Opinion National Interest columns

Our Singapore fantasy

The Summer Freeze

The out,their rage

The Great Indian Hijack

Delhi Disconnect

Jantar,Chhu Mantar

The great letdown

We,the thieving people

Minus the Left

Constant Congressman

Lok Sabha,2014

Thank God for politics

The Ides of February

Mumbye

July 16,2011

Here is a question,and a proposition,rolled into one: Is Mumbai the new Calcutta? And the choice of the new name for one,and the old one for the other,is deliberate. There was a time when Calcutta was the globally celebrated metaphor for all that was wrong with India. From Oh! Calcutta to Dominique Lapierre’s City of Joy,the poverty,the dysfunctionality of that city was the benchmark for all that could go wrong with Third World urban sprawl. Rajiv Gandhi brought the decline of the city to national consciousness by proclaiming that the city was dead. Even the most die-hard Kolkata-walas will not protest when I say that their city has lost that dubious “number one” status to Mumbai. In fact,not only has Mumbai become the new Kolkata,it also does not have the comfort of having a Mother Teresa to bring it succour,a sense of pride and a possible Nobel.

Check out the signals from popular culture. Four of the most prominent books centred on Mumbai (Sacred Games by Vikram Chandra,Shantaram by Gregory Roberts,Suketu Mehta’s Maximum City and,most recently,Aravind Adiga’s Last Man in Tower) have each drawn from the seamier underbelly of India’s clichéd city of dreams where streets were allegedly paved with gold. Two of the most celebrated India-themed foreign films,Slumdog Millionaire and Salaam Bombay,have followed the same pattern. Not to be left behind,Bollywood is also back to its old pessimistic view of its own city,as the success of Once Upon a Time in Mumbai (with a sequel in the works) shows. In fact,today,almost all that is optimistic in popular culture is north/ Delhi-based,from Band Baaja Baaraat to Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi. Even the new bestselling chicklit is based in Delhi,Anuja Chauhan’s Zoya Factor and Advaita Kala’s Almost Single. And this,in a city with a well-earned notoriety for being wildly unkind to young women.

Repeated terrorist attacks and bombings are only the most visible symptoms of Mumbai’s decline. The boast of developing it into Asia’s new financial centre,a new Shanghai,is now an insult to India’s fastest diminishing city. Its policing is a disaster,the underworld is making a comeback (that is also the message from J. Dey’s murder,irrespective of whose story you believe). It has lost nearly 400 lives to terror attacks in five years. And the answer to the question,“Why Mumbai?”,may lie in the fact that here,more than anywhere else,do terror modules find refuge and protection from the underworld. It is also silly to go on and on insinuating that Mumbai is vulnerable because of its mixed population or communal divide. It is a horrible insinuation on its Muslims. A flourishing underworld and a sprawling slum provide Mumbai a unique sanctuary for terror. And what do we have to fight them? A most politicised and faction-ridden police leadership. And a police rank and file which,if it is fortunate,finds shelter in one of the city’s rotting chawls. I invite you to visit any of these. How can a man living such a poor quality of life with his family have a sense of pride in his city,or his uniform? It is still a marvel it manages to produce great heroes like Tukaram Ombale (who died clutching Kasab’s AK-47).

This is further compounded by the fact that the police reports to R.R. Patil,whose first holy objective is to fix Mumbai’s “rotting” morality. So he would shut down the dance bars while the larger underworld and terror modules flourish and his police force gets more divided and demoralised. Such is the paralysis that most of the purchases planned after 26/11 have not been made. And while the chief minister blames complex scrutiny of acquisitions by the many three-letter monsters of New Delhi — CVC,CAG,CBI — the fact is the Central government belongs to the same coalition. So these are thin excuses. A Rs 500-crore plan to cover the crucial parts of Mumbai with CCTV cameras has been pending since 26/11,and if it gets approved by the cabinet later next week,it will be a collateral benefit of this week’s bombings.

You cannot build a global financial centre in a city whose law and order is so uncertain. Nor can you do so in a city which is adding no new and modern schooling and higher education facilities. Deepak Parekh,one of the most respected residents of Mumbai,speaks with great pain that he has so few seats in the reputed Bombay Scottish,which he presides over,that he has to deny admissions to the children of professors in its Powai branch from the neighbouring IIT. There are too few college seats,too few engineering and medical colleges of quality and repute. No surprise then that some of the most important figures in the financial and corporate world are now relocating to Delhi. Just over the past year,two of the shiniest stars of global banking have relocated to Delhi,harassed by the nightmare of traffic,infrastructure,and possibly also a sense of insecurity. Most of Bombay’s infrastructure decisions are lost in some kind of a dreaded politico-bureaucratic orbit,where these keep circling without getting anywhere. The city took nearly a decade to build a tiny sea-link at a time when the Chinese build one 14 times its size in four years and make no song-and-dance about it. What kind of a commercial capital can it be if it does not even offer its residents even one air-conditioned train seat for their daily commute? (Delhi now has 2.5 million,and Kolkata six lakh.) Can a city with just one north-south artery be Asia’s financial centre? Not when just one strategically parked,and booby-trapped,truck can slice it neatly into two,snapping all contact between its only airport and the downtown.

For a long time every decision taken by the Maharashtra government was presumed to carry the stink of corruption. Now we have a chief minister whose personal honesty nobody questions,but who does not take any major decisions. Preventing corruption by not taking any decisions is a bit like banishing AIDS by banning sex.

There is,however,an essential difference between the declining Calcutta of the old and Mumbai of now. Unlike Calcutta,whose residents always maintained their love and loyalty to the city and resented any criticism of it,Mumbai’s residents are now the angriest Indians. You see this anger spill over to the media,TV discussions,social networking sites and so on. A desperate sullenness has replaced what used to be eternal optimism,once upon a time in Mumbai. That is why the very idea of the “spirit of Bombay”,which so fired their imagination once,now irritates them no end.

Because it is just seen as a cynical mantra to fool them to accept their fate as it is.

These bombings will surely hasten some decisions. But that will not be a solution if Mumbai has to survive as a self-respecting modern city and not degenerate into a third-world equivalent of how New York was before Mayor Rudy Giuliani cleaned it up. The new Shanghai is a dream that never will be. It can,however,be redeemed only in one way: if we can free Mumbai,and other major cities (like Bangalore,Hyderabad,Kolkata),from being colonies of their state-level politicians. That would require autonomous city governance,and the shifting of state capitals,(and therefore the political class which gets its power from votes in the hinterland,and then monetises it in the big bad city),back to the state’s heartland. Take the American example,where the capital of almost no state is its biggest city (New York’s is in Albany,California’s in Sacramento,Illinois has its capital in Springfield,not Chicago,and so on). But that,in our system,is too radical a change to expect. Can we,instead,merely get the two-dozen-odd infrastructure-building decisions fast-forwarded in Mumbai,some de-congestion,and the police force cleaned up? Or could it be that these latest blasts haven’t quite claimed enough lives for us to be shaken up even that much as yet?

The Supreme Quote

July 9,2011

The ideological bent of the higher judiciary has never been a significant aspect of the glorious (and sometimes not quite so) uncertainties of democratic politics in India,unlike,say,in America. There are good reasons why it is so. In America,Supreme Court judges are chosen by presidents on ideological grounds. To put it very simply,therefore,if the Republicans get to appoint a few of the judges,you know that the court will tilt to the religious right,or the “right to life” side on the issue of abortion,and if the Democrats are able to appoint theirs,the judges will be “pro-choice”. And so on,on other,larger socio-constitutional issues.

In India,judges are not appointed for their political or ideological leanings. That was never particularly the case and in fact it was one of the arguments Indira Gandhi and her Emergency apologists had used to start interfering in judicial appointments: that our judges were much too old-fashioned and conservative (and thank god,some of them were,because they cast our basic freedoms and the sanctity of the basic structure of the Constitution in stone,and emerged as some of the greatest,wisest and certainly the bravest judges of the modern world,not just India). There were threats of bringing in a “committed” judiciary,more in tune with the “socialist ideal” that was used as a brutally cynical excuse for the Emergency. This was the response of an all-powerful,dictatorial state still smarting from a 7-6 defeat in the Kesavananda Bharati case,and the setting aside of Mrs Gandhi’s election by the Allahabad high court. The “packing” of the Supreme Court with judges “more in tune” with the establishment’s then socialist ideology was launched in earnest by the Emergency cabal. But,fortunately,it was cut short by Mrs Gandhi’s defeat in the 1977 election. The cleaning-up of the wreckage of the higher judicial institutions and qualitative reconstruction was launched by the Janata government under the care of who else but Shanti Bhushan,the law minister in Morarji Desai’s cabinet.

It was the only time that systematic effort was made to give the higher judiciary a pre-determined ideological slant,and fortunately for our generation and our children’s,the voters cut it short. Subsequent and reformist changes in the procedure of a judge’s appointment,ushered in by the Supreme Court itself,further ensured that the political class would not be able to either sabotage or “pack” the higher judiciary with their own. Nobody tried to mess with this even during the six years of the NDA.

Indian senior judges,therefore,have evolved as formidable professional jurists. They have built a name over the decades for their clinical interpretation of the law and the Constitution. In the process,the institution of the Supreme Court has emerged as the strongest pillar of our democracy and has built a real (and well-deserved) reputation around the world.

Its ideology,if anything,has been unshakeable constitutionalism and successive generations of judges have established a liberal,democratic and large-hearted tradition. Over nearly three-and-a-half decades from the Emergency,the higher judiciary has evolved in harmony with the larger democratic world: towards social liberalism and economic reform.

Our Supreme Court’s record over the recent years underlines this wonderful phenomenon. On economics,society and politics,the bench has stayed way ahead of the executive and the political class,even under reformist prime ministers. On economics,the court’s views,ranging from denying strikes as employees’ fundamental right to strengthening rights to private property,rulings on contract labour have all been reformist and modern. As is the case with the leadership it took on environmental issues when they were not so fashionable and when Greenpeace wasn’t spending tens of crores in India. The Supreme Court brought in CNG,set emission standards for vehicles,protected the Taj Mahal,set new norms for organ transplants and so on and the rest of the judiciary picked up the thread. So we got that landmark,liberal judgment from the Delhi high court decriminalising consensual homosexuality.

In the same heady period the Supreme Court reinforced the independence of the Election Commission,strengthened the CVC,raised the bar on Article 356,thereby strengthening the federal structure,played a stellar role in ensuring investigations into the Gujarat killings,strengthened laws on sexual harassment in workplace and so on. In fact,over these three decades you can see almost no Supreme Court order that does not pass the test of liberal,reformist large-heartedness,and brilliantly so.

That is why some of the recent judgments and orders — in fact over the past week or so — are so significant. You can agree or disagree with the order,but the language used? This paper had a full page of highlighted excerpts on Thursday morning. Not only is the language out of tune with the times,it is also as if the apex court had made a dramatic ideological shift,or almost as if a new president in America had just made a bunch of his own appointments. Large parts of these judgments are just lectures on political economy that makes you ask a legitimate question: what is the job of the judges,to interpret law,or to criticise/ make/ change economic policy? Surely,judges,like you and I,are entitled to their own,strong views on these issues. But if you want to make policy,the message to you has to be the same as to our civil society: go to the people with these ideas,get votes,change policies,and be accountable for the consequences,good or bad.

Or,okay,let us stop complaining about the language in these never-ending lectures on the post-reform “neoliberal” economy having the intellectual depth of a JNU postgrad. Pick an issue with the larger argument,that all this corruption,state (and Maoist) brutality,black money,misuse of land acquisition laws,etc are a consequence of economic reform. Did we generate less black money (as a percentage of our economy) when tax rates were at 97 per cent in the heyday of Emergency socialism,or now? Reform,transparent,non-discretionary regulation and modern laws are not the cause of corruption,but the best antidote against it. And the scams we have seen,including 2G,have taken place not because of too much,but too little reform. Because too much discretion was still left in the system. It is these areas of discretion that the apex court can help eliminate even as it oversees the investigation and prosecution in these scams. Ushering in an entirely new political economy or new socialist revolution may be too much of an ask even for our most venerably redoubtable Supreme Court. And you can add with the greatest humility,this is not its brief,either.

Our Singapore fantasy

June 25,2011

The increasing upper crust impatience with our “messy” democracy and the rising new,post-Jantar Mantar clamour for quick-fixes for the most complex problems in governance,all conveniently blamed on our “rotten” politics,bring to my mind an exchange at a recent institutional investors’ conference which I was addressing on contemporary Indian politics. Just a little bit disconcerted by how many questions were being asked on the “curse” of caste-based reservations,I did something wicked. This was a crowd of nearly 500 of the best paid,globalised Indian finance whiz-kids,in hundred-dollar Hermes ties,seven-figure (in dollars) bonuses and fancy cars. “We have here,fellow Indians with the finest jobs in the world,mostly with an IIT/ IIM education. Both institutions have also had caste-based reservations for ever. So how many of you here are tribal or Dalit?”

Not a single hand came up.

Sensing a QED moment,I turned the knife. “Okay,please tell me how many of you at least count a Dalit or a tribal among your friends or acquaintances? Or how many of you have even shaken hands with a tribal or a Dalit?”

Not a single hand came up again.

That’s because the Dalits or tribals our class of PLU interacts with,are not equals,I said. They are only our domestic servants,drivers,people who wipe our windscreens at gas stations,iron our clothes,polish our shoes. Even when one of them drives you for a weekend’s break at a hill station,he sits on a different table,or more likely in another dhaba,rather than eat with you. That’s why you need legal,constitutional and,howsoever you may hate it,political intermediation to bridge that divide,I said. Or they will invade our gated communities,burn our cars,poison our pugs.

There was silence for a moment,but then protest. Why was I bringing “dirty” politics into what was,after all,a simple question of merit? After all it was just our politics,and the corruption it brought in its wake,that was responsible for these inequalities,no?

This week’s argument,however,is not about merit or caste. It is about this growing upper crust disenchantment with the “soft” management and “messy” execution that democracy brings. There should,therefore,be a quick,managerial,and by implication extra-parliamentary,solution. And there should be preventive,even prophylactic,safeguards so things can’t go too wrong. Read once again the statements that some of our latest TV stars,members of Team Anna,have been making to support the argument that the prime minister be brought under their Lokpal. Shanti Bhushan said it first: “What if Madhu Koda or A. Raja becomes prime minister?” Arvind Kejriwal elaborated,and asked what if indeed,because it was quite possible given “our coalition politics”. And a prime minister in India,he said,knows so much on issues of national security. So what will the Lokpal do then,if he thinks that the man chosen prime minister does not look worthy of the job? Put fetters on him? Give him a bad ACR? Tell the cabinet secretary to keep secrets of the state from him? But most importantly,how would this Lokpal then determine that a really bad,unworthy guy has become prime minister,presuming that nobody actually charged with serious corruption can get there even in the current system? If he is a tribal (Koda) or a Dalit (Raja),it would be a dead giveaway,you’d suppose. You expect social and intellectual elites to be,what else,but elite. But this is now treading dangerous territory.

The upper crust in India is displaying an arrogant new authoritarian streak that has no patience for the “dirty unwashed”,the “bhookha-nangas” or the “jahil-ganwars” who man our politics or vote to elect them,for the price of a sari,100 rupees or a bottle of liquor,to quote Anna’s immortal line. They do not particularly want a dictatorship,but a more controlled,less noisy,better managed and guided democracy. This is the new Indian elite’s Singapore fixation. The government will be elected,of course,but only from amongst People Like Us,and then we will get a cabinet as academically accomplished as Singapore’s. And yet,if they go astray,as people in power often do,there should be a senior minister,a minister-mentor or whatever you call him,a Lee Kuan Yew of our own to keep them in check.

The Indian elite’s concept of its own Lee Kuan Yew is this civil society version of the all-powerful Lokpal,answerable to none and “selected” from amongst us PLUs,by who else,but PLUs. If you look at the Team Anna version,the Lokpal will be selected by all upper crust,well-educated people: predominantly IAS officers (former CECs and CAGs),Supreme Court judges,civil society representatives (nearly half of whom are also former civil servants),and the prime minister and the leader of the opposition to represent the elected classes as well as the corrupt,stupid voters. This Lokpal institution will be untouched and unsullied by politics. It will keep the politicians in check and,should a really bad-sounding guy get to the top,do something pro-actively to prevent him from doing any damage. This is never going to fly,because this is India with all its complexities,diversity,inequalities,problems and so on. This is not anodyne,disciplined Singapore (which I love to visit),because if it was,half of this government would have been locked up in jail already for chewing gum,and particularly for sticking it under the finance minister’s desk.

This impatience with the noise of democracy,the tendency to blame everything on politics and the search for managerial,short-cut,extra-democratic solutions by executive fiat of some sort,or the kind of T20 approach to law-making exemplified by the candles-at-Jantar Mantar crowd,is an even greater irony given that this year marks the 20th year of reform. Today’s chattering classes owe their new globalised stature to this reform,which came out of our politics. Today,every chief minister,every political party talks investments,infrastructure,aspiration. Yes,there are problems with our politics and governance and both need reform. That reform is challenging and messy,and needs imagination,patience and persistence. It needs better education for the voter,not contempt for the voting classes. It needs better,deeper,wider democracy,not less of it. What will never work are these quick,elitist and even escapist solutions imposed from “outside” the parliamentary tent by a privileged few who seem to believe the TV studio is the new Lok Sabha and you don’t even have to be elected to get there.

The Summer Freeze

June 18,2011

Finally,there is unanimity at least on one thing in this capital city: that this has become our most dysfunctional real government in three decades. Real,to distinguish it from the obviously temporary arrangements like Chandra Shekhar’s,Gowda’s and Gujral’s,described by late Vithal Gadgil in his immortal phrase,“ten-day wonders”. It passes the buck to GoMs and EGoMs,which in turn only make news in single-columns on inside pages for postponing their meetings. The government is too scared to raise petroleum prices,treating the three-figure Nymex and Brent quotes with suspension of disbelief,indecision over coal mining is blighting power generation,and waffling over the Cairn-Vedanta and Reliance-BP deals is being watched with such dismay by foreign investors. Appointments of heads of the most important PSU giants like ONGC and UTI,chairman of our most vital infrastructure organisation,NHAI,even the CVC,are stuck. There is no progress on the ambitiously high-sounding National Counter-Terrorism Centre (NCTC),though the president promised it in her address to Parliament.

Our higher defence organisation is a mess,with chiefs speaking out of turn and an unedifying controversy over the army chief’s birth certificate which is not being set at rest one way or the other,thereby dividing the brass. Such is the state of paralysis that even members of this cabinet,senior leaders of the “party” and definitely its furious coalition partners all acknowledge it with a shrug of helplessness. We have seen how devastating a government which is non-functional despite a majority can be in West Bengal in the two years under Buddhadeb since May 2009. Now to have a government in that condition at the Centre,and that too for three full years?

It is a frightening prospect. Businessmen are voting with their feet,taking a bulk of their new investments overseas. The markets are usually the first to sense policy paralysis. The markets,languishing in the third position among the world’s worst performers in the past 12 months,have brushed aside Egypt to become the second worst. Given the mood of dismay in Dalal Street,Russians should be feeling threatened at the bottom.

The paralysis in the government is matched by the confusion in the Congress party. Its carefully scripted strategy of distancing itself from all government decisions except the most obviously populistic ones has now unravelled and backfired. While the government finally responded to this by suspending all decision-making on anything even remotely controversial,it is the party that is now getting the rap for all the scams,some real,some exaggerated and some (as a most eminent and honest scientist-entrepreneur,Kiran Karnik,explained in an interview with me,IE,March 8) mostly imaginary like ISRO/ Devas. You can blame the formidable whispering machine of the RSS for it,and maybe you are right,but the clamour over “hundreds of lakhs of crores of dollars” stashed away in foreign banks has a very strong undertone of Sonia Gandhi’s foreign origin. The same whisper machine talks of her recent Europe visit as some smoking-gun evidence of a conspiracy to vacuum-clean India’s wealth. The more brazen,like Subramanian Swamy,say so in public: that Sonia and Rahul have gone to Switzerland to sort out their secret accounts,nervous that now their time is up. Over the past three weeks I have been stopped by ordinary people at airports,in shopping malls,at a petrol pump,in a spiritual ashram,at the national athletic games in Bangalore and so on with a question that seems to have become a clamour: why are you in the media so scared of the Gandhis? Why is no one exposing their humongous stash overseas?

It is all bunkum,of course,and in any case the beauty of Swiss accounts is that nobody needs to go to Switzerland to do anything with them. But the Congress defends itself very poorly when it merely responds by calling those making such allegations deranged or uncivil,or sounding as if the RSS is the new ISI. People of India are not stupid. They know who to trust and who to laugh at. But the Congress party steps on its own toes by even treating its top leaders’ travels as some kind of a national secret. Of course,they are perfectly entitled to spend their vacation wherever they wish,whether within the country or overseas,but why should that be kept so hush-hush? So far,the Congress has got away with treating its top leaders as some kind of an endearing,mysterious,aloof royalty. The use-by date on that self-imposed mystique is now over.

Ditto for the Gandhi family. The strategy of controlling the politics and government from a distance without directly speaking to the people has become counter-productive and has contributed to the current paralysis. The Congress is not the Communist Party of China,when you had to face-read Mao or Deng to figure out what the party line was,and it is not the seventies or the eighties. In this increasingly young,aspirational India of 2011,leaders have to talk not just to their partymen but also to their people. Because if they don’t,the so-called civil society,hyperactive judges and a hyperventilating media will grab that space. To take this space back,the Gandhis have to not only totally reboot their politics,but also their political style.

There are two areas where we Indians believe we can teach the world a thing or two: politics and cricket. So if you see this peculiar party-government arrangement,it is a bit like you send out a nightwatchman to play out the difficult half hour at the end of the day,so your main batsman,some Sachin Tendulkar,can come and shine the next morning. That is the way the party looked at UPA 2,presuming it had already won 2014. But it forgot that five years of governance was not the difficult last hour in a day’s play,but an entire innings. The main batsmen (in this case the main batsman,Rahul) can no longer be hidden in the safety of the pavilion. He has to step out and speak up. So must Sonia.

The same nightwatchman syndrome has caught the government as well,with the prime minister and the seniormost ministers being totally out of the picture. Just as the Congress has outsourced its fight to Digvijaya Singh,the government has left it to Kapil Sibal. Why should the government continue to sound like it has a bad conscience? It is shockingly,suicidally stupid to go on saying that the prime minister himself does not mind being under the Lokpal,but the government doesn’t want it. The prime minister may be reticent about speaking in public,but he has to now step on the podium to explain to us one simple point: that while he may personally have no problem with being under the Lokpal,these are the problems it will cause in governance,and the reason his government is opposed to the idea. He is still trusted and respected as one of our most selfless,honest leaders ever. Where is the need for him to be silent?

This has been a remarkably unique period in our political history,where three seniormost leaders of the establishment have not been speaking to us,the people,as a matter of policy and strategy. It is not working. They have to reinvent both their politics and their style,and start conversing with

India. Since it is primarily because of their silence that the whisperers are now winning. The victory they had taken for granted in 2014 is now most certainly a fantasy. Worse,if they do not change tack,2012 may indeed be the new 2014.

The out,their rage

June 11,2011

Here are the two questions you are most likely to be asked these days: One,when was the last time India looked so rudderless and angry? And two,do people of India bother about corruption? Hasn’t it just been a way of life for ever?

The answer to both lies in 1989-90,in what should be one of the most important years in our political history. Rajiv Gandhi lost power to V.P. Singh,mainly because of the Bofors stink which raised an almighty popular outrage that devastated the Congress in the north. And then,soon enough,V.P. Singh,the victor himself,was running for cover,with his rude implementation of the Mandal Commission report unleashing an even angrier storm. In each case,India looked even more anarchic and furious than it does now. So that should answer the first question.

The second question was asked a little differently in 1989. It was more like,would Indian voters understand Bofors? Would they care? Surely,V.P. Singh was himself asked this question all the time. And to those of us who followed him,on motorcycles in 48-degree heat in the 1988 by-election in Allahabad,what followed was a fascinating tutorial in political communication.

In village after village,V.P. Singh would get down from his motorcycle,and speak to small groups of people. “Your homes have been burgled,” he would say. In fact he would use the more colloquial sendh lag gayi hai — sendh is the hole a burglar makes in your wall to break into your home. Then he would pull out a matchbox from his kurta pocket,and hold it up: when you buy a matchbox for 25 paise,five paise go to the government. It is your money,with which the government builds schools and hospitals for you,buys guns for your army. If somebody has stolen a part of this,isn’t that the same as your house having been burgled? The voter understood. And you have not seen him angrier since,except,perhaps,now.

The difference is that this new surge has not even needed a V.P. Singh to explain it in such simplistic terms. It is mostly a result of how India has changed. If our people have moved so firmly away from the politics of grievance to the politics of aspiration,they will also not accept day-to-day corruption as a normal,chalta hai part of life. Second,aspirational people have higher self-esteem,so they are also less willing to swallow the daily humiliations they face wherever there is an interface with the government,whether to get a driving licence,a passport,an income tax refund,admission in a Central school,a decent college for your children,a hospital bed for your old parents and so on. One of the more profound statements Rahul Gandhi made some time ago (at the Congress’s Burari plenary in December) was the way he defined the aam admi: one who is left out of the system,who has neither the contacts to manoeuvre his way through it,nor the cash to pay his way out of it. It is a different matter that his own party’s government,or its hallowed NAC,has done nothing to ease the pain of the same aam admi,squandering money,energy and political capital behind populist yojanas and laws instead. That aam admi is out on the street now,with the cry of “enough”. This aspirational,new Indian will not be resigned to her fate just because she is “out” of the system,and incapable of paying her way through it either.

There is an old Punjabi truism. That all those who beat their breasts at someone’s funeral are actually each crying for their own. That is true of this anti-corruption mood as well. Please do not miss a story in tomorrow’s edition of The Sunday Express (‘Unseen,unheard’) where our reporters have spoken to a wide range of people attending the various protests,all at their own expense,sacrificing a day’s work or more. Each one has a story to tell.

A story of having been made to pay a bribe for a petty service,or a straightforward entitlement,like a hospital bed,a property registration,a passport and,worst of all for the urban middle class,a simple income tax refund,a school admission. Or having been denied it,just because he did not have the money or contacts. In today’s aspirational,competitive upsurge,he will not take this with that old stoicism. If your child does not make it to the IITs/ IIMs through a competitive exam,you are disappointed,but not livid with the system,because that exam is a fair,level playing field. But what happens when you cannot get your child into a Central school,but your neighbour can,just because his distant cousin is an MP with a quota slip,or has the money to buy it from an MP?

That is why this rising anger has not even needed a V.P. Singh to explain to people what corruption and scams mean for them. They actually neither understand nor bother about 2G,or CWG,nor is their anger going to be sated by the mere fact that those allegedly involved in these scandals are all getting locked up in jail. People of India are not looking for revenge. They are looking for justice,and an equal playing field for themselves,and their children. They want politics to respond to their aspirations. That is what widespread corruption,nepotism and “connection-ocracy” denies them.

The recent burst of scams,particularly 2G and CWG,are playing in 2011 the role V.P. Singh played in 1989,by confirming the aam admi’s worst suspicions and fears. And if these scams are the new V.P. Singh,in a manner of speaking,the media is their new megaphone. Those coming out on the street in Delhi’s 44-degree heat are not doing so because they have done any fine reading of Team Anna’s Lokpal bill,or because they believe it will eradicate all corruption,or that Baba Ramdev’s campaign will bring “400 lakh crore” rupees worth of black money from foreign banks. They are coming in,because they are angry,they are finding no redress,not even the hope or promise of a reform. So they just want to kick butt.

The answer to all this is neither any apologies or promises from the government or the party,nor just locking up people in jail. It is not even the most draconian anti-corruption law and ombudsman ever in human history. You talk about hanging those involved in major scams? The Chinese execute hundreds for corruption every year,including governors of their provinces. Has that ended corruption? Transparency International ranks them higher than us on its scale of corruption: so even here the Chinese are ahead of us!

The answer is governance reform. India needs to launch a massive reform in every area where a citizen comes in contact with the sarkar,from getting ration cards to driving licences and passports,birth certificates,property registrations,municipal clearances,tax assessments and refunds and so on. Availability of quality schools and colleges,something the aspirational young Indian and her parents value most of all,hospital beds,has to be quadrupled in the next five years,and a credible programme needs to be launched now. Land records,registrations must be computerised,and a new system ensuring deadline-bound delivery of routine government services must be set up. It is more complex than reforming the economy in 1991,but the gains will be enormously greater. More important,this is the only way to bring back some of the constructive,if competitive,calm we were just getting used to in our society.

The Great Indian Hijack

June 4,2011

The way UPA 2 has lost authority,or what is better described in a wonderful Urdu word that defies fair translation,iqbal,makes you wonder how the same leadership had been able to throw off the yoke of the Left and returned to power with even greater numbers. On its second anniversary now,UPA 2 looks more irreparably damaged than Rajiv Gandhi’s government was in its third. In a most incredible and frightening first in India’s constitutional history,an elected government has been hijacked by intellectual charlatans,former babu busybodies,has-beens and wannabes,even some assorted nutcases and loonies. Its ministers issue a panicky,precedent-setting notification to placate a man in white and cede Parliament’s right to law-making in a surrender worse than the Treaty of Versailles. A month later the same ministers go crawling to the airport to prostrate themselves before a man in saffron,setting up directorates and committees to bring back the “four hundred lakh crore” of Indian black money from overseas. Just how ludicrous that figure is can be seen even by a class five child,once you remember that India’s current GDP is just Rs 59 lakh crore. But nobody is to question any of this. Or the fact that the same “wizard” in saffron promises that if his prescription is followed,all black money will return and the exchange rate will be fifty dollars to a rupee. That is,nearly a 2500 times increase. You can snigger,smirk,turn your face and laugh. But what is the point,because you ultimately surrender? Just as you had done when threatened by another maverick in white who believes drunks should be caned,and all voters are corrupt,and Narendra Modi personifies good governance.

You can choose who you want to surrender to and how in the belief that it buys you a reprieve for now,and that you can live to fight another day. But that is a vain,wishful fantasy of the politically vanquished. Which is exactly how this government has been looking. Surely we have seen past governments losing authority faster than this. Morarji’s Janata in its very first year (with Charan Singh’s and the RSS’s growing impatience) and Narasimha Rao’s in its second,with the Babri demolition. But never in India’s history has a government with a genuine majority and a strong political core surrendered the state’s sovereign constitutional authority and responsibility as this one has. What is even more dangerous,they have ceded this to just about five characters in fancy dress,in shades of white to saffron,representing Left,Right and the Centre. They all claim to have no political ambition,all love “democracy”,but just want to change the “system”. On whose mandate,nobody dares to ask,least of all the UPA,minus of course poor Digvijaya Singh,fighting a lonely battle in a lost cause,a forlorn,modern-day Jhansi ki Rani. These new “mass” leaders in fancy dress fight and compete bitterly amongst themselves,but have unanimity only on one thing: they must not first prove their popularity at any election. Elections,even in the world’s largest democracy,are only for us mortals. Are you suggesting that corrupt monstrosity for the divine? And,hello,did Mahatma Gandhi ever fight an election?

So what do we have for our new leadership now? A new pantheon consisting of a self-styled Mahatma Gandhi,a Vivekananda,a Sri Aurobindo and,well,if our society ever produced another neo-Maoist who draped himself in saffron,please remind me. Otherwise,we might just have one original here. And a government which won such an impressive mandate just two years ago,a coalition that can still sweep elections in so many states,has handed over the baton to them. Even God cannot save a country where such powers of blackmail have been ceded to sundry godmen. And when we have a ruling party behaving like the Indian army in retreat in 1962.

Time has also come now to junk all pretences and face the truth. The original blunder of outsourcing law-making and governance is the UPA’s or,more precisely,the Congress party’s. It invented a totally subversive and extra-constitutional idea of the NAC consisting of “civil society” activists and functioning as a super cabinet. Just like the Anna Hazare group,this consists of people never elected,and incapable of ever being elected. All we do not know is if Sonia’s civil society dudes are also as contemptuous of elections as Anna’s. But the principle was no different. You need men and women of integrity from “outside” the system,not “tainted” by politics (which is necessarily dirty),to keep an eye on a government of wretched politicians,even if led by an honest man. You need the NAC to make sure power does not go even to his head,and also to keep him off-balance by attacking his government and policies,and continuing to throw one idiotic law after another in his court. Why blame Anna Hazare when it is the Congress party itself that outsourced law-making to its darbari jholawallahs? This is not a team of modern-day Ambedkars,but mostly of IAS drop-outs and retirees who approach law-making with the “wisdom” of sincere undergrads. You have any doubts,take a look at the draft of the incredibly stupid Prevention of Communal and Targeted Violence (Access to Justice and Reparations) Bill 2011 (www.nac.nic.in/pdf/pctvb_amended.pdf). A Modi or Togadia can see in a minute the wonderful opportunity it presents them. It is totally violative of the states’ rights,is subversive of the Constitution,and will never pass parliamentary or judicial scrutiny. But it will polarise people on a communal basis just when they seem to be getting over that sad past. This bill will not pass. But if the UPA continues to push it,it is guaranteed to polarise the Hindu vote and give the BJP a shot at power that any appeals to Ram Lalla cannot in 2014. This could indeed become Sonia Gandhi’s Shah Bano moment.

Laws apart,the idea of putting a non-governmental watch over your own government undermines the very idea of elected,constitutional democracy and the cue is being taken everywhere. By new Anna Hazares and Ramdevs,and by Congressmen all over the country. Surrender in fright is more infectious than chicken flu and the first to display fatal symptoms is Maharashtra Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan. Petrified of a fasting Medha Patkar,just last week he set up a committee to inquire into an established slum rehabilitation project and included some senior-most Medha activists in the committee. Sheila Dikshit,one of the two re-electable Congress chief ministers in the country (Gogoi being the other),is also under assault from jholawallahs on her brave cash transfer scheme in lieu of PDS. Outsourcing governance to activists is an idea not many Congressmen are willing to resist. Let us see how long Dikshit can hold out.

You can choose to delude yourself,but that won’t change the fact that UPA 2 is now going rapidly downhill. By undermining its own government,the Congress has exposed its flanks,front and behind,in the hope that its darbari,establishment activists will fill that space. But this vacuum is far too big for them to fill,so the rest are trooping in too. The logic is simple: if your chosen activists can draft key laws without getting elected or any accountability,why can’t we? And so what if our leaders are five notables in fancy dress.

Sonia’s options are now clear. If she doesn’t like her government,it can change its leadership. Or she can dissolve her government and seek a fresh mandate. But if her objective is to win power again in 2014,she cannot carry on with a diminished,polarised,paralysed and demoralised government for three more years. She should,therefore,either dismantle the NAC or expand it into a much larger,purely advisory,think-tank-ish body,like the National Integration Council or the National

Security Advisory Board. Otherwise,just as NGOs moved into her government space through a silent coup,the BJP will move into her political space. She hasn’t got until 2014 to decide. Because if her government continues to go downhill,she would do well to remember an Abu Abraham cartoon in this newspaper during the Emergency: the rearview mirror in Indira Gandhi’s car,showing the word “elections” with the warning: “Objects in this mirror are closer than they seem.” Put simply,if the drift continues,2014 could arrive in 2012.

Similarly,the prime minister has to choose from limited,but simple,options as well. He can take a leaf out of Vajpayee’s book. Faced with relentless attacks from the RSS,Vajpayee made it clear that he would have no more of it,and tested the belief that they needed him more than he needed them. He was able to save his government,his own beliefs and principles. Now the prime minister has to step out of the trenches and underline the fact that a country like India can never survive with a weakened prime minister. Most likely,he will have his way. But if he doesn’t,it may be time for him to think of doing what he may have so far thought unthinkable.

Delhi Disconnect

May 21,2011

The rise of regional parties and leaders is no longer news. Last week’s results have brought in two phenomenally strong single-state leaders,Mamata Banerjee and J. Jayalalithaa. A third has risen too,Jaganmohan Reddy in Andhra Pradesh,though that has passed under the radar a bit,thanks to the overwhelming noise of the bigger upheavals elsewhere. So,what’s the news,if the rise and rise of regional leaders is an old story?

This election provides further evidence that the days of the very centralised,high command-led parties are now over. The Congress has been paying for a decade now for this inability,and unless it makes a correction now,it will face a disaster in 2014. Today it has much fewer regional leaders capable of winning their states for it than even the BJP. New evidence that this distant,Delhi-centric management of national politics no longer works also comes from the plight of the CPM. Its leadership has shown itself to be as far removed from reality,and as alienated from its state-level leaders and issues,as the Congress. And the results are with us.

The Left’s pulling out of support to the UPA,presenting a cynical,unprincipled and opportunistic third front “alternative” under Mayawati,left its voters in West Bengal and Kerala totally confused. But the bigger damage was strategic: it helped the Congress and the Trinamool discover each other as natural allies in West Bengal. That one blunder led to the Left’s total loss of clout in the 2009 Parliament elections,and now power in its most important state.

This argument is not so much about strategic errors as about the growing impossibility of managing national politics through centralised decision-making structures. This is a fundamental shift in our politics. Delhi-based leaders of the CPM,for example,could argue that their decision to pull out support to the UPA was principled and dictated by ideology. But anybody who travelled in West Bengal in this election,as this columnist did,rarely heard the two words that were used to justify that decision: America,and Imperialism. In fact,the only time I heard that was when Dipak Sarkar,the CPM’s suave tyrant of Jungle Mahal,suggested that the uprising in Lalgarh may have been an imperialist conspiracy. So the high command was driven by issues that were of no concern to the voters in the one state that mattered to it the most. As a consequence,it also exposed its government in the state to the combined assault of the Trinamool and the Congress.

The Congress is celebrating its victories in Kerala and Assam and its successful joint venture in Bengal. But looking ahead to 2014,it should now be a deeply worried party. In the last Lok Sabha election,Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh gave it 41 MPs,one-fifth of its tally of 206. Tamil Nadu now looks hopeless,unless it can change partners. But more significant is the near-certain destruction of its base in Andhra Pradesh,the one large state it could call its pocket borough and without sweeping which it cannot come to power. The victory of rebel Jaganmohan Reddy by more than five lakh votes is the real takeaway from this election for the Congress,way more significant than retaining power in Assam and the return of Kerala.

A quarter century’s political history tells you now that it is,for some reason,Andhra Pradesh where the Congress makes its most suicidal strategic blunders. And in each case,these stem from its high command’s inability to show even basic courtesies and political respect to the local leadership in a state it needs to be so grateful to for ensuring its hold on Delhi. If the earlier insults to its Andhra leaders led to the rise of N.T. Rama Rao,enabling him to build a campaign of Telugu self-respect,the insensitive and unwise,if not contemptuous,way in which it treated Jagan after his father’s death is now a case of history repeating itself. His demand of immediate succession as chief minister was juvenile. But he,and his mother,had to be handled with greater care and respect. His father was the Congress party’s only stalwart capable of delivering a large state (Sheila Dikshit and Bhupinder Singh Hooda being the remaining two,but together,their states have just over one-third of the seats of Andhra). Yet,the high command and its core decision-makers had no time for Jagan’s insolence. The party,of course,is greater than any individual,but it is many individuals,spread all over the country,that make a party and bring it votes,not a dozen — or less — people in New Delhi,far removed from realities of ground-level politics. In fact,while most of the Congress leadership has refrained from commenting on Andhra,Digvijaya Singh demonstrated rare political maturity and wisdom in underlining this as a most worrying development,one that should make “our party put its house in order” in Andhra.

The BJP has some of these problems too. It allowed the egos and ambitions of some members of the high command to destroy Vasundhara Raje’s prospects of re-election in 2008. Now it has made a correction and put her back in charge in Jaipur,and she has already made an impact. Probably because its high command itself has so many divisions and rivalries,it is not able to squash its regional leaders as the Congress and the CPM do. That is why the BJP has Narendra Modi,Raman Singh,Shivraj Singh Chauhan who have all won their second terms and are still capable of delivering their states to the party. Or even Prem Kumar Dhumal and B.S. Yeddyurappa who both look unassailable in their states. Add to this the rise of Naveen Patnaik,Nitish Kumar,Jayalalithaa,Mamata Banerjee. If the Congress looks at the likely national political map in 2014 honestly,it will be staring at a real problem. Can it fix it? A good beginning would be to give no more than one Rajya Sabha term for each individual. At least that will force the high command dadas to go back and smell the earth,connect with people,instead of making a living sitting back,pulling strings and cutting their own regional leaders,and ultimately their party,to size.

Jantar,Chhu Mantar

May 14,2011

The rise of regional parties and leaders is no longer news. Last week’s results have brought in two phenomenally strong single-state leaders,Mamata Banerjee and J. Jayalalithaa. A third has risen too,Jaganmohan Reddy in Andhra Pradesh,though that has passed under the radar a bit,thanks to the overwhelming noise of the bigger upheavals elsewhere. So,what’s the news,if the rise and rise of regional leaders is an old story?

This election provides further evidence that the days of the very centralised,high command-led parties are now over. The Congress has been paying for a decade now for this inability,and unless it makes a correction now,it will face a disaster in 2014. Today it has much fewer regional leaders capable of winning their states for it than even the BJP. New evidence that this distant,Delhi-centric management of national politics no longer works also comes from the plight of the CPM. Its leadership has shown itself to be as far removed from reality,and as alienated from its state-level leaders and issues,as the Congress. And the results are with us.

The Left’s pulling out of support to the UPA,presenting a cynical,unprincipled and opportunistic third front “alternative” under Mayawati,left its voters in West Bengal and Kerala totally confused. But the bigger damage was strategic: it helped the Congress and the Trinamool discover each other as natural allies in West Bengal. That one blunder led to the Left’s total loss of clout in the 2009 Parliament elections,and now power in its most important state.

This argument is not so much about strategic errors as about the growing impossibility of managing national politics through centralised decision-making structures. This is a fundamental shift in our politics. Delhi-based leaders of the CPM,for example,could argue that their decision to pull out support to the UPA was principled and dictated by ideology. But anybody who travelled in West Bengal in this election,as this columnist did,rarely heard the two words that were used to justify that decision: America,and Imperialism. In fact,the only time I heard that was when Dipak Sarkar,the CPM’s suave tyrant of Jungle Mahal,suggested that the uprising in Lalgarh may have been an imperialist conspiracy. So the high command was driven by issues that were of no concern to the voters in the one state that mattered to it the most. As a consequence,it also exposed its government in the state to the combined assault of the Trinamool and the Congress.

The Congress is celebrating its victories in Kerala and Assam and its successful joint venture in Bengal. But looking ahead to 2014,it should now be a deeply worried party. In the last Lok Sabha election,Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh gave it 41 MPs,one-fifth of its tally of 206. Tamil Nadu now looks hopeless,unless it can change partners. But more significant is the near-certain destruction of its base in Andhra Pradesh,the one large state it could call its pocket borough and without sweeping which it cannot come to power. The victory of rebel Jaganmohan Reddy by more than five lakh votes is the real takeaway from this election for the Congress,way more significant than retaining power in Assam and the return of Kerala.

A quarter century’s political history tells you now that it is,for some reason,Andhra Pradesh where the Congress makes its most suicidal strategic blunders. And in each case,these stem from its high command’s inability to show even basic courtesies and political respect to the local leadership in a state it needs to be so grateful to for ensuring its hold on Delhi. If the earlier insults to its Andhra leaders led to the rise of N.T. Rama Rao,enabling him to build a campaign of Telugu self-respect,the insensitive and unwise,if not contemptuous,way in which it treated Jagan after his father’s death is now a case of history repeating itself. His demand of immediate succession as chief minister was juvenile. But he,and his mother,had to be handled with greater care and respect. His father was the Congress party’s only stalwart capable of delivering a large state (Sheila Dikshit and Bhupinder Singh Hooda being the remaining two,but together,their states have just over one-third of the seats of Andhra). Yet,the high command and its core decision-makers had no time for Jagan’s insolence. The party,of course,is greater than any individual,but it is many individuals,spread all over the country,that make a party and bring it votes,not a dozen — or less — people in New Delhi,far removed from realities of ground-level politics. In fact,while most of the Congress leadership has refrained from commenting on Andhra,Digvijaya Singh demonstrated rare political maturity and wisdom in underlining this as a most worrying development,one that should make “our party put its house in order” in Andhra.

The BJP has some of these problems too. It allowed the egos and ambitions of some members of the high command to destroy Vasundhara Raje’s prospects of re-election in 2008. Now it has made a correction and put her back in charge in Jaipur,and she has already made an impact. Probably because its high command itself has so many divisions and rivalries,it is not able to squash its regional leaders as the Congress and the CPM do. That is why the BJP has Narendra Modi,Raman Singh,Shivraj Singh Chauhan who have all won their second terms and are still capable of delivering their states to the party. Or even Prem Kumar Dhumal and B.S. Yeddyurappa who both look unassailable in their states. Add to this the rise of Naveen Patnaik,Nitish Kumar,Jayalalithaa,Mamata Banerjee. If the Congress looks at the likely national political map in 2014 honestly,it will be staring at a real problem. Can it fix it? A good beginning would be to give no more than one Rajya Sabha term for each individual. At least that will force the high command dadas to go back and smell the earth,connect with people,instead of making a living sitting back,pulling strings and cutting their own regional leaders,and ultimately their party,to size.

The great letdown

April 30,2011

There are parallels in the mandates that Rajiv Gandhi’s Congress won in December 1984,and Sonia Gandhi’s UPA in May 2009. In both cases an aspirational electorate brought back an incumbent to power on a promise of optimistic change. A fortnight from the second anniversary of UPA 2 you can also begin to see parallels in the pace with which the Congress of 1984 squandered its mandate,and the UPA now.

Rajiv Gandhi was undone by his party’s old guard,who he had taken on frontally a bit too early in the day. He had not yet prepared his party,or public opinion,for the break from the past that he articulated so bravely in his speech at the Bombay AICC session (in 1985). When the formidable immune system of entrenched old interests struck back,he did not have the time,support base or firepower to fight back. The move downhill began just as his government entered its third year,and gathered momentum on way to the 1989 elections.

UPA 2 began its decline even before it was two. For one,it had brought along its Bofors from UPA 1,the telecom scam. But to call the telecom scam primarily responsible for UPA 2’s predicament would be to oversimplify the case. Because in politics,a scandal or an event can spin so out of control as to destroy a strong,elected government and a popular,credible leader only if the political ground for that has been prepared by,what else,poor politics and leadership.

Rajiv Gandhi’s politics started going downhill with his pandering to the Muslim Right on the Shah Bano judgment that alienated moderate Muslims within his own party,liberals among his voters,and gave the Hindu Right a cause. From then to Bofors,and the shilanyas at Ayodhya to please the devout Hindus instead,it was one long series of political blunders with no redemption or recovery. UPA 2’s blunders are of a different nature,and a direct result of fundamentally flawed politics.

This government was voted back to power by a resurgent

India making a bold and widely hailed move from the politics of grievance to the politics of aspiration,something this newspaper also underlined on the day after the results in a front-page editorial (‘Hands down’,IE,May 17,2009). But it would seem that,once elected,it forgot all about that aspirational young India and slipped back into its own,old,povertarian,everything-is-wrong-where-are-we-headed discourse. Not a step was taken on economic reforms,if anything some were reversed as so many Central ministers,now full of the arrogance of re-election,were back to the old Congress instinct of extortion and rent-seeking. The return of this depredatory governance fed directly into the alienation sparked by the government’s inability to take the telecom scam head-on. The others that followed,Commonwealth Games and Adarsh (though the Centre had almost nothing to do with it),only fed that rising anger.

From day one,UPA 2 seemed like it was embarrassed by the very factors that had given its voters such an aspirational belief. It was shy of talking growth,employment generation,modernisation,even national pride. It was shy of even sending a thank-you card of some kind to those who had voted it back to power. In 2009,the UPA won almost every single city in a rapidly urbanising India. Yet,rather than reform urban governance,it sat silently as one urban agency after the other became more corrupt,more whimsical and more cruelly authoritarian,and most in cities under its own governments. Ask anybody in Delhi who has to take an MCD permit to build something or get a certificate from the DDA. Can you even get a birth certificate,a driving licence,a passport in time without paying somebody? You are first not told what you can build,and after you build,the same guys come to demolish it. In Mumbai,no apartment buyer knows how much square-footage he is paying for and what he will get. All cities are so short of school and college seats,and a child is doomed unless her uncle is a big shot who can swing her into a decent school. Dr Singh’s government and Sonia’s Congress party should have begun to address these issues from day one in their second innings. They did nothing of the sort,and the result is the mainly well-heeled,but angry and humiliated,city folk who are walking around with candles,“mera neta chor hai” tattoos and demanding that their MPs be fed to vultures or dogs,or both. An aspirational society is an impatient society. Even more so when it is so young,and getting younger.

Nobody in the Congress or the UPA has been talking to this India,whether in cities or villages. This has been the quietest,the most shy government in India’s history,and nobody can govern this country from the trenches. If the mood at Jantar Mantar is anti-politician,or for an apolitical system,this has been an incredibly apolitical government,which is its own and India’s tragedy. Because in a democracy,politicians must speak with people,to sell their ideas,plans,explain their mistakes,promise redress,and so on. But here,Sonia and Rahul rarely,if ever,speak in public. They almost never speak to the media or make an intervention in Parliament and rarer still on behalf of the government. The party behaves as if this government has been outsourced to bureaucrats. The prime minister too speaks rarely and his minders seem to not only draw great comfort from it,but also take pride in it,as if they have a prime minister they need to protect,and hide from public interaction and gaze. If you do not speak to the voters for two full years,they will turn to somebody,to the courts,to high-decibel TV anchors,to Anna Hazare.

Petrified Congressmen are today coming out in self-serving defence of politics and democracy. But their own party set up this government as if politics was India’s curse and only what was apolitical was virtuous. How else would you explain the formation of the National Advisory Council (NAC) with a statutorily mandated position,and to which Sonia Gandhi related (in public perception) much more strongly than to her government? In the name of civil society,the NAC was not only given the powers to draft legislation but also to attack the government and its policies relentlessly. That is why the Congress now sounds so hollow when it questions the demand that “civil society” draft the new Lokpal legislation. If Sonia’s civil society can do it,why not Anna’s? And please stop giving us sanctimonious lectures on Parliament’s sovereignty over law-making.

These,the de-politicisation of its own political approach,and a clinical but systematic distancing of the party and its top leadership from its government,are UPA 2’s equivalent of Rajiv Gandhi’s premature assault on the old guard and the Shah Bano bill. Telecom and other scams have filled the moral space thus vacated to become today’s Bofors,and to symbolise popular anger. Howsoever good the results of May 13 for the Congress,they will not reverse this downslide. But they will provide a breather. If Sonia,Manmohan Singh and,most importantly,Rahul still want to reverse the slide,and not write off 2014 as well,they will have to totally reboot their politics. And remember not to repeat the mistakes Rajiv made in his government’s second half,though the spectacle the Congress created at the PAC,unfortunately,reminded you so much of Shankaranand’s shameful JPC on Bofors.

We,the thieving people

April 23,2011

Some questions can have only one answer. For example,is corruption a bloody awful thing? Are you sick and tired and outraged by recent scandals? Shouldn’t the perpetrators of all these be thrown into jail? Is the process of catching such thieves in high positions too slow,too compromised and,actually,a joke? Does India need to set up a new,effective mechanism to not only catch and convict the corrupt but also to strike terror in the hearts of all those who may have felt tempted to steal? If the Jan Lokpal bill,drafted by well-meaning,sincere members of the civil society,provides that legal framework,should it be passed forthwith? The answer to all these will be a resounding,unanimous “YES”. No question. No argument.

Now,let’s pose some more questions: have you read the text of the proposed bill? The honest answer is most of you have not. Nor had I,until late last week. So here are some follow-up questions: in that fight against corruption are you willing to reshuffle the great constitutional arrangement of checks and balances,separation of powers and responsibilities within our institutions,Parliament,executive and the judiciary? Will you create an institution that’s a cop-cum-prosecutor-cum-inquisitor-cum-judge at the same time,in a “na appeal,na vakil,na daleel” (the expression made famous during the Emergency) kind of arrangement? Do you want an institution that will override the judiciary and Parliament,have the magisterial powers of search and seizure and,as time passes,will pretty much appoint its own successors and be answerable to none,particularly as even the judges of the Supreme Court will quake in their robes before they hear complaints against the Lokpal as it would also have the powers to investigate complaints against them (there is a concession however: such investigations will not be carried out on behalf of the Lokpal by a police officer below the rank of a superintendent of police)? Finally,are you willing to appoint a General Musharraf in mufti to sort out all that bedevils India today? I can presume the answer to all these will be generally no,though there will be some quibbles over the interpretation of this and that. But please do read the text of the bill (available at http://www.indiaagainstcorruption.org) as we go on.

The Musharraf reference is brought in with great care. He tried to create a perfect system with a “democracy” that was “guided” by him,and his corps commanders,obviously men with “unimpeachable integrity” (a term you will read often in the Lokpal bill draft) and certainly unquestionable patriotism. It worked well for nine years,until he willy nilly got caught in putting his control over his judiciary to the test of public opinion and a Pakistan,even under military rule, revolted. It is tough to see how India,old or new,would ever accept so dictatorial an arrangement. The Musharraf reference is also tempting because the standard answer from this group of civil society leaders to the question if their bill violates the basic spirit of the Constitution is,so what,the Constitution can be amended as it has been so many times. But the kind,and number of Constitutional amendments this draft will require,will need a Musharraf. Remember how he unveiled his new constitution at a press conference,and carried out 36 amendments on the spot,on the suggestions of journalists who,I presume,fitted his definition of members of civil society.

Read along this draft with me. First of all,the composition of the 10-member Lokpal and its chief. Four will have to be former senior lawyers or judges,and no more than two former civil servants. Where will the rest come from? Your guess is as good as mine. All of these will have to be people of “unimpeachable integrity” and also “should have demonstrated their resolve to fight corruption in the past.” From where will you find these people,particularly as you are working on the presumption that a large number of judges of the Supreme Court and high courts do not pass that test of unimpeachable integrity. And who will choose them? A committee headed by the prime minister who,in turn,will be under the jurisdiction of the Lokpal he chooses. But,wait,it is more complicated than that. This committee shall include the two youngest judges of our high courts and Supreme Court respectively,the presumption being that the young are cleaner (Clause 6,5 c and d). But,if a Lokpal has to be fired for misdemeanour,the case will be heard by a bench consisting of the five seniormost judges of the Supreme Court? Confused? Why are the youngest virtuous while hiring,and the seniormost equally so while firing?

The first time,this selection committee will set up a search committee of 10,of which five shall be former CAGs and CECs but only if there has never been a “substantive” allegation of corruption against them,nor do they have any “strong” political affiliations. Who is to sit in judgment over such subjective criteria? But wait. This committee of five will then choose five members from the civil society. How civil society is defined we do not know,but in fairness,you should presume we journalists will not be among them. If this is not sounding impossible already,this search committee has to recommend at least “three times the names as there are vacancies” (Clause 6,10 f). So if you thought it is hard enough to find so many perfect men and women,you now know that you have to find thrice as many. And,of course,when the selection committee’s choice is finally forwarded to the president,she “shall” sign it within a month. This would make the Congress party blush,in particular,as the last time the president of the Republic was treated so peremptorily was during the Emergency. Remember Abu Abraham’s immortal cartoon in this paper,showing Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed in his bathtub,handing out a signed ordinance through an ajar door,and saying,if there are more ordinances,can they wait till I finish?

If the bill tells the president what she “shall” do,it similarly directs the Supreme Court,five seniormost of whose judges will hear any complaints against the Lokpal and “shall not dismiss such petitions in liminae.” And,of course,should they decide that the Lokpal is guilty,they will write to the president who “shall” fire him within a month.

If the idea of this bill is to take away all discretion,and strike terror in the hearts of the bad guys,it does that very effectively.

Except,so many of the rest,generally innocent Indians,may live in that terror as well. The bill,for example,entitles the Lokpal to collect 10 per cent of all the fines collected,stolen wealth recovered,or even national wealth saved from being stolen,in its own corpus for its own use,thereby creating extortionist incentive: the more you value,the more you collect. Read on further. If you report on another citizen and he is caught and convicted,you would similarly earn 10 per cent of the money recovered,and/ or the money saved from being swindled as your reward. We will,therefore,be incentivised by law to become a nation of cops and spies,sneaking on neighbours and family for pecuniary gain. Such things happen in North Korea and if it is your argument that its people are happier than us Indians,we will need some convincing. Of course,this may see so many Indians in jail that real estate companies,maybe even DB Realty and Unitech,may find it profitable to diversify into building new prisons all over the country. Further,almost all Lokpal proceedings,from selection committee meetings to trials,will be videorecorded and copies will be available for a fee. This will be a great stimulus for the video industry and if you had any spare cash you had better buy some Moserbaer stock.

The bill plays nicely on the current sab chor hain mood. So if a company is found to benefit from a corrupt practice,five times the loss it is supposed to have caused the public (it could have been 5 x 1.76 lakh crore in case of the telecom scam) will be recovered by auctioning not just its assets,but also the personal assets of its directors. You can go on,the Lokpal members will be deemed police officers,have the powers of seizure and search without going to a magistrate — precisely the question with Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act) — have protection of contempt of court law,will function as civil courts,be investigators and prosecutors,throwing out the very principle of separation of powers,checks and balances (Clauses 8-19,21,24,25,27,32).

As we saw in the first five questions raised,and answered in the affirmative in this article,there is no doubt that all Indians are now desperately angry with corruption. But is the way to fight it to totally subvert our constitutional arrangement and create an institution with absolute,unchallenged and draconian powers? Or install a Kim Il Sung with his politburo? This bill,in this form,is designed to match the dictum of “absolute power corrupts absolutely.” It also presumes all Indians are thieves,unless proven otherwise,and can only be governed in a police state. Further,that a society of a billion-plus thieves can be cleansed by barely a dozen individuals armed with the most undemocratic law drafted in a democracy outside its Parliament. That is why this needs greater,cooler discussion. Medha Patkar is right in saying that the antecedents of the civil society committee members are not the most important thing and that there should,instead,be a vigorous debate on all aspects of this bill. That is what we are trying to initiate in this paper.

A word about the response of the political class so far. The Congress has been panicking because of its own well-earned and deserved guilty conscience as so many scams have happened under its watch. The BJP touchingly believes this is its second Ganesh-drinking-milk moment that will help bring it back to power. But it does not see the contradiction of backing Santosh Hegde against the Congress in Delhi and Yeddyurappa against him in Bangalore. A strong,effective institutional framework to prevent and punish corruption is an idea whose time has come. This draft bill,unfortunately,is like losing your way before starting that journey.

Minus the Left

March 12,2011

Funny we still see 2012 as the most crucial year on way to the big 2014 general election,mainly because Uttar Pradesh goes to the polls early in that year and probably also because a new president has to be elected for the Rashtrapati Bhavan that year. Funnier,therefore,is how nobody looks at 2011 as a year of any great political significance.

Just liberate yourself from the notion that 2012 may be the year of the Congress revival in Uttar Pradesh (rendered outdated after Bihar),and from all the dark rumours in the Lutyens’ opium den about Manmohan Singh being moved up and aside into Rashtrapati Bhavan,and it would not look like such a make-or-break year. That year could indeed be the current one,and here is how.

The five state elections that take place within two months from now (all results come on May 13) are among the easiest to predict in our electoral history in a very long time. You know exactly who will lose Bengal and Kerala. You know that Tamil Nadu will now be a very open election. In Assam,the Congress would still have a better chance of putting together a government and Pondicherry,which the Congress may again win,is of insignificant value. Generally,these elections will leave the Congress feeling much better about itself. And the BJP won’t be feeling much worse either. It has no stakes in these states and it will not look like a loser. And the Left will be devastated. That is why,if these elections indeed go the way they are headed right now,they have the potential of altering our national political equations,and setting a much more interesting stage for 2014.

It is a unique set of state elections where the Congress and the BJP will hardly cross swords anywhere. On the contrary,the Left will be the Congress’s adversary in all the five states,including in Tamil Nadu and Assam where it has a small but significant footprint. These elections will,therefore,have four important consequences. One,they will leave the Congress feeling much more confident,settled. Two,they will give the BJP time to regroup and savour the defeat of its bitterest ideological enemy,the Communists. Three,these will give the Congress and the BJP at least two,if not three,Parliament sessions where they can healthily cooperate and pass some legislations and economic policies on which they have a common view. And four,and most important,this decimation of the Left,unprecedented in recent years,may just push our national politics towards clearer bipolarity.

Ever since the decline of the Congress as an unassailable national force,our politics has carried the peculiar curse of tripolarity. Classically,you would expect two ideological poles in Indian politics,with the more liberal forces (or,to put it more directly,those valuing the Muslim vote) coming under the Congress umbrella,and those that do not particularly need (or expect to get) the minority vote going with the BJP. That is why the DMK/ AIADMK,Hyderabad’s MIM and Kerala’s Muslim League are natural Congress allies,just as the Shiv Sena and Akali Dal are the BJP’s. If this was a clear,two-way division,our national politics would have been a lot more coherent post-1989. But it hasn’t been so because of a third,disruptive factor,aptly called the Third Front. It fulfils the needs of those regional parties that want the Muslim vote and yet have the Congress as their main rival in their respective states; for example,Chandrababu Naidu’s TDP in Andhra,Naveen Patnaik’s BJD in Orissa and even to some extent Mayawati in Uttar Pradesh. They cannot go with the Congress because it is their main rival,or with the BJP because that will lose them the Muslim vote. So they gravitate to a third front whose nucleus and ideological and tactical powerhouse is the Left. After the results come this May 13,these parties will need to review their options,because the Left will lose the “third pole” status it has thrived on for nearly two decades.

This will bring the biggest change and opportunity in our national politics in a long time. These powerful regional adversaries of the Congress will have to make a choice: to stay isolated on the national stage,or to gravitate towards the NDA. The opportunity will first be the BJP’s. If it can moderate its own politics and conduct,if it has the good sense of going to both Naidu and Patnaik with a humble mea culpa on the past and a promise of following the Nitish model in their states,it will have its first chance of rebuilding a credible national alternative post-Vajpayee. And if it has the wisdom and the large-heartedness to do this,gains will come from elsewhere too. The “other” Dravida party (other than the one with the UPA),for example. Even,at some point post-2012,Mayawati. Similarly,for Mulayam,Lalu,Paswan,Gowda and other regional chieftains,the Congress and UPA will emerge as their default option with the comforting shoulder of the articulate,English-speaking Left no longer available.

Exactly two months from today,therefore,India will have a rare opportunity to rebalance its politics in a manner that would be ideologically and electorally more logical than what we have had since the beginning of the coalition era. Hopefully then the phenomenon of irresponsible “outside support” keeping governments unsettled and governance distorted through a Treaty of Versailles kind of CMPs will be behind us,at least for now. But for this to happen,leaders of both national parties,the Congress and the BJP,will quickly need to reboot their own politics. Whoever manages the aftermath of the mini election of 2011 better will have a headstart on 2014. The best thing is,you do not even need to wait till May 13 to start working on that.

Constant Congressman

March 5,2011

The first time I met Arjun Singh,he was not dealing with a real crisis. It was in Bhopal a few days after the gas tragedy in December 1984. What struck me was his composure. He was cool,unruffled and even exchanged old-fashioned banter with journalists. You could not miss the bonhomie between him and the Bhopal press corps. Arjun Singh,we all knew,had done more to improve the living standards of journalists,with government housing and other freebies,in his state than anybody before or after him

My first one-on-one conversation with him came in the following summer. It was a very short,half-hour Indian Airlines flight from Delhi to Chandigarh. He wouldn’t stop smiling as all kinds of people lined up to congratulate him. He was on his way to take over as the new governor of Punjab,at a very young age of 55. The Punjab governorship was not a job for retired people. The terror-hit state was constantly under president’s rule. Rajiv Gandhi had just signed a peace accord with the respected Sikh leader,Sant Harchand Singh Longowal. Arjun Singh,as Rajiv’s most trusted political lieutenant,had played a stellar role behind the scenes. No surprise then,that Rajiv trusted him to oversee its implementation. Hence that governorship at such a young age. In fact as I shook his hand while stepping out of that plane,I,somewhat naively,wished him a brilliant five years of governorship.

“Arrey bhai,young man,I do not know you very well. But do you want me to remember you as my friend or my enemy?” he asked me. He wanted to finish the job quickly,and get back to the political mainstream.

His stint in Chandigarh,though,was longer and patchier than he would have wished. Within months of his arrival,separatists assassinated Sant Longowal,exposing the limitations of the accord and the tenuous peace it had brought. Of course,Arjun Singh did not lose his cool. He asked his trusted aide,IAS officer Sudeep Banerji who he had brought along from Bhopal,to get the pending applications of five of the senior-most journalists in Chandigarh for upgrading their government houses. His first executive act within minutes of that assassination was to upgrade them all,not by one but two levels. Sure enough,many of the following morning’s stories talked not so much of his failure to protect his most valuable ward,but of how anguished he was that Longowal never listened to his entreaties to take his personal security more seriously.

Arjun Singh was too layered and fascinating a political figure to describe in one newspaper article. But one of the more interesting aspects of his personality was how seriously he took the media. Friend or foe,he never refused a journalist a favour. But,at the same time,he was never shy of raising that dreaded question: are you my friend or my enemy?

During his full stint as HRD minister in UPA 1,this newspaper,and this editor,were usually at odds with him. While we generally support the idea of caste-based reservations (though with some important qualifications),we saw his move to spring OBC reservations on the entire higher education system without any preparation as some kind of a too-clever-by-half ploy to unsettle the prime minister,where it would be politically unwise for him to oppose that policy and impossible to implement in a hurry. It was in the course of that argument,run on these editorial pages with our usual bluntness,that I received an early morning phone call from him.

“I do not want to engage you in any long conversation,” he said,sort of deadpan,in clipped English. “I only called to tell you one thing.”

“And what is it Arjun Singhji?” I asked.

“It is just that had the man in whose name your paper is published (referring to our redoubtable founder Ramnath Goenka),had he been alive

today,you would not have lasted in your job for even one more week. I had that kind of relationship with him,” he said.

I was starting to tell him we were all so sorry that Ramnathji was no longer with us and that we all missed him greatly. But that he had left a formidable legacy and equally a successor,and that our freedoms were actually very secure with them. But he had no patience.

“I told you I do not want to enter into an argument with you,” he said and gently put the phone down. Gently,he did not bang it.

It was a tribute to our old-fashioned political tradition that in spite of so many differences,he was always willing to give me time. My last long conversation with him was when he was recovering from a sudden attack of painful herpes on his face. He talked to me in half-recline,his face unshaven for days because of the herpes lesions. Of course he told me in detail where I had got my reading of politics,particularly politics of caste and poverty,all wrong. But then,maybe because he was distracted by pain,or just generous with me because I had come to look him up in this awfully distracting sickness,he began to speak expansively about himself,almost letting his guard down. Which,those who knew him better would tell you,was extremely rare.

“Why did I return to politics?” he asked,“Only because I discovered that within the Congress,even at senior-most levels,there were people who were in such a hurry to junk Rajiv Gandhi’s ideals.”

“You mean,Arjun Singhji,” I asked,“you are saving Rajiv Gandhi’s ideals from a party led by his own wife and son?”

“No,not that. It is just that none of the others was close enough to Rajiv to know what he really dreamed for India,” he said. Then he went on to describe the days when he,as chief minister of Madhya Pradesh,accompanied Rajiv deep into the countryside,“where we lay on cots in small inspection bungalows under star-filled skies and exchanged our ideas for the future of India.”

It was at this point that I saw his eyes moist a bit. “One thing I will say about Rajiv,” he said. “His sense of patriotism was always palpable.”

Through exactly 25 years of knowing him,and both disagreeing and arguing with him intellectually,one thing I would never doubt was his loyalty to the Gandhi family. But that is what also made him so angry,even bitter: he thought that his loyalty was not adequately rewarded,as the ultimate prize,the prime ministership,was denied to him not once but twice,by Narasimha Rao and then Manmohan Singh,both of whom he considered lesser leaders than himself. Then,inside their respective cabinets,he tried to run circles around them,on his — and he presumed the Gandhi family’s — favourite issues,secularism and social justice. In both cases he was out-manoeuvred. And that too by politicians he did not consider half as sharp as himself. This,more than his many chronic health problems,angered him in his last years. But his political mind remained razor-sharp to his last day. His party,his friends as well as detractors will all miss him. So will we journalists for whom he was a fine example of the traditional Congress politician so accessible,even if you mostly disagreed with him.

Lok Sabha,2014

February 26,2011

The resumption of our parliamentary proceedings has coincided with the cricket World Cup. And,at least in the early rounds,it has looked like more fun than the one-sided matches being played in the World Cup preliminaries. Also,while the first week of the World Cup has still not changed any equations in terms of the eventual favourites,the first week of a functioning Parliament for nearly six months has made one thing dramatically clear: that the election of 2014 is no longer a done deal. Opening exchanges showed a new energy in the opposition,particularly the BJP. In a debate that must rank among the classics of our recent parliamentary history,Sushma Swaraj notably worsted veteran Pranab Mukherjee,point by point,and then gave us one of those moments you cherish in parliamentary politics,by giving a smiling Pranabda a friendly hug at the end of the day. It’s been a long time since we saw such mutual large-heartedness in our Parliament.

The BJP’s mood is easier to explain. At this time last year,it was staring at a hopeless future. Its top leaders engaged in a Mahabharata of sorts,no happy turning point in sight. Across the ideological fence,their Congress counterparts were sharpening the knives as well, to stab their own in the back as they jockeyed for the spoils of an election already “won” in 2014. And,in the process,brutally undermining their own government much like a body afflicted with autoimmune disease that begins attacking itself. Both sides would acknowledge that an upset of sorts has now been caused. Not that the tables have turned but the next election has been thrown open as nobody would have anticipated.

Five things have made it happen,three of which are rooted in our major states,Andhra Pradesh,Bihar and Tamil Nadu,and do not need too much explaining. It is difficult to see the UPA repeating its near-sweep of 2004 and 2009 in Andhra and Tamil Nadu. And the disaster of Bihar stunned the Congress. Even more than its tally of four seats,the shocker was the fact that its candidates lost their deposits in 221 out of the 243 seats it contested. For the NDA,on the other hand,the success of Bihar showed what kind of political gains were available in the new India if you were willing to dump old,exclusionist,negative agendas. Bihar has,therefore,emerged as that fortuitous turning point that an opposition,in the dumps,prays for,so early in the life of a Lok Sabha. The two factors outside of these states are the obvious ones: the withering damage the UPA has suffered because of corruption charges and the discordant,disruptive noises that began emerging from within the Congress,exposing its disastrous complex of ideological laziness,conflicting ambitions and political impatience. And even if its leadership seems to have put down that noise for now,some damage is done.

To understand this shift,National Interest has to revisit its long-held theory that an Indian national election is now like a best-of-nine-sets tennis match — whoever wins five of these will take the trophy. These nine “sets” are our large states where electoral fortunes can change: Uttar Pradesh,Bihar,Andhra,Maharashtra,Rajasthan,Madhya Pradesh,Tamil Nadu,Kerala and Karnataka. Together,these account for 351 seats in Lok Sabha,so whichever coalition wins five of these is likely to cross the 200-mark anyway. That 200 is the new 272 in our Lok Sabha now,as you would presume that the same coalition would collect some more seats out of the remaining 192,and if it is still short,some small parties with totally fungible ideologies would join it. If you were a Congress strategist,that equation would look far from reassuring today,and you would be a fool not to acknowledge,at least to yourself,that this will be a much closer election than you had expected it to be. And how does the BJP pass this “best-of-nine-sets” test? It would err in hoping to ride Bihar’s euphoria to victory in Lok Sabha,because it does not exist in Kerala,Tamil Nadu and Andhra,and has been decimated in

Uttar Pradesh.

So where do the UPA and NDA,or,more accurately,the Congress and BJP go from here? The lesson for each is somewhat similar. The next election is its to win or lose depending on whether it can dump some of its awful,outdated and politically suicidal basic instinct or not. Take the Congress first. Its entire politics is built around loyalty to one family. Which,by itself,may not be such a bad thing for it,because it keeps the party together. But should it also continue to mean that the party will build no other,strong leaders,particularly regional chieftains who will conquer their states for it,just like YSR,Hooda and Sheila Dikshit had done in the last election? How many such does the party have right now,particularly in these nine key states? To expect Rahul to go out and win all these states by himself will be a tough call in 2014 when so many of India’s voters would have been born after the assassination of Indira Gandhi. So the Congress will have to build a new set of genuinely empowered state leaders,an idea Indira Gandhi junked in 1969.

The BJP,similarly,should know from its Bihar experience that its original,Muslim-hating,narrow Hindutva is now outdated and there are rewards to be had in discarding it. In a state with a sizeable Muslim vote,the BJP has won 91 of the 102 seats it contested,possibly the highest strike rate (90 per cent) for any party ever in our history. Would it have done as well if Modi,Mandir,Hindutva had been floating in the Bihar air? Only if it takes that logical lesson forward,does a mea culpa with Chandrababu Naidu,Naveen Patnaik and Jayalalithaa,can it put together a coalition that will once again begin to look like a winner,particularly if the election does turn out to be that best-of-nine-sets match.

The challenge for both parties is,therefore,similar: liberate itself from its past,bury the old politics of hatred,insecurity,grievance and embrace the new Indian mood of resurgence and aspiration,particularly among the young. The first week of this budget session has confirmed to us that the election of 2014 is now open. The winner would be the party that makes that bold,final and convincing move from its outdated politics of grievance to India’s wonderful new politics of aspiration.

Thank God for politics

February 19,2011

Just a 90-minute interaction between the prime minister and the captains of electronic media in the country turned our entire upper crust into TV reviewers. And of course,in their near-unanimous judgment,the prime minister came off poorly. That is the clamour wherever Indian elites are to be found,from the party circuit to airline lounges: He sounded too defensive,he was getting too much into minutiae,he did not sound assertive enough. How does it measure up to a quick reality check?

It won’t,if you remember that the key to understanding

Dr Manmohan Singh,and that is particularly so in terms of his public persona,is — the man you see,is the man you get. He is never one to sound assertive,or aggressive,never one to make broad-brush statements. His style is like that of a professor caught in the complex detail of a problem rather than that of an expansive Atal Bihari Vajpayee. And his method and moods? I have often said that even at the best of times Dr Singh seems to come across as Rahul Dravid batting at 39 for 3. He is not given to flourishes of any kind whatsoever. Go back to his public statements after the first flush of reform in 1991. He had the same lonely,almost melancholy,countenance when his first crisis,the (Harshad Mehta) stock market scam,hit him,and when he spoke a line as honest — and politically naive,you might say — as his “depends on what is your starting point” explanation for how to calculate presumptive loss on account of Raja’s 2G spectrum allocation. He said then,famously or infamously,on the stock market crash in Parliament,that he “wasn’t going to lose any sleep over it.” Of course it got the rich,old and new,by far the greatest immediate beneficiaries of his policies then,furious: we are losing money,and he is so nonchalant? Nobody remembered that it was that one budget from him that had multiplied their wealth many times in the first place.

Lack of gratitude is the hallmark of the upper crust the world over. But in our country,lately,it has also got wrapped in a fascinating elite contempt for the political class. For the well-heeled Indian now,our politician (neta is the preferred expression,used as a pejorative) represents all that is wrong with our society. Some of it,probably,is driven by some evangelical “don’t confuse me with facts” sections of news TV where anchors with clenched teeth and bared fangs hold forth,calling every scam massive,unprecedented,bigger than ever before and then,safely,blame it on the political class.

Safely because,whether we choose to acknowledge it or not,ultimately it is only our politicians who end up facing accountability,and they are also least likely to go after you. Take the telecom scam. A cabinet minister of the ruling coalition,who also happens to be the leading Dalit face of a key ally in a state going to the polls this year,has been locked up in jail. If he and his alleged co-conspirators were bribed,it was done by some corporates. Have any of these “intrepid” TV anchors dared to call one of them,or even his spokesman or CEO,to his studio for a debate,or called for their arrest if not hanging? Would any of them,in fact,ever dare to call one of these corporates “a congenital scamster”? You have to ask that question,because that is exactly how one of these anchors has been routinely describing Suresh Kalmadi. Now,for sure,Suresh Kalmadi has more than a few serious questions to answer for CWG. But how do you know his forefathers were scamsters? Would you ever dare talk like that about anybody but a politician?

The more interesting thing,however,is that it is the rich who are applauding this lynch mob. Exactly the classes who wanted to hire private commandos in Mumbai after 26/11,to stop paying taxes,and keep routinely calling for election boycotts. You ask them who they would prefer as their rulers if not our “netas” and they waffle: the Congress has nobody worthwhile,the BJP has imploded,the third front is dead,and Mayawati,arre baap re baap… There was a time when the same class was fascinated with Musharraf: so smart,so with it,so confident,what swagger,so articulate,so much “like” us. More important,so unlike our smelly,pot-bellied,crotch-scratching politicians who mostly do not know how to dress or speak English. You know where he ended up as millions of brave Pakistanis took to the streets to protect their democratic rights and their judiciary.

And while the charmed circle mourns the end of the idea of India because of political corruption,incompetence,and cynicism,it is exactly our politics that is transforming India in a most remarkable manner now. The politics we curse has given us a truly federal polity where over half of the states are governed by non-UPA parties and where,while power to make big money (from land,minerals and liquor licensing) has shifted to the states,we have at least ten chief ministers with impeccable reputations. When was the last time you saw that in India? Maybe in Nehru’s first decade? What is even more important,the most efficient and effective among our chief ministers — Nitish Kumar,Naveen Patnaik,Sheila Dikshit,Narendra Modi,Raman Singh,Shivraj Singh Chouhan — have all defied anti-incumbency. So it is evident that their voters not only acknowledge and reward these qualities,they also celebrate and value their democracy and politicians that make it possible,rather than curse them for all of their problems.

That is the happy,overwhelming reality behind this sullen,big-city drawing room mood. India is democratising and the political class and the voters are warming up to each other in a manner that is unprecedented,yet logical in its happy evolution. Voting percentages are going up,good leaders are being re-elected with larger majorities and others are mending their ways. Even the Congress has been forced to send to Maharashtra,its traditional milch cow,

a chief minister in Prithviraj Chavan whom his worst enemies would never accuse of taking a paisa in bribes or cuts. Likewise,can you deny that Dr Manmohan Singh is honest,capable,well-intentioned,wise and,most importantly,re-electable? So what if you do not exactly find him to be a rock star in front of the camera. That was never promised to you in the first place. But one thing you can be sure of. Whatever his countenance and style,like the dour but indispensable cricketer we compared him with,he is at his best at 39 for 3,which is how the scoreline looks for UPA 2 right now. You can trust him when he says he isn’t going anywhere midway through this innings,and you can also be sure his party will now cut all the clutter and confusion and work with him rather than at cross-purposes. Even in the gossip-filled opium den that is Lutyens Delhi,you can see the smoke of confusion lifting. So forget all talk of a change midway,likely successors and so on through this Lok Sabha. And expect a fresh push for reforms,administrative and political changes and,hopefully,a changing of the headlines.

The Ides of February

February 2,2011

One challenge with analysing the situation in which the UPA government finds itself in its second term is that you cannot find any real parallel,or comparative reference point,for it in our political history. Governments have run aground early in their tenures despite comfortable majorities (Rajiv Gandhi’s in its third year,and Janata probably from the moment it was sworn in). But those were different situations,and first-term governments. This is a coalition that only emerged stronger through a tenuous first term,and has lately lost its way.

The government is locked in mortal combat with the opposition,an inevitability,but it has visited UPA 2 much too early. It is caught in withering arguments with,or over,key institutions. In this case,notably,the judiciary.

Just a year back,the debate was about how to cleanse the judiciary of increasing corruption. But now,the political class and the executive have ceded so much moral ground that the judiciary chides them almost every day. Of course,the Supreme Court has risen in stature with the rise of a tough,no-nonsense Chief Justice in S.H. Kapadia,but that is not the only reason this newspaper listed him on the top of this year’s national Power List (https://indianexpress.com/ news/the-most-powerful-indians-in-2011-no.-110/745646/). It was also an acknowledgement of the changed balance of power,where the executive and the political class had lost so much credibility,and the higher judiciary had moved in to fill that space. Every evening it is the judiciary’s admonitions to the government that make the headlines — and even if this news-paper has most respectfully cautioned the higher judiciary against ruling by obiter dicta rather than judgments,and of the perils of playing to the sab-chor-hain gallery,the fact is,it is finding popular applause.

If you were a UPA leader you would ask why should it be so when their government has been brave enough to jail one of its own ministers. But popular opinion would give credit for this to the Supreme Court instead,under whose pressure some cleansing has begun. And yet,so peculiar is UPA 2’s predicament that it is now caught in yet another hopeless argument with the same court on the CVC’s appointment. Hopeless,because whether P.J. Thomas wins or loses,the government would end up looking silly,cynical and,either way,weak.

Surely the Congress party’s first instinct,fighting fire with fire,has backfired. Its “nuancing” of the telecom scam under a new,and personally clean,minister has not convinced anybody. Some humility would have served the government better: of accepting something truly awful has happened and is being sorted out by a newly empowered CBI under an unforgiving Supreme Court,so let’s all watch this space. The totally bull-headed rejection of the opposition’s demand for a JPC,even at the cost of losing one Parliament session and thre-atening another,has only increased its own difficulties. Hopefully,that is being sorted out in a new mood of pre-budget session realism.

You can read out a sermon to the opposition as well. Just what do you expect to gain by so upping the ante so early in the tenure of a Lok Sabha? Do you want an election already? But the opposition will be the opposition,and it is its basic instinct to play spoiler. Why,instead,did the Congress need to raise the temperature of combat — with the BJP — to such a high level in a year when it is not going to lock horns with it in any state election? Of course you need to underline your ideological commitments,but you have to choose your moment. Also,if you think to be seen in constant combat with the BJP is the only way to get back the Muslim vote,you have learnt nothing from the Bihar election.

Finally,the UPA 2 has been cursed by its own inbuilt contradictions and conflicting ambitions,and for once the allies take no blame for this. The essential contradiction,of the centre of gravity of UPA 2 sitting not in the government but in the Congress party,which,it seems,has begun celebrating its “victory” of 2014 too soon,still persists. It gets even more complex when the most powerful Congressmen prefer to sit in the party office,strengthening the impression that it is not exactly their government,but has been outsourced to loyal mandarins.

But there are still more than three years to go. The prime minister says often enough that a public office is like holding public trust. You can’t have it and do nothing with it. You cannot go into a sullen,can’t-do-anything/ do-nothing/ what-can-I-do mode. You cannot do this particularly now,when our messy politics is threatening to damage the India story that the entire world has been celebrating and that you began to script exactly 20 years ago.

The bitter truth is,the India story is now under threat. It may have been the second India-theme year at Davos within five years,but under the hoopla,the mood was sober. There were more questions about India than excitement. About corruption,governance deficit,inability of the government to fulfil even old reform commitments made in Parliament,about shifting,inconsistent government policies,the likelihood of a change of leadership and,most tellingly,about top Indian corporates “shifting” their balance sheets overseas.

And there is no need of conspiracy theories here,because these doubts are all rooted in facts,the most telling of which are a 60 per cent fall in FDI this year,and now our stalling manufacturing. That is what our stock markets have been telling us,bucking the rising global trend.

Can UPA 2 regain its balance and authority? Can it protect the India story,and thereby the legacy of two decades of reform? You could argue that it is still possible. But then it has to try changing the headlines from tonight. No squabbling ministers,no party-government conflicts,no fighting with institutions,and finding a modus vivendi with the main opposition so at least some long-pending legislation can pass. It is a good thing that the prime minister has begun to speak out on some key issues lately. It would help if Sonia and Rahul broke their silence too. The budget fortnight is usually the best time for a government to change the headlines. And nobody knows that better than the prime minister,and his most astute and exceptional cabinet colleague,the finance minister.