The voter speaks...and how !

Elections sometimes resemble a kaleidoscope. Every twist gives you a different pattern from the same elements.
The recent state assembly polls in Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Uttarakhand, Goa and Manipur seem to have broken that mould.
The voter has given the party of his or her choice a definitive mandate.
Whether it is the record-breaking return of the Akali party-led coalition in Punjab, or the Samajwadi Party's stunning victory in UP, the massive win for the BJP in Goa, or the Congress in Manipur, you are left in no doubt as to what the voter wanted.
The Congress party had the anti-incumbency factor at its command to win in Punjab and Uttarakhand, and do much better in UP, but that it did not, is a result of the anti-corruption sentiment that has gripped the land, ever since the Commonwealth Games and 2G scams tsunami hit. 



Akhilesh Yadav

The Congress party had the anti-incumbency factor at its command to win in Punjab and Uttarakhand, and do much better in UP, but that it did not, is a result of the anti-corruption sentiment that has gripped the land, ever since the Commonwealth Games and 2G scams tsunami hit. 

The anti-corruption mood, too, explains the extent of Mayawati's defeat. The high voter turnouts and the decisive nature of the verdicts make it clear, however, that the outcome is not a negative vote against the loser, but a positive mandate for the winner.
The massive surge in support for the SP, which won across all the regions of the state - owes a great deal to the support of the Muslim community. In every election since the post Babri Masjid riots, the community has voted tactically - to keep the BJP out of the seat.
However, this time it would appear that the Muslims have voted overwhelmingly for the SP, but for a different reason.
Security was not a consideration since the BJP had little chance of forming the government. The decision seems based on an assessment as to the party that would credibly have a chance of forming the next government, and offering the community the best possible developmental deal.
These are considerations that have influenced other communities, too. A great deal of credit must go to the party scion Akhilesh Yadav who has sought to give the party a modern face.
People seem to have ignored the role of the party in bringing goonda raj (hooligan rule) the last time around in 2003. Clearly, the politics of expectations have trumped those of fears. What does all this bode for national politics? At one level, the performance of the 'national' parties has been poor.
If the Congress has failed to perform in all the states, except Manipur, the BJP performance has been little better, notwithstanding its good showing in Goa.
It is riding on the back of its regional ally in Punjab, and in UP its performance has been nothing to write home about. In Uttarakhand, only Maj General Khanduri's sacrifice has enabled it to salvage what was once a clearly lost cause.
It would be premature to write off the national parties at this stage. In great measure the Congress is paying for its own acts with regard to corruption. Its handling of the corruption scandals of 2010 and 2011 has been scandalous.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is an honest man, but most people believe that he has led one of the most corrupt governments in the history of the nation.
A combination of these factors may have influenced the outcome in Punjab, where the voters overlooked the corruption charges against the Badals to hand them a massive victory.
Their attitude seems to be that the Akalis were a more credible option when it comes to their own future and the development of the state, rather than the factious Congress party of the state.
The self-inflicted weaknesses of the mainstream parties may be creating space for the consolidation of the regional formations.
Thus the second victory in a row, the first time this has happened in more than 40 years, for the Akali Dal will help it to cement itself in the state's politics. We may also be witnessing something akin to this in UP where the polity may become bipolar- involving the SP and the BSP- excluding the mainstream parties like the Congress and the BJP.
The Punjabi identity has never been in doubt. But a UP wallah is neither here nor there. This election may begin to provide some answer to that in giving shape to the identity-the state where the SP and BSP flourish. It will not quite have the ideological flavour of our Dravidian parties-the DMK and AIADMK-but it would be fairly definite and it is a beginning. 

At the helm: Sukhbir Singh Badal

And what of the individual? In many ways this was an election that heralded generational change. Young Sukhbir Badal already has his hands on the helm in Punjab.
In UP, Mayawati is relatively young, but she was confronted by young Rahul Gandhi, and the even younger Akhilesh Yadav. The clear winner of the three is Akhilesh who many people believe has been instrumental in steering the party away from its goonda raj days, though only time will tell whether or not this is true.
As for Rahul, despite his heroic efforts, he failed to galvanise the voters, even against the relatively easy target of Mayawati. Perhaps he was bested by the more credible presence of the SP in the state, or maybe his high-voltage campaign was pitched wrongly.
But it is back to the drawing board for him and he knows this. There are some things you can say when an election result comes out. But there are others you can only learn in the fullness of time and fitness of things. Among these will be the implications of the election outcome on the UPA II government at the Centre.
And then there are the forthcoming Rajya Sabha polls, the Presidential election, and the final culmination- the next general elections currently scheduled for 2014. 
Mail Today March 6, 2012

Uttar Pradesh is on the cusp of change

My atomic theory is seriously outdated, but from what I remember, one electron and one proton gave you hydrogen, two and two add up to helium, three and three lithium and so on. In other words, a quantitative increase in protons and electrons leads to a qualitatively different element. The same, of course, happens in the case of molecules where a simple combination of carbon and hydrogen gives you butter, but another, more complex will yield dalda.
How does this connect to politics? Simply, the quantitative changes that have taken place in the country in the past decade are on the verge of taking on a qualitative shape. The signature development of this period has been economic growth— notwithstanding, or indeed in spite of turbulence in the global economy. This has led to a transformation in the way our countrymen think and act. The positive development has been the individualisation of identities which were, till now, forged in the fires of caste.

Expectations
This differentiation has been evident in cities, where the baleful forces of caste identity, or, in all fairness, its security blanket, have frayed. Given the economics of living in the big city, it is each man and family for itself, and may the devil take the hindmost. The pull of the extended family will still be there, but not so much of the caste. In any case, making ends meet is tough enough, and maintaining kinship ties an expensive proposition.
In the countryside it has unleashed the revolution of rising expectations that has swept and maintained Nitish Kumar in power in Bihar. Now it is threatening to upend the existing power balance in Uttar Pradesh. The one state, paradoxically, where nothing seems to be happening is Punjab whose politics seems to be stuck in a groove, much to the detriment of a state which deserves better.
In UP, a congruence of disparate events are creating the opportunity for a tectonic change. First, Mayawati’s rule may have solidified her Dalit base, but it has frayed the electoral alliance between the Bahujan Samaj Party and the upper castes in the state that led to an unprecedented majority for the party in the 2007 state assembly elections. Second, the rapacity of the rule has alienated the influential middle classes who live in the ever growing tier II and tier III towns of the state. Just one manifestation of this has been the NRHM scam where an astounding Rs 3,000 crore may have been embezzled over the course of ten years or so. The people do not resent the monuments made by Mayawati, but they most certainly are fed up of the extent of money the political and bureaucratic class is skimming off into its pockets.
Second, the crisis in the Congress-party led United Progressive Alliance government in New Delhi probably forced Rahul Gandhi to shift gears and put down his own stakes in the ongoing state assembly elections. This act has led to an injection of resources and effort by the party to revive its moribund unit in the state. The going is uphill, but the effort is bound to yield positive results in the future.

Elements
Third, Mulayam Singh began feeling the effects of age in the past couple of years. People who know him and interact with him know that Netaji is no longer the man he was. Instead, we have his son, educated abroad, married outside the close-knit community, and fluent in English, a language that his father abhorred. Fortunately, young Akhilesh is not alienated enough to be apolitical. When it comes to politics he is very much Netaji’s son and that, and the energy and perspective he has brought into the Samajwadi Party politics in recent times will pay the party back in spades when the results are announced.
Fourth, the early focus on the Muslim vote in the contest has led to a revival of the fortunes of the Bharatiya Janata Party. Initially, the BJP appeared deadbeat, and the entire attention was focused on Rahul Gandhi’s activities and the Samajwadi surge. Narendra Modi’s refusal to campaign only underscored the perennial leadership problem of the party. However, the constant refrain over the importance of the Muslim vote has led to a polarisation of votes in favour of the BJP and the party is likely to do better than expected.

Paradigm
Just what will be the new plate tectonics of UP is somewhat difficult to assess. In the multi-phased elections there have been ups and downs within the matrix we have outlined above. In any case, in a multi-cornered contest, it is not easy to predict the way the seats will be gained or lost. And don’t forget that 163 out of the 403 seats are new constituencies since they have come up as a consequence of the delimitation process.
There is another factor we should consider. Just as at the national level, elections to the state assembly often end up shifting the paradigm. This was manifest in 2007 when Mayawati and the BSP won with a clear majority, for the first time since 1991. Does it mean that the voter is likely to give the winner a clear mandate, rather than the fractured ones that were a feature of the state before the 2007 poll? Even though sometimes it appears that the more things change the more they stay the same, the truth is in history there is no going back.
But, there is always the worry. Remember the lesson from the chemistry of making hooch from denatured spirit: Ethyl alcohol distils over at 78.3 degrees centigrade, and methyl alcohol at 64.7 degrees. A little error leads to the poisonous methyl alcohol contaminating the distillate, causing tragedy. Unanticipated shifts could always transform UP’s seemingly upbeat scenario into a political disaster.
Mail Today February 29, 2012

NCTC: Over the top ideas rain trouble on government

ONE of the features of the infirmity of the second UPA government is its poor power of anticipation. This is manifested in the manner in which it has been blind-sided by the negative response of almost all Opposition-ruled states to the order creating the National Counter-Terrorism Centre (NCTC).
That these states include Tripura, ruled by the Leftists, centrist Orissa, Bihar and Tamil Nadu, and the right-wing BJP-ruled Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, Uttarakhand and Gujarat, tells its own story.
Though they have not spoken, the BSP that rules Uttar Pradesh and the Akali Dal-run Punjab are likely to have a similar view.
The situation is not dissimilar to what happened when the government announced its decision to permit 100 per cent Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in multi-brand retail in December. But the issue of the NCTC is different.
It is not just a matter of anticipation, but something which appears to be questionable in law and utility. Everyone is agreed that India needs to do a great deal to enhance its ability to respond to the terrorist threat. For the past 30 years, we have suffered from the scourge of terrorism, and even today, our ability to thwart attacks in advance is negligible.
In the past month, we have heard of the peculiar clash between the Delhi Police special cell, acting as a proxy of the Intelligence Bureau (IB), and criticising the Mumbai Police for arresting one of their informants.
Insiders will tell you that the Mumbai Police are no angels, divided as they are between the crime branch and the Anti-Terrorism Squad.
The lack of coordination between the various intelligence agencies and the state police departments was one of the major reasons why the NCTC was mooted. It was proposed that the Multi-Agency Centre (MAC), set up by the group of ministers report of 2002 to fuse intelligence on terrorism from a variety of sources, become the core of the new NCTC. 
But where the MAC was confined to intelligence gathering and analysis, the NCTC will have investigation and operations functions as well.

Even more ambitious was the move, as enunciated by Union home minister P. Chidambaram in a speech at the Intelligence Bureau centenary endowment lecture in December 2009, to place institutions like the National Investigation Agency, the National Technical Research Office (NTRO), the National Crime Records Bureau, the Crime  and Criminal Tracking Network and Systems and  the National Security Guards under the NCTC; and have the counter-terror work of the Research & Analysis Wing (RAW), the Aviation Research Centre and the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), too under this organisation.
Clearly, Chidambaram was poorly advised. The proposal was transparently way over the top.
Terrorism is a major threat to India, but it is by no means the only one, or the most potent one. It simply does not make sense to have the NTRO, which specialises in high-end technical intelligence against China and Pakistan, to be made subservient to a counter-terror body. And why should the JIC whose remit is to provide analytical reports on subjects ranging from nuclear weapons to climate change be part of the NCTC?
The result was that the proposal was put through the grinder through 2010 and 2011 and when it emerged late last year, Chidambaram’s more extravagant claims were shorn off. 
But even the truncated proposal which has now been notified by the government has problems.
First and foremost, it locates the NCTC within the IB. There is a problem here. Though the NCTC has drawn its powers from the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act of 1967, the IB itself is not subject to any legal statute. It was established in 1887 through an office order to spy on Russian activities, and later on the Indian national movement.
Subsequently, there has been no effort to legislate its existence and place it under some form of parliamentary oversight, as is the practice in democratic countries. The government of India has ensured till now that the IB has no powers of arrests and seizures.
Whatever information or evidence it gathers is handed over to the state police services, or the CBI, which undertakes investigations, effects arrests and detentions and processes the evidence for prosecution.
By first placing the NCTC under the IB, and then giving it investigation and operations functions, the government has crossed an important firewall.
In great measure, the response of the states to the NCTC proposal is based on the fear that the central intelligence agency, already something of a bugbear for the Opposition, will become even more all-pervasive and powerful. More important, it will encroach upon the powers of arrest and detention which currently reside with the states.
Of course, there is Article 355 of the Constitution which states that “It shall be the duty of the Union to protect every state against external aggression and internal disturbance….” The wording is unambiguous “It shall be the duty…”, in other words, there is a mandate. But taken together with other Articles, it is clear that the mandate is for a cooperative and consultative federalism, not one that is run by the diktat of the Union government.
There is nothing wrong with the idea of the NCTC, and our recent history will tell us that we need a strong counter-terrorist organisation. But there is also a need to understand that huge organisations which are “too big to fail” are not a particularly good idea.

Second, that crossing the firewall between intelligence gathering and operations, particularly within the national boundaries, is a no-no and will take India down a dangerous and slippery slope, especially since the IB does not have any form of administrative or parliamentary oversight, leave alone legislative authority.
Third, that counter-terrorism requires a bottom up approach where our state police and intelligence services need to be revamped first, before any effective counter-terrorist strategy can get under way.

Mail Today Feb 22, 2012

The politics of the holy cow

 It should be no surprise that in India, the cow and politics go hand in hand. The Sangh Parivar’s first move to mobilise the “masses” came through the anti-cow slaughter movement of 1966. The vehicle was the then newly created Vishwa Hindu Parishad. But, the movement did not yield any  political dividend, despite the unexpected, or really unanticipated, attack on Parliament in 1967 by thousands of sadhus demanding a ban on cow slaughter. In recent times we have been once again witnessing an effort to use the gentle bovine as a political vehicle by the Bharatiya Janata Party. Last month, the party’s manifestos for the state assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand featured issues relating to the cow.

Elections
Last week the UP election manifesto of the BJP promised a free cow for every below poverty line (BPL) family.  As Mail Today correspondent Piyush Srivastava pointed out, this would involve, at a minimum, a cost of Rs 56,000 crore to the state exchequer, since there are 5.60 crore BPL families in the state, and the going rate for cows ranges from Rs 10,000-Rs 20,000. That will be approximately 33 per cent of the total state budget (Rs 1,69,416 crore in 2011-12). And the BJP is offering an additional subsidy of Rs 750 per month for a cow and Rs 500 for a buffalo to small and medium farmers which would add another Rs 17,000 crore to the bill.

According to the National Sample Survey Organisation, 43 per cent of the rural households in the state are landless. No doubt most of them belong to the BPL category who are barely able to feed and shelter themselves; now they will also get a cow to shelter and to feed.
Not to be outdone, the party’s Uttarakhand unit’s manifesto came up with even more far-reaching proposals. If re-elected, the BJP would encourage the production of filtered Gau Mootra (cow’s urine) in the state. Besides the usual development issues, the manifesto flagged the promotion of cow products and cow reverence in the state.
 As the State unit in-charge and national general secretary Thawarchand Gehlot explained, cow’s urine would be filtered and cleaned to produce a drink called ‘ark’ which would have various benefits including curing cancer and injuries. Cow’s urine would also form the basis of medicines for treating eye and ear diseases, as well as toothpaste, detergents and aftershave. Of course, the urine would also be used for conventional requirements such as fertilisers.

Obscurantists
There is nothing new in all this. The Sangh Parivar has long promoted the use of cow’s urine and dung as medicine. In 2010, two leading newspapers reported that an institution which was affiliated to the Rashtriya Swyamsevak Sangh had got a US patent for an anti-cancer drug extracted from cow’s urine. Apparently the institution, Go Vigyan Anusandhan Kendra, had earlier received patents for other “bio” enhancers and anti-cancer drugs. The item also noted that the “drug” had been tested on three patients, hardly the norm for clinical trials.
A hilarious sidelight to this is that the Parivar kooks claim that the virtues of the cow are limited to Indian breeds. Some claim that the milk of foreign hybrids may even be toxic. In a “learned” article written in the Sangh Parivar journal Organiser in August 2009, Vaidya Kulamarva Jayakrishna laid out the various advantages of cow’s milk—it was nutritive, good for the eyes, brain and heart, it promoted immunity and could alleviate a variety of illnesses. But, he noted, “We have to understand that these properties have been explained in the context of desi or indigenous breed of cow and not the hybrid ones which are the major source of milk to us today.”
Cow slaughter and cow protection have been a vehicle of the Hindutva movement from the outset. Prior to the use of the Babri Masjid for the Ram Temple agitation, the Parivar had hoped to use an agitation calling for the ban of cow slaughter as its political vehicle.
This issue is still doing the rounds. In December, Madhya Pradesh’s new anti-cow slaughter bill received presidential assent. Under the new bill, the existing  anti-cow slaughter law was reinforced by enhancing the punishment for killing cows and transporting beef to up to seven years’ imprisonment. The Act also gave officials draconian powers of search and arrest and, worse, put the burden of proof on the accused.
Immediately after the bill became law, there were a spate of attacks on the Muslim community by Bajrang Dal activists. This was not unexpected, since the purpose of the law was, indeed, as much to harass them as to promote “cow reverence” as a means of consolidating the Hindu community behind the BJP.
Mr Chouhan is a canny and able chief minister. Significantly, what his bill did was to amend an Act penalising cow slaughter passed when Uma Bharti was the chief minister. He is probably using the issue to cement his position with the kooks who dominate the higher echelons of the Sangh Parivar. With Modi’s PM candidacy running into a roadblock of opposition, Chouhan is clearly positioning himself as an alternative.

Pasts
Hindus do not actually worship the cow. The bovine, however, has had a major role in Indian mythology, religious ritual, sentiment and everyday life. The five products of milk, curd, ghee, urine and dung form part of religious ritual. There is no revulsion to the urine or the dung of a cow. On the other hand, Indians will swear by the virtues of ghee and the value of milk and curd in their diet. Poets sing of the beauty of godhuli, the sight of the evening sun’s rays piercing the dust raised by cows coming back home from pasture.
The dung of the cow is mixed with straw to make patties which are the basic fuel in many households, and dung is also mixed with clay and used to coat the plaster of the walls of a mud-shack. When I was a child living in Almora, in the 1950s, the grandmothers of the house would often sprinkle cow’s urine on the sheets soiled by bed-wetting children. They said that it was the best thing available for removing the bad odour which would not go away with an ordinary washing. It was a primitive remedy, but life was like that—no electricity, little or no milk, eggs, sugar, or antibiotics, even for middle class families.
Given the semi-literate and cynical plane upon which politics operates in this country, it would be useless to argue that the role of the cow has actually evolved over time and that one of the most sacred texts of the Hindus, the Rig Veda, even speaks of cow sacrifice and beef eating.
I can understand why my grandmothers did what they did. The burden of tradition was heavy on them. In a primitive economy, the cow did play a big role in the lives of ordinary folk. Religion sanctified it and practice, such as the use of cow dung for fuel, cemented it. Cows remain an important part of Indian life even today, but not on the plane that the Parivar wants them to be.
But my memories are of an era when smallpox and TB were big killers, and penicillin had just about arrived in India; a lot has changed since. But it would be worthwhile exploring just what it is that is impelling the BJP to hark back to that era and beyond in its quest for political moksha.
Mail Today February 4, 2012