Tags:
Journalism of Courage
In an era when politics is becoming more about communication, a competent economic administrator like Manmohan Singh is bound to be lost in translation. His government will appear to be heading nowhere and there will be incoherence and fumbling on policy preparation. Worse, with real power concentrated in the hands of Sonia Gandhi, the prime minister will forever look east from his 7 Race Course Road residence. As for communication with the millions out there, outside the bandwidth of intrigue and machinations in Lutyens8217; Delhi, there8217;ll be no concerted attempt, no astute vision and no understanding even of what needs to be communicated.
In a nutshell, that is the sense one gets of the Congress preparation to face the electorate within the next 15 months. As it is, the party doesn8217;t get to tee off on a level-playing course. It has two major handicaps. It8217;s the only Centrist party in the country and its policy statements on most issues, whether it is minority development or economic health, are neither here nor there. Secondly, in a dynastic party, courtiers tend to lack that sense of belonging to the larger cause; they pursue their own individual aspirations even if those are counter-productive to the party8217;s interests.
Let8217;s look at the ongoing search for a political language which unites today8217;s India and brings Delhi closer to Karbi Anglong and Kodaikanal. Every village, every small town in today8217;s India is voting for its immediate requirements of bijli, sadak, paani and isn8217;t overly bothered about deals being nuked by obscure ideologues who fight their quixotic battles from remote, ideology-shrouded, A.K.Gopalan Bhavan. The Congress is floundering, Manmohan Singh appears happy subtracting politics from his governance and Sonia Gandhi is left with the unenviable task of fighting anti-incumbency after having refused to climb the official pedestal.
A politically tongue-tied Congress has allowed Narendra Modi to snatch the good growth rate story from an eloquent P. Chidambaram. The Sachar panel has become a ticking bomb that Congressmen keep returning to without deciding whether it should explode or be defused. Whatever good came out of the NREGA was credited in the Left8217;s political account because the four party block insisted it had pushed its agenda down a reluctant government8217;s throat. It8217;s another matter that Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee8217;s police force fired upon Forward Block sympathisers because they were complaining about NREGA benefits not reaching everybody in Cooch Behar.
For the other parties, the idiom has already been decided upon. The SP will lampoon everything that is not Muslim and Yadav. The BSP will re-energise poor brahmins and recast their caste story by introducing a class angle. The Left will speak Bengali and Malayalam. Om Prakash Chautala and Ajit Singh will speak pure Jat. Akalis will speak chaste Gurmukhi. Karunanidhi may speak bits and pieces from the Tamil Eelam credo. Jayalalithaa will speak exactly the opposite of what Karunanidhi is talking about. N. Chandrababu Naidu will find out that his tightrope doesn8217;t actually exist. Shiv Sena will emulate Raj Thackeray. Nitish Kumar will speak his mother tongue. And Naveen Patnaik will make yet another attempt to speak the language of his illustrious father.
But we have heard those languages before. The big question is, what is that magic countrywide idiom that the BJP will reinvent. Four years ago, the party was taught a lesson: this country is too big and too wise to digest a glossy, feel-good campaign. A no-holds-barred Hindutva language may have lost the novelty it possessed in the nineties. Aatankvaad is definitely part of the political discourse in metros and small towns but its importance may ebb unless there are more blasts during the run-up to polls. L.K. Advani8217;s recent lacklustre speech in Jabalpur exposed his lack of conviction in a single, emotive issue.
The former charioteer is now looking for ways to give the BJP a final push beyond its existing frontiers in the west and the north. He is keenly aware that later this year, his party8217;s energy will be spent on the seemingly impossible mission of defending its turf in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. The momentum will shift to the Congress. The party had tried out the limited successful formulae of 8216;Ours is an untested nationalist party8217; in 1998 and 8216;Give us a better mandate after the Jayalalithaa betrayal and the Kargil War8217; in 1999 but those campaign templates had historical and political contexts that are no longer relevant.
It8217;s a curious situation. We have started talking about a general election but we do not know the campaign language and its metaphors. Finally, the Union government and its seat of power in Delhi are staring at political irrelevance.
The writer is national affairs editor, CNN-IBN diptoshgmail.com
