After scripting acts, Amar now acts on a script
By M J Akbar
Which required better acting from the irrepressible Amar Singh: a 14-year association with Mulayam Singh Yadav or his role as husband of Dimple Kapadia in a Malayalam movie?
Politics is carbon-dated by events, not time. Partnerships need tensile strength to survive misunderstandings when suspicion warps a relationship into a tangential curve. Mercury rather than blood flows through the vein of public life; politics is very human and turbulent, and ego floats beyond the reach of rational discourse.
The best politicians are very talented, but often that blessing is flecked with problems characteristic of a maverick. The big chiefs like talent in their subordinates, but squirm at its attendant frailties. Bright sparks tend to possess an implacable desire to place a mirror before stupidity. The reverse mirror, however, displays a more provocative facet. Jealousy and intrigue are companions of ambition; if the talented were not ambitious, they would not be in politics.
Any institution, whether party or government, demands the stability of an uncontroversial script, or the comfort of silence from geniuses who can never find an equitable balance between their self-estimation and the role they have been given in what is essentially a Brechtian beggar's opera. Jairam Ramesh is a sharp and well-read politician, except when his tongue goes to his head. He has been a good environment minister, willing to stand his ground and even take a risk or two. But collective responsibility demands caution: you have to keep space between your blow-drier and your brain. Jairam Ramesh may even have been right on China, but he was wrong to say what was right.
Despite his penchant for the unusual, Amar Singh has been a far more careful politician, sticking to his responsibilities at some cost to his individuality. Happy memories are the first casualty of an unpleasant divorce, but it would be unfair to forget Amar Singh's mastery of the craft of first-past-the-post democracy. Mulayam Singh Yadav got the votes, but the real point in our system is to get winning votes. Backroom strategy can turn the first into the second in a difficult election. The conversion of Jayaprada into a Begum of Rampur who became more real than the real Begum deserves a chapter in any analysis of Indian democracy. Amar Singh has now taken on a more formidable challenge, the reinvention of Amar Singh.
Actors slip easily into politics because they have MBAs in the management of adulation. They have studied the arts of froth and the science of glamour, most notably the cruel fact that it has an early sell-by date. Madhubala remains an ageless icon because she died in her Thirties; death interrupted decline. A Dimple Kapadia is a rare phenomenon: she will be forever 16 thanks to 'Bobby' and a personality that is incompatible with domesticity. Women actors generally choose marriage as their retirement home. For a very few, 40 is too old for cinema and too young for oblivion, and they shift careers. Men get a few more years if they live in a gym. Politicians, however, do not possess the courage to become actors. Amar Singh has the élan to act a script after so many years of scripting an act.
The problem in both professions, of course, is finding an audience, without which you are not in business. An alliance with Mulayam Singh was ideal because he could guarantee a minimum box office in the worst of seasons. Nor were they involved in a multi-starrer like Congress, where great battles seethe beneath surface discipline. It was a two-star act, with Amar Singh the perfect alter ego to his leader. Perhaps a midlife crisis was inevitable, leading to a parting of ways. Mulayam Singh still has an audience, but can he turn it into a winning proposition? Amar Singh knows how to win, but does he have an audience?
When such questions set out in search of answers, they can lose their way in the by lanes of paradox. The definitive replies will be available only in the next assembly elections of Uttar Pradesh. If Amar Singh picks up, to give an example, the votes of his fellow Thakurs, it will hurt Congress rather more than Mulayam Singh's socialists because Congress is counting on a mobilization of upper castes and Muslims. And the greater the fragmentation the better it will suit Mayawati, whose core support remains consistent even if her supplementary vote is drifting.
If dancing has been described as the vertical expression of a horizontal desire, then there is a similar divergence between position and intention in politics. Subtle histrionics mix basic instinct with populist promise; rhetoric carries the message. The voter plays along, suspending disbelief en route to a polling booth.
Amar Singh is good before any camera, either in a studio or on the street.
Times of India Column
Sunday, May 16, 2010
Saturday, May 15, 2010
The Comforts and Dangers of Sin and Stupidity
Byline by M J Akbar: The Comforts and Dangers of Sin and Stupidity
The choice is admittedly difficult, but which of these three is the biggest threat to the social stability of India: greed, hatred or stupidity? Our polity is less vulnerable than our social compact, although the first can, logically, only be a manifestation of the second. But the former is structured in legislation and held together by institutions that have won support across diversity. Social harmony is always under threat from human excess and bile, both of which escape the confines of reason with a reprehensible consistency.
There are some specialists who go the extra mile and combine two of the three elemental dangers. Pramod Muthalik, chief of the Sri Ram Sene, is a standard-bearer of this breed; hatred is insufficient as a spur, he needs the greasy lubrication of hard cash as well. Such men must hate God even more than they hate men: why else would they name their parties, designed for evil objectives, after a God? Hindu belief places Lord Rama at the pinnacle of idealism; Iqbal, who was later adopted as the poet-laureate of the idea of Pakistan (although Pakistan was born much after he died), called Lord Rama Imam-e-Hind. It is only when you cannot differentiate between good and evil that violence becomes your ethic and hatred your ideology; when you have obliterated humanity from your consciousness you have also eliminated any understanding of divinity. This warp of the essence is not confined to any faith.
Terrorists who butcher innocents, but name their outfits after the Prophet of Islam are exactly the same. Any Muslim will add salle ala alaihe wa sallam after mentioning the name of Prophet Muhammad. It means: “peace be upon him”. We wish the Prophet peace precisely because peace is the highest ideal in our world. Peace, salaam, is the ineradicable element of public discourse, whether to garrulous friend or monosyllabic, minimalist stranger. Only irreparably twisted minds besmirch the name of the Prophet by associating it with terrorism.
The world, as has been said with too long a sigh, is what it is, but that does not mean that we have to accept it as it is. We can take some consolation in the fact that there is broad consensus against hate-fuelled violence, because it is clearly the greatest destabiliser. This consensus weakens considerably when we confront greed or stupidity. Both seem to have rather more supporters than common sense might bargain for. There is even a theory that greed is good because it is the Rolls Royce engine of growth. It is hardly surprising that such notions are perpetuated by grabbers, who claim respectability on the basis of a partnership between greed and agreed. Evidence to the contrary is building up at every level, individual, social, corporate, national. When greed infects the soul of corporate power then it can cause havoc, whether in a hyped-up cricket tournament or the New York Stock Exchange. Greed is eating away the capital of capitalism, eroding the basis on which a successful contemporary economy has been created. Greed is regressive, self-destructive, and yet has been turned into the holy grail of progress.
Face it: it is the greed of a limited slab of India that condemns 80% of our country to unacceptable levels of poverty, stark hunger and hopelessness. Each time the well-off look into a mirror, they will find one reason for the rise of Naxalism. The indifference of haves is the principal inspiration for the violence of the have-nots. Greed has a loyal friend, hypocrisy.
The most acceptable sin is clearly stupidity. It is possible that jokes have lent a slightly droll nuance to stupidity. Its dangers should not be underestimated, particularly when stupidity is harnessed to any interpretation of faith. This week’s evidence lies in some of the fatwas that are consuming the news cycle in this dull, post-Parliament season. A fatwa, it should be clarified, is only the opinion of a cleric whose academic credentials are considered acceptable; it is not a law passed through a legislature and backed by the authority of the state. Still, even if an absurd fatwa damages one home, it must be repudiated. Extremist clerics have misled Muslims by promoting bias against Muslim women with a consistency that is the prerogative of a closed mind. They have done their best to separate Muslims from modernity; now they want to divorce Muslims from the modern economy. This is a heinous travesty, since Islam rescued its first communities from the grip of jahalat, or obscurantism. Dramatic displays of silliness will, but naturally, provoke headlines, but they will not travel. No Muslim is going to resign from an insurance company, or surrender his or her LIC policy because of a marginal fatwa from Deoband. The faithful have more resilience than some of their self-appointed preachers believe.
The fringe, violent, greedy or stupid, will continue to damage, but will never destroy India.
The choice is admittedly difficult, but which of these three is the biggest threat to the social stability of India: greed, hatred or stupidity? Our polity is less vulnerable than our social compact, although the first can, logically, only be a manifestation of the second. But the former is structured in legislation and held together by institutions that have won support across diversity. Social harmony is always under threat from human excess and bile, both of which escape the confines of reason with a reprehensible consistency.
There are some specialists who go the extra mile and combine two of the three elemental dangers. Pramod Muthalik, chief of the Sri Ram Sene, is a standard-bearer of this breed; hatred is insufficient as a spur, he needs the greasy lubrication of hard cash as well. Such men must hate God even more than they hate men: why else would they name their parties, designed for evil objectives, after a God? Hindu belief places Lord Rama at the pinnacle of idealism; Iqbal, who was later adopted as the poet-laureate of the idea of Pakistan (although Pakistan was born much after he died), called Lord Rama Imam-e-Hind. It is only when you cannot differentiate between good and evil that violence becomes your ethic and hatred your ideology; when you have obliterated humanity from your consciousness you have also eliminated any understanding of divinity. This warp of the essence is not confined to any faith.
Terrorists who butcher innocents, but name their outfits after the Prophet of Islam are exactly the same. Any Muslim will add salle ala alaihe wa sallam after mentioning the name of Prophet Muhammad. It means: “peace be upon him”. We wish the Prophet peace precisely because peace is the highest ideal in our world. Peace, salaam, is the ineradicable element of public discourse, whether to garrulous friend or monosyllabic, minimalist stranger. Only irreparably twisted minds besmirch the name of the Prophet by associating it with terrorism.
The world, as has been said with too long a sigh, is what it is, but that does not mean that we have to accept it as it is. We can take some consolation in the fact that there is broad consensus against hate-fuelled violence, because it is clearly the greatest destabiliser. This consensus weakens considerably when we confront greed or stupidity. Both seem to have rather more supporters than common sense might bargain for. There is even a theory that greed is good because it is the Rolls Royce engine of growth. It is hardly surprising that such notions are perpetuated by grabbers, who claim respectability on the basis of a partnership between greed and agreed. Evidence to the contrary is building up at every level, individual, social, corporate, national. When greed infects the soul of corporate power then it can cause havoc, whether in a hyped-up cricket tournament or the New York Stock Exchange. Greed is eating away the capital of capitalism, eroding the basis on which a successful contemporary economy has been created. Greed is regressive, self-destructive, and yet has been turned into the holy grail of progress.
Face it: it is the greed of a limited slab of India that condemns 80% of our country to unacceptable levels of poverty, stark hunger and hopelessness. Each time the well-off look into a mirror, they will find one reason for the rise of Naxalism. The indifference of haves is the principal inspiration for the violence of the have-nots. Greed has a loyal friend, hypocrisy.
The most acceptable sin is clearly stupidity. It is possible that jokes have lent a slightly droll nuance to stupidity. Its dangers should not be underestimated, particularly when stupidity is harnessed to any interpretation of faith. This week’s evidence lies in some of the fatwas that are consuming the news cycle in this dull, post-Parliament season. A fatwa, it should be clarified, is only the opinion of a cleric whose academic credentials are considered acceptable; it is not a law passed through a legislature and backed by the authority of the state. Still, even if an absurd fatwa damages one home, it must be repudiated. Extremist clerics have misled Muslims by promoting bias against Muslim women with a consistency that is the prerogative of a closed mind. They have done their best to separate Muslims from modernity; now they want to divorce Muslims from the modern economy. This is a heinous travesty, since Islam rescued its first communities from the grip of jahalat, or obscurantism. Dramatic displays of silliness will, but naturally, provoke headlines, but they will not travel. No Muslim is going to resign from an insurance company, or surrender his or her LIC policy because of a marginal fatwa from Deoband. The faithful have more resilience than some of their self-appointed preachers believe.
The fringe, violent, greedy or stupid, will continue to damage, but will never destroy India.
Sunday, May 09, 2010
Get Pakistan to set a timetable
Get Pakistan to set a timetable
By M J Akbar
The drip-dry India-Pakistan peace process has recovered a table, ironically, in the month of mass murderer Ajmal Kasab's conviction. But does it have a timetable?
There is more than one table set out. The menu at Thimphu was similar to the repast at Sharm el-Sheikh; in essence, for four years India has cooked what Pakistan wanted to eat. In the September 2006 talks with Musharraf, Manmohan Singh downgraded terrorism from core issue to common concern. On July 16 last year at Sharm el-Sheikh, he released Pakistan from the consequences of terrorism; the joint statement said: "Action on terrorism should not be linked to the composite dialogue process and these should not be bracketed." After Thimphu, Pakistan's foreign minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi took terrorism off the bilateral map, noting pithily that it was a global concern that was best addressed collectively.
The next time a Kasab turns up, then, Delhi can telephone the United Nations.
Compare this to the alacrity with which Islamabad acted when Washington cracked the whip. Faisal Shahzad was arrested in New York on May 8 for terrorism. Within hours, police picked up suspects in Lahore and the FBI must be interrogating them by now. When Washington talks, Islamabad listens. When Delhi talks, Islamabad talks back. Pakistan has fudged even on Kasab, noting that its experts will "study" the Mumbai special court judgment since they forgot to watch television in November 2008.
Terrorism, in fact, has been reduced to a pro forma presence at the high table, an unwelcome distant cousin shunted to the corner, neither banished nor discussed. One does not know whether Dr Singh forgives, but he certainly has the negotiator's critical need for amnesia. Pak foreign secretary Salman Bashir's sneer that P Chidambaram's dossiers on the Lashkar-e-Taiba and Kasab's handlers in Pakistan were mere literature has already been deleted from the hard disc as Delhi revs up the pace of talks.
If hearts were melting in Islamabad like the Chenab in spring flood, there might have been some justification. But each gesture has been answered by belligerence. Accusations that India helps Baloch secessionists have become a staple of Pakistani commentary after Sharm el-Sheikh. Success at Thimphu persuaded Pakistan to reverse its position on Kashmir. Last Tuesday, Qureshi sneered at Musharraf's "wavering" in a speech to the Pakistani National Assembly and insisted there was no change in the country's "historical" stance. Square one has not looked so square in a long while.
Delhi, in the meanwhile, has been funding long discussions on the virtues of wavering. Sombre experts rub lamps furiously in the hope of arousing a genie who can grant three wishes, or even one. All they manage is a glimpse of the occasional ghost of American ambassadors past. Galbraith, Kennedy's envoy to Nehru, has been resurrected, not for his inimitable wit and wisdom, but for the condominium he constructed for Kashmir, offering India and Pakistan a flat each, with America presumably in charge of watch and ward. The concept is so naively Sixties, it is almost heartwarming.
Every option is on the table except the only one that will work: conversion of the status quo into the basis for a solution. Musharraf called for soft borders and perhaps Dr Singh now regrets he let that moment pass. But before a border can be soft or hard, there has to be a border, and India and Pakistan need therefore to agree on one. The Line of Control, created after the first war, has stood the test of three more. Why mend something that has not been broken?
America has rarely been as ambidextrous as it is at the India-Pak table, officially absent and unofficially omnipresent. The Pakistani media, ever delighted to turn implicit into explicit, made it a point to mention that Robert Blake, former deputy head of mission in Delhi, was at Thimphu; and on May 4, the present ambassador to Delhi Timothy Roemer met Asif Zardari in Islamabad. American foreign policy is uncomplicated: what is good for America is good for the world; therefore the world, out of self-interest, must adjust its calculus to fit in with American requirements. Obama's highest priority is victory in Afghanistan, and Pakistan has been the obedient ally, with one condition — get the Indian army off our back in Kashmir and give us "soft strategic space" in Kabul.
India is loath to be left out of Washington's affections. Convinced of the urgency of American need, Islamabad has nudged up the ante. A clever Delhi response would be to offer the shell of dialogue on Kashmir and let inherent contradictions destroy the substance.
India has set the table. It must now deal with Pakistan's timetable.
( Times of India Column : 9th May 2010)
By M J Akbar
The drip-dry India-Pakistan peace process has recovered a table, ironically, in the month of mass murderer Ajmal Kasab's conviction. But does it have a timetable?
There is more than one table set out. The menu at Thimphu was similar to the repast at Sharm el-Sheikh; in essence, for four years India has cooked what Pakistan wanted to eat. In the September 2006 talks with Musharraf, Manmohan Singh downgraded terrorism from core issue to common concern. On July 16 last year at Sharm el-Sheikh, he released Pakistan from the consequences of terrorism; the joint statement said: "Action on terrorism should not be linked to the composite dialogue process and these should not be bracketed." After Thimphu, Pakistan's foreign minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi took terrorism off the bilateral map, noting pithily that it was a global concern that was best addressed collectively.
The next time a Kasab turns up, then, Delhi can telephone the United Nations.
Compare this to the alacrity with which Islamabad acted when Washington cracked the whip. Faisal Shahzad was arrested in New York on May 8 for terrorism. Within hours, police picked up suspects in Lahore and the FBI must be interrogating them by now. When Washington talks, Islamabad listens. When Delhi talks, Islamabad talks back. Pakistan has fudged even on Kasab, noting that its experts will "study" the Mumbai special court judgment since they forgot to watch television in November 2008.
Terrorism, in fact, has been reduced to a pro forma presence at the high table, an unwelcome distant cousin shunted to the corner, neither banished nor discussed. One does not know whether Dr Singh forgives, but he certainly has the negotiator's critical need for amnesia. Pak foreign secretary Salman Bashir's sneer that P Chidambaram's dossiers on the Lashkar-e-Taiba and Kasab's handlers in Pakistan were mere literature has already been deleted from the hard disc as Delhi revs up the pace of talks.
If hearts were melting in Islamabad like the Chenab in spring flood, there might have been some justification. But each gesture has been answered by belligerence. Accusations that India helps Baloch secessionists have become a staple of Pakistani commentary after Sharm el-Sheikh. Success at Thimphu persuaded Pakistan to reverse its position on Kashmir. Last Tuesday, Qureshi sneered at Musharraf's "wavering" in a speech to the Pakistani National Assembly and insisted there was no change in the country's "historical" stance. Square one has not looked so square in a long while.
Delhi, in the meanwhile, has been funding long discussions on the virtues of wavering. Sombre experts rub lamps furiously in the hope of arousing a genie who can grant three wishes, or even one. All they manage is a glimpse of the occasional ghost of American ambassadors past. Galbraith, Kennedy's envoy to Nehru, has been resurrected, not for his inimitable wit and wisdom, but for the condominium he constructed for Kashmir, offering India and Pakistan a flat each, with America presumably in charge of watch and ward. The concept is so naively Sixties, it is almost heartwarming.
Every option is on the table except the only one that will work: conversion of the status quo into the basis for a solution. Musharraf called for soft borders and perhaps Dr Singh now regrets he let that moment pass. But before a border can be soft or hard, there has to be a border, and India and Pakistan need therefore to agree on one. The Line of Control, created after the first war, has stood the test of three more. Why mend something that has not been broken?
America has rarely been as ambidextrous as it is at the India-Pak table, officially absent and unofficially omnipresent. The Pakistani media, ever delighted to turn implicit into explicit, made it a point to mention that Robert Blake, former deputy head of mission in Delhi, was at Thimphu; and on May 4, the present ambassador to Delhi Timothy Roemer met Asif Zardari in Islamabad. American foreign policy is uncomplicated: what is good for America is good for the world; therefore the world, out of self-interest, must adjust its calculus to fit in with American requirements. Obama's highest priority is victory in Afghanistan, and Pakistan has been the obedient ally, with one condition — get the Indian army off our back in Kashmir and give us "soft strategic space" in Kabul.
India is loath to be left out of Washington's affections. Convinced of the urgency of American need, Islamabad has nudged up the ante. A clever Delhi response would be to offer the shell of dialogue on Kashmir and let inherent contradictions destroy the substance.
India has set the table. It must now deal with Pakistan's timetable.
( Times of India Column : 9th May 2010)
Saturday, May 08, 2010
How much sleaze can you spare, brother?
Byline by M J Akbar: How much sleaze can you spare, brother?
“My case is cleared, na?” said the politician who wanted to be telecom minister to the lobbyist for a telecom major four days before the present Union Cabinet was sworn in last summer. The middle-woman, Nira Radia, was coy and comforting in her first-name-basis response: “Your case was cleared last night only.”
The truly touching aspect of the politician’s piteous plea is a syllable, na. It has every shade of pathos, not to mention every variation of bathos, kneaded into it. The lobbyist is in command, and why shouldn’t she be? She knows something that is privy to perhaps three or four people at the very highest level of the present Government. She has a vested interest in telecom, and therefore a direct stake in the person who will run this department. The minister-to-be, A. Raja of the DMK, is in her debt, and he better not forget it. She does not convey how she knows the decision was taken the previous night, but she implies that she has intervened on Raja’s behalf. Raja does not care whether a corporation got him this job or not. He is merely desperate to get it.
We know this today, a year later, because of some sterling journalism done by the television channel Headlines Today, which obtained transcripts and audio recordings of the taped conversation and honoured the profession of journalism by doing the story.
Text demands context for greater clarity. Raja is an intimate associate of the Karunanidhi family and Radia must now be the most famous middle-woman in the world. She is on the payroll of some of the most important corporates in contemporary India, both those with a tradition of grease and those with historic claims to probity.
Corporate warriors did not record this conversation, as a hapless Congress spokesman vainly tried to suggest in defence of an indefensible ally. It was taped by income tax authorities, who suspected Radia of tax fraud, with formal permission of the home secretary. Raja’s phone was on tap; Radia’s was. It was fortuitous that the six-month window of taping coincided with a general election and formation of a new Government. This information has been available with the Manmohan Singh Government for many months now. Its only response was to harass and transfer the officials, as it sought to protect politicians.
It is the right of partners, in a coalition, to demand their quota of Cabinet members, but the allotment of portfolios is the privilege of the Prime Minister. Dr Farooq Abdullah, a veteran who became Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir in 1982, is not particularly happy with renewable energy, but he has respected the Prime Minister’s privilege. DMK accepted a change in the other portfolios allotted to its ministers, but made telecom conditional to its participation in Government despite the fact that Dr Singh was reluctant to give it.
Why was DMK insistent and PM reluctant?
Because both knew that Raja, as telecom minister in the first UPA Cabinet, was involved in a rip-off of incredible proportions. The Bofors allegations, which damaged the Congress in the 1980s, amounted to Rs 64 cr. This 2G scam is said to be of the order of over Rs 60,000 cr, or a thousand times that of Bofors. If you want to understand the scale of this rip-off, think of this. Mrs Sonia Gandhi has been pressing Government to provide food security for those below the poverty line. Agriculture minister Sharad Pawar has said Government does not have the resources to do so. The cost of a year’s food security is far less than Rs 60,000 cr.
The unambiguous fact is that Dr Singh and Mrs Sonia Gandhi were aware of this, but chose silence because the price of disclosure would have been the collapse of Government. DMK has levelled a cash pistol at the head of Government, and the head has nodded in acquiescence because the alternative was to watch its brains being blown up. DMK blackmail has worked, and would have continued to do so but for the integrity of some journalists.
The most important question awaiting an answer, unless a large, interconnected, corporate-politician-media establishment protects the brazenly guilty, is: how did a lobbyist know of portfolio distribution? It is ironic that one of the reasons that brought the UPA back to power was a reputation for financial integrity, bolstered by the Prime Minister’s personal image (which remains clean).
Radia was privy to specific details of the politics of Government formation, much more than can be discerned by common or even uncommon sense. The tapes are proof of her contacts, at one level; at another, they also reveal the squalid civil wars within the DMK. The war of succession between the Brothers Alagiri and Stalin is only one detail of a diamond-studded opera that is surely beyond the fantasy of any television soap.
This much we know thanks to a leak in Government, possibly initiated by an officer who saw this option as a last resort. But think of the perhaps hundreds of conversations between minister and middle-woman that could not be taped. How much sleaze is stored in them?
Nothing, it is said, clears the mind like the prospect of a hanging. Judging by Raja’s face after the story broke, nothing confuses the mind like the prospect of demotion, to paraphrase from Hindi, from raja (royalty) to runk (commoner).
“My case is cleared, na?” said the politician who wanted to be telecom minister to the lobbyist for a telecom major four days before the present Union Cabinet was sworn in last summer. The middle-woman, Nira Radia, was coy and comforting in her first-name-basis response: “Your case was cleared last night only.”
The truly touching aspect of the politician’s piteous plea is a syllable, na. It has every shade of pathos, not to mention every variation of bathos, kneaded into it. The lobbyist is in command, and why shouldn’t she be? She knows something that is privy to perhaps three or four people at the very highest level of the present Government. She has a vested interest in telecom, and therefore a direct stake in the person who will run this department. The minister-to-be, A. Raja of the DMK, is in her debt, and he better not forget it. She does not convey how she knows the decision was taken the previous night, but she implies that she has intervened on Raja’s behalf. Raja does not care whether a corporation got him this job or not. He is merely desperate to get it.
We know this today, a year later, because of some sterling journalism done by the television channel Headlines Today, which obtained transcripts and audio recordings of the taped conversation and honoured the profession of journalism by doing the story.
Text demands context for greater clarity. Raja is an intimate associate of the Karunanidhi family and Radia must now be the most famous middle-woman in the world. She is on the payroll of some of the most important corporates in contemporary India, both those with a tradition of grease and those with historic claims to probity.
Corporate warriors did not record this conversation, as a hapless Congress spokesman vainly tried to suggest in defence of an indefensible ally. It was taped by income tax authorities, who suspected Radia of tax fraud, with formal permission of the home secretary. Raja’s phone was on tap; Radia’s was. It was fortuitous that the six-month window of taping coincided with a general election and formation of a new Government. This information has been available with the Manmohan Singh Government for many months now. Its only response was to harass and transfer the officials, as it sought to protect politicians.
It is the right of partners, in a coalition, to demand their quota of Cabinet members, but the allotment of portfolios is the privilege of the Prime Minister. Dr Farooq Abdullah, a veteran who became Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir in 1982, is not particularly happy with renewable energy, but he has respected the Prime Minister’s privilege. DMK accepted a change in the other portfolios allotted to its ministers, but made telecom conditional to its participation in Government despite the fact that Dr Singh was reluctant to give it.
Why was DMK insistent and PM reluctant?
Because both knew that Raja, as telecom minister in the first UPA Cabinet, was involved in a rip-off of incredible proportions. The Bofors allegations, which damaged the Congress in the 1980s, amounted to Rs 64 cr. This 2G scam is said to be of the order of over Rs 60,000 cr, or a thousand times that of Bofors. If you want to understand the scale of this rip-off, think of this. Mrs Sonia Gandhi has been pressing Government to provide food security for those below the poverty line. Agriculture minister Sharad Pawar has said Government does not have the resources to do so. The cost of a year’s food security is far less than Rs 60,000 cr.
The unambiguous fact is that Dr Singh and Mrs Sonia Gandhi were aware of this, but chose silence because the price of disclosure would have been the collapse of Government. DMK has levelled a cash pistol at the head of Government, and the head has nodded in acquiescence because the alternative was to watch its brains being blown up. DMK blackmail has worked, and would have continued to do so but for the integrity of some journalists.
The most important question awaiting an answer, unless a large, interconnected, corporate-politician-media establishment protects the brazenly guilty, is: how did a lobbyist know of portfolio distribution? It is ironic that one of the reasons that brought the UPA back to power was a reputation for financial integrity, bolstered by the Prime Minister’s personal image (which remains clean).
Radia was privy to specific details of the politics of Government formation, much more than can be discerned by common or even uncommon sense. The tapes are proof of her contacts, at one level; at another, they also reveal the squalid civil wars within the DMK. The war of succession between the Brothers Alagiri and Stalin is only one detail of a diamond-studded opera that is surely beyond the fantasy of any television soap.
This much we know thanks to a leak in Government, possibly initiated by an officer who saw this option as a last resort. But think of the perhaps hundreds of conversations between minister and middle-woman that could not be taped. How much sleaze is stored in them?
Nothing, it is said, clears the mind like the prospect of a hanging. Judging by Raja’s face after the story broke, nothing confuses the mind like the prospect of demotion, to paraphrase from Hindi, from raja (royalty) to runk (commoner).
Sunday, May 02, 2010
The Spy who spooked India
The spy who spooked India
By M J Akbar
You don’t have to be beautiful to be Mata Hari; you merely have to be available. Margaretha Zelle, the Dutch-born, Paris-based, World War 1 German agent who made spying synonymous with sexual frisson, was actually a bit of a podge who couldn’t get a job in a vaudeville chorus line because she wasn’t “cute” and became a circus horse-rider.
One pithy observer thought she was as attractive with clothes as without them, which may or may not have been a compliment. She was driven to striptease by despair: she fled her husband, an officer in the Dutch colonial army, posted to Indonesia, and an alcoholic who beat her regularly and mercilessly.
But she had an extraordinary talent, the ability to trump the real with the surreal. She reinvented herself as an expert in the secret and mysterious arts of “Indian” erotica (hence the name ‘Mata Hari’), learnt during her interlude in Java, and became a sensation. She was not much of a spy actually; she did more spending than spying. The Germans, cold to a fault, betrayed her, and she ended up before a French firing squad in 1917.
It is not, presumably, compulsory, but it is clearly useful for a potential spy to have a split personality. The pain of the tragedy, or failure, is subsumed by the surreal. But a fevered imagination also weakens or even erases the constraints of duty and morality that bind real life.
There is an obvious problem in the analogy with Mata Hari. The honey in the Madhuri Gupta trap came from Mudassar Rana, and we have no confirmation yet about his expertise in the seductive arts. But gender is not the issue. Men are far more vulnerable to the inflammable concoction of ego and libido. In the 1980s, when Rajiv Gandhi was Prime Minister, an armed forces attache in our mission in Karachi was lured by a woman operative of Pakistani intelligence. But the principle of a spy’s mentality holds. Since there is never sufficient justification for the betrayal of a country, and the greed (whether for money or sex) involved must be rationalized by layers of self-deceit, the spy converts a complex, tortured fiction into his or her version of that malleable commodity called truth.
Moreover the Fifties are a dangerous decade in the age of professionals. They mark the intersection between ebb of career and flow of frustrations. Gupta, an IFS B-cadre officer, was second secretary at an age when a regular IFS officer would already have been ambassador. The caste-and-cocoon world of an embassy like Islamabad could only have heated her fantasies to an unbearable conflagration. You can see that she had lost any mooring with reality in the taunt after her arrest — “What took you guys so long to get it?” It would not even occur to her that institutions are reluctant to condemn their own, particularly when the final responsibility with those who decided to send her to a mission like Islamabad.
It is foolish to blame Pakistan for this squalid episode. Posting a 54-year-old with a chip factory, rather than a mere chip, on her shoulder is akin to an open-ended invitation to ISI and its carefully groomed stable of studs. The ISI response was well crafted. Rana was of a similar age, and wooed Madhuri at the “Iffy” cafe (you couldn’t have invented such a name for an “iffy” operation, could you?) even as he distilled her grievances into information for Pakistan’s intelligence services.
Gupta’s interrogation by the Delhi police is essential, of course; but a second interrogation, within the grand portals of the offices of the external affairs ministry, is equally necessary. Who decided to send Gupta to Pakistan? A simple psychographic analysis would have thrown up the obvious; Gupta was entirely unsuitable for a hostile environment, prone to blandishment and subversion, like Islamabad. Paradoxically, and this can only be a surmise, she might have got the Islamabad job precisely because someone thought she would be less vulnerable than say an equally Urdu-qualified Indian Muslim option. This is not an allegation of bias against Delhi, although prejudice still lurks, albeit less flagrantly. But the dark services of the Pakistani establishment, imbued with hostility as they are to India, find the Indian Muslim an even more difficult entity to come to terms with, for Indian Muslims challenge the very foundations of their nation by rejecting the two-nation theory.
Madhuri Gupta may be a marginal Pakistani success, for she knew less than her bravado believes, and might even have been turned into a conduit of misinformation, without her knowledge, after she was uncovered. But she does constitute a gigantic Indian failure. Only saps get sucked into such soft snares, and an Indian diplomat, and an Indian mission, leapt at the bait hook, line and sinker.
As appeared in The Times of India
By M J Akbar
You don’t have to be beautiful to be Mata Hari; you merely have to be available. Margaretha Zelle, the Dutch-born, Paris-based, World War 1 German agent who made spying synonymous with sexual frisson, was actually a bit of a podge who couldn’t get a job in a vaudeville chorus line because she wasn’t “cute” and became a circus horse-rider.
One pithy observer thought she was as attractive with clothes as without them, which may or may not have been a compliment. She was driven to striptease by despair: she fled her husband, an officer in the Dutch colonial army, posted to Indonesia, and an alcoholic who beat her regularly and mercilessly.
But she had an extraordinary talent, the ability to trump the real with the surreal. She reinvented herself as an expert in the secret and mysterious arts of “Indian” erotica (hence the name ‘Mata Hari’), learnt during her interlude in Java, and became a sensation. She was not much of a spy actually; she did more spending than spying. The Germans, cold to a fault, betrayed her, and she ended up before a French firing squad in 1917.
It is not, presumably, compulsory, but it is clearly useful for a potential spy to have a split personality. The pain of the tragedy, or failure, is subsumed by the surreal. But a fevered imagination also weakens or even erases the constraints of duty and morality that bind real life.
There is an obvious problem in the analogy with Mata Hari. The honey in the Madhuri Gupta trap came from Mudassar Rana, and we have no confirmation yet about his expertise in the seductive arts. But gender is not the issue. Men are far more vulnerable to the inflammable concoction of ego and libido. In the 1980s, when Rajiv Gandhi was Prime Minister, an armed forces attache in our mission in Karachi was lured by a woman operative of Pakistani intelligence. But the principle of a spy’s mentality holds. Since there is never sufficient justification for the betrayal of a country, and the greed (whether for money or sex) involved must be rationalized by layers of self-deceit, the spy converts a complex, tortured fiction into his or her version of that malleable commodity called truth.
Moreover the Fifties are a dangerous decade in the age of professionals. They mark the intersection between ebb of career and flow of frustrations. Gupta, an IFS B-cadre officer, was second secretary at an age when a regular IFS officer would already have been ambassador. The caste-and-cocoon world of an embassy like Islamabad could only have heated her fantasies to an unbearable conflagration. You can see that she had lost any mooring with reality in the taunt after her arrest — “What took you guys so long to get it?” It would not even occur to her that institutions are reluctant to condemn their own, particularly when the final responsibility with those who decided to send her to a mission like Islamabad.
It is foolish to blame Pakistan for this squalid episode. Posting a 54-year-old with a chip factory, rather than a mere chip, on her shoulder is akin to an open-ended invitation to ISI and its carefully groomed stable of studs. The ISI response was well crafted. Rana was of a similar age, and wooed Madhuri at the “Iffy” cafe (you couldn’t have invented such a name for an “iffy” operation, could you?) even as he distilled her grievances into information for Pakistan’s intelligence services.
Gupta’s interrogation by the Delhi police is essential, of course; but a second interrogation, within the grand portals of the offices of the external affairs ministry, is equally necessary. Who decided to send Gupta to Pakistan? A simple psychographic analysis would have thrown up the obvious; Gupta was entirely unsuitable for a hostile environment, prone to blandishment and subversion, like Islamabad. Paradoxically, and this can only be a surmise, she might have got the Islamabad job precisely because someone thought she would be less vulnerable than say an equally Urdu-qualified Indian Muslim option. This is not an allegation of bias against Delhi, although prejudice still lurks, albeit less flagrantly. But the dark services of the Pakistani establishment, imbued with hostility as they are to India, find the Indian Muslim an even more difficult entity to come to terms with, for Indian Muslims challenge the very foundations of their nation by rejecting the two-nation theory.
Madhuri Gupta may be a marginal Pakistani success, for she knew less than her bravado believes, and might even have been turned into a conduit of misinformation, without her knowledge, after she was uncovered. But she does constitute a gigantic Indian failure. Only saps get sucked into such soft snares, and an Indian diplomat, and an Indian mission, leapt at the bait hook, line and sinker.
As appeared in The Times of India
A cut in Delhi, a Run in Ranchi
Byline by M J Akbar: A cut in Delhi, a run in Ranchi
A cut motion is moved in the Lok Sabha to wound the Congress alliance in Delhi and a BJP alliance a thousand miles away, in Ranchi, begins to bleed to death. Is there a rational connection between cause and consequence apart from the compulsions of an ageing politician suspected of more crimes than we can count without being a professional mathematician? If the story were only about the addictive duplicity of a drama-centric Shibu Soren, it might be worth a fleeting sneer, but not much comment. If the BJP has made its bed with Soren, then it can hardly afford to get hysterical at infidelity. Some politicians do not offer their souls at wholesale rates; they bargain for small pieces, a bit at a time, at rates negotiated by market value. If the price is occasionally set by police officers of the CBI, that is par for the course in an age of turbulent corruption. The great merit of the Congress is that its expertise in the use of power for the benefit of the party, whether through public policy or private pressure, is unmatched. When the BJP tried similar tactics, it fell on its face. Its nose is still in disrepair.
Cause and consequence may both be obscured by facts. The turmoil in Delhi, with the ruling alliance being hammered for corruption on a scale unprecedented in the history of the UPA, is not accidental. Very little happens by accident; and information is certainly never leaked inadvertently. There are political reasons why a spat between the look-alikes Shashi Tharoor and Lalit Modi blew up like an Iceland volcano, and spread a cloud of ash over the ruling alliance that has left the biggest of big boys wheezing and a number of small boys in self-pitying tears. The telephone tapping brouhaha that followed did not fall into the lap of journalists like nature’s gentle rain from heaven. The transcripts which exposed DMK’s A. Raja did not multiply by themselves, like excessively enthusiastic amoeba. Someone leaked that evidence, and it was not the hand of God. The fingerprints belonged to someone in Government.
The massive Raja scam, with heavily-lubricated PR agencies, semi-lubricated journalists, and triple-dealing corporations, could have been news more than a year ago. It was not. The general elections had not taken place, and the allies would have been foolish to injure each other before an election. On the face of it, the UPA victory of 2009 reinforced the status quo. In reality, it energised the momentum for equations of the second decade of the 21st century.
The first decade began with the NDA victory under Atal Behari Vajpayee. Those ten years were stable precisely because of multi-party partnerships. Every member of the group was allotted a relevant share of the cake, inducing comfort. The NDA was so comfortable that it became complacent, and was punished. Both the Congress and the BJP are aware, even if they do not find it expedient to say so, that the next stage in the evolution of Indian democracy will be the gradual elimination of the smaller parties, many of whom are making themselves irrelevant, either because of their inflexible attitude to leadership or because the issues that brought them into power have outlived their utility.
The paradox can be cruel: the DMK movement, for instance, has lost its dynamic hold on Tamil affections precisely because it has succeeded in its caste-empowerment agenda. It has ruled, in one form or the other, since 1967. A new generation awaits a new agenda, and there is no sign of it. DMK leaders have no idea what to do next, except repeat squalid and vicious wars of succession that went out of fashion in the 18th century. If that is the story of the apex, then the leaders on the rung just below are busy looting with a voracious and inexhaustible appetite. Who can blame the Congress for hoping that it can replace the DMK? The squeeze has begun through an exposure of sleaze. Such exposure played a crucial part in the decimation of Lalu Yadav in Bihar. Lalu did not believe he was being sliced in a pincer; neither does the DMK. It will find out when it is too late.
It is equally obvious that the Congress is not entirely unhappy over the tribulations of Sharad Pawar; Maharashtra is another large state where it can bid for sole supremacy. Once again, the spillage of sleaze on a partner’s reputation does not hurt the Congress, but creates space that it can capture when time creates the opportunity. This is not a drama of continual thunder and lightning; it is a play dominated by long periods of silence, interspersed by occasional bouts of decisive intervention. So stories will rattle through media only to disappear, and then reappear when the optimal moment arrives.
The BJP has begun to realise the futility of allies that take more than they offer. If it wants to return to the spotlight, it must reconstruct; and the architecture of reconstruction cannot be left to the fringe. We will see a gradual but inevitable effort to expand by the Congress and BJP, and in doing so they will disturb the patterns of the last ten years. There will be patches in the new quilts as well, but far less patchwork.
A cut motion is moved in the Lok Sabha to wound the Congress alliance in Delhi and a BJP alliance a thousand miles away, in Ranchi, begins to bleed to death. Is there a rational connection between cause and consequence apart from the compulsions of an ageing politician suspected of more crimes than we can count without being a professional mathematician? If the story were only about the addictive duplicity of a drama-centric Shibu Soren, it might be worth a fleeting sneer, but not much comment. If the BJP has made its bed with Soren, then it can hardly afford to get hysterical at infidelity. Some politicians do not offer their souls at wholesale rates; they bargain for small pieces, a bit at a time, at rates negotiated by market value. If the price is occasionally set by police officers of the CBI, that is par for the course in an age of turbulent corruption. The great merit of the Congress is that its expertise in the use of power for the benefit of the party, whether through public policy or private pressure, is unmatched. When the BJP tried similar tactics, it fell on its face. Its nose is still in disrepair.
Cause and consequence may both be obscured by facts. The turmoil in Delhi, with the ruling alliance being hammered for corruption on a scale unprecedented in the history of the UPA, is not accidental. Very little happens by accident; and information is certainly never leaked inadvertently. There are political reasons why a spat between the look-alikes Shashi Tharoor and Lalit Modi blew up like an Iceland volcano, and spread a cloud of ash over the ruling alliance that has left the biggest of big boys wheezing and a number of small boys in self-pitying tears. The telephone tapping brouhaha that followed did not fall into the lap of journalists like nature’s gentle rain from heaven. The transcripts which exposed DMK’s A. Raja did not multiply by themselves, like excessively enthusiastic amoeba. Someone leaked that evidence, and it was not the hand of God. The fingerprints belonged to someone in Government.
The massive Raja scam, with heavily-lubricated PR agencies, semi-lubricated journalists, and triple-dealing corporations, could have been news more than a year ago. It was not. The general elections had not taken place, and the allies would have been foolish to injure each other before an election. On the face of it, the UPA victory of 2009 reinforced the status quo. In reality, it energised the momentum for equations of the second decade of the 21st century.
The first decade began with the NDA victory under Atal Behari Vajpayee. Those ten years were stable precisely because of multi-party partnerships. Every member of the group was allotted a relevant share of the cake, inducing comfort. The NDA was so comfortable that it became complacent, and was punished. Both the Congress and the BJP are aware, even if they do not find it expedient to say so, that the next stage in the evolution of Indian democracy will be the gradual elimination of the smaller parties, many of whom are making themselves irrelevant, either because of their inflexible attitude to leadership or because the issues that brought them into power have outlived their utility.
The paradox can be cruel: the DMK movement, for instance, has lost its dynamic hold on Tamil affections precisely because it has succeeded in its caste-empowerment agenda. It has ruled, in one form or the other, since 1967. A new generation awaits a new agenda, and there is no sign of it. DMK leaders have no idea what to do next, except repeat squalid and vicious wars of succession that went out of fashion in the 18th century. If that is the story of the apex, then the leaders on the rung just below are busy looting with a voracious and inexhaustible appetite. Who can blame the Congress for hoping that it can replace the DMK? The squeeze has begun through an exposure of sleaze. Such exposure played a crucial part in the decimation of Lalu Yadav in Bihar. Lalu did not believe he was being sliced in a pincer; neither does the DMK. It will find out when it is too late.
It is equally obvious that the Congress is not entirely unhappy over the tribulations of Sharad Pawar; Maharashtra is another large state where it can bid for sole supremacy. Once again, the spillage of sleaze on a partner’s reputation does not hurt the Congress, but creates space that it can capture when time creates the opportunity. This is not a drama of continual thunder and lightning; it is a play dominated by long periods of silence, interspersed by occasional bouts of decisive intervention. So stories will rattle through media only to disappear, and then reappear when the optimal moment arrives.
The BJP has begun to realise the futility of allies that take more than they offer. If it wants to return to the spotlight, it must reconstruct; and the architecture of reconstruction cannot be left to the fringe. We will see a gradual but inevitable effort to expand by the Congress and BJP, and in doing so they will disturb the patterns of the last ten years. There will be patches in the new quilts as well, but far less patchwork.
Sunday, April 25, 2010
Mayhem on the Orient Sexpress
Mayhem on the Orient Sexpress
By M J Akbar
Those who are still in a state of puzzled excitement over the denouement of the most exhilarating melange of soap opera and crime thriller to appear in the Indian media, have clearly never read Agatha Christie’s classic 'Murder on the Orient Express'.
Or seen Albert Finney and Peter Ustinov as Hercule Poirot in the film and TV versions. Poirot’s priceless grey cells went into overdrive and overtime seeking the murderer, who had to be one of the dozen passengers on this fabled train. But those grey cells never failed: they hit upon the startling truth. Everyone was guilty.
As is everyone in the IPL mystery. Everyone knew what was going on, from Mauritius-funding to insider-betting to coke-and-company parties. Silence was purchased by the allotment of some direct or indirect slice of the expanding pie. Omerta, the silence of the wolves, is not imposed by the capo di capo’s dictatorship. It is induced by a variation of the Marxist dictum: from each according to ability, to each according to greed.
The fictional Poirot was looking for facts; Delhi is looking for scapegoats. Neither process is easy, but the second is harder. Scapegoats have this unnerving tendency to breed an heir just before sacrifice; you’ve barely got through one, and another is required for the chopping block. Some of them might squeal sharply on the way to the butcher’s block, or, if their voice has been gagged, send an email technically disguised by anonymity. A know-it-all like Lalit Modi is always more likely to use his knowledge to destabilize than to trot off obediently towards oblivion. He will not drown alone. If he takes Cabinet ministers down with him, he threatens the stability of the Union government, although not its existence.
Governments do not commit suicide deliberately, although they may do so accidentally. Nor do you break your second leg in revenge if the first one is hobbling. Politicians, therefore, will make every effort to shift investigation from clarity to obfuscation through a smokescreen of brazen half-truths, thin justifications and, in some case, in-your-face lies. The wobble in the ruling alliance is larger than Sharad Pawar's NCP. There are southern franchise holders with persuasive powers, and no group is more easily persuaded than the DMK.
The most useful weapon in the politician’s armoury is public amnesia about yesterday's news, replaced by fresh reports that emerge from the baking oven of information, accusation and speculation. An early exclusive revealed that an unnamed Cabinet minister had summoned Kochi franchisees and offered them the choiceless choice: fall in line, or else. Where is that once earth-shattering story now? Ask not — or else.
The merit of finance minister Pranab Mukherjee's decision to order financial sleuths into the fray will be tested by the next step. Mukherjee’s handling of the crisis has been mature and exemplary, but how much can he do with the facts in his files? So many roads lead to colour-neutral havens of alchemy, where black money turns into white at the nod of an accountant's pencil. Mukherjee has an opportunity to clean up more than the IPL, and challenge corruption in the private sector. But that cannot be his decision alone.
The political-comprador alliance atop IPL is hoping fervently for the onset of information-fatigue, when the story fades from screen, print and public consciousness. But that may take time, for there hasn't been a story like this in six decades, so utterly rich in sex, sleaze and superstars. There is money, nepotism, ministers, molls, models, alcohol and parties where big boys play at night, as the Pakistan cricket hero Imran Khan once reminded us through a famous T-shirt. You have inside-dealers, high-rollers, back-stabbers, whistle-blowers, gambling rings and international betting rackets. In the camera lights, histrionic celebrities chase one another with snide remarks or hurt feelings; in the shadows, there are whispers about underhand pay-offs to the holiest names in the litany of cricket. There is some genuinely innovative cricket thrown in as well. How could the media resist turning such explosive ingredients into the most volatile Molotov cocktails in memory? On the evening of the first IPL semi-final, the news reports were arguably far more interesting than the match. It is only a matter of time before movies come tumbling out of such masala. Look forward to 'Lagaan’ on hormones and 'Sholay’ in designer suits. Kitney paise thhey, Kaalia?
Cynics have called IPL a circus. When you buy a ticket to the circus you get clowns along with lion-tamers, while trapeze artistes inspire the cheerleaders. But it does become a curious extravaganza when you can't tell the difference between who is who.
This much is certain: Shashi Tharoor was not the end of the story. He was the beginning of a serial.
Appeared in Times of India - April 24, 2010
By M J Akbar
Those who are still in a state of puzzled excitement over the denouement of the most exhilarating melange of soap opera and crime thriller to appear in the Indian media, have clearly never read Agatha Christie’s classic 'Murder on the Orient Express'.
Or seen Albert Finney and Peter Ustinov as Hercule Poirot in the film and TV versions. Poirot’s priceless grey cells went into overdrive and overtime seeking the murderer, who had to be one of the dozen passengers on this fabled train. But those grey cells never failed: they hit upon the startling truth. Everyone was guilty.
As is everyone in the IPL mystery. Everyone knew what was going on, from Mauritius-funding to insider-betting to coke-and-company parties. Silence was purchased by the allotment of some direct or indirect slice of the expanding pie. Omerta, the silence of the wolves, is not imposed by the capo di capo’s dictatorship. It is induced by a variation of the Marxist dictum: from each according to ability, to each according to greed.
The fictional Poirot was looking for facts; Delhi is looking for scapegoats. Neither process is easy, but the second is harder. Scapegoats have this unnerving tendency to breed an heir just before sacrifice; you’ve barely got through one, and another is required for the chopping block. Some of them might squeal sharply on the way to the butcher’s block, or, if their voice has been gagged, send an email technically disguised by anonymity. A know-it-all like Lalit Modi is always more likely to use his knowledge to destabilize than to trot off obediently towards oblivion. He will not drown alone. If he takes Cabinet ministers down with him, he threatens the stability of the Union government, although not its existence.
Governments do not commit suicide deliberately, although they may do so accidentally. Nor do you break your second leg in revenge if the first one is hobbling. Politicians, therefore, will make every effort to shift investigation from clarity to obfuscation through a smokescreen of brazen half-truths, thin justifications and, in some case, in-your-face lies. The wobble in the ruling alliance is larger than Sharad Pawar's NCP. There are southern franchise holders with persuasive powers, and no group is more easily persuaded than the DMK.
The most useful weapon in the politician’s armoury is public amnesia about yesterday's news, replaced by fresh reports that emerge from the baking oven of information, accusation and speculation. An early exclusive revealed that an unnamed Cabinet minister had summoned Kochi franchisees and offered them the choiceless choice: fall in line, or else. Where is that once earth-shattering story now? Ask not — or else.
The merit of finance minister Pranab Mukherjee's decision to order financial sleuths into the fray will be tested by the next step. Mukherjee’s handling of the crisis has been mature and exemplary, but how much can he do with the facts in his files? So many roads lead to colour-neutral havens of alchemy, where black money turns into white at the nod of an accountant's pencil. Mukherjee has an opportunity to clean up more than the IPL, and challenge corruption in the private sector. But that cannot be his decision alone.
The political-comprador alliance atop IPL is hoping fervently for the onset of information-fatigue, when the story fades from screen, print and public consciousness. But that may take time, for there hasn't been a story like this in six decades, so utterly rich in sex, sleaze and superstars. There is money, nepotism, ministers, molls, models, alcohol and parties where big boys play at night, as the Pakistan cricket hero Imran Khan once reminded us through a famous T-shirt. You have inside-dealers, high-rollers, back-stabbers, whistle-blowers, gambling rings and international betting rackets. In the camera lights, histrionic celebrities chase one another with snide remarks or hurt feelings; in the shadows, there are whispers about underhand pay-offs to the holiest names in the litany of cricket. There is some genuinely innovative cricket thrown in as well. How could the media resist turning such explosive ingredients into the most volatile Molotov cocktails in memory? On the evening of the first IPL semi-final, the news reports were arguably far more interesting than the match. It is only a matter of time before movies come tumbling out of such masala. Look forward to 'Lagaan’ on hormones and 'Sholay’ in designer suits. Kitney paise thhey, Kaalia?
Cynics have called IPL a circus. When you buy a ticket to the circus you get clowns along with lion-tamers, while trapeze artistes inspire the cheerleaders. But it does become a curious extravaganza when you can't tell the difference between who is who.
This much is certain: Shashi Tharoor was not the end of the story. He was the beginning of a serial.
Appeared in Times of India - April 24, 2010
Saturday, April 24, 2010
A fairy tale, minus happy ending
Byline by M J Akbar: A fairy tale, minus happy ending
The secret mantra of The Greatest Circus in the World was quite simple: keep everyone happy and pass the loot to a cosy club. This brilliant formula deserves all the credit possible in an age where profit is the sole morality and mass entertainment the highest art form. This was entertainment on a spectacular level, with a ticket-pricing policy designed to serve the most important psychological weakness of acquisitive Indians, the ego. The astonishingly exorbitant ticket to the rather tardy lounge at the top of the crest quickly became the perfect gift to anyone with even a modicum of influence. Those who purchased a more moderate ticket became surrogate members of this cosy club, permitted a few thrills from the fringe while club owners laughed all the way to the bank — or, in many cases, tax havens like Mauritius and the British Virgin Islands where the colour of cash is a permanent black.
If the owners had one fear, it was the thought of an intrusive Government that might begin to investigate their financial shenanigans. They bought into Government by sharing the loot with politicians in return for protection. And so, even when tax authorities did put together a note on Lalit Modi, action was aborted. Paradoxically, this encouraged Modi’s self-delusion to the point of self-destruction.
There were institutional rewards as well. It seems unbelievable, but this circus was exempt from entertainment tax. Maharashtra alone could have earned Rs 500 crores so far. Such exemptions are given for mass media with some noble message. If anyone has discovered anything noble in a show whose most exciting attraction is a bunch of imported, under-dressed cheerleaders, then it would be good to know.
The script was superb, and the finest actors were contracted for all the roles, but there is nothing, alas, called a perfect movie. You can square a bunch of ministers, but how do you woo a belligerent Opposition? It was silly to believe that the Opposition — or indeed media — could be silenced with a few throwaway tickets in the front row. When a silly altercation between primary stakeholders and nouveau riche gatecrashers opened, as it were, the floodgates, the power of media and Parliament became suddenly apparent. It was too late. Opposition parties have already introduced two slogans that are going to reverberate across the country: the Government belongs to IPL, while Opposition is concerned with BPL (that is, those below the poverty line). If this sounds a trifle ponderous, the second one is tangy and spicy in Hindi: Dal mein kaala zaroor hai,/Aur kitney Tharoor hain? Shashi Tharoor is a prawn compared to the big fish in the net. As for the proportions of dirt in the daal, it might be more accurate to reverse the equation. There is just some lentil in the dirt, rather than the other way around.
We do not have a full idea of the level of muck. The private betting done by some franchise owners is still a story waiting to be told. When owners bet, it is axiomatic that matches are fixed. More money can be made, privately, when a good team loses than when it wins. As is well known, bribing players is not impossible. The older players get, the more they thrash around for retirement benefits. Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee has been exemplary in ordering raids, and there is already talk that data and emails reveal an owner-betting underbelly of significant proportions. So far, Government has been resisting the appointment of a Joint Parliamentary Committee to investigate this scam, but for how long? A JPC would be entitled to all the information collected by Government in these raids, which would put it in the public domain.
IPL honchos still believe they can get away without much damage, because destruction of IPL could fracture the Government. The sacrifice of a couple of scapegoats would be a peanuts price compared to the bloodshed that awaits a proper accountability. That jaded crutch known as the “necessary evil” is being trotted out to justify some of the excesses, along with a solemn promise that everything will be cleaned up if the show is permitted to continue. As someone more wise than famous said, once you assuage your conscience, this begins to look more and more necessary and less and less evil.
The damage in cash terms can be calculated, but who will do the accounting of the damage to IPL’s credibility? There is cynical response: why should a circus need any credibility? Who believes a Hindi movie to be the essence of truth, and if it is the essence of truth, who watches it? But Cabinet ministers do not use their power to preside over the Hindi movie industry, or divert Air India aircraft to pick up cast and crew. The story has reached where it has because the credibility of the Union Government is also at stake. Try being cynical about this.
When the scriptwriters of IPL promised to make everyone happy, they forgot an essential requirement. They needed a happy ending for themselves.
The secret mantra of The Greatest Circus in the World was quite simple: keep everyone happy and pass the loot to a cosy club. This brilliant formula deserves all the credit possible in an age where profit is the sole morality and mass entertainment the highest art form. This was entertainment on a spectacular level, with a ticket-pricing policy designed to serve the most important psychological weakness of acquisitive Indians, the ego. The astonishingly exorbitant ticket to the rather tardy lounge at the top of the crest quickly became the perfect gift to anyone with even a modicum of influence. Those who purchased a more moderate ticket became surrogate members of this cosy club, permitted a few thrills from the fringe while club owners laughed all the way to the bank — or, in many cases, tax havens like Mauritius and the British Virgin Islands where the colour of cash is a permanent black.
If the owners had one fear, it was the thought of an intrusive Government that might begin to investigate their financial shenanigans. They bought into Government by sharing the loot with politicians in return for protection. And so, even when tax authorities did put together a note on Lalit Modi, action was aborted. Paradoxically, this encouraged Modi’s self-delusion to the point of self-destruction.
There were institutional rewards as well. It seems unbelievable, but this circus was exempt from entertainment tax. Maharashtra alone could have earned Rs 500 crores so far. Such exemptions are given for mass media with some noble message. If anyone has discovered anything noble in a show whose most exciting attraction is a bunch of imported, under-dressed cheerleaders, then it would be good to know.
The script was superb, and the finest actors were contracted for all the roles, but there is nothing, alas, called a perfect movie. You can square a bunch of ministers, but how do you woo a belligerent Opposition? It was silly to believe that the Opposition — or indeed media — could be silenced with a few throwaway tickets in the front row. When a silly altercation between primary stakeholders and nouveau riche gatecrashers opened, as it were, the floodgates, the power of media and Parliament became suddenly apparent. It was too late. Opposition parties have already introduced two slogans that are going to reverberate across the country: the Government belongs to IPL, while Opposition is concerned with BPL (that is, those below the poverty line). If this sounds a trifle ponderous, the second one is tangy and spicy in Hindi: Dal mein kaala zaroor hai,/Aur kitney Tharoor hain? Shashi Tharoor is a prawn compared to the big fish in the net. As for the proportions of dirt in the daal, it might be more accurate to reverse the equation. There is just some lentil in the dirt, rather than the other way around.
We do not have a full idea of the level of muck. The private betting done by some franchise owners is still a story waiting to be told. When owners bet, it is axiomatic that matches are fixed. More money can be made, privately, when a good team loses than when it wins. As is well known, bribing players is not impossible. The older players get, the more they thrash around for retirement benefits. Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee has been exemplary in ordering raids, and there is already talk that data and emails reveal an owner-betting underbelly of significant proportions. So far, Government has been resisting the appointment of a Joint Parliamentary Committee to investigate this scam, but for how long? A JPC would be entitled to all the information collected by Government in these raids, which would put it in the public domain.
IPL honchos still believe they can get away without much damage, because destruction of IPL could fracture the Government. The sacrifice of a couple of scapegoats would be a peanuts price compared to the bloodshed that awaits a proper accountability. That jaded crutch known as the “necessary evil” is being trotted out to justify some of the excesses, along with a solemn promise that everything will be cleaned up if the show is permitted to continue. As someone more wise than famous said, once you assuage your conscience, this begins to look more and more necessary and less and less evil.
The damage in cash terms can be calculated, but who will do the accounting of the damage to IPL’s credibility? There is cynical response: why should a circus need any credibility? Who believes a Hindi movie to be the essence of truth, and if it is the essence of truth, who watches it? But Cabinet ministers do not use their power to preside over the Hindi movie industry, or divert Air India aircraft to pick up cast and crew. The story has reached where it has because the credibility of the Union Government is also at stake. Try being cynical about this.
When the scriptwriters of IPL promised to make everyone happy, they forgot an essential requirement. They needed a happy ending for themselves.
Sunday, April 18, 2010
Hullo Shashi Modi, Meet Lalit Tharoor
Hullo Shashi Modi, Meet Lalit Tharoor
By M J Akbar
There is something oddly dysfunctional about Shashi Tharoor's career graph. Four years ago he was Dr Manmohan Singh's candidate for the most high-profile job in the world, that of secretary general of the United Nations, despite professional advice from the foreign ministry that he had little chance of victory. But when last year Dr Singh got an opportunity to give Tharoor a job, he decided that the Man Who Would Be King in New York was fit only for minister of state, reporting to a Cabinet minister who generally cannot find much for his junior to do.
As events have proved, Dr Singh was right in 2009. But the first person to twig on Tharoor was Dr Singh's friend George Bush. In 2006, Washington made it clear that despite the warmth of the Singh-Bush era, Tharoor was too immature. Incidentally, Tharoor did not leave his "high-paid" UN assignment, as he repeats a bit too often, in order to do Indian politics a personal favour. He resigned to try and move to the top of the UN food chain.
The more interesting question, surely, is why Tharoor accepted a demotion in Delhi. He is not, after all, famous for underestimating himself. There had to be another reason. The obvious answer is that the limelight is more important to him than the job. Half the limelight was better than no limelight at all. Many politicians display an inordinate affection for the mirror. The problem, as ever, lies in the degree. The swivel moment comes when you go searching for a place in the story, instead of the story searching for you.
The IPL is, logically, the brainchild of a party animal, for it is the most ingenious private party organized in the history of independent India. Each limited-entry guest is welcomed into the fiesta with a winning lottery ticket. As in all lotteries, the money comes from the public and payment goes to a handful, in this case a pre-selected network. All guests are not equal, but all are equally happy.
There are many forms of payoff, including phenomenal salaries, and we are not talking merely of what players take home. The most lucrative core of this less-than-virtuous circle constitutes a club of promoters and their friends, the franchise owners who are permitted a double benefit: promotion of their brands through surrogate advertising, and the promise of huge escalation in share values, since there is no immediate prospect of profitability through regular business models. The owners of the now extra-famous Kochi franchise have said that they will have to lose more than Rs 100 crore a year for the foreseeable future. Details of ownership have been kept opaque to transfer value to individuals while funding comes from companies.
Tharoor is writhing between a mistake and a misfortune. His mistake was to gatecrash a party without an invitation. He thought he could buy entry with Dubai and Gujarat money and spin out collateral political benefits by name-association with Kochi. He leapt to take the political credit when Kochi won the franchise. He is alleged to have taken financial rewards more surreptitiously. His friend Sunanda Pushkar's feeble claim that she is not a proxy is silly. You do not get sweat equity in perpetuity, which means free and forever, with a starting value of Rs 70 crore, for being an unknown executive of a Dubai company. There hasn't been a case of "cheque-payment culpability" of this order since the transactions that ended the chief ministership of A R Antulay in 1981. Nearly 30 years ago, Congress inexplicably tried to defend the indefensible before dumping Antulay so hard it virtually broke the warhorse's back. Mystery repeats itself.
Tharoor's misfortune was to encounter an adversary who could out-Twitter him at high noon in the gunfight at IPL corral. Tharoor and Lalit Modi have more in common than sharp suits, sharp wits and a dogged commitment to the television cameras. Having achieved so much through effective use of the media, they were convinced their favourite weapon remained the best option. They went to war through the media. A veteran like Sharad Pawar would have told them, had they but asked that children in glasshouse nurseries shouldn't throw stones
Modi has one advantage over Tharoor; he is in the private sector. His accountability is to fiscal laws. Tharoor affects the image of the Congress at a time when the party cannot afford a greasy controversy. Tharoor is the first Congress minister in the Sonia Gandhi-Manmohan Singh government to be publicly pilloried for alleged corruption.
He has left Mrs Gandhi and Dr Singh with a complicated problem: how do you rearrange spaghetti into straight lines?
Appeared in Times of India - April 18, 2010
By M J Akbar
There is something oddly dysfunctional about Shashi Tharoor's career graph. Four years ago he was Dr Manmohan Singh's candidate for the most high-profile job in the world, that of secretary general of the United Nations, despite professional advice from the foreign ministry that he had little chance of victory. But when last year Dr Singh got an opportunity to give Tharoor a job, he decided that the Man Who Would Be King in New York was fit only for minister of state, reporting to a Cabinet minister who generally cannot find much for his junior to do.
As events have proved, Dr Singh was right in 2009. But the first person to twig on Tharoor was Dr Singh's friend George Bush. In 2006, Washington made it clear that despite the warmth of the Singh-Bush era, Tharoor was too immature. Incidentally, Tharoor did not leave his "high-paid" UN assignment, as he repeats a bit too often, in order to do Indian politics a personal favour. He resigned to try and move to the top of the UN food chain.
The more interesting question, surely, is why Tharoor accepted a demotion in Delhi. He is not, after all, famous for underestimating himself. There had to be another reason. The obvious answer is that the limelight is more important to him than the job. Half the limelight was better than no limelight at all. Many politicians display an inordinate affection for the mirror. The problem, as ever, lies in the degree. The swivel moment comes when you go searching for a place in the story, instead of the story searching for you.
The IPL is, logically, the brainchild of a party animal, for it is the most ingenious private party organized in the history of independent India. Each limited-entry guest is welcomed into the fiesta with a winning lottery ticket. As in all lotteries, the money comes from the public and payment goes to a handful, in this case a pre-selected network. All guests are not equal, but all are equally happy.
There are many forms of payoff, including phenomenal salaries, and we are not talking merely of what players take home. The most lucrative core of this less-than-virtuous circle constitutes a club of promoters and their friends, the franchise owners who are permitted a double benefit: promotion of their brands through surrogate advertising, and the promise of huge escalation in share values, since there is no immediate prospect of profitability through regular business models. The owners of the now extra-famous Kochi franchise have said that they will have to lose more than Rs 100 crore a year for the foreseeable future. Details of ownership have been kept opaque to transfer value to individuals while funding comes from companies.
Tharoor is writhing between a mistake and a misfortune. His mistake was to gatecrash a party without an invitation. He thought he could buy entry with Dubai and Gujarat money and spin out collateral political benefits by name-association with Kochi. He leapt to take the political credit when Kochi won the franchise. He is alleged to have taken financial rewards more surreptitiously. His friend Sunanda Pushkar's feeble claim that she is not a proxy is silly. You do not get sweat equity in perpetuity, which means free and forever, with a starting value of Rs 70 crore, for being an unknown executive of a Dubai company. There hasn't been a case of "cheque-payment culpability" of this order since the transactions that ended the chief ministership of A R Antulay in 1981. Nearly 30 years ago, Congress inexplicably tried to defend the indefensible before dumping Antulay so hard it virtually broke the warhorse's back. Mystery repeats itself.
Tharoor's misfortune was to encounter an adversary who could out-Twitter him at high noon in the gunfight at IPL corral. Tharoor and Lalit Modi have more in common than sharp suits, sharp wits and a dogged commitment to the television cameras. Having achieved so much through effective use of the media, they were convinced their favourite weapon remained the best option. They went to war through the media. A veteran like Sharad Pawar would have told them, had they but asked that children in glasshouse nurseries shouldn't throw stones
Modi has one advantage over Tharoor; he is in the private sector. His accountability is to fiscal laws. Tharoor affects the image of the Congress at a time when the party cannot afford a greasy controversy. Tharoor is the first Congress minister in the Sonia Gandhi-Manmohan Singh government to be publicly pilloried for alleged corruption.
He has left Mrs Gandhi and Dr Singh with a complicated problem: how do you rearrange spaghetti into straight lines?
Appeared in Times of India - April 18, 2010
Saturday, April 17, 2010
100 years after Gokhale, Jinnah
Byline by M J Akbar: 100 years after Gokhale, Jinnah
As anniversaries go, this does not quite compete with the birth of demigods or emperors, but it does demand something more than indifference. 2010 has a legitimate claim to being the 100th anniversary of Indian democracy. In January 1910, following the Minto-Morley reforms, 27 members, elected on the basis of limited franchise and separate electorates, took their seats in the 60-member Imperial Legislative Council, housed in Calcutta. The elective principle had to be reformed and refined periodically but was never, in India, abandoned.
On 25 January 1910 Muhammad Ali Jinnah was sworn in as the Muslim member from Mumbai. The other victor from the great metropolis was Gopal Krishna Gokhale, from the “general”, or Hindu seat. The young Jinnah had been fortunate: two elderly bearded frontrunners hated each other so much that they let the candidature go to the young Anglophile lawyer. Jinnah held that seat till 1946. Jinnah was not enthused by the system that brought him to the Council. Separate electorates, in which only Muslims could vote for Muslims, were the consequence of a collaborative demand placed before Lord Minto in 1906 by a group of Muslim notables who went on to create the Muslim League in December that year. Jinnah refused to join the Muslim League and, at the Allahabad Congress in 1910, seconded a resolution deprecating the “principle of Separate Communal Electorates”. He warned that this would divide the nation, supremely oblivious of a future in which he would become the architect of partition.
Odd, despite the bad odour sprinkled upon the idea by Congress, the shadow of separate electorates has always hovered over Indian democracy, thinly disguised by an alias, reservation. This alias was conceptualised in September 1932, when Gandhi made a pact with Babasaheb Ambedkar, who was in favour of separate electorates for Dalits. Instead of separating voters, Gandhi separated candidates, and promised Ambedkar more reserved seats than the British had awarded to Dalits.
In practice, this did not amount to a huge difference. The purpose of separate electorates and reservations was the same: to ensure that a certain number of MPs from a particular community entered Parliament. In 1928 Jinnah had offered to abandon separate electorates for Muslims in exchange for reserved seats, as the formula for an all-party Constitution being drafted by Motilal Nehru. If Congress had accepted, the idea of Pakistan might never have been born. But Congress would not grant to Muslims what it was prepared to give to Ambedkar.
Reservations entered the Indian Constitution as a temporary measure, but have become a permanent reality, expanding with a slow but relentless tenacity. Think about it: if the Women’s Reservation Bill goes through, some 60% of Indian voters (women, Scheduled Tribes and Scheduled Castes) will enjoy reservations, even after adjusting for overlap. It is unsurprising that the question that was never answered in 1928 and 1932 has returned to the top of the Indian Muslim agenda: why not us?
The focus has shifted from political space to economic and educational entitlement, but at the core remains the grievance of injustice. If reservations are good for virtually everyone else, why do they become such a terrible idea when it comes to Muslims? True, the Constitution does not permit reservations for religious groups; but the Constitution does not envisage reservations for women either. If you can change the Constitution to accommodate women, why not alter it for Muslims? In any case, the religion argument was made irrelevant when “backward” Sikhs and Buddhists were included within reservation quotas. Why did Congress then, and more so today, consider caste and gender a perfectly reasonable basis for empowerment, but religion such a threat? Was it because caste is Hindu, and Muslims are, well, Muslim? The Muslim League divided India on the basis of religion in 1947, but how long are Muslims expected to pay for mistakes of history, particularly when guilt is never unilateral. Delhi is no longer controlled by the decisive third force in the equations of 1947, the British, and democratic India has displayed the strength and resilience to crush any secessionist threat. Why does this confidence dip when impoverished Muslims demand economic empowerment? The watershed impact of the statistics gathered by Justice Rajinder Sachar in his defining report cannot be underestimated. Such questions are addressed to Congress because the Left, and parties led by Mulayam Singh Yadav and Lalu Yadav, have accepted the justice of the Muslim claim for job reservations.
The merits of each question may not be equally valid, but doubts are rising through the second tier of political discourse. Democracy is a system of valves that finds solutions through debate and protest. But democracy is ineffective if the right of protest does not interconnect with the duty to hear. The first is a privilege of the citizen; the second a compulsion of authority. A deaf Government breaks the circuit. The only known cure of frustration is an election. When frustration lingers across elections it becomes bitter and exaggerated. We have not reached that point, which means that the moment to answer questions is now.
The Gokhale of 1910 would have understood the Jinnah of 1928, although he would never have forgiven the Jinnah of 1947.
As anniversaries go, this does not quite compete with the birth of demigods or emperors, but it does demand something more than indifference. 2010 has a legitimate claim to being the 100th anniversary of Indian democracy. In January 1910, following the Minto-Morley reforms, 27 members, elected on the basis of limited franchise and separate electorates, took their seats in the 60-member Imperial Legislative Council, housed in Calcutta. The elective principle had to be reformed and refined periodically but was never, in India, abandoned.
On 25 January 1910 Muhammad Ali Jinnah was sworn in as the Muslim member from Mumbai. The other victor from the great metropolis was Gopal Krishna Gokhale, from the “general”, or Hindu seat. The young Jinnah had been fortunate: two elderly bearded frontrunners hated each other so much that they let the candidature go to the young Anglophile lawyer. Jinnah held that seat till 1946. Jinnah was not enthused by the system that brought him to the Council. Separate electorates, in which only Muslims could vote for Muslims, were the consequence of a collaborative demand placed before Lord Minto in 1906 by a group of Muslim notables who went on to create the Muslim League in December that year. Jinnah refused to join the Muslim League and, at the Allahabad Congress in 1910, seconded a resolution deprecating the “principle of Separate Communal Electorates”. He warned that this would divide the nation, supremely oblivious of a future in which he would become the architect of partition.
Odd, despite the bad odour sprinkled upon the idea by Congress, the shadow of separate electorates has always hovered over Indian democracy, thinly disguised by an alias, reservation. This alias was conceptualised in September 1932, when Gandhi made a pact with Babasaheb Ambedkar, who was in favour of separate electorates for Dalits. Instead of separating voters, Gandhi separated candidates, and promised Ambedkar more reserved seats than the British had awarded to Dalits.
In practice, this did not amount to a huge difference. The purpose of separate electorates and reservations was the same: to ensure that a certain number of MPs from a particular community entered Parliament. In 1928 Jinnah had offered to abandon separate electorates for Muslims in exchange for reserved seats, as the formula for an all-party Constitution being drafted by Motilal Nehru. If Congress had accepted, the idea of Pakistan might never have been born. But Congress would not grant to Muslims what it was prepared to give to Ambedkar.
Reservations entered the Indian Constitution as a temporary measure, but have become a permanent reality, expanding with a slow but relentless tenacity. Think about it: if the Women’s Reservation Bill goes through, some 60% of Indian voters (women, Scheduled Tribes and Scheduled Castes) will enjoy reservations, even after adjusting for overlap. It is unsurprising that the question that was never answered in 1928 and 1932 has returned to the top of the Indian Muslim agenda: why not us?
The focus has shifted from political space to economic and educational entitlement, but at the core remains the grievance of injustice. If reservations are good for virtually everyone else, why do they become such a terrible idea when it comes to Muslims? True, the Constitution does not permit reservations for religious groups; but the Constitution does not envisage reservations for women either. If you can change the Constitution to accommodate women, why not alter it for Muslims? In any case, the religion argument was made irrelevant when “backward” Sikhs and Buddhists were included within reservation quotas. Why did Congress then, and more so today, consider caste and gender a perfectly reasonable basis for empowerment, but religion such a threat? Was it because caste is Hindu, and Muslims are, well, Muslim? The Muslim League divided India on the basis of religion in 1947, but how long are Muslims expected to pay for mistakes of history, particularly when guilt is never unilateral. Delhi is no longer controlled by the decisive third force in the equations of 1947, the British, and democratic India has displayed the strength and resilience to crush any secessionist threat. Why does this confidence dip when impoverished Muslims demand economic empowerment? The watershed impact of the statistics gathered by Justice Rajinder Sachar in his defining report cannot be underestimated. Such questions are addressed to Congress because the Left, and parties led by Mulayam Singh Yadav and Lalu Yadav, have accepted the justice of the Muslim claim for job reservations.
The merits of each question may not be equally valid, but doubts are rising through the second tier of political discourse. Democracy is a system of valves that finds solutions through debate and protest. But democracy is ineffective if the right of protest does not interconnect with the duty to hear. The first is a privilege of the citizen; the second a compulsion of authority. A deaf Government breaks the circuit. The only known cure of frustration is an election. When frustration lingers across elections it becomes bitter and exaggerated. We have not reached that point, which means that the moment to answer questions is now.
The Gokhale of 1910 would have understood the Jinnah of 1928, although he would never have forgiven the Jinnah of 1947.
Sunday, April 11, 2010
You can't pass the buck, PC
You can't pass the buck, PC
By M J Akbar
Most mistakes begin in the mind. It is hardly a state secret that home minister P Chidambaram is an avid fan of the American security doctrine summed up succinctly in "clear, hold, build". No one saw the fault lines. This was a formula for overseas operations, not domestic soil. America faces both an internal and external security challenge.
It does not use the same doctrine for both. The CRPF, or its offshoots, are not an occupation force. Moreover, the Maoists have not seized territory; they have turned the natural habitat of the poor, with local support, into their strongholds; they are, right or wrong, of the people. Their fighters are not in uniform; their officers do not wear cravat and beret; their foot soldiers do not change into civvies to go home.
America understands the need to 'build' in Iraq or Afghanistan, but this is the third priority, which is why it either does not happen, or gets too diluted. The maximum energy is exhausted by 'clear' and 'hold'. In practice, this means that the security force is largely occupied in providing security for itself. Chidambaram has argued that development is impossible until his personal armies can clear the 'infected' areas of Maoists. The Cobra Force was developed for this purpose. It has been renamed the Special Action Force presumably because someone thought the world's most famous poisonous snake might be inappropriate nomenclature for the striking arm of an 'aam-aadmi' government. You can change the name, but what about the mentality?
Uncertainty has turned the home ministry's advertisement campaign into an exercise in confusion. The copy says: "I was poor and had no job. So, I joined the Maoists. The gun became my identity. I killed, I maimed, I blew up schools and bridges. But, I still have no job. My children can't go to school. My wife can't live with me. I can't till my land." Then follows the message: "Abjure violence, support development." Ignore the fact that Maoists are hardly reading upmarket English newspapers with their morning cuppa; it does rather sound like an invitation to join Maoists, rather than abjure them.
If "I was poor" etc etc, and the state had done little except ensure that the rich were getting richer at a rate of 8%, maybe the gun would seem the only wake-up call left. One can join development if there is development. Dantewada is not quite Marine Drive. The poor are not fools; they do not expect a genie to suddenly offer them a magical palace — but neither will they accept indifference as their destiny.
Poverty is the sustenance of Maoism. If we want to destroy Maoists, we need to end poverty. There is an alternative to "clear, hold, build": empower, educate, eliminate. The gun is a weapon of last resort in a democracy, not the first. Equally, a sensible government must reduce the attraction of the gun among the poor by restoring their faith, not by multiplying cemeteries and graveyards. There is nothing particularly radical in this suggestion. If Pranab Mukherjee or A K Antony had been home minister, they would have understood. Such a strategy has been used successfully in Andhra Pradesh by governments across the party divide, led by N T Rama Rao, Chandrababu Naidu and Y Rajasekhara Reddy. They built police units – called Greyhounds, not Cobras — which spoke the people's language, and earned their trust by behaving as protectors rather than conquerors. Experienced police officers advised the home ministry to base the Cobra Force in Hyderabad so that it could imbibe an operational culture that had proved successful, but Chidambaram disagreed. He made it personal. Delhi remained the headquarters of Cobra-SAF.
The Greyhounds had few intelligence failures because they were intelligent. Simultaneously, positive discrimination became the theme of economic development. It was, inevitably, a slow process; there were no grandiose claims that Naxalites would be finished in two years, or three. More important, no Andhra politician tried to use a crisis to become a pseudo-Napoleon through verbal explosions.
Good politicians know that a single pompous phrase can reverse trajectory and turn a thundering cannonball into an ominous boomerang. Chidambaram loftily informed the mild Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee during a visit to Maoist-hit Bengal that the Naxalite buck stopped at the Bengal chief minister's desk. He could not have imagined that within days the taunt would return to haunt him.
Where does the Dantewada buck stop? Chidambaram has been chasing alibis, claiming this was a joint operation. Not quite correct. The CRPF in Chhattisgarh — whether wearing its Cobra face or Special Action Force hat — took its orders from Delhi. American President Harry Truman made the phrase famous with a "desk gadget" bearing the legend "The Buck Stops Here". (This plaque, incidentally, was a gift from the Federal Reformatory at El Reno.) Another President, Calvin Coolidge, made a more relevant promise: "I won't pass the buck."
To pass the buck is to fail the nation.
Appeared in Times of India - April 11, 2010
By M J Akbar
Most mistakes begin in the mind. It is hardly a state secret that home minister P Chidambaram is an avid fan of the American security doctrine summed up succinctly in "clear, hold, build". No one saw the fault lines. This was a formula for overseas operations, not domestic soil. America faces both an internal and external security challenge.
It does not use the same doctrine for both. The CRPF, or its offshoots, are not an occupation force. Moreover, the Maoists have not seized territory; they have turned the natural habitat of the poor, with local support, into their strongholds; they are, right or wrong, of the people. Their fighters are not in uniform; their officers do not wear cravat and beret; their foot soldiers do not change into civvies to go home.
America understands the need to 'build' in Iraq or Afghanistan, but this is the third priority, which is why it either does not happen, or gets too diluted. The maximum energy is exhausted by 'clear' and 'hold'. In practice, this means that the security force is largely occupied in providing security for itself. Chidambaram has argued that development is impossible until his personal armies can clear the 'infected' areas of Maoists. The Cobra Force was developed for this purpose. It has been renamed the Special Action Force presumably because someone thought the world's most famous poisonous snake might be inappropriate nomenclature for the striking arm of an 'aam-aadmi' government. You can change the name, but what about the mentality?
Uncertainty has turned the home ministry's advertisement campaign into an exercise in confusion. The copy says: "I was poor and had no job. So, I joined the Maoists. The gun became my identity. I killed, I maimed, I blew up schools and bridges. But, I still have no job. My children can't go to school. My wife can't live with me. I can't till my land." Then follows the message: "Abjure violence, support development." Ignore the fact that Maoists are hardly reading upmarket English newspapers with their morning cuppa; it does rather sound like an invitation to join Maoists, rather than abjure them.
If "I was poor" etc etc, and the state had done little except ensure that the rich were getting richer at a rate of 8%, maybe the gun would seem the only wake-up call left. One can join development if there is development. Dantewada is not quite Marine Drive. The poor are not fools; they do not expect a genie to suddenly offer them a magical palace — but neither will they accept indifference as their destiny.
Poverty is the sustenance of Maoism. If we want to destroy Maoists, we need to end poverty. There is an alternative to "clear, hold, build": empower, educate, eliminate. The gun is a weapon of last resort in a democracy, not the first. Equally, a sensible government must reduce the attraction of the gun among the poor by restoring their faith, not by multiplying cemeteries and graveyards. There is nothing particularly radical in this suggestion. If Pranab Mukherjee or A K Antony had been home minister, they would have understood. Such a strategy has been used successfully in Andhra Pradesh by governments across the party divide, led by N T Rama Rao, Chandrababu Naidu and Y Rajasekhara Reddy. They built police units – called Greyhounds, not Cobras — which spoke the people's language, and earned their trust by behaving as protectors rather than conquerors. Experienced police officers advised the home ministry to base the Cobra Force in Hyderabad so that it could imbibe an operational culture that had proved successful, but Chidambaram disagreed. He made it personal. Delhi remained the headquarters of Cobra-SAF.
The Greyhounds had few intelligence failures because they were intelligent. Simultaneously, positive discrimination became the theme of economic development. It was, inevitably, a slow process; there were no grandiose claims that Naxalites would be finished in two years, or three. More important, no Andhra politician tried to use a crisis to become a pseudo-Napoleon through verbal explosions.
Good politicians know that a single pompous phrase can reverse trajectory and turn a thundering cannonball into an ominous boomerang. Chidambaram loftily informed the mild Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee during a visit to Maoist-hit Bengal that the Naxalite buck stopped at the Bengal chief minister's desk. He could not have imagined that within days the taunt would return to haunt him.
Where does the Dantewada buck stop? Chidambaram has been chasing alibis, claiming this was a joint operation. Not quite correct. The CRPF in Chhattisgarh — whether wearing its Cobra face or Special Action Force hat — took its orders from Delhi. American President Harry Truman made the phrase famous with a "desk gadget" bearing the legend "The Buck Stops Here". (This plaque, incidentally, was a gift from the Federal Reformatory at El Reno.) Another President, Calvin Coolidge, made a more relevant promise: "I won't pass the buck."
To pass the buck is to fail the nation.
Appeared in Times of India - April 11, 2010
Saturday, April 10, 2010
Senapati’s route to heroism
Byline by M J Akbar: Senapati’s route to heroism
P. Chidambaram first tried out the resignation route to heroism when he was in P.V. Narasimha Rao’s Cabinet. Rao, a bit like his protégé Dr Manmohan Singh, was a Prime Minister wrought by fate; he had, in fact, retired because of a heart condition and sent his impressive library to Hyderabad, where he intended to spend his time. He did not contest the elections for the 1991 Parliament that made him Prime Minister. The younger Congress leaders, consequently, tended to underestimate him. Rao surprised the political class, and shocked the victim, by accepting Chidambaram’s resignation. The scar never quite healed; Chidambaram eventually started his own party, and was brought back into the Congress mainstream only by Mrs Sonia Gandhi.
Chidambaram, despite the consistent colour of his dark hair, is older and wiser now. He knew there was no chance that Dr Manmohan Singh would accept his pro forma offer to resign over the Dantewada bungle, largely because the Prime Minister believes in what his Home Minister is doing. The resignation gesture was not an immediate response. His first reaction was to test whether an alibi — that this was a “joint” operation, meaning that the state Government was equally culpable — would work. It did not, because there are too many retired and respected police officers and security experts ready to explain and reveal precisely what happened.
The surprise of the week was surely not the endorsement Chidambaram received from his Prime Minister, but the warm support he got from the BJP. There have been some cross-party surprises of late. Publicly, the Congress made a colossal fuss when Amitabh Bachchan was condemned as evil because he was seen with Narendra Modi. Away from the limelight, the Prime Minister endorsed Modi as head of the working group on consumer affairs at a Chief Ministers’ meeting. Then Goa’s Congress Chief Minister Digambar Kamat, after this CMs’ conference, told the world that Narendra Modi was his best friend and he would happily visit Gujarat if invited. Kamat could not have been unaware that his counterpart in Maharashtra, Ashok Chavan, was castigated, at the instigation of Delhi, for what might be called “third-degree contact” with Modi, because he had been civil to Amitabh who had been civil to Modi. Such “first-degree” proximity should be sufficient reason, by publicly declared standards, to remove Kamat, but he is clearly unconcerned. Does he know something that we do not? Politicians do not risk their gaddi very easily. Is Congress trying to finesse the new, emerging Opposition unity in Parliament, which threatens the passage of the Women’s Reservation Bill in the Lok Sabha, by being nice to the pre-eminent lightning rod in the BJP? In the absence of answers, we can at least ask questions.
The BJP’s support for Chidambaram, however, is based on ideological strategy rather than tactical requirements. The BJP has never been dubious about its aversion to democratic Marxists, and complete hostility to violent Maoists. The BJP considers Chidambaram the perfect “senapati” in the war against Maoists, because the Home Minister shares its uncomplicated view of Maoists as nothing but cowards and criminals who deserve complete elimination. This is a conviction shared by the Prime Minister, who has described Naxalites as the greatest threat to India.
Other politicians might hedge: Nitish Kumar believes that Maoists cannot be defeated only by force, Buddhadeb Bhattacharya is certain that this cannot be treated as just a law and order matter, and Mani Shankar Aiyar, who heads the committee organising the Congress’ 125th anniversary, is certain that a one-eye policy focusing only on security will be counterproductive. But Chidambaram is a one-eyed man when it comes to Maoists; after all, you cannot take aim with a gun if both your eyes are open.
The Congress has, for the moment, officially rallied around Chidambaram, but there is very clearly a major internal debate that is seeping out of the confines of inner-party curtains. Dantewada might, paradoxically, strengthen a hawkish Home Minister, but it is not going to extinguish the two-eyed view of an admittedly difficult problem.
There is as much uncertainty in the Congress about the contours and consequences of a caste war as there is about a class war. The Congress was splintered during the heated arguments over the Mandal Commission in 1990, and its confusion lost the party UP and Bihar. There is always a price to be paid for irresolution. A strong section of the party is in harmony with the BJP over Maoists, just as many Congressmen agreed with V.P. Singh on Mandal. The left has been weakened within the Congress by the domination of Rao and Dr Singh in the last two Congress Governments, but it has not disappeared. Scratch Pranab Mukherjee and A.K. Antony and you will find Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi in their blood. Mrs Sonia Gandhi has already indicated that she is not going to abandon the Congress left, but remains palpably unsure about the extent to which she can rehabilitate it.
A general purpose warning to Congress Cabinet Ministers: think thrice before offering to resign. You never know when it might be accepted.
P. Chidambaram first tried out the resignation route to heroism when he was in P.V. Narasimha Rao’s Cabinet. Rao, a bit like his protégé Dr Manmohan Singh, was a Prime Minister wrought by fate; he had, in fact, retired because of a heart condition and sent his impressive library to Hyderabad, where he intended to spend his time. He did not contest the elections for the 1991 Parliament that made him Prime Minister. The younger Congress leaders, consequently, tended to underestimate him. Rao surprised the political class, and shocked the victim, by accepting Chidambaram’s resignation. The scar never quite healed; Chidambaram eventually started his own party, and was brought back into the Congress mainstream only by Mrs Sonia Gandhi.
Chidambaram, despite the consistent colour of his dark hair, is older and wiser now. He knew there was no chance that Dr Manmohan Singh would accept his pro forma offer to resign over the Dantewada bungle, largely because the Prime Minister believes in what his Home Minister is doing. The resignation gesture was not an immediate response. His first reaction was to test whether an alibi — that this was a “joint” operation, meaning that the state Government was equally culpable — would work. It did not, because there are too many retired and respected police officers and security experts ready to explain and reveal precisely what happened.
The surprise of the week was surely not the endorsement Chidambaram received from his Prime Minister, but the warm support he got from the BJP. There have been some cross-party surprises of late. Publicly, the Congress made a colossal fuss when Amitabh Bachchan was condemned as evil because he was seen with Narendra Modi. Away from the limelight, the Prime Minister endorsed Modi as head of the working group on consumer affairs at a Chief Ministers’ meeting. Then Goa’s Congress Chief Minister Digambar Kamat, after this CMs’ conference, told the world that Narendra Modi was his best friend and he would happily visit Gujarat if invited. Kamat could not have been unaware that his counterpart in Maharashtra, Ashok Chavan, was castigated, at the instigation of Delhi, for what might be called “third-degree contact” with Modi, because he had been civil to Amitabh who had been civil to Modi. Such “first-degree” proximity should be sufficient reason, by publicly declared standards, to remove Kamat, but he is clearly unconcerned. Does he know something that we do not? Politicians do not risk their gaddi very easily. Is Congress trying to finesse the new, emerging Opposition unity in Parliament, which threatens the passage of the Women’s Reservation Bill in the Lok Sabha, by being nice to the pre-eminent lightning rod in the BJP? In the absence of answers, we can at least ask questions.
The BJP’s support for Chidambaram, however, is based on ideological strategy rather than tactical requirements. The BJP has never been dubious about its aversion to democratic Marxists, and complete hostility to violent Maoists. The BJP considers Chidambaram the perfect “senapati” in the war against Maoists, because the Home Minister shares its uncomplicated view of Maoists as nothing but cowards and criminals who deserve complete elimination. This is a conviction shared by the Prime Minister, who has described Naxalites as the greatest threat to India.
Other politicians might hedge: Nitish Kumar believes that Maoists cannot be defeated only by force, Buddhadeb Bhattacharya is certain that this cannot be treated as just a law and order matter, and Mani Shankar Aiyar, who heads the committee organising the Congress’ 125th anniversary, is certain that a one-eye policy focusing only on security will be counterproductive. But Chidambaram is a one-eyed man when it comes to Maoists; after all, you cannot take aim with a gun if both your eyes are open.
The Congress has, for the moment, officially rallied around Chidambaram, but there is very clearly a major internal debate that is seeping out of the confines of inner-party curtains. Dantewada might, paradoxically, strengthen a hawkish Home Minister, but it is not going to extinguish the two-eyed view of an admittedly difficult problem.
There is as much uncertainty in the Congress about the contours and consequences of a caste war as there is about a class war. The Congress was splintered during the heated arguments over the Mandal Commission in 1990, and its confusion lost the party UP and Bihar. There is always a price to be paid for irresolution. A strong section of the party is in harmony with the BJP over Maoists, just as many Congressmen agreed with V.P. Singh on Mandal. The left has been weakened within the Congress by the domination of Rao and Dr Singh in the last two Congress Governments, but it has not disappeared. Scratch Pranab Mukherjee and A.K. Antony and you will find Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi in their blood. Mrs Sonia Gandhi has already indicated that she is not going to abandon the Congress left, but remains palpably unsure about the extent to which she can rehabilitate it.
A general purpose warning to Congress Cabinet Ministers: think thrice before offering to resign. You never know when it might be accepted.
Sunday, April 04, 2010
UPA2 has a bad case of teen acne
UPA2 has a bad case of teen acne
By M J Akbar
2010 is still in its adolescent phase: is that the reason for a sudden rash of acne on the government’s face? Nothing serious, nothing incurable; just a sense that life would be so much better without the itch and cream-resistant spots. In January, the government looked invulnerable. March became a month of stumbles and at least one spill on a banana skin.
Stepping carefully into April, Dr Manmohan Singh spoke to the nation on the undeniable virtues of compulsory education, a commitment that is possibly six decades overdue but welcome nevertheless. His sincerity was apparent (he is a professor, after all) but one wonders why his speechwriters are chained to trite phrases, impervious to the magic of change, possibility and new ideas. Think about it: the mobile phone can become the latest driver of literacy. Aspiration as much as need is taking the mobile to villages. Its functions include SMS, which requires literacy. Technology and its relationship to the market can be so easily harnessed into a vision of upliftment.
Did this speech also have something to do with the sudden reassertion of Mrs Sonia Gandhi into governance space?
Mrs Gandhi has been the architect of two general election victories; her role as party chief and silent front-bench MP was incompatible with her real status. During UPA1, she used the National Advisory Council (NAC) as the parent of social policy, with government as its nurse. Implicit was the unmentioned recognition of Dr Singh as an apolitical Prime Minister who needed support systems from the political class. Egos can get easily ruffled in such a balance of power, but one of Dr Singh’s remarkable characteristics is the ability to keep his ego so effectively disguised that no one is totally sure if he has one.
Dr Singh’s ego is still heavily veiled, despite the fact that the lottery winner of UPA1 has evolved into the unquestioned Prime Minister of UPA2. But his government has been prone to problems and drift. Oddly, while Dr Singh is more assertive with bureaucrats, he has become meeker towards politicians. Hands-on and hands-off are calibrated very carefully in the capital. NAC2 does not strengthen Mrs Gandhi because no one questioned her power before she revived it. It does, however, weaken the UPA2 Prime Minister, who should not need support systems after six years in office. Perception is an important element of power, since reality is opaque. Delhi reads body language far more astutely than any script. The Prime Minister has complained about empty chairs at Cabinet meetings. This is not because missing Cabinet ministers are busy serving the nation with their last drop of blood. They simply do not care.
Would they have been absent from a Sonia Gandhi Cabinet meeting?
Dr Singh has been bled by the fact that three initiatives identified with him -- Indo-US relations, peace with Pakistan, and economic reform -- have stalled. Pakistan has snubbed India on terrorism and laughed its way to American and Chinese banks and arsenals. Obama gave dinner to Dr Singh and strategic partnership to General Kayani. China has offered advice to Delhi and two nuclear plants, with 82% financing, to Islamabad, even as it tries to pick up the Iranian gas project and turns it north via Pakistan with a $2.5 billion investment. Dr Singh stalled the Iran-Pak-India gas pipeline to appease Washington; Pakistan has no such fears.
For five years Dr Singh accused the Left of sabotaging economic reforms. Well, the Left has sabotaged itself; where are the reforms?
The Congress, necessarily sensitive to public opinion, has launched a guerrilla war against the government’s civilian nuclear liability bill, currently trapped between a rock called Parliament and a hard place called the American nuclear industry. A resurrected NAC confirms the distance between party, which has to win elections, and government, which has to run the country. Its members, personally chosen by Mrs Gandhi, will function as a virtual politburo, setting a populist agenda and challenging the executive to find the resources, management skills and delivery systems for implementation.
Is it too early for Mrs Gandhi to worry about an election scheduled for 2014? She is clearly trying to bridge the gap between confidence and overconfidence. The women’s bill strengthened the party but weakened the government. Lalu Prasad, expert at mordant similes, notes that it takes only four people to carry a corpse to the burning ghat and he has four MPs. The government is not in danger, merely hobbled by an uncertainty that will be exploited by the Opposition during every Parliament session. It is never too early to worry.
The banana skin was the spat with Amitabh Bachchan. The Congress pontificated while people were laughing. When you have acne, you do tend to get cross when a smile may be all that is necessary.
By M J Akbar
2010 is still in its adolescent phase: is that the reason for a sudden rash of acne on the government’s face? Nothing serious, nothing incurable; just a sense that life would be so much better without the itch and cream-resistant spots. In January, the government looked invulnerable. March became a month of stumbles and at least one spill on a banana skin.
Stepping carefully into April, Dr Manmohan Singh spoke to the nation on the undeniable virtues of compulsory education, a commitment that is possibly six decades overdue but welcome nevertheless. His sincerity was apparent (he is a professor, after all) but one wonders why his speechwriters are chained to trite phrases, impervious to the magic of change, possibility and new ideas. Think about it: the mobile phone can become the latest driver of literacy. Aspiration as much as need is taking the mobile to villages. Its functions include SMS, which requires literacy. Technology and its relationship to the market can be so easily harnessed into a vision of upliftment.
Did this speech also have something to do with the sudden reassertion of Mrs Sonia Gandhi into governance space?
Mrs Gandhi has been the architect of two general election victories; her role as party chief and silent front-bench MP was incompatible with her real status. During UPA1, she used the National Advisory Council (NAC) as the parent of social policy, with government as its nurse. Implicit was the unmentioned recognition of Dr Singh as an apolitical Prime Minister who needed support systems from the political class. Egos can get easily ruffled in such a balance of power, but one of Dr Singh’s remarkable characteristics is the ability to keep his ego so effectively disguised that no one is totally sure if he has one.
Dr Singh’s ego is still heavily veiled, despite the fact that the lottery winner of UPA1 has evolved into the unquestioned Prime Minister of UPA2. But his government has been prone to problems and drift. Oddly, while Dr Singh is more assertive with bureaucrats, he has become meeker towards politicians. Hands-on and hands-off are calibrated very carefully in the capital. NAC2 does not strengthen Mrs Gandhi because no one questioned her power before she revived it. It does, however, weaken the UPA2 Prime Minister, who should not need support systems after six years in office. Perception is an important element of power, since reality is opaque. Delhi reads body language far more astutely than any script. The Prime Minister has complained about empty chairs at Cabinet meetings. This is not because missing Cabinet ministers are busy serving the nation with their last drop of blood. They simply do not care.
Would they have been absent from a Sonia Gandhi Cabinet meeting?
Dr Singh has been bled by the fact that three initiatives identified with him -- Indo-US relations, peace with Pakistan, and economic reform -- have stalled. Pakistan has snubbed India on terrorism and laughed its way to American and Chinese banks and arsenals. Obama gave dinner to Dr Singh and strategic partnership to General Kayani. China has offered advice to Delhi and two nuclear plants, with 82% financing, to Islamabad, even as it tries to pick up the Iranian gas project and turns it north via Pakistan with a $2.5 billion investment. Dr Singh stalled the Iran-Pak-India gas pipeline to appease Washington; Pakistan has no such fears.
For five years Dr Singh accused the Left of sabotaging economic reforms. Well, the Left has sabotaged itself; where are the reforms?
The Congress, necessarily sensitive to public opinion, has launched a guerrilla war against the government’s civilian nuclear liability bill, currently trapped between a rock called Parliament and a hard place called the American nuclear industry. A resurrected NAC confirms the distance between party, which has to win elections, and government, which has to run the country. Its members, personally chosen by Mrs Gandhi, will function as a virtual politburo, setting a populist agenda and challenging the executive to find the resources, management skills and delivery systems for implementation.
Is it too early for Mrs Gandhi to worry about an election scheduled for 2014? She is clearly trying to bridge the gap between confidence and overconfidence. The women’s bill strengthened the party but weakened the government. Lalu Prasad, expert at mordant similes, notes that it takes only four people to carry a corpse to the burning ghat and he has four MPs. The government is not in danger, merely hobbled by an uncertainty that will be exploited by the Opposition during every Parliament session. It is never too early to worry.
The banana skin was the spat with Amitabh Bachchan. The Congress pontificated while people were laughing. When you have acne, you do tend to get cross when a smile may be all that is necessary.
Saturday, April 03, 2010
Beware a Comedy of Mirrors
Byline by M J Akbar: Beware a Comedy of Mirrors
A comedy of errors is a minor fracas. We have all been there. But beware the comedy of mirrors, when you don’t get what you see — or, worse, you don’t see what you get.
Sania Mirza and Shoaib Malik have known “true love”, or one of its many transitory manifestations, before, otherwise the first would not have got engaged and the second would not have got married earlier. There is another lady in Hyderabad, Ayesha, who is displaying a nikahnama as proof of an earlier Malik marriage. The Malik family is careful in its response, describing the document as invalid rather than a forgery. But they are safe, since there is no legal hitch to the Shoaib-Sania wedding: Muslim men can marry four times in Pakistan (or, indeed, in India). Sania recently celebrated her engagement to a childhood friend who turned out, on closer inspection, to be maritally challenged.
Shakespeare took care, when writing Romeo and Juliet, to make them about 15 years of age, in the middle of their teens. You have to be gloriously naïve to die for love. Adults live for love, and hope for sustainable compatibility in marriage. It is ironic that the term “Romeo” has acquired connotations of promiscuity when the actual chap was the very model of high romance and fidelity.
Shoaib is 30, and certainly not a Shakespearean Romeo, either in age or temperament. At 30 the original Romeo would have had a son looking around for his own Juliet. Sania has surely factored in the possibility that her soon-to-be-husband might have been a modern rather than an old-fashioned Romeo. But that is a meaningless quibble. She is perfectly aware of the implications of her decision, including the fact that she is marrying a Pakistani. She has every right to make a personal choice that transcends nationality, but she must indulge in the luxury of illusions.
There are other issues, etched in the sexual subconscious of the subcontinent, some of which can barely be mentioned in print but resonate through a mass psychology created by subsets of false arrogance. Signals will be read into television images once the drama is given its visuals.
Sania and Shoaib are stellar magnets for the media, and their marriage will be a public event with repercussions and interpretations beyond their mutual relationship. Pakistani tennis authorities have already made a claim on her; although we have not been told whether Pakistan’s morality monitors have endorsed the short skirts and T-shirts Sania wears on tennis courts. Her mother-in-law, apparently, has already said that such sartorial minimalism is not her preferred taste. India has no problems with skirts, but it might have one with such mothers-in-law.
Love is about wives and husbands; marriage is about mothers-in-law. Fed with the adrenalin of illusion, it is easy to rush in where angels dare to tread. In your happy delirium you do not notice that the honeymoon has been named after a moon, and a moon wanes after it waxes — and if you are not careful, disappears behind a cloud. Sania’s first serious lunar probe should be to find out whether she has become a wife or a trophy wife. This would apply on both the individual and collective level.
Shoaib Malik’s track record is not very encouraging, if his “alleged” first wife Ayesha is to be believed. It was a marriage, apparently, made in a telephone bhavan, since the nikah was solemnised over long-distance phone on 3 June 2002. Ayesha’s photographs in which she seemed slim, it seems, entranced Shoaib. According to Ayesha, she was dumped when he discovered that she was fat. Shoaib contests this. But it would be unusual for a conventional Indian woman to invent a high-profile accusation of such a sensitive nature. In any case, the relevant point for Sania is not the weight of an allegation that may or may not be true, but the weight of the reason. If Ayesha’s problem was the difference between pose and adipose, I hope, for her sake, that Sania is immune to rising fat levels in her body.
Equally, for her sake, I hope Sania has not become a trophy wife for her husband’s country.
Sania still believes that she can continue to be a citizen of India. This is correct in theory; the practice might be another story. India and Pakistan do not permit dual citizenship. Pakistan law demands that if a citizen’s spouse wants to live in the country, he or she must become a Pakistani citizen. A subcontinent mother-in-law might wonder why her son’s wife can only meet her with permission from the Government. And Sania would need a separate passport booklet only for Pak visas. For the couple, Dubai will be a residence, not a home. Sania and Shoaib are sports professionals. Their flutter with the limelight is lucrative, but brief. Their children will need a nationality, and, unless they shift to London or America, they will be Pakistani. Sania is welcome to whatever future she has fashioned for herself, but she should not fool herself into believing that she can marry a Pakistani and retain the rights and privileges of an Indian. On 11 April Sania Mirza will acquire the right to become a citizen of Pakistan, with its mother-in-law’s dress codes. She should grasp the opportunity. Why the reluctance?
A comedy of errors is a minor fracas. We have all been there. But beware the comedy of mirrors, when you don’t get what you see — or, worse, you don’t see what you get.
Sania Mirza and Shoaib Malik have known “true love”, or one of its many transitory manifestations, before, otherwise the first would not have got engaged and the second would not have got married earlier. There is another lady in Hyderabad, Ayesha, who is displaying a nikahnama as proof of an earlier Malik marriage. The Malik family is careful in its response, describing the document as invalid rather than a forgery. But they are safe, since there is no legal hitch to the Shoaib-Sania wedding: Muslim men can marry four times in Pakistan (or, indeed, in India). Sania recently celebrated her engagement to a childhood friend who turned out, on closer inspection, to be maritally challenged.
Shakespeare took care, when writing Romeo and Juliet, to make them about 15 years of age, in the middle of their teens. You have to be gloriously naïve to die for love. Adults live for love, and hope for sustainable compatibility in marriage. It is ironic that the term “Romeo” has acquired connotations of promiscuity when the actual chap was the very model of high romance and fidelity.
Shoaib is 30, and certainly not a Shakespearean Romeo, either in age or temperament. At 30 the original Romeo would have had a son looking around for his own Juliet. Sania has surely factored in the possibility that her soon-to-be-husband might have been a modern rather than an old-fashioned Romeo. But that is a meaningless quibble. She is perfectly aware of the implications of her decision, including the fact that she is marrying a Pakistani. She has every right to make a personal choice that transcends nationality, but she must indulge in the luxury of illusions.
There are other issues, etched in the sexual subconscious of the subcontinent, some of which can barely be mentioned in print but resonate through a mass psychology created by subsets of false arrogance. Signals will be read into television images once the drama is given its visuals.
Sania and Shoaib are stellar magnets for the media, and their marriage will be a public event with repercussions and interpretations beyond their mutual relationship. Pakistani tennis authorities have already made a claim on her; although we have not been told whether Pakistan’s morality monitors have endorsed the short skirts and T-shirts Sania wears on tennis courts. Her mother-in-law, apparently, has already said that such sartorial minimalism is not her preferred taste. India has no problems with skirts, but it might have one with such mothers-in-law.
Love is about wives and husbands; marriage is about mothers-in-law. Fed with the adrenalin of illusion, it is easy to rush in where angels dare to tread. In your happy delirium you do not notice that the honeymoon has been named after a moon, and a moon wanes after it waxes — and if you are not careful, disappears behind a cloud. Sania’s first serious lunar probe should be to find out whether she has become a wife or a trophy wife. This would apply on both the individual and collective level.
Shoaib Malik’s track record is not very encouraging, if his “alleged” first wife Ayesha is to be believed. It was a marriage, apparently, made in a telephone bhavan, since the nikah was solemnised over long-distance phone on 3 June 2002. Ayesha’s photographs in which she seemed slim, it seems, entranced Shoaib. According to Ayesha, she was dumped when he discovered that she was fat. Shoaib contests this. But it would be unusual for a conventional Indian woman to invent a high-profile accusation of such a sensitive nature. In any case, the relevant point for Sania is not the weight of an allegation that may or may not be true, but the weight of the reason. If Ayesha’s problem was the difference between pose and adipose, I hope, for her sake, that Sania is immune to rising fat levels in her body.
Equally, for her sake, I hope Sania has not become a trophy wife for her husband’s country.
Sania still believes that she can continue to be a citizen of India. This is correct in theory; the practice might be another story. India and Pakistan do not permit dual citizenship. Pakistan law demands that if a citizen’s spouse wants to live in the country, he or she must become a Pakistani citizen. A subcontinent mother-in-law might wonder why her son’s wife can only meet her with permission from the Government. And Sania would need a separate passport booklet only for Pak visas. For the couple, Dubai will be a residence, not a home. Sania and Shoaib are sports professionals. Their flutter with the limelight is lucrative, but brief. Their children will need a nationality, and, unless they shift to London or America, they will be Pakistani. Sania is welcome to whatever future she has fashioned for herself, but she should not fool herself into believing that she can marry a Pakistani and retain the rights and privileges of an Indian. On 11 April Sania Mirza will acquire the right to become a citizen of Pakistan, with its mother-in-law’s dress codes. She should grasp the opportunity. Why the reluctance?
Sunday, March 28, 2010
Ask Headley for a full 26/11 List
Ask Headley for a full 26/11 List
By M J Akbar
David Coleman Headley alias Daood Gilani alias Whoknowswhat has been floating through multiple loyalties and their obverse, multiple betrayals, diligently obedient to the basic laws of post-modern treachery. He may not have been top-of-the-class: Daood is only the Arabic form of David. But he survived because he learnt the rules and stuck to them.
The rules establish the relationship between agency-controller and pretend-puppet. The spymaster believes that only evidence of loyalty to the enemy can ensure reasonable accuracy of information from an agent — double, triple or quadruple. This is clearly more complicated than the Cold War ruse of bait-trap-turn-burn that exhausted the intelligence agencies, and sometimes the intelligence, of superpowers.
The double agent is passé in a war that has risen above the demands, limitations and advantages of nationalism. Nationalism offers the hope, however thin, of protection in a crisis. But the stateless enemy is a frontier-less freebooter, working deals, finessing primary cause with subsidiary ventures. He is a contradiction, a high-moralist in his sense of self even as he short sells to all vendors with the glib ease of a snake-oil salesman.
This is not unknown to those who hold the strings and yet they continue the operation in the belief that the value of information, even if compromised, is worth the price of scattered lies. The freebooter has a vested interest in many masters and multi-layered deceit because complicity with all sides is his only guarantee of safety on the day of exposure, a possibility that can drive even the best to paranoia. If he is not killed before capture, then his tongue is a threat to those who cannot afford to be public about what they do in private.
Headley must be relieved that he is still alive and in the custody of those who had something to gain from him when he was a conduit through turbulent crosscurrents. He sold America to terrorists and terrorists to America and both thought they had a bargain. Facts are still at a premium, so we can only guess as to which American agencies he dealt with, although one would have to be particularly stupid to guess wrongly. Headley would not have managed the “plea bargain” that keeps him safe from Indian authorities without a nod from someone powerful in the Washington system.
It is only logical that Pakistan-born Headley should prefer an American jail to an Indian one. We did not catch him on his five trips to India to help plan 26/11, so America obviously gets first rights on his future. But since Headley was involved in 26/11, those rights cannot be exclusive. Would America have been content with a one-time interrogation if India had caught an al-Qaida leader who had done five reconnaissance missions in the States in order to facilitate 9/11? Unlikely.
So we must ask the obvious question: why is it so important for America to keep Headley in America? Headley was picked up for plotting to murder a Danish cartoonist, and confessed his role in 26/11. The main aggrieved, therefore, are Danes and Indians; India has a stronger case for repatriation since the Danish plot never fructified, while 26/11 happened.
There was no crime committed or intended on American soil, but America insists Headley will not leave its soil. (Pakistan does not want him.) No intelligence agency willingly hands over control of an asset unless compelled to; even America and Britain have not extended intelligence-sharing to total transparency. Relations between American and Indian agencies are mature enough to have survived the discovery of two CIA agents in Delhi’s services, including one posted to the PMO. So they should see through this problem too.
India will get a structured, monitored, time-specific opportunity to question Headley, if only to appease public anger. What should Indians sleuths ask? Delhi needs a sharp scalpel, not the thermometer we keep for friends, constantly measuring sentiment.
It would be a waste of time to record what is known. Headley will be an invaluable source for details about the past: the LeT, its allies, its systems, plans and links with the Pakistan establishment. But the vital question is: who knew, during the planning process, about the Mumbai terror attacks and when did they know it? Headley was an informant: whom did he inform?
James Bond is dead, along with clarity; his was an age in which you shot straight or got killed, and the story ended. By the time we reached John le Carre’s icy war of the 1960s and 1970s, the end had been replaced by a sequel. Bond knew who his friends were; le Carre’s Smiley had no idea who his enemies might be. India has no shortage of enemies. Among them is silence.
By M J Akbar
David Coleman Headley alias Daood Gilani alias Whoknowswhat has been floating through multiple loyalties and their obverse, multiple betrayals, diligently obedient to the basic laws of post-modern treachery. He may not have been top-of-the-class: Daood is only the Arabic form of David. But he survived because he learnt the rules and stuck to them.
The rules establish the relationship between agency-controller and pretend-puppet. The spymaster believes that only evidence of loyalty to the enemy can ensure reasonable accuracy of information from an agent — double, triple or quadruple. This is clearly more complicated than the Cold War ruse of bait-trap-turn-burn that exhausted the intelligence agencies, and sometimes the intelligence, of superpowers.
The double agent is passé in a war that has risen above the demands, limitations and advantages of nationalism. Nationalism offers the hope, however thin, of protection in a crisis. But the stateless enemy is a frontier-less freebooter, working deals, finessing primary cause with subsidiary ventures. He is a contradiction, a high-moralist in his sense of self even as he short sells to all vendors with the glib ease of a snake-oil salesman.
This is not unknown to those who hold the strings and yet they continue the operation in the belief that the value of information, even if compromised, is worth the price of scattered lies. The freebooter has a vested interest in many masters and multi-layered deceit because complicity with all sides is his only guarantee of safety on the day of exposure, a possibility that can drive even the best to paranoia. If he is not killed before capture, then his tongue is a threat to those who cannot afford to be public about what they do in private.
Headley must be relieved that he is still alive and in the custody of those who had something to gain from him when he was a conduit through turbulent crosscurrents. He sold America to terrorists and terrorists to America and both thought they had a bargain. Facts are still at a premium, so we can only guess as to which American agencies he dealt with, although one would have to be particularly stupid to guess wrongly. Headley would not have managed the “plea bargain” that keeps him safe from Indian authorities without a nod from someone powerful in the Washington system.
It is only logical that Pakistan-born Headley should prefer an American jail to an Indian one. We did not catch him on his five trips to India to help plan 26/11, so America obviously gets first rights on his future. But since Headley was involved in 26/11, those rights cannot be exclusive. Would America have been content with a one-time interrogation if India had caught an al-Qaida leader who had done five reconnaissance missions in the States in order to facilitate 9/11? Unlikely.
So we must ask the obvious question: why is it so important for America to keep Headley in America? Headley was picked up for plotting to murder a Danish cartoonist, and confessed his role in 26/11. The main aggrieved, therefore, are Danes and Indians; India has a stronger case for repatriation since the Danish plot never fructified, while 26/11 happened.
There was no crime committed or intended on American soil, but America insists Headley will not leave its soil. (Pakistan does not want him.) No intelligence agency willingly hands over control of an asset unless compelled to; even America and Britain have not extended intelligence-sharing to total transparency. Relations between American and Indian agencies are mature enough to have survived the discovery of two CIA agents in Delhi’s services, including one posted to the PMO. So they should see through this problem too.
India will get a structured, monitored, time-specific opportunity to question Headley, if only to appease public anger. What should Indians sleuths ask? Delhi needs a sharp scalpel, not the thermometer we keep for friends, constantly measuring sentiment.
It would be a waste of time to record what is known. Headley will be an invaluable source for details about the past: the LeT, its allies, its systems, plans and links with the Pakistan establishment. But the vital question is: who knew, during the planning process, about the Mumbai terror attacks and when did they know it? Headley was an informant: whom did he inform?
James Bond is dead, along with clarity; his was an age in which you shot straight or got killed, and the story ended. By the time we reached John le Carre’s icy war of the 1960s and 1970s, the end had been replaced by a sequel. Bond knew who his friends were; le Carre’s Smiley had no idea who his enemies might be. India has no shortage of enemies. Among them is silence.
Saturday, March 27, 2010
Politicians don’t get stiff necks
Byline by M J Akbar: Politicians don’t get stiff necks
Which is the bigger crime in politics, hypocrisy or stupidity? On careful consideration it must be the second, since hypocrisy is not merely useful but often necessary. Only a very foolish minister or Member of Parliament would tell his or her constituents that the petition scribbled on an untidy piece of paper is either meaningless or untenable. A good politician never gets a stiff neck, because he is constantly exercising it downwards, nodding yes vigorously when what he really wants to indicate is a calm and decorous no.
Hypocrisy can be, in specific circumstances, productive. Stupidity is always counterproductive. Maharashtra Chief Minister Ashok Chavan opted for stupidity when Congress leaders began to pile upon him, obviously after instructions from the top, after he was civil to Amitabh Bachchan during the second opening of the Bandra sealink in Mumbai. (In the old days, inaugurations used to come in two varieties: either they were fraudulent exercises in laying a foundation stone when there was no prospect of anything being built later. Or they were one-off affairs in which a grandee cut a ribbon, smiled for the cameras, made a speech and went home. Now they are designed for multiplier effect; the same project keeps getting re-opened in parts.)
Under attack, Chavan claimed that he would never have gone to the function had he been aware that Amitabh, an international superstar for two generations, had been invited. This makes two things clear: the Chief Minister of Maharashtra does not read newspapers; and his security detail doesn’t mention who will be beside him at a high profile event. He also expects you and I to believe this. When you set out to tell a lie, you should at least have the decency to tell an intelligent one.
The trouble with public functions is that there are pesky photographers and they take pictures. They wait for the moment when you are animated and smiling; it makes for a better picture. Chavan was doing both as he sat shoulder to shoulder with Amitabh. There was nothing to suggest that he considered Amitabh toxic, somewhere between contagious flu and bubonic plague. Both Amitabh and Chavan were, in fact, being courteous and decent, which is what, I am sure they are as human beings. Amitabh continued to exhibit those qualities after the event; politics dragged Chavan into a bog.
The Congress rationale for bad manners is that Amitabh has agreed to be a brand ambassador for Gujarat by promoting the state’s tourism, and was photographed in the company of Narendra Modi. Fine, but why is such political morality an exclusive exercise? There has been no such diktat about Ratan Tata, who not only took land on handsome terms from Narendra Modi for his Nano project but praised Modi as just the kind of Chief Minister he likes. Many industrialists are as close to Modi and the BJP as they are to Congress, and this is not taken personally.
In any case, it ill behoves a party to take a moral stand when it protects a Sajjan Kumar for nearly three decades, and still manages to ensure, through its control of the executive, soft and biased treatment by the police. Modi must be held accountable for the unforgiveable Gujarat riots, and there must be constant pressure on the judicial process to hasten what has been, so far, only a slow and winding route to his doorstep. But it has at least been faster than the journey after the anti-Sikh riots.
There is a rational reason why Ratan Tata, or any other industrialist, cannot be condemned for sitting in the same frame as Modi. No one in his senses expects a businessman to stop investing in Gujarat just because Modi is Chief Minister. Democracy has processes through which crime and punishment are measured. Businessmen will not pass judgement at the expense of their balance sheets.
The only regrettable element in this overblown and completely unnecessary fracas is that a public event has been vitiated by personal preferences. This destroys the culture of democracy. Politics provides for wide leeway. Is it secular for Sharad Pawar, for instance, to call on Bal Thackeray with a bunch of flowers and should that be the cause of a rupture in the Congress-NCP alliance in Maharashtra? Even Muslim voters, who have no sympathy for any Thackeray, would laugh at such silly dogmatism.
Ashok Chavan would have done himself a lot of good had he simply told the truth in a controversy where truth served him best. All he needed to say was that he had not sent out the invitations; and that he had been taught the virtue of good manners, which require civil behaviour. He was not offering Amitabh Bachchan a place in his Cabinet; he was only conversing with a man whose films he had seen and enjoyed, and who has, through his screen presence, become a worldwide icon. But that would have required self-confidence and self-belief. Neither can be purchased off the shelf.
Which is the bigger crime in politics, hypocrisy or stupidity? On careful consideration it must be the second, since hypocrisy is not merely useful but often necessary. Only a very foolish minister or Member of Parliament would tell his or her constituents that the petition scribbled on an untidy piece of paper is either meaningless or untenable. A good politician never gets a stiff neck, because he is constantly exercising it downwards, nodding yes vigorously when what he really wants to indicate is a calm and decorous no.
Hypocrisy can be, in specific circumstances, productive. Stupidity is always counterproductive. Maharashtra Chief Minister Ashok Chavan opted for stupidity when Congress leaders began to pile upon him, obviously after instructions from the top, after he was civil to Amitabh Bachchan during the second opening of the Bandra sealink in Mumbai. (In the old days, inaugurations used to come in two varieties: either they were fraudulent exercises in laying a foundation stone when there was no prospect of anything being built later. Or they were one-off affairs in which a grandee cut a ribbon, smiled for the cameras, made a speech and went home. Now they are designed for multiplier effect; the same project keeps getting re-opened in parts.)
Under attack, Chavan claimed that he would never have gone to the function had he been aware that Amitabh, an international superstar for two generations, had been invited. This makes two things clear: the Chief Minister of Maharashtra does not read newspapers; and his security detail doesn’t mention who will be beside him at a high profile event. He also expects you and I to believe this. When you set out to tell a lie, you should at least have the decency to tell an intelligent one.
The trouble with public functions is that there are pesky photographers and they take pictures. They wait for the moment when you are animated and smiling; it makes for a better picture. Chavan was doing both as he sat shoulder to shoulder with Amitabh. There was nothing to suggest that he considered Amitabh toxic, somewhere between contagious flu and bubonic plague. Both Amitabh and Chavan were, in fact, being courteous and decent, which is what, I am sure they are as human beings. Amitabh continued to exhibit those qualities after the event; politics dragged Chavan into a bog.
The Congress rationale for bad manners is that Amitabh has agreed to be a brand ambassador for Gujarat by promoting the state’s tourism, and was photographed in the company of Narendra Modi. Fine, but why is such political morality an exclusive exercise? There has been no such diktat about Ratan Tata, who not only took land on handsome terms from Narendra Modi for his Nano project but praised Modi as just the kind of Chief Minister he likes. Many industrialists are as close to Modi and the BJP as they are to Congress, and this is not taken personally.
In any case, it ill behoves a party to take a moral stand when it protects a Sajjan Kumar for nearly three decades, and still manages to ensure, through its control of the executive, soft and biased treatment by the police. Modi must be held accountable for the unforgiveable Gujarat riots, and there must be constant pressure on the judicial process to hasten what has been, so far, only a slow and winding route to his doorstep. But it has at least been faster than the journey after the anti-Sikh riots.
There is a rational reason why Ratan Tata, or any other industrialist, cannot be condemned for sitting in the same frame as Modi. No one in his senses expects a businessman to stop investing in Gujarat just because Modi is Chief Minister. Democracy has processes through which crime and punishment are measured. Businessmen will not pass judgement at the expense of their balance sheets.
The only regrettable element in this overblown and completely unnecessary fracas is that a public event has been vitiated by personal preferences. This destroys the culture of democracy. Politics provides for wide leeway. Is it secular for Sharad Pawar, for instance, to call on Bal Thackeray with a bunch of flowers and should that be the cause of a rupture in the Congress-NCP alliance in Maharashtra? Even Muslim voters, who have no sympathy for any Thackeray, would laugh at such silly dogmatism.
Ashok Chavan would have done himself a lot of good had he simply told the truth in a controversy where truth served him best. All he needed to say was that he had not sent out the invitations; and that he had been taught the virtue of good manners, which require civil behaviour. He was not offering Amitabh Bachchan a place in his Cabinet; he was only conversing with a man whose films he had seen and enjoyed, and who has, through his screen presence, become a worldwide icon. But that would have required self-confidence and self-belief. Neither can be purchased off the shelf.
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Give Credit to Mayawati for her Candour
Give Credit to Mayawati for her Candour
By M J Akbar
How much anger can one provoke on a lazy Sunday morning by offering a single cheer to Mayawati, whose latest version of jewellery is cash garlands? Judging by the vehemence of cartoons, quite a lot. Mayawati never fails to irritate the English Indian, being the antithesis of its political, behavioural and psychological preferences. But pause, rewind, and reconsider: surely Mayawati deserves at least a ‘C’ (following the new grading system of examinations) for candour. She is doing in sunlight what her peers do in the privacy of the drawing room. Moreover, this money is from party faithful, not lobbyists handing out black money in return for favours taken or due.
We cannot upgrade Mayawati to two or three cheers, since she is probably not averse to drawing-room deals either, but there is something to be said for this undisguised pot-shot at the hypocrisy that sprinkles weak perfume over the pervasive stink at the heart of Indian democracy. Politics has become expensive, and politicians spoilt. Those shocked by the thought of Rs 5 crore should order some wake-up pills: that kind of money buys you a few packets of peanuts in conventional party politics.
Mayawati never provokes her antagonists by accident. It is conscious and deliberate. She represents the third stage of Dalit empowerment, a process that began before independence under the charismatic leadership of that true intellectual giant, B R Ambedkar. Ambedkar’s rage against untouchability led him to seek separate political space in British India. However, he realized that his best option, at that stage of history, was accommodation: his Pune pact with Mahatma Gandhi in 1932 ensured Dalits the reservations that became a springboard for political evolution.
Kanshi Ram took the next quantum leap forward when he ripped apart the Gandhian dialectic as patronizing, and initiated the rescue of Dalits from the comatose embrace of Congress. It is quite astonishing that we can no longer legally use the term that Gandhi coined for Dalits. Kanshi Ram confronted the establishment and transformed Indian politics. His heir Mayawati has built on that transformation to seize power without allies through the electoral system, a prospect that would have been dismissed as fantasy even in the 1990s. She has done so by diluting confrontation to provocation.
Challenge is the noun and verb of the rhetoric of anger. When Mayawati flaunts her public or personal riches, she is sending a message to her own constituency, that wealth is a source of power, and power is no longer the monopoly of a traditional elite that has brutalized Dalits for thousands of years. She displays contempt for the “legality” that has kept her community socially enslaved and economically impoverished; and scorn for a system in which dominant parties can be flush with hidden cash while she must become answerable for each rupee. She is levelling the playing field with a brazen display, because brazen is as good for her as secrecy is for others. If the CBI were honest enough to probe just how much all political leaders — all, across the spectrum, including Mayawati — spent on private jets, we would get some very revealing facts and figures.
Her dilemma is the familiar balancing act; the demographics of every constituency ensure that she needs the support of others for victory. She has a potential ally in Muslims, but there are many claimants to the Muslim vote. She needs some working relationship with UP’s Brahmins, and there is always the danger that her provocations will be perceived as confrontation. A government is not re-elected on the basis of a rally; it is measured by the quality of governance. A rally merely reassures the faithful. Sensible rule encourages the expansion of faith.
Do not underestimate, however, a notable point: not a rupee from the Mayawati garland lost its way along the journey from collection to knit to neck and then her safe. Cash garlands are a familiar form of tribute in India, whether to bridegroom or politician, but that does not make them foolproof. Last week, Ejaz Ali, former JD (U) MP who became famous beyond his hometown, Patna, after his protests against the women’s bill, was welcomed with a cash garland at Patna airport. They were not, admittedly, 1,000-rupee notes, but a hundred rupees buys more than a meal in Bihar. Alas, by the time the garland reached the recipient it was no longer a cash garland. The cash had been ripped off. Mark this down to the ideological purity of Biharis. This was an instinctive display of Marxist-Leninist principles: from each according to his ability, to each according to his need, without interference from any intermediary. The money had come from those willing to pay, and gone to the needy, leaving the politician laden with honour and light of cash. Perfect.
Appeared in Times of India - March 21, 2010
By M J Akbar
How much anger can one provoke on a lazy Sunday morning by offering a single cheer to Mayawati, whose latest version of jewellery is cash garlands? Judging by the vehemence of cartoons, quite a lot. Mayawati never fails to irritate the English Indian, being the antithesis of its political, behavioural and psychological preferences. But pause, rewind, and reconsider: surely Mayawati deserves at least a ‘C’ (following the new grading system of examinations) for candour. She is doing in sunlight what her peers do in the privacy of the drawing room. Moreover, this money is from party faithful, not lobbyists handing out black money in return for favours taken or due.
We cannot upgrade Mayawati to two or three cheers, since she is probably not averse to drawing-room deals either, but there is something to be said for this undisguised pot-shot at the hypocrisy that sprinkles weak perfume over the pervasive stink at the heart of Indian democracy. Politics has become expensive, and politicians spoilt. Those shocked by the thought of Rs 5 crore should order some wake-up pills: that kind of money buys you a few packets of peanuts in conventional party politics.
Mayawati never provokes her antagonists by accident. It is conscious and deliberate. She represents the third stage of Dalit empowerment, a process that began before independence under the charismatic leadership of that true intellectual giant, B R Ambedkar. Ambedkar’s rage against untouchability led him to seek separate political space in British India. However, he realized that his best option, at that stage of history, was accommodation: his Pune pact with Mahatma Gandhi in 1932 ensured Dalits the reservations that became a springboard for political evolution.
Kanshi Ram took the next quantum leap forward when he ripped apart the Gandhian dialectic as patronizing, and initiated the rescue of Dalits from the comatose embrace of Congress. It is quite astonishing that we can no longer legally use the term that Gandhi coined for Dalits. Kanshi Ram confronted the establishment and transformed Indian politics. His heir Mayawati has built on that transformation to seize power without allies through the electoral system, a prospect that would have been dismissed as fantasy even in the 1990s. She has done so by diluting confrontation to provocation.
Challenge is the noun and verb of the rhetoric of anger. When Mayawati flaunts her public or personal riches, she is sending a message to her own constituency, that wealth is a source of power, and power is no longer the monopoly of a traditional elite that has brutalized Dalits for thousands of years. She displays contempt for the “legality” that has kept her community socially enslaved and economically impoverished; and scorn for a system in which dominant parties can be flush with hidden cash while she must become answerable for each rupee. She is levelling the playing field with a brazen display, because brazen is as good for her as secrecy is for others. If the CBI were honest enough to probe just how much all political leaders — all, across the spectrum, including Mayawati — spent on private jets, we would get some very revealing facts and figures.
Her dilemma is the familiar balancing act; the demographics of every constituency ensure that she needs the support of others for victory. She has a potential ally in Muslims, but there are many claimants to the Muslim vote. She needs some working relationship with UP’s Brahmins, and there is always the danger that her provocations will be perceived as confrontation. A government is not re-elected on the basis of a rally; it is measured by the quality of governance. A rally merely reassures the faithful. Sensible rule encourages the expansion of faith.
Do not underestimate, however, a notable point: not a rupee from the Mayawati garland lost its way along the journey from collection to knit to neck and then her safe. Cash garlands are a familiar form of tribute in India, whether to bridegroom or politician, but that does not make them foolproof. Last week, Ejaz Ali, former JD (U) MP who became famous beyond his hometown, Patna, after his protests against the women’s bill, was welcomed with a cash garland at Patna airport. They were not, admittedly, 1,000-rupee notes, but a hundred rupees buys more than a meal in Bihar. Alas, by the time the garland reached the recipient it was no longer a cash garland. The cash had been ripped off. Mark this down to the ideological purity of Biharis. This was an instinctive display of Marxist-Leninist principles: from each according to his ability, to each according to his need, without interference from any intermediary. The money had come from those willing to pay, and gone to the needy, leaving the politician laden with honour and light of cash. Perfect.
Appeared in Times of India - March 21, 2010
Saturday, March 20, 2010
Little Pakistan’s big India problem
Byline by M J Akbar: Little Pakistan’s big India problem
Pakistan’s India policy is nurtured by a fundamental principle: Pakistan is always right. The obverse assumption is, but naturally, that India is always in the wrong, and gets away because of its size. The conflation between size and strength is meaningless and unhistorical, but remarkably effective. Britain was less than the size of a medium-level principality of the Indian subcontinent, and it ruled half the world.
Grievance is a wide canvas, creating elbow room even for the unacceptable. In this Pakistani logic, even cross-border terrorism becomes India’s fault since its “root cause” is Indian injustice towards the Muslims of the Kashmir valley. History becomes the story of lament, and if facts do not suit the lament then facts must be suitably altered. Little mention is made therefore of the fact that it was Pakistan which began the war on Kashmir within six weeks of freedom; this was the first foreign policy decision taken by independent Pakistan, on the assumption that it could seize what it wanted while India remained comatose. The reality is that if there had been no Pak-sponsored invasion in 1947, the status of Kashmir would have been settled through negotiations by 1948, probably through some form of partition. There would have been no Kashmir problem.
There are two starting points to history as written by Islamabad: Kashmir in 1947 and Bangladesh in 1971. The first exonerates cross-border terrorism; the second is used to explain Islamabad’s need for “strategic depth”, which, in effect, means Pak control of Kabul without interference from India. Once again, the military defeat of Pakistan and birth of Bangladesh is “big” India’s fault. The sequence of events from Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s spectacular victory in the general elections to the massacre of Bengali civilians in East Pakistan and the consequent arrival of millions of refugees into India is excised from public memory. These are not academic issues; they impinge on current objectives creating tensions, as for instance in Afghanistan.
Any nation’s foreign policy must keep space for flexibility, and therefore cannot be bound to a specific pattern, but its contours are always evident. The world’s powers and superpowers cannot be indifferent to India-Pakistan relations, not only because the two neighbours have nuclear weapons, but also because they are involved in a critical battle zone of the next decade. America and Britain would be happy to see peace between India and Pakistan, not because it is a good thing in itself, but also because it is in their interest to release Pakistan from confrontation with India so that it can concentrate on the confrontation with their foes in Af-Pak region. Their need for Pakistan makes them add to their historical ambivalence about a core problem, the terms on which this peace can be arranged. It would suit them to see a more compliant India, even though, on paper, India is closer to Anglo-America’s definition of terrorism than Pakistan’s. Washington and London, therefore, have to negotiate each decision, whether on policy framework or specifics like Headley, through a complex web of immediate necessity, medium-term options and long-term horizon. Contradictions are inevitable.
Russia, aware of its post-Soviet limitations, but determined to pursue its interests in Iran, Central Asia and Afghanistan to the extent possible, would prefer a greater convergence of Russia-India objectives on terrorism as well as national priorities in South, Central and West Asia. The revival of a military equation between these two powers is evidence of shared goals. The reasons are not the same, for the world is radically different, but the impulses and intellectual reasoning that brought India close to the Soviet Union are again in play within the India-Russia relationship. Russia would be happy at a resolution in South Asia, but with its tilt towards Delhi.
China is the one regional power that has no interest in Indo-Pak peace, and as long as China remains Pakistan’s all-weather benefactor, a settlement is unlikely. Pakistan’s self-image, painted with the brush of lament, suits China perfectly, because it can outsource a substantive part of its competition/confrontation with India to Pakistan. China and Pakistan offer a vital service to each other, by improving mutual comfort levels. With China by its side, Pakistan can negate, psychologically, India’s “big” factor. China helped build Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal not only as reassurance, but also to stretch the nuclear confrontation from the north to the west. Pakistan is the nuclear hedge that China factors into its war games at a time when India is displaying the promise of economic resurgence and military potential.
Diplomats and their political guardians are used to tiptoeing through minefields, but surely there is no region more explosive than the stretch between North India, Iran and Central Asia. West Asia has dangerous triggers of course, but only one side, Israel, has nuclear arms. (This could change, of course, if Iran goes nuclear, a prospect that keeps the mood wintry in Washington and Tel Aviv.) The sheer danger of an unmanageable explosion should, in theory, make the imperative for an Indo-Pak settlement that much more urgent. In practice, the absence of minimal trust, and the competition of a widening arc of national interests, keeps India and Pakistan frozen in a winter of despair.
Pakistan’s India policy is nurtured by a fundamental principle: Pakistan is always right. The obverse assumption is, but naturally, that India is always in the wrong, and gets away because of its size. The conflation between size and strength is meaningless and unhistorical, but remarkably effective. Britain was less than the size of a medium-level principality of the Indian subcontinent, and it ruled half the world.
Grievance is a wide canvas, creating elbow room even for the unacceptable. In this Pakistani logic, even cross-border terrorism becomes India’s fault since its “root cause” is Indian injustice towards the Muslims of the Kashmir valley. History becomes the story of lament, and if facts do not suit the lament then facts must be suitably altered. Little mention is made therefore of the fact that it was Pakistan which began the war on Kashmir within six weeks of freedom; this was the first foreign policy decision taken by independent Pakistan, on the assumption that it could seize what it wanted while India remained comatose. The reality is that if there had been no Pak-sponsored invasion in 1947, the status of Kashmir would have been settled through negotiations by 1948, probably through some form of partition. There would have been no Kashmir problem.
There are two starting points to history as written by Islamabad: Kashmir in 1947 and Bangladesh in 1971. The first exonerates cross-border terrorism; the second is used to explain Islamabad’s need for “strategic depth”, which, in effect, means Pak control of Kabul without interference from India. Once again, the military defeat of Pakistan and birth of Bangladesh is “big” India’s fault. The sequence of events from Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s spectacular victory in the general elections to the massacre of Bengali civilians in East Pakistan and the consequent arrival of millions of refugees into India is excised from public memory. These are not academic issues; they impinge on current objectives creating tensions, as for instance in Afghanistan.
Any nation’s foreign policy must keep space for flexibility, and therefore cannot be bound to a specific pattern, but its contours are always evident. The world’s powers and superpowers cannot be indifferent to India-Pakistan relations, not only because the two neighbours have nuclear weapons, but also because they are involved in a critical battle zone of the next decade. America and Britain would be happy to see peace between India and Pakistan, not because it is a good thing in itself, but also because it is in their interest to release Pakistan from confrontation with India so that it can concentrate on the confrontation with their foes in Af-Pak region. Their need for Pakistan makes them add to their historical ambivalence about a core problem, the terms on which this peace can be arranged. It would suit them to see a more compliant India, even though, on paper, India is closer to Anglo-America’s definition of terrorism than Pakistan’s. Washington and London, therefore, have to negotiate each decision, whether on policy framework or specifics like Headley, through a complex web of immediate necessity, medium-term options and long-term horizon. Contradictions are inevitable.
Russia, aware of its post-Soviet limitations, but determined to pursue its interests in Iran, Central Asia and Afghanistan to the extent possible, would prefer a greater convergence of Russia-India objectives on terrorism as well as national priorities in South, Central and West Asia. The revival of a military equation between these two powers is evidence of shared goals. The reasons are not the same, for the world is radically different, but the impulses and intellectual reasoning that brought India close to the Soviet Union are again in play within the India-Russia relationship. Russia would be happy at a resolution in South Asia, but with its tilt towards Delhi.
China is the one regional power that has no interest in Indo-Pak peace, and as long as China remains Pakistan’s all-weather benefactor, a settlement is unlikely. Pakistan’s self-image, painted with the brush of lament, suits China perfectly, because it can outsource a substantive part of its competition/confrontation with India to Pakistan. China and Pakistan offer a vital service to each other, by improving mutual comfort levels. With China by its side, Pakistan can negate, psychologically, India’s “big” factor. China helped build Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal not only as reassurance, but also to stretch the nuclear confrontation from the north to the west. Pakistan is the nuclear hedge that China factors into its war games at a time when India is displaying the promise of economic resurgence and military potential.
Diplomats and their political guardians are used to tiptoeing through minefields, but surely there is no region more explosive than the stretch between North India, Iran and Central Asia. West Asia has dangerous triggers of course, but only one side, Israel, has nuclear arms. (This could change, of course, if Iran goes nuclear, a prospect that keeps the mood wintry in Washington and Tel Aviv.) The sheer danger of an unmanageable explosion should, in theory, make the imperative for an Indo-Pak settlement that much more urgent. In practice, the absence of minimal trust, and the competition of a widening arc of national interests, keeps India and Pakistan frozen in a winter of despair.
Monday, March 15, 2010
Good Intentions cannot justify bad delivery
By M J Akbar
Enthusiasm is no substitute for clarity. The flaws in the Women’s Reservation Bill are not in the laudable intention but in the clogged delivery. The desire to be politically correct has overtaken the imperative to be politically sensible. Method and order, the favourite weapons of Hercule Poirot, might be usefully employed in analysis.
Why do women need reservation? Taken purely as a demographic identity, they constitute the most powerful force in electoral politics. Every second voter is a woman. If she were motivated purely by gender, the majority of MPs would already be women. Theory, alas, tends to have a cool, or even antagonistic, relationship with real life.
The basis on which a candidate is chosen, by any party, can be described in a single, if ungainly, word: winnability. The two most powerful women politicians in the country are in charge of Congress in Delhi; both, Mrs Sonia Gandhi and Mrs Sheila Dikshit, are also known for their secularism. They chose only one woman candidate out of seven, and not a single Muslim. Jagdish Tytler and Sajjan Kumar were offered as nominees, but their names were withdrawn when their “winnability” became doubtful. This is how politics is conducted. This is why the idea of women’s reservation gained momentum, because the “winnability” factor is neutralized when all legitimate candidates are women.
But women do not constitute a homogenous group, and all women are not equal. Just as men have the advantage over women in what should be a gender-neutral election to the Lok Sabha, some women have an in-built advantage over others, owing to caste or faith, or socio-economic factors. The logic that provides reservations for women also sustains the argument for sub-reservations. The principle is the same.
Empowerment must be the right of all women, not just some women. The argument that parties can always select candidates from a particular caste or faith, rather than do so under legal compulsion, does not hold. In the last six decades, no one has prevented the Congress or BJP from filling half their list with women, but they have not done so. Without sub-reservations, distributive justice will be trumped by “winnability” in women’s seats. Since this is a Constitutional amendment, rather than a simple Bill, provisions can be introduced to protect the legislation from being struck down in court.
A second structural flaw could further erode the already ebbing credibility of our parliamentary system.
The life-blood of our democracy is a covenant, a pact between elector and elected that the quid pro quo for the vote is service to the constituency. The quality of that service is an important (but not the only) factor in an MP’s re-election. This is the one big check that keeps a MP on some sort of practical leash.
The 108th Amendment envisages a rotational method of reservation that would make two-thirds of the Lok Sabha, or about 360 members, one-term MPs: 181 that will get reserved in an election, and the 181 male seats that will get reserved for women in the following election. Both categories, therefore, become one-term MPs. A woman MP can, of course, seek re-election by remaining in what will become a non-reserved seat, but that will be a rare exception.
Two-thirds of the Lok Sabha, therefore, will have no political incentive to serve its constituents. This, given prevailing levels of public morality, is a license to satisfy personal interests for the length of the term to MP and minister. The cynical response is that this hardly matters since MPs have become irrelevant to national development or even to their constituency’s welfare. If that is the level of degeneration, then we should abandon first-past-the-post parliamentary democracy and find another definition of democracy. Perhaps we can adopt a dual system in which two-thirds of MPs are elected on the basis of lists prepared by the party leaders, enabling them to send their chosen favourites to the House in direct proportion to the percentage of votes they have received.
The relationship between MP and voter can, thereby, be officially abandoned. This should make party bosses delirious.
The irony is that such flaws can be easily corrected, with some time and thought. Both have been absent from the process. The pro-reservation lobbies have employed hustle topped off by self-congratulation; those opposed think that explosions constitute an argument.
The former worked through cheerleaders in the media; the latter played to galleries beyond the media, and did so effectively. The Congress began to waver when the message from the second horizon began to permeate back to Delhi. The government was indifferent to the threat from political parties, but it could not remain immune to a threat from the voter. Empowerment of women is powerful and necessary objective, but the route map should be navigated with care.
Appeared in The Times of India - March 14, 2010
By M J Akbar
Enthusiasm is no substitute for clarity. The flaws in the Women’s Reservation Bill are not in the laudable intention but in the clogged delivery. The desire to be politically correct has overtaken the imperative to be politically sensible. Method and order, the favourite weapons of Hercule Poirot, might be usefully employed in analysis.
Why do women need reservation? Taken purely as a demographic identity, they constitute the most powerful force in electoral politics. Every second voter is a woman. If she were motivated purely by gender, the majority of MPs would already be women. Theory, alas, tends to have a cool, or even antagonistic, relationship with real life.
The basis on which a candidate is chosen, by any party, can be described in a single, if ungainly, word: winnability. The two most powerful women politicians in the country are in charge of Congress in Delhi; both, Mrs Sonia Gandhi and Mrs Sheila Dikshit, are also known for their secularism. They chose only one woman candidate out of seven, and not a single Muslim. Jagdish Tytler and Sajjan Kumar were offered as nominees, but their names were withdrawn when their “winnability” became doubtful. This is how politics is conducted. This is why the idea of women’s reservation gained momentum, because the “winnability” factor is neutralized when all legitimate candidates are women.
But women do not constitute a homogenous group, and all women are not equal. Just as men have the advantage over women in what should be a gender-neutral election to the Lok Sabha, some women have an in-built advantage over others, owing to caste or faith, or socio-economic factors. The logic that provides reservations for women also sustains the argument for sub-reservations. The principle is the same.
Empowerment must be the right of all women, not just some women. The argument that parties can always select candidates from a particular caste or faith, rather than do so under legal compulsion, does not hold. In the last six decades, no one has prevented the Congress or BJP from filling half their list with women, but they have not done so. Without sub-reservations, distributive justice will be trumped by “winnability” in women’s seats. Since this is a Constitutional amendment, rather than a simple Bill, provisions can be introduced to protect the legislation from being struck down in court.
A second structural flaw could further erode the already ebbing credibility of our parliamentary system.
The life-blood of our democracy is a covenant, a pact between elector and elected that the quid pro quo for the vote is service to the constituency. The quality of that service is an important (but not the only) factor in an MP’s re-election. This is the one big check that keeps a MP on some sort of practical leash.
The 108th Amendment envisages a rotational method of reservation that would make two-thirds of the Lok Sabha, or about 360 members, one-term MPs: 181 that will get reserved in an election, and the 181 male seats that will get reserved for women in the following election. Both categories, therefore, become one-term MPs. A woman MP can, of course, seek re-election by remaining in what will become a non-reserved seat, but that will be a rare exception.
Two-thirds of the Lok Sabha, therefore, will have no political incentive to serve its constituents. This, given prevailing levels of public morality, is a license to satisfy personal interests for the length of the term to MP and minister. The cynical response is that this hardly matters since MPs have become irrelevant to national development or even to their constituency’s welfare. If that is the level of degeneration, then we should abandon first-past-the-post parliamentary democracy and find another definition of democracy. Perhaps we can adopt a dual system in which two-thirds of MPs are elected on the basis of lists prepared by the party leaders, enabling them to send their chosen favourites to the House in direct proportion to the percentage of votes they have received.
The relationship between MP and voter can, thereby, be officially abandoned. This should make party bosses delirious.
The irony is that such flaws can be easily corrected, with some time and thought. Both have been absent from the process. The pro-reservation lobbies have employed hustle topped off by self-congratulation; those opposed think that explosions constitute an argument.
The former worked through cheerleaders in the media; the latter played to galleries beyond the media, and did so effectively. The Congress began to waver when the message from the second horizon began to permeate back to Delhi. The government was indifferent to the threat from political parties, but it could not remain immune to a threat from the voter. Empowerment of women is powerful and necessary objective, but the route map should be navigated with care.
Appeared in The Times of India - March 14, 2010
Saturday, March 13, 2010
Danger Ahead: From aam aadmi to khaas aurat?
Byline by M J Akbar: Danger Ahead: From aam aadmi to khaas aurat?
In an odd swing of fortunes, the first legislative round of the Women’s Reservation Bill has left the victors just a little shaken and the defeated mightily stirred. This was not what the script said. With all the heavyweights on the side of gender-bias correction, including the heaviest weight of all, media, the contest was meant to end in an easy victory against a set of ragbag antediluvians.
It is true that after the Rajya Sabha vote the score sheet reads Mrs Sonia Sushma Brinda Goliath 1, Mr Yadav Khan David 0. But it is the Goliath camp that has become apprehensive about its prospects in the compulsory return match in the Lok Sabha, while David is now polishing his sling with some relish. A confident Mrs Goliath was expected to organise a quick return fixture on the assumption that the David team was in disarray, but that is not how it has turned out, and a decision has been put in abeyance.
This is not to suggest that Mrs Goliath has lost nerve, or is in danger of losing the match. But it is indisputable that sudden gaps have opened up in what was thought to be formidable defense, while the giant strikers are wondering if their numerical superiority has become politically counter-productive. The triumphant self-congratulation with which they began the match and which continued till the passage of the 108th Amendment to the Constitution, has slipped into a deepening sense of unease. This is because the smiles in Delhi are not quite matched by sentiments on the ground, particularly in North India. Politicians opposed to the Bill represent the more deprived sections of Indian society: Dalits, Backward Classes and Muslims. The Government that claims to represent the interests of the aam aadmi (common man) is clearly worried that it might end up as the voice of the khaas aurat (special woman).
At the heart of the wrangle lies a pertinent question: is this reservation for some women, or is it for all women? Neither men nor women are a homogenous group, nor does gender represent political identity. If women were to vote for women per se, then the present Lok Sabha would be flooded with women MPs, since every second voter is a woman. The reason why parties do not select more women candidates has nothing to do with bias; it is because women have collateral disadvantages in electoral politics that makes it more difficult for them to defeat male nominees. This is a rational justification for increasing their presence in the House through reservation. But if reservation is necessary to reduce the imbalance between men and women, then, by the same logic, it is also essential to reduce the imbalance between women and women. Wealth, caste and faith are decisive elements of this internal imbalance, and reservations within reservations make sense. Those who argue that faith-based reservations are not permitted by the Constitution forget that this is a Constitutional amendment, and not an ordinary Bill. If you can amend the Constitution for one reason, you can amend it for a second as well.
A disproportionate Lok Sabha will eventually become a dysfunctional Lok Sabha, so corrections are essential. Some corrections are easy, as for instance in the rather self-defeating proposal to create a system of rotation in every general election. This would, in effect, make two-thirds of the Lok Sabha one-term MPs, destroying the compact between MP and voter by eliminating accountability. But rotation can be easily spaced out, as in the case of reserved seats for Scheduled Castes and Tribes.
There are more pernicious realities about the parliamentary system hidden in the woodwork. The most dangerous is that the Indian Parliament has become the preserve of the super-rich.
The National Election Watch has unearthed extremely interesting statistics. There are 59 women in the current Lok Sabha. (This is almost twice the number of Muslims. The graph of the last six decades, incidentally, is also revealing: the number of women MPs is rising, while the number of Muslims has declined sharply. But that is not a comparison relevant to this column.) Forty of 59 women MPs, or 68%, have personal assets over Rs 1 cr. The percentage of super-rich among male MPs (57%) is not very different. Wealth is still primarily a male asset, and the percentage of wealthy women will come down with greater representation.
Throw in another factor, that virtually everyone hides wealth, and the percentage of gender-neutral super-rich becomes much higher. Parliament, in other words, has become an elitist club. It is virtually impossible for a person without substantial means to contest an election seriously, given the costs of a campaign. A candidate has to be either a leader or extremely lucky if his or her party meets even a quarter of real costs.
Why is no one demanding reservations for those around or below the poverty line, who constitute perhaps 40% of India? Why not replace caste-based reservations with poverty-based reservations?
That would be a true revolution.
In an odd swing of fortunes, the first legislative round of the Women’s Reservation Bill has left the victors just a little shaken and the defeated mightily stirred. This was not what the script said. With all the heavyweights on the side of gender-bias correction, including the heaviest weight of all, media, the contest was meant to end in an easy victory against a set of ragbag antediluvians.
It is true that after the Rajya Sabha vote the score sheet reads Mrs Sonia Sushma Brinda Goliath 1, Mr Yadav Khan David 0. But it is the Goliath camp that has become apprehensive about its prospects in the compulsory return match in the Lok Sabha, while David is now polishing his sling with some relish. A confident Mrs Goliath was expected to organise a quick return fixture on the assumption that the David team was in disarray, but that is not how it has turned out, and a decision has been put in abeyance.
This is not to suggest that Mrs Goliath has lost nerve, or is in danger of losing the match. But it is indisputable that sudden gaps have opened up in what was thought to be formidable defense, while the giant strikers are wondering if their numerical superiority has become politically counter-productive. The triumphant self-congratulation with which they began the match and which continued till the passage of the 108th Amendment to the Constitution, has slipped into a deepening sense of unease. This is because the smiles in Delhi are not quite matched by sentiments on the ground, particularly in North India. Politicians opposed to the Bill represent the more deprived sections of Indian society: Dalits, Backward Classes and Muslims. The Government that claims to represent the interests of the aam aadmi (common man) is clearly worried that it might end up as the voice of the khaas aurat (special woman).
At the heart of the wrangle lies a pertinent question: is this reservation for some women, or is it for all women? Neither men nor women are a homogenous group, nor does gender represent political identity. If women were to vote for women per se, then the present Lok Sabha would be flooded with women MPs, since every second voter is a woman. The reason why parties do not select more women candidates has nothing to do with bias; it is because women have collateral disadvantages in electoral politics that makes it more difficult for them to defeat male nominees. This is a rational justification for increasing their presence in the House through reservation. But if reservation is necessary to reduce the imbalance between men and women, then, by the same logic, it is also essential to reduce the imbalance between women and women. Wealth, caste and faith are decisive elements of this internal imbalance, and reservations within reservations make sense. Those who argue that faith-based reservations are not permitted by the Constitution forget that this is a Constitutional amendment, and not an ordinary Bill. If you can amend the Constitution for one reason, you can amend it for a second as well.
A disproportionate Lok Sabha will eventually become a dysfunctional Lok Sabha, so corrections are essential. Some corrections are easy, as for instance in the rather self-defeating proposal to create a system of rotation in every general election. This would, in effect, make two-thirds of the Lok Sabha one-term MPs, destroying the compact between MP and voter by eliminating accountability. But rotation can be easily spaced out, as in the case of reserved seats for Scheduled Castes and Tribes.
There are more pernicious realities about the parliamentary system hidden in the woodwork. The most dangerous is that the Indian Parliament has become the preserve of the super-rich.
The National Election Watch has unearthed extremely interesting statistics. There are 59 women in the current Lok Sabha. (This is almost twice the number of Muslims. The graph of the last six decades, incidentally, is also revealing: the number of women MPs is rising, while the number of Muslims has declined sharply. But that is not a comparison relevant to this column.) Forty of 59 women MPs, or 68%, have personal assets over Rs 1 cr. The percentage of super-rich among male MPs (57%) is not very different. Wealth is still primarily a male asset, and the percentage of wealthy women will come down with greater representation.
Throw in another factor, that virtually everyone hides wealth, and the percentage of gender-neutral super-rich becomes much higher. Parliament, in other words, has become an elitist club. It is virtually impossible for a person without substantial means to contest an election seriously, given the costs of a campaign. A candidate has to be either a leader or extremely lucky if his or her party meets even a quarter of real costs.
Why is no one demanding reservations for those around or below the poverty line, who constitute perhaps 40% of India? Why not replace caste-based reservations with poverty-based reservations?
That would be a true revolution.
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