Posts from — May 2004

The chameleon who changes his colours every time a new government comes into power in Delhi, has done it once again!

He has laid the blame of his party’s debacle in Andhra Pradesh, squarely on the shoulders of BJP, the party which helped him change the perception of Andhra Pradesh throughout the world.

While political commentators and poll analysts throughout the country have been unanimous in their criticism of Naidu for his over-ambitious emphasis on technology while being ignorant of the masses living in poverty in Andhra Pradesh, Naidu is unapologetic in his blame on the BJP…

In his address, on the concluding day of the two-day ‘Mahanadu,’ the party’s annual convention, Naidu said the Muslim community was alienated from the TDP because of the Godhra incident, though he was the first Chief Minister to have demanded the ouster of Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi.

He also said that the TDP suffered the wrath of Christians due to anti-conversion bill and other measures proposed by the NDA government at the Centre to regulate the funds received by Christian organisations, though his party had nothing to do with there decisions.

So the great, progressive minded CEO of AP has sunk to the depths of vote-bank politics after all!!

Such a slimey pseud!!

Nehru was truly, an extraordinary fellow according to Lt Gen Eric A Vas (retd.)

Arun Jaitley, suave and urbane to some, glib-tongued to others, has never been short of words.

In an interview to Rediff.com, he speaks about BJP’s loss and the probable reasons behind the defeat that took the party by surprise.

While I do not agree with some of the reasons he gives to explain the defeat, I do think some of the points he raises are valid. One such point is the one about ‘campaign of negativism‘.

In Indian elections, when you conduct a campaign, you invariably succeed on a campaign of negativism. The [A B] Vajpayee campaign in Delhi, the (Chandrababu) Naidu campaign in Andhra, and the [S M] Krishna campaign in Karnataka were identical. All three campaigns claimed that we have done a good job. All three campaigns said our leaders have a positive image and they presented a vision of India. All three campaigns were positive.

As against this, if you conduct a campaign with an element of negativism, as it happened in 1977 and 1984, it clicks. In 1977, post-Emergency, when Mrs (Indira) Gandhi’s decline started, there was an element of negativism, people voted against the Emergency. In 1984, people voted against the killing of Mrs Gandhi.

If you consider it for a moment, this campaign of negativism is nothing but the concept of anti-incumbency! And as I’ve maintained all along, the biggest factor in Indian elections is the crucial factor of anti-incumbency!

KPS Gill makes a mention of this anti-incumbency in one of his articles before the election results were out…

All this does not augur well for Indian democracy, or for India’s future. The present elections will install a new coalition at the Centre, and new governments in some of the States, most of which, like the majority of recent regimes, will prove to be non-performers, and will fail to come to grips with the basic problems that confront the nation. The new incumbents – whatever their structure and constitution – will start with heady propaganda about the grand transformations they plan for the nation; but will fail to effectively implement most of what they promise. Nevertheless, they will project a false propaganda of fictional achievements, which they will eventually begin to believe themselves. Till the acid test of the next election brings transient disillusionment.

Coming back to Arun Jaitley, he explains why only Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, etc. witnessed this anti-incumbency effect but not Bihar or UP.

In India, when the BJP and the Congress party contest an election after remaining in power, they need a major political performance to get back into power. Not so for regional parties. So if Digvijay [Singh] or Krishna doesn’t perform, they will be shown the door.

But Bihar, UP and West Bengal are exceptions. In UP and Bihar, the Rashtriya Janata Dal, Samajwadi Party, and Bahujan Samaj Party have caste as a fallback even though they don’t perform. Even when they don’t do their jobs well, their caste remains consolidated. Caste-based voting is not performance-centric.

The Left Front has cadres, which has helped them to de-link the election and government performance in West Bengal. Also, the Congress party, BJP and Trinamool Congress divide votes and benefit the Leftists. These three parties can’t unite against the Leftists. Kerala is a revolving door where two groups are keeping power alternatively.

He makes a very important point here which politicians often tend to explain with various labels such as charisma, magic, etc. I mean, the continued reign of Laloo in Bihar is put down to his rustic charm and the charisma he posesses!

A similar point is also made by KPS Gill in the article mentioned above.

On the other hand we have leaders like Laloo Prasad Yadav, whose party does not even pretend to make an offer of governance or development to the people of Bihar, but whose manipulation of the lowest common denominators of social mobilization – caste and communal polarities – have guaranteed his repeated success. Worse still, parties with great pretensions to nationalism and noble political lineage have not only failed altogether to create a credible alternative to Bihar’s current anarchy, but have in fact been eager to forge the most unprincipled alliances with the party that has brought the State to its present condition as the epitome of the most abject misery and lawlessness.

One of Gill’s points is something that I have always belived…

The general population of flatterers and self-servers among the political classes has grown so greatly, moreover, that politicians have lost all grips over grassroots reality. No single leader relies on party cadres, even in the rare cases where these still exist. It is petty coteries that invent false realities that are the source of all ‘political intelligence’ – till the harsh realities of an election bring fruitless disillusionment. Unreliable though the recent exit polls may be, they have shocked the ruling coalition into the realization that India is somewhat larger than the little pools of light where it appears to be ‘shining’.

Parties, today, do not take up people’s issues and use them as an ideological base. What they do is in fact the opposite of this. They create issues and ideologies that have little or no support among the populace. Then they go around the country trying to build up public opinion in support of these ideologies. This ‘top-down’ approach is fatal when it comes to elections. Usually this happens to the parties in power since it is during the time a party is power that it loses contact with the grassroots. The self-serving sycophants run off to the power centres leaving their constituencies high and dry. Without any real contact with the ground realities, these parties have to invent issues!

Ok… once again back to Jaitley…

He says about the India Shining campaign,

“Even now I think that campaign gave a sense of confidence in the [growing] economy. It helped build an image outside India about India.”

I wonder what good is a good image outside the country if you are fighting elections within it! Perhaps in their eagerness to make an impact on the world stage, the BJP spin doctors forgot that the elections are fought in the villages and towns of India!

Then Jaitley raises perhaps one of the most important points in his interview. Something that the Congress will have to grapple with in the days and months to come.

The turning point has already arrived. Now, what I’ll hate to see is a debate — are reforms politically costly? Is there a cost to reform because it will have political fallout? Shall we make the whole of India a Bihar? Shall we create caste issues or any such fallback systems to win elections, but not performance? I think it’s not desirable for India if this debate will decide that since reforms are costly you abandon them. We will go the Bihar way.

Already the Left parties, with a meagre 61 seats in the new Lok Sabha, have been trying to impose their will on the economic policies of the Government. The issue before the PM and the FM would be to decide if they want to make the reform process run its own course or let it be strangled by the populist rants of the Left!

While the whole country is speaking about the renewed strength of the Congress, Jaitley says this of the Congress…

I have not the least hesitation in saying that the Congress party from an ideological movement has reduced itself to a crowd around the Gandhi family. This happened 30 years ago. To a proud Indian it’s not a matter of glory; it is a matter for soul-searching.

The BJP will overcome its problems. We will stay on. But the fact is that when the Gandhi family delivers, the Congress is on top, and when the family doesn’t deliver, as has happened several times in the past, the Congress party refuses to come to terms with itself.

And I tend to agree with his views on this!

And if you feel confused by the point of this post, let me assure you that I’m the one who’s more confused! ;-)

With power firmly in their grasp, the ’secular’ forces in the country have initiated the process of ‘de-saffronisation’ of education. The first salvo has been fired in Delhi where the NCERT curriculum will be replaced by SCERT.

Delhi Government today announced to replace the curriculum of NCERT with that of State Council for Educational Research and Training (SCERT) in the government-run schools of the Capital.

Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit met HRD Minister Arjun Singh today to apprise him of the changed curriculum. The move appears to be a lead in ‘de-saffronisation’ of education.

I do not want to discuss the issues behind the saffronisation and the subsequent de-saffronisation of education in the country, but this move by the Delhi and Central Government only goes to prove the age-old adage that history is written by the victors!

So claims like the one below mean nothing to me…

“Over the years, distortion of facts had occurred in text books and education was being tilted towards a particular ideology affecting the secular ethos of the country,” Dikshit told reporters citing the cause behind the move to shift.

On the books being introduced, the Chief Minister said these were “strong on facts of history, reinforcing secular ethos of the country” and “nothing had been done to distort history.”

After all… all they are doing is to tailor the history books in accordance to their ideology, which, with due respect to Gandhi and Nehru, is nothing but Gandhisation of history, whether you like it or not!

www.hinduunity.org, a website that proclaims that it promotes and supports the “ideals of Bajrang Dal, VHP and Youth Wing Bharat“, has been blocked by the biggest ISP in India, Videsh Sanchar Nigam Limited. It has also been blocked by smaller ISPs like Hathway and HCL Infinet. This gagging has taken place on the basis of a request from the office of Mumbai Police Commissioner.

The site has been blocked on the basis of a request from the Mumbai police commissioner’s office in a letter sent out to ISPs on April 28.

Sources at the Mumbai police commissioner’s office said the directive was issued because the web site published inflammatory material against Islam. Joint Commissioner of Police (crime) Dr Satyapal Singh, a decorated officer of the Indian Police Service, authorised the note.

While the big daddy VSNL (with around 800,000 subscribers) has acted promptly in response to the request, SIFY (reportedly with 700,000 subscribers) has refused to heed the request which, it says, has not come through the right channels.

“Only CERT has the right to issue such an order,” said Sify spokesman David Appasamy. “In case they do, we have no option but to comply. When we got the request from the police commissioner’s office, we spoke to them and explained that we could block the site only if the order came from CERT.”

These things apart, this gagging order raises serious issues of restriction of freedom of expression on the Net. And coming, as it does immediately after a ‘secular‘ government has taken oath, it raises fears of a re-emergence of an era of vote-bank politics and minority-appeasement!!

I know that I am just conjecturing at this moment, but if such a thing happens, the ball that was in the Congress court after the public display of ‘inner voices‘, will fall right back into the BJP’s court!

[link to the article is in the subject of the post]