From BYLINE- Sunday Guardian (August 7)
Unqualified, unmitigated congratulations to All India Radio. The government's official broadcaster was not fooled by a mere communiqué from the All India Congress Committee, even when it was personally read out by the prevailing all-purpose party official, Janardan Dwivedi. Dwivedi put A.K. Antony at the top of the pecking order in the Group of Four authorised to oversee Congress affairs in the unfortunate absence of Mrs Sonia Gandhi, with Rahul Gandhi trailing at either number two or three, depending on whose version you consulted. [It is in tune with his character that the man at the bottom of the list, Ahmad Patel, is going to do most of the heavy lifting in this quartet.] AIR would have none of this nonsense. It insisted in all its bulletins on giving Rahul Gandhi top billing. AIR is right.
Read more...
Sunday, August 07, 2011
Friday, August 05, 2011
It's all in the economy
From Byword- India Today (August 5)
The French politician who formally congratulated the mayor of Paris for losing the 2012 Olympics bid to London made perfect sense. The straitjacket of security, he explained, would drive summer tourists away from London towards grateful France. Paris would get the holiday business while London paid the 9 billion-pound bill for the effete glory of a forgettable media event. Win-win for the Eiffel Tower.
Boris Johnson, mayor of London, who has delivered all Olympics facilities within budget and a year ahead without being accused of anything more corrupt than an occasional ogle, must have sneered and chortled in response. But there is a major philosophical lesson to be learnt about fate. The lucky, win. The truly lucky know when to lose.
A very powerful Congress leader, his demeanour touched by a faraway wistful look, whispered a fantasy to me the other day: that the Congress had chosen to sit in Opposition after winning 206 seats in the summer of 2009. Some crumbly structure would perforce have made a grab for power, doubtless with former Congress allies like DMK queuing up for the telecom ministry as their price for support to a BJP prime minister. Within weeks the whole lot would have been compromised at bargain rates, since they would be trading in used goods. Suresh Kalmadi would have welcomed the return of this version of NDA, since he could have bought out their bigwigs with nothing more expensive than the occasional first class ticket to a sports jamboree. This government would have either sought to sabotage investigations into both the Commonwealth Games and 2G spectrum, or defended them on some silly technical ground, leaving the quiet but well-fed Congress on a high moral plateau. The rackety NDA government would have collapsed in derisive confusion; Congress would win a clear majority in the winter 2011 general elections and Rahul Gandhi would be sworn in as the undisputed prime minister.
The BJP should be feeling extraordinarily pleased that it lost the last general elections.
In 2004 the BJP was unprepared for defeat; but then no ruling party is ever ready for bad news. In 2009 the BJP was unprepared for victory, which is less forgivable. The fault lay not in any individual, but in a more basic flaw: it had not still fully absorbed the extent to which the Indian voter had shifted from an emotional agenda to an economic ambition. In 2009 some of the more media-magnetic BJP campaigners were still behaving as if they were on the sets of a 1950s Bollywood historical melodrama. That age had, paradoxically, exhausted itself with the culmination of the Ram temple movement; once the mosque at Ayodhya was destroyed, it took its emotions along with it. The BJP lost the Assembly elections of 1993 in the very heartland that had sustained its most powerful emotional appeal; Digvijaya Singh became chief minister of Madhya Pradesh that year.
Two general election defeats have created a double benefit for the BJP. The voter is ready to empathise again, feeling that enough punishment has been meted out. And the party understands that serious correctives are essential if the show is to go on. The first is happening. There is a visible rise in the BJP vote across the north. The party could shock its enemies and surprise its friends in the next Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections. It has stemmed the bleed in Madhya Pradesh and returned to form in Rajasthan, while remaining steadily ahead in Gujarat. The correctives are still a work in progress. Nitin Gadkari's principal task over the next year will be to put together a viable economic policy for the party which the voter can assess, measure and then identify with.
Why has the Congress slipped? Corruption is the easy answer, but not a complete one. The voter is angry about the theft of public money, of course. But he is truly livid at the fact that corruption has derailed economic growth. The first is sufficient cause for the visible and escalating concern that we see around us; the second can lay the seeds for insurrection. The Indian industrialist is talking through his bank account, investing abroad rather than at home. The worker is seeing the gains for which he abandoned the culture of strikes, being frittered away. There is confusion in villages as the landowner demands a share in that fixed lottery called land prices.
Protest is a legitimate part of any Opposition's duty, but that alone cannot convert the BJP into a ruling party. It has to rise above protest and become an alternative; from a trade union into the management structure that the shareholders of democracy can hire when the present management is voted out.
It tells us something when the language of business becomes perfectly applicable to the business of contemporary politics.
The French politician who formally congratulated the mayor of Paris for losing the 2012 Olympics bid to London made perfect sense. The straitjacket of security, he explained, would drive summer tourists away from London towards grateful France. Paris would get the holiday business while London paid the 9 billion-pound bill for the effete glory of a forgettable media event. Win-win for the Eiffel Tower.
Boris Johnson, mayor of London, who has delivered all Olympics facilities within budget and a year ahead without being accused of anything more corrupt than an occasional ogle, must have sneered and chortled in response. But there is a major philosophical lesson to be learnt about fate. The lucky, win. The truly lucky know when to lose.
A very powerful Congress leader, his demeanour touched by a faraway wistful look, whispered a fantasy to me the other day: that the Congress had chosen to sit in Opposition after winning 206 seats in the summer of 2009. Some crumbly structure would perforce have made a grab for power, doubtless with former Congress allies like DMK queuing up for the telecom ministry as their price for support to a BJP prime minister. Within weeks the whole lot would have been compromised at bargain rates, since they would be trading in used goods. Suresh Kalmadi would have welcomed the return of this version of NDA, since he could have bought out their bigwigs with nothing more expensive than the occasional first class ticket to a sports jamboree. This government would have either sought to sabotage investigations into both the Commonwealth Games and 2G spectrum, or defended them on some silly technical ground, leaving the quiet but well-fed Congress on a high moral plateau. The rackety NDA government would have collapsed in derisive confusion; Congress would win a clear majority in the winter 2011 general elections and Rahul Gandhi would be sworn in as the undisputed prime minister.
The BJP should be feeling extraordinarily pleased that it lost the last general elections.
In 2004 the BJP was unprepared for defeat; but then no ruling party is ever ready for bad news. In 2009 the BJP was unprepared for victory, which is less forgivable. The fault lay not in any individual, but in a more basic flaw: it had not still fully absorbed the extent to which the Indian voter had shifted from an emotional agenda to an economic ambition. In 2009 some of the more media-magnetic BJP campaigners were still behaving as if they were on the sets of a 1950s Bollywood historical melodrama. That age had, paradoxically, exhausted itself with the culmination of the Ram temple movement; once the mosque at Ayodhya was destroyed, it took its emotions along with it. The BJP lost the Assembly elections of 1993 in the very heartland that had sustained its most powerful emotional appeal; Digvijaya Singh became chief minister of Madhya Pradesh that year.
Two general election defeats have created a double benefit for the BJP. The voter is ready to empathise again, feeling that enough punishment has been meted out. And the party understands that serious correctives are essential if the show is to go on. The first is happening. There is a visible rise in the BJP vote across the north. The party could shock its enemies and surprise its friends in the next Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections. It has stemmed the bleed in Madhya Pradesh and returned to form in Rajasthan, while remaining steadily ahead in Gujarat. The correctives are still a work in progress. Nitin Gadkari's principal task over the next year will be to put together a viable economic policy for the party which the voter can assess, measure and then identify with.
Why has the Congress slipped? Corruption is the easy answer, but not a complete one. The voter is angry about the theft of public money, of course. But he is truly livid at the fact that corruption has derailed economic growth. The first is sufficient cause for the visible and escalating concern that we see around us; the second can lay the seeds for insurrection. The Indian industrialist is talking through his bank account, investing abroad rather than at home. The worker is seeing the gains for which he abandoned the culture of strikes, being frittered away. There is confusion in villages as the landowner demands a share in that fixed lottery called land prices.
Protest is a legitimate part of any Opposition's duty, but that alone cannot convert the BJP into a ruling party. It has to rise above protest and become an alternative; from a trade union into the management structure that the shareholders of democracy can hire when the present management is voted out.
It tells us something when the language of business becomes perfectly applicable to the business of contemporary politics.
Monday, August 01, 2011
The Old Man And The Sleaze
From Byword – India Today (August 1)
Although they have been, historically, loath to admit it, journalists are human. They err. But if error was their only offence, there would be no story. The true crimes of yellow journalism are bias, gossip and bribes. There is a class difference between bias, the privilege of owners and editors, and gossip, the diet of downmarket news rooms. But cash is classless.
Gossip is more honest than bias; there may be more chicanery but there is less deceit. Gossip rarely pretends to be what it is not; it has a breathless, giveaway style, heavily dependent on suggestion and suspicion. Gutter press lords float bias on wafts of pseudo-ideology. Bias is a culture, a genetic strain that runs through the DNA of a publication. Gossip is an industry, with reporters as its working class. Every level of the factory knows the algebra: gossip equals sensation, sensation equals sales, sales equal advertising, advertising equals pay-cheques. This is the confident mathematics of sensationalism. Sex, the most familiar ingredient of sensation, is a comparatively innocent indulgence: the merely salacious can never compete in impact and intensity with a high-ticket mobilisation of reader sentiment like fear, and its induced consequence, revulsion or hatred.
An authentic predator-genius of the media business like Rupert Murdoch derives his power from three generators. First is the vaulting ambition of a ruthless conqueror. This requires genius, of course; you cannot be Chengiz Khan or Taimur without extraordinary resources of will, ability and the unstoppable trajectory of a gambler whose adrenalin rises in proportion to the stake. You cannot run out of kingdoms to subjugate. Success is the only law. The only moral is in the marketplace: what sells must be good, because there is a buyer. Failure is evil. Readers get what they deserve, and deserve what they get. There is nothing sentimental about content: Those who want High Church get the Wall Street Journal; voyeurs are offered News of the World.
The voyeur is obviously complicit: sleaze is a shared pleasure. There is no Murdoch without the reader, and indeed there is no reader without a Murdoch. They are partners who need each other. The journalist, whether an editor like Andy Coulson who dines with Prime Ministers, or the celeb-hunter running with the pack, is a necessary hyphen, driven by the high cash rewards for prurience. The photographer who snaps topless models for a living is actually quite jaded. It is the reader who ogles.
Stories are cooked up by cynics who have lost any early appetite for good taste. The front page is driven by hysteria, fed by ravenous competition. Since money is the only value in this world, no one even wonders if there is anything wrong with hacking into the mobile phone of a murdered child, Milly Dowler, just 13 when she was killed in 2002.
The third side of a Murdoch power triangle is, well, power. Murdoch's tabloids have many times more readers than a political party has members. Voila: who sets the agenda for elections? Murdoch traded his readership for personal power. Politicians obeyed, or else. British politicians used to understand the dangers of pen-pushers without accountability. In the early days of print media, the press was barred from the British Parliament. Publishing reports of a debate was considered "high indignity" and "notorious breach of privilege".
Modern politicians find it easier to sup with Murdoch. The relationship is cultivated with great sophistication, of course, as behoves a ruling class with generations of pedigree. British Prime Minister David Cameron's personal circle of close friends, now dubbed the North Oxford Set, included Rebekah Brooks, chief executive of a Murdoch company before she was arrested; her husband Charlie Brooks; Elisabeth Murdoch, Rupert's daughter, and her husband Matthew Freud, a PR smoothie; and James Murdoch, Rupert's son. His close adviser was Andy Coulson, who led the team as editor when Milly Dowler's phone was 'pinged' [the technical term used by the police for monitoring a mobile phone]. The Set sipped fine wine from cut glass in the shires, and elegant conversation doubtless improved the taste of dinner cooked in Cameron's million-pound kitchen. How could we ever have guessed that at the heart of this bonhomie was the multi-dimensional fiscal political profit from sleaze?
Paradise is lost when your moral compass disappears. Murdoch knew he was never in any danger from prime ministers or their police, who gratuitously looked away from the evidence for nearly a decade. But he made the fatal mistake of believing that his readers were as amoral as he was. Readers went along with titillation; but they drew the line at mercenary exploitation of a child's corpse. The algebra had a backlash: a Murdoch without readers is a useless Murdoch. Politicians have no use for the useless. There is no one more lonely than a prostrate god with feet of clay.
Sunday, July 31, 2011
The power of the small story
From BYLINE- Sunday Guardian (July 31)
The big picture generates understandable excitement. Sholay will always get more hype than an "art movie", as state-funded cinema used to be called in the days when the state still had the will to hand out dollops to chaps wearing pyjamas and beards. But there is as much to be learnt from the intricacies of the small picture. The most famous portrait ever painted, Mona Lisa, was done on a small canvas.
Politics may be more reasonably compared to artifice rather than art, but the analogy holds.
Friday, July 29, 2011
Revenge of the scapegoat
From Byword – India Today (August 8)
The slings and arrows of fortune, or more accurately misfortune, are a periodic affliction of high office. Serious politicians, however, are not flippant about fate. They do not attribute to divinity what can be measurably sourced to humanity.
Subconsciously, we seek comfort in hard times from the mysterious logic of destiny, which is one explanation for the deep Indian devotion to astrology. But while Delhi's power-mongers definitely keep one eye on the stars, and fill their fingers with protective rings, they keep the second equally firmly planted on their colleagues. When a poisoned arrow strikes, they check out the bungalow next door. That is why the classic Delhi shield is not held in front of the body. It is strapped to the back.
A. Raja and Kanimozhi, the two DMK leaders who have mutated from pillars of the regime in 2009 to caterpillars in the shrubbery by 2011, have had enough time in Tihar to ponder over the source and trajectory of the arrows that hit them in the spine. Their legal response is constructed around a simple question with complicated answers: how does a scapegoat escape the axe?
Conventional escape routes are not available. The DMK is fractured in Chennai and hospitalised in Delhi. Their leader M. Karunanidhi is in anguish, but too weak to alchemise his pain into politics. He does not have enough MPs to threaten the survival of the Manmohan Singh-Sonia Gandhi government, a fact that is being fully exploited by the principal beneficiary of the arrangement, Congress. Nothing is more self-destructive in politics than an empty threat.
Raja has in truth only one option. He cannot trouble the government's majority, but he can leave its leaders deeply troubled. That is precisely what he has set out to do.
Such a calibrated response has collateral advantages. The law of intended consequences appeals to other allies within the ruling coalition, which must factor in the possibility that the Congress has reserved a place for its high-fliers in the Scapegoats Corner of Tihar Jail. Sharad Pawar, who thinks through every move with a chess grandmaster's precision, took an unusually public risk when he sent one of his knights, D.P. Tripathi, to say hello to Shahid Balwa in an open courtroom. It was not an overdue courtesy call on an old pal. There was a message written in simple language, without any code. This saga has many more chapters to go, studded with enough twists and turns to make it an aerobic exercise of yogic proportions.
If attack is the best form of defence then counterattack is the most effective form of offense. If a scapegoat can demonstrate that he was not the only head at the head table then he has opened up numerous channels to safety. He will not sink alone but take the boat with him.
Raja has always looked, from his body language, more confident than his circumstances seemed to warrant. Now we know why. He kept the evidence of all those discussions at the high tables of governance. This, by the way, is now de rigeur with Cabinet ministers, from all parties-a classic symptom of unstable, uncertain times. The most effective weapon in the political arsenal is now a photocopier. Everyone keeps true copies of secret files. The president should order the deletion of the secrecy clause when she administers the oath of office.
The Government went for Raja's throat; he has gone for their jugular. Honours even. Or perhaps tilted a bit in Raja's favour. He has nothing more to lose. Mrs Sonia Gandhi, Dr Singh and P. Chidambaram have a government to lose. If Raja has his way, the prime minister and the home minister will be grilled in the witness box, with the nation's chief law officer in the vicinity. That will be a sight for television crews waiting outside the courtroom.
Raja's objective is transparent. He cannot do much about the survival of the upa Government. But he can do a bit about the survival of the government's credibility.
Democracy is much more than a game of numbers. It is a curious fact that Dr Singh was a far more assertive prime minister when his numbers were under continual challenge during his first term. He has been ambushed after he led the Congress to 206 seats in the Lok Sabha. The damage has been done by his friends, while his foes have watched in disbelief.
In any case, 206 is a false number: far below the 272 needed for single-party rule, and just enough to induce that deathly viral known as complacency. Atal Bihari Vajpayee had 271 MPs on his side when he lost the vote in the Lok Sabha, and he was seasoned enough to know that Parliament is not a gambling den.
If you live only by numbers, one day your number will be up.
Monday, July 25, 2011
Between a yawn and a yelp
From Byword – India Today (July 25)
It's becoming a habit. Whenever Congress gets a headache it orders a foot massage. Dr Manmohan Singh and Mrs Sonia Gandhi recognised the size of their problem, which is why they met four times, one-to-one, in their attempt to stabilise a government that had lost shape and begun to wobble. They did not need to save the Government, since they have not lost it, yet. UPA 2 can splutter along on the usual paradox: the bigger the crisis, the closer partners cling together, since elections can only bring bad news. What Government has lost is the confidence of the people. The reshuffle was an opportunity for radical renewal of an administration immobilised by corrupt politicians, comatose administration, an angry Supreme Court, and citizens outraged by venality and inflation. All that Mrs Gandhi and Dr Singh managed was surface tinkering that induced a yawn from a handful of winners, a yelp from a basketload of losers, and puns by the tonne in newspaper headlines which opted for wit in the absence of substance.
The smiles were few, silent and strained; the yelp was picked up by media nationwide. It is not, as the prime minister correctly noted, terribly significant that Gurudas Kamat and Srikant Jena were upset at being denied a place in Cabinet. Parliament is packed with MPs who believe that they should be in Cabinet, and Cabinet teems with ministers who think they should be prime minister. The story is that their behaviour is part of a growing pattern of indiscipline, which is slowly disintegrating into disarray.
Mukul Roy, the little-known minister of state for railways, had the audacity to taunt the PM when told to visit the site of a railway accident at Fatehpur. Instead of being dropped, he was promoted to independent charge of shipping. If Roy had insulted his party leader Mamata Banerjee, he would have been out of a job. Ergo: he knows whom to respect. Veerappa Moily blithely attributed his demotion from law to corporate affairs to "vested interests", implying that the PM is beholden to such interests. Every such remark whittles away the authority of a Prime Minister. A weak government begins to melt from the head, or at least the neck.
Immutable law of politics: Never shut a door that can be left ajar. The prime minister did himself no favours when he asserted that this would be the last reshuffle before general elections in 2014. I have never been able to fully understand why 'gruntled' is not the opposite of 'disgruntled', but mysteries of the English language include dysfunctional logic. However, for every gruntled person in Delhi there are a hundred who are disgruntled. Their self-respect survives in hope. They have no other answer to the question gnawing at their hearts when it is not sprawled over conversation: why have you not become a minister? The last alibi is gone. There is no next reshuffle. Their only option now is transference of hope, to the next prime minister. Since every Congressman knows his name, all future applications will be addressed to Rahul Gandhi.
Such pinpoint confidence certainly worked for the backward caste leader from Uttar Pradesh, who defected from Mulayam Singh Yadav's party to Congress, Beni Prasad Verma. He is our glistening new Cabinet minister for steel. This is not the messiah Indian industry was waiting for; this is not the economic brain who will bring inflation under control. Verma's star has evolved into a meteor through collateral benefit; Rahul Gandhi believes that this will bring him additional votes in the next UP Assembly elections.
All politics is sold as welfare of the people; the truth of democracy is that politics impels Cabinet promotion more easily than ideas or competence. The prime minister probably had a far more difficult time in making the environment ministry more environment friendly to investment, and law ministry more conversant with law than Rahul Gandhi had in putting some steel into his UP gambit. This is the conundrum that has harried Dr Singh. The time left to solve the riddle is ebbing, even as delay turns a headache into migraine.
Sunday, July 24, 2011
Dream come true, or perhaps not
From BYLINE- Sunday Guardian (July 24)
The little patch of London I encounter is watching cricket and talking Rupert Murdoch. The colour of language matches the English sky; grey, rather than black and white. Media is not devil-black, and cricket is not virgin-white.
Heaven, for a cricket-fantasist like me, is a spectator seat in the committee room at Lord's on the opening day of the centenary Test between India and England. [A cricket-fantasist is someone who believes he should be captain of India because he scored 32 in a crucial school match.] The gentle murmur of nostalgia between a galaxy of greats is punctuated by acute observation on the prospects of the day's play ahead. Tea and coffee are the mildest libations available: opening time is 11 a.m. and I may have added my tiny bit to the cultural history of Lord's with a recipe called Coffee Mary.
Monday, July 18, 2011
The Wheel of God
From Byword - India Today (July 18)
Arun Shourie's new book, Does He Know a Mother's Heart? How Suffering Refutes Religions, offers a choice. You can pretend it does not exist, or you can suffer. We are cowards before destiny, particularly those fortunate enough to waft on normalcy; we shroud sensibility with the alibi of indifference. Shourie rips apart this security blanket of feigned ignorance with an existentialist question: Who is the God of injustice? Who creates the gene that goes awry and twists an innocent life into lifelong tragedy? Who ravages earth with the mass annihilation of an earthquake or tsunami? Death is the law of life; but what is the logic of sudden death, or lingering misery that consumes existence, drip by slow drip, with wanton, cruel, endless pain?
Shourie, trying to keep his own torment aside, sets his laser-pen through the prism of his wife Anita's anguish. Her beauty is a marginal fact: this book is, partly, a narrative of her character, courage, and above all her love, all of which have been tormented by a feckless fate. They have a spastic son, Adit, who is now 35, but lives outside time. The bond between parents and child is a boundless, almost mystic, love; and if its price is unbearable for an outsider, how benumbed must be the hearts of Arun, Anita and Adit? Adit's limbs are helpless; his heart is full, and fully conscious. So answer the rage of Shourie if you have the audacity to do so: "He (Adit) loves everyone. Everyone in the family loves him. His maternal grandmother, Malti Shukla, was his life. He is ours. And...God just does not stop pounding this helpless, defenceless child. And then Anita goes down with Parkinson's.
Every faith knows that it must offer some rationale for the illogic that sways this life from the rationale we have absorbed, internalised since creation. Christianity believes that this world is a consequence of crime and punishment. Adam and Eve disobeyed the Almighty, lost Paradise and nurtured this capricious world. But who is responsible for punishment without crime? Adam condemned us all with his fatal step from original innocence to original sin. But has divinity abandoned this logic for human existence? Why are the sinful blessed with laughter? When has the threat of hell deterred Adam's child from evil? Which doctrine explains a hell on earth for the innocent?
Islam has the promise of justice in eternity, when Allah shall resolve the inequities of this arbitrary span from birth to death. Only the atheist believes in death; for a Muslim death is a pause in the continuity of life. The Quranic funeral verse is simple: from Allah we come, to Allah we go. But is there a radical soul who, on the day of judgment, will perhaps ask a question or two himself? The priest told him to fear God, the sufi asked him to embrace divinity: what should a spastic do?
Hindu philosophy is more nuanced. It takes the cyclical view of pain, and offers purification as an answer. Even the villain has a soul seeking release from villainy. When Krishna destroys the mischievous Shishupala by cleaving him from head to foot with a flaming discus, Shishupala's soul flings itself at the feet of Krishna "for even the enemies of the Lord go to salvation by thinking wholly upon him".
The human answer to this conundrum is trapped in contradiction. Shourie recalls Mahatma Gandhi's indictment of the victim after the Bihar earthquake of 1934, which left 30-foot chasms broad enough for four elephants to walk through. D.G. Tendulkar, Gandhi's biographer, quotes the Mahatma on Bihar: "I share the belief with the whole world-civilised and uncivilised-that calamities... come to mankind as chastisement for their sins...I regard untouchability as such a grave sin as to warrant divine chastisement" (Harijan, February 2, 1934). But the quake had no caste system. It did not spare Dalits.
Shourie's God is a croupier at the roulette wheel, indifferent to those whose number spells misfortune.
Sunday, July 17, 2011
The Criminal and the Callous
From BYLINE- Sunday Guardian (July 17)
There is no category of criminals as brutish and barbaric as terrorists. The depravity of their intention is matched only by the perversity of their actions. Their target is the innocent citizen, the non-partisan, the individual, the nameless child who might have been drawn to death by the accident of circumstance, or the misfortune of destiny. The terrorists who attacked Mumbai on 13 July were cowards, hiding maliciously behind anonymity. Since we live in an age increasingly stripped of values, whether in war, peace or the indeterminate grey in between, a brave city like Mumbai has adjusted to the fact that terrorism is part of the price of urban density. But Mumbai will not reconcile itself to either the inefficiency or the alibi that politicians trot out to protect themselves from the whiplash of accountability.
Sunday, July 10, 2011
The high price of being a friend
From BYLINE- Sunday Guardian (July 10)
Sunday, July 03, 2011
PMs Don't Dine on Humble Pie
PMs Don't Dine on Humble Pie
'Manmohan needs to assert his legitimate authority for better governance'
by M J Akbar
In Byword - India Today
July 11, 2011
Manmohan Singh's dilemma is unenviable. He still cannot make up his mind whether he has been elected by the people of India or selected by Sonia Gandhi. 'Both' is a compromise that survives in calm waters but comes apart at the first hint of turbulence.
Sonia Gandhi's problem is a complication of adversity: you can tell a Salvation Army that there is no Army, but you can't suggest that there is no Salvation. The Congress face of salvation is Rahul Gandhi, not Manmohan, which creates a disconnect between government and party. A senior party office-bearer like Digvijaya Singh, therefore, has no qualms about undermining Manmohan at will. Would Digvijaya Singh dare criticise Rahul Gandhi, even after the calamity of the Bihar campaign or the less than salutary results in Tamil Nadu? No. He knows where the source of bread and butter in Congress is. They are the reward of those who constantly demand that Rahul Gandhi replace Manmohan forthwith. The notional prime minister has more authority in Congress than the national prime minister.
A famous tycoon who built an empire out of a dream used to say that it was always possible to lose your way if a car had one driver; but a crash was absolutely certain if it had two. The UPA Government has three drivers, all in the front seat. Manmohan has been handed the steering wheel without being given the keys to the car. If nothing moves, he gets the blame. When he does try and move, driver and navigator often work at cross purposes. Sonia Gandhi's agenda is fixated on populist measures that she believes will make Rahul Gandhi electable; Manmohan is constrained by the limitations of fiscal responsibility. Almost any issue, including the corrosive management, or mismanagement, of corruption, exposes internal contradictions.
Manmohan became prime minister in 2004 but had to share power with a higher authority. After 2007, he has been denied even the privileges of his office. He has been shunted to a waiting room, awaiting the day Rahul Gandhi feels sufficiently stirred to do Indians the favour of becoming their prime minister. But the nation has no pity to waste on a prime minister who does not assert his legitimate authority. Every waiting room has a door. You can always exit through the door that brought you in.
Instead of moving, either to assert control, or to walk out, Manmohan seems frozen. The freeze included his vocal chords, because candour could easily have become incandescent in an environment where his party leaders are allowed to taunt him publicly. Manmohan is a humble man, but effective prime ministers do not dine on humble pie. He has been persuaded at long last to loosen his chords, and we learn that he will take tea with media "regularly", perhaps even once a week. It is always better to chat with the messenger than shoot him, but the point surely is whether there is any resolution for the contradictions that have trapped governance.
How long can a government last without governance? The technical answer is known. A majority in Parliament is often described as "brute" because it can become impervious to popular sentiment. If the Congress believes that it can be both government and Opposition, soaking up the advantages of power while stoking popular sentiment against a scapegoat prime minister, then it will pay a heavy price in the next elections. Duplicity does not work.
Manmohan is a reticent man, whose feelings are rarely visible. But he is unable to hide his discomfort any longer. He has never laughed in public, even in happier times, but he did flash the occasional smile, which sort of burst through his beard, but gently. He almost beamed after victory on the nuclear bill, which set the mood for re-election in 2009. Within two years of his finest moment, he has lost his smile. He should either get it back, or go home.
'Manmohan needs to assert his legitimate authority for better governance'
by M J Akbar
In Byword - India Today
July 11, 2011
Manmohan Singh's dilemma is unenviable. He still cannot make up his mind whether he has been elected by the people of India or selected by Sonia Gandhi. 'Both' is a compromise that survives in calm waters but comes apart at the first hint of turbulence.
Sonia Gandhi's problem is a complication of adversity: you can tell a Salvation Army that there is no Army, but you can't suggest that there is no Salvation. The Congress face of salvation is Rahul Gandhi, not Manmohan, which creates a disconnect between government and party. A senior party office-bearer like Digvijaya Singh, therefore, has no qualms about undermining Manmohan at will. Would Digvijaya Singh dare criticise Rahul Gandhi, even after the calamity of the Bihar campaign or the less than salutary results in Tamil Nadu? No. He knows where the source of bread and butter in Congress is. They are the reward of those who constantly demand that Rahul Gandhi replace Manmohan forthwith. The notional prime minister has more authority in Congress than the national prime minister.
A famous tycoon who built an empire out of a dream used to say that it was always possible to lose your way if a car had one driver; but a crash was absolutely certain if it had two. The UPA Government has three drivers, all in the front seat. Manmohan has been handed the steering wheel without being given the keys to the car. If nothing moves, he gets the blame. When he does try and move, driver and navigator often work at cross purposes. Sonia Gandhi's agenda is fixated on populist measures that she believes will make Rahul Gandhi electable; Manmohan is constrained by the limitations of fiscal responsibility. Almost any issue, including the corrosive management, or mismanagement, of corruption, exposes internal contradictions.
Manmohan became prime minister in 2004 but had to share power with a higher authority. After 2007, he has been denied even the privileges of his office. He has been shunted to a waiting room, awaiting the day Rahul Gandhi feels sufficiently stirred to do Indians the favour of becoming their prime minister. But the nation has no pity to waste on a prime minister who does not assert his legitimate authority. Every waiting room has a door. You can always exit through the door that brought you in.
Instead of moving, either to assert control, or to walk out, Manmohan seems frozen. The freeze included his vocal chords, because candour could easily have become incandescent in an environment where his party leaders are allowed to taunt him publicly. Manmohan is a humble man, but effective prime ministers do not dine on humble pie. He has been persuaded at long last to loosen his chords, and we learn that he will take tea with media "regularly", perhaps even once a week. It is always better to chat with the messenger than shoot him, but the point surely is whether there is any resolution for the contradictions that have trapped governance.
How long can a government last without governance? The technical answer is known. A majority in Parliament is often described as "brute" because it can become impervious to popular sentiment. If the Congress believes that it can be both government and Opposition, soaking up the advantages of power while stoking popular sentiment against a scapegoat prime minister, then it will pay a heavy price in the next elections. Duplicity does not work.
Manmohan is a reticent man, whose feelings are rarely visible. But he is unable to hide his discomfort any longer. He has never laughed in public, even in happier times, but he did flash the occasional smile, which sort of burst through his beard, but gently. He almost beamed after victory on the nuclear bill, which set the mood for re-election in 2009. Within two years of his finest moment, he has lost his smile. He should either get it back, or go home.
Thursday, June 30, 2011
A spring in Arab history
A spring in Arab history
By M.J. Akbar
Ibn Khaldun, the classical Arab historian, ascribed the great revival of the Arab spirit to “asabiya”, a term that can loosely equated to “group solidarity”, a consciousness that rose above traditional loyalties like tribal identity and released the inspirational energy that made oasis dwellers and nomads into world conquerors. Nothing can compare with that seminal 7th century resurrection, but there is a touch of “asabiya” in the transnational Arab Spring that has turned a dormant Arab street into a revolutionary force that is clearing the septic cobwebs which have turned a great people into victims of local despotism and tyranny.
The pace and trajectory of a revolution can never be predicted, nor can its re-formation into a stable order be guaranteed. But the Gaddafis and the Assads are clinging desperately to a world that is dead, along with their bankrupt ideas and alibis, all of which have been a thin cover for devastating regimes which turned national wealth [including oil] into personal property and castrated the people’s right to freedom and democracy. These army-police states tried to garner international respectability through a thin middle class which shared some prosperity as reward for loyalty to the new hereditary, civilian sultanates. Could there be a worse instance of medieval despotism than the Gaddafi family, whose anarchic flamboyance was tolerated for so long by the rest of the world?
Western powers were indifferent to values they professed at home as long as despots honored their regional security concerns: an Egyptian somehow did not need democracy as much as an American if Hosni Mubarak was obedient. Now that Tahrir Square has decided otherwise, traditional relationships are in disarray. America and Europe have not been able to save clients in Tunisia or Egypt, even while they mobilize on the side of street anger to destabilize regimes in Tripoli and Damascus. With the Soviet Union long buried, and Russia and China hesitant to offer more than verbal reassurance, the establishments in Libya and Syria are fighting their last battles with incremental brutality against their own people. They have a lot to lose: their loot. They will fight hard to preserve their obnoxious oppression, and the process will be neither easy nor predictable.
Paradoxically, if the pro-West monarchies have shown a greater flexibility in the management of dissent, it is because they have been closer to their societies than republican despots. But that, in the long, or even medium run, is insufficient. There are many layers of meaning in the campaign for driving licences by Saudi women. They are asking a loaded question: if Aisha, one of the wives of the Prophet Muhammad, could drive a camel at the head of her army, if women could go to mosques and take part in consultations, then why cannot women drive cars in a country ruled by the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques? The question juxtaposes current reality with a pre-monarchial republican ideal in which there was far great gender equality than in most modern Arab nations. The debate is opening minds. Open minds demand open societies. If Arab monarchs do not turn their abodes into a Buckingham Palace, and substitute total authority with a ceremonial role, the spirit of “asabiya” will rattle their gates.
Hafez Assad had a slogan on every city gate and public building: “Our Leader forever is President Hafez Assad”. His son Bashar shares this pompous conviction. Time, and the tide of “asabiya”, wait for no man.
By M.J. Akbar
Ibn Khaldun, the classical Arab historian, ascribed the great revival of the Arab spirit to “asabiya”, a term that can loosely equated to “group solidarity”, a consciousness that rose above traditional loyalties like tribal identity and released the inspirational energy that made oasis dwellers and nomads into world conquerors. Nothing can compare with that seminal 7th century resurrection, but there is a touch of “asabiya” in the transnational Arab Spring that has turned a dormant Arab street into a revolutionary force that is clearing the septic cobwebs which have turned a great people into victims of local despotism and tyranny.
The pace and trajectory of a revolution can never be predicted, nor can its re-formation into a stable order be guaranteed. But the Gaddafis and the Assads are clinging desperately to a world that is dead, along with their bankrupt ideas and alibis, all of which have been a thin cover for devastating regimes which turned national wealth [including oil] into personal property and castrated the people’s right to freedom and democracy. These army-police states tried to garner international respectability through a thin middle class which shared some prosperity as reward for loyalty to the new hereditary, civilian sultanates. Could there be a worse instance of medieval despotism than the Gaddafi family, whose anarchic flamboyance was tolerated for so long by the rest of the world?
Western powers were indifferent to values they professed at home as long as despots honored their regional security concerns: an Egyptian somehow did not need democracy as much as an American if Hosni Mubarak was obedient. Now that Tahrir Square has decided otherwise, traditional relationships are in disarray. America and Europe have not been able to save clients in Tunisia or Egypt, even while they mobilize on the side of street anger to destabilize regimes in Tripoli and Damascus. With the Soviet Union long buried, and Russia and China hesitant to offer more than verbal reassurance, the establishments in Libya and Syria are fighting their last battles with incremental brutality against their own people. They have a lot to lose: their loot. They will fight hard to preserve their obnoxious oppression, and the process will be neither easy nor predictable.
Paradoxically, if the pro-West monarchies have shown a greater flexibility in the management of dissent, it is because they have been closer to their societies than republican despots. But that, in the long, or even medium run, is insufficient. There are many layers of meaning in the campaign for driving licences by Saudi women. They are asking a loaded question: if Aisha, one of the wives of the Prophet Muhammad, could drive a camel at the head of her army, if women could go to mosques and take part in consultations, then why cannot women drive cars in a country ruled by the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques? The question juxtaposes current reality with a pre-monarchial republican ideal in which there was far great gender equality than in most modern Arab nations. The debate is opening minds. Open minds demand open societies. If Arab monarchs do not turn their abodes into a Buckingham Palace, and substitute total authority with a ceremonial role, the spirit of “asabiya” will rattle their gates.
Hafez Assad had a slogan on every city gate and public building: “Our Leader forever is President Hafez Assad”. His son Bashar shares this pompous conviction. Time, and the tide of “asabiya”, wait for no man.
Saturday, June 25, 2011
Guruji, Heal Thyself
Guruji, Heal Thyself
'Tihar's impoverished convicts find prison far more civilised than freedom'
The most interesting author I have met calls himself 'Guruji' Shastri, Girish Chandra Gautam. The apostrophe and comma are a carefully nuanced note of stress, not mangled grammar. Perhaps he needs a delicate pause between his scholarship and present status. He is a convict in Tihar jail No. 2. I did not check the nature of his crime; a certain delicacy is the legitimate due of fellow authors.
Lord Ganesh is seated majestically on the cover of his 'patrika' (journal); the back cover belongs to a cross-legged 'Guruji', sun rays streaking away with pointed force from behind his head. Three rings of rudraksha circle his neck. There is an Om on his raised right palm, and a touch of steel in his eyes. The title is self-explanatory: 'Recognise Yourself Through the Knowledge of Palmistry'. His journal tends towards palms rather than palmistry (long nails denote simplicity, shorts ones intellect) but he must have something going for his art. On page 31, he predicts the future success of his book; and here he is, already being reviewed in INDIA TODAY. That's fame.
It is easy to underestimate the lure of a Guruji. There have been intelligent charlatans in every faith, in every age, who have used religion as their passage towards credibility and thence to popularity. The distance between such popularity and wealth is a short one, whether you wear saffron robes or wear a beard.
The vulnerability of religion as an instrument of manipulation lies, paradoxically, at its core: that it cannot be roped to the moorings of reason. The institutions of faith, whether temple, mosque, gurdwara or church, have been regularly victimised by the interloper, the charlatan, adept at sweeping the masses off their senses by the promise of supernatural reward. The elasticity in the spectrum of belief, and its distance from the laws of conventional behaviour, provides space for characters whose principal purpose is fraud rather than service.
The power of the faith-orator is evident all around us; his phrases offer hope, an experience-proof security blanket against the bitter winds of helplessness, the most common affliction of humankind, or its near relative, hopelessness. But can a religious con find an audience in prison? Prison is, in theory, Dante's hell: abandon hope all ye who enter here. A prison has finality. You know you are in, and a calendar will tell you when you could be out. There are no miracles inside prison walls.
Paradoxically, the majority of Tihar's prisoners abandoned hope long before they crossed its intimidating doors. Tihar is a stigma upon India, not because of recent high-profile guests, but because of its stream of regular inmates: 92 per cent are from below the poverty line. More than 40 per cent are totally illiterate. The majority of those between 18 and 21 arrive without a single possession, even a set of clothes. They have never used a proper toilet. These are street children long abandoned by family and nation; the children of Delhi we trained our eyes to ignore while driving past in cars, the detritus of a ravenous metropolis ingesting chunks of national wealth to satisfy its insatiable appetite for development. The poor were not born criminal. Life has given most of them little option.
The irony of course is that Tihar's impoverished convicts find prison far more civilised than freedom. There is the certainty of food and the possibility of work. The soft-spoken Neeraj Kumar, Director General, Prisons, has upscaled a remarkable programme of reform in Tihar that seeks to ease crime by softening the criminal. Tihar produces exquisite linen shirts (I am wearing one as I write) and a range of products whose quality is controlled by professional consultants. But Tihar is as distant from the rest of Indian prisons as Delhi is superior to the rest of India.
The European Karl Marx thought religion was the opium of the masses. In caste-ridden India, for centuries, opium was the religion of the masses. The Gurujis of today have found a wonder drug: they sell both, in a single mixture.
'Tihar's impoverished convicts find prison far more civilised than freedom'
The most interesting author I have met calls himself 'Guruji' Shastri, Girish Chandra Gautam. The apostrophe and comma are a carefully nuanced note of stress, not mangled grammar. Perhaps he needs a delicate pause between his scholarship and present status. He is a convict in Tihar jail No. 2. I did not check the nature of his crime; a certain delicacy is the legitimate due of fellow authors.
Lord Ganesh is seated majestically on the cover of his 'patrika' (journal); the back cover belongs to a cross-legged 'Guruji', sun rays streaking away with pointed force from behind his head. Three rings of rudraksha circle his neck. There is an Om on his raised right palm, and a touch of steel in his eyes. The title is self-explanatory: 'Recognise Yourself Through the Knowledge of Palmistry'. His journal tends towards palms rather than palmistry (long nails denote simplicity, shorts ones intellect) but he must have something going for his art. On page 31, he predicts the future success of his book; and here he is, already being reviewed in INDIA TODAY. That's fame.
It is easy to underestimate the lure of a Guruji. There have been intelligent charlatans in every faith, in every age, who have used religion as their passage towards credibility and thence to popularity. The distance between such popularity and wealth is a short one, whether you wear saffron robes or wear a beard.
The vulnerability of religion as an instrument of manipulation lies, paradoxically, at its core: that it cannot be roped to the moorings of reason. The institutions of faith, whether temple, mosque, gurdwara or church, have been regularly victimised by the interloper, the charlatan, adept at sweeping the masses off their senses by the promise of supernatural reward. The elasticity in the spectrum of belief, and its distance from the laws of conventional behaviour, provides space for characters whose principal purpose is fraud rather than service.
The power of the faith-orator is evident all around us; his phrases offer hope, an experience-proof security blanket against the bitter winds of helplessness, the most common affliction of humankind, or its near relative, hopelessness. But can a religious con find an audience in prison? Prison is, in theory, Dante's hell: abandon hope all ye who enter here. A prison has finality. You know you are in, and a calendar will tell you when you could be out. There are no miracles inside prison walls.
Paradoxically, the majority of Tihar's prisoners abandoned hope long before they crossed its intimidating doors. Tihar is a stigma upon India, not because of recent high-profile guests, but because of its stream of regular inmates: 92 per cent are from below the poverty line. More than 40 per cent are totally illiterate. The majority of those between 18 and 21 arrive without a single possession, even a set of clothes. They have never used a proper toilet. These are street children long abandoned by family and nation; the children of Delhi we trained our eyes to ignore while driving past in cars, the detritus of a ravenous metropolis ingesting chunks of national wealth to satisfy its insatiable appetite for development. The poor were not born criminal. Life has given most of them little option.
The irony of course is that Tihar's impoverished convicts find prison far more civilised than freedom. There is the certainty of food and the possibility of work. The soft-spoken Neeraj Kumar, Director General, Prisons, has upscaled a remarkable programme of reform in Tihar that seeks to ease crime by softening the criminal. Tihar produces exquisite linen shirts (I am wearing one as I write) and a range of products whose quality is controlled by professional consultants. But Tihar is as distant from the rest of Indian prisons as Delhi is superior to the rest of India.
The European Karl Marx thought religion was the opium of the masses. In caste-ridden India, for centuries, opium was the religion of the masses. The Gurujis of today have found a wonder drug: they sell both, in a single mixture.
The Chewing Gum War
Byline by M J Akbar: The Chewing Gum War
Collateral damage is surely the most unhappy consequence of this tragic business called war. There you are, quietly preparing the day’s propaganda sheet in yet another existentialist confrontation between George Bush and Saddam Hussein, or Barack Obama and Mullah Omar, or Pranab Mukherjee and P. Chidambaram, and wham! From out of the night-blue a Drone demolishes your ego so completely that you cannot recognise your self-esteem from the debris of your self-respect.
Spare a thought, friends, for the Congress spokespersons who were ordered last week to keep quiet at the peak of the raging civil war between the Home Minister and Finance Minister of India. There is little more devastating to the pride of a spokesperson than being told not to speak, particularly when heavy artillery and napalm are cascading through the battlefields of media.
The serious historian will, doubtless, record the range of emotions and arguments that have coursed through the War of the Chewing Gum. This is perhaps not the most serious conflict of 2011, but it is pepping up to become its most hilarious. There is enough bathos to daunt the muse of that poet-prince of satire, Alexander Pope. But jollity should not blind us to the serious questions that must be answered in the cause of national security as well as prestige. What, for instance, is Pakistan’s preeminent security establishment, ISI, thinking of Indian capabilities now that they are sure that the mightiest of all surveillance battles is being fought through that most useless invention in the history of mankind, that device of teenage mastication, chewing gum?
We belong to an age in which superpowers can pick, with heavyweight computers, any conversation that travels through the world’s airwaves, and then transcribe and decode it before breakfast. Even at the low end of the market, a ruthlessly chivalrous spy like James Bond would not be caught, dead or alive, with either chewing, or its first cousin bubble gum. That sleuths working on behalf of the Home Minister of rising India used this supremely silly blob of virtual rubber as a principal weapon is worrying confirmation that where security is concerned India is merely a fourth rate power.
Experts, either shocked or gleeful, have flooded the internet with deep-background analysis. It seems that there are two kinds of bugs. Permanent ones need to be planted inside walls, but that can only be done while the building is being constructed. Since the walls of India’s finance ministry were built before Lord Irwin became Viceroy in 1930, that was clearly not a feasible option. Temporary, or opportunist, bugs can be scattered into the enemy quarters through the help of a fifth columnist, who then removes them after the requirement is over. Some clever chap thought little blobs of something that “looked like chewing gum” would suffice to deceive the Finance Minister of India and his most trusted civil servants.
The only thing more amusing than this Pink Panther-style spy story is the cover-up. The official line, now that government is being forced to clean up an embarrassing mess, is that nothing much happened. No one, however, is saying that nothing was attempted, even if the master sleuth of this particular operation was an outstanding bumble bee.
Pranab Mukherjee has more experience in high office than most of the Cabinet put together. He is not prone to seasonal hysteria. His maturity is beyond question; his supporters still cannot understand why he should do the bulk of the work but not be appointed Prime Minister. If he took as deliberate a step as placing his complaint on the record with a letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, he did so after the most careful consideration. He had his office swept by technologists hired by the Central Board of Direct Taxes, which reports to him, rather than the Intelligence Bureau, which reports to Chidambaram. His letter went ten months ago. It is unsurprising that the Prime Minister’s Office chose silence as its first and last line of defence. The Congress, when it was forced to utter a word or two, went into its default position, which is treating everything unpleasant as an RSS conspiracy. The one exception was senior Congress leader Digvijay Singh, who believes that a formal probe has become essential.
Digvijay Singh is right. This government is coming apart at the seams. Individual ambition is tearing apart the fabric of governance. The voter can see what Delhi can’t, that the emperors have no clothes.
There comes a point where a joke refuses to amuse. We are near that tipping point. Manmohan Singh, himself a bit ragged now, has one last visit left to the tailors: the Cabinet reshuffle he has long promised but never quite delivered. He can no longer afford to stitch a few buttons; he needs a whole new wardrobe -- and one which can survive the acidic wear and tear of whatever time is left in his political destiny.
Collateral damage is surely the most unhappy consequence of this tragic business called war. There you are, quietly preparing the day’s propaganda sheet in yet another existentialist confrontation between George Bush and Saddam Hussein, or Barack Obama and Mullah Omar, or Pranab Mukherjee and P. Chidambaram, and wham! From out of the night-blue a Drone demolishes your ego so completely that you cannot recognise your self-esteem from the debris of your self-respect.
Spare a thought, friends, for the Congress spokespersons who were ordered last week to keep quiet at the peak of the raging civil war between the Home Minister and Finance Minister of India. There is little more devastating to the pride of a spokesperson than being told not to speak, particularly when heavy artillery and napalm are cascading through the battlefields of media.
The serious historian will, doubtless, record the range of emotions and arguments that have coursed through the War of the Chewing Gum. This is perhaps not the most serious conflict of 2011, but it is pepping up to become its most hilarious. There is enough bathos to daunt the muse of that poet-prince of satire, Alexander Pope. But jollity should not blind us to the serious questions that must be answered in the cause of national security as well as prestige. What, for instance, is Pakistan’s preeminent security establishment, ISI, thinking of Indian capabilities now that they are sure that the mightiest of all surveillance battles is being fought through that most useless invention in the history of mankind, that device of teenage mastication, chewing gum?
We belong to an age in which superpowers can pick, with heavyweight computers, any conversation that travels through the world’s airwaves, and then transcribe and decode it before breakfast. Even at the low end of the market, a ruthlessly chivalrous spy like James Bond would not be caught, dead or alive, with either chewing, or its first cousin bubble gum. That sleuths working on behalf of the Home Minister of rising India used this supremely silly blob of virtual rubber as a principal weapon is worrying confirmation that where security is concerned India is merely a fourth rate power.
Experts, either shocked or gleeful, have flooded the internet with deep-background analysis. It seems that there are two kinds of bugs. Permanent ones need to be planted inside walls, but that can only be done while the building is being constructed. Since the walls of India’s finance ministry were built before Lord Irwin became Viceroy in 1930, that was clearly not a feasible option. Temporary, or opportunist, bugs can be scattered into the enemy quarters through the help of a fifth columnist, who then removes them after the requirement is over. Some clever chap thought little blobs of something that “looked like chewing gum” would suffice to deceive the Finance Minister of India and his most trusted civil servants.
The only thing more amusing than this Pink Panther-style spy story is the cover-up. The official line, now that government is being forced to clean up an embarrassing mess, is that nothing much happened. No one, however, is saying that nothing was attempted, even if the master sleuth of this particular operation was an outstanding bumble bee.
Pranab Mukherjee has more experience in high office than most of the Cabinet put together. He is not prone to seasonal hysteria. His maturity is beyond question; his supporters still cannot understand why he should do the bulk of the work but not be appointed Prime Minister. If he took as deliberate a step as placing his complaint on the record with a letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, he did so after the most careful consideration. He had his office swept by technologists hired by the Central Board of Direct Taxes, which reports to him, rather than the Intelligence Bureau, which reports to Chidambaram. His letter went ten months ago. It is unsurprising that the Prime Minister’s Office chose silence as its first and last line of defence. The Congress, when it was forced to utter a word or two, went into its default position, which is treating everything unpleasant as an RSS conspiracy. The one exception was senior Congress leader Digvijay Singh, who believes that a formal probe has become essential.
Digvijay Singh is right. This government is coming apart at the seams. Individual ambition is tearing apart the fabric of governance. The voter can see what Delhi can’t, that the emperors have no clothes.
There comes a point where a joke refuses to amuse. We are near that tipping point. Manmohan Singh, himself a bit ragged now, has one last visit left to the tailors: the Cabinet reshuffle he has long promised but never quite delivered. He can no longer afford to stitch a few buttons; he needs a whole new wardrobe -- and one which can survive the acidic wear and tear of whatever time is left in his political destiny.
Saturday, June 18, 2011
A Grim Reminder To Mumbai : Dey Murder
A Grim Reminder To Mumbai
Dey murder: Should we assume that it is currently legal to shoot journalists in Mumbai?
By M J Akbar
In Byword - India Today, June 27, 2011
The besetting sin of the Indian ruling class might prove to be exceptional stupidity rather than pervasive corruption. Successful politicians are clever, or they would not be successful. But they can become foolish enough to believe that the rest of us are stupid.
The subtle lie is a fine art, and a crisis rouses veterans to their slipperiest best. The murder of crime-busting reporter Jyotirmoy Dey in Mumbai by a posse of motorbike gunmen, in the soggy daylight of a monsoon afternoon, was a public relations catastrophe for the Maharashtra government. The crocodile tears of ministers began to compete with the monsoon instantly. Carried away by excessive piety, Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan, Home Minister R.R. Patil and all-purpose busybody Chhagan Bhujbal even promised a majestic law to protect journalists.
Since this law has not been passed, should we assume that it is currently legal to shoot journalists in Mumbai?
There is no shortage of laws in India. There is a terrifying shortage of legal order. The order of the day in Mumbai is determined by a politician-police-criminal coalition that deploys private armies to send a periodic message to pests who interfere with their lucrative control of the economic sinews of the black economy. They do not kill journalists, or whistleblowers, every day. Discretion is the better part of their valour. Their purpose is just to let everyone know whose finger is more effective on the trigger. Dey's death was one such reminder to the media.
The litany of alibis, including a few pompous ones like the proposed legislation, trotted out by politicians is designed to cajole, flatter, fudge or even buy the Mumbai establishment's way out of a crisis that threatens the stability of the cops-criminal-minister nexus.
I often wonder why we keep calling Mumbai's criminal gangs the underworld. They live in, and dominate, the overworld. 'Underworld' tends to give them a shadowy, even ethereal presence, as if they float in dark corners of the city like phantoms on the prowl.
They are masters of the day, not vampires of the night. They are in league with, if not colleagues of, high officials who shield them from those suicidal enough to challenge their kingdom.
Within 48 hours of Dey's murder, an Assistant Commissioner of Police, Anil Mahabole, in charge of the Azad Maidan precinct, had been downgraded. His ranking senior, police commissioner Arup Patnaik said that he was "neither denying nor confirming Mahabole's role" in the incident. Such equivocation suggests guilt, at the very least. Simple question: how long does it take an assistant commissioner of police to get corrupt? 24 hours, or 24 years? If Mahabole's reputation was common knowledge, why was he in control of Azad Maidan police station? On one side, Azad Maidan runs along a green lung to Bombay Gymkhana. Turn 180 degrees, and life shifts: just beyond the great railway terminus lie the congested lanes where Dawood Ibrahim used to live, and from where his brother and sister still control their prolific business. A few weeks ago, a motorbike squad tried to kill Dawood's brother in one of these lanes, and got his driver instead.
You do not have to be as brilliant as a chief minister or a police commissioner to guess what the Mumbai police's brief is: promise just about enough to appease journalists, but do nothing to destroy the enriching partnership that rules Mumbai. Round up scapegoats. Sacrifice one or two, strictly if necessary. Photograph the applause. Limit this to a media issue, not a citizens' cause. Circumstances are on your side: the culture of an ambitious metropolis is determined by the self-interest of anonymous survival, not the generosity of community consciousness. Mumbai knows that the "bhai", the gangster, is an ineradicable part of the city's ecology. Take your time. Reporters will return to their grind, with another tiny germ of fear etched into their hearts. A reporter's death is a statistic. Mumbai is not sentimental about statistics.
The ruling class will rule, until the phlegm at the base finally rises, and boils over into rage.
Dey murder: Should we assume that it is currently legal to shoot journalists in Mumbai?
By M J Akbar
In Byword - India Today, June 27, 2011
The besetting sin of the Indian ruling class might prove to be exceptional stupidity rather than pervasive corruption. Successful politicians are clever, or they would not be successful. But they can become foolish enough to believe that the rest of us are stupid.
The subtle lie is a fine art, and a crisis rouses veterans to their slipperiest best. The murder of crime-busting reporter Jyotirmoy Dey in Mumbai by a posse of motorbike gunmen, in the soggy daylight of a monsoon afternoon, was a public relations catastrophe for the Maharashtra government. The crocodile tears of ministers began to compete with the monsoon instantly. Carried away by excessive piety, Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan, Home Minister R.R. Patil and all-purpose busybody Chhagan Bhujbal even promised a majestic law to protect journalists.
Since this law has not been passed, should we assume that it is currently legal to shoot journalists in Mumbai?
There is no shortage of laws in India. There is a terrifying shortage of legal order. The order of the day in Mumbai is determined by a politician-police-criminal coalition that deploys private armies to send a periodic message to pests who interfere with their lucrative control of the economic sinews of the black economy. They do not kill journalists, or whistleblowers, every day. Discretion is the better part of their valour. Their purpose is just to let everyone know whose finger is more effective on the trigger. Dey's death was one such reminder to the media.
The litany of alibis, including a few pompous ones like the proposed legislation, trotted out by politicians is designed to cajole, flatter, fudge or even buy the Mumbai establishment's way out of a crisis that threatens the stability of the cops-criminal-minister nexus.
I often wonder why we keep calling Mumbai's criminal gangs the underworld. They live in, and dominate, the overworld. 'Underworld' tends to give them a shadowy, even ethereal presence, as if they float in dark corners of the city like phantoms on the prowl.
They are masters of the day, not vampires of the night. They are in league with, if not colleagues of, high officials who shield them from those suicidal enough to challenge their kingdom.
Within 48 hours of Dey's murder, an Assistant Commissioner of Police, Anil Mahabole, in charge of the Azad Maidan precinct, had been downgraded. His ranking senior, police commissioner Arup Patnaik said that he was "neither denying nor confirming Mahabole's role" in the incident. Such equivocation suggests guilt, at the very least. Simple question: how long does it take an assistant commissioner of police to get corrupt? 24 hours, or 24 years? If Mahabole's reputation was common knowledge, why was he in control of Azad Maidan police station? On one side, Azad Maidan runs along a green lung to Bombay Gymkhana. Turn 180 degrees, and life shifts: just beyond the great railway terminus lie the congested lanes where Dawood Ibrahim used to live, and from where his brother and sister still control their prolific business. A few weeks ago, a motorbike squad tried to kill Dawood's brother in one of these lanes, and got his driver instead.
You do not have to be as brilliant as a chief minister or a police commissioner to guess what the Mumbai police's brief is: promise just about enough to appease journalists, but do nothing to destroy the enriching partnership that rules Mumbai. Round up scapegoats. Sacrifice one or two, strictly if necessary. Photograph the applause. Limit this to a media issue, not a citizens' cause. Circumstances are on your side: the culture of an ambitious metropolis is determined by the self-interest of anonymous survival, not the generosity of community consciousness. Mumbai knows that the "bhai", the gangster, is an ineradicable part of the city's ecology. Take your time. Reporters will return to their grind, with another tiny germ of fear etched into their hearts. A reporter's death is a statistic. Mumbai is not sentimental about statistics.
The ruling class will rule, until the phlegm at the base finally rises, and boils over into rage.
Silence, or bluster, is not an answer
Byline by M J Akbar: Silence, or bluster, is not an answer
We need to lay out the sequence if we want to assess the consequence.
In the 12 June 2011 issue of the Sunday Guardian our political editor Kota Neelima broke a story that in one of the famous taped conversations A. Raja, the telecom minister, told lobbyist Niira Radia that “Chidambaram has taken a lot of money”. Her source was a CBI document, part of the written CBI evidence given to the Public Accounts Committee of Parliament, headed by Dr Murli Manohar Joshi, based on an “Analysis of calls received from Income Tax Department”. It was submitted by the Anti Corruption Branch of CBI. This document is in possession of the Sunday Guardian.
Chidambaram, now home minister but in charge of finance during the substantive part of the telecom scam, has issued a statement that the “Raja” mentioned in the CBI note to Parliament was not A. Raja, the minister, but a certain K.R. Raja, an executive working for Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries. K.R. Raja has made a statement apologising for casting such aspersions on Chidambaram.
The case gets more curious at every step. The questions have increased, not disappeared.
1: CBI has been investigating these tapes for a year at least. How could it make a mistake in identifying Raja’s voice in the audio when it must have heard that voice countless number of times? Do the Reliance Raja and the DMK Raja have the same voice? Could CBI not have checked the difference, if any, and sent this tape for authentication to a laboratory? Incidentally, the assumption that it was a private sector executive who believed that Chidambaram had got “a lot of money” does not make the allegation any less heinous, since it is the private sector which has paid politicians in this scam.
2: This conversation was obviously recorded from Radia’s mobile phone, since the Mukesh Ambani Raja’s phone was not, presumably, being tapped. Did CBI question Radia about whether she had any knowledge of this “large sum of money”? Or does CBI pursue allegations against a DMK Raja to the hilt, but is totally indifferent to allegations against powerful Congress ministers? It is the duty of CBI to investigate allegations of all corruption, which is why these phone taps were authorised in the first place. What efforts did the CBI make to either substantiate corruption by Chidambaram, or absolve him? Or are we to assume that CBI has been ordered not to enquire any further when someone of the political weight of Chidambaram is involved? Accusing the finance minister of corruption is as high a misdemeanour as we can get: Why did CBI not pursue this lead from the transcript? The matter could have been settled long before this paragraph went to PAC. Did CBI ever check with telecom minister Raja whether he had made that remark? If yes, what was his answer? If not, then why not? Raja is still in custody. Has CBI bothered to ask Radia about this since the story broke? And if the voice is that of Reliance Raja, as Chidambaram avers, then has CBI asked the private sector executive why he made such a remark? If yes, what was the answer? If not, then why not?
3: In the documents sent to PAC, CBI has consistently referred to principals by their surnames without adding initials before them. Chidambaram, for instance, has been mentioned only by his familiar surname in the relevant paragraph; there is no “P.C.” before the surname. The context of the document tells us that the text refers to the then finance minister, and not to any of the millions of other Chidambarams who are citizens of India. Similarly, former telecom minister A. Raja is regularly referred to only as “Raja”. Witness, to mention only a few examples, the CBI’s analysis of conversations on 15 November 2008, 18 November 2008, 19 November 2008 or 20 November 2008. All these references are in the papers that are with the Public Accounts Committee. There is no reference to any K.R. Raja in the CBI document. And even if the statement was made by the Reliance Raja, the question will not go away: why was there no follow-up in an investigation about corruption during these many, many months? Home minister Chidambaram has not denied that the reference was to him, nor has anyone else.
4: Is CBI so incompetent that it sent a document to the highest authority in a democracy, Parliament, without a full check on something as serious as an allegation of corruption against a former finance minister and present home minister? CBI lets this explosive allegation about “a lot of money” going to Chidambaram hang in the air. Why? Which officers of CBI are responsible for this lacuna?
Who will provide the answers? Silence, or even bluster, is not an answer.
We need to lay out the sequence if we want to assess the consequence.
In the 12 June 2011 issue of the Sunday Guardian our political editor Kota Neelima broke a story that in one of the famous taped conversations A. Raja, the telecom minister, told lobbyist Niira Radia that “Chidambaram has taken a lot of money”. Her source was a CBI document, part of the written CBI evidence given to the Public Accounts Committee of Parliament, headed by Dr Murli Manohar Joshi, based on an “Analysis of calls received from Income Tax Department”. It was submitted by the Anti Corruption Branch of CBI. This document is in possession of the Sunday Guardian.
Chidambaram, now home minister but in charge of finance during the substantive part of the telecom scam, has issued a statement that the “Raja” mentioned in the CBI note to Parliament was not A. Raja, the minister, but a certain K.R. Raja, an executive working for Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries. K.R. Raja has made a statement apologising for casting such aspersions on Chidambaram.
The case gets more curious at every step. The questions have increased, not disappeared.
1: CBI has been investigating these tapes for a year at least. How could it make a mistake in identifying Raja’s voice in the audio when it must have heard that voice countless number of times? Do the Reliance Raja and the DMK Raja have the same voice? Could CBI not have checked the difference, if any, and sent this tape for authentication to a laboratory? Incidentally, the assumption that it was a private sector executive who believed that Chidambaram had got “a lot of money” does not make the allegation any less heinous, since it is the private sector which has paid politicians in this scam.
2: This conversation was obviously recorded from Radia’s mobile phone, since the Mukesh Ambani Raja’s phone was not, presumably, being tapped. Did CBI question Radia about whether she had any knowledge of this “large sum of money”? Or does CBI pursue allegations against a DMK Raja to the hilt, but is totally indifferent to allegations against powerful Congress ministers? It is the duty of CBI to investigate allegations of all corruption, which is why these phone taps were authorised in the first place. What efforts did the CBI make to either substantiate corruption by Chidambaram, or absolve him? Or are we to assume that CBI has been ordered not to enquire any further when someone of the political weight of Chidambaram is involved? Accusing the finance minister of corruption is as high a misdemeanour as we can get: Why did CBI not pursue this lead from the transcript? The matter could have been settled long before this paragraph went to PAC. Did CBI ever check with telecom minister Raja whether he had made that remark? If yes, what was his answer? If not, then why not? Raja is still in custody. Has CBI bothered to ask Radia about this since the story broke? And if the voice is that of Reliance Raja, as Chidambaram avers, then has CBI asked the private sector executive why he made such a remark? If yes, what was the answer? If not, then why not?
3: In the documents sent to PAC, CBI has consistently referred to principals by their surnames without adding initials before them. Chidambaram, for instance, has been mentioned only by his familiar surname in the relevant paragraph; there is no “P.C.” before the surname. The context of the document tells us that the text refers to the then finance minister, and not to any of the millions of other Chidambarams who are citizens of India. Similarly, former telecom minister A. Raja is regularly referred to only as “Raja”. Witness, to mention only a few examples, the CBI’s analysis of conversations on 15 November 2008, 18 November 2008, 19 November 2008 or 20 November 2008. All these references are in the papers that are with the Public Accounts Committee. There is no reference to any K.R. Raja in the CBI document. And even if the statement was made by the Reliance Raja, the question will not go away: why was there no follow-up in an investigation about corruption during these many, many months? Home minister Chidambaram has not denied that the reference was to him, nor has anyone else.
4: Is CBI so incompetent that it sent a document to the highest authority in a democracy, Parliament, without a full check on something as serious as an allegation of corruption against a former finance minister and present home minister? CBI lets this explosive allegation about “a lot of money” going to Chidambaram hang in the air. Why? Which officers of CBI are responsible for this lacuna?
Who will provide the answers? Silence, or even bluster, is not an answer.
Saturday, June 11, 2011
Lost between bail and bail-out
Byline by M J Akbar: Lost between bail and bail-out
If the final fatality of this summer of suicides happens to be Dr Manmohan Singh's government, some intrepid, future historian of Congress affairs could be tempted to point a finger at Delhi High Court. The Court has asked DMK patriarch Karunanidhi to choose between a loving father of his daughter Kanimozhi and a loyal ally of Dr Singh. Unlike the Biblical King Solomon, famed for innovative justice, the Delhi High Court has not offered a solution to tricky problems. It has merely delivered its obiter dicta and adjourned.
Simply put: if Karunanidhi wants Kanimozhi out on bail, which he has every legitimate right to desire, he will have to walk across to the Opposition benches in the Lok Sabha, thereby in all likelihood initiating a process that could precipitate a premature general election.
Even a cursory reading of the honourable court's reasons for rejecting yet another bail plea, on 8 June, makes this obvious: "They [the petitioners] have got strong political connections. Petitioner Kanimozhi Karunanidhi belongs to same political party to which accused A.Raja belongs and the said party is sharing power in the central government." That's it, then. If you share power in the central government you share a jail in Delhi. You do not have to be a convict to languish in jail. Being an accused is sufficient, as long as you are among the rulers of the nation.
Logic is not an option. Karunanidhi might well argue - as he is probably instructing his counsel to do before they move up to the Supreme Court - that if he had the clout to disrupt the course of justice, Kanimozhi would hardly be in jail. He might suggest, reasonably, that Kanimozhi and A. Raja, former telecom minister, had been out of prison for years before their incarceration and did not tamper with evidence or influence witnesses, so how could they do so now? Indeed, if proximity to power was sufficient for life in lock-up then Suresh Kalmadi, or anyone else in the Congress, has no chance of leaving Tihar for many years, irrespective of whether they were guilty or not. If he does get tetchy, Karunanidhi could even wonder how the courts will deal will some powerful Congress names who could be next in line, since they approved all the decisions on G2 made by Raja. But all this disappears into the academic category. The court's thinking is categorical: in office? Off to jail without bail.
Perhaps it is the thought of abortion that is making some Congress leaders hysterical. Some of them are turning abusive, and aggravating this offence by making a virtue of the unnecessary. Others, with higher ministerial ambitions, have opted for political rather than personal virulence. They are treating dissent as treason. One of them declared that this was a virtual war against the state and drew out a precise map of the space he had allotted for opposition activity. Anyone who stepped out of that line deserved a muscled thump, if not some unlit recess of a mofussil prison. The pompous rhetoric surrounding nothing more savoury than self-interest is always shrouded in various aspects of patriotism, of course. Out of kindness, we shall not mention their names, but even a casual look at the newspapers will suffice to reveal who they are.
Claim and accusation are not relevant. The moot fact is that governance has disappeared much before this government has disappeared. The union government has frozen into a caricature, with some of its ministers sallying forth into people's territory from their castle, like so many Don Quixotes on individual missions against a rising crowd of windmills. It is as if whatever the union government touches ends up in shambles. Mistakes can be contagious, and the summer of 2011 is acquiring plague proportions. If there is still a semblance of sanity across the country it is because the state governments have not yet been infected with the plague.
The Congress has shown a remarkable inability to manage a partner, DMK, who has in fact nowhere else to go except oblivion. The acid drips from the wounds in this relationship are corroding the stability of the UPA alliance. It has proved incompetent in its response to those forces who are exercising their democratic right to destabilize the alliance. If a union government cannot take the measure of a maverick like Baba Ramdev, and find the right means of defusing someone who was always more bluster than substance, then it has no right to rule the country. Government has turned Ramdev into an unlikely hero for more voters than it can immediately count.
The Manmohan Singh government may not have lost its majority, but it has lost its poise and purpose, and is unlikely to recover its elan. The government seems in desperate need of a bail-out itself.
If the final fatality of this summer of suicides happens to be Dr Manmohan Singh's government, some intrepid, future historian of Congress affairs could be tempted to point a finger at Delhi High Court. The Court has asked DMK patriarch Karunanidhi to choose between a loving father of his daughter Kanimozhi and a loyal ally of Dr Singh. Unlike the Biblical King Solomon, famed for innovative justice, the Delhi High Court has not offered a solution to tricky problems. It has merely delivered its obiter dicta and adjourned.
Simply put: if Karunanidhi wants Kanimozhi out on bail, which he has every legitimate right to desire, he will have to walk across to the Opposition benches in the Lok Sabha, thereby in all likelihood initiating a process that could precipitate a premature general election.
Even a cursory reading of the honourable court's reasons for rejecting yet another bail plea, on 8 June, makes this obvious: "They [the petitioners] have got strong political connections. Petitioner Kanimozhi Karunanidhi belongs to same political party to which accused A.Raja belongs and the said party is sharing power in the central government." That's it, then. If you share power in the central government you share a jail in Delhi. You do not have to be a convict to languish in jail. Being an accused is sufficient, as long as you are among the rulers of the nation.
Logic is not an option. Karunanidhi might well argue - as he is probably instructing his counsel to do before they move up to the Supreme Court - that if he had the clout to disrupt the course of justice, Kanimozhi would hardly be in jail. He might suggest, reasonably, that Kanimozhi and A. Raja, former telecom minister, had been out of prison for years before their incarceration and did not tamper with evidence or influence witnesses, so how could they do so now? Indeed, if proximity to power was sufficient for life in lock-up then Suresh Kalmadi, or anyone else in the Congress, has no chance of leaving Tihar for many years, irrespective of whether they were guilty or not. If he does get tetchy, Karunanidhi could even wonder how the courts will deal will some powerful Congress names who could be next in line, since they approved all the decisions on G2 made by Raja. But all this disappears into the academic category. The court's thinking is categorical: in office? Off to jail without bail.
Perhaps it is the thought of abortion that is making some Congress leaders hysterical. Some of them are turning abusive, and aggravating this offence by making a virtue of the unnecessary. Others, with higher ministerial ambitions, have opted for political rather than personal virulence. They are treating dissent as treason. One of them declared that this was a virtual war against the state and drew out a precise map of the space he had allotted for opposition activity. Anyone who stepped out of that line deserved a muscled thump, if not some unlit recess of a mofussil prison. The pompous rhetoric surrounding nothing more savoury than self-interest is always shrouded in various aspects of patriotism, of course. Out of kindness, we shall not mention their names, but even a casual look at the newspapers will suffice to reveal who they are.
Claim and accusation are not relevant. The moot fact is that governance has disappeared much before this government has disappeared. The union government has frozen into a caricature, with some of its ministers sallying forth into people's territory from their castle, like so many Don Quixotes on individual missions against a rising crowd of windmills. It is as if whatever the union government touches ends up in shambles. Mistakes can be contagious, and the summer of 2011 is acquiring plague proportions. If there is still a semblance of sanity across the country it is because the state governments have not yet been infected with the plague.
The Congress has shown a remarkable inability to manage a partner, DMK, who has in fact nowhere else to go except oblivion. The acid drips from the wounds in this relationship are corroding the stability of the UPA alliance. It has proved incompetent in its response to those forces who are exercising their democratic right to destabilize the alliance. If a union government cannot take the measure of a maverick like Baba Ramdev, and find the right means of defusing someone who was always more bluster than substance, then it has no right to rule the country. Government has turned Ramdev into an unlikely hero for more voters than it can immediately count.
The Manmohan Singh government may not have lost its majority, but it has lost its poise and purpose, and is unlikely to recover its elan. The government seems in desperate need of a bail-out itself.
Friday, June 10, 2011
Beware the ideas of June
BEWARE THE IDES OF JUNE
by M.J. Akbar
Byword - In India Today
There is something about June that does not quite agree with Congress fortunes. On June 25, 1946, the Congress accepted the Wavell plan to protect a notional form of Indian unity, only to walk away from its decision in a fortnight and open the party to accusations that may have become archaic, but never quite disappear from history books. On June 4, 1947, the Congress accepted the partition of India. Mahatma Gandhi, sitting in Delhi’s Dalit colony, mourned: “Today, I find myself alone… (even Sardar Patel and Jawaharlal Nehru) wonder if I have not deteriorated with age.”
Gandhi, Patel and Nehru would have got together to cry on June 26, 1975 when Mrs Indira Gandhi imposed Emergency, and the country hovered in anxiety and fear while her son Sanjay repeatedly expressed the thought that dictatorship should continue for another two decades. Maybe the old guard knew about the June malaise: Jayaprakash Narayan launched the movement that precipitated the Emergency in June 1974. Indira Gandhi’s second terrible historic blunder, Operation Bluestar, took place on June 6, 1984. A closer scrutiny of dates and events would surely produce more interesting data, albeit on a sliding scale in descent.
The follies of June 2011 may seem squalid, particularly when juxtaposed with some contemporary characters who have seized centrestage, compared to the great confrontations over nationalism, democracy and federalism in Junes past, but it would be a mistake to underestimate the fury that has seized Indians over black money and corruption. A complacent and even arrogant Congress is showing every sign of doing precisely that. It believes it can mollify Anna Hazare and vilify Baba Ramdev just as it once thought it could ignore Anna and deal with Baba by stroking the latter’s ego. This is a petty strategy for a profound problem.
The voter is recording every scene of this volatile drama in his subconscious, and that montage will determine the next elections. History tells us that it is virtually impossible to defeat the Congress until it takes a very determined vow to defeat itself.
Paradoxically, the problem of corruption is a consequence of success. Before 1947, the British did not need to ferret away black money, because they could pick up as much white money from India as they wanted. Empire apologists, or their Indian sycophants, rarely acknowledge the war debt that Britain owed India after 1945, and which it could not pay when free India needed the money most.
The black economy was a marginal fact for three decades after freedom, because when you don’t have much of an economy, black economy can’t be much of a deal either. In the 1960s and 1970s, smuggling was a theatrical reality for newspapers and movies, but it did not penetrate the bloodlines of the Indian economy. Today, corruption is leukemia. The Indian is both awed by a figure like Rs 1.76 lakh crore, as well as nonplussed by it. It is so fantastic that it floats into the notional. What makes Rs 1.76 lakh crore real is the fact that Indians have to pay Rs 176 at every corner every day to get every small thing done by government, or indeed the multiples they pay as a bribe to twist the law or ignore it. The result is a deadly mixture of rage and guilt. Underlying both is a gradual conviction that if matters continue as they are, the nation state will corrode. The young are at the forefront because they want to protect an India they know will blossom once it is rescued from those who have infected its bloodstream.
This national fury has found a legitimate target in the politician, because the political class has outstripped all competition to become the most obnoxiously rapacious exploiter in modern history. Businessmen at least provide jobs. Politicians fatten files when they are not fattening themselves. In 1739, Nadir Shah looted Delhi for three days, and we have not forgotten. Politicians have welcomed the 21st century with loot on an unprecedented scale.
It is ironic that this loot has taken place under the watch of a decent Prime Minister who has kept his personal distance from the sack of India. But Dr Manmohan Singh’s financial integrity is of little use to Indians when he presides over a Cabinet weighed down with the corrupt. He refused, for years, to recognise guilty colleagues because that would have brought his government down, although he knew precisely what they were doing. This continues to be true. The current crusade is being led by non-political actors because Indians no longer trust their politicians. There is stain on every side. It is necessary to note that when they believe a politician to be honest, they reward him with reelection.
If 2004 was the best year in Manmohan Singh’s life, then he might, when he gets to write his autobiography, rue the day he was reelected in 2009.
by M.J. Akbar
Byword - In India Today
There is something about June that does not quite agree with Congress fortunes. On June 25, 1946, the Congress accepted the Wavell plan to protect a notional form of Indian unity, only to walk away from its decision in a fortnight and open the party to accusations that may have become archaic, but never quite disappear from history books. On June 4, 1947, the Congress accepted the partition of India. Mahatma Gandhi, sitting in Delhi’s Dalit colony, mourned: “Today, I find myself alone… (even Sardar Patel and Jawaharlal Nehru) wonder if I have not deteriorated with age.”
Gandhi, Patel and Nehru would have got together to cry on June 26, 1975 when Mrs Indira Gandhi imposed Emergency, and the country hovered in anxiety and fear while her son Sanjay repeatedly expressed the thought that dictatorship should continue for another two decades. Maybe the old guard knew about the June malaise: Jayaprakash Narayan launched the movement that precipitated the Emergency in June 1974. Indira Gandhi’s second terrible historic blunder, Operation Bluestar, took place on June 6, 1984. A closer scrutiny of dates and events would surely produce more interesting data, albeit on a sliding scale in descent.
The follies of June 2011 may seem squalid, particularly when juxtaposed with some contemporary characters who have seized centrestage, compared to the great confrontations over nationalism, democracy and federalism in Junes past, but it would be a mistake to underestimate the fury that has seized Indians over black money and corruption. A complacent and even arrogant Congress is showing every sign of doing precisely that. It believes it can mollify Anna Hazare and vilify Baba Ramdev just as it once thought it could ignore Anna and deal with Baba by stroking the latter’s ego. This is a petty strategy for a profound problem.
The voter is recording every scene of this volatile drama in his subconscious, and that montage will determine the next elections. History tells us that it is virtually impossible to defeat the Congress until it takes a very determined vow to defeat itself.
Paradoxically, the problem of corruption is a consequence of success. Before 1947, the British did not need to ferret away black money, because they could pick up as much white money from India as they wanted. Empire apologists, or their Indian sycophants, rarely acknowledge the war debt that Britain owed India after 1945, and which it could not pay when free India needed the money most.
The black economy was a marginal fact for three decades after freedom, because when you don’t have much of an economy, black economy can’t be much of a deal either. In the 1960s and 1970s, smuggling was a theatrical reality for newspapers and movies, but it did not penetrate the bloodlines of the Indian economy. Today, corruption is leukemia. The Indian is both awed by a figure like Rs 1.76 lakh crore, as well as nonplussed by it. It is so fantastic that it floats into the notional. What makes Rs 1.76 lakh crore real is the fact that Indians have to pay Rs 176 at every corner every day to get every small thing done by government, or indeed the multiples they pay as a bribe to twist the law or ignore it. The result is a deadly mixture of rage and guilt. Underlying both is a gradual conviction that if matters continue as they are, the nation state will corrode. The young are at the forefront because they want to protect an India they know will blossom once it is rescued from those who have infected its bloodstream.
This national fury has found a legitimate target in the politician, because the political class has outstripped all competition to become the most obnoxiously rapacious exploiter in modern history. Businessmen at least provide jobs. Politicians fatten files when they are not fattening themselves. In 1739, Nadir Shah looted Delhi for three days, and we have not forgotten. Politicians have welcomed the 21st century with loot on an unprecedented scale.
It is ironic that this loot has taken place under the watch of a decent Prime Minister who has kept his personal distance from the sack of India. But Dr Manmohan Singh’s financial integrity is of little use to Indians when he presides over a Cabinet weighed down with the corrupt. He refused, for years, to recognise guilty colleagues because that would have brought his government down, although he knew precisely what they were doing. This continues to be true. The current crusade is being led by non-political actors because Indians no longer trust their politicians. There is stain on every side. It is necessary to note that when they believe a politician to be honest, they reward him with reelection.
If 2004 was the best year in Manmohan Singh’s life, then he might, when he gets to write his autobiography, rue the day he was reelected in 2009.
Saturday, June 04, 2011
Party Singh vs. Government Singh
Byline by M J Akbar: Party Singh vs.Government Singh
Has the time for the Congress high command to issue notices to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, his virtual deputy Pranab Mukherjee and his principal interlocutor for officially unofficial dialogue Kapil Sibal, for gross violation of discipline? If it cannot muster up the courage to censure its own PM, it could always expel general secretary Digvijay Singh. The party Singh wants to send Baba Ramdev to prison or perdition, whichever is nearer. The government Singh believes that acrobatic subservience by four ministers in the VIP lounge of Delhi airport, rather than within the more private environment of a drawing room, before the crusader-Baba, is the way forward to an honest India in which every politician glistens with moral fervour, and anyone giving or taking a bribe gets the noose he deserves.
It must be the summer. The government's brain has melted. Whatever else may be your view of Baba Ramdev, you have to be a bit soft to believe he can be bribed by flattery. The Baba has not risen from a bicycle in Haryana to a private jet by being gullible. He is playing for much higher stakes.
The Prime Minister had two options when confronted by a "fast unto death". He could either negotiate with a man who had everything to gain by confrontation; or he could have gone over Baba Ramdev's head, as it were, and spoken directly to the India that was lining up in support of the Baba, not just in Delhi but in every small town. Better still, he could have done both; negotiate at a minimalist level, and address India's core concern comprehensively, decisively. The multiple negotiations with Ramdev have not only raised the latter's stature in public life, but also ensured that the credit for any decision will go not to Dr Singh's government but to the man who generated a midsummer day's thunderstorm.
Pressure is guaranteed to ensure mistakes in decision-making. Dr Manmohan Singh would have handled pressure from Opposition parties, but is unable to deal with parallel stress from two different, but inter-linked points. The anger of the people has derailed governance. But his most difficult challenge is neither from the people nor from a crusader; it is from a faction within Congress that derives its power from proximity to Mrs Sonia Gandhi. Digvijay Singh is the main spokesman of this faction, which is why he has the freedom to offer a continuous stream of alternative policy advice, on every matter from Assam to Kashmir, depending on the news of the day. Digvijay Singh has done more to weaken the authority of Dr Manmohan Singh than anyone else; and a mute Prime Minister's helplessness before this onslaught only confirms the power equations within today's Congress.
Mrs Sonia Gandhi has also empowered her parallel Cabinet, the NAC, which believes that Dr Singh's Cabinet and Parliament should listen to its instructions. Some of its members specialise in pomposity when they are not heckling the Prime Minister. The strategy is transparent: to snatch credit if the government does anything right, and turn stridently accusatory if the government makes a mistake.
The BJP has to do nothing to destabilize the Manmohan Singh government, which is crumbling under the pressure of internal contradictions. Opposition parties need to do nothing except wait. Once upon a time they did not know how to. Now they have learnt.
Inevitable question: how long can a dysfunctional government totter around? Technically, forever [caveat: forever comes in 2014, the year of the next scheduled general elections]. The mathematics of this Parliament works in favour of the establishment. M. Karunanidhi may publicly rue the poor choice of friends he has made, meaning the Congress, but politically there is nothing he can do. Potential new allies are in no hurry to touch a DMK toxic with corruption charges. Regional animosities in other states create a curious algebra. It would take some catastrophe, for instance, to bring Mulayam Singh Yadav's SP and Mayawati's BSP on the same side of the voting platform in Parliament. But is this impossible?
Dr Manmohan Singh's government is not in any danger of being washed away by some sudden flood or devastated by an earthquake; its foundations are being eroded by inbred worms. Dr Singh is flashing a sword, slashing the heart of a former Cabinet colleague here, breaking the arm of a private sector executive, which makes for temporary political theatre. What he needs is very powerful pesticide, to be sprayed at home. The disease of corruption is not limited to enemies or allies who might have become dispensable. The Congress seems to believe that it can get away by speaking in multiple voices, each customised for whichever audience is in the hall.
Baba Ramdev has a significant advantage over the Congress in this test of wills. He has nothing to lose. The Congress does: it could lose power.
Has the time for the Congress high command to issue notices to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, his virtual deputy Pranab Mukherjee and his principal interlocutor for officially unofficial dialogue Kapil Sibal, for gross violation of discipline? If it cannot muster up the courage to censure its own PM, it could always expel general secretary Digvijay Singh. The party Singh wants to send Baba Ramdev to prison or perdition, whichever is nearer. The government Singh believes that acrobatic subservience by four ministers in the VIP lounge of Delhi airport, rather than within the more private environment of a drawing room, before the crusader-Baba, is the way forward to an honest India in which every politician glistens with moral fervour, and anyone giving or taking a bribe gets the noose he deserves.
It must be the summer. The government's brain has melted. Whatever else may be your view of Baba Ramdev, you have to be a bit soft to believe he can be bribed by flattery. The Baba has not risen from a bicycle in Haryana to a private jet by being gullible. He is playing for much higher stakes.
The Prime Minister had two options when confronted by a "fast unto death". He could either negotiate with a man who had everything to gain by confrontation; or he could have gone over Baba Ramdev's head, as it were, and spoken directly to the India that was lining up in support of the Baba, not just in Delhi but in every small town. Better still, he could have done both; negotiate at a minimalist level, and address India's core concern comprehensively, decisively. The multiple negotiations with Ramdev have not only raised the latter's stature in public life, but also ensured that the credit for any decision will go not to Dr Singh's government but to the man who generated a midsummer day's thunderstorm.
Pressure is guaranteed to ensure mistakes in decision-making. Dr Manmohan Singh would have handled pressure from Opposition parties, but is unable to deal with parallel stress from two different, but inter-linked points. The anger of the people has derailed governance. But his most difficult challenge is neither from the people nor from a crusader; it is from a faction within Congress that derives its power from proximity to Mrs Sonia Gandhi. Digvijay Singh is the main spokesman of this faction, which is why he has the freedom to offer a continuous stream of alternative policy advice, on every matter from Assam to Kashmir, depending on the news of the day. Digvijay Singh has done more to weaken the authority of Dr Manmohan Singh than anyone else; and a mute Prime Minister's helplessness before this onslaught only confirms the power equations within today's Congress.
Mrs Sonia Gandhi has also empowered her parallel Cabinet, the NAC, which believes that Dr Singh's Cabinet and Parliament should listen to its instructions. Some of its members specialise in pomposity when they are not heckling the Prime Minister. The strategy is transparent: to snatch credit if the government does anything right, and turn stridently accusatory if the government makes a mistake.
The BJP has to do nothing to destabilize the Manmohan Singh government, which is crumbling under the pressure of internal contradictions. Opposition parties need to do nothing except wait. Once upon a time they did not know how to. Now they have learnt.
Inevitable question: how long can a dysfunctional government totter around? Technically, forever [caveat: forever comes in 2014, the year of the next scheduled general elections]. The mathematics of this Parliament works in favour of the establishment. M. Karunanidhi may publicly rue the poor choice of friends he has made, meaning the Congress, but politically there is nothing he can do. Potential new allies are in no hurry to touch a DMK toxic with corruption charges. Regional animosities in other states create a curious algebra. It would take some catastrophe, for instance, to bring Mulayam Singh Yadav's SP and Mayawati's BSP on the same side of the voting platform in Parliament. But is this impossible?
Dr Manmohan Singh's government is not in any danger of being washed away by some sudden flood or devastated by an earthquake; its foundations are being eroded by inbred worms. Dr Singh is flashing a sword, slashing the heart of a former Cabinet colleague here, breaking the arm of a private sector executive, which makes for temporary political theatre. What he needs is very powerful pesticide, to be sprayed at home. The disease of corruption is not limited to enemies or allies who might have become dispensable. The Congress seems to believe that it can get away by speaking in multiple voices, each customised for whichever audience is in the hall.
Baba Ramdev has a significant advantage over the Congress in this test of wills. He has nothing to lose. The Congress does: it could lose power.
Friday, June 03, 2011
Didi at Heaven's door
DIDI AT HEAVEN’S DOOR
By MJ Akbar
Byword in India Today
The door to heaven deserves a fresh coat of paint. There is only a smudge or two of contemporary colour in Siliguri, the last town on the Bengal plains before the horizon slides up to the ethereal beauty of the Himalayas. Siliguri is an urban scrawl, unable even to achieve the breadth of a sprawl. A couple of malls have come up along the national highway before it curves away towards the exquisite turbulence of the Teesta river, tumbling through picturesque settlements like Kalijhora and Kalimpong before it heads into Gangtok or Darjeeling.
Perhaps a hundred yards from Siliguri’s Spencers mall is a billboard from history, an advertisement for the cpi(m)’s daily newspaper Ganashakti (People’s Power). A once-strident typography has evaporated to the edge of invisibility. The faint masthead speaks of past glory. Askance of this billboard is a newly-minted office of a Bengali newspaper that has, over the last many years, fought the Left Front almost as ferociously as Mamata Banerjee. The building is on a wide, narrow strip, a house without proportional depth; its central feature a hall punctuated by open doors. The conjunction seems an appropriate metaphor for the seismic shift that has taken place in Bengal. The Left has faded away. But there is something empty and dysfunctional about the alternative space.
This is understandable, given that Mamata’s government has just begun to function. Her initial impetus has been on hard work. This too is explicable, since work was not the favourite occupation of a Leftist administration heavily influenced by trade unions. Mamata is surely aware of the ditty that Calcutta coined, with the resigned sense of humour that became its preferred weapon during the stagnant phase of Left rule, to describe the work culture of Writers’ Buildings, seat of Bengal’s government: “Aashi jaai, mainey paai, kaaj korley beshi chaai (I come, I go, I get my salary; if you want me to work, give me more).” The new chief minister will not find it easy to propel the sedentary babu, but she has set her ministers an unprecedented pace. The strain has sent one to hospital already, albeit briefly.
Mamata might be missing the point. It is of course always better to work hard rather than work soft, but efficiency is a secondary rather than primary priority. Surprisingly, given the national clamour on the subject, corruption is not a dramatic problem in Bengal. The give and take in Bengal has been of the petty cash variety, nothing that would disturb the summer siesta of an Anna Hazare or Baba Ramdev. The Bengali voter did not demolish the Left Front because it was lazy or corrupt. Its sin was far more venal: it had become barren.
What Mamata needs, immediately and in profusion, is mint-new ideas. She understands the intensity of the challenge required in such a massive resurrection, but she should also worry that her ministers could undermine her government by searching for solutions within a vacuum.
The most conclusive evidence for the view that the Left Front government knew it was heading towards an iceberg is the simple fact that the Marxists had a fabulous pre-crash party on the Titanic. They left the treasury bankrupt. Bengal has a per capita debt of Rs 21,697, the highest in the country, according to the new finance minister, Amit Mitra, who believes that he will have to borrow Rs 3,000 crore from the market just to honour unpaid bills. While Uncle Pranab Mukherjee in Delhi might be a wonderful mentor, he does not have the wherewithal for nepotism. Bengal needs the private sector. More important, private capital must deliver a high return in terms of employment for every rupee invested; which means, broadly, geometric expansion in the service industry.
Alas, the private sector is not equally in need of Bengal. The Left Front, clinging to attitudes that had exhausted its utility two decades ago, thought it could tax its way to survival. Mamata will need a different compass. She may need to look at the Himalayas for inspiration.
Her neighbour up north is Sikkim. Sikkim has no income tax. The state has a population of 600,000 and seven universities, only one of which is a state institution. A number of medical companies have started manufacturing units there. There is a building boom, messy and noxious, but there. Sikkim is a thin puff of steam compared to Bengal’s potential as an engine that can drive the revival of eastern India. Necessity forced Sikkim towards invention. Bengal obviously cannot replicate such flexibility, but if Mamata does not incentivise local entrepreneurs with irresistible sweeteners and bait national businesses that can change, visibly and quickly, ordinary lives in Bengal, she will fall prey to that most fatal of diseases in public life, frustration and its first cousin, cynicism.
The biggest box in Bengal is called Writers’ Buildings. Mamata must think out of it.
By MJ Akbar
Byword in India Today
The door to heaven deserves a fresh coat of paint. There is only a smudge or two of contemporary colour in Siliguri, the last town on the Bengal plains before the horizon slides up to the ethereal beauty of the Himalayas. Siliguri is an urban scrawl, unable even to achieve the breadth of a sprawl. A couple of malls have come up along the national highway before it curves away towards the exquisite turbulence of the Teesta river, tumbling through picturesque settlements like Kalijhora and Kalimpong before it heads into Gangtok or Darjeeling.
Perhaps a hundred yards from Siliguri’s Spencers mall is a billboard from history, an advertisement for the cpi(m)’s daily newspaper Ganashakti (People’s Power). A once-strident typography has evaporated to the edge of invisibility. The faint masthead speaks of past glory. Askance of this billboard is a newly-minted office of a Bengali newspaper that has, over the last many years, fought the Left Front almost as ferociously as Mamata Banerjee. The building is on a wide, narrow strip, a house without proportional depth; its central feature a hall punctuated by open doors. The conjunction seems an appropriate metaphor for the seismic shift that has taken place in Bengal. The Left has faded away. But there is something empty and dysfunctional about the alternative space.
This is understandable, given that Mamata’s government has just begun to function. Her initial impetus has been on hard work. This too is explicable, since work was not the favourite occupation of a Leftist administration heavily influenced by trade unions. Mamata is surely aware of the ditty that Calcutta coined, with the resigned sense of humour that became its preferred weapon during the stagnant phase of Left rule, to describe the work culture of Writers’ Buildings, seat of Bengal’s government: “Aashi jaai, mainey paai, kaaj korley beshi chaai (I come, I go, I get my salary; if you want me to work, give me more).” The new chief minister will not find it easy to propel the sedentary babu, but she has set her ministers an unprecedented pace. The strain has sent one to hospital already, albeit briefly.
Mamata might be missing the point. It is of course always better to work hard rather than work soft, but efficiency is a secondary rather than primary priority. Surprisingly, given the national clamour on the subject, corruption is not a dramatic problem in Bengal. The give and take in Bengal has been of the petty cash variety, nothing that would disturb the summer siesta of an Anna Hazare or Baba Ramdev. The Bengali voter did not demolish the Left Front because it was lazy or corrupt. Its sin was far more venal: it had become barren.
What Mamata needs, immediately and in profusion, is mint-new ideas. She understands the intensity of the challenge required in such a massive resurrection, but she should also worry that her ministers could undermine her government by searching for solutions within a vacuum.
The most conclusive evidence for the view that the Left Front government knew it was heading towards an iceberg is the simple fact that the Marxists had a fabulous pre-crash party on the Titanic. They left the treasury bankrupt. Bengal has a per capita debt of Rs 21,697, the highest in the country, according to the new finance minister, Amit Mitra, who believes that he will have to borrow Rs 3,000 crore from the market just to honour unpaid bills. While Uncle Pranab Mukherjee in Delhi might be a wonderful mentor, he does not have the wherewithal for nepotism. Bengal needs the private sector. More important, private capital must deliver a high return in terms of employment for every rupee invested; which means, broadly, geometric expansion in the service industry.
Alas, the private sector is not equally in need of Bengal. The Left Front, clinging to attitudes that had exhausted its utility two decades ago, thought it could tax its way to survival. Mamata will need a different compass. She may need to look at the Himalayas for inspiration.
Her neighbour up north is Sikkim. Sikkim has no income tax. The state has a population of 600,000 and seven universities, only one of which is a state institution. A number of medical companies have started manufacturing units there. There is a building boom, messy and noxious, but there. Sikkim is a thin puff of steam compared to Bengal’s potential as an engine that can drive the revival of eastern India. Necessity forced Sikkim towards invention. Bengal obviously cannot replicate such flexibility, but if Mamata does not incentivise local entrepreneurs with irresistible sweeteners and bait national businesses that can change, visibly and quickly, ordinary lives in Bengal, she will fall prey to that most fatal of diseases in public life, frustration and its first cousin, cynicism.
The biggest box in Bengal is called Writers’ Buildings. Mamata must think out of it.
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