A Nuts & Bolts Race

By Swapan Dasgupta

Opinion polls in India, quite understandably, have a very mixed record. Part of the unevenness stems from the cost factor: it is hideously expensive to conduct an opinion poll with a truly randomised and yet socially representative sample. Secondly, the conversion of votes into seats in a country that witnesses straight fights, three-cornered and four-cornered contests and the emergence of new parties is a nightmare exercise. When pollsters get their seat projections broadly right, it is due as much to skill as to luck.

Given the uncertainties of poll projections it is hardly surprising that the opinion polls on TV channels and publications are increasingly being treated as exercises in political entertainment. The possible losers believe the findings are motivated and the parties that should be smiling are uncertain as to whether the projections are real and correspond to anecdotal evidence or mere hype.

In the past few weeks, the opinion polls are beginning to suggest that the BJP-led National Democratic Front has broken the 200 seat barrier and is hovering around the 220-225 seat mark. The polls appear to be indicating that the anointment of Narendra Modi as the NDA’s prime ministerial candidate has paid off handsomely and that the BJP’s own tally will exceed its previous best of 181 seats in 1999. The quantum of the BJP’s surge may well be debated but there is no doubt about two trends: the rise of the BJP and the corresponding shrinkage of the Congress.

For the BJP the trends are very encouraging. But they also indicate that the party still has a lot of ground to cover before it can be certain that Modi will definitely move into the house of Race Course Road that will be vacated by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in May this year.  The party has no doubt been able to consolidate itself in states such as Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan and Gujarat where it controls the state government. In addition, it has also managed to make considerable headway in states such as Bihar, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand where it is the principal opposition party. However, it still needs to cover a lot of ground in Uttar Pradesh , Assam and Maharashtra. Plus there is the threat from the Aam Aadmi Party in Delhi and the National Capital Region, and the regional party challenge in Orissa, Andhra Pradesh and states such as West Bengal and Tamil Nadu where it must hunt for incremental support. Modi may be the frontrunner in an increasingly presidentialised race but he is by no means home and dry.

From the BJP’s point of view there are many things going for the BJP campaign. For the first time since the campaign of 1999, the committed party workers are enthused, even sensing a possible victory after nearly a decade in opposition at the Centre. In addition, the RSS which has a large body of committed volunteers at its disposal has thrown in its full weight behind the campaign—perhaps for the first time since the Ayodhya-centric campaign of 1991. More to the point, Modi has been able to attract a large number of otherwise unattached voters—mainly the youth—into the campaign. The huge attendance at Modi rallies all over the country, including in places like Imphal, Chennai and Kolkata where the BJP has very little footfall, suggests that these efforts are beginning to yield returns.

Ironically, what is pulling the BJP down and preventing the raw enthusiasm of Modi’s supporters from deriving full mileage is the BJP organisation itself. It is worth remembering that despite many victories (and defeats) in the state Assembly elections, the organisational apparatus of the BJP has been quite creaky since about 2000. In particular, the period after 2004 witnessed a prolonged crisis in the party over leadership and organisational dominance. Despite the appearance of seeming purposefulness the first tenure of Rajnath Singh and the three-year term of Nitin Gadkari were wasted years for the party. The party singularly failed in injecting new blood and new talent into the party and persisted with many functionaries who had either lost the will to be energetic or whose public image was less than wholesome. The last occasion when the BJP injected new blood into the party was during the Ayodhya agitation of 1990-93. Since then, the odd individual apart, there has been no real new blood in the party.

This organisational stagnation has resulted in the party often operating as rival factions, a phenomenon that has prevented it from being nimble-footed in its approach to changing situations.

Delhi is probably the most glaring example of this institutionalised paralysis. Recall the inordinate delay in announcing Harsh Vardhan as the chief ministerial candidate and the slowness in finding a replacement to the incumbent state president Vijay Goel. This incompetence has led to the BJP yielding political space to the AAP.  

Likewise, whereas the groundswell surge in UP in favour of BJP has been noticeable, it is significant that the party organisation remains divided into antagonistic factions. The tired and often discredited faces of yesteryear have suddenly smelt a last opportunity to become relevant once again, little realising that their very presence on the stage at Modi’s rallies puts off people. A similar situation prevails in Maharashtra where corruption is an additional complication.

Curiously, Modi who otherwise has an undeserved reputation for micro-managing has not devoted any personal attention to fixing the organisation. He has focussed almost entirely on his public rallies and in promoting groups that are supplementing the campaign from outside the formal party structure. But this approach may falter if the BJP list of candidates is dominated by individuals whose public image is at variance with the energetic change that Modi is promising.

The final phase of any election campaign is very important. It can determine whether the initial momentum can be translated into a winning margin through sheer momentum. A failure to do so results in slippage as traditional voting patterns are reasserted. For his own sake, Modi cannot afford to be detached from the nuts and bolts of a battle to make him Prime Minister. 

Asian Age, February 21, 2014

KEJRIWAL HAD BEEN SCOUTING EXIT ROUTE

By Swapan Dasgupta

“Body language” is a term that is recklessly over-used by the media when it seeks to impose a conclusion without too much supporting evidence. At the risk of being guilty of the same offence, I would like to suggest that the “body language” of the Aam Aadmi Party leaders and supporters last Friday evening suggested a monumental sense of relief.

It is doubtful whether too many people will contest this assessment. Ever since he was sworn in at a state-funded political rally in the Ramlila Maidan some 48 or 49 days ago, Arvind Kejriwal has been looking for the most dramatic exit route—one that would yield him the maximum political advantage. Governance was never a priority for Kejriwal when he assumed the Chief Ministership, thanks to an injudicious Congress diktat from the bachelor boy. He merely wanted to milk a brief tenure for all its grandstanding potential and then move on to newer pastures.

Judged by the standards he set for himself, Kejriwal has been more successful than he initially calculated. First, he has managed to secure all-India recognition and even a measure of goodwill from the 48-day experiment thanks in no small measure to the oxygen of publicity provided by the media. In a country where popularising the election symbol is a hugely challenging project, the AAP has achieved in three months what others take years to manage. Today, AAP is a national reality, even if it takes longer for the brand recognition to translate into active electoral endorsement.

Equally, Kejriwal’s grandstanding was focussed. He carefully targeted the AAP’s supporters in the poorer sections of Delhi and provided them the hope that he was best suited to take on the “vested interests” and “money bags” which had captured the Congress and BJP. The FIR against Mukesh Ambani may not get too far but its intention was purely symbolic: to impress upon the disadvantaged that only AAP had the guts to take on the high and mighty.

True, this grandstanding and over-reliance on symbolism may have exasperated a section of the middle classes who were gullible enough to vote for a supposed vision of “alternative politics”. But Kejriwal appears to have calculated that it is more rewarding to lose the middle class vote and gain additional support of the poorer citizens. In crafting a vote bank of the urban poor in Delhi with seemingly radical politics, Kejriwal appears to have succeeded where the Communists failed for 60 years.

Last week, I spoke to a prominent CPI(M) leader and he frankly admitted that AAP has successfully decimated the party in its pockets of influence outside West Bengal, Kerala, Tripura and Tamil Nadu. The Comrades who had been struggling for long without making any breakthrough have, it would seem, deserted the red flag for the jharu because it promises more immediate returns. The same is the case with the BSP support in urban pockets of North India.

The greatest loser, however, is undoubtedly the Congress. All opinion polls suggest that AAP has hit the Congress the hardest, depriving it of the potential of taking on the BJP in a triangular contest. In a situation where the Congress is staring at certain defeat in the general election, AAP offers the demoralised Congress voters a glimmer of hope. In states such as Himachal Pradesh, Haryana and Gujarat, where AAP has had a limited impact, the consequences are likely to be felt by the Congress. The unintended consequence is that the AAP electoral intervention will ensure a clean BJP sweep.

The extent to which the AAP effect will be felt in the general election will, of course, depend almost entirely on the media. More than any other party, AAP is disproportionately dependant on the media for producing a multiplier effect. This may explain the party’s intense anger at the media when, after the vigilantism against the African residents of Khirkee village, the coverage turned more critical. Intemperate AAP spokespersons showed a measure of fascist intolerance, that included vilification of all those in the media who dared to be critical of it.

The AAP will be hoping that this will change now that it is no longer answerable for the administration of Delhi. Certainly on Friday night, the closet supporters of AAP were jubilant and were flattering the smooth-talking Yogendra Yadav into thinking that the jump from the Delhi Secretariat to the South Block would be logical. With the Congress demonstrating an astonishing ineptitude in confronting the formidable Narendra Modi challenge, the only hope of those threatened by imminent marginalisation seems to be AAP. The media is much more divided today than it was 49 days ago when it was ready to embrace Kejriwal as the new messiah. However, there is enough AAP influence in the media to give the party and its over-exuberant supporters a leg up.

Kejriwal abandoned his mission to cut water rates and electricity rates in Delhi because he saw the city-state as a mere launching pad for his national ambitions. These ambitions will now come into full play and there is no question that AAP will become an alternative point of attraction for disgruntled Congress, BSP and Communist voters in North India, particularly in the National Capital Region. Its appeal will be based on two factors. First, it will always be a party of protest and disruption. These themes will resonate among a section of the urban poor, particularly that section which is insufficiently rooted in a new environment. Secondly, it will invoke fear—a theme that will appeal to disoriented liberals (too small a number to count electorally) and to those Muslims who no longer have faith in the Congress’ ability to stop Modi.

Where AAP will be most vulnerable will be its inability to move from protest to change. Expressed over-simplistically, the coming fight could be one between anger and aspiration. My vote is unequivocally for the latter.

Sunday Pioneer, February 16, 2014

TRUTHS OF DEMOCRACY - The US accepts that a democratic decision must be respected

By Swapan Dasgupta

The minister of external affairs, Salman Khurshid, is believed to be the most educated member of the cabinet after the prime minister, Manmohan Singh. A former law don at Oxford, Khurshid was expected to be sensitive to the broadly bi-partisan nature of foreign policy and the importance of national sovereignty in the conduct of international relations. It is, therefore, deeply unfortunate that the minister allowed the heat and dust of a general election campaign and his partisan preference to determine his response to the scheduled meeting of the American ambassador, Nancy Powell, with the Gujarat chief minister, Narendra Modi, a man who is the principal challenger to the Congress. That the scheduled meeting in Gandhinagar is of considerable significance is undeniable. Since the United States of America administration unilaterally rescinded Modi’s US visa in 2005 citing concerns over “human rights”, the American embassy broke off all engagements with the Gujarat government, a step that was in turn emulated by the countries of the European Union. At that time, India’s ambassador to the US had registered his protest to the US at a move against an individual who had been democratically elected to a constitutional position. The protest went unheeded in Washington DC because it was accompanied by signals emanating from Delhi that suggested the ruling Congress was delighted that Modi had been cast in the role of an international pariah. During the 2009 Gujarat assembly election campaign, a Congress spokesperson who also happened to be a lawyer of some distinction, also suggested that Modi be tried in the International Court of Justice for mass murder. The desire of Modi’s opponents, which included a significant section of the Indian intelligentsia and the editorial classes, to punish him for his failure to contain the horrible riots of 2002 was understandable. Yet, this push for political retribution was bound by the principles of national sovereignty. It was understood that any action against Modi had to pass the test of judicial scrutiny inside India. International outrage may have played a role but there was never any question that the ultimate assessment of Modi’s alleged culpability had to done by the Indian judicial system. Indeed, Washington’s implicit pre-judgment of Modi’s guilt was felt to be gratuitous. After all, even if the US had the right to determine who could or could not arrive on its shores, its self-professed role as India’s conscience keeper was presumptuous. The US decision to resume contact with Modi at the level of the ambassador — its consul general in Mumbai had met the chief minister infrequently — was a combination of two factors. Since early 2013, soon after Modi’s third successive electoral victory in Gujarat in 2012, many EU countries decided to resume normal links with Modi. The United Kingdom was first off the block and it was followed by other EU countries, with one significant exception. Apart from Modi’s growing political importance, the economic importance of Gujarat as a fast-growing economy had much to do with the about turn. Politics spoke, but economics showed the way. The US, however, continued to prevaricate, perhaps hoping against hope that the United Progressive Alliance’s political fortunes would improve and that Modi would be upstaged by his rivals in the Bharatiya Janata Party. After the September 13 announcement by the BJP declaring Modi as its prime ministerial candidate and the Ahmedabad magistrate court’s exoneration of the chief minister in a case where he was sought to be implicated for ‘conspiracy’ in the killing of a former Congress member of parliament, there was no real reason for the US to cling to its 2005 decision. The state department in Washington was confronted with a choice: to be on the wrong side of the person who could well end up as prime minister in May 2014 or grudgingly admit its miscalculation and buy insurance. When Modi and Powell meet in Gandhinagar, it is highly unlikely that either of them will utter the word ‘visa’. That issue will remain unaddressed but the larger message would have been clear: Modi will be treated as a ‘normal’ chief minister. And ‘normal’ chief ministers often have a habit of travelling abroad to ostensibly promote investments or, more likely, to interact with the large Indian diaspora. Ideally, the UPA government should have reacted to the US initiative with a deadpan reaction. The visa issue and the unstated US boycott of Modi was, strictly speaking, an American problem, and Delhi had no role in the matter. Yet, Khurshid reacted to the Powell visit to Gujarat in a churlish and petulant way, quite unbecoming of India’s external affairs minister. According to a PTI report in a Mumbai newspaper, Khurshid said that “we are a country that believes in a Gandhian way of life, compassion (and) service without recognition, and none of these terms applies to Modi”. Barely concealing his intense disappointment at US overtures to Modi, he went on to say: “There are lot of things that they will not and we should not put behind. The holocaust is not put behind and if (the) holocaust is not put behind who are we to lecture them to say you put (the) holocaust behind?” Apart from the sheer effrontery of comparing what happened in Gujarat in March 2002 to the mass murder of nearly six million Jews by the Nazis, Khurshid’s petulance was very revealing. It certainly appeared to confirm the suspicion that the US strictures against Modi had the tacit blessings of India’s own government — an astonishing case of seeking foreign help for an internal political battle. Secondly, Khurshid’s outburst has underlined the fact that the Congress loyalists don’t see the forthcoming general election as yet another democratic encounter where there will a winner and many losers. To them, a war against Modi is a no-holds-barred contest where normal rules of encounter don’t apply. In short, and this is becoming apparent in the last-ditch populist spending spree of the government: fearful of defeat, the Congress appears to be following a scorched earth policy. The aim is clear: deny Modi any worthwhile inheritance in May. The irony is that the more the likes of Khurshid up the ante, the more is the yearning for a strong, decisive and no-nonsense leader. In the past fortnight, the Modi campaign is generating more and more momentum. His public meetings all over the country, including in places such as Calcutta, Imphal, Chennai and Thiruvananthapuram, where the BJP has nominal presence, are attracting huge crowds — so much so that they no longer make news. The bureaucracy, blessed with extra-sensitive antennae, has decided that change is in the offing and there is no point processing files and taking decisions. The arrival lobby of Ahmedabad airport has become a gathering point of notables awaiting a darshan of the man they think is going to be the next prime minister. The change may or may not happen in the way the chattering classes of Delhi and the diplomatic circles are predicting. The final decision rests with the voters who have their own priorities. This is exactly as it should be in a healthy, competitive democracy. But the democratic traditions of India aren’t going to be strengthened if the incumbent administration acts on the assumption that all means — both fair and foul — are legitimate in the bid to stop Modi at all costs. The US volte face on Modi may well have been governed by cynical calculations and even business considerations. But it was also governed by the belief that a democratic decision has to be respected. Sadly, Western-educated intellectuals such as Khurshid lack that spirit of generosity and enlightenment. The Telegraph, February 14, 2014

The Loser's Front

By Swapan Dasgupta

The term “Third Front” has been so discredited and arouses so much fear among those who have a stake in the future of India that even its most avowed protagonists are loath to use it in a public forum.

Nevertheless, in the run-up to every election since 1998, some variant of the Third Front usually emerges and equally abruptly disappears after counting day.

In 1998, it was the United Front that fought the general election with I.K. Gujral as the incumbent Prime Minister. Yet, immediately after the votes were counted, its convenor N. Chandrababu Naidu of the Telugu Desam Party broke ranks and extended “outside” support to a government led by Atal Behari Vajpayee.

In 1999 and 2004, there was no meaningful attempt to forge a third alternative. At best, it was the Left Front, with strong bases in West Bengal, Kerala and Tripura, that sought localised alliances with either the Samajwadi Party and even the Congress to replenish its numbers. In 2009, having won the state Assembly election in Uttar Pradesh, Bahujan Samaj Party chief Mayawati thrust herself as the leader of the third path. And although the Left Front made noises about being half in sympathy and half sceptical of her candidature, the fear of a maverick regime assuming charge in Delhi proved sufficient for a significant section of the electorate to support the Congress pitch for stable continuity.

In the past week, a Third Front of sorts has once again made a reappearance. It began with a beleaguered Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar, himself pushed into a possible third place in his home state, trying to give some substance to his national positioning. He found two immediate supporters in the Janata Dal (Secular) of H.D. Deve Gowda and, more important, in Mulayam Singh Yadav who is also fearful of being squeezed by a resurgent Bharatiya Janata Party and a vengeful BSP. From all accounts, the core of the Third Front could just as well be dubbed the Loser’s Front.

Arguably, Tamil Nadu chief minister J. Jayalalithaa’s electoral understanding with the Communist Party of India and Communist Party of India (Marxist) in Tamil Nadu has given a fillip to the idea that Narendra Modi can yet be deprived of his possible occupancy of Race Course Road if everyone else, from the Congress to the fledgling Aam Aadmi Party, joins hands. There are expectations that the YSR Congress’ Jaganmohan Reddy, who has kept alive his connections with Ms Jayalalithaa, will join and give the notion of a Federal Front some real meaning.
In itself, a grand anti-Modi alliance is an idea that appeals to the minusculity that believes that zero growth and transformation of the Indian dream into a nightmare is an acceptable consequence as long as the man from Gujarat is somehow kept out. It is an idea that, at least in this election, also appeals to a Congress that believes its only hope lies in making the 2014 election a curtain raiser to another election in some 18 months time. The Congress, after all, is not fighting the 2014 election to win; its best hope is to prevent Mr Modi from winning.

Needless to say, the idea that everyone can join hands to roll back the Modi tide is fraught with imponderables. Mamata Banerjee, whose Trinamul Congress is likely to do extremely well in West Bengal, is not attracted by the idea of having any direct or indirect association with the Left. Nor for that matter does Ms Mayawati like to consider supping at the same table as Mr Yadav.

True, these are not insurmountable problems. Ms Banerjee’s party was in the United Progressive Alliance-2 government at a time it was supported by the Left. And the BSP and SP did together provide critical support to the UPA, although cynics would suggest that this management of contradictions had more to do with the Central Bureau of Investigation than the Congress’ political managers. As the V.P. Singh government clearly demonstrated between 1989 and 1990, it is possible to even have the Left and the BJP on the same table if the situation so warrants.

The question is: what will warrant a replay of the unhappy 1989 and 1996 experiments?
The answer is relatively simple: the numbers will dictate the final strategy. If the BJP performs below expectations — that is if the combined National Democratic Alliance tally stops below 200 —Mr Modi can say goodbye to any hope of becoming Prime Minister in 2014. He will either have to eschew national politics or, like Rahul Gandhi, hope for better luck next time. If the opinion polls are any indication, this is an unlikely possibility. A combination of the poll arithmetic and public meeting chemistry suggests that Mr Modi has been quite successful in transforming the Lok Sabha election into a presidential contest. But he still has a few laps to go. In particular, Mr Modi has to ensure that he is able to transform the support for him into a vote for the BJP in eastern and southern India.
The BJP suffers from an over-dependence on Mr Modi in places where it does not have strong chief ministers. The other so-called national leaders of the BJP don’t have the clout or the necessary appeal to complement Mr Modi. And, to make matters worse, the BJP organisation has been in a state of disrepair, except in the states where it is in power.
Yet, Mr Modi is fortunate that he has been successful in transforming his personal appeal into an idea. Mr Modi today represents something tangible: the yearning for decisiveness, high growth and, not the least, anti-Congressism. The first two attributes have no other challengers. However, he has competitors in the anti-Congress space.

Whether India succumbs to another Third Front muddle or experiences a 60-month respite from over-politicisation and dodgy governance will depend on whether all the three elements of the Modi appeal coalesce with the one issue that will matter more and more as voting day approaches: a yearning for stability. Before the numbers game begins, this election will be fought in the mind of India.

Asian Age, February 7, 2014

CPI(M) sinking, but is Bengal rising?

By Swapan Dasgupta

A  casual visitor to West Bengal will be forgiven for not being mindful that this is the same State where the CPI(M)-led Left Front exercised a stranglehold over political power for an inordinately long period from 1977 to 2011. 

Although there are wall writings announcing a mass rally at the Brigade Parade Ground on Sunday afternoon, and there are rows of red flags fluttering lazily at important road junctions, the hyper over-presence of the Left that was a feature of the State until barely three years ago is noticeably absent. The names of Left leaders are absent from people’s lips and there are no whispers of the activities of the Local Committees of the CPI(M). It almost seems that all that belonged to a very distant past.

The extent to which the Left has been decimated in West Bengal seems unbelievable. Last Friday, three MLAs belonging to the smaller allies of the CPI(M) defied the party whip and voted for a Trinamool Congress candidate in the Rajya Sabha elections. This would have been inconceivable a few years ago. To compound the problems, former Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee admitted at a public meeting in South Midnapore district that the CPI(M) had erred grievously in allowing their supporters to open fire at protesting villagers during the Nandigram agitation of 2010. Although Bhattacharjee is too important a leader to have been censured by the leadership, the media reported that the State CPI(M) was very unhappy over this self-criticism. It would serve, they muttered privately, to further demoralise an already demoralised party.

The concerns of the leadership are understandable. In the past, the Left banked disproportionately on its hold over rural Bengal. Even after the 2011 rout, there was a belief that the deep roots of the party in the countryside would serve as a springboard for the re-conquest of Bengal once the Mamata Banerjee Government had run out of steam. Last year’s panchayat election put paid to the strategy of patient waiting. Mamata may have become controversial in the urban areas after her insensitive approach to assaults on women, but she has used the three years in power to make significant advances in rural areas.

The political transformation was managed through a combination of patronage and coercion. In many ways it was a textbook replica of the approach followed by the Left after 1977. The Left still retains its hold in many of the outlying areas of the State but in the heartland of Bengal red flags have been replaced by the Trinamool Congress tricolour. Often, the very same people who provided muscle to the Left have simply changed sides effortlessly. The CPI(M) is justified in pointing to the vast numbers of their supporters who have been forced to leave their homes in fear of retribution. But let us not forget that this spiral of political violence was begun by the Left itself when it was dominant. This does not justify the methods used by the TMC but it underlines the underlying violence of competitive politics in Bengal.

For Mamata, the task of establishing her dominance has been made easier by the significant support she has received from the Muslim community, a process that began in the last years of Left Front rule. The presence of the firebrand Imam of Kolkata’s Tipu Sultan mosque at the TMC rally on January 31 only served to underline the Muslim consolidation behind the Chief Minister. At one time, the Congress too had a hold over the Muslim community in the border districts, particularly in North Bengal. But over the years this too has weakened, as evident from the defection of many members of ABA Ghani Khan Choudhury’s family to the TMC.

The overall impact of these developments is that Mamata is no longer afraid of multi-cornered contests as she was in 2009 and 2011. In the past, the fear was of anti-Left votes being divided between the TMC, Congress and, to a lesser extent, the BJP. However, since 2011 the Left is no longer the dominant party and politics is no longer a tussle between the Left and the anti-Left. It is now a dominant TMC versus a splintered anti-TMC. No wonder the political pundits in Bengal are talking of Mamata sending a contingent of some 35 MPs to the next Lok Sabha — a tally that is certain to acquire monumental significance in the event the country returns a fractured mandate.

For the Left, this is a distressing prospect. For very long, the CPI(M) has used its tally from West Bengal to box above its weight in national politics and, occasionally, to even set the terms of the political discourse. It is once again playing the same game with yet another bid to reforge a Third Front, riding piggyback on the shoulders of J Jayalalithaa and Mulayam Singh Yadav. However, this time the enterprise carries even less conviction than before because the Left will not be in a position to take advantage of a rapidly shrinking Congress. If nothing else, Mamata — whose politics is based on a visceral antipathy to the Left — will ensure that the Comrades are back to where they should all along have remained: on the fringes.

Yet, what should worry West Bengal is not that Mamata is a rising force in national politics. The concerns stem from the fact that her social base makes it almost impossible for West Bengal to use its regional clout to play a meaningful role in national affairs. Mamata is caught in a sectarian bind from which she can’t get out of.  

Sunday Pioneer, February 9, 2014

What Modi campaign needs is a mindset poriborton

By Swapan Dasgupta

In the 1950s, an angry Jawaharlal Nehru described Kolkata as a “city of processions” , an image that still persists in the national imagination . The former capital of British India may have lost its economic importance and been bypassed by the cutting edge of market-inspired modernity, but it has stubbornly refused to shed its voluble preoccupation with politics. 

On January 31, Mamata Banerjee organised a massive show of strength at the Maidan where she signalled her prime ministerial ambitions. From all accounts, there were some seven lakh or more people who turned up to cheer her. On Sunday, the now-beleaguered Left Front is to have its own rally at the same venue when it can look back with nostalgia at the days when the Brigade Parade Ground was covered in a sea of red flags. Nostalgia is probably the only remaining solace for a Left that, having lost power in 2011, is desperately (and somewhat unsuccessfully) trying to hold on to its remaining pockets of influence. According to roadside wisdom , never mind matching Mamata, the Left should focus on outperforming the Narendra Modi rally last Wednesday. 

By the exacting standards he has set in his recent rallies in, say, Patna, Gorakhpur and Meerut, the Modi rally in Kolkata was modest. Yet, there was a difference. In northern and western India, the BJP has an organization capable of building on the reputation of its prime ministerial candidate. It has nothing of the sort in West Bengal, a state where BJP candidates are accustomed to forfeiting their security deposits. Under the circumstances, filling most of the massive Brigade Parade Ground was a stupendous achievement. It was more so because at least 40% of those who attended were walk-ins. 

The Kolkata rally indicated quite clearly that there is a groundswell of goodwill (and curiosity) for Modi that far exceeds the organized support for the BJP. Moreover, this support is national. Modi is likely to get big crowds in Tamil Nadu, Kerala and West Bengal — states where the BJP does not figure in political calculations. Are people in these states going to cheer Modi at rallies and in front of their TV sets but on election day go out and endorse a candidate sponsored by Jayalalithaa or Mamata because a vote for BJP would be a wasted one? 

For the Modi campaign this is a formidable challenge: how does it extricate the voter in the east and south from local politics and persuade him/ her to think national? In his own way Modi tried to grapple with the issue in Kolkata when he suggested that Mamata’s ‘poriborton’ in West Bengal could be complemented by a Modi-led ‘poriborton’ in Delhi. His message was clear: support Mamata if you must in an Assembly election but vote BJP to bring about a national transformation that will also touch Bengal. 

In theory, people can vote differently at the state and national levels. They often have, especially when a tall leader such as Indira Gandhi made a pitch for the prime ministership. There is also evidence to indicate that party organization on the ground becomes largely irrelevant in a “wave” election — as happened in 1984, even in West Bengal. In a limited way, even the Aam Aadmi Party benefitted from such a phenomenon in Delhi last December: its campaign was based almost entirely on effective messaging. 

If Modi is to lessen his dependance on temperamental allies who join the bandwagon after the election, he has to ensure the BJP win a clutch of seats from areas outside its traditional spheres of influence. The possibility of this happening is greater if the BJP makes the election extra-presidential . Of course, a half-decent candidate is a must but greater returns are likely to accrue if the party makes it clear that in, say, the 42 seats of Bengal and 39 seats of Tamil Nadu, that there is one candidate: Narendra Modi. 

This is personality cultism no doubt. But in 2014, people will be voting for a PM.

Sunday Times of India, February 9, 2014

AAP MEDIA GIMMICK STEALS DIDI’S THUNDER

By Swapan Dasgupta

Last week, Mamata Banerjee organised a mammoth political rally at the Brigade Parade Ground in Kolkata. From all accounts, the crowd was bigger than anything witnessed in recent years: estimates ranged from seven lakhs to 12 lakh people. The rally had a larger political significance too. It suggested that the Trinamool Congress (AITC) would try to maximise its haul from West Bengal and leverage that with whichever political formation is closest to the 272 mark in the next Lok Sabha. Her strategy is not dissimilar to the one being pursued by Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J.Jayalalithaa.

Mamata’s rally and the unveiling of her strategy for the Lok Sabha polls was a major political development and certainly much more significant than the Nitish Kumar-led initiative to forge a Federal Front of those who were at one time or other associated with the old Janata Dal. Whereas Mamata and Jayalalithaa look like winners in their home turf of West Bengal and Tamil Nadu, the trio of Nitish Kumar-Mulayam Singh Yadav-H.D. Deve Gowda give the impression of being a club of the left-behind. Indeed, given its illusory nature and waning fortunes the Left parties could just as well have joined this formation.

The irony is that the audacious move of Mamata to seek a greater role in the politics of the Centre was barely noticed by a media that calls itself “national”. Jawaharlal Nehru’s stereotype of Kolkata being a “city of processions” still plays a role in shaping the minds of the so-called opinion-makers. Maybe it wouldn’t have been the case if the Left was still dominant in what was once regarded as the Red Fort. Thanks to the intellectual patronage accorded by the Congress Establishment to anything that remotely smelt “progressive”, the Left could merrily punch above its weight. Its electoral insignificance (except in the period 2004-09) was always offset by its strategic role in the opinion-making industry. The Left became the certifying authority for determining good or evil.

The Left’s disdain for a gutsy street-fighter who ousted them from West Bengal is well known and understandable. However, the Left’s clout in the corridors of power and social influence has diminished considerably ever since Prakash Karat effected the rupture with the Congress over the Indo-US nuclear deal. If the significance of Mamata, Jayalalithaa or for that matter Naveen Patnaik is insufficiently understood in the “national” media it is because Kolkata, Chennai and Bhubaneshwar are outside the imagined world of the dominant intellectual elite which is incapable of thinking beyond the Hindi-speaking belt.

In the old days this used to be manifested in the exaggerated preoccupation with the likely voting patterns of the voters of Uttar Pradesh. Countless column inches—those were pre-TV days—were devoted to dissecting the intricacies of caste alliances, particularly the AJGAR or MAJGAR phenomenon. The more self-professedly ‘enlightened’ of the political pundits branched out into a fanatical obsession with which way the Muslims of UP would vote. We would be subjected to reams of narrative about the lost world of a community which once ruled India but rued the fact that it was now struggling to make itself heard in the Ganga belt.

Today, the residual effects of this bogus romanticism are still in place but in the main it has been overwhelmed by a further narrowing of horizons. Far from being concerned with the 542 Lok Sabha seats, the forthcoming elections have been reduced to one question: how will the Aam Aadmi Party do in 2014? If the opinion polls are any guide it seems that AAP is likely to be a factor in about 20 Lok Sabha, mainly in the National Capital Region. In other places they might play the role of spoiler. The point is that these 20 seats are well below the 42 seats where Mamata is a big player or the 39 seats in Tamil Nadu where the charm Jayalalithaa could work. But yet, AAP has hogged the media space, outpacing the regional parties by many miles. Is it only because AAP is unique or is it because it is a doorstep Hindi-speaking phenomenon? If a smooth-talking Yogendra Yadav was from the ‘provinces’ would the media have cared for him?

This obsession with what is in sight has proved a double-edged sword. The beautiful people who have flocked to the various committees set up by AAP (perusing the lists is very instructive) may have been embarrassed by the anti-African tirade let loose by a lout masquerading as a people’s representative. But by upholding his right to spread prejudice and hate, by mooting proposals to keep Delhi University only for ‘locals’ and by even endorsing KHAP panchayats, the AAP created the conditions whereby some shopkeepers in Delhi’s Lajpat Nagar felt that thrashing a student from Arunachal Pradesh was all right? After all, like the Africans in Khirkee village of Delhi, this young student too was ‘different’.

In the guise of protest and newness, the AAP is inflicting some of the most regressive social attitudes on Delhi and according it the legitimacy of a political party. And yet, the opinion-makers are either silent or quietly approving. Is it because a movement run by common friends in Delhi—and let’s have no doubts that AAP is phenomenally well-connected—is more important than a 10 lakh rally in Kolkata?

As the proprietor of a large media group once remarked while turning down a story on Manipur: “Who cares?”  Those entrusted with manufacturing opinon certainly don’t give a damn. 

Sunday Pioneer, February 2, 2014

  

ELDER STATESMAN - The president’s first Republic Day address to the nation

By Swapan Dasgupta

Those with a taste for historical fiction and counter-factual history may well find the British writer D.J. Taylor’s The Windsor Faction published last year, quite absorbing. Set in the England of the nine months or so of the “phoney war” of 1939-40, it probes the fantasies and amateurish conspiracies of the small set—with a larger measure of public support—that sought to prevent a repeat of the Great War of 1914-18 by facilitating a negotiated settlement with Germany.

Although much of Taylor’s brilliantly crafted exploration of the British upper-crust support for Hitler is based on actual events, there is a significant departure from the historical script. The Windsor Faction begins with the description of a quiet funeral in a village church in December 1936: the funeral of Wallis Simpson. “It is neither disloyal, nor merely callous” said an imaginary editorial in The Spectator, “to suggest that if Mrs Simpson’s unlooked-for passing has not saved a nation from disaster, then it has…saved His Majesty from himself.”

In an England where the abdication of 1936 was fortuitously averted by the death of the American divorcee, the declaration of war against Germany on September 3, 1939, saw Edward VIII still on the throne. The King isn’t too enthusiastic about a war to protect a distant Poland. To him, as with many Britons of his class, the real enemy is Bolshevism. Yet, the King is a constitutional monarch and must do what the Government tells him to do. There is precious little scope for the monarch to speak his mind publicly.

In Taylor’s story, the King detects a small window of opportunity: his traditional live Christmas broadcast to the Empire. With the aid of a dandyish journalist Beverly Nichols (who in real life wrote an astonishingly controversial repudiation of Indian nation in Verdict on India) the King plots to deviate from the script that had been vetted by his Palace minders and Whitehall. As the live broadcast from Windsor proceeds, Edward Windsor slyly inserts a paragraph into his speech: “This, we are told, is a war to defend the interests of those who cannot defend themselves. But might not those interests be better defended by war’s cessation?” The monarch says that he can’t answer these questions. “They are for governments, for the democratically elected representatives…to consider. But I put it to you that they should be considered, that the duties which lie before us may not be as straightforward as they seem to be…”

For history buffs, Taylor accurately anticipates the consequences had Edward VIII actually made such a Christmas broadcast. He crafts an imaginary Daily Telegraph editorial that confronts the issues with characteristic tact and circumspection. Did the King exceed his Constitutional brief? No, because “The King’s Speech is one of the few occasions on which the Sovereign is permitted—in fact encouraged—to express a personal opinion.” But, should the King have said what he did? “The gap between what a man may say in private and what may decently be uttered on a public platform is known…In supposing such a gap not to exist, the King has not only—albeit inadvertently—offered comfort to our enemies.”

The invocation of an imaginary royal indiscretion by a monarch who in real life put emotion above the call of duty may appear a self-indulgent diversion. But the controversies that arise as a result of a ceremonial Head of State deviating from both homilies and anodyne comments are real. Indeed, in the context of President Pranab Mukherjee first Republic Day address to the nation, it assumes a contemporary relevance.

To begin with, there is the vexed question as to whether the Republic Day address—as opposed to the speech he delivers at the opening of Parliament—is the President’s own or reflect the views of the Government. The Constitution deems that the Head of State is guided by the advice of his Council of Ministers. In practice, this does not imply that the President is entirely a rubber stamp, deprived entirely of his right of independent observation. By convention, a draft of the President’s speech on a national day is sent to the Cabinet Secretary. Yet, there is no known case of a government modifying the draft. As with the British monarch’s Christmas Day broadcast, the President speaks his mind with the necessary dose of circumspection and understatement. This is all the more relevant in the context of President Mukherjee. Along with Dr Rajendra Prasad and R.Venkatraman, he is the only person who came to Rashtrapati Bhavan after having occupied the most important political posts. There have been other politicians who became President but their experience of public life was nowhere as significant as that of the present incumbent. What President Mukherjee thinks bears the hallmark of both experience and erudition.

This Republic Day, some eyebrows were raised by two of the President’s more political observations. First, he suggested that “Elections do not give any person the licence to flirt with illusions. Those who seek the trust of voters must promise only what is possible. Government is not a charity shop. Populist governance cannot be a substitute for governance.”

Quite predictably and given the shenanigans of Arvind Kejriwal on the streets of Delhi just three days before, the warning against reckless populism was seen as an indictment of the Aam Aadmi Party. It was certainly viewed as such by the AAP leadership and by its supporters.

Secondly, the President spoke about the yearning of Young India for opportunities and a better life. However, he argued that “This chance will not come if India does not get a stable government…A fractured government hostage to whimsical opportunists, is always an unhappy eventuality. In 2014, it could be catastrophic. Each one of us is a voter; each one of us has a deep responsibility.”

This grave warning of the implications of a weak government was well-intentioned. Yet, coming as it did in the backdrop of opinion polls suggesting that the Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance had clearly outpaced its Congress opponents, there were whispers that the President was arguing that the duty of the citizen lay in bolstering the front-runner and giving it an unequivocal mandate. In another context, it may have been read as an encouragement to the Congress but with anti-incumbency sweeping the country, the President’s message must have been music to the ears of the Modi camp.

Till a year ago, President Mukherjee was an over-active politician, well respected on all sides of the political divide. It is against his nature to fall back on meaningless platitudes and homilies. He wants to remain relevant, not perhaps in an intrusive way but as a wise elder statesman. His remarks were not calculated to offend but to counsel all those who have a stake in the future of India. Most important, the sentiments he expressed found a positive echo in much of India. At the same time, his observations were jarring to those who imagine they have given direct democracy a new meaning and those who believe that the only meaningful objective of the coming election is to stop Modi at all cost.

National consensus can only be achieved in a united country. At Christmas 1939, Britain was confronted by an existential dilemma: to fight or to maintain an Empire and a way of life. In 2014, India is troubled by indecision over whether to look back or move forward. The uncertainty imposes an additional obligation on the Head of State to speak his mind, albeit in code. 

The Telegraph, January 31, 2014

Not the same old drill; R-Day brings hope of real choices

By Swapan Dasgupta

India’s national days—Republic Day and Independence Day—have become occasions for both celebration and despondency. There is a bout of flag waving, some pageantry and lots of Manoj Kumar-type patriotic films on TV. At the same time, and ever since I can recall, they are taken up a great deal of existential anguish. Ponderous articles with depressing headlines such as “Nation at the crossroads” and “Whither India” appear to dominate the newspapers and these themes resonate in the talk shows where anchors shed their dark suits for more desi apparel.  

It is unlikely to be substantially different this January 26. With a general election round the corner, a hint of amateurish ‘anarchism’ in the Capital and growth rates down to a sluggish five per cent, citizens will be forgiven for looking at the future with a measure of trepidation. Even the Bharat Nirman ads boasting of India’s dramatic transformation from shoddiness to the glitzy 21^st century are unlikely to lift the mood. Not when something as monumentally trivial as the transfer of four SHOs threatened to derail the official Republic Day parade in Delhi.

‘Crisis’, it would seem, is a permanent state of mind in India. In the early days of the Republic, the optimism of the Nehruvian intelligentsia was invariably offset by a fear that things would somehow fall apart. The crippling shortages of everything from food and cooking fuel to telephones and cars defined Indian existence. The only solace was Bollywood and its regional variants that enabled Indians to momentarily escape the drudgery of life.

Some of these problems were inherited but many were politically determined and a consequence of the wrong choices made by the decision-makers. Periodically, some great leader would throw up a great hope to either banish poverty or take India into the 21^st century. Unfortunately, these great projects would be derailed through a combination of incompetence, venality and plain bad luck. Yet India muddled through.

More important, India’s institutions endured, although battered and in serious need of repair. And above all, India didn’t lose faith in itself. As democracy struck deep roots, Indian elections were dominated by two big themes: protest and hope. Each alternated with the other for popular endorsement. The only occasion the two themes combined in 1984, Rajiv Gandhi won the most impressive majority ever. It can happen again.

History suggests that Indians loath turbulence. They may be temperamentally fatalistic, hoping for a better after-life, but they combine it with a quest for basic sureties. It was the fear and revulsion of the anarchy post-Aurangzeb that facilitated the transition of the East India Company from merchants to rulers. Likewise, for much of post-Independence history the Congress became the default party because it promised stability with creeping change. In the 1970s, many India-watchers prophesied that the Green Revolution would inevitably turn Red. It never happened because even a poor country found radical breaks too unsettling.

The past is not always a reliable guide to the future. In the past 25 years, India has witnessed profound changes. In statistical terms, the economic growth since 1990 has matched the growth spread over the preceding 100 years. The timeless and unchanging India which fascinated romantic Orientalists is now history. There is now a new India that is discernibly less fatalistic and considerably more impatient for a better life that their parents and grandparents never enjoyed. Above all, there is a growing India that measures itself in global terms. To economists India may be a “developing” country but the aspirations of a significant section are on par with that of a “developed” economy. It is this mismatch that marks India on the 64^th anniversary of the Republic.

It is a moment to cherish. On the surface and in the TV debates India may seem a voluble but confused country. Underneath the surface, however, the country is being presented with clear alternatives: between low but seemingly growth and an audacious bid to be a truly breakout nation by removing the brakes on self-motivation. There is also a third choice: to wreck the present in the hope that out of the debris will emerge an alternative India.

For a change, the options are real and meaningful. 

Sunday Times of India, January 26, 2014

The papier-mache Mahatma

By Swapan Dasgupta

On December 23, 1987, incensed by the Faizabad district order opening the locks of the disputed shrine in Ayodhya, Syed Shahabuddin and the newly-formed All India Babri Masjid Conference gave a call for Muslims to “not associate themselves with official functions”.  Although the call was quickly withdrawn following a national outrage, it was perhaps the first time a non-secessionist body had called for a boycott of Republic Day.

Few things in India are sacred but all political parties and all citizens who believe that their “idea of India” must necessarily include faith in the Indian Constitution accord a special place to the country’s two national days. It is a measure of Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal’s astonishing recklessness and arrogance that he felt no inhibitions threatening the disruption of the Republic Day parade by “lakhs” of Aam Aadmi Party supporters.

What is equally mystifying that this grave threat was issued because his demand for the suspension of four SHOs had not been entertained by the Lt-Governor of Delhi. When Shahabuddin craved for attention 25 years ago, he did so for a big, albeit misplaced, cause. Kejriwal’s iconoclasm was centred on the fact that lowly police officers had dared to say no to one permanently angry Rakhee Birla and one Somnath Bharti who is more caricature than real. His anger knew no bounds and TV resonated with gems from Kejriwal: “If they don’t listen to ministers, who will they listen to?”; “Who is (Home Minister) Shinde to tell the Chief Minister of Delhi where to sit. The Chief Minister can tell him where he can sit.” Frankly, Cartoon Network couldn’t have done better.

Kejriwal is an interesting human being. Like many self-professed messiahs who appear from time to time, he believes that he and only he has the monopoly of truth and virtuousness: those who contest his intellectual infallibility are either Congress/ BJP agents or, better still, plain dishonest. From swearing by his children to pretending that some things just didn’t happen because he says it didn’t, Kejriwal is contemporary India’s papier mache Mahatma.

Mohandas Gandhi, the other Mahatma, was one of the wiliest politicians who left his opponents both angry and mystified. From Viceroy Lord Irwin to the sun-hardened India hands in the colonial service, there was no agreement as to whether Gandhi was a saint who had unwittingly strayed into politics, a familiar seditious lawyer who had improvised his dress or a plain oriental humbug. There was never any unanimity as to what Gandhi stood for and, indeed, the man India venerates as its sole Mahatma stood for different things at different times. Like most people engaged in politics, philosophical or even issue-based consistency was not the hallmark of the ‘Father of the Nation”.

For many of his new-found supporters, Kejriwal is indeed the new Gandhi—and they say so in their slogans. In many ways, AAP’s supreme leader consciously cultivates that image. Like Gandhi, he has made a virtue of simplicity which, given the lifestyle excesses of India’s political class, is an admirable attribute. Like Gandhi, he has learnt the art of appearing to be obstinate, particularly in his relationship with his colleagues. He often conveys the impressionable that he is blessed with the monopoly of both the truth and tactical wisdom. At the same time, his version of truth is negotiable and susceptible to periodic revisions. When he contested the elections he did so never imagining that one day he would need Congress support to form a government which his support base desperately wanted. Consequently, he pretended that the past go-it-alone-at-all-cost assurance never existed and still doesn’t exist. It is a different matter that a confused, Rahul Gandhi-directed Congress constantly gives him the opening to persist with the charade.

Kejriwal boasted he was an anarchist and seemed to ready to man the barricades. The very next day he went back to work, with his smooth-talking ideologues swearing their undying allegiance to the Constitution. What had changed? The answer lies in Kejriwal’s ability to effect a tactical retreat when the occasion so demands. Compromise and intransigence seem to go hand in hand with him. On the question of funding of his party and, earlier, his movement, Kejriwal maintains a need-based flexibility that may, in future, land him in a spot of bother. He can replace the skull cap with the AAP cap, feign outrage at the “fake encounter” at Batla House and preach an inclusive secularism. At the same time, he can turn a blind eye to the worst verbal excesses of a Kumar Vishwas and a Somnath Bharti and even embrace the regressive logic of a khap panchayat. And he piously proclaim his supporters join him for a do-or-die battle and when the turnout proves hugely disappointing, he first tries to manufacture a confrontation and, when that fails, quietly negotiate a face-saving settlement—and proclaim it as a huge victory.

Kejriwal seeks to change the rules of the political game just as Gandhi did. The “useful idiots”—one of Lenin’s memorable descriptions of the do-gooders who backed the brutalities of the Bolsheviks—go along with him and wish for a bout of honest disruption. The turbulence is backed by a media that gives AAP unprecedented and sympathetic publicity that in turn encourages Kejriwal to press the accelerator harder.

Yet there is a difference. Gandhi was fighting for national independence and self-rule. Under the guise of participative democracy, Kejriwal is seeking to go beyond reforms. He wants to unsettle India and keep it in a state of permanent turbulence. That is an agenda most Indians can do without, even if it is articulated by a self-righteous man who wears honesty on his sleeve.

Kejriwal is making a difference: he is transforming the coming electoral battle to a choice between anarchy and growth. May the better cause win. 

Deccan Chronicle/ Asian Age, January 24, 2014

If Missed Calls Could Change India!

By Swapan Dasgupta

It is that time of the year when convivial dinner table conversations invariably veer towards politics and the general election. At such an occasion around Christmas, I overheard an erudite gentleman tell the junior diplomat of a European Union country that “if Narendra Modi comes to power I will flee the country.” 

The melodramatic proclamation left me cold. I had heard like-minded, self-proclaimed liberals say similar things in 1997 when the likelihood of a BJP-led government became a real possibility. No matter that Atal Behari Vajpayee was regarded as the sole enlightened voice in a party of cretins and fanatics, when it comes to impending political change there is always a great deal of nervous over-reaction.

Last week I went to a similar dinner where the guests were a familiar mix of the literary and the media. Once again, politics entered the conversation but this time there were no hyperbolic assertions and inquiries about one-way tickets out of India. On the contrary, the members of India’s “creative” community were visibly relaxed. The consensus was that the momentum had gone out of the Modi campaign and that The Economist’s dire warning had worked. Just as Hurricane Katrina had blown away the Republican challenge to the Obama presidency in 2012, the feeling was that a flood of missed calls had choked the Modi campaign. “Just wait and see”, the resident pundit with a taste for socialism and the good life told me, “Aam Aadmi Party will win 80 Lok Sabha seats.”  Modi, I was told in no uncertain terms, has “lost the plot”.

I am no prophet and it is indeed possible that the Indian electorate will use its vote to register a protest, putting aside the more daunting task of electing a government that is empowered to perform. Whatever the ultimate decision, there is no question that the first fortnight of 2014 has been intensely educative for all.

First, we have seen the conventional wisdom surrounding political mobilisation or, indeed, insurrectionary politics, being turned on its head. Contrary to the belief that motivating people to engage with civic and national life involved a long and even thankless slog, we have now been informed that governance and participation is all a matter of a missed call. A missed call, the innovators would like us to believe, can change India and propel the forces of goodness. I would strongly suggest that no citizen of India loses this opportunity. It is even better than clicking the ‘Like’ button on Facebook.

Secondly, an otherwise sceptical media that hitherto made ritual genuflections at the altar of neutrality have suddenly decided that this is no time to be mere observers and reporters. The Indian variants of Lord Beaverbrook, Lord Rothermere and Rupert Murdoch—each one blessed with a Citizen Kane-like belief in their power to make or break governments—have decided to throw in their lot with the Missed Call Party (MCP). The media has chosen to be a force multiplier for the MCP. The consequences have been absolutely bizarre. National news and even local news have been subsumed by the city news of Delhi.

Thirdly, the past month has seen the very same people who served as social, cultural and intellectual props of the Congress Party and the UPA Government shift their preference to the MCP. Nandan Nilekani may be the solitary aberration but it would seem that the tribe of individuals who were rewarded with committee memberships, research grants by ministries and umpteen business class tickets for seminars in the Occident, have realised that dynastic politics does not have the capacity to ensure the perpetuation of their perquisites after the summer of 2014. After the December 8, 2013 results of the Assembly elections, they may even have fearfully concluded that their Establishment would be replaced by a Counter-Establishment comprising those committed to rapid growth and Indian resurgence—a far cry from the lachrymose advocacy of the National Advisory Council agenda. Today, in the exhilarating buzz around the MCP, they have sensed an opportunity to kill two birds with one stone: to stop Modi reaching Delhi and to remain relevant during the ensuing chaos.

Finally, the dramatic energy boost of the MCP has come as a godsend to at least one powerful country that is fearful of a Modi-led government. The reasons for this fear are complex. There is of course the burden of the strategic miscalculation that led to a US Administration peremptorily announcing the revocation of Modi’s US visa. But there is a far more complex reason. India’s “potential” to be a global economic power and be a factor in the strategic calculus of Asia has long been recognised. At the same time, India’s inability to live up to expectations for the past decade has been greeted with smug satisfaction. In Modi the big powers anticipated the possibility of the Indian elephant rising from its slumber. It would have meant recalibrating international relations—a bothersome and hazardous exercise. However, an India gripped by political turbulence and preoccupied with navel gazing, symbolism and missed calls would end all uncertainty. India would happily re-establish its pious irrelevance.

There are many smiling faces in the Capital these days. For the old sinners, the missed calls symbolise the counter revolution; for India, missed calls could be the harbinger of missed opportunities. The choice is ours. 

Sunday Pioneer, January 12, 2014

Very Little Lef:t Over Far too long have Rightist voices been stifled—since 1947

By Swapan Dasgupta

A casual reading of India’s post-Independence history may well prompt the belief that the Republic was born to be Left in its political orientation. From the time Jawaharlal Nehru warded off the challenge of the orphaned followers of Mahatma Gandhi and Sardar Vallabbhai Patel in the early-1950s, socialism was the buzzword of the times. This deification of state control with its attendant inefficiencies and the celebration of centralised planning persisted into the tenure of Indira Gandhi when it was obligatory to be progressive.

Apart from institutionalising sluggish economic growth, creating a bloated and venal state, and driving honest entrepreneurship into oblivion, Indira Gandhi, who entered into a marriage of convenience with an opportunistic Marxist Left, distorted the vocabulary of Indian politics. As opposed to Nehru who transplanted the genteel traditions of upper-class British socialism into the discourse, his daughter had little inhibition in borrowing generously from the crude, sloganeering language of the pro-Soviet intellectuals. Thus, the denunciation of “right wing reactionaries” that was the hallmark of the battle against the Syndicate became a feature of the political landscape until the collapse of the Berlin Wall put an end to the supposed march of history.  Its high point was the Emergency when the Preamble to the Constitution was modified and replenished with the terms ‘secularism’ and ‘socialism’.

The economic liberalisation process initiated by the P.V. Narasimha Rao government in 1991 was an important trigger in breaking the Left consensus. Hitherto, the so-called Right had existed at two levels: as a traditionalist critique of a nationalism that was insufficiently mindful of the cultural moorings of India, and as an alternative to statist economics. The two strands, initially represented by the Jana Sangh and the Swatantra parties remained on the margins and were unable to effectively challenge the Nehruvian consensus. It was the Ayodhya movement and economic liberalisation that created the conditions for a viable Right—a process that, however, remains work in progress.

For the Indian Right, the general election of 2014 presents the greatest opportunity to rectify the ideological imbalance. The rise of Narendra Modi as a pan-Indian challenger to dynastic politics and the Left consensus is located within a definite context. First, thanks to the UPA Government’s hesitation in carrying forward the process that had been inaugurated by Manmohan Singh when he was Finance Minister in the Rao government, India’s growth rates have slipped alarmingly. From being a rising world power, India appears to have lost steam in the increasingly globalising world. Secondly, the BJP, with its emphasis on infrastructural development and the promotion of entrepreneurship, has emerged as an alternative to the Congress’ well-meaning but inept welfarism. Finally, the steady dilution of the rough edges of ‘cultural nationalism’ has meant that the Congress attempt to paint the BJP as a party of the lunatic fringe is carrying diminishing returns.

These trends have coalesced around the personality of Modi for a variety of reasons. As a three-term Chief Minister of a rapidly-growing state, Modi has had the opportunity to demonstrate an alternative approach in action. Despite his commitment to a ‘minimal state’, Modi isn’t a classical Thatcherite. Rather than dispense with state-sponsored initiatives—a difficult proposition in a country marked by economic and social inequalities—he has focussed on two things: doing away with needless bureaucratic controls and demanding efficiency from the state. Lacing his larger-than-life persona with an enthusiastic promotion of technology, he has sold a dream to an India that is longer content to remain stuck in the Third World. Modi has whetted the Indian appetite for modern governance draped in an Indian flag. A formidable communicator who loves to take on his opponents frontally, Modi has used Gujarat as the launching pad of an audacious attempt to make a parliamentary election presidential.

As the general election battle heats up, there are likely to be two emerging trends in the Modi campaign. First, it is more than likely that the facets of governance, particularly the approaches to economic management, which distinguishes Modi from the rest of the pack will be aggressively showcased. Those wishing for a manifesto commitment to large-scale privatisation and the abolition of the Planning Commission could be disappointed. But their enthusiasm may well be kindled by an assurance that the days of big government are over.

Secondly, it is also likely that the projection of Modi may well be aimed at elevating him from the humdrum of party politics. A carefully-crafted and nuanced distinction between what Modi stands for and what the BJP represents could well find reflection in the next few months.

For the Indian Right, the Modi campaign is make-or-break moment. The outcome will prove crucial in determining whether or not Indian politics can be re-calibrated to reflect the logic of the changes that have affected the country over the past 25 years. India has changed unrecognisably but its politics is still stuck in a rut. Modi represents the most coherent bid to bring governance and politics into the 21^st century.

The voices that were stifled after 1947 are awaiting their moment, eagerly. 

Outlook, January 20, 2014