A Country Betrayed by its Leaders

Their actions on the nuclear deal and oil prices undermine the future of the nation

WHEN I turned on the TV to listen to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s address to the nation on Wednesday evening, there was a brief flicker of expectation —perhaps he would actually use the occasion to say that the government had decided to go ahead with the Indo- US nuclear deal, damn the consequences. After all prime ministers don’t address the nation on trivial matters like raising oil prices. That was an administrative decision, which if commonsense had prevailed, should actually have been a commercial one. I didn’t expect that the PM would have to do something as dramatic as addressing the nation merely to justify a price hike of a commodity over which the government has been procrastinating for the past ten months. Alas, that was what it was all about. He did tell us how the international situation had warranted the price hike and did note that the present policy was not a“permanent solution” to the problem. But after a token reference to the need for conservation, and an exhortation to develop alternate energy sources, he was silent.
Mr. Singh’s address was par for the course for his prime ministership —uninspiring, dull and close to the political script of the pusillanimous Congress party that requires total appeasement of the Left allies of the UPA. This column is not about the nuclear deal. Though, for the record, the window is getting smaller and smaller and will probably close in September. What this is about is the larger failure of the political system to measure up to the needs of the country and its people.
Perhaps the best example is the oil price hike itself. Every party under the sun has gone out of its way to criticise it, even the BJP, whose record on dealing with the subject when in government as the leader of the NDA is not particularly edifying. None of them came out with arealistic and intellectually honest alternative to raising the prices of petroleum products. This is not surprising. After all, they are all fiddling while India’s energy prospects go from being bad to worse.
The country’s energy needs are not something that we have infinite time to resolve. The needs are here and now and not being met. Yes, we have our nuclear plan based on thorium, but it kicks in thirty years or so from now and that too if technical challenges don’t intervene. Reports that Indian nuclear power plants are running out of fuel have not been concocted by the Manmohan Singh government to build a political climate to favour the deal. The first official reference to the problem was available in the mid- term appraisal of the 10th Five Year Plan which was prepared in the early 2000s, well before the UPA came to power.

Demographic Dividend

There is an argument that nuclear power alone will not achieve much. True, it has to be seen as part of a package of measures. France, after all, has managed in the last thirty years after the first oil shock to ensure that 79 per cent of its electricity is produced by nuclear energy, Japan manages 30. Think where they would have been today without nuclear power. The current nuclear renaissance is moving in a similar direction. Fourth generation reactors and newer technologies based on thorium are on the cards. But these will only be available if India is part of the world nuclear order, as defined by the Nuclear Suppliers Group and the IAEA.
India’s window of opportunity is finite and can be defined with considerable clarity. It lies between now and 2030, because of something called the demographic dividend. As Prof Kaushik Basu has explained, the dependency ratio of our population, the number of people of working age as against those who are dependent, is set to decline in the next three decades and then start climbing again. In the year 2004 India had a population of 1,080 million, of whom 670 million people were in the age group of 15 to 64 years, which is considered as the “working age population.” The rest of the population —the very young and the old, some 400 million —were seen as the dependent population. So the dependency ratio, or the proportion of working age population to the dependent population worked out to 0.6.
Given our current trends this ratio will decline even further in the coming decades. In 2020, the average age of an Indian will be 29 years, compared to 37 for China and 48 for Japan; and, by 2030, India's dependency ratio should be just over 0.4. The advantage of a young working age population is obvious — they earn, consume and save. Higher savings rates make for greater investments into the economy. But this is only the theory. We need the practice. It is no good having a young working age population if it is not well educated, or if it does not have jobs.
So, the advantages of the demographic dividend are dependent on the kind of physical infrastructure we can provide for them —better universities, hospitals, roads, railways, factories, and so on. India needs a massive effort to shift avast number of people —we are talking of hundreds of millions —from the agriculture to the manufacturing and services sector. At the heart of this effort lies not only the availability of energy, but our ability to use it efficiently. The train to that future is leaving right now. We will not get another chance to board it again in this century.

Opposition

There is nothing in the policies and politics of today which tells us that our politicians understand this truth. What does the CPI( M)’ s Prakash Karat have against the nuclear deal? Something to do with an abstract notion called “US imperialism”, perhaps. The Left is not even addressing the issue on hand —how to get nuclear fuel to power our domestic programme and acquire technology and financing to establish nuclear power plants in quick order to boost energy availability in the country. The specious critique of the Hyde Act, the faux concern for fuel security, are all aimed at scuttling the deal because of an unscrupulous political calculation.
L. K. Advani’s response is even more difficult to comprehend. On one hand he says that the BJP does not “basically” oppose the nuclear agreement. His suggestion that the US insert a provision in the 123 Agreement saying that the Hyde Act will not affect India is an insult to intelligence. Does he really expect that the US executive will agree to a changed wording that will negate the validity of a legislation of the US Congress?

Responsibility

Perhaps we are being too harsh on Advani. The person who is steering the agreement is Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and he has behaved in a peculiar way with Mr Advani. Instead of engaging the Leader of the Opposition to get his support, he has avoided dealing with him, and gratuitously insulted him by appealing to Atal Bihari Vajpayee to make the BJP see reason on the issue.
When history looks back at our present distempers, it cannot but point out the culpability of small men found wanting when confronted with the big problems of the country. In north Indian historical consciousness, two characters stand out for their chicanery —Jaichand and Mir Jafar. Since the nation state did not exist during their time, they cannot really be condemned as traitors, as they have been in popular imagination. They were merely run of the mill men involved in petty politics, unable or unwilling to see the larger picture. I wonder how the leaders of today whose politics are undermining the nation will be portrayed by future generations.
The article was published in Mail Today June 6, 2008

He is only past his first hurdle

L.K. Advani, the BJP’s PM-in-waiting carries the huge burden of his past, of NDA’s failings and his advancing years

Lal Kishen Advani has been anointed leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party after many trials and tribulations — and a great deal of humiliation. Yet the party's war trumpet signaling its readiness to face another general election has been unusually muted, and somewhat out of tune. Coming as it does on the eve of the first round of Gujarat polling, the designation of Advani as Prime Minister-in-waiting is a complex one. The decision has been pending for quite a while and an announcement was expected on his 81st birthday on November 8.
Some say that the decision is aimed at showing that it is not connected to the outcome of the Gujarat state assembly elections — whatever it is. Others argue that it could be seen as a means of getting some bump out of the electorate, because Mr. Advani represents Gandhinagar and has carefully cultivated his constituency, even though reports from the state indicated that attendance at his rallies was thin.
It is more than likely that the real reason is to put Narendra Modi in his place. In many ways Modi's persona and age seem to be better tailored to lead the party of Hindutva than that of the ageing Mr. Advani. But Modi’s style that brooks little dictation from the Sangh Parivar or anyone else goes against the grain of the Rashtriya Swyamsevak Sangh that prides itself in keeping its pracharaks and sympathisers on a short leash.

Sangh

Mr Advani has come to the fore also because he is the last man standing in the group of leaders who have had their hat in the ring for the past three years. Mr. Atal Bihari Vajpayee's reluctant retirement has been brought on by chronic illness in the past year. Mr. Murli Manohar Joshi's presence at the ceremony indicates that for the present, at least, he has conceded Mr. Advani's claim to primacy. Both he and the hapless Mr. Rajnath Singh became lame duck ever since the party was decisively trounced in the Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls earlier this year.
What remains to be seen now is whether there is a similar shift in the RSS. As long as Mr. K.S. Sudarshan remains Sarsanghchalak, the BJP will be forced to adjust to his eccentric demands and not be able to set its own agenda. As of now it would appear that the RSS wants a dual party-government type system where it can retain control through the party president who owes his position to the organisation. But this has not proved to be a workable proposition. Mr. Vajpayee's success lay precisely in avoiding the Sangh dictation. On the other hand, the manner in which the RSS savaged Advani on the “Jinnah was secular” remark indicates that the new leader has much less room for manoeuver.
Advani brings to the party a number of strengths. He is clear-headed and a good networker with regional parties which is needed to establish a new National Democratic Alliance. He has the loyalty of the younger crowd of leaders. But given his long innings, his weaknesses are also manifest. Primary among these is that he is cynical and self-serving.
He tailored his personal beliefs to ride a chariot across the country for the cause of building a temple for Lord Rama at Ayodhya. He did the same last year when he visited Mohammed Ali Jinnah’s mazar in Karachi and declared him secular. Cynicism is a pre-eminent trait of all successful politicians, but in Advani’s case it has been a source of weakness and brought disaster for the country and himself. Its latest manifestation is his opposition to the Indo-US nuclear deal, something that the pro-American Advani knows is good for the country, but he cannot get himself to say so because he sees no advantage in it for himself.


Rival

And, of course, there is the issue of age. Though he is in excellent health, he is 81. That is an age when infirmity steals up with ruthless speed and unpredictability. More important, he will be pitted with the Congress’ Rahul Gandhi who has recently been anointed crown prince of the Congress. Besides Rahul, there is the relatively young Sonia (61), who is increasingly assertive and sure-footed because the “Italian origin” slur has found little footing with the electorate. While Rahul has yet to make his mistakes, and will any way be given a long rope because of his inexperience, Advani has already made his, and will be judged on their basis.
Mr. Advani saw the moment of his greatness wither a long time ago. If it did not do so after his Babri Masjid movement destroyed social peace in the country, it certainly did so with his indifferent performance as Union Home Minister. The repeated instances of terrorism — Parliament, Akshardham, Kaluchak and the humiliation of exchanging a plane load of hostages in Kandahar for three top terrorists — are damning. His failure to formulate an effective strategy beyond talking tough marked out Advani as the non-Sardar Patel. A former intelligence chief's assessment was that “Mr Advani is incredibly shallow”. He showed an unusual appetite for accessing intelligence information, but he did little with it.
His remarks on Pakistan just after the nuclear tests were downright irresponsible and his predilection towards the US nearly got India caught into the Iraqi quagmire. The handling of a law to tackle terrorism, POTA, was so partisan that it prevented the enactment of an effective anti-terrorist legislation. He was completely swamped by the Intelligence Bureau and Home Ministry bureaucracy and did not provide the kind of ministerial leadership that was expected from the strong man of the BJP.
Beyond his own person, Mr. Advani has to contend with the problems of his party. While it does not have the stultifying leadership culture of the Congress which is dominated by a family, the BJP is a house divided everywhere. Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s relationship with his Cabinet colleagues, including Deputy Prime Minister Advani, were just a shade better than that of Shah Jehan with his sons.
The basic problem that Mr. Advani and the BJP have to confront is that they are a party espousing Hindutva, and by and large subsist on upper caste Hindu votes, but their potential allies come from a variety of parties, some based on caste, some on ethnicity. They do not see Hindutva as their lodestar, and neither do they necessarily demonise Muslims. The issue of Muslims has gained considerable salience considering that the National Democratic Alliance almost certainly lost the 2004 general election because of the Gujarat massacres of 2002. In the UP Assembly elections earlier this year, the BJP’s sorry showing was not just because of the state of the party organisation and leadership, but the fact that across the state Muslims made it a point to support the candidate most likely to defeat the BJP nominee. Alienating a bloc of voters is not a recipe for success in elections, except perhaps in the special conditions of Gujarat.

Hindutva

Advani and Vajpayee know that a pure Hindutva party does not have much traction with the electorate. Advani has himself publicly spoken about how the Jana Sangh had to become the “Bharatiya Janata Party” and later constitute a National Democratic Alliance before it could wield power at the Centre. Both Vajpayee and Advani had boasted that their government had a riot-free record in relation to Muslims, and then came the Gujarat cyclone and all pretensions were blown away.
Vajpayee’s attempt to sack Modi was defeated. And the consequence was the defeat in 2004. Vajpayee’s efforts to woo the community through a Dalit party president Bangaru Laxman, too came a cropper when he was caught in a sting and Bangaru’s remark that Muslims were the “blood of our blood” forgotten. Advani’s elliptical, though clumsy effort in hailing Jinnah nearly ended his career with the Parivar.
No two general elections are ever the same, and neither do issues that dominated one transfer to the other. The coming elections, whether in 2008 or on schedule the year after, will also be no different. To become Prime Minister, Mr. Advani will have to go beyond Lord Rama, rath yatras, terrorism or Pakistan. He has been a resourceful, if ruthless, politician in the past; what the future holds now for him only time will tell. But his margin for error is already that much thinner.

The article appeared in Mail Today December 12, 2007

The Modi Trap: He may win in Gujarat, but the BJP will lose everywhere else

The ghosts of the Gujarat dead will not lay quiet. Those who thought that the massacres of 2002 — that of Godhra and its aftermath—will fade from public memory are mistaken. Murder, especially mass murder, is not something that ever has a closure, especially when the guilty remain unpunished. The Bharatiya Janata Party’s stand on the killings is striking for how it reveals the hollow moral core of the party.
Whether or not the party’s government was guilty of complicity in the massacre of Muslims, we would have expected some expression of remorse. L.K. Advani has claimed that the Babri Masjid’s demolition was the saddest day in his life. Yet neither he, nor Narendra Modi have ever expressed the remotest sense of shame that during their watch — the former was the Union Home Minister and the latter the Chief Minister of the State — hundreds, if not thousands of people were killed by mobs led by goons belonging to the party and its fraternal organisations — the VHP and Bajrang Dal. The consequences of such a moral vacuum are usually severe. If unchecked they lead to the kind of excesses committed by Adolf Hitler, Stalin or Mao Zedong.

Root causes

Advani and Modi are a real and present danger for our polity. Intelligence agencies are not willing to say so openly, but their actions — Babri Masjid demolition of 1992 and the Gujarat killings of 2002 — gave the biggest fillip to terrorism in the country. Terrorists may need no motivation, but those who believe that a grievance does not play a role in fertilising the ground for recruiting terrorists are deluding themselves. In 1991, when Pakistan wanted to incite Indian Muslims, they sent Manjit Singh alias Lal Singh to Aligarh, Ahmedabad and other places disguised as a Muslim, Aslam Gill, because they had no reliable Indian Muslim agent. He found the ground sterile and was arrested in 1992. But that same year, Advani and his cohorts brought down the Babri Masjid and spurred horrific riots across India, especially in Surat and Mumbai. The result? There has been no shortage of recruits thereafter.
The elections in Gujarat are important, maybe, the BJP even has good reason to believe that they are crucial. But they are only one state elections in a very large country. Recent elections and political trends have indeed shown that the hard Hindutva line of the BJP may give dividends in Gujarat, but nearly everywhere else it will cost the party heavily.
The reason is that while Modi’s personality and Gujarat’s history may be tailor made for a chauvinist campaign, the rest of the country is marching to a different tune. This was manifest in the UP state elections recently where the BJP suffered a humiliating defeat. In almost every constituency, Muslims, who may constitute anywhere between 50 per cent and 15 per cent, voted only to defeat the Bharatiya Janata Party.
The BJP should not have forgotten the lesson of 2004 when it lost what was an almost shoo-in election. Allies like Chandrababu Naidu squarely blamed Gujarat for the defeat. Andhra’s Muslims are numerically less than those in UP, but if they vote en bloc against a party aligned to the BJP, it makes a difference. In the divided polity of the country, a bloc vote of 5, 10 and 15 per cent is enough to spell disaster for a party.
The BJP’s tallest leaders — Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Lal Kishen Advani — are well aware of this. It was the former’s acceptability with constituents that made the National Democratic Alliance possible. Not for nothing did Vajpayee seek to have Modi dismissed in the wake of the Gujarat happenings. Advani, too, is aware of the national ramifications of the Gujarat BJP’s near-homicidal attitude towards the Muslims and sought to square the circle by praising Mohammed Ali Jinnah, only to fall afoul of the RSS leadership. So the challenge before the party remains — be inclusive and go against the RSS’s Hindutva lakshman rekha; be exclusive and run the risk of being dumped by the
electorate.

Moral vacuum

The Modi position on Sohrabuddin Sheikh killing lacks any kind of ethical or moral foundation. In his fulminations, Modi does not refer to the “collateral” murder of Kausar Bi, Sohrabuddin’s spouse. If she was killed only because she was the wife of a bad man, the logical extension of the argument could be that we have the licence to kill the family of a terrorist, and, perhaps, members of the the community from which the terrorist hails. Those who laud Modi because he is only advocating a tough line against terrorists need to carefully look at the slippery slope ahead.
In our Constitutional scheme of things, only the judiciary has the right to punish wrong-doers. Neither the President, Prime Minister nor Chief Minister have this right, most certainly not police personnel like D.G. Vanzara, or for that matter S.S. Rathi and the other murderers in uniform who the media insists on calling “encounter specialists”.
Modi and Advani have perhaps not thought about this, but the only other set of individuals who believe that they have the right to decide whether or not “wrong-doers” shall live or die are terrorists. Modi’s posture is no different from that of a terrorist.

The trap

A great deal now depends on the Congress party. Its hands are not clean, though they are cleaner than that of the BJP. But for a brief flurry of “when a big tree falls” rhetoric, the party has steered clear of arrogantly defending the Sikh massacres of 1984. That it has kept politicians like Sajjan Kumar and Jagdish Tytler in the margin is proof that there is some sense of guilt in the party. But it has everything to gain, and nothing to lose by taking a hard line against religious, ethnic and caste fanatics. There may be losses, but in the long term there can only be gains. Nothing, in any way, could be worse than its fate in the last couple of decades. It has pandered to forces of casteism, chauvinism and fundamentalism and still remains unrewarded by the electorate.
As the clock ticks for the next general elections, it is clear that neither the Bharatiya Janata Party, nor the Congress will come near to a working majority on their own. Both will need support of substantial chunks — Left parties, TDP, AIDMK/DMK, BSP, SP, various factions of the Janata Dal and so on. Look at the list. None of them are likely to back a party that has a hawkish anti-Muslim stand.
Given the usually craven behaviour of the Congress, I may be over-interpreting the signs, but BJP and Modi may be walking into a trap of the Congress party’s making. Sonia’s “maut ke saudagar” comment immediately got Modi’s goat and his hard-line response has now set the tone for the party’s Gujarat campaign. The Bharatiya Janata Party may yet savour temporary success in the state, but hriday samrat Narendra Modi’s victory will spell disaster for the party elsewhere.
The article appeared in Mail Today December 7, 2007