious to put the Indo-Pak dialogue process, which was feebly resurrected in Thimpu two months ago, on a fast track. This goes against the low-key approach India was compelled to adopt following the all-round hostile reaction to the Sharm-el-Sheikh agreement.

India has once again jumped into a bout of adventurist diplomacy with an unstable Pakistan because our PM needs to demonstrate something 'positive' to a sceptical party. Our neighbourhood policy is not merely being mortgaged to domestic compulsions, it has become a feature of a one-upmanship game involving the PM and his own party.

Sunday Pioneer, March 27, 2011

 

 

 

 

It’s Left versus Future in Bengal 2011

By Swapan Dasgupta

For the past 100 years, there have been two sharply conflicting perceptions of Bengalis. The first takes off from Gopal Krishna Gokhale's astonishingly non-prescient testimonial, "What Bengal thinks today, India thinks tomorrow." The second centres on the Bengali bhadralok as the obvious inspiration for Rudyard Kipling's chattering, disruptive bandarlog in Jungle Book.

Few communities in India have been the object of so much simultaneous admiration and disdain as Bengalis. The enlightenment of Rabindranath Tagore, and the artistry of Satyajit Ray constituted a defining facet of the Bengali inheritance. But this awe was also offset by the exasperation with the indolent, over-politicised and disruptive Bengali. Till the early-20^th century the Bengali babu was regarded as an epitome of high-minded effeteness—the man who would be Devdas. By the 1960s, he had been transformed into a prickly contrarian, screaming cholbe na—a ridiculous Don Quixote with a Red Book.

For 34 years, the Left Front monopolised, the politics of West Bengal because it engulfed both traditions. It incorporated 'progressive' politics with its earnest concern for the 'struggling masses'—a romantic ideal that, along with the glorification of squalor and poverty, appealed to the lofty Bengali self-image. And in its espousal of endless bandhs, strikes and 'cadregiri', the Left blended a perverse sense of entitlement with cussedness.

The Communist movement did more than merely direct the course of politics: it reshaped the Bengali character. From aspiring to bourgeois refinement, the Bengali in Bengal (to be distinguished from their expatriate cousins) began worshipping at the altar of insolence and bloody-mindedness. In the shift from the stylised but happy rusticity of a Jamini Roy painting to the wall graffiti of angry, gorilla-faced peasants brandishing sickles and the Red Flag lie the story of Bengal's regression.

Election manifestos, as Devi Lal once famously remarked, aren't meant to be read. Yet, it is worth glancing through the Trinamool Congress manifesto for next month's Assembly election to gauge the extent of Bengal's decline. In 1975-76, the share of industry in West Bengal's Net Domestic Product was 19 per cent; by 2008-09, it was down to 7.4 per cent. In 1976-77, it had 7.6 per cent of the total number of factories in India; by 2008-09, it was 4 per cent. In 1976-77, after nearly a decade of Left-inspired turbulence, Bengal still accounted for 13.3 per cent of employment in manufacturing; it nosedived to 5 per cent by 2008-09. Although the TMC manifesto doesn't mention the gold medal Bengal got for the number of man-days lost in bandhs, strikes and closures, it admits "industrial workers…also lost the productivity race during CPI(M) rule."

The story of Bengal has been grim since 1967. As India advanced into the frontiers of the global economy, the state that was second only to Maharashtra in the early-1960s took large, determined strides backwards.

The Left claims it focussed on the regeneration of rural Bengal. The countryside certainly gave the Left unwavering support for seven consecutive elections. This was partly due to the irrevocable security of tenure granted to share-croppers between 1978 and 1981. This empowerment was complemented by the draconian control over rural life by the CPI(M)'s dreaded Local Committees.

Communists hero-worship tyrants like Stalin and Mao because they are control freaks. Starting from the silly notion that all human activity is inherently political, the Left Front sought to extend its control from the state to society. Its rule has seen political intrusiveness in every walk of life from policing to education. 'Cadre raj' has come to signify a million tyrannies perpetrated by the 'party' to control public institutions and private lives.

In three decades—far too long for any one dispensation to be in power—the CPI(M) has fractured Bengali society. In seeking total control it has pitted their cadres against those whose voting preferences were suspect, those who incurred the enmity of local apparatchiks and those who were contrarian. Dissidence could flourish in urban clusters but it needed exceptional courage and fortitude for anyone known to be anti-CPI(M) to withstand the oppressive regimentation in rural Bengal.

The Reds believed that with political control they could also regulate people's aspirations and freeze Bengalis in a state of permanent mediocrity. Fortunately, India's economic growth has led whetted expectations and triggered a realisation that Bengal has lost the plot. For a people that revel in its imagined intellectual master race status, the mere admission that Bengal has ceased to be at the centre of the world is a gigantic mental shift.

The coming election is only nominally a battle between the CPI(M) and TMC; it is a fight between the Left and those Bengalis who no longer want to be left behind. After 1967, Bengal was a great place to leave; after May 2011 let's hope it becomes a better place to live.

Sunday Times of India, March 27, 2011

Curious case of cables

By Swapan Dasgupta

One of the delightful gifts I gave myself last Christmas was a curious collection of diplomatic despatches. Parting Shots is a collection of what its editor Matthew Parris has called "an extraordinary beast", the Valedictory Despatch of an envoy before he retired to walk the Labrador on the South Downs. The valedictories (as they were called) weren't just a confidential report to the Minister or Permanent Secretary; convention deemed that they also be circulated to colleagues in the diplomatic service.

In 2006, the valedictories were formally discontinued by a humourless Foreign Secretary. Presumably she saw nothing funny in the observations of the pre-politically correct generation of Britons. Although the murder of yet another noble tradition was robustly denounced in the gentleman's clubs, New Labour's killjoy streak may have actually saved the United Kingdom from grave embarrassment in the age of WikiLeaks.

Random selections from two valedictories by Her Majesty's envoys to Thailand may explain why candour and confidentiality can't be separated. Writing on the eve of his departure in July 1967, Sir Anthony Rumbold debunked the belief that "Thais are rather easier for Europeans to understand". "It seems to me", he wrote uninhibitedly, "that Sino/ Indian/ Malay/ Thai ways of thought are so alien to ours that analogies between events in South-east Asia and events in Europe are nearly always misleading…The general intelligence of Thais is rather low, a good deal lower than ours and much lower than that of the Chinese. But there are a few very intelligent and articulate ones…"

In a similar vein, Sir Arthur De La Mare in his valedictory of November 1973 noted that like "other people including ourselves the Thais tend to gauge their status by the past…Inordinately vain and race conscious by nature they look upon themselves as the elite of South-east Asia. After 37 years' of acquaintance with them…I cannot say that I find their pretensions entirely justified. Except for those who have Chinese blood they are indolent and feckless." Before launching into a clinical dissection of the Thai character, Sir Arthur confessed he was doing so "since it is now immaterial whether my superiors consider me better fitted for a lunatic asylum than for a diplomatic post…"

It must be a matter of intense reassurance to Washington DC that most of its diplomats do not share the refreshing lack of earnestness that marks their trans-Atlantic cousins. The phased release of what the White House described as the "unauthorised release of classified documents and national security information" by WikiLeaks has titillated the charmed world of politics, diplomacy and the media. Only India's Prime Minister is in denial, insisting the cables are "unverified and unverifiable." However, contrary to what the State Department feared, the contentious cables have so far neither led to riots and regime change nor forced American diplomats into involuntary purdah.

The cables can be classified into two broad categories. First, there are the assessments of issues and events as seen through the prism of American interests. The US Embassy in Delhi thus inquired into the BJP's apparently unrelenting opposition to the Indo-US nuclear agreement and was urged by Washington to be inquisitive about the preferences and predilections of Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee. Although the quality of some of these assessments have been called into question—a British columnist wrote that "What the American Embassy thinks about the (Conservative-Liberal Democrat) coalition (in the UK) suggests not an alliance at risk but an embassy with a talent problem"—their legitimacy is undeniable.

Diplomatic outposts, after all, exist to feed the home government with assessments of the goings-on in different parts of the world. What is, however, interesting is how little these assessments differ from conventional media wisdom of situations, suggesting the US Embassy's reliance on what are called 'open sources'—the euphemism for the lack of insider knowledge.

Secondly, there are reports (often woven into situation updates) of private conversations with public figures. It has, for example, emerged Rahul Gandhi's view of internal security is woefully one-sided and that the relationship of former National Security Adviser M.K. Narayanan with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was tempered by mutual disrespect. The scepticism of one journalist over the political potential of Congress General Secretary Rahul Gandhi is the subject of an entire cable—a pointer not so much to the journalist's perceived proximity to the family as to the paucity of the US Embassy's open contacts.

WikiLeaks may have set out to damage US interests and perhaps even trigger a global wave of anti-Americanism. However, there is precious little by way of ammunition in the leaked cables to bolster the highly conspiratorial view of a US engaged in subversion. The 25,000 stolen US diplomatic cables don't as yet make for another Mitrokhin Archive. Arguably, CIA reports—if these were ever to find their way into the public domain—could point to the non-diplomatic games. But these WikiLeaks indicate a separation between legitimate diplomacy and undercover operations. For all their interest in the survival of the UPA Government in the Trust Vote of July 2008, US diplomats could only gain limited access the skulduggery of the operation to woo Opposition MPs—and that too because two unsavoury fixers chose to boast. If the UPA gets singed by witness account of a proposed act of criminality, it will amount to unintended collateral damage

The image of the Ugly American hasn't been strengthened by WikiLeaks. The cables have been remarkably restrained—so unlike the eccentric British valedictories. Yet, the WikiLeaks have damaged American diplomacy grievously. They have subjected it to peer group ridicule.

The sheer porousness of a system that can lead to one disgruntled man downloading 25,000 secret cables from secure servers has left the world in a state of bewilderment. A nation unable to respect private conversations has been decried with the disdain befitting a diplomat incapable of holding his drink. After WikiLeaks, few will be willing to engage US diplomats in uninhibited conversation. That's good news for the American spook community.

Asian Age/ Deccan Chronicle, March 25, 2011

PM stands surety for wheeler-dealers

By Swapan Dasgupta

Even in this age of cynicism and despondency, there is some sanctity attached to the personal statement of a Prime Minister to Parliament. Did Manmohan Singh consider the horrifying implications of what he told MPs last Friday afternoon while entering his 'not guilty' plea to the charges of bribing Opposition MPs during the Trust vote of July 2008?

It is not that anyone has seriously accused the PM of inviting potential turncoats to Race Course Road to settle the proverbial terms of trade. Mercifully, such things still don't happen in the presence of the PM—although for how much longer is a moot point. However, most people will take his assertion that he was "unaware" of the political auctions being conducted that fateful fortnight after the Left withdrew support as being only technically correct. The PM was 'unaware' insofar as an average citizen is unaware that there are rampant cash transactions in the real estate business. We are aware that builders routinely demand under-the-table payments (and even the PM said so at the India Today Conclave) but we may be personally 'unaware' of specific transactions.

In July 2008, every remotely well-informed person in the political class was aware that the dalals had opened shop and were offering mouth-watering sums for every extra vote for the Government. At that time, A.B. Bardhan put the incentive payment at Rs 20 crore per MP—a sum that seems an exaggeration, if the version of the US diplomat realeased by WikiLeak is to be believed. It is also said that Opposition MPs were not approached indiscriminately: the targeting of potential defectors was preceded by a careful profiling exercise that bore a spooky signature.

As the principal political officer of the Government of India with the greatest access to information, the PM was probably aware that such an operation was being undertaken—every newspaper reader and TV watcher knew that. He was possibly "unaware" of the operational aspects of what the dirty tricks departments were up to. After all, even President Richard Nixon didn't have prior knowledge of the burglary in the Democratic Party office in the Watergate building in 1972.

Equally, it would be fair to say that the PM never "authorised anyone" to procure votes, just as another WikiLeak document states P.Chidambaram never authorised his son to Karti to dole out money to the voters of Sivaganga. People rarely authorise—was A.Raja 'authorised' to play havoc with 2-G allotments? These things presumably happen because, well, they happen.

It would be interesting to know if the daily intelligence briefing given to the PM by the heads of the two intelligence agencies and the National Security Adviser conveyed any information about the underground trade in MPs. If they did, it would call into question PM's initial remark to the India Today Conclave that he was "unaware". If the agencies made him broadly aware that the fears of horse-trading were real, did he do anything to save parliamentary democracy from disrepute? Or, did he wilfully choose to be the most habitually unaware PM in history? Since the price of knowledge involved the possible loss of power, did the PM choose the path of ignorance?

It is intriguing that in the course of 200 minutes, the PM shifted tack from being personally "unaware" to telling Parliament that the "Government rejects the allegations of bribery as mentioned in WikiLeak; nobody from the Congress or Government was engaged in any unlawful act."

The implications of this blanket rejection are profound. Unlike the morning when he hid behind being "unaware", this time the PM suggested that he was aware that "nobody" from either the Congress or the Government participated in any lawful act. The statement in Parliament suggested he was speaking from a position of knowledge. In asserting this, the PM was in effect standing surety for the army of disreputable characters—many of whom may well be primary members of the Congress—who were unleashed on Lutyens' Delhi to lure MPs.

The WikiLeak documents may well be nominally "unverified and unverifiable"—although Ambassador Mulford seems to believe that US diplomatic cables are not bereft of credibility—but they seem to suggest a significant role of the likes of Captain Satish Sharma and Nachiketa Kapoor in a cash and carry operation. Is the Prime Minister standing surety for such people? Does he realise that he has rendered himself a hostage to all those shadowy creatures who may have bribed MPs or at least tried to bribe them? Is the fate of the PM likely to be in the hands of individuals who may routinely threaten to turn approver or whistle-blower? Has the PM made his Government vulnerable to blackmail?

That bribes were paid by one Sanjiv Saxena, an aide of former Samajwadi MP Amar Singh, was noted by the Parliamentary Committee headed by Kishore Chandra Deo. Is the PM suggesting that Operation Bribery was independent initiative of a section of the Samajwadi Party? Has he calculated that in the event of the controversy persisting, he can make someone who was not in the Congress the fall guy?

In choosing to shift from ignorance to outright denial, the PM has gambled his reputation on the abrupt end of this controversy. But what happens if the fuss refuses to die and something more damaging emerges from a thorough criminal inquiry? Where will that leave Manmohan Singh?

Sunday Pioneer, March 20, 2011

 

Favourite places

The culture of political patronage seriously harms governance

By Swapan Dasgupta

With the Supreme Court coming down hard on the Government and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh taking full responsibility for an "error of judgment", the furore over K.V. Thomas' appointment as Central Vigilance Commissioner has come to an end. Although the Opposition had much more ammunition that could have demonstrated that the Prime Minister's misjudgement wasn't due to his being misinformed by a junior minister (who, incidentally, has also owned up to his full responsibility), Sushma Swaraj's magnanimous tweet that the country must "move on" prevented a confused BJP from going for the jugular.

Although the BJP deferred to the Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha, its heart wasn't with the forces of magnanimity. Would the Congress, many disgruntled backbenchers argued, have been so forgiving had any BJP-led Government been similarly devastated by the Supreme Court? Last Wednesday, when Leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Arun Jaitley attacked the Government for its vindictive harassment of companies that had signed agreements to invest in Gujarat, he was targeting the political spite that accompanies official decisions. Even the Communists who see red at the very mention of Gujarat couldn't but agree with Jaitley's larger assertion that the federal grandeur of India has been tarnished by narrow partisanship.

Indian democracy is moving in contradictory directions. At one level, the system of one-party dominance that prevailed till 1989, is now history. Rahul Gandhi may harbour ambitions of restoring the Congress to its dominant status but there is no indication as yet that India is inclined to revert to political uniformity. Most of the national parties have had a shy at power at the Centre and a change in government in the states has become routine. There is no party which can claim to have ruled uninterruptedly for a prolonged spell. The only exception, the Left Front which enjoyed 34 years of uninterrupted rule in West Bengal, may well find itself in opposition after May this year.

Paradoxically, the willingness of voters to experiment with alternatives has truncated the boundaries of political tolerance. There may be lots of convivial clubability among the young, English-speaking MPs, across party lines, in the Central Hall of Parliament. The scions of political dynasties in particular are inclined to socialise with each other and even travel together for 'leadership' junkets organised by American universities. Yet, this fraternity rarely extends to political decision-making and governance. From the Republic Day awards and gubernatorial postings to placements in quangos and even institutions of higher learning, patronage is guided by the narrowest considerations of political loyalty. There is little space for generosity and broad-mindedness.

In determining the choice of the CVC, both the Prime Minister and the Home Minister seemed determined to ignore the legitimate objections of the Leader of Opposition. In insisting on Thomas, for reasons that still remain in the realms of feverish speculation, it gave the Supreme Court the necessary opening to make executive appointments justiciable. Had the principle of consensus been adhered to—although this is not easy if the Opposition decides to be cussed—the judges may have had no occasion to intervene in a matter that belongs to the legislature and executive.

It is said that Thomas was chosen for his malleability. If so, it is an example of political short-sightedness. By preferring unilateralism over reasoned agreement, the political class made itself vulnerable to judicial encroachment.

The use of executive prerogative to reward political loyalty is souring the spirit of democracy and encouraging confrontational politics. All parties have been infected by perception that political power involves 'adjusting' the faithful in the state-controlled institutions. In the six years it was in power at the Centre, the BJP often reinforced its outlander image by placing bumpkins in positions of importance. In West Bengal, the backlash against cadre intrusiveness was occasioned by the single-mindedness with which CPI(M) supporters were accommodated in all public institutions, notably schools and colleges.

The foibles of red and saffron, however, pale into insignificance at the systematic way in which the Congress has undermined governance. To most Congress activists, it is the exercise of political power that attracts them to the party. This has been so since Indira Gandhi chose to extend public ownership and exert political control over the entire public sector. From loan melas to the disbursement of industrial licenses in a shortage economy, India came to be governed by discretionary powers.

True, many of these powers have been whittled down with the erosion of the licence-permit-quota raj but in the psyche of the Congress, political patronage still remains an entitlement. The politician who lost his seat in a parliamentary election still demands to be 'adjusted' in some job so that he can retain a white Ambassador and official accommodation in the centre of Delhi. The man approaching senility still manages to pressure the Government into sending him to a Raj Bhavan. And obliging ex-bureaucrats and lesser political functionaries expect to be provided berths in the thousands of state-funded bodies that have mushroomed all over India. Most important, the party is unhappy if this special courtesy is extended to either a non-party professional or worse to someone linked to an earlier regime.

The mindset of exclusion that is implicit in the exercise of political patronage has had a debilitating effect on governance. For a start, it has distorted the conduct of our legislatures. The Government believes that all decision-making is its exclusive domain and, by way of a reaction, the Opposition is convinced that obstruction and street politics are the only options available to it. Many important economic reforms have been kept in abeyance because the Government is not convincingly placed in the Rajya Sabha. But rather than take the route of meaningful consultation—as was done in the case of the Nuclear Liabilities Act—it prefers to keep the Opposition in the dark. The Congress and BJP have broadly similar approaches to many facets of economic management. Yet, there is precious little display of bipartisan politics.

Secondly, in issues of appointments to positions of great importance, a partisan approach has wreaked havoc. Ideally, the President of India should be a common nominee of both the Government and the main Opposition. In recent times, this was the case with the election of N. Sanjeeva Reddy, K.R. Narayanan and A.P.J. Abdul Kalam. On all these occasions, it is important to note, the Congress wasn't in power at the Centre. Indeed, the Atal Bihari Vajpayee went back on its earlier plan to nominate P.C. Alexander after the Congress objected to his name. Sonia Gandhi, it was said, couldn't countenance Alexander, a former Principal Secretary to Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi, having a cosy relationship with the 'other side'. If the US assessment in WikiLeak is to be believed, she innately distrusts a Rashtrapati with independent judgment.

Finally, the appointment of party hacks to public sector bodies has seriously hindered good governance. With the state underwriting sinecures, there has been a temptation to constantly add to the number of useless bodies funded by the government. In his first year in office, the Prime Minister promised thoroughgoing administrative reforms which would have rationalised and professionalised quangos. After seven years in office, he is yet to take even a modest step in that direction, not least because it would be unacceptable to a parasitic class that conducts its politics on taxpayers' money.

As India's governance deficit intensifies, it is time to look more closely at the strands linking inefficiency and venality with the culture of partisanship.

The Telegraph, March 18, 2011

Marx’s fallible world

Book Review

By Swapan Dasgupta

How To Change The World: Tales of Marx and Marxism by Eric Hobsbawm (Little, Brown/ Hachette India. 470 pages, Rs 795)

In an essay calculated to offend colleagues in Oxford, the raffish AJP Taylor lamented the absence of enough bitterness and dispute in the study of English history. English historians (particularly medievalists) were, he implied, bores and unlike the excitable creatures across the Channel: unworthy, or so Taylor felt, of a vibrant European inheritance. "To be a historian in France is to be a combatant, to be also a politician and even a prophet, a moral teacher."

Eric Hobsbawm was always perceived by his peer group to be more European than English. His packed evening lectures at Birkbeck College (which I attended in the mid-1970s) recreated the romance and intrigue of post-Napoleonic Europe with the same vividness that characterised Taylor's narrative of otherwise dry, diplomatic history. Part of his appeal stemmed from clinical erudition—his ability to rise above excitability and hyperbole—which some saw as very German. But equally, the halo around Hobsbawm was enhanced by his credential as an unreconstructed member of the Communist Party. Unlike other British 'intellectuals' who left the CPGB after the suppression of the Hungarian uprising in 1956, Hobsbawm retained his membership till 1991 when the party dissolved itself.

Institutional attachment didn't mar Hobsbawm's reputation as a historian. He operated within what he saw as a Marxist framework, not the party framework. And even that Marxist framework was open-ended.

Insofar as he went beyond narrow diplomatic and constitutional history and explored the past through the additional prisms of economic and social transformation, Hobsbawm was being true to Karl Marx's legacy. Yet, there was nothing specifically Marxist about this exercise. Like many scientists who saw little connection between their researches and Marxist theory, Hobsbawn noted that the inter-War years saw many creative people "linked to the politics of the Left not so much through theoretical reflection as through an emotional commitment of their practitioners and admirers to the struggles of the period."

Hobsbawm was a good historian not because he was a Communist but despite being a Communist.

In this collection of essays, some published for the first time in English, Hobsbawm subjects both Marx and Marxist movements to the scrutiny of a historian liberated from the pressures of "official Marxism of the USSR" and a stultifying Leninist dogma. Marx is located within a contemporary intellectual context and ruthlessly (yet sympathetically) dissected. "It is obvious that much of what he wrote is out of date…It is also evident that his writings do not form a finished corpus but are, like all thought that deserves that name, an endless work in progress."

Some of Hobsbawm's conclusions are worth repeating, in view of the prevailing depiction of Marx in India as an infallible thinker. He questions the notion of a 'correct' or 'incorrect' Marxism; "(Marx's) mode of enquiry could produce different results and political perspectives." To Hobsbawm, this was not surprising. "There is no analogous systematic theoretical effort about politics" in Marx's writings. "His writings in this field take the form, almost entirely, of journalism, inquests on the immediate political past… and private letters." There is, for example, he felt, some basis to suggest that (had he lived) Engels may have supported Germany in August 1914—a suggestion that prompts ticklish questions about the split in the Second International.

Hobsbawm questions many of the pillars of Marxist orthodoxy. In his view, "Marx himself never seems to have used the term 'dictatorship' to describe a specific institutional form of government, but always only to describe the content rather the form of a group or class rule…The only regime actually described by Marx as a dictatorship of the proletariat was the Paris Commune, and the political characteristics of it which he emphasised were the opposite of dictatorial…"

Dissecting the Communist Manifesto, Hobsbawm questions the rationale behind the sweeping assertion that "of all the classes that confront the bourgeoisie today, the proletariat alone is a truly revolutionary class." History certainly doesn't justify Marx's touching faith in this class.

This scepticism fits uneasily with the image of Hobsbawm as a loyal Communist ready, as he conceded in his autobiography Interesting Times, to even spy for the Soviet Union. Of the post-Marx Communist leaders, Hobsbawm is disdainful of Lenin, contemptuous of Stalin and somewhat dismissive of Trotsky. But he has the highest regard for the originality of Antonio Gramsci. Yet, his suggestion that Gramsci constructed a Marxist theory of politics is an odd overstatement. It implies that politics follows a predictable trajectory and permits a pre-defined range of options—a questionable assumption that has cost the Left dearly.

Hobsbawm should know. The most passionate section of the book is a chapter on Marxist politics in the era of anti-Fascism. It was the time Hobsbawm, the Jewish migrant from Vienna and Berlin, jumped into battle, embracing the only force that seemed determined to resist Hitler and Mussolini, even if that meant implicitly endorsing another tyranny. The issue, for him, was "the future of an entire civilisation. If fascism stamped out Marx, it equally stamped out Voltaire and John Stuart Mill…(In) the fight against fascism, communism and liberalism were, in a profound sense, fighting for the same cause." Stalin was a "Russian problem"; Hitler threatened the world.

Hobsbawm's Marxism, it would seem, wasn't located in the bleakness of Stalinist Russia but in the pulsating excitement of the pre-1914 European Enlightenment. That is what gives this book a special poignancy.

Business Standard, March 17, 2011