The Enigma of Defeat, or how the leadership failed the country in 1962

The fiftieth anniversary of the Sino-Indian border war of 1962 has led to an outpouring of comment, analysis and some hand-wringing in India. The Chinese have more or less ignored the event.
In India, the war is seen as a stab in the back by China which resulted in a catastrophic defeat for the Indian forces and humiliation for the country. In retrospect, it was a watershed event marking the shift from the idealpolitik of the Nehruvian era to the realpolitik of Indira Gandhi.
But as time goes by the question continues to nag - how did the collapse of one division in a border region of the country become a national defeat? Were we undone by the Nehruvian hubris, or outdone by Mao's guile? 

Defeat

Because the government refuses to declassify the documents of that era  -even the history of the war that has been readied as a manuscript remains unpublished - the events surrounding the period remain shrouded in mystery, with rumour, half-baked incomplete information muddying what were already muddied waters.
The foremost question that comes to mind today is: Can it happen again? Even more so than 1962, China looms large over India, its economic prowess and military build up have shaken the region and the world. In terms of economic power, China seems to have an insurmountable lead over us.
Militarily then, as now, China remains vastly more powerful than India. Worse, in recent years, it has displayed a tendency to flex its ultra-nationalist muscles. Chinese assertiveness not only alarms India, but a swathe of countries from South Korea to Vietnam and Malaysia, not to speak of Japan and the United States.
In the Chinese reckoning, the 1962 war was a minor border war which was favourably concluded on their terms. The Chinese themselves have acknowledged that they lost as many as 800 plus soldiers, as compared to some 3180 Indians killed and another 4000 or so captured as prisoners of war.
The war in the east can be evenly divided into two parts roughly from October 20, with the first attacks on Indian positions on the Namka Chu rivulet, and the fall of Tawang four days later and a second phase which began with a series of attacks in mid-November. This included the attack on Walong at the eastern extremity of the McMahon Line that defines the Sino-Indian border in Arunachal Pradesh on November 16, followed a day later by an attack on Se La and Bomdi La positions east and south-east of Tawang.
Simultaneously, in the western sector, after clearing up poorly supported and isolated Indian positions in the Aksai Chin and Pangong Tso area beginning October 20, the main attack against Chusul was launched on 18 November.
Disaster hit India in the Se La-Bomdi La area where the PLA outflanked a strong Indian position leading to the collapse of the 4th Division. This brought their forces to the very plains of Assam by November 20.
The Se La bastion, for example, was "exceedingly strong, well stocked and held by a brigade of five battalions" according to the official history. But poor generalship and superior Chinese tactics led to their collapse without a battle of any consequence.
The official history notes that this was not about overwhelming Chinese strength or "human wave" tactics - the Chinese outnumbered the Indian side only marginally and had no artillery support. This was about the demoralisation of the Indian military leadership - that of division commander Maj Gen Pathania, their Corps Commander Lt Gen B.M. Kaul and the Eastern Army Commander L.P. Sen.
But in the three other areas along the Line of Actual Control, Indian troops stood their ground, often till they were overwhelmed and killed. In the battle for Walong in the eastern extremity of the country, jawans, poorly equipped and supported - they had single shot .303 rifles as their basic weapon and in most cases no artillery support - fought hard and when they had to withdraw, they did so in reasonable order.

Courage

The story of Chusul is inspiring. Indian forces - essentially a company 100 or so strong - at Rezangla and a smaller number on nearby Gurung Hill faced a massive attack backed by artillery and fought throughout the day on November 18 from the crack of dawn till nearly midnight.
In Rezangla, just 14 of its 112 Indian defenders survived. The initial attacks on Gurung Hill were halted for a while, but the smaller force of 17 men eventually died to the man. There was no retreat here and this enabled Brigadier T N Raina to redeploy his forces in an orderly manner to positions in Chusul that were held till the ceasefire.
Considering the size of the forces that we had concentrated in the Se La-Bomdi La area, this was a defeat of a great magnitude, pure and simple. But across the Sino-Indian border, deployed often in penny-packets, supplied by air and lacking artillery support and modern weapons, the Indian soldiers fought and died like no others.

Explanation

Yet, the outcome of the Sino-Indian war of 1962 is seen as a comprehensive national defeat. And that it was, not because the army gave way, but because the leadership did - the generals, politicians and bureaucratic leaders' will to resist collapsed in the wake of the Se La-Bomdi La disaster.
This was manifested in the precipitate abandonment of upper Assam, an action that involved the emptying of the Treasury in Tezpur, opening of its jails and, reportedly, even its mental asylum.
Compare this with Britain in the summer of 1940 or Moscow in December 1941, where will alone created a triumph. It was not a matter of guns, since only a few had been brought into play anyway.
The bulk of the Indian army remained undeployed, and the combat capacity of the Air Force was never used.
It was, and it remains, a classic lesson in the art of war by Mao, a student of Sun Tzu - using deception, diplomacy and the military to shape events in such a manner that the will to resist collapses well before the real war begins.

Mail Today October 11, 2012

Bharatiya Janata Party needs to shed its negativism

The passing of Brajesh Mishra, the all-powerful aide of National Democratic Alliance Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee in the 1998- 2004 period on the day that the BJP national executive meeting concluded in Surajkund, Haryana, was a coincidence.
Mishra retired from an active role in public life, along with Vajpayee, in the wake of the election defeat of 2004.
But the intersection of the two events at this time serves to highlight the gap between the BJP of today, and the one that ruled the country then. 

This gap is important, because within it lies the answer to the conundrum-will they, or won't they.
Will the BJP and the NDA be able to capitalise on the travails of the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance, win the general election scheduled for 2014, and come to power again at the head of the Union government?

Mishra with his hats as the Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister and National Security Adviser ramrodded the policies of the NDA government, whether they related to economic reform or national security.
He, and to a great extent his boss, represented the realist strain of Indian politics.
Their policy prescriptions were shaped by a relentless pursuit of national interest. Issues such as the Ram Mandir, the removal of Article 370 from the Constitution and the need for a uniform civil code-an otherwise laudable measure but for the Sangh Parivar a manifestation of its antipathy for Muslims-were ignored.
Their skill was manifest in their graduated handling of Pakistan. In February 1999, they offered Islamabad the hand of friendship in Lahore.
Confronted by Kargil, they used a combination of military force and diplomacy with such subtlety that Pakistan has more or less lost its international case on Kashmir.
But instead of rubbing its nose on the ground, they offered a hand of friendship again in Agra in 2002, which paid off in the January 2004 agreement that has been the basis of the India-Pakistan peace process since then.
While Nehruvian idealism as practised by Pandit Nehru and his heirs Indira, Rajiv and Sonia Gandhi contains a great deal of pragmatism, and even ruthless realism, its default mode has been an idealism. In contrast, Mishra and Vajpayee were, in a sense not ideological.
True, Vajpayee was a swayamsevak, indeed, the senior-most member of the RSS, but it is also a fact that throughout his term as prime minister he gave short shrift to the Sangh and its parivar.
As for Mishra, he may have begun his political life as a member of the BJP's foreign affairs cell, but his dharma was to faithfully carry out his boss's policies, many of which were never clearly articulated and had to be understood intuitively.
And those policies shifted the Indian paradigm decisively. Pokhran and its momentous consequences, the Golden Quadrilateral, deregulation of the oil sector, the fiscal responsibility act, opening up of the telecommunications sector, peace moves towards Pakistan and for resolution of the border dispute with China, all had their roots in the NDA government.
It is this era of realism, pragmatism and achievement that the current BJP, which leads the much battered NDA, must strive to reach.
And anyone who witnessed the national executive meeting of the party and its outcome last week will agree, that it will take some doing.
Its tone and tenor were evident from its principal 'achievement'-approving a change of rules to enable Nitin Gadkari to become president for a second consecutive term.
Had Gadkari's first term been outstanding, this measure would be understandable. But it has not been so, and the only conclusion that we can arrive at is that the party's leadership issue remains unresolved.
Of course, there is the other subtext of this decision. Gadkari, a businessman and a Maharashtra-state politician, became president of the party over the wishes of its senior leadership pushed by the Rashtriya Swyamsevak Sangh (RSS) following L K Advani's eclipse in the wake of the Jinnah controversy.

While the resolutions adopted were standard fare, what was surprising was the rhetoric. Moving the resolution on economic affairs, Arun Jaitley attacked the Congress reforms as being influenced by the West.
But for generalities, neither Jaitley, nor Gadkari or other party leaders outlined just what reforms the BJP would offer were it to come to power.
Strangely, instead of telling us what reforms his party would undertake in India, Jaitley outlined a set of reforms he wanted the western countries to undertake.
In the process, it has opposed everything that the Congress has proposed, regardless of whether or not these measures had been backed by the BJP in the past.
It is not as though the BJP has gone back to its Hindutva roots. The three issues it had set aside at the time of forming the NDA-Ram Mandir, Article 370 and uniform civil code-remain firmly off the agenda, even now.

Not surprisingly, the one voice of reason that stuck out was that of L K Advani.
Notwithstanding his own past weaknesses and opportunistic behaviour, the grand old man of the party was clearly in a didactic mood when he told the concluding session of the national executive meet that perhaps the time had come for the party to reinvent itself once again.
In essence, he said that the party needed to reassure the minorities (read Muslims) 'that we brook no discrimination or injustice in dealing with different sections of our diverse society.'
But at the heart of Advani's message was the call for the party to recover the realistic roots of its Vajpayee era political equipoise.
The key manifestation of that posture was the NDA itself-an alliance wide enough to contain a George Fernandes, M Karunanidhi, Parkash Singh Badal, Farooq Abdullah and Naveen Patnaik.
At the heart of any policy based on realism, is pragmatism and not the mindless negativism that we have got from the Surajkund conclave.

Mail Today October 1, 2012

Political timing scores for the UPA

If a week is supposed to be a long time in politics, the eighteen months till the scheduled date of the next general elections in 2014 is an eternity.

This is the reality that the Opposition parties, which are huffing and puffing to blow the UPA-2 house down, must contend with.
These are also the months that offer the possibility of redemption for the Congress-led alliance which has wasted three long years through its policy of masterly inactivity and finally decided to act. Alliance In politics, as in theatre, timing is everything.
Critics may argue that the UPA2 should have acted earlier and that they struck back only when their backs were to the wall. In the end, whether by design or accident, they acted at the right time.
For them to have taken these measures last year at the height of the anti-corruption movement, and on the eve of important state assembly polls, would have been foolhardy.
Likewise, this year they needed to hold their fire till the presidential and vice-presidential elections were out of the way.
Finally they acted when the anti-corruption movement had reached its nadir, no significant state assembly poll (barring Gujarat where the Congress tally has only one way to go, up) and the haemorrhaging fuel costs had reached a point where the country's credit rating would get 'junk' status.
So, the UPA now has time. The question is whether it can use this time effectively, or squander it as it did in the last three years.
As of now the coalition has been smart to front-load reform measures that were being opposed tooth and nail by the Opposition-FDI in retail, broadcasting, aviation, an increase in diesel prices, an effort to cap the LPG subsidy.
This has been followed in rapid- fire movement by Chidambaram's signal that the taxation regime will once again become investor friendly and that the government would now begin moving on its disinvestment agenda.
The government knows that issues like banking or insurance reform is less likely to be taken up because they require a change in the current law and the balance of power in Parliament, especially the Upper House, is not a comfortable one for UPA2.
Eighteen months are clearly not enough to get the economy on the high growth path howsoever urgently the government acts. This is especially since the external situation remains dismal.
Europe is still teetering on the brink and the American economy remains anaemic. Oil prices continue to remain high and inflation is still a concern enough to ensure that the RBI is not lowering the interest rates.
But what matters is that the UPA has at least revealed a blueprint for the kind of India it wants and more important seems determined at last to act on that blueprint instead of merely waving it around.
The Opposition, on the other hand, has no blueprint or scheme; it just seems to revel in negativism.
The BJP, the party that strongly supported FDI, the Indo-US nuclear deal and disinvestment when it led the then ruling National Democratic Alliance coalition has become a bitter opponent of all three policies.
No one knows what the party stands for today. All we hear from its leaders is an endless tirade against the Congress and the UPA. Come election time, voters are unlikely to be impressed by this.
They will want to know what the BJP is all about, and that is being carefully obfuscated to prevent us from realising that the party's leadership and its ideology are in disarray.
By now it is clear that the UPA 2 ship remains steady; the decision of the Trinamool Congress to walk out has, ironically, assisted this process. By remaining within, the 19-member group by itself was capable of capsizing the boat.
The experience between the defenestration of Dinesh Trivedi as railway minister and that of the protest against the price rise of diesel and the introduction of FDI in retail would have been sufficient to convince even the most optimist of people, that Mamata's exit was a matter of time. Politics
The politics of India is now at an interesting new phase where a collection of regional and caste-based parties sense opportunity to move ahead, while the three major national formations-here we include the Left in the category- seek to retain their clout.
The problem with these regional and caste formations is that their traction is limited.
Ask Mayawati. She has tried more than anyone else has to enhance the footprint of the Bahujan Samaj Party across the nation.
Conventional wisdom would have suggested that she would succeed since Dalits are a pan-Indian phenomenon, and the BSP is well-funded and has a leader who has developed a national presence.
But the BSP has failed to make headway. In a more desultory way, the Trinamool is playing the same game. The SP has managed some voter support in distant Mumbai, based on migrants, but that's all.
The Janata Dal (United) may hearken to the old Janata party, but it is in essence a Bihari formation and likely to remain that way. As for the Dravidians, their appeal remains confined to the lands between Tirupati and Kanyakumari.
So, we have a slew of leaders who are likely to win 20,30, 50 seats and they are all hoping to be crowned king, or be the kingmaker. And this is what is really adding turbulence to the Indian political system.
There is little to be gained by celebrating these petty satraps. This vast and divergent India needs a leadership which is able to deal with issues on a national basis and perspective.
Only two formations are in that game. But where one seems to have gotten lost in some modern chakravyuh (maze), the other is at least, and at last, making an effort.
Mail Today September 24, 2012

Sops and projects only trick up UPA sleeve

It is difficult not to be cynical over the UPA's efforts to press the constitutional amendment for promotions for SC&ST personnel in government.
Especially since the ongoing political developments are bringing on talk of the next general election which is scheduled to be held by May 2014, but could well take place sooner.
The zeal with which the UPA pushed for the SC&ST promotion Bill was not merely to deflect the heat from the Coalgate affair, but also to prepare the ground for the next general election.

Having no other 'big bang' idea, the UPA government has, in bits and pieces, begun putting in place a slew of social welfare schemes, sops and projects which are designed to maximise its appeal to the electorate.

The centre pieces here are the food security bill, health-care reform and rural sanitation schemes.
In addition, the government has put in new funding for older schemes like Bharat Nirman, for developing rural infrastructure and the MNREGA for providing rural employment.
The food security bill seeks to cover a staggering 67.5 per cent of India's 1.2 billion people, expanding the existing subsidised food entitlement scheme that covers about 180 million of India's poorest people who receive about 4 million tonnes of grain every month through 'fair price shops'.

The scheme would virtually double annual food subsidies and play havoc with the fiscal deficit, but that would happen after the elections.
Of course, with the future functioning of parliament in doubt, it remains to be seen whether the proposed Bill will ever go through both the houses.
The second pillar of the social welfare regime to be promised in the coming elections is the new healthcare programme for the urban poor.
Here, the Union Health ministry is already moving to unveil its National Urban Health Mission to benefit the urban poor which will provide healthcare infrastructure worth Rs 22,500 crore in seven metros and nearly 800 towns with a population of more than 50,000.

Coal-laden trucks at Rajrappa, an open-cast coal mine project, under Central Coalfields Limited in Ramgarh, Jharkhand, India

This is a counterpart of the National Rural Health Mission which has been under way since 2005, but which, as the example of Uttar Pradesh shows, has been mired in corruption and maladministration.
A third scheme that the UPA is banking on is the rural sanitation scheme for which Rs 3,500 crore has been allocated for the coming year and an estimated Rs 35,000 crore will be spent in the coming 12th plan period (2012-17).
The legislative leg of this scheme is a bill to prohibit manual scavenging and rehabilitate the scavengers.
A pre-election budget could see a host of more sops. A preview of sorts is visible in the promises being made by the Gujarat Congress party which has promised affordable houses, free plots, cheap medical treatment, and free laptops to students after they clear standard XII examination.
The Delhi government, for its part, has come up with a massive scheme to regularise over 700 illegal colonies.
And this is just the beginning. In an atmosphere where free TVs, laptops, mixer grinders and mangalsutras are raining down on the electorate, it is not surprising that a rumour last month claimed that the PM was all set to announce the distribution of free cell phones for below poverty line people.
All these come on top of a massive subsidy regime involving fuel, fertiliser and food.
The budgeted (for 2012-13) subsidy for fuel is Rs 43,580 crore, that for fertiliser Rs 61,000 crore and Rs 75,000 crore for food. But we know that if the controlled prices of petroleum products are not increased substantially, the subsidy could be several times the budgeted amount.
In the present economic situation, the government's subsidy efforts require it to run faster to stay in the same place.
That is because the economic downturn has led to a considerable slowdown in the rate of growth of jobs, particularly in the urban and semi-urban areas.

 

 

That these subsidies have a distorting effect on the economy is understood well by the economists. But the ordinary folk do not understand that the fiscal deficit that they lead to can actually negate the value of the subsidies.
That is because the fiscal deficit leads to inflation, which has rightly been called a tax on the poor. This year the government had budgeted for a possible deficit of 5.1 per cent of the GDP, but it now looks like that the figure could be over 6 per cent. But will that stay the government's hand?
Unlikely. The ruling UPA does not seem to have anything else by way of election strategy.
The last two years have seen the government embroiled in multiple scandals which have served to show that the licence-quota raj is alive and kicking.
Indeed, in almost every area, the government seems to have retained discretionary power and has misused it to aid and enrich friends and their families.
Experience shows that no elections are ever won by promises of sops and subsidies. Otherwise incumbents would never lose since they are often in a position to promise more goodies.
Almost every general election that has taken place has shifted the political paradigm in one direction or the other.
So will the next general election. And you can be sure that sops and subsidies will be of little avail.
Mail Today September 14, 2012

China launches a peace offensive

The Chinese are on a peace offensive now. In keeping with the precision with which they operate, the Chinese have sent three top military officers across the world to convey the message that China's actions in South Asia and the South China Sea should not be seen as threatening by anyone.
It is quite another matter whether their interlocutors will receive the message that China wishes to convey. But you can't fault Beijing for not trying.
China's defence minister Liang Guanglie came on a four-day official visit to India on Sunday, at the head of a 23 member delegation.
The delegation included Yang Jinshan, commander of the Tibet autonomous region's military district. This was the first visit by a Chinese defence minister since 2004, but Liang had visited India as chief of the general staff in 2005.
Simultaneously, a PLA delegation, led by the deputy chief of general staff Lt General Ma Xiaotian, began a tour of Vietnam, Myanmar, Malaysia and Singapore. India, of course, has a border dispute with China, and so do Vietnam and Malaysia.
Lieutenant General Cai Yingting, deputy chief of the general staff of the PLA recently concluded a visit to the United States where he took the opportunity of reiterating Beijing's position on the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands which are disputed between China and Japan, leaving the Chinese worried that the latter may invoke the US-Japan security treaty to protect their claim over the islands. 

And, we should be clear, as Meng Xiangqing, deputy director of the Strategic Research Institute at the National Defense University of the PLA told China Daily, despite the new diplomatic thrust Beijing 'will not yield when sovereignty and territory are concerned'. In that sense, diplomacy, military or otherwise, is another weapon in assertive Beijing's arsenal.
In an interview to an Indian daily on the eve of his visit, General Liang sought to soothe Indian fears. He echoed what General Ma had told prime minister Manmohan Singh in December 2011, that the PLA does not have a single soldier in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir.
He also commended the steps the two sides had taken to maintain peace and tranquility on the Line of Actual Control that marks the Sino-Indian border.
In essence, what General Liang seems to be attempting is to ensure that the Sino-Indian relations remain stable, even as Beijing grapples with its more pressing problems-the US pivot to Asia and its maritime boundary disputes with various ASEAN countries and Japan.
But while generals Liang, Ma and Cai, the diplomats, do the rounds of South and South-east Asia, their armies continue to plan and fight the next war better.
Which is saying a lot for any military. Of immediate concern to India, for example, are the four major military exercises that the PLA has carried out in Tibet since March this year.
These have included exercises relating to the movement of Chinese forces across the Tibet Qinghai plateau, as well as live air to ground fire drills conducted by the PLA Air Force.
The Chinese are making a special effort to gear up their forces for high-altitude operations in cold areas, a field where the Indian armed forces have considerable experience and expertise.  Earlier this month, a major exercise featured the movement of Chinese armoured columns across the Brahmaputra river (called Yalung Yangbo) in Tibet. Exercises have focused on fuel replenishment, food supply and ammunition transportation.
Another area of tension between the two countries has been the South China Sea. India's decision to withdraw from two exploration blocks earlier this year was seen as a withdrawal from the South China Sea dispute by New Delhi. However, since then, ONGC has said that it will continue to participate in Vietnam's oil exploration.
The use of military diplomacy is a hallmark of the growing sophistication of Chinese foreign and security policy. The goal of the Chinese generals is to convince their principals-India, Vietnam, Japan and the US, that their military modernisation does not aim to destabilise regional equations.
In other words, India should not get worked up over Chinese relations with Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. Pakistan is, of course, a special case. But there is a larger goal in view. Beijing is mortally afraid of being 'contained' by the United States.
For this reason, it is maintaining good ties with Russia, and backing it diplomatically on the issue of Syria. Likewise, China is conducting a complex policy through which it manages to maintain its 'all weather' friendship with Pakistan and maintain a tough posture on its border dispute with India, even while ensuring that New Delhi, whose military modernisation is lagging, does not fall into the arms of the United States.
The same goals mark its efforts with the ASEAN countries with whom it is locked in disputes over their maritime boundary with China. India has nothing to fear from China.
This may be the 50th anniversary of our defeat at the hands of Beijing in 1962, but we are a world away from that era. The Indian armed forces modernisation may be lagging, but we possess sufficient forces to defend ourselves. More important, in contrast to 1962, we have a far greater 'situational awareness.'
In short, we know what is on the other side of the mountain-Chinese capabilities and their deployments are not a complete unknown as they were in 1962. Significantly, China itself stands at a delicate threshold.
Its military may be strong, but its political and social situation is fraught. Growth is slowing and its political system is looking frail and antiquated in the light of the Bo Xilai affair.
Despite decades of effort, Tibet remains an area of concern for Beijing. There should be no doubt that it remains in India's interest to engage China without reservations.
We must, however, be clear in our own minds that the only way to achieve peaceful and productive relations with our great neighbour is by maintaining a credible defence posture-both nuclear and conventional.

Mail Today September 6, 2012

A battle that the BJP cannot win

Attack the government, if you will for not taking decisions, but the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is responsible for the paralysis of parliament. The party says that the Prime Minister is responsible for allotting coal blocks to private parties when they should have been disposed through an auction.
Basing themselves on the Comptroller & Auditor General's report, they say that the PM must go, otherwise they will not let Parliament function.
Its leaders are quite unapologetic about their stand, with Arun Jaitley declaring that the party was willing to stand in 'majestic isolation', if required. 

Remarkably, even as the Delhi trio of Jaitley, Sushma Swaraj and L.K. Advani have brought on an unprecedented political crisis in the country, party president Nitin Gadkari has gone with his family on a 22- day vacation to Canada.
Strategy It is not very clear as to what is motivating the BJP to take what is clearly an over the top stand. Simply put, the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance has some 155 seats in Parliament and the Congress led United Progressive Alliance has over 267.
Since the Bahujan Samaj Party and the Samajwadi Party largely support the UPA, the ruling alliance has an unassailable numerical majority.
That is why, instead of moving a no-confidence motion and seeking the removal of the government, as parliamentary procedure would dictate, the BJP wants the Congress to commit hara-kiri.
Now, just why it thinks the Congress should oblige is not entirely clear since shame and self esteem are hardly qualities that you factor into equations defining the political balance of power.
The BJP cannot demand that its numerical weakness, a consequence of its poor performance in the 2009 general elections, be ignored.
At the end of the day, the Congress is the ruling dispensation and the BJP the Opposition.
This balance is reflected not only in the way the chips would fall if a no confidence motion were moved, but also in how the Public Accounts Committee which, as per convention, examines the Comptroller & Auditor General's reports in greater detail would deal with the issue. Perhaps there is a simpler answer to this seemingly unreasonable course adopted by the party.
The two leaders who are the most vociferous in the debate- Jaitley and Swaraj are known to be acolytes of Advani. A seppuku by the Congress would give Mr Advani, who has insistently refused to announce his retirement, a shot at becoming the prime minister. Lalji is a sprightly 85 now, so in 2014 he will be approaching 87.
At the same time, it would neutralise the threat that is being posed to Jaitley and Swaraj's ambitions by Narendra Modi, who will not become the definitive prime ministerial candidate of the BJP till the Gujarat State Assembly elections are over, six months from now.
The BJP's dysfunctional behaviour has been visible for some time now. And most recently it was manifest in its conduct during the presidential elections.
Instead of coming out with a credible candidate who would have represented the party's ideological and philosophical position clearly, they sought to encourage a UPA renegade- Mamata Banerjee-to stick the knife in the Congress party's back.
The result was not surprising-the BJP ended up with no candidate of its own and had to piggy-back on P A Sangma's candidacy- another UPA renegade, backed by two NDA outliers, Jayalalitha and the AIADMK and Navin Patnaik and the BJD. Pushed by Jaitley and Swaraj and backed by Advani, the BJP appears to have staked all in a battle it cannot win.
Yes, it can draw out the Coalgate affair. Its dirty tricks department can slyly suggest that this or that allottee was related to this or that Congress leader or minister. Govt But on the larger issue, they have not managed to shake the Congress from its position that the allotments were made in a transparent manner and that if there was wrongdoing in terms of misrepresentations and forgeries by the companies in question, well they have the CBI looking into it.
The government's view that the presumptive losses have been wrongly calculated is not that outlandish. And, to top it all, there is clear evidence that among those who opposed the auction route were chief ministers of the BJPruled states.
When it comes to mining, no ruling party in the country has a clean record. The BJP's Karnataka copy book has been thoroughly blotted by the Reddy brothers of Bellary, 'god sons' of Sushma Swaraj, who coincidentally blamed Jaitley for their appointment as ministers in the Karnataka cabinet.
Consequences As it is, the Delhi trio-Advani, Swaraj and Jaitley- may have taken on more than they can chew in targeting Prime Minister Singh.
Mr Advani should not have forgotten the consequences his party faced after he decided to target Singh during the 2009 elections. This time, the BJP believes that the PM cannot escape blame since he was the Coal Minister. This could however, be misleading.
The Prime Minister is often nominally the incharge of several ministries.
He certainly does have, as Jaitley pointed out, the 'vicarious' responsibility for the allocations- which the PM has acknowledged in his Monday statement in Parliament- though few would agree that he was 'directly' liable as well, which would mean he was taking day-to-day interest in the Coal ministry's activities.
The Coalgate affair will have lasting consequences in India's political history.
At one level, it has brought the already crisis-ridden system one step closer to a breakdown.
If the principal Opposition of the day refuses to acknowledge the majority of an incumbent government and is hell-bent on pushing the situation over the brink, there is little that the government of the day can do, except to take undemocratic steps like seeking the expulsion and eviction of the entire NDA from Parliament.
We may therefore have the paradox of the system being cleansed per force by the actions of the civil society and the Opposition and the reaction of the government. But the government system itself seems to be tottering towards a collapse. 
Mail Today August 28, 2012