Byline by M J Akbar: A Certain Uncertainty
Two significant news items were circulated within twenty-four hours of each other by the Press Trust of India, an agency that believes, correctly, that the information it distributes should be independent of its consequences. It concentrates on what, not why or wherefore. It is left to us, hence, to wonder if there are any dots that connect.
The first item reported that the next session of the All India Congress Committee would be held in Delhi on 17 November. An AICC plenary can be fun. It is a wonderful party mela that attracts a spectrum of shapes, shades and shrieks, a collection of the washed and unwashed, starched and silken, lords, middlemen and peasants that reflect the national character of a party which has lost a national vote but retains a national aspiration. The speeches are predictable paeans of loyalty, but that is only to be expected. Once upon a time these used to be annual affairs, with resolutions discussed in the subjects committee before being moved at the full session, and new presidents elected with their own working committees. But those days are long over. The late P.V. Narasimha Rao attempted to revive inner party elections to the working committee (but not to his own job) at the Tirupati AICC but abandoned the exercise after checking the results. That was the end of that. Even the subjects committee is being abandoned now because very few can understand why it exists.
The last AICC plenary was in January 2006 at Hyderabad. It was a double-whammy celebration: for a well-deserved triumph in Andhra Pradesh, and a more crafted victory at the national level. Ritual homage was paid to the future in the praise for Rahul Gandhi and everyone went home to enjoy the fruits of office.
The coming AICC session in November is not a plenary, but a limited gathering of AICC members. It has been called at short notice. It has not been summoned to celebrate anything, because after three years in office no ruling party has more reason for worry than celebration. It is not being called to reassert its confidence in the leadership, because there is no question of any challenge to the president of the party, Mrs Sonia Gandhi. But it cannot be an exercise in nothing. So what is the purpose?
Is there a link to the second PTI story, which said that the American administration wants the Indo-US nuclear deal to be presented to the Congress by January next year? The specific PTI sentence is: "Harping on a year-end deadline for the nuclear deal with India, the US has said it will be good to get it voted in the Congress by the coming January."
The next meeting between the government and the Left on the nuclear deal is scheduled for 14 November. If the January deadline is to be met, this will also be the last meeting on the subject, for the deal must then pass through the IAEA in Vienna and the Nuclear Suppliers Group. The AICC session therefore is perfectly placed for three resolutions: congratulating the president of the party and the Prime Minister for negotiating and implementing the nuclear deal; offering it as a panacea for prosperity; and welcoming Rahul Gandhi, with his young followers, into the top echelons of the party.
The Congress will fight the next elections on the twin slogans of the nuclear deal and youth. The November AICC is clearly designed to set the stage for trumpets. Generals sound the bugle only on the eve of battle. Logic suggests, therefore, that the Congress has made up its mind and will settle for a spring election, in either February or April. Expect a few "pro-poor" announcements soon.
All the factors that must be taken into consideration also suggest this. If the nuclear deal slips out of control, and ends up in political never-never-land, the Congress will have nothing to show for its three years in power. It is banking on the youth of the urban middle class, which is a natural ally of America and disdainful of the Left, to provide the necessary impetus to its election prospects.
Moreover, the politics of the impending Assembly elections in Gujarat has revived the Modi-riots issue. Crime and punishment have a tenuous relationship when it comes to communal riots against minorities. The fact that those who killed in Gujarat had the support of Narendra Modi, or are still free, will astonish only those who wear tinted eyewear. Modi, unsurprisingly, believes that electoral success places him above the law, and he can get away with shooting the messenger. There is no penance in his soul, or even mild regret.
Unwashed bloodstains form a macabre backdrop to our social history. The gruesome Bhagalpur riots, when Yadavs massacred Muslims, took place in 1989. A token few were convicted for their role in it only this year; the rest are nearly twenty years older, and possibly parading as respectable pillars of the community. But the conviction of the few must be considered an achievement. Many of those who were directly involved in the anti-Sikh riots of 1984 are in high office; most are comfortably forgotten in the anonymity of Delhi. The killers of Mumbai’s Muslims in 1992 and 1993, a process that lasted for intermittent days spread across weeks, could have been stopped by the Congress government then in power, but were permitted to indulge in mayhem. A commission of enquiry has named dozens of the guilty, including policemen who became part of the murdering mobs, but for fifteen years successive state governments, including Congress governments in the last eight years, have protected rather than prosecuted the killers.
Each general election becomes a purgative for a multitude of sins. The sins are placed before a jury of voters that measures them on the scales of self-interest. It is natural for the scales to keep swinging in a volatile democracy. Political parties, if they have it in their power, choose the moment when they believe the tilt is in their favour to go to the polls. The Congress seems to have convinced itself that 2008 is a better year than 2009 for elections.
All facts are not equal in an election. There are facts, and then there are decisive facts. The great charm of democracy is that the voter never quite lets on which is the fact that is going to be decisive as he steps into the booth. Politicians who are confident about victory pay the bitter price of regret. This much can be said about the winter of 2007: there is a pall of uncertainty over every political face. This may be bad news for politicians but is extremely good news for politics. The equations that produced a government in 2004 have fractured, but alternatives are tentative. The Third Front, equidistant from both the Congress and the BJP, began with a flourish, and then nearly collapsed on itself before showing signs of revival. There is no alliance yet which can promise a post-election government on its own.
The consolidation necessary for government-formation will probably take place around the numbers thrown up by results, rather than pre-election issues. The present government was formed after the results, not before them; you can expect that again, with the difference that the binding Common Minimum Programme will be even more minimalist in order to achieve a degree of commonality.
The size of the field is the same; the number of players has multiplied. The next general election will be the last to offer a flux. After that voters will veer towards one principal party. Which one? That depends on who does what over the next three years.
Sunday, October 28, 2007
Monday, October 22, 2007
Item Number
Byline by M J Akbar : Item Number
Trust a Calcuttan to come up with the perfect political metaphor. We were chatting about the political mood of Muslims over tea and savouries on Id, and the conversation turned inevitably to the fate of Rizwan ur Rehman, the young man whose death in suspicious circumstances has set off a firestorm in Bengal. The Muslim vote, my Calcuttan friend said bitterly, had become like an item number in Hindi films. It was used to pump up the box office, and then dumped completely from the script.
For the very, very few of you out there who still do not know what an item number is in a Hindi movie: this is the generally raunchy song that is planted into the sequence without any pretence of reason, and with absolutely no consequence on the narrative. The Muslim voter feels similarly used by the political parties he supports. As my friend pointed out, at least those in the item number get paid for their contribution.
The best way to prevent disillusionment, of course, is to avoid the trap of illusion. And yet, the Left, spearheaded by the CPI(M), has given Indian Muslims cause for some comfort. Three decades of communal peace in Bengal during the reign of the Left Front have erased memories of what Bengal once was. Bengal is a border state that has been partitioned, and embers from 1947 raged till the mid-Seventies. In a sense the Marxist generation of Biman Bose, the present head of the party in Bengal, won its spurs during the frequent riots in Calcutta during the 1960s when it mobilised its cadre and stood on street corners, preventing hired goons from entering the city’s Muslim mohallas. Ever since the Left Front came to power in 1977, and Jyoti Basu became chief minister, a deft combination of political and administrative management has kept this particular beast out of people’s lives.
But over three decades, the Left in Bengal has slipped, unconsciously perhaps, into another trap: "soft secularism". Because it has prevented riots, it tends to believe that it has done enough for the community. There is an element of patronage in this attitude, as if providing protection to the lives of Muslims is a special favour rather than a government’s duty. One statistic, available in the seminal report on minorities prepared by Justice Rajendra Sachar, should be enough to make the point. Muslims constitute 25.2% of the population of West Bengal, but have only 2.1% of state government jobs. Kerala, which has almost the same percentage of Muslims (24.7%), has given 10.4% of state government jobs to the community. Assam’s ratio is similar: 30.9% and 11.2%. Bihar does better: it gives 7.6% of state jobs to Muslims, who add up to 16.5% of the population. Andhra Pradesh has the best record: 9.2% ofthe population and 8.8% of jobs. Uttar Pradesh, despite leaders who claim to be more-secular-than-thou has given only 5.1% of state government jobs to an 18.5% population. The situation is no better when it comes to health and education indices.The anger in Bengal therefore is much greater than the appalling mismanagement of one incident would warrant.
Muslim disenchantment with the Congress, the other party that received its enthusiastic vote in 2004, is more widespread and deeper. The cause is the same, a perception of injustice. Maharashtra’s Muslims are still waiting for the Congress to take action against those named in the Srikrishna report for fomenting riots in the wake of the demolition of the Babri mosque. The Congress and its ally, Sharad Pawar’s NCP, have been in power in the state for eight years. They have no alibis left.
A second reason is the treatment of Muslim suspects after the recent blasts by the Andhra Pradesh police. Torture was pervasive. This was the finding of the Andhra Pradesh State Minorities Commission, which sent its report to the government — which, till date, has opted for familiar silence. The street has its own means of forming an opinion, through what it sees. It notes police indifference in the investigation of the bomb blasts at Mecca Masjid, where only Muslims died and the zeal displayed elsewhere. A voter does not make up his (and more important, her) mind in one eureka moment. It is a slow accretion of evidence that takes the voter in one direction or the other when his moment comes, on polling day.
And then of course there is George Bush, the omnipresent ghost hovering over Dr Manmohan "Hamlet" Singh. The Muslim voter may not understand the finer points of the 123 Agreement, or the hammer blows of the Hyde Act, but he can see the headlong rush of Dr Singh into the embrace of the man who has wrought unprecedented havoc on Iraq, whose record is stained with the blood of perhaps half a million Iraqis, who has turned four million Iraqis into refugees and talks of permanent bases in a nation that wants his troops out yesterday.
Hamlet’s fatal flaw was not sleaze but indecision. The iron law of public life is clear: people will accept a wrong decision, but they have no respect for indecision. Dr Hamlet Singh’s sudden waffle on the nuclear deal has done the worst possible damage. It has made him look silly, and Bush look clueless. The latter may not cause too much damage to the American President’s reputation, since this is not the first time he has looked clueless. But for the Indian Prime Minister to slip from Super Saviour to Hiccup Hamlet is not good electoral news for the Congress. Dr Hamlet Singh is also probably beginning to appreciate the unpleasant fact that the admirers who basked in his kindness and favour for three years, were supporters of the deal, not supporters of the Prime Minister. The moment he suggested that life could go on beyond the deal, they began to demand his resignation. Hero-worship is a merciless profession.
Nor has the foreign policy story played out. Russia’s snub to external affairs minister Pranab Mukherjee, who was not permitted the customary call on President Vladimir Putin, and defence minister A.K. Antony, who could not even get an appointment with his counterpart Sergei Lavrov, is a reminder that those who have stood by India with both military hardware and nuclear fuel have their own views on Dr Singh’s lurch towards George Bush.
It is already evident that while Muslims will still prefer Congress to the BJP in a straight contest in next year’s general election, Congress governments in the states and the Centre have done enough in three years to halve their support from this crucial minority.
How badly will the Left Front be affected in Bengal? There is one important difference between the Left and the Congress: while Muslims still expect some redress from the Left, they are cynical about the Congress. The Congress has habitually been long on rhetoric and short on delivery when it comes to affirmative action. The Left has a chance to cut its losses in Bengal but it needs to get its act in place fast.
What is beyond dispute is that Muslims are tired of being the item number of a general election, flashed out for five minutes and sent back to political purgatory when the elections are over. The elections of 2008 will probably be the last time that they will stick to their traditional anchors. If the only reward for their support is indifference, the item girl will write her own script for a movie in which she will be the star.
Over three decades, the Left in Bengal has slipped, unconsciously perhaps, into another trap: "soft secularism". Because it has prevented riots, it tends to believe that it has done enough for the community.
Trust a Calcuttan to come up with the perfect political metaphor. We were chatting about the political mood of Muslims over tea and savouries on Id, and the conversation turned inevitably to the fate of Rizwan ur Rehman, the young man whose death in suspicious circumstances has set off a firestorm in Bengal. The Muslim vote, my Calcuttan friend said bitterly, had become like an item number in Hindi films. It was used to pump up the box office, and then dumped completely from the script.
For the very, very few of you out there who still do not know what an item number is in a Hindi movie: this is the generally raunchy song that is planted into the sequence without any pretence of reason, and with absolutely no consequence on the narrative. The Muslim voter feels similarly used by the political parties he supports. As my friend pointed out, at least those in the item number get paid for their contribution.
The best way to prevent disillusionment, of course, is to avoid the trap of illusion. And yet, the Left, spearheaded by the CPI(M), has given Indian Muslims cause for some comfort. Three decades of communal peace in Bengal during the reign of the Left Front have erased memories of what Bengal once was. Bengal is a border state that has been partitioned, and embers from 1947 raged till the mid-Seventies. In a sense the Marxist generation of Biman Bose, the present head of the party in Bengal, won its spurs during the frequent riots in Calcutta during the 1960s when it mobilised its cadre and stood on street corners, preventing hired goons from entering the city’s Muslim mohallas. Ever since the Left Front came to power in 1977, and Jyoti Basu became chief minister, a deft combination of political and administrative management has kept this particular beast out of people’s lives.
But over three decades, the Left in Bengal has slipped, unconsciously perhaps, into another trap: "soft secularism". Because it has prevented riots, it tends to believe that it has done enough for the community. There is an element of patronage in this attitude, as if providing protection to the lives of Muslims is a special favour rather than a government’s duty. One statistic, available in the seminal report on minorities prepared by Justice Rajendra Sachar, should be enough to make the point. Muslims constitute 25.2% of the population of West Bengal, but have only 2.1% of state government jobs. Kerala, which has almost the same percentage of Muslims (24.7%), has given 10.4% of state government jobs to the community. Assam’s ratio is similar: 30.9% and 11.2%. Bihar does better: it gives 7.6% of state jobs to Muslims, who add up to 16.5% of the population. Andhra Pradesh has the best record: 9.2% ofthe population and 8.8% of jobs. Uttar Pradesh, despite leaders who claim to be more-secular-than-thou has given only 5.1% of state government jobs to an 18.5% population. The situation is no better when it comes to health and education indices.The anger in Bengal therefore is much greater than the appalling mismanagement of one incident would warrant.
Muslim disenchantment with the Congress, the other party that received its enthusiastic vote in 2004, is more widespread and deeper. The cause is the same, a perception of injustice. Maharashtra’s Muslims are still waiting for the Congress to take action against those named in the Srikrishna report for fomenting riots in the wake of the demolition of the Babri mosque. The Congress and its ally, Sharad Pawar’s NCP, have been in power in the state for eight years. They have no alibis left.
A second reason is the treatment of Muslim suspects after the recent blasts by the Andhra Pradesh police. Torture was pervasive. This was the finding of the Andhra Pradesh State Minorities Commission, which sent its report to the government — which, till date, has opted for familiar silence. The street has its own means of forming an opinion, through what it sees. It notes police indifference in the investigation of the bomb blasts at Mecca Masjid, where only Muslims died and the zeal displayed elsewhere. A voter does not make up his (and more important, her) mind in one eureka moment. It is a slow accretion of evidence that takes the voter in one direction or the other when his moment comes, on polling day.
And then of course there is George Bush, the omnipresent ghost hovering over Dr Manmohan "Hamlet" Singh. The Muslim voter may not understand the finer points of the 123 Agreement, or the hammer blows of the Hyde Act, but he can see the headlong rush of Dr Singh into the embrace of the man who has wrought unprecedented havoc on Iraq, whose record is stained with the blood of perhaps half a million Iraqis, who has turned four million Iraqis into refugees and talks of permanent bases in a nation that wants his troops out yesterday.
Hamlet’s fatal flaw was not sleaze but indecision. The iron law of public life is clear: people will accept a wrong decision, but they have no respect for indecision. Dr Hamlet Singh’s sudden waffle on the nuclear deal has done the worst possible damage. It has made him look silly, and Bush look clueless. The latter may not cause too much damage to the American President’s reputation, since this is not the first time he has looked clueless. But for the Indian Prime Minister to slip from Super Saviour to Hiccup Hamlet is not good electoral news for the Congress. Dr Hamlet Singh is also probably beginning to appreciate the unpleasant fact that the admirers who basked in his kindness and favour for three years, were supporters of the deal, not supporters of the Prime Minister. The moment he suggested that life could go on beyond the deal, they began to demand his resignation. Hero-worship is a merciless profession.
Nor has the foreign policy story played out. Russia’s snub to external affairs minister Pranab Mukherjee, who was not permitted the customary call on President Vladimir Putin, and defence minister A.K. Antony, who could not even get an appointment with his counterpart Sergei Lavrov, is a reminder that those who have stood by India with both military hardware and nuclear fuel have their own views on Dr Singh’s lurch towards George Bush.
It is already evident that while Muslims will still prefer Congress to the BJP in a straight contest in next year’s general election, Congress governments in the states and the Centre have done enough in three years to halve their support from this crucial minority.
How badly will the Left Front be affected in Bengal? There is one important difference between the Left and the Congress: while Muslims still expect some redress from the Left, they are cynical about the Congress. The Congress has habitually been long on rhetoric and short on delivery when it comes to affirmative action. The Left has a chance to cut its losses in Bengal but it needs to get its act in place fast.
What is beyond dispute is that Muslims are tired of being the item number of a general election, flashed out for five minutes and sent back to political purgatory when the elections are over. The elections of 2008 will probably be the last time that they will stick to their traditional anchors. If the only reward for their support is indifference, the item girl will write her own script for a movie in which she will be the star.
Sunday, October 14, 2007
Nuclear Winter
Byline by M J Akbar: Nuclear Winter
It is all a bit embarrassing of course. No general likes to march his troops to the top of the hill, heroic breastplates glinting in the sun, only to march them down again. Even if you do not lose a battle, you do lose face. But embarrassment is a small price to pay for survival in office. What the Prime Minister does need to worry about is loss of credibility. For three years he has told the country that the nuclear deal is central to India’s well-being and prosperity for the next five decades. At various points, opponents of the deal have been derided as unpatriotic and even enemies of peace. You cannot suddenly sit down to supper with pseudo-traitors and enemies with the thin explanation that life must go on. The Prime Minister raised the stakes. He invested more time and energy into this one policy than the rest of his decisions put together. This was the central fact of his administration. To walk away from such pinnacles of history with nary a whimper can only whittle the authority of a man leading a government.
A Prime Minister must ride high. You cannot rule India by riding low.
The only politician riding high now is Prakash Karat, and that is because he rode steadily through intense turbulence. That is always the litmus test in leadership, the ability to be steadfast in a crisis. He was steady because Marxists have a stabiliser called ideology. It would be incorrect to minimise the storms he was facing. If there was a typhoon charging at him in Delhi, there was a tornado behind his back, in Bengal.
The Prime Minister always maintained that he was motivated by principle, but when it came to the crux he succumbed to the politician’s irresistible lure for office. The Congress decision turned on something as insubstantial as opinion polls. You can see the relationship between public posture and psephologists. When some rather breathless television polls (where are they now?) predicted that the Congress would win 200 seats thanks to the nuclear deal, the Prime Minister picked up his lance and charged at the Left’s windmills, daring Marxists to do their worst. This was not a private dare; this was a public challenge. When the poll numbers began to drop, the triumphalism started to waver. The latest internal polling numbers must have been truly desultory to force such a retreat.
The paradox is that while it remains to be seen how helpful this will be to the Congress, the Congress has done the Left a huge favour. The Marxists are in a poor shape in Bengal (which makes Prakash Karat’s ideological clarity all the more praiseworthy). Ration riots — not seen since 1967 — have erupted in Marxist strongholds, and bode ill for the Left in an election. A Left bulwark in Bengal has been the substantial Muslim vote: Muslims account for 27% of the population and over 30% of the vote since they tend to vote in larger numbers. This support has weakened in rural areas because of Nandigram, and in Kolkata because of the case of a young man called Rizwan ur Rehman. He died recently in unexplained circumstances after falling in love and marrying a Marwari Hindu girl. By all accounts, it was a happy marriage, and the girl was content with a middle class home despite the fact that her father, Ashok Todi is supposed to be worth over Rs 200 crores. It is known that this money came from the less than respectable trade of illegal betting; you do not succeed as a bookie without a mutually beneficial relationship with the police. Rizwan’s family alleges that the police murdered him on Todi’s instance; the police claim it was suicide; the truth is in the hands of an enquiry, if the enquiry can find the truth.
Kolkata, true to its reputation as a bastion of spirited secularism, has treated this as a human rights issue, rather than a communal problem. Kolkatans have lots of reasons for pride in their city; this one is at the top.
Chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee is honest and sincere but he is no Jyoti Basu. Jyoti Basu was unique. He combined the patrician’s impartiality with a common touch. He could, through instinct and experience, read the common pulse and soothe the popular nerve at moments of crisis. Buddhadeb seems constantly torn between his administration’s self-centred advice and a public position that tends to suffer from poor counsel.
This is why Rizwan’s mother says that she would meet Jyoti Basu any time, but will not meet the chief minister. Buddhadeb was mature enough to visit the family despite the comment, which is an indication of how CPI(M) can turn things around.
In plain words, Bengal is in a bit of a mess. The one thing that the CPI(M) needs desperately is time to clean up the mess. It has the capacity to do so, with the help of Jyoti Basu, but it could never have managed this in the hothouse of an immediate election campaign. It needs a minimum of three months if not more. The Congress retreat has given it invaluable time.
The big mystery is: why did the Congress blink before it needed to? It could have waited till the CPI(M)’s politburo meeting on 18 October, or the next UPA-Left meeting on 22 October. A week is a long time in politics, and who knows who would have succumbed under internal pressure. The Bengal CPI(M)’s dilemma must be obvious. Mrs Sonia Gandhi’s speech in Haryana was written to raise the pitch in preparation for an election. Why then the volte face?
Perhaps we need to return to our starting point: have Dr Singh and Mrs Gandhi survived to fight another day over the nuclear deal? If so, when is the "another day" scheduled?
The Bush administration has not changed its calendar. It still wants the necessary clearances from the IAEA and the Nuclear Suppliers Group so that the agreement can be sent back to Congress by March. It believes that it has enough leverage with both to complete the process in eight or ten weeks. Support in the Congress thereafter will be bipartisan. So, even if the deal were activated in December, it could still catch the March deadline. In other words, if you are a betting man, take your chances on a nuclear winter in India. That would of course mean an April election, but hasn’t the Prime Minister said, if winter comes can spring be far behind?
An April election would also be within the comfort zone of the Left.
Is there a difference between calculation and speculation? Not much perhaps, when it comes to Indian politics. But watch out for the omens. We already have one: the decision not to raise oil prices. Who wants higher prices in an election year? One can already see the whole Cabinet suddenly getting teary-eyed about the welfare of the poor, who have, for three years, been fed the old routine of minimal sops and maximum promises. That is another omen. If there is a sudden flurry of attention towards what are considered "Muslim" issues, that will be a third. Nothing sets off a frenzy of do-goodism quicker than the prospect of a general election. But you have to time these things accurately. This cannot be done too early, or time will expose them as hollow.
To govern you need balance, flair and credibility. The Prime Minister does much more than an administrative job. The momentum of power is not static. If you do not propel it forward, it pushes you back. You have to ride high. The only horse that moves on static is a hobby horse. Has the nuclear deal become one? The Prime Minister cannot accept yes as an answer to that tricky question.
The government’s retreat on the Indo-US nuclear deal, after three years of do-or-die bravado, can only be explained by that old adage: He who fights and runs away, lives to fight another day. Martyrs get memorials and medals, but they don’t get a second chance. Dr Manmohan Singh and Mrs Sonia Gandhi, sensibly, have opted for a second chance in preference to a charge of the light brigade towards immediate elections."A Prime Minister must ride high. You cannot rule India by riding low."
"Is there a difference between calculation and speculation? Not much perhaps, when it comes to Indian politics. But watch out for the omens."
It is all a bit embarrassing of course. No general likes to march his troops to the top of the hill, heroic breastplates glinting in the sun, only to march them down again. Even if you do not lose a battle, you do lose face. But embarrassment is a small price to pay for survival in office. What the Prime Minister does need to worry about is loss of credibility. For three years he has told the country that the nuclear deal is central to India’s well-being and prosperity for the next five decades. At various points, opponents of the deal have been derided as unpatriotic and even enemies of peace. You cannot suddenly sit down to supper with pseudo-traitors and enemies with the thin explanation that life must go on. The Prime Minister raised the stakes. He invested more time and energy into this one policy than the rest of his decisions put together. This was the central fact of his administration. To walk away from such pinnacles of history with nary a whimper can only whittle the authority of a man leading a government.
A Prime Minister must ride high. You cannot rule India by riding low.
The only politician riding high now is Prakash Karat, and that is because he rode steadily through intense turbulence. That is always the litmus test in leadership, the ability to be steadfast in a crisis. He was steady because Marxists have a stabiliser called ideology. It would be incorrect to minimise the storms he was facing. If there was a typhoon charging at him in Delhi, there was a tornado behind his back, in Bengal.
The Prime Minister always maintained that he was motivated by principle, but when it came to the crux he succumbed to the politician’s irresistible lure for office. The Congress decision turned on something as insubstantial as opinion polls. You can see the relationship between public posture and psephologists. When some rather breathless television polls (where are they now?) predicted that the Congress would win 200 seats thanks to the nuclear deal, the Prime Minister picked up his lance and charged at the Left’s windmills, daring Marxists to do their worst. This was not a private dare; this was a public challenge. When the poll numbers began to drop, the triumphalism started to waver. The latest internal polling numbers must have been truly desultory to force such a retreat.
The paradox is that while it remains to be seen how helpful this will be to the Congress, the Congress has done the Left a huge favour. The Marxists are in a poor shape in Bengal (which makes Prakash Karat’s ideological clarity all the more praiseworthy). Ration riots — not seen since 1967 — have erupted in Marxist strongholds, and bode ill for the Left in an election. A Left bulwark in Bengal has been the substantial Muslim vote: Muslims account for 27% of the population and over 30% of the vote since they tend to vote in larger numbers. This support has weakened in rural areas because of Nandigram, and in Kolkata because of the case of a young man called Rizwan ur Rehman. He died recently in unexplained circumstances after falling in love and marrying a Marwari Hindu girl. By all accounts, it was a happy marriage, and the girl was content with a middle class home despite the fact that her father, Ashok Todi is supposed to be worth over Rs 200 crores. It is known that this money came from the less than respectable trade of illegal betting; you do not succeed as a bookie without a mutually beneficial relationship with the police. Rizwan’s family alleges that the police murdered him on Todi’s instance; the police claim it was suicide; the truth is in the hands of an enquiry, if the enquiry can find the truth.
Kolkata, true to its reputation as a bastion of spirited secularism, has treated this as a human rights issue, rather than a communal problem. Kolkatans have lots of reasons for pride in their city; this one is at the top.
Chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee is honest and sincere but he is no Jyoti Basu. Jyoti Basu was unique. He combined the patrician’s impartiality with a common touch. He could, through instinct and experience, read the common pulse and soothe the popular nerve at moments of crisis. Buddhadeb seems constantly torn between his administration’s self-centred advice and a public position that tends to suffer from poor counsel.
This is why Rizwan’s mother says that she would meet Jyoti Basu any time, but will not meet the chief minister. Buddhadeb was mature enough to visit the family despite the comment, which is an indication of how CPI(M) can turn things around.
In plain words, Bengal is in a bit of a mess. The one thing that the CPI(M) needs desperately is time to clean up the mess. It has the capacity to do so, with the help of Jyoti Basu, but it could never have managed this in the hothouse of an immediate election campaign. It needs a minimum of three months if not more. The Congress retreat has given it invaluable time.
The big mystery is: why did the Congress blink before it needed to? It could have waited till the CPI(M)’s politburo meeting on 18 October, or the next UPA-Left meeting on 22 October. A week is a long time in politics, and who knows who would have succumbed under internal pressure. The Bengal CPI(M)’s dilemma must be obvious. Mrs Sonia Gandhi’s speech in Haryana was written to raise the pitch in preparation for an election. Why then the volte face?
Perhaps we need to return to our starting point: have Dr Singh and Mrs Gandhi survived to fight another day over the nuclear deal? If so, when is the "another day" scheduled?
The Bush administration has not changed its calendar. It still wants the necessary clearances from the IAEA and the Nuclear Suppliers Group so that the agreement can be sent back to Congress by March. It believes that it has enough leverage with both to complete the process in eight or ten weeks. Support in the Congress thereafter will be bipartisan. So, even if the deal were activated in December, it could still catch the March deadline. In other words, if you are a betting man, take your chances on a nuclear winter in India. That would of course mean an April election, but hasn’t the Prime Minister said, if winter comes can spring be far behind?
An April election would also be within the comfort zone of the Left.
Is there a difference between calculation and speculation? Not much perhaps, when it comes to Indian politics. But watch out for the omens. We already have one: the decision not to raise oil prices. Who wants higher prices in an election year? One can already see the whole Cabinet suddenly getting teary-eyed about the welfare of the poor, who have, for three years, been fed the old routine of minimal sops and maximum promises. That is another omen. If there is a sudden flurry of attention towards what are considered "Muslim" issues, that will be a third. Nothing sets off a frenzy of do-goodism quicker than the prospect of a general election. But you have to time these things accurately. This cannot be done too early, or time will expose them as hollow.
To govern you need balance, flair and credibility. The Prime Minister does much more than an administrative job. The momentum of power is not static. If you do not propel it forward, it pushes you back. You have to ride high. The only horse that moves on static is a hobby horse. Has the nuclear deal become one? The Prime Minister cannot accept yes as an answer to that tricky question.
Sunday, October 07, 2007
Soft Hands
Byline by M J Akbar: Soft Hands
Politics prefers soft hands. Why have Indian politicians suddenly started playing with knuckledusters? Democracy functions best when handled gently. Even an unrepentant villain knows that it makes sense to smile and smile even when he wants to be his natural self. That is the law of democratic behaviour. It is a gentle game, even if not a gentleman’s game.
All coalition politics begin with a promise. They survive when you add a "com" to the "promise". Compromise is the natural flow of give and take, an art that is familiar to Indian politics. In the last few weeks there has been an upsurge of a new mood: a desire to stick to a one-way street, to get away with what you can take.
Karnataka is a reflection of a larger phenomenon. The veteran of wile, H.D. Deve Gowda, has walked away from a commitment to hand over the chief ministership of the state to the BJP. Of course he hopes to walk all the way to an electoral vote bank, since his decision is an invitation to a fresh election, but his crutch is a lame excuse. How far can a lame excuse take him? The BJP has hardly been lily-white, provoking its partner at every opportunity. But it stuck to the letter of the agreement.
The hard lines in Tamil Nadu are, paradoxically, more fluid, but the alliance has gone askew there as well thanks to a gratuitous provocation. Chief minister Karunanidhi might believe that he can get away with an insult to Lord Ram in his own state, but there has been serious collateral damage to his principal ally, the Congress, whose fortunes are determined outside Tamil Nadu. The controversy keeps rising a notch a week, when it could easily have been calmed down by a suitable phrase of regret. Even when a sort of apology was offered, it was hemmed in by less than apologetic nuances. Curiously, the Congress seems either unconcerned or completely unable to do anything about the spreading simmer. Karunanidhi has been around long enough to know that a boomerang has struck the Congress even if it has possibly missed him. Does he care? Not by the evidence.
Never were soft hands needed more urgently than to save the coalition at the top of the bunch, headed by Dr Manmohan Singh. A Prime Minister who is in office thanks to support from the Left might have been expected to purchase velvet gloves for very very soft hands in order to massage the plethora of thorns in the nuclear deal he has fashioned with his now good friend, George Bush. Instead Dr Singh, who had the reputation of being the gentlest of men, has been swinging out with a passion that few expected. The worst of his anger has not been directed at the Opposition, but at the Left. In a series of comments he has literally dared the Left to do its worst, and now seems a little surprised when the Left has gone ahead and done its worst. A rigid certainty that he is right, and the only one who is right, does not help coalition sensitivities. There are many senior voices in the Congress who believe (naturally, only privately) that Dr Singh has hijacked the party with his inexplicable obstinacy. But any suggestion of even a mild compromise, like a little more time, provokes the muted threat from the Prime Minister that he will resign if talks with the IAEA and the Nuclear Suppliers Group do not proceed according to the calendar set by George Bush. If there are any medals for political fidelity, the Victoria Cross for heroism in the face of common sense should go to Dr Manmohan Singh.
Is there a common strand in the sudden rise in the divorce rate in Indian politics? One explanation is obvious. The urge for power today has been replaced by the thirst for power tomorrow. The present coalition arrangements have clearly passed their sell-by date. Everyone has moved into election mode. The controlling force of events is not what will keep an existing government in power, but what will — hopefully, always only hopefully in a vibrant democracy such as ours — bring a party back to power.
But why should the prospect of a general election encourage fragmentation? Surely political parties need all the allies they can manage to cobble together before they ask the voters to choose?
Not quite.
We think of political parties as either "big" or "small". The "big" are the Big Two, Congress and the BJP, because they spread across about half the country. The "small" are the rest, the regional powers.
But this is not quite the way that the political players see themselves. Reverse the lens, and the second perspective might have more merit. The CPI(M) may be "small" vis-à-vis the country, but it is not merely big but dominant in Bengal. A Mulayam Singh Yadav, a Mayawati, a Chandrababu Naidu, a Naveen Patnaik may be dismissed as "small" in Delhi, but in their own playgrounds it is the Congress and the BJP who are small if not minuscule. In some states, the definitions are still in flux. That is why politics gets even more murky. The next election in Karnataka, for instance, will decide who is "big" and "small" between three claimants.
A progression process has now transformed into an elimination game in at least two states, Karnataka and Maharashtra. Maharashtra has two alliances, and four claimants. Intra-alliance tensions can become as volatile as inter-party antagonisms. The Shiv Sena and the BJP may have patched up for the moment, but their tensions will not disappear. The Congress and Sharad Pawar’s NCP can barely maintain a civil attitude towards each other. Everyone knows that the next election might change a rectangular balance of power into a triangular one. In other states, new forces are shifting traditional vote blocs. The biggest player in the coming churn will be Mayawati, who will foment a surprise or two in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Maharashtra.
Partly as a consequence of competing ambitions, and partly because too many differences hinge on personality rather than ideology, there is recognition (albeit unmentioned) that the next coalition to rule India will be created after the results of the next general election are known, and will not emerge from a pre-election alliance. Only specific results can sift out ego and flatulence from fact. And so those political parties who can, or who feel confident enough, are ready to go their own way. They may return to present alliances, or they may go with a better offer. The players will sit at a tough negotiating table, confident that the one thing the game will not allow is a bluff. All cards will be on the table.
The cards will be hard, but that game will be played with soft hands. This is a democracy, after all.
We think of political parties as either "big" or "small". The "big" are the Big Two, Congress and the BJP, because they spread across about half the country. The "small" are the rest, the regional powers.
Politics prefers soft hands. Why have Indian politicians suddenly started playing with knuckledusters? Democracy functions best when handled gently. Even an unrepentant villain knows that it makes sense to smile and smile even when he wants to be his natural self. That is the law of democratic behaviour. It is a gentle game, even if not a gentleman’s game.
All coalition politics begin with a promise. They survive when you add a "com" to the "promise". Compromise is the natural flow of give and take, an art that is familiar to Indian politics. In the last few weeks there has been an upsurge of a new mood: a desire to stick to a one-way street, to get away with what you can take.
Karnataka is a reflection of a larger phenomenon. The veteran of wile, H.D. Deve Gowda, has walked away from a commitment to hand over the chief ministership of the state to the BJP. Of course he hopes to walk all the way to an electoral vote bank, since his decision is an invitation to a fresh election, but his crutch is a lame excuse. How far can a lame excuse take him? The BJP has hardly been lily-white, provoking its partner at every opportunity. But it stuck to the letter of the agreement.
The hard lines in Tamil Nadu are, paradoxically, more fluid, but the alliance has gone askew there as well thanks to a gratuitous provocation. Chief minister Karunanidhi might believe that he can get away with an insult to Lord Ram in his own state, but there has been serious collateral damage to his principal ally, the Congress, whose fortunes are determined outside Tamil Nadu. The controversy keeps rising a notch a week, when it could easily have been calmed down by a suitable phrase of regret. Even when a sort of apology was offered, it was hemmed in by less than apologetic nuances. Curiously, the Congress seems either unconcerned or completely unable to do anything about the spreading simmer. Karunanidhi has been around long enough to know that a boomerang has struck the Congress even if it has possibly missed him. Does he care? Not by the evidence.
Never were soft hands needed more urgently than to save the coalition at the top of the bunch, headed by Dr Manmohan Singh. A Prime Minister who is in office thanks to support from the Left might have been expected to purchase velvet gloves for very very soft hands in order to massage the plethora of thorns in the nuclear deal he has fashioned with his now good friend, George Bush. Instead Dr Singh, who had the reputation of being the gentlest of men, has been swinging out with a passion that few expected. The worst of his anger has not been directed at the Opposition, but at the Left. In a series of comments he has literally dared the Left to do its worst, and now seems a little surprised when the Left has gone ahead and done its worst. A rigid certainty that he is right, and the only one who is right, does not help coalition sensitivities. There are many senior voices in the Congress who believe (naturally, only privately) that Dr Singh has hijacked the party with his inexplicable obstinacy. But any suggestion of even a mild compromise, like a little more time, provokes the muted threat from the Prime Minister that he will resign if talks with the IAEA and the Nuclear Suppliers Group do not proceed according to the calendar set by George Bush. If there are any medals for political fidelity, the Victoria Cross for heroism in the face of common sense should go to Dr Manmohan Singh.
Is there a common strand in the sudden rise in the divorce rate in Indian politics? One explanation is obvious. The urge for power today has been replaced by the thirst for power tomorrow. The present coalition arrangements have clearly passed their sell-by date. Everyone has moved into election mode. The controlling force of events is not what will keep an existing government in power, but what will — hopefully, always only hopefully in a vibrant democracy such as ours — bring a party back to power.
But why should the prospect of a general election encourage fragmentation? Surely political parties need all the allies they can manage to cobble together before they ask the voters to choose?
Not quite.
We think of political parties as either "big" or "small". The "big" are the Big Two, Congress and the BJP, because they spread across about half the country. The "small" are the rest, the regional powers.
But this is not quite the way that the political players see themselves. Reverse the lens, and the second perspective might have more merit. The CPI(M) may be "small" vis-à-vis the country, but it is not merely big but dominant in Bengal. A Mulayam Singh Yadav, a Mayawati, a Chandrababu Naidu, a Naveen Patnaik may be dismissed as "small" in Delhi, but in their own playgrounds it is the Congress and the BJP who are small if not minuscule. In some states, the definitions are still in flux. That is why politics gets even more murky. The next election in Karnataka, for instance, will decide who is "big" and "small" between three claimants.
A progression process has now transformed into an elimination game in at least two states, Karnataka and Maharashtra. Maharashtra has two alliances, and four claimants. Intra-alliance tensions can become as volatile as inter-party antagonisms. The Shiv Sena and the BJP may have patched up for the moment, but their tensions will not disappear. The Congress and Sharad Pawar’s NCP can barely maintain a civil attitude towards each other. Everyone knows that the next election might change a rectangular balance of power into a triangular one. In other states, new forces are shifting traditional vote blocs. The biggest player in the coming churn will be Mayawati, who will foment a surprise or two in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Maharashtra.
Partly as a consequence of competing ambitions, and partly because too many differences hinge on personality rather than ideology, there is recognition (albeit unmentioned) that the next coalition to rule India will be created after the results of the next general election are known, and will not emerge from a pre-election alliance. Only specific results can sift out ego and flatulence from fact. And so those political parties who can, or who feel confident enough, are ready to go their own way. They may return to present alliances, or they may go with a better offer. The players will sit at a tough negotiating table, confident that the one thing the game will not allow is a bluff. All cards will be on the table.
The cards will be hard, but that game will be played with soft hands. This is a democracy, after all.
Sunday, September 30, 2007
20-20 Politics
Byline by M J Akbar: 20-20 Politics
Politics is not a 20-20 game, or even a limited overs match; it is a patient Test series, with long stretches of grafting and boredom, and innumerable breaks for lunch and tea. Excitement is limited to crunch time, and such occasions are rare.
Those who celebrate India’s victory over Pakistan in the final of the Twenty20 tournament celebrate the least of the team’s achievements. The game was superb precisely because it was so evenly matched, the teams separated, in the end, by the strength of a single flick of the wrist. The youngsters led by Mahendra Singh Dhoni deserve applause because they defeated much more than the best cricket sides in the world.
They defeated, for starters, Shoaib Malik. The young Pakistani captain ended a glorious tournament on a silly note when he thanked "all Muslims" for their support to Pakistan. Pakistani players seem obliged to appropriate the Almighty into all proceedings, but that is their privilege. They would be wise, however, not to appropriate all Muslims on their side, for the good reason that all Muslims are not in or with Pakistan. Perhaps Mr Malik lost the match because he was wearing a blindfold. That is the only explanation for his inability to recognise that there were two Muslims in the Indian side. Irfan Pathan, Man of the Match, did everything possible to remind Pakistan that Indian Muslims wanted India to win. It may be news to Pakistan’s players that Irfan’s father was a muezzin in a small mosque in Gujarat, and his mother wears the hijab in public. The subcontinent apart, does Shoaib Malik believe that a billion Muslims, Indonesians, Malays, Arabs and Turks, were sitting closely glued to their television sets, cheering Pakistan? It would be a miracle if 99% had heard of cricket, a game as foreign to them as the English language.
Perhaps the difference between victory and defeat is the gap between a closed and open mind.
Dhoni’s boys did their country great service in a second subliminal region: they defeated the egotism that has bogged Indian cricket for so long. The egos of the Big Three, Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly and Rahul Dravid have become bigger than the team. Three ex-captains in a single eleven must be some sort of a world record. The team was divided into three individuals in different moods, ranging from sulk to self-interest to petulance, and eight other players trying to fit into the minimal space these three left for others. Trust me, if the Big Three had any idea that the 20-20 victory would be as big as it became, they would have been in the team: fitness is not a problem in this form of the game, because 20-20 is only half as demanding as the full one-dayer. On the other hand, if the Big Three had been there, the youngsters might not have won. Alone, they had a different body language, a palpable common commitment, and unity of spirit. This was a victory for new India, which has now marched a step ahead of modern India. It was a triumph for small-town India, for popular rather than rarefied India, for an inclusive nation, not an exclusive elite. If this is the future, the future is bliss.
It is tempting to see this as the defining culture of contemporary India, the essence of a confident democracy, its populism rid of both elitist genuflection and sectarian tensions. No definition of popular culture can encompass the whole of India; but will there be enough such Indians to control the balance in the next general elections?
The thought did occur to me that one section of India had adopted the basic tenets of 20-20 cricket even before the rest of the country became addicted: television news. Frenzy, drama, nasal diction and a compulsive need for instant decisions have become its hallmarks. Not all Indian television is there yet, mercifully, but the attitude is pervasive enough to spill over into parts of print. And so, when the Left was playing chess with the government on the nuclear deal, much of the media kept covering it by the rules of 20-20 cricket. Artificial teams were conjured up to lend excitement to developments. The CPI(M) was split into the pro-Congress Bengal Lions, led by Souradeb Bhattacharya, and the China Contras, led by Rahul Karat. Journalists were chasing their own version of the story, reporting the collapse of the China Contras in the twelfth over, or a compromise when the collapse did not take place.
There is a useful rule to remember when covering the Left, and they will demand coverage for some time yet. It functions democratically; they take the politburo and the central committee seriously. This means that there is inevitably debate on issues as important as the survival of a coalition that rules the country. But this debate is not conducted in public. Differences are sorted out behind closed doors, and when they cannot be reconciled a vote determines their fate. The CPI(M) does not conduct its debate through media, much as it may dishearten media to discover this. When the party’s general secretary takes a position, he does so after taking a sense of his committee. It is not arbitrary imposition. No comrade is impressed by traditional media games like twisting half of a quote to suit an editorial line.
What is surprising is not the media’s willingness to see what it wants to see, but that so many seasoned politicians fall into the same constricted mire. Almost everyone in the Dr Manmohan Singh government had convinced himself that the Marxists would have an epiphany moment at their party conclaves in Kolkata, and return, sheepishly no doubt, to pay homage at the feet of the Prime Minister. The venerable Jyoti Basu was meant to bring the Marxists into harmony with the American timetable for the nuclear deal.
Clearly the first thing that happens when you join government in Delhi is amnesia about anything that might be inconvenient. Jyoti Basu was on the verge of becoming Prime Minister of India in 1997 instead of Mr Inder Gujral, when he was stopped not by his allies but his own party. The politburo voted against the idea because it was not ready to permit the party to share power in Delhi. Jyoti Basu did not utter a word of protest, although much later, in an interview to this columnist he did call that decision a "historic blunder". Any party that lives by such rigid discipline cannot be split by media whims.
If the Manmohan Singh government does not halt the process by which the nuclear deal travels to the next stage, through the IAEA and the Nuclear Suppliers Group, the Left will withdraw support. This is what the Left has been saying and this is what the Left will do.
Politics is not a 20-20 game, or even a limited overs match; it is a patient Test series, with long stretches of grafting and boredom, and innumerable breaks for lunch and tea. Excitement is limited to crunch time, and such occasions are rare. One is due in the first week of October, when the next, and perhaps final round of talks take place between the government and the Left. The chief negotiator for the Congress is foreign minister Pranab Mukherjee, but he is not the chief decision-maker. He would have happily bought six months of silence so that the government could get on with the rest of life.
But whatever happens, do remember that the game in Delhi is chess, not 20-20 cricket.
Sunday, September 23, 2007
Amoral Code
Byline By M J Akbar : Amoral Code
In India, secularism means respect for the other’s right to practice faith in whatsoever manner the other chooses. Hindus and Muslims have lived with each other almost as long as Muslims and Christians.
When a coalition begins to melt, its partners subtly, if not silently, begin to shift their public agenda from common concern to individual need. The debate over the bridge built by Lord Ram between the Tamil Nadu coast and Sri Lanka is hardly new. A year ago, the supreme leader of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, Mr M.K. Karunanidhi, would not have fractured sensibilities nationwide with intemperate, unacceptable remarks about Lord Ram, revered and worshipped by Hindus as the paradigm of virtue. Today, the political calendar has a premature general election marked within the first half of 2008. His party’s fortunes are now more important to him than his coalition’s fate. After all, what use is any coalition to him if he cannot get the seats that can make him a power broker?
Under pressure, Mr Karunanidhi is dipping into the source of Dravida nectar for sustenance. The origins are lost to public memory, so it may be useful to recall them.
The movement began in 1914 when Dr C. Nadesan Mudaliar started the Dravida Association. But it got its first impetus when the son of a rich landlord, privileged enough to be educated in England, walked away from his background to fight for the lower castes against the domination of the Brahmins. The name of this remarkable man was E.V. Ramaswamy Naicker, popularly known as ‘EVR’ and then ‘Periyar’. His philosophy was practical: he likened caste to malaria and said that his search was not for medicine but for the mosquitoes that spread malaria. He declared himself an atheist and went to war against Brahmins, the chief perpetrators of caste iniquity. He launched an agitation against his personal friend, the Maharaja of Travancore for reform: an Untouchable could not walk on the streets of the princely state, let alone raise his eyes in front of someone from an upper caste. You can get a flavour of EVR’s views from this quotation: "(Aryans) concocted absurd stories in keeping with their barbarian status… The blabberings of the intoxicated Brahmins in those old days are still faithfully observed in this modern world as the religious rituals, morals, stories, festivals, fasts, vows and beliefs". Inherent in the doctrine was the Aryan as an outsider, who had driven true Indians, Dravidians, south and then maintained his power through an iniquitous system. Brahmins were agents of that domination. The Dravida movement would move away from the eccentricities of EVR into the sager leadership of C.N. Annadurai, but the basic philosophy did not alter. When the DMK was formed after the split in the Dravida Kazhagam on 17 September 1949, it did not name a chairman. That chair was kept vacant for the "soul of Periyar".
Mr Karunanidhi has made two basic miscalculations in trying to revive his party by resurrecting the spirit of Periyar. No faith has undergone more dramatic reform than Hinduism has in the last seventy-five years. This is a tribute to both Hinduism’s leaders, the most notable of them being Mahatma Gandhi, and to ordinary Hindus, who realised that the excesses of caste were self-defeating. The India of 2007, with a supremely confident Mayawati as chief minister of India’s most important state, would be unrecognisable to the Hindus of 1932, a dramatic year in the history of caste relations. A nation cannot be modern until it destroys the shibboleths that have kept it chained to regression. There is much talk of a Hindu renaissance in the 19th century. That is a myth compared to the true renaissance that came in the 20th century, and became the engine of social change, a vital necessity for the kind of economic growth that India is witnessing. When the Brahmin votes for Mayawati, he makes Periyar, once a crucial catalyst of change, irrelevant. Periyar’s genius created the change that has made Periyar unnecessary. Tamil Nadu has changed as much as the rest of India. The "low caste" Hindus of Tamil Nadu are no longer subservient to the Brahmin. Mr Karunanidhi’s electoral success is evidence of this.
Mr Karunanidhi is talking to the Tamil Nadu of 1967, not the Tamil Nadu of 2007.
Nor does the venerable Dravida leader quite understand the meaning of secularism, at least as we practise it in India. The European benchmark of secularism is the separation of faith and state. In India, secularism means respect for the other’s right to practice faith in whatsoever manner the other chooses. Hindus and Muslims have lived with each other almost as long as Muslims and Christians. But there is no instance of the kind of ferocious diatribe that Dante, author of Divine Comedy, indulged in against the person of Islam’s Prophet, in any epic written by a Hindu. Similarly, there is not a single writer of any standing among Muslims who has ever been insulting towards a Hindu god. We do not have to believe in each other’s creeds to have respect for each other’s religions. That is the essence of co-existence. Mr Karunanidhi, who is probably an atheist, forgot that simple rule.
The debate about proof is inane, to opt for the most polite word. I cannot ‘prove’ that Allah exists; a Jew cannot ‘prove’ that Jehovah exists; a Christian cannot prove that ‘God’ exists. This may be, for all I know, less a reflection on divinity, and more an indication of human limitations. It is arrogance to believe that truth is merely the little that the human brain comprehends.
Gravity existed before Isaac Newton’s brain "discovered" it; indeed, it would be presumptuous to claim that the Pyramids were built without a thorough knowledge of gravity. The human brain is a work in progress.
Belief that has sustained itself for centuries is rarely constructed on a chimera, no matter what deviations (like caste) men may impose on the original faith. The past is littered with forgotten claims. Mr Karunanidhi would have been wiser to respect the faith of the millions who have prayed in the temple at Rameshwaram, the offshore island also called the Kashi of the South: no prizes for guessing that Rameshwaram is named after Lord Ram. It is interesting that a Sri Lankan, King Parakrama Bahu, built the sanctum sanctorum of the Ramanathswamy temple. Incidentally, "mythology" has an answer to Mr Karunanidhi’s question about whether Lord Ram was an engineer: the bridge between the mainland and Sri Lanka was constructed by Nala, the son of Vishwakarma. But such political wisecracks only trivialise a sensitive issue.
A voter decides on the fate of a ruling party because of a bouquet of reasons. There is rarely just one reason that becomes the decisive driver, submerging others. What parties need to worry about is the tipping point, the final straw that persuades a voter to move from the past to a different future. Many voters, across the country, will be hurt by the insult to Lord Ram and establishment’s inability to do anything about it.
Mr Karunanidhi has one advantage over his critics. He knows that no one cares how you win an election, or what you do to stay in power; the only thing that matters is numbers in an age of coalitions. His allies may fudge and squirm but no one will dare ask him to leave the alliance. If he retains his MPs after the next election, he will be welcome in the next permutation and combination, whatever it might be.
Power has its own moral, or amoral, code.
Under pressure, Mr Karunanidhi is dipping into the source of Dravida nectar for sustenance. The origins are lost to public memory, so it may be useful to recall them.
The movement began in 1914 when Dr C. Nadesan Mudaliar started the Dravida Association. But it got its first impetus when the son of a rich landlord, privileged enough to be educated in England, walked away from his background to fight for the lower castes against the domination of the Brahmins. The name of this remarkable man was E.V. Ramaswamy Naicker, popularly known as ‘EVR’ and then ‘Periyar’. His philosophy was practical: he likened caste to malaria and said that his search was not for medicine but for the mosquitoes that spread malaria. He declared himself an atheist and went to war against Brahmins, the chief perpetrators of caste iniquity. He launched an agitation against his personal friend, the Maharaja of Travancore for reform: an Untouchable could not walk on the streets of the princely state, let alone raise his eyes in front of someone from an upper caste. You can get a flavour of EVR’s views from this quotation: "(Aryans) concocted absurd stories in keeping with their barbarian status… The blabberings of the intoxicated Brahmins in those old days are still faithfully observed in this modern world as the religious rituals, morals, stories, festivals, fasts, vows and beliefs". Inherent in the doctrine was the Aryan as an outsider, who had driven true Indians, Dravidians, south and then maintained his power through an iniquitous system. Brahmins were agents of that domination. The Dravida movement would move away from the eccentricities of EVR into the sager leadership of C.N. Annadurai, but the basic philosophy did not alter. When the DMK was formed after the split in the Dravida Kazhagam on 17 September 1949, it did not name a chairman. That chair was kept vacant for the "soul of Periyar".
Mr Karunanidhi has made two basic miscalculations in trying to revive his party by resurrecting the spirit of Periyar. No faith has undergone more dramatic reform than Hinduism has in the last seventy-five years. This is a tribute to both Hinduism’s leaders, the most notable of them being Mahatma Gandhi, and to ordinary Hindus, who realised that the excesses of caste were self-defeating. The India of 2007, with a supremely confident Mayawati as chief minister of India’s most important state, would be unrecognisable to the Hindus of 1932, a dramatic year in the history of caste relations. A nation cannot be modern until it destroys the shibboleths that have kept it chained to regression. There is much talk of a Hindu renaissance in the 19th century. That is a myth compared to the true renaissance that came in the 20th century, and became the engine of social change, a vital necessity for the kind of economic growth that India is witnessing. When the Brahmin votes for Mayawati, he makes Periyar, once a crucial catalyst of change, irrelevant. Periyar’s genius created the change that has made Periyar unnecessary. Tamil Nadu has changed as much as the rest of India. The "low caste" Hindus of Tamil Nadu are no longer subservient to the Brahmin. Mr Karunanidhi’s electoral success is evidence of this.
Mr Karunanidhi is talking to the Tamil Nadu of 1967, not the Tamil Nadu of 2007.
Nor does the venerable Dravida leader quite understand the meaning of secularism, at least as we practise it in India. The European benchmark of secularism is the separation of faith and state. In India, secularism means respect for the other’s right to practice faith in whatsoever manner the other chooses. Hindus and Muslims have lived with each other almost as long as Muslims and Christians. But there is no instance of the kind of ferocious diatribe that Dante, author of Divine Comedy, indulged in against the person of Islam’s Prophet, in any epic written by a Hindu. Similarly, there is not a single writer of any standing among Muslims who has ever been insulting towards a Hindu god. We do not have to believe in each other’s creeds to have respect for each other’s religions. That is the essence of co-existence. Mr Karunanidhi, who is probably an atheist, forgot that simple rule.
The debate about proof is inane, to opt for the most polite word. I cannot ‘prove’ that Allah exists; a Jew cannot ‘prove’ that Jehovah exists; a Christian cannot prove that ‘God’ exists. This may be, for all I know, less a reflection on divinity, and more an indication of human limitations. It is arrogance to believe that truth is merely the little that the human brain comprehends.
Gravity existed before Isaac Newton’s brain "discovered" it; indeed, it would be presumptuous to claim that the Pyramids were built without a thorough knowledge of gravity. The human brain is a work in progress.
Belief that has sustained itself for centuries is rarely constructed on a chimera, no matter what deviations (like caste) men may impose on the original faith. The past is littered with forgotten claims. Mr Karunanidhi would have been wiser to respect the faith of the millions who have prayed in the temple at Rameshwaram, the offshore island also called the Kashi of the South: no prizes for guessing that Rameshwaram is named after Lord Ram. It is interesting that a Sri Lankan, King Parakrama Bahu, built the sanctum sanctorum of the Ramanathswamy temple. Incidentally, "mythology" has an answer to Mr Karunanidhi’s question about whether Lord Ram was an engineer: the bridge between the mainland and Sri Lanka was constructed by Nala, the son of Vishwakarma. But such political wisecracks only trivialise a sensitive issue.
A voter decides on the fate of a ruling party because of a bouquet of reasons. There is rarely just one reason that becomes the decisive driver, submerging others. What parties need to worry about is the tipping point, the final straw that persuades a voter to move from the past to a different future. Many voters, across the country, will be hurt by the insult to Lord Ram and establishment’s inability to do anything about it.
Mr Karunanidhi has one advantage over his critics. He knows that no one cares how you win an election, or what you do to stay in power; the only thing that matters is numbers in an age of coalitions. His allies may fudge and squirm but no one will dare ask him to leave the alliance. If he retains his MPs after the next election, he will be welcome in the next permutation and combination, whatever it might be.
Power has its own moral, or amoral, code.
Sunday, September 16, 2007
A Joke Too Far
Byline by M J Akbar: A Joke Too Far
President Pervez Musharraf is proving to be a far better tactician with politicians than his commitment to an Army uniform might suggest. Ms Benazir Bhutto is not even back in Pakistan and her credibility has already been eroded. General Musharraf has many disadvantages after more than seven years in power, but he does have one serious advantage in terms of public perception. No one has accused him of being individually corrupt.
Which of the two is funnier? Take your time, there is no hurry, for the competition is keen. If one of the gems is priceless, then the second can only be called invaluable. Ladies first, so let us quote Pakistan’s Prime Minister-in-Waiting Ms Benazir Bhutto. She called her rival Nawaz Sharif’s attempt to return to Pakistan to contest elections, "a mockery of democracy".
If this statement encouraged a belly laugh, as it should, then how do we react to the claim by Pakistan’s Prime Minister-in-Exitmode Shaukat Aziz? The dapper Mr Aziz had this to say about Nawaz Sharif’s brief stay at Islamabad airport, before he was deported to the ever-accommodating Saudi Arabia: "The government did not force Nawaz Sharif to return to Saudi Arabia. We did not force him. I have been told that he was given two options, either go to prison or proceed to Saudi Arabia."
There used to be a gentleman, or not very much of a gentleman, in Victorian England named Thomas Hobson. He used to hire out horses. If any customer wanted a horse, he had to take the one nearest the door or he would not get any. The horses did not become famous, but Thomas Hobson did. His name is immortalised in the phrase ‘Hobson’s Choice’, which implies that you really have no choice. Shaukat Hobson Aziz’s nuanced proposition to Nawaz Sharif would have pleased the old Englishman. Nawaz Sharif was not "forced". He was told, as rudely as possible (simply shoved into a bus and bumped into a waiting plane, while Army commandos laughed and joked), that he could either return to a harsh prison in Pakistan or a gilded cage in Saudi Arabia.
Prime Minister Aziz, alumnus of the World Bank School of Diplomacy, was careful not to take the blame himself. He is Prime Minister of Pakistan but, according to his own version of events, he seemingly had nothing to do with the decision. He was informed after the event. "I have been told," he said. If this is true, he is not very prime in his ministership. Would Benazir Bhutto, who is desperate for Shaukat Aziz’s job, accept such a limited, primitive prime ministership? Would she be a quiet little dormouse if Nawaz Sharif turned up at Islamabad airport while she was sitting in Shaukat Aziz’s office, and the President decided whether Mr Sharif should go to prison or purgatory or a democratic paradise called the election trail? I daresay she would, unless she wanted to join Nawaz Sharif in Jeddah or Riyadh.
Careful observers will, of course, have noted that Shaukat Hobson Pontius Pilate Aziz has washed his hands of any suggestion that he might be involved in the persecution of Nawaz Sharif. The first lesson World Bank diplomats are taught is that governments might come and governments might go, but the World Bank lives on forever.
The only bank that Expectant Prime Minister Bhutto can depend upon is the vote bank left by her late father, Zulfiqar Ali, assassinated by the cruel rope of a flawed judicial process. She has depleted the Zulfiqar Bank resources substantially with a murky triangular deal between her individual self, Washington and President Pervez Musharraf. It takes some gall to describe a self-serving deal with Army rule as restorative democracy, and dismiss Sharif’s attempt to join the electoral process as a "mockery". It says something about the state of Pakistan’s polity when a lady who would be Prime Minister has to wait in Washington for permission to seek her nation’s foremost executive post.
One has no idea who advises Benazir Bhutto, if, that is, anyone has the temerity to do so, but she might want to forget about the forty suitcases Nawaz Sharif apparently took with him when he was exiled seven years ago. Benazir Bhutto took away a whole English castle when she was turfed out by the Army, not to mention fairly healthy bank accounts in Switzerland. Nawaz Sharif may indeed be as black as black money, but it does not behove a pot to call a kettle black.
What is quite extraordinary is the duplicity of the Pakistan People’s Party over the legitimacy and authority of the nation’s Supreme Court. PPP leaders, most notably the pre-eminent lawyer Aitzaz Ahsan, were in the forefront of this year’s passionate, nationwide movement to restore Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry to office. This struggle was said to have marked the beginning of a fresh chapter in Pakistan’s democracy, and was certainly instrumental in forcing the Army to compromise with civilian power. The moment Benazir Bhutto was offered the scent of office, she joined the Army in trampling over an order of the Supreme Court permitting Nawaz Sharif to return home.
The Benazir argument, echoed by her parrots, that Mr Sharif should stay away because of some verbal agreement made seven years ago, is specious and untenable. A Supreme Court’s decision supersedes any private agreement that is disputed by one party and, in any event, has no basis in law. Nawaz Sharif returned to Pakistan with the specific permission of the Supreme Court. The Pakistan People’s Party has just dug a future grave by treating the Supreme Court so contemptuously.
President Pervez Musharraf is proving to be a far better tactician with politicians than his commitment to an Army uniform might suggest. Ms Benazir Bhutto is not even back in Pakistan and her credibility has already been eroded. General Musharraf has many disadvantages after more than seven years in power, but he does have one serious advantage in terms of public perception. No one has accused him of being individually corrupt. He is unlikely to surrender that advantage by withdrawing corruption cases against either Benazir Bhutto or Nawaz Sharif. He might bend under pressure from his mentors in Washington, but one doubts if he will stoop so far. Ms Bhutto will not be deported when she returns to Pakistan in late October, since Washington insists upon some cosmetic changes in the power structure of Islamabad. But that is not quite the same thing as re-gilding the lady in honest hues.
Now that Benazir Bhutto’s People’s Party has become the King’s Party, Nawaz Sharif will inherit the popular space along with those smaller parties who see merit in his continued confrontation with Army rule. The most vocal of the latter is surely the former cricketer Imran Khan, who commands the attention of the media and makes effective public interventions. Imran Khan possesses the virtue of clarity. He told President Musharraf fairly bluntly that it was about time he woke up. "If you think that by sending Mr Nawaz Sharif to Saudi Arabia you can save your skin, you better stop fooling yourself. Neither can America save you, nor Benazir, and not even the PML(Q) turncoats… God willing, the entire Pakistani nation will rise against you and we will fight you in the streets."
One can see a new political compass drawing fresh arcs: Benazir Bhutto, pro-Musharraf elements in Nawaz Sharif’s party and America are placed in one group; Nawaz Sharif and friends are now the legitimate opposition. It may be too early to claim that the entire Pakistani nation has joined this opposition. But presumably God, whose will Imran Khan has invoked, will soon let us know — through events on the Pakistani street rather than deals in the Islamabad secretariat.
Saturday, September 08, 2007
Look East for the Left
Byline by M J Akbar : Look East for the Left
The nuclear deal was the perfect opportunity for the Marxists to walk out of the Bengal trap, precisely because it was an ideological issue. The Manmohan Singh government wants to bind India into a strategic relationship with the United States, specifically targeted against Iran (in writing) for starters but developing into a larger axis of the kind that America once had with Pakistan through the Baghdad Pact.
One of the oldest laws of politics is back at work: when a government is not in control of events, events take control of a government. Delhi, obsessed with itself, believes that events only take place in Delhi. Government is in a tight geographical ring; voters live outside this pseudo-magical circle.
If you want to understand what the Left is doing, you have to hop across from Delhi to Kolkata. The Marxist machinery has been cranked back into gear. You can hear the occasional squeal of age, of course. And the design is not pretty. But it still works. This week saw the surest sign that the Marxists are getting ready for a general election. I don’t mean the posters and the processions, evocative as they are. The CPI(M) brought out its genuine heavyweight and put him into political play. When Jyoti Basu speaks Bengal listens. It would not be inaccurate to suggest that Mr Basu’s influence extends over much larger space than the Marxist vote bank or the Bengali world: the Indian poor know he is on their side even if they do not have his party’s candidate in their constituency.
Mr Basu made two statements, connected by an unseen cord. He remarked that "anything" could happen if the Manmohan Singh government went ahead with the 123 Agreement. It does not require a philologist or a scientist to decipher the meaning of "anything". His second public statement was in response to Mamata Banerjee’s rather facile explanation that she was in the previous BJP-led alliance only because of her personal respect and admiration of former Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee. Mr Basu thought that he had never heard, in his 67 years of public life, anything more ridiculous. Mr Basu rarely makes a point unless he has a point to make. If that is the best reason that Mamata Banerjee is going to offer for being an ally of the BJP, it is not going to wash. She would have been far more credible if she had been a little more honest. She could have argued that defeating the Left was the most important part of her political agenda, and she chose to align with the BJP precisely because she thought this alliance could take on the Left. After all, if she thought the Congress was good enough, she would never have left the Congress, would she? But some politicians continue to believe that the simple truth is injurious to their health. They must be firmly convinced that the voter is a fool.
A primary reason for the split between the Congress and the Left is the secret understanding between the Congress and Mamata Banerjee’s party that they would contest the next elections in harmony even if they could not manage a complete alliance. The alliance was not formalised because the Congress needed the Left’s support in Delhi to survive. But workers of the two parties had begun to cooperate on the ground, the parties were together in the Singur and Nandigram movement, and when Mamata Banerjee decided to go on her famous hunger strike Congress ministers made every gesture of sympathy and support.
The announcement would have been made just before the elections were due, after the Congress had made full use of the Left’s support in Parliament, and in the process neutralised the Left’s ability to criticise it on the hustings. How do you attack, in an election campaign, someone you have defended during five years in power? The Left was in a trap, a clever one set by the Congress, and unable to wriggle out of it. Moreover, some Left MPs had succumbed to the obvious temptations of being associates of a ruling alliance; the beneficiaries were loath to end this relationship prematurely. But realpolitik had to supersede the preferences of individuals. As the Left moves towards departure mode, Mamata Banerjee turns up in arrival lounge. This is not the only trap that the Congress has set for partners that it does not consider reliable enough for a long-term alliance. When the escalating price of food becomes a subject of steamy exchanges during the coming election campaign, will the Congress blame Sharad Pawar, the agriculture minister? Priya Ranjan Das Munshi has already gone on record to suggest that the wheat purchases were mishandled because Mr Pawar is more interested in being president of the cricket board than in being agriculture minister.
The nuclear deal was the perfect opportunity for the Marxists to walk out of the Bengal trap, precisely because it was an ideological issue. The Manmohan Singh government wants to bind India into a strategic relationship with the United States, specifically targeted against Iran (in writing) for starters but developing into a larger axis of the kind that America once had with Pakistan through the Baghdad Pact. This was sweetened by much talk of nuclear energy on rather salty terms, intrusive, expensive and imbalanced. The Left could hardly have found a better reason to take a stand. Incidentally, those who are waiting for the Left to split on the nuclear deal do not understand Marxists.
We live, thank Heaven, in a free country, but freedom does not give anyone the freedom to dictate the pace of a vital national debate.
The most important point relates to common sense rather than special expertise: what is the hurry? Why cannot Parliament and the people be permitted time to discuss a matter that will set the course of investment and strategy for the next four or five decades? China took fifteen years over its negotiations with America; why can’t India be permitted a few months to examine the complex issues? Most people simply do not know the meaning of the strategic embrace that seeks to create a nexus of long-standing American allies, Japan, Australia and Singapore, with India. All these countries go to war when America goes to war, as they did in Iraq, even when majority public opinion is not in favour of self-defeating conflicts like Iraq. How many Indians are aware that there are four clauses in three sections of the Hyde Act which bind India to a "congruent" foreign policy with America on Iran, and that they express and impose an operational obligation on the US administration to bring India into full compliance? Link this with statements made by American officers that the current war games between the "allied" navies are designed to achieve operational compatibility in war. One has a right to ask whether this is preparation for a potential conflict with Iran, particularly when Pentagon sources are openly talking about an Iran plan in which the country’s nuclear and other assets will be flattened by three days of intense aerial bombing. The government has an obligation to discuss this.
Former Prime Minister V.P. Singh is still waiting for a response to his query on the price and value of the peaceful nuclear energy that has suddenly become the key to the future. I hope he is not condemned as a traitor — or even a Marxist! — for asking inconvenient questions. But such is the hurry of the Prime Minister that he even had a chat with Mr Amar Singh in the hope of getting the support of the Samajwadi Party. There is no danger to the government if it doesn’t rush through the deal: why would the Prime Minister want to risk his government when he can tell George Bush that he needs a stable majority in Parliament behind this deal before he can go through with it? Surely Dr Singh can crave for something without being craven?
India has begun to ask questions. A slogan is not an answer.
Saturday, September 01, 2007
Clues in Candlelight
Byline by M J Akbar : Clues in Candlelight
This date, doubtless, will be finalised the moment the present session of Parliament gets over on the 14th of September. An Indian team will be in Vienna as part of routine discussions with IAEA. They might not be required to return to India, and could take up discussions on the Indo-US nuclear deal. The Left would then be welcome to do what it liked. Or didn’t like.
Here is an even more revealing clue. Minorities minister A.R. Antulay was pulled out from the woodwork this week to announce a "follow-up" to the Sachar Committee recommendations for Muslims. When Congress throws sops in the general direction of Muslims by the Congress, can elections be far behind?
Sometimes I feel that the ruling class must consider Muslims to be the biggest idiots in India. In 2006, Dr Manmohan Singh, possibly moved by the Sachar Committee report on the abject plight of Indian Muslims, promised something of an extraordinary multiple rise in the budgetary expenditure for their welfare. When his budget appeared in 2007, the allocation for minorities had actually been slashed. The finance minister apparently forgot to read the Prime Minister’s instructions. The Prime Minister of course forgot to do anything about it. Now Antulay, who was given a ministry without an office, has announced a few more committees.
They must also believe that every Muslim is illiterate, and does not know the difference between a guideline and a law or an order. The government has sent "guidelines" that Muslims should be given more jobs in the bureaucracy. These are not orders, just guidelines. I can visualise every secretary of every ministry, his visage flush with the excitement of a new purpose, getting into office on Monday and ordering the immediate hiring of millions of unemployed Muslim youth. It is one thing if they cannot give jobs; why twist the knife with jokes?
Why does Shelley’s line about the desire of a moth for the flame keep coming back to me?
India is in the throes of a violent fever. You can see it shivering everywhere. There is a bus accident in Agra and the young turn to stones and arson. A dalit dies in Haryana, and the community is out on the streets. Caste wars surface only sometimes, but the turbulence is a permanent stream just under the surface. Muslims are restless and angry, imbued with a sense of betrayal as yet another government they helped elect has given them committee reports rather than justice. One part of the crimes of the winter of 1992-93 has been punished, but those who indulged in anti-Muslim riots, including policemen named by the Srikrishna report, are untouched by the law. Any protest is fobbed by the promise of action tomorrow. Tomorrow is a day that never comes.
The poor, of all regions, faiths, castes, economic denominations, want economic and social justice; they want life and sustenance, and if they do not get it they will make their voice heard, and their anger evident. Whenever they ask a question, they are told by the government to wait till 2020 for an answer. They are not looking at 2020. They are looking at deprivation and death. There is no 2020 for the farmers who have committed suicide. There is no 2020 for vegetable vendors and the egg-suppliers who see their only form of income being swallowed by a retail giant. A policy for 2020 can work only if sustained by immediate programmes for those who are being dispossessed on the way to El Dorado. A limited dole is not a policy, particularly when it is punctured by corruption.
The nuclear deal with the United States will be an issue in the next general elections, but it will not be the only debate. Campaign season is question time, so the questions that have not yet been articulated will rise to the top of the debate. One can understand, for instance, the family silver being hocked to protect or expand India’s military nuclear programme, but why get into an embrace as demanding, one-sided and restrictive as that detailed in the Hyde Act for civilian nuclear energy? We have enough fuel for our military purposes.
This nuclear deal was not part of the Congress manifesto in the last elections; it did not exist in the Common Minimum Programme that is the basis of the ruling alliance. When the last civilian energy policy of the country was announced, a document which was the sum of collective effort, there was no hint that nuclear power was to become so crucial to India’s energy requirements. From which bottle did this genie suddenly materialise? And if nuclear power is so green and so beneficial, why has America not invested heavily in civilian nuclear power after the Three Mile Island accident in 1979? America doesn’t need either the Hyde Act, or anyone else’s technology to do so. As this column has argued before, it would be a very foolish country that would prefer hostility with America, but the fundamental requirement of friendship is equality. Subservience is not an equitable or sustainable long-term relationship. How cost-effective is nuclear energy? There is never a direct, or even an indirect, answer from the government to this question. Can those at the bottom of the pile afford this energy, or do they need more hydro power? Water is one natural resource that is not going to disappear, for if it does there will be nothing left to protect.
The basic question before the nation is actually a fairly simple one: is the future of India linked to every Indian? Or is Dream India the destiny of only some Indians? Has Jawaharlal Nehru’s tryst with destiny been converted from a national challenge into a self-satisfied statistic?
Shelley’s flame drew the fluttering moth. Ghalib’s flame, methinks, defines the vote. Shama har rang main jalti hai sahar hone tak. The flame sparkles in every colour until dawn. What comes at dawn when another multi-dimensional electoral candle is exhausted? The clarity of sunlight, I hope.
The basic question before the nation is actually a fairly simple one: is the future of India linked to every Indian? Or is Dream India the destiny of only some Indians? Has Jawaharlal Nehru’s tryst with destiny been converted from a national challenge into a self-satisfied statistic?
The decisive moment in Indian politics comes not when leaders believe that they have convinced the electorate but when they are certain that they have convinced themselves. The system is then informed: Members of Parliament, party officials, and whatever is left of the structure down the scale. If you want to know when a general election is likely to be announced, check the faces inside Parliament. If the leaders look buoyant and the MPs glum, you know an election cannot be too far away.
Any half-decent Sherlock Holmes could have offered a reasonable guess on the date of the next general election. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has strewn his public utterances with clues. It is obvious that, although a man of laconic demeanour, he cannot resist a riposte. When CPI(M) general secretary Prakash Karat indulged in the metaphor of a nuclear winter, Dr Singh asked whether spring could be far behind. It seems that a spring general election is about to be sprung.
This date, doubtless, will be finalised the moment the present session of Parliament gets over on the 14th of September. An Indian team will be in Vienna as part of routine discussions with IAEA. They might not be required to return to India, and could take up discussions on the Indo-US nuclear deal. The Left would then be welcome to do what it liked. Or didn’t like.
Here is an even more revealing clue. Minorities minister A.R. Antulay was pulled out from the woodwork this week to announce a "follow-up" to the Sachar Committee recommendations for Muslims. When Congress throws sops in the general direction of Muslims by the Congress, can elections be far behind?
Sometimes I feel that the ruling class must consider Muslims to be the biggest idiots in India. In 2006, Dr Manmohan Singh, possibly moved by the Sachar Committee report on the abject plight of Indian Muslims, promised something of an extraordinary multiple rise in the budgetary expenditure for their welfare. When his budget appeared in 2007, the allocation for minorities had actually been slashed. The finance minister apparently forgot to read the Prime Minister’s instructions. The Prime Minister of course forgot to do anything about it. Now Antulay, who was given a ministry without an office, has announced a few more committees.
They must also believe that every Muslim is illiterate, and does not know the difference between a guideline and a law or an order. The government has sent "guidelines" that Muslims should be given more jobs in the bureaucracy. These are not orders, just guidelines. I can visualise every secretary of every ministry, his visage flush with the excitement of a new purpose, getting into office on Monday and ordering the immediate hiring of millions of unemployed Muslim youth. It is one thing if they cannot give jobs; why twist the knife with jokes?
Why does Shelley’s line about the desire of a moth for the flame keep coming back to me?
India is in the throes of a violent fever. You can see it shivering everywhere. There is a bus accident in Agra and the young turn to stones and arson. A dalit dies in Haryana, and the community is out on the streets. Caste wars surface only sometimes, but the turbulence is a permanent stream just under the surface. Muslims are restless and angry, imbued with a sense of betrayal as yet another government they helped elect has given them committee reports rather than justice. One part of the crimes of the winter of 1992-93 has been punished, but those who indulged in anti-Muslim riots, including policemen named by the Srikrishna report, are untouched by the law. Any protest is fobbed by the promise of action tomorrow. Tomorrow is a day that never comes.
The poor, of all regions, faiths, castes, economic denominations, want economic and social justice; they want life and sustenance, and if they do not get it they will make their voice heard, and their anger evident. Whenever they ask a question, they are told by the government to wait till 2020 for an answer. They are not looking at 2020. They are looking at deprivation and death. There is no 2020 for the farmers who have committed suicide. There is no 2020 for vegetable vendors and the egg-suppliers who see their only form of income being swallowed by a retail giant. A policy for 2020 can work only if sustained by immediate programmes for those who are being dispossessed on the way to El Dorado. A limited dole is not a policy, particularly when it is punctured by corruption.
The nuclear deal with the United States will be an issue in the next general elections, but it will not be the only debate. Campaign season is question time, so the questions that have not yet been articulated will rise to the top of the debate. One can understand, for instance, the family silver being hocked to protect or expand India’s military nuclear programme, but why get into an embrace as demanding, one-sided and restrictive as that detailed in the Hyde Act for civilian nuclear energy? We have enough fuel for our military purposes.
This nuclear deal was not part of the Congress manifesto in the last elections; it did not exist in the Common Minimum Programme that is the basis of the ruling alliance. When the last civilian energy policy of the country was announced, a document which was the sum of collective effort, there was no hint that nuclear power was to become so crucial to India’s energy requirements. From which bottle did this genie suddenly materialise? And if nuclear power is so green and so beneficial, why has America not invested heavily in civilian nuclear power after the Three Mile Island accident in 1979? America doesn’t need either the Hyde Act, or anyone else’s technology to do so. As this column has argued before, it would be a very foolish country that would prefer hostility with America, but the fundamental requirement of friendship is equality. Subservience is not an equitable or sustainable long-term relationship. How cost-effective is nuclear energy? There is never a direct, or even an indirect, answer from the government to this question. Can those at the bottom of the pile afford this energy, or do they need more hydro power? Water is one natural resource that is not going to disappear, for if it does there will be nothing left to protect.
The basic question before the nation is actually a fairly simple one: is the future of India linked to every Indian? Or is Dream India the destiny of only some Indians? Has Jawaharlal Nehru’s tryst with destiny been converted from a national challenge into a self-satisfied statistic?
Shelley’s flame drew the fluttering moth. Ghalib’s flame, methinks, defines the vote. Shama har rang main jalti hai sahar hone tak. The flame sparkles in every colour until dawn. What comes at dawn when another multi-dimensional electoral candle is exhausted? The clarity of sunlight, I hope.
Sunday, August 26, 2007
Chicken Soup
Byline by M J akbar: Chicken Soup
Ronen Sen, India's ambassador to the United States, has sullied a long and distinguished career by an uncharacteristic outburst that reeks of personal frustration. Whether he will enter the history books remains to be seen. But I fear that his description of the deal's critics as "headless chicken" will enter that vast vault in which the foreign ministry's memory bank is stored.
Frustration is unprofessional in a government servant. It is a gesture of personal peeve, contrary to the ethos of governance, which must at all times be an expression of collective will. There are some unusual occasions that become even more demanding, as in the case of the Indo-US nuclear deal, when a decision must be raised above the limitations of executive authority and sifted through a national consensus, for it commits the nation to a course of action stretching ahead through four or five decades.
Ronen Sen, India's ambassador to the United States, has sullied a long and distinguished career by an uncharacteristic outburst that reeks of personal frustration. Whether he will enter the history books remains to be seen. But I fear that his description of the deal's critics as "headless chicken" will enter that vast vault in which the foreign ministry's memory bank is stored.
Sen did little for his reputation by compounding his mistake with a clumsy lie when he "clarified" that he was referring to the media rather than MPs. Most of the media has in fact been supportive of his deal, and, in Sen parlance, the greater proportion of journalists thereby fall into the category of chicken with head. In any case, journalists cannot stop such a deal. Members of Parliament can.
An interview, particularly one which has the stamp of a command performance, often reveals far more than it sets out to convey. The discerning try and read between the lines. But it is also useful to read behind the lines, into the mind of the nabob giving the interview. Stress and vehemence, for instance, are clues to motive or a hint towards the next step being taken. The Ronen Sen interview should be read carefully for reasons other than the use of an unhappy phrase.
There is by now a familiar pattern in pro-deal arguments that breaks down with a little analysis of inbuilt contradictions. I shall give only one example. Sen asserts that every concern about guaranteed nuclear fuel supplies has been met. He then goes on to stress that the Hyde Act, signed into American law by President George Bush, will govern American decisions. (We have accepted this qualification in the 123 Agreement.) The Hyde Act clearly specifies that fuel supplies will be conditional upon clearance from the American Congress, which will require a certification of good behaviour by India across a range of issues.
It is possible that the government might float another line (already put into limited circulation) during the debates in Parliament: that a bilateral treaty takes precedence over American domestic law. This is self-deception, to use the kindest phrase. If this is true, why was the law needed in the first place? The government of India has repeatedly characterised Hyde as the "enabling legislation" on the deal, which of course it is. After the 123 Agreement was signed on 23 July 2007, Nicholas Burns, undersecretary of state and the chief American negotiator, said, on the record, that "we kept reminding the Indian side, and they were good enough to negotiate on this basis, that anything we did had to fall within, and respect, the legal guidelines that Congress had set forth". Those legal guidelines are what is known as the Hyde Act.
Negotiators on both sides are agreed, and have said so publicly, that the agreement must live within the parameters set by Hyde. Delhi has said that no provision of the Hyde Act has been breached in the agreement. How many more times do we need to hear such plain language in order to understand their import?
Sen also rules out any renegotiation of Hyde. This "cannot even be considered". If nothing can be altered then it makes a nonsense of the government's current argument that the next stage of discussions, in Vienna with the IAEA and later with the Nuclear Suppliers Group, should be allowed to proceed while the Left's concerns are addressed. The Vienna talks are in fact an operationalisation of the 123 Agreement, since they are a consequence of its provisions. The outcome of these talks will be amicable, since that is pre-arranged.
Perhaps the most revealing part of this interview, done by Aziz Haniffa, is the section in which Sen's name does not figure.
The interview is divided into two parts. In the first, Sen is quoted directly. Then, mysteriously, the quotes are attributed to "senior diplomatic observers", named once in the plural and once in the singular. These "senior diplomatic observer/s" are happy to be quoted, but very nervous about being identified. Why? Will they be imprisoned in Guantanamo because they are saying that no future government can abrogate this deal? Why were their quotes added to a Ronen Sen interview? Would it be wrong to surmise that these quotes came from Sen as well, but he requested that his name be kept out since he was being critical of a particular political party, and calling its position a "childish tantrum"?
This unnamed but very senior diplomatic "observer" named the BJP, but he should have been even more wary of the Communists. It is their opposition that has stopped the nuclear deal. The government made a serious miscalculation in its reading of the Left. Just because the CPI(M) supported a Congress-led government three years ago, it did not mean that the CPI(M) had become a wing of the Congress. The CPI(M) remains an ideological party, and there is a limit that it cannot cross without compromising its raison d'être. The Left's concern extends to the "strategic partnership" that is being developed by this government with the United States. What is interesting is the belligerence with which the "senior diplomatic observers" condemned any thought of the deal being abrogated by a successor government.
This fits in with the latest strategy being pursued in some circles of the Delhi government.The thinking is that Dr Manmohan Singh should go ahead and sign the deal even though he has lost the support of the Left on this issue. The alliance with the Left is dead for all political purposes, so why become hostage to its demands? However, there are still two stages of negotiations left before the deal can be inked. They can be hurried through with American assistance, but it will still need time, perhaps eight weeks or so. Till then the Left needs to be placated, or hoodwinked, with the argument that these interim discussions do not amount to an operationalisation of the deal. The Left has set the condition that it will withdraw support only when the deal becomes operational. The deal will become operational, it will be argued, with various degrees of ingeniousness, only when the Prime Minister of India signs a document either with Bush or the American secretary of state Condoleezza Rice.
The worst that the Left can do at that stage is withdraw support, but the Congress will be ready to go to the country on the strength of this "achievement". The Prime Minister is convinced that he will obtain nationwide support for the partnership with America, and that he can lead his redesigned coalition back to power after an early general election. Further, he will not be hampered by a leftist baggage in the future. In any case, since no future government can renegotiate what has been signed, the deal will survive even if the present government does not. India was shining for the last government. America is shining for this one.
Friday, August 24, 2007
Freedom's Another World: On 15th August
Freedom's Just Another World:
We still struggle with freedom—we have to defeat the sins within by M J Akbar
India became independent on August 15, 1947. When did Indians become free? Jawaharlal Nehru, an architect and master-builder of independent India, often remarked that Mahatma Gandhi's greatest gift to Indians was abhaya—freedom from fear. Some 50,000 Britishers held over 300 million "natives" in the grip of fear. Gandhi led them out of this prison, but only after he had lost his respect for the Empire. Till virtually the end of the First World War, Gandhi was a servant of the Empire, fawning and obsequious in his support of the war effort. Jallianwalla Bagh smashed that heavy illusion.
Once Gandhi had released himself from himself, he crafted the non-cooperation, or the aptly named Khilafat, movement between 1919 and 1922. It was a swivel moment of history. Gandhi could not end British rule, although he made the Empire's knees wobble, but he destroyed British mystique.
After 1922 it was never a question of if, but when.
August 15 is celebrated as Independence Day.We should rename January 26 Freedom Day, because that was the day that India first celebrated its freedom, in 1931. The Congress declared itself free on January 30, 1930, at its Lahore session, with the adoption of the Purna Swaraj resolution. Gandhi gave the party and the people time to commemorate this moment of liberation, and chose January 26 as the day for nationwide celebrations. Not many now know why the framers of the Constitution chose January 26 as Republic Day; We have enjoyed more than 75 years of freedom, as against only six decades of independence.
The amnesia is not accidental. We celebrate independence because we have protected it with pride. Freedom is quite another matter. Gandhi gave us freedom from fear, but that was only the first item on a long wish-list. We have freed ourselves from famine, a remarkable achievement of modern India; but we have not freed India from hunger, illiteracy, communal bias against minorities, economic exploitation, injustice, the legal and social indignity suffered by women, casteism.
We Indians have a rather awkward propensity. We keep declaring victory in the quarter-finals. And sometimes even before that: remember the parties we organised even before our cricket team had left for the World Cup? No victor's laurels could have been illuminated with more gauche glamour. A similar sentiment is evident in the triumphal hurrahs raised each day to economic growth. The government and the media are the main cheerleaders as both have limited themselves to the same constituency—the middle class.Growth is good, but there is a mine hidden in each letter of that word.
Growth can be sustained only if it is protected by a few adjectives, starting with equitable. Instead, a trickle-down theory is always tagged to this 9% growth, that some of the great froth at the top will trickle down to the bottom, eventually lifting the poor from their morass. What pernicious self-delusion! The poor need the benefits of growth most, and quickly. They won't accept a waterfall for those whose stomachs are sated, and a trickle for bellies bloated by hunger. Both justice and nature demand a reversal.
As do the Naxalites, of course. How often does the Indian Establishment need to be woken up by the crackle of gunfire? Faced with a problem, frightened by the price of a prescription, the Establishment retreats behind the thin security of an assumption. Punjab festered for decades, but we only saw the face of its agricultural wealth until the 1980s left us reeling. The tribals have experienced nothing in the sixty proud years of independence except neglect, exploitation and marginalisation, but we assume that they are too weak, or "uneducated", or docile forest people to make themselves count.Indian Muslims have got democracy, so we assume that they don't really need schools and jobs. Indian philosophy is non-violent and non-aggressive, so communalism can only be a passing flare. India is independent, so it can never be snared by economic or strategic neo-colonisation.
Our independence movement climaxed in a triumph. Our freedom struggle, which began earlier, is far from over. Defeating the British might have been the easier part, for now we have to defeat the sins within ourselves. Gandhi could not lead the freedom struggle until he had rid himself of illusions. Is there any Mahatma around who can liberate Indians from their own complacency?
-(Appeared in Outlook India - 20th August 2007)
We still struggle with freedom—we have to defeat the sins within by M J Akbar
India became independent on August 15, 1947. When did Indians become free? Jawaharlal Nehru, an architect and master-builder of independent India, often remarked that Mahatma Gandhi's greatest gift to Indians was abhaya—freedom from fear. Some 50,000 Britishers held over 300 million "natives" in the grip of fear. Gandhi led them out of this prison, but only after he had lost his respect for the Empire. Till virtually the end of the First World War, Gandhi was a servant of the Empire, fawning and obsequious in his support of the war effort. Jallianwalla Bagh smashed that heavy illusion.
Once Gandhi had released himself from himself, he crafted the non-cooperation, or the aptly named Khilafat, movement between 1919 and 1922. It was a swivel moment of history. Gandhi could not end British rule, although he made the Empire's knees wobble, but he destroyed British mystique.
After 1922 it was never a question of if, but when.
August 15 is celebrated as Independence Day.We should rename January 26 Freedom Day, because that was the day that India first celebrated its freedom, in 1931. The Congress declared itself free on January 30, 1930, at its Lahore session, with the adoption of the Purna Swaraj resolution. Gandhi gave the party and the people time to commemorate this moment of liberation, and chose January 26 as the day for nationwide celebrations. Not many now know why the framers of the Constitution chose January 26 as Republic Day; We have enjoyed more than 75 years of freedom, as against only six decades of independence.
The amnesia is not accidental. We celebrate independence because we have protected it with pride. Freedom is quite another matter. Gandhi gave us freedom from fear, but that was only the first item on a long wish-list. We have freed ourselves from famine, a remarkable achievement of modern India; but we have not freed India from hunger, illiteracy, communal bias against minorities, economic exploitation, injustice, the legal and social indignity suffered by women, casteism.
We Indians have a rather awkward propensity. We keep declaring victory in the quarter-finals. And sometimes even before that: remember the parties we organised even before our cricket team had left for the World Cup? No victor's laurels could have been illuminated with more gauche glamour. A similar sentiment is evident in the triumphal hurrahs raised each day to economic growth. The government and the media are the main cheerleaders as both have limited themselves to the same constituency—the middle class.Growth is good, but there is a mine hidden in each letter of that word.
Growth can be sustained only if it is protected by a few adjectives, starting with equitable. Instead, a trickle-down theory is always tagged to this 9% growth, that some of the great froth at the top will trickle down to the bottom, eventually lifting the poor from their morass. What pernicious self-delusion! The poor need the benefits of growth most, and quickly. They won't accept a waterfall for those whose stomachs are sated, and a trickle for bellies bloated by hunger. Both justice and nature demand a reversal.
As do the Naxalites, of course. How often does the Indian Establishment need to be woken up by the crackle of gunfire? Faced with a problem, frightened by the price of a prescription, the Establishment retreats behind the thin security of an assumption. Punjab festered for decades, but we only saw the face of its agricultural wealth until the 1980s left us reeling. The tribals have experienced nothing in the sixty proud years of independence except neglect, exploitation and marginalisation, but we assume that they are too weak, or "uneducated", or docile forest people to make themselves count.Indian Muslims have got democracy, so we assume that they don't really need schools and jobs. Indian philosophy is non-violent and non-aggressive, so communalism can only be a passing flare. India is independent, so it can never be snared by economic or strategic neo-colonisation.
Our independence movement climaxed in a triumph. Our freedom struggle, which began earlier, is far from over. Defeating the British might have been the easier part, for now we have to defeat the sins within ourselves. Gandhi could not lead the freedom struggle until he had rid himself of illusions. Is there any Mahatma around who can liberate Indians from their own complacency?
-(Appeared in Outlook India - 20th August 2007)
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
The Ambush
Byline by M J Akbar: The Ambush
Now that divorce proceedings have begun between the Congress and the Left, the best thing to do would be to make a quick and clean break. The House — the Lok Sabha of course — is now unstable. The partnership has become untenable.
The one thing that the Congress and the Left will not fight about is custody of the child. In three years the Manmohan Singh government has produced just one child, the Indo-US nuclear deal. The Left has made it clear that it has serious doubts about the circumstances of its arrival.
This government was elected because a majority of Indian voters rejected the fatuous claim that India was shining. That was a moment tailor-made for a new economic agenda that shifted the focus from wealth creation to wealth distribution. Instead, this government of World Bank economists insisted that wealth creation was, in a very fundamental sense, incompatible with wealth distribution.
It stuck doggedly to a crumbs-policy. If it ensured a feast for the rich, there would always be enough crumbs for the poor. This, in essence, is the trickle down theory advocated by the highest in the land, and applauded by all those given a free ticket to the table. One could sense that elections were around the corner when the Prime Minister rediscovered the poor during his speech on the sixtieth Independence Day. In Indian democracy, the poor get homilies, while the rich get policies.
If Dr Manmohan Singh had fought for and staked his government’s survival on an anti-poverty programme, no one would have dared to bring his government down. He would have won an election on his record, for the poor vote. How poor is India? Some startling statistics have just been released by a forgotten wing of Dr Singh’s own administration, the National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganised Sector. Around 80% of India’s working population is in this sector. Nearly 80% of this group earns less than 20 rupees a day and 85% of this sub group is trapped in debt. By that usual sleight of hand we have drawn an arbitrary line to define poverty: Rs 12 a day constitutes the poverty line. This encourages the illusion that 77% of India is now above the poverty line. It isn’t that much above in any case. Nor is this poverty line index-linked to inflation. Twelve rupees a day buys much less today than it did three years ago. The traditional poverty groups remain where they were: 88% of Scheduled Tribes and Castes, 80% of "Other Backward Classes" and 85% of Muslims belong to the "poor and vulnerable" class.
If these statistics are lies the government should disown them, sack the author of the report, and produce alternative figures that indicate a different scenario. Dr Manmohan Singh cannot hide from facts by taking shelter behind silence.
Instead of concentrating on poverty, Dr Singh concentrated on George Bush. Heads of government who have invested in Bush at the expense of their national interest are on a losing streak this year. Tony Blair has disappeared into insignificance so quickly that his decade in office already seems like a mirage. Any good he might have done for his country has been lost in that colossal and unthinking blunder called Iraq. John Howard, the other great Bush ally, is heading for defeat in this year’s Australian elections.
Dr Singh always misunderstood the nature of the debate on the nuclear deal. That political fault line has now extended to the parties in his alliance, who did not have much to do with the decision but surrendered (unlike the Left) their independent judgment in order to hang on to office. Lalu Yadav, Sharad Pawar and M. Karunanidhi will be answerable to voters for a decision that they rubber stamped without examining the consequences.
For some reason that one has been unable to fathom, Dr Singh once called protests against the Bush visit to India "communal". If he thought that only Muslims were suspicious of his eagerness to accept any terms imposed by the Bush administration then I presume he has changed his views now. Any investment on such a scale, in both financial and strategic terms, cannot be pushed through by merely the will of a government. It has to be sifted through the process of national debate, particularly in Parliament. If the American legislature has the right to interfere in decision-making, and impose qualifications, why not the Indian legislature? Is the Indian MP less patriotic than the American Senator, or indeed more ignorant?
The logic of democracy travels in only one direction: the popular will. The Prime Minister pushed the pace by presenting his allies with a timetable that they were unable to accept.
There has also been a serious misunderstanding about the nature of government. India’s ambassador to Washington, an extremely capable diplomat, Ronen Sen, says that he has been privately assured that Washington will not react excessively if India uses the option to test. Alas, nations last longer than individuals. The life of this deal is estimated at around forty years. Ronen Sen will not be ambassador that long. Bush will not be President after January 2009. What matters is the law of the land and the written record. The law of America, by which every President is bound, is called the Hyde Act. It will prevail when a Democrat takes the White House from the Republicans. India’s national interest cannot be compromised on the strength of a private assurance. It is astonishing that a senior diplomat should make such a statement, when American negotiators and spokesmen have insisted that the law of their land will determine the course of their actions in any dispute. It is astounding that a government should accept this as some form of guarantee.
No marriage ever survived because of prolonged divorce proceedings. The time has come to go to a higher court than even the Indian Parliament — to the people of India.
Instead of concentrating on poverty, Dr Singh concentrated on George Bush.Heads of government who have invested in Bush at the expense of their national interest are on a losing streak this year. Tony Blair has disappeared into insignificance so quickly that his decade in office already seems like a mirage. Any good he might have done for his country has been lost in that colossal and unthinking blunder called Iraq.
What is human about nature? Bystanders enjoy conflict more than resolution. Partisans may prefer peace, but an audience can be persuaded to pay good money to watch gladiators. Which street in the world ever stopped to applaud a serene couple strolling by, hand in hand? But let a husband and wife begin screaming at each other and a crowd will collect instantly. Let the couple be marginally familiar and a posse of journalists will arrive to turn them into minor celebrities. Such is the law of inhuman nature.
A divorce, therefore, will always get much more coverage than a marriage. Good news has only limited rights over airtime and newsprint. A marriage gets decent attention only at the time of nuptials. You might recall for instance the photographs flooded with smiles when the present UPA government was joined together in functional matrimony a little more than a thousand days ago. Such pictures aren’t news after 24 hours.
But a divorce can make news every day. There are so many issues to deal with. Who keeps the house after the split? That is a tough one since the house would never have been stable without the willing consent of both parties. The bickering can get intense over the most trivial detail, and each bicker feeds further demand from an insatiable media. Accusations get hurled across that nasty wrestling pit called a television studio. Mud sticks. Everyone has heard of some happy marriage, for such things are still possible. Whoever heard of a happy divorce?
Now that divorce proceedings have begun between the Congress and the Left, the best thing to do would be to make a quick and clean break. The House — the Lok Sabha of course — is now unstable. The partnership has become untenable.
The one thing that the Congress and the Left will not fight about is custody of the child. In three years the Manmohan Singh government has produced just one child, the Indo-US nuclear deal. The Left has made it clear that it has serious doubts about the circumstances of its arrival.
This government was elected because a majority of Indian voters rejected the fatuous claim that India was shining. That was a moment tailor-made for a new economic agenda that shifted the focus from wealth creation to wealth distribution. Instead, this government of World Bank economists insisted that wealth creation was, in a very fundamental sense, incompatible with wealth distribution.
It stuck doggedly to a crumbs-policy. If it ensured a feast for the rich, there would always be enough crumbs for the poor. This, in essence, is the trickle down theory advocated by the highest in the land, and applauded by all those given a free ticket to the table. One could sense that elections were around the corner when the Prime Minister rediscovered the poor during his speech on the sixtieth Independence Day. In Indian democracy, the poor get homilies, while the rich get policies.
If Dr Manmohan Singh had fought for and staked his government’s survival on an anti-poverty programme, no one would have dared to bring his government down. He would have won an election on his record, for the poor vote. How poor is India? Some startling statistics have just been released by a forgotten wing of Dr Singh’s own administration, the National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganised Sector. Around 80% of India’s working population is in this sector. Nearly 80% of this group earns less than 20 rupees a day and 85% of this sub group is trapped in debt. By that usual sleight of hand we have drawn an arbitrary line to define poverty: Rs 12 a day constitutes the poverty line. This encourages the illusion that 77% of India is now above the poverty line. It isn’t that much above in any case. Nor is this poverty line index-linked to inflation. Twelve rupees a day buys much less today than it did three years ago. The traditional poverty groups remain where they were: 88% of Scheduled Tribes and Castes, 80% of "Other Backward Classes" and 85% of Muslims belong to the "poor and vulnerable" class.
If these statistics are lies the government should disown them, sack the author of the report, and produce alternative figures that indicate a different scenario. Dr Manmohan Singh cannot hide from facts by taking shelter behind silence.
Instead of concentrating on poverty, Dr Singh concentrated on George Bush. Heads of government who have invested in Bush at the expense of their national interest are on a losing streak this year. Tony Blair has disappeared into insignificance so quickly that his decade in office already seems like a mirage. Any good he might have done for his country has been lost in that colossal and unthinking blunder called Iraq. John Howard, the other great Bush ally, is heading for defeat in this year’s Australian elections.
Dr Singh always misunderstood the nature of the debate on the nuclear deal. That political fault line has now extended to the parties in his alliance, who did not have much to do with the decision but surrendered (unlike the Left) their independent judgment in order to hang on to office. Lalu Yadav, Sharad Pawar and M. Karunanidhi will be answerable to voters for a decision that they rubber stamped without examining the consequences.
For some reason that one has been unable to fathom, Dr Singh once called protests against the Bush visit to India "communal". If he thought that only Muslims were suspicious of his eagerness to accept any terms imposed by the Bush administration then I presume he has changed his views now. Any investment on such a scale, in both financial and strategic terms, cannot be pushed through by merely the will of a government. It has to be sifted through the process of national debate, particularly in Parliament. If the American legislature has the right to interfere in decision-making, and impose qualifications, why not the Indian legislature? Is the Indian MP less patriotic than the American Senator, or indeed more ignorant?
The logic of democracy travels in only one direction: the popular will. The Prime Minister pushed the pace by presenting his allies with a timetable that they were unable to accept.
There has also been a serious misunderstanding about the nature of government. India’s ambassador to Washington, an extremely capable diplomat, Ronen Sen, says that he has been privately assured that Washington will not react excessively if India uses the option to test. Alas, nations last longer than individuals. The life of this deal is estimated at around forty years. Ronen Sen will not be ambassador that long. Bush will not be President after January 2009. What matters is the law of the land and the written record. The law of America, by which every President is bound, is called the Hyde Act. It will prevail when a Democrat takes the White House from the Republicans. India’s national interest cannot be compromised on the strength of a private assurance. It is astonishing that a senior diplomat should make such a statement, when American negotiators and spokesmen have insisted that the law of their land will determine the course of their actions in any dispute. It is astounding that a government should accept this as some form of guarantee.
No marriage ever survived because of prolonged divorce proceedings. The time has come to go to a higher court than even the Indian Parliament — to the people of India.
Sunday, August 12, 2007
Dependence Day
Byline By M.J. Akbar : Dependence Day
In July Mrs Sonia Gandhi took charge of an election that had suddenly become difficult, thanks to a candidate of her own choosing. Her nominee for President was a last-minute surprise with a dreary record and a dubious approach to public finance. And yet, within days, she split the opposition so comprehensively that it was bleeding after the result.
In August Prime Minister Manmohan Singh achieved a unique reversal. Within a week he not only united the Opposition that Mrs Gandhi had dispersed, but managed to lop off a vital slice from the coalition that keeps him in office. It remains to be seen whether the Left has fallen out, or still remains hanging in the alliance, but the threads that bind it to Dr Singh are looking tenuous. Dr Singh has had three years to prepare for the denouement of the Indo-US nuclear deal. The last stage was bungled because it was managed in precisely the same way as every other stage of the process. At all times the Prime Minister was making two simultaneous deals. One was with Washington, whose details were naturally kept secret. And the other was with Delhi’s closed-circuit elite, a quadrangle of politicians, bureaucrats, businessmen and journalists, on the assumption that their support, managed through ego-massage and more concrete benefits, would be sufficient to get domestic endorsement.
He never could quite comprehend that Indian nationalism had stronger foundations than the self-interest of the establishment; or that, in a democracy, the base can affect the top. Indians are not yet ready to celebrate sixty years of independence by handing over the next forty years to dependence.
He thought he could get away by a display of the text and was unpleasantly surprised when India asked for the context. The context was public knowledge thanks to the transparency of American democracy. The Hyde Act, with its extensive demands on the Indian right to independent behaviour, was one context, but not the only one. As V.P. Singh pointed out in a letter to the Prime Minister, we also need a proper evaluation of the cost-benefit ratio of civilian
nuclear power, and whether we can generate much more power for far less investment. V.P. Singh is not a foam-in-the-mouth adversary; he is among those who helped Dr Singh become Prime Minister.
A Prime Minister holds a political office. Dr Singh has promoted, and enjoyed, a carefully nurtured disdain for politics; he likes his bread buttered on both sides. Politics is the art of establishing harmony between policy and the people. Dr Singh was only ever interested in establishing harmony between his policies and the elite, the inmates of a circular road in Delhi. India is now letting him know it exists.Three years is sufficient time to garner the material needed for the construction of an image. Dr Manmohan Singh has identified himself with only two passions: economic growth and the Indo-US nuclear deal. There is nothing wrong with either on principle. There is a great deal wrong with both in practice. Both have serious
electoral limitations.
The policy of wealth creation as pursued by this government has never been adjusted for economic justice or equity. This emerges from statements consistently made by the highest in the government, that the poor will be beneficiaries of the "trickle down theory". Think about it. Cream is collecting at the top of the Indian pie at the rate of 9% a year. About 80% of this cream is swallowed up, to differing degrees, by perhaps a quarter of the population. The three-quarters below have to wait for a thin trickle which is lapped by various strata before anything can reach the depths of those below the poverty line. Common sense suggests that the poorest should be the first beneficiaries of wealth creation, as they live on the margins of hunger and the edge of anger. Instead, the poor believe that they have been left out of an Indian success story
to which they have contributed with sweat, and, in the case of that rising ulcer, the Special Economic Zone, with their land. They find themselves marginalised or even deleted from the distribution of rewards.
Those with swimming pools get a waterfall; those dying of thirst are fended off with a trickle. This trickle is the breeding ground for Naxalites. Young people do not live only on the fashion and celebrity pages of newspapers; there are young in hovels as well. And they vote.
Neither is Dr Manmohan Singh helped by his intense identification with President George W. Bush, a relationship visible in his slightly tremulous body language when the two meet. Let us keep to one side the fact that Bush has done more harm to his own country, and to the world, than any American President in memory. Or that people equate Bush with the havoc in Iraq. It is more important for us, who are still fortunate enough not to have been liberated by Bush, to understand the implications of Iraq. At issue is the meaning of sovereignty.
American policy under Bush has abandoned all respect for the concept of sovereignty, and is ready to go to war to further an American economic and political agenda. One no longer need point out that the war in Iraq had nothing to do with the war against terrorism. If there had been no resistance in Iraq, who could have prevented Bush from invading two other Muslim nations, Syria and Iran? This would have been the strategic centre of the "New Middle East".
Is India rather than Pakistan to become the guardian of the eastern flank of this New Middle East? Is India now going to become part of the politics, and indeed the wars, of the region? If America does move militarily against Iran, there will be continuous war from Beirut on the Mediterranean to the borders of India and maybe seep across as well. And if we do not cooperate with Washington in that conflict, will we get sermons from American candidates and instructions from the American administration, as our neighbour Pakistan is getting at the moment? Is this the meaning of the specific reference to Iran in the Hyde Act? It is completely unusual for a third country to be mentioned in legislation which is meant for bilateral purposes. Why was it done? Why have we not questioned it? Why is it being treated as something inconsequential? If it was inconsequential, why was it included, not in a statement, but in the law of America? The Hyde Act is not political posturing. It is the law of the land, and every President of America, present or future, has to abide by that law. Prime Minister Singh has already compromised the integrity of India’s independent foreign policy with his silence on the Hyde Act. There also seems to have been a message sent to the American administration not to roil Indian waters by stressing the Hyde Act. But this is too serious a business for fudge.
Dr Singh’s allies are beginning to wonder about the extent of the damage through decisions on which they were never really consulted, but accepted in order to keep the government going. I can’t see Lalu Yadav discussing the nuances of the nuclear deal, but he will be answerable when he meets his voters next time.The Left, which survives by thinking ahead, has realised that Dr Singh has driven the UPA to a crossroads. You can hunt with the Opposition hounds and run with the government hare on a flat course, not at a crossroads. Moreover, a crowd has collected. Bengal is watching Delhi as closely as it is watching Nandigram. When the street speaks sensible politicians listen.
If America does move militarily against Iran, there will be continuous war from Beirut on the Mediterranean to the borders of India and maybe seep across as well. And if we do not cooperate with Washington in that conflict, will we get sermons from American candidates and instructions from the American administration, as our neighbour Pakistan is getting at the moment?
In July Mrs Sonia Gandhi took charge of an election that had suddenly become difficult, thanks to a candidate of her own choosing. Her nominee for President was a last-minute surprise with a dreary record and a dubious approach to public finance. And yet, within days, she split the opposition so comprehensively that it was bleeding after the result.
In August Prime Minister Manmohan Singh achieved a unique reversal. Within a week he not only united the Opposition that Mrs Gandhi had dispersed, but managed to lop off a vital slice from the coalition that keeps him in office. It remains to be seen whether the Left has fallen out, or still remains hanging in the alliance, but the threads that bind it to Dr Singh are looking tenuous. Dr Singh has had three years to prepare for the denouement of the Indo-US nuclear deal. The last stage was bungled because it was managed in precisely the same way as every other stage of the process. At all times the Prime Minister was making two simultaneous deals. One was with Washington, whose details were naturally kept secret. And the other was with Delhi’s closed-circuit elite, a quadrangle of politicians, bureaucrats, businessmen and journalists, on the assumption that their support, managed through ego-massage and more concrete benefits, would be sufficient to get domestic endorsement.
He never could quite comprehend that Indian nationalism had stronger foundations than the self-interest of the establishment; or that, in a democracy, the base can affect the top. Indians are not yet ready to celebrate sixty years of independence by handing over the next forty years to dependence.
He thought he could get away by a display of the text and was unpleasantly surprised when India asked for the context. The context was public knowledge thanks to the transparency of American democracy. The Hyde Act, with its extensive demands on the Indian right to independent behaviour, was one context, but not the only one. As V.P. Singh pointed out in a letter to the Prime Minister, we also need a proper evaluation of the cost-benefit ratio of civilian
nuclear power, and whether we can generate much more power for far less investment. V.P. Singh is not a foam-in-the-mouth adversary; he is among those who helped Dr Singh become Prime Minister.
A Prime Minister holds a political office. Dr Singh has promoted, and enjoyed, a carefully nurtured disdain for politics; he likes his bread buttered on both sides. Politics is the art of establishing harmony between policy and the people. Dr Singh was only ever interested in establishing harmony between his policies and the elite, the inmates of a circular road in Delhi. India is now letting him know it exists.Three years is sufficient time to garner the material needed for the construction of an image. Dr Manmohan Singh has identified himself with only two passions: economic growth and the Indo-US nuclear deal. There is nothing wrong with either on principle. There is a great deal wrong with both in practice. Both have serious
electoral limitations.
The policy of wealth creation as pursued by this government has never been adjusted for economic justice or equity. This emerges from statements consistently made by the highest in the government, that the poor will be beneficiaries of the "trickle down theory". Think about it. Cream is collecting at the top of the Indian pie at the rate of 9% a year. About 80% of this cream is swallowed up, to differing degrees, by perhaps a quarter of the population. The three-quarters below have to wait for a thin trickle which is lapped by various strata before anything can reach the depths of those below the poverty line. Common sense suggests that the poorest should be the first beneficiaries of wealth creation, as they live on the margins of hunger and the edge of anger. Instead, the poor believe that they have been left out of an Indian success story
to which they have contributed with sweat, and, in the case of that rising ulcer, the Special Economic Zone, with their land. They find themselves marginalised or even deleted from the distribution of rewards.
Those with swimming pools get a waterfall; those dying of thirst are fended off with a trickle. This trickle is the breeding ground for Naxalites. Young people do not live only on the fashion and celebrity pages of newspapers; there are young in hovels as well. And they vote.
Neither is Dr Manmohan Singh helped by his intense identification with President George W. Bush, a relationship visible in his slightly tremulous body language when the two meet. Let us keep to one side the fact that Bush has done more harm to his own country, and to the world, than any American President in memory. Or that people equate Bush with the havoc in Iraq. It is more important for us, who are still fortunate enough not to have been liberated by Bush, to understand the implications of Iraq. At issue is the meaning of sovereignty.
American policy under Bush has abandoned all respect for the concept of sovereignty, and is ready to go to war to further an American economic and political agenda. One no longer need point out that the war in Iraq had nothing to do with the war against terrorism. If there had been no resistance in Iraq, who could have prevented Bush from invading two other Muslim nations, Syria and Iran? This would have been the strategic centre of the "New Middle East".
Is India rather than Pakistan to become the guardian of the eastern flank of this New Middle East? Is India now going to become part of the politics, and indeed the wars, of the region? If America does move militarily against Iran, there will be continuous war from Beirut on the Mediterranean to the borders of India and maybe seep across as well. And if we do not cooperate with Washington in that conflict, will we get sermons from American candidates and instructions from the American administration, as our neighbour Pakistan is getting at the moment? Is this the meaning of the specific reference to Iran in the Hyde Act? It is completely unusual for a third country to be mentioned in legislation which is meant for bilateral purposes. Why was it done? Why have we not questioned it? Why is it being treated as something inconsequential? If it was inconsequential, why was it included, not in a statement, but in the law of America? The Hyde Act is not political posturing. It is the law of the land, and every President of America, present or future, has to abide by that law. Prime Minister Singh has already compromised the integrity of India’s independent foreign policy with his silence on the Hyde Act. There also seems to have been a message sent to the American administration not to roil Indian waters by stressing the Hyde Act. But this is too serious a business for fudge.
Dr Singh’s allies are beginning to wonder about the extent of the damage through decisions on which they were never really consulted, but accepted in order to keep the government going. I can’t see Lalu Yadav discussing the nuances of the nuclear deal, but he will be answerable when he meets his voters next time.The Left, which survives by thinking ahead, has realised that Dr Singh has driven the UPA to a crossroads. You can hunt with the Opposition hounds and run with the government hare on a flat course, not at a crossroads. Moreover, a crowd has collected. Bengal is watching Delhi as closely as it is watching Nandigram. When the street speaks sensible politicians listen.
Sunday, August 05, 2007
A Good Deal Walks on Two Legs
Byline by M.J. Akbar: A Good Deal Walks on Two Legs
Much to my regret, I cannot change my nose into one of the Seven Wonders of the World by calling it a pyramid. Spin, make-up or clever photography might disguise its excesses, but in the loneliness of the morning mirror, I have to admit that it is nothing more than a slightly protuberant outcrop on a fairly arid base. The Principle of the Nose extends to the text of agreements. The manipulation of words, or their contrived omission, does not deny fundamental facts.
There is still some way to go before the proposed nuclear deal between India and the United States becomes operational, but it is very clear that the two negotiating teams, and their governments, have agreed on one thing: that they will sell different narratives on home turf, even when the narratives contradict each other.
Delhi, to give the most obvious instance, is massaging the media and trumpeting the absence of any reference to the consequences of a new nuclear test by India as a triumph. Delhi is treating this as de facto American recognition of India’s right to resume testing if it so decides.
The 123 Agreement was announced on Friday 27 July. On 2 August, just six days later, Nicholas Burns, undersecretary of state and chief American negotiator was asked by a journalist, Robert McMahon, in a recorded interview, "Some say that under the deal, if India holds a nuclear weapons test, the US would delay its own nuclear fuel supplies to India but the US would help India find other sources of fuel, which violates the spirit of the Hyde Act. What do you say to those concerns?"
Burns replied: "That’s absolutely false. I negotiated the agreement and we preserved intact the responsibility of the President (of the United States) under the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 that if India or any other country conducts a nuclear test, the President — he or she at that time in the future — will have the right to ask for the return of the nuclear fuel or nuclear technologies that have been transferred by American firms. We’re releasing the agreement on our website on Friday afternoon (3 August 2007) and people will see that when they cite the text."
The answer could not be more categorical: "absolutely false". That is the American position, and it is being enunciated for the record, without any ambiguity. The message is clear, and it is loud. America will demand fuel and technology back, and probably not return the still-uncounted billions of dollars we paid for it either.
Delhi is pretending as if the Hyde Act does not exist, or at least is not binding upon India. But it is, as Burns has repeatedly and publicly insisted, binding on Washington.
Why is this a vital fact? Because of the nature of the agreement. This is not a two-way deal. India is not selling something of critical interest to America in return for nuclear fuel or nuclear technology. India is a buyer. It is a one-way transaction. America can sell only if India is in compliance with the conditions imposed by the Hyde legislation, which was specifically designed for this deal, and which makes no bones about its intention to place Indian nuclear activity as well as Indian foreign policy on watch. This is why Burns added, "…we hope very much that India will not conclude any long-term oil and gas agreements with Iran. The Indians, as you know, have voted with us at the International Atomic Energy Agency board of governors against Iran on two occasions". This is nothing to do with his personal views; he is enjoined, as a public servant, to place these issues on public record.
India has formally accepted this obligation in the 123 Agreement, a point that seems to have escaped the notice of some, but certainly not all, instant analysts. Article 2.1 says very specifically: "Each Party shall implement this Agreement in accordance with its respective applicable treaties, national laws, regulations, and license requirements concerning the use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes."
The Hyde Act is the national law of the United States, and any perceived violation would give any "future President" — he or she, as Burns wisely pointed out — cause to declare the agreement null and void and demand American fuel and technology back.
I suppose we could retaliate by banning the export of mangoes to America, but there would not be much else that we could do.
The question is a simple one. America is the supplier; has it made India a supplicant?
Only a very foolish person advocates enmity as a national objective. It is utterly stupid to seek the hostility of America, a genuine great power, not because of its military might (which it is squandering in Iraq) but because it is the true fountainhead of technology, education, economics and democracy. India has exactly the same passions, and no two modern nations are better designed for true friendship. America became, in my view, the oldest country of the modern world because its democratic Constitution is the template on which nations must find their future in an age of liberal freedoms. India is the ideological leader of the post-colonial world, because our Constitution is proof that independence is the birthright of a nation, and freedom is the birthright of the people. But a sustainable friendship can only be built between equals. One might be tempted to wink one’s way past potentially conflicting interpretations of clauses, but this would at the very least sour relations between India and the United States.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, architect of the nuclear deal, made a small but perhaps significant mistake when trying to persuade us of its merits. He suggested that it would be unpatriotic to oppose it. I believe that the mistake was unintentional, for I cannot doubt his sincerity or his excellent manners. Perhaps the problem is that language can sometimes be an impediment to understanding. He probably wanted to suggest that it was in the national interest to accept this pact.
There is a way of ensuring national support: by making this a national, rather than merely a government’s, decision. How?
For a start, the pace of implementation must slow down. There is no reason why this agreement should be signed within four weeks. What is the hurry? The text will not change. America will wait until we have concluded a safeguards agreement with the IAEA and convince the 45 Nuclear Suppliers Group members to give it acceptable terms in civil nuclear trade. When India’s Parliament convenes the Prime Minister should take the initiative to set up an all-party committee that would be tasked to take evidence from experts, examine the implications of each clause and arrive at its recommendations by the end of the year. It will be a bipartisan process without rancour and politics, and each section of the House will be co-owner of the consensus. So far, the whole process has been handled by a small group around the Prime Minister, consisting primarily of bureaucrats.
This decision will influence Indian policy for the next half century, and must have the legs to walk for fifty years. A partisan approach would give this decision but a single leg, and how far can you travel with a crutch? The American administration has taken care to use the House of Representatives and the Senate to make it a bipartisan decision, compromising with the likes of Senator Hyde when it had to. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh can afford to do no less. You cannot run a marathon at the speed of a hundred-metre dash; there could be a grievous injury en route.
It is in the national interest to make the Indo-US nuclear deal a national decision.
Much to my regret, I cannot change my nose into one of the Seven Wonders of the World by calling it a pyramid. Spin, make-up or clever photography might disguise its excesses, but in the loneliness of the morning mirror, I have to admit that it is nothing more than a slightly protuberant outcrop on a fairly arid base. The Principle of the Nose extends to the text of agreements. The manipulation of words, or their contrived omission, does not deny fundamental facts.
There is still some way to go before the proposed nuclear deal between India and the United States becomes operational, but it is very clear that the two negotiating teams, and their governments, have agreed on one thing: that they will sell different narratives on home turf, even when the narratives contradict each other.
Delhi, to give the most obvious instance, is massaging the media and trumpeting the absence of any reference to the consequences of a new nuclear test by India as a triumph. Delhi is treating this as de facto American recognition of India’s right to resume testing if it so decides.
The 123 Agreement was announced on Friday 27 July. On 2 August, just six days later, Nicholas Burns, undersecretary of state and chief American negotiator was asked by a journalist, Robert McMahon, in a recorded interview, "Some say that under the deal, if India holds a nuclear weapons test, the US would delay its own nuclear fuel supplies to India but the US would help India find other sources of fuel, which violates the spirit of the Hyde Act. What do you say to those concerns?"
Burns replied: "That’s absolutely false. I negotiated the agreement and we preserved intact the responsibility of the President (of the United States) under the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 that if India or any other country conducts a nuclear test, the President — he or she at that time in the future — will have the right to ask for the return of the nuclear fuel or nuclear technologies that have been transferred by American firms. We’re releasing the agreement on our website on Friday afternoon (3 August 2007) and people will see that when they cite the text."
The answer could not be more categorical: "absolutely false". That is the American position, and it is being enunciated for the record, without any ambiguity. The message is clear, and it is loud. America will demand fuel and technology back, and probably not return the still-uncounted billions of dollars we paid for it either.
Delhi is pretending as if the Hyde Act does not exist, or at least is not binding upon India. But it is, as Burns has repeatedly and publicly insisted, binding on Washington.
Why is this a vital fact? Because of the nature of the agreement. This is not a two-way deal. India is not selling something of critical interest to America in return for nuclear fuel or nuclear technology. India is a buyer. It is a one-way transaction. America can sell only if India is in compliance with the conditions imposed by the Hyde legislation, which was specifically designed for this deal, and which makes no bones about its intention to place Indian nuclear activity as well as Indian foreign policy on watch. This is why Burns added, "…we hope very much that India will not conclude any long-term oil and gas agreements with Iran. The Indians, as you know, have voted with us at the International Atomic Energy Agency board of governors against Iran on two occasions". This is nothing to do with his personal views; he is enjoined, as a public servant, to place these issues on public record.
India has formally accepted this obligation in the 123 Agreement, a point that seems to have escaped the notice of some, but certainly not all, instant analysts. Article 2.1 says very specifically: "Each Party shall implement this Agreement in accordance with its respective applicable treaties, national laws, regulations, and license requirements concerning the use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes."
The Hyde Act is the national law of the United States, and any perceived violation would give any "future President" — he or she, as Burns wisely pointed out — cause to declare the agreement null and void and demand American fuel and technology back.
I suppose we could retaliate by banning the export of mangoes to America, but there would not be much else that we could do.
The question is a simple one. America is the supplier; has it made India a supplicant?
Only a very foolish person advocates enmity as a national objective. It is utterly stupid to seek the hostility of America, a genuine great power, not because of its military might (which it is squandering in Iraq) but because it is the true fountainhead of technology, education, economics and democracy. India has exactly the same passions, and no two modern nations are better designed for true friendship. America became, in my view, the oldest country of the modern world because its democratic Constitution is the template on which nations must find their future in an age of liberal freedoms. India is the ideological leader of the post-colonial world, because our Constitution is proof that independence is the birthright of a nation, and freedom is the birthright of the people. But a sustainable friendship can only be built between equals. One might be tempted to wink one’s way past potentially conflicting interpretations of clauses, but this would at the very least sour relations between India and the United States.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, architect of the nuclear deal, made a small but perhaps significant mistake when trying to persuade us of its merits. He suggested that it would be unpatriotic to oppose it. I believe that the mistake was unintentional, for I cannot doubt his sincerity or his excellent manners. Perhaps the problem is that language can sometimes be an impediment to understanding. He probably wanted to suggest that it was in the national interest to accept this pact.
There is a way of ensuring national support: by making this a national, rather than merely a government’s, decision. How?
For a start, the pace of implementation must slow down. There is no reason why this agreement should be signed within four weeks. What is the hurry? The text will not change. America will wait until we have concluded a safeguards agreement with the IAEA and convince the 45 Nuclear Suppliers Group members to give it acceptable terms in civil nuclear trade. When India’s Parliament convenes the Prime Minister should take the initiative to set up an all-party committee that would be tasked to take evidence from experts, examine the implications of each clause and arrive at its recommendations by the end of the year. It will be a bipartisan process without rancour and politics, and each section of the House will be co-owner of the consensus. So far, the whole process has been handled by a small group around the Prime Minister, consisting primarily of bureaucrats.
This decision will influence Indian policy for the next half century, and must have the legs to walk for fifty years. A partisan approach would give this decision but a single leg, and how far can you travel with a crutch? The American administration has taken care to use the House of Representatives and the Senate to make it a bipartisan decision, compromising with the likes of Senator Hyde when it had to. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh can afford to do no less. You cannot run a marathon at the speed of a hundred-metre dash; there could be a grievous injury en route.
It is in the national interest to make the Indo-US nuclear deal a national decision.
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