No easy options on Pakistan

A way to benchmark the seriousness of the present India-Pakistan crisis is to imagine the consequences of a Mumbai-type mass-casualty attack by Pakistan-backed, or Pakistani, terrorists in India today.
Given the national mood, it would be difficult to rule out anything then, even war. So, in this context, Army chief Bikram Singh's level-headed remarks in his Army Day eve press conference on Monday are welcome.
Gen Singh said that the army would not undertake a knee-jerk reaction, but reserved the right to retaliate at a "time and place of its choice."
He added that while the Army would maintain a tactically aggressive posture on the Line of Control (LoC), it understood the larger imperatives of maintaining the ceasefire there.
A professional army, he could well have added, is concerned about its strategy and tactics, not martyrdom or machismo.

Conjoined

What is remarkable about the incident in which two Indian soldiers were killed and one of them decapitated in the Mendhar sector of the LoC in Jammu & Kashmir, is that it was publicised in the manner that it was.
Cross-border raids have been a feature of the LoC, beginning in 1993 and until the ceasefire of 2003. These raids featured beheadings and worse.
As for the brutality of modern warfare, you don't have to go to Pakistan - see the fiendishness in hiding a powerful bomb inside the body of a dead CRPF jawan by the Maoists.
What has changed since 2003 has been the nature of the Indian media, which is now dominated by 24-hour news channels whose fight for TRPs leads to excesses of an unimaginable scale. 

General Bikram Singh understands the need to preserve peace on the LoC

So we have a full blown mini-crisis in which drums of war are being furiously beaten by a coterie of retired army officers, egged on by the media. Demonising the adversary has a history as old as warfare and you can see how easy it is to do so by seeking and playing back responses of families who are grieving for their loved ones.
Yet, another way of looking at the recent Pakistani behaviour is that it is prodding and probing to see how much India can take, and if we do not respond with toughness they will only expand the envelope of disruption and push in militants to revive the flagging militancy in J&K.
Few seem to notice that the situation in Pakistan is precarious and it is that which ought to concern us more.
The breakdown of the civilian authority is becoming manifest by the day. Imran Khan's rallies, Tahirul Qadri's million man march, the wanton killings of Shias, the depredations of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, could well presage another spell of military rule. But that, as we know, is to revert to an option that won't work.
India and Pakistan may be hostile to each other but they are, even 65 years after their birth, joined at the hip. Yet, the two nations find it difficult to get along with each other, leave alone have normal relations. Being conjoined, yet with two different personalities and character, makes for an unusually fraught relationship because no matter what you do, you cannot really get away from each other.

Engagement

It is not easy to have a working policy for a conjoined entity because you have a hundred ways of getting at each other's throat.
Almost everything that critics of the government are suggesting has been tried and has failed before. We have thinned out high commission personnel, shut down air, road and rail traffic, suspended dialogue and conducted diplomatic offensives against Pakistan. We have massed our army on the border and threatened war in 2002, and actually fought a small war in 1999 in Kargil.
Yet, the best minds in India, beginning with Atal Bihari Vajpayee in 1979, have concluded that there is no alternative to engaging with our conjoined sibling. There are poisons in our relationship that predate partition of 1947, and these need to be worked out before things normalise.
And this can only be done through a prolonged process of churning. Mr Vajpayee's journeys from Lahore through Kargil in 1999, Agra in 2001, the near war following the Parliament House attack in 2002, culminating in an agreement to restart the India-Pakistan dialogue in Islamabad in 2004 are instructive. They teach us the value of flexibility - Mr Vajpayee was tough when he had to be, but his default mode with Pakistan was engagement.

Normalisation

Normalisation of relations is a project that is of great importance for India. Without a stable and non-hostile Pakistan, we cannot remain on the path of sustainable high economic growth for long.
And even if it does attain significant economic strength, it will remain hostage to the situation in Pakistan. For the present, India is signalling that we cannot have business as usual with Islamabad.
So while the dialogue has not been suspended, New Delhi has announced its intention of adopting an active posture on the LoC.
In any case, India and Pakistan are in election mode and there is little likelihood of the dialogue achieving anything anyway. The basic lines of the policy of flexible engagement followed by governments in India since 1990 are not wrong. What is required is constant review and tweaking of this policy, which involves strategic restraint, engagement and limited use of force.
It requires the careful application of power, one that will push Pakistan in the direction that we desire, both with regard to its internal democratisation, and the stabilisation of Afghanistan.
The process is not getting any easier with the authority of the government in Islamabad fraying by the day, but it is a process to which we do not have many alternatives.

Mail Today January 16, 2012

Pakistan's Army finally sees the enemy within as a greater security threat than India

 
At first sight it is nothing short of a paradigm shift.
According to a news report, the Pakistan Army now believes that the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), and a host of assorted militants within, are a bigger security threat than India.
This has been outlined in the new Pakistan Army doctrine which deals with operational preparedness. 

The shift in the Pakistani doctrine poses significant opportunities and risks for India

The doctrine is written up in a "Green Book" which is widely distributed within the Army and it has long considered India as its enemy number one.
But, the actual experience of the last couple of years seems to have convinced the higher echelons of the Pakistan Army that the times have changed and there is need to revise its strategy.
So, a new chapter has been added to the Green Book which now includes threats posed by what the Pakistan military calls "sub conventional warfare."
Actually, India is not really off the hook since the sub-conventional chapter is an addition and presumably the older India-centric posture remains unchanged in the book.
But the new addition does provide a certain balance.
In any case even the new doctrine blames "foreign proxies" (read India in Balochistan) for creating unrest in some parts of the country, although it does not name any country.
Between 2004 and 2009, the Pakistan Army launched several operations against insurgents in its Federally Administered Tribal Areas and Swat.
It was apparent at the time that the Army had found it doctrinally difficult to shift from its posture of confronting India to dealing with the threat that arose from tribal insurgents.
Its fighting style was characterised by conventional operations in which fighter aircraft, attack helicopters and artillery were extensively used.
After the last big offensive in South Waziristan in 2009, the Pakistan Army has been content to continue operations in a limited way, but has avoided any follow through attack on the militants who are now holed out in North Waziristan.
The Pakistan Army has baulked saying that it is already over-stretched in the tribal areas.

Anyway, they believe that it is the American presence in Afghanistan and their drone attacks that are driving the militancy, not any action of the Pakistani forces.
There are several factors that could be driving the change in the Pakistan Army's outlook.
First, is the reality of what is happening in the country. Far from being split and on the verge of defeat, the TTP insurgency remains active and deadly.
In December, it was responsible for the beheading of 21 Pakistani policemen, an attack on the Peshawar airport and the assassination of Bashir Ahmed Bilour, a minister in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
More important, its top leaders Hakimullah Mehsud and Waliur Rehman appeared jointly in a video to show the world that far from being estranged, they remain close to each other.
The second factor is the relationship of what is happening in Pakistan with developments in Afghanistan.
In the same video, Hakimullah declared that the Pakistan Taliban were under their Afghan counterparts and would take orders from its emir, Mullah Omar, and that both the Talibans were with the Al Qaeda.
In other words, the withdrawal of the US from Afghanistan could see Pakistan confronted by a united Taliban, rather than be the strategic opportunity that many in the Pakistan military dream that it will be.
The third factor is the role of the United States.
Never have the relations between the US and Pakistan been worse than they are right now. As the western withdrawal gathers momentum, Pakistan's leverage over the US will decline further.
Alienating the world's sole super-power (as of now) is not a particularly smart thing to do, not because of its military consequences alone, but because of the ways that it can impact on Pakistan's efforts to stabilise its economy and move on the track of economic growth.
The fourth factor is the relationship with India.
By now some among the hawkish elements in Pakistan may be realising that India is not the existential threat to the Islamic Republic that it is made out to be.
A country that did not react militarily despite the provocation of the terrorist attack in Mumbai in 2008, is hardly the country that is itching to dismantle Pakistan.
Fifth, is the military assessment of the generals.
They cannot but be aware that despite tall talk of "Cold Start", the Indian armed forces, especially its army, is far from ready for a war.
It possesses no mobile artillery, its air defence systems are outdated and its endemic shortages are a virtually public affair.
Equally important is that in the last ten years Pakistan's nuclear weapons capability has grown and actually exceeded that of India.
There was a selfperceived gap in the area of tactical nuclear weapons to offset Indian conventional capabilities, and even that has now been closed.
Sixth, Pakistan continues to bask in the warmth of its relationship with China.
The growth of Chinese economic and military power relative to India provides an important cushion for Islamabad and offsets the perceived losses that arise from its declining relations with the West.
The shift in the Pakistani doctrine, howsoever small, poses significant opportunities and risks for India.
The growing awareness in Islamabad of the dangers from within provide New Delhi an occasion to build on the openings that are visible on the front of trade relations.
With an unsettled Afghanistan to the west, Pakistan realises that it needs peace in the east, and with peace can come the opportunity for stability and prosperity which are directly linked to the opening up of India.
But there are risks as well.
Principal among these are the unreconstructed hawks who probably see the whole thing in tactical terms and want to bide their time, create a pro-Pakistani regime in Afghanistan and return to "deal" with India.
This is linked to the continuing existence of proxies like the Lashkar-e-Tayyeba and the unrestrained expansion of the Pakistani nuclear arsenal.
Yet, being where we are, we have few choices; we must continue to move forward and deal with the circumstances as they present themselves, rather than wait for the arrival of some ideal situation.

Mail Today January 7, 2013

Making the most of the flux in Asia

Amidst the sound and fury of immediate events, not least the massive protests against the rape and assault of a young woman in Delhi, the geopolitical landscape of Asia is shifting.
This is the message sent out by the recently concluded Asean Commemorative Summit marking the 20th year of the Asean-India partnership.
But there is a message, too, coming out from political changes in a vast arc, stretching from Tokyo to New Delhi, where the tectonic plates have been shifting in recent months. It is not entirely a coincidence that this is happening in the wake of the decadal turnover of the Chinese Communist Party leadership.
While Asia, and indeed the world, has been adjusting to the rise of China for the past decade, there seems to be a special urgency now given the continued momentum of China's growth, both economic and military. 

ASEAN and Indian leaders pose during the Commemorative Summit in New Delhi

Far East

In New Delhi, a special meeting of the ASEAN has adopted a vision document which subtly encapsulates the goal of cooperative security. In Tokyo, the electorate has swept the LDP to power with Shinzo Abe as its leader. In Seoul, Park Geun-hye, daughter of Park Chung Hee, the erstwhile dictator of South Korea has been elected President and shifted its polity rightward.
Though Ms Park, who speaks Chinese, is focused on North Korea, the Republic of Korea has a dispute with China over a set of uninhabited Socotra rocks in the Yellow Sea.
Of course, the Sino-Japan dispute over the Senkaku/Diayou islands in the East China sea is more serious, with both countries facing off over them in recent months. In the South China Sea, contested claims tangle China, Taiwan, Japan, the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia and Brunei over three island groupings. And then there is India, whose wholeland border with China is disputed.
Last month China changed its entire party leadership lineup - Xi Jinping was appointed general secretary and chairman of the Central Military Commission and a new standing committee of the politburo was appointed.
But the first signals from the new leadership have not been particularly reassuring. Within weeks of taking over as the Supreme Commander, Xi Jinping undertook his first inspection tour of the Guangzhou military region and ordered the People's Liberation Army to boost its "real combat" awareness. This is the crucial military region that opens up to the South China Sea and includes the island of Hainan.

 

Unlike his predecessor Hu Jintao, Xi has past experience in working with the PLA. Indeed, his wife Peng Liyuan is a major general in the song and dance troupe of the PLA. Xi's father, Xi Zhongxun, had served as a political commissar of the Guangzhou military district in the 1970s.
Significantly, at the end of November, the Chinese issued a notification saying that the border police had been "empowered to board and check ships that illegally enter waters under Hainan's jurisdiction".
It is through Hainan that China extends its maritime claims to seas off Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia and Brunei, all members of the Asean. Last week, a Chinese aircraft flew over the Japanese controlled Senkaku islands, provoking Tokyo to scramble its fighter aircraft. It was perhaps no surprise that the LDP which has vowed a muscular response to Beijing's alleged provocations swept the elections.
Since the election, Mr Abe has made it clear that his party will take a tough stand on the issue. There is little doubt that Asean is looking for some signs that the other big Asian power, India, will be willing to play a larger role in Asia to balance Chinese power.
As of now, Asean appears dispirited and confused, despite the so-called United States pivot to Asia. The reason is that they cannot be sure, despite their close links with the US, that the Americans will back them if push comes to shove over the disputed island territories of the South China Sea.

New Delhi

At the Asean meeting, Dr Singh acknowledged that this was a period of flux and that there were "several unsettled questions and unresolved issues in our region."
But as of now, India is not willing to say more than what the PM said: "We should intensify our political and security consultations... and engagement for maritime security and safety, for freedom of navigation and for peaceful settlement of maritime disputes in accordance with international law."
But this is not going to be enough to deal with China. Given the increasing difference between the economic and military power of China and India, New Delhi needs to urgently revisit its policy towards China.
Needless to say, this does not mean that it invite Beijing's hostility. That would be a foolish move, especially since trade between the two countries is touching $75 billion today and no country can afford not to have good economic relations with China.

Opportunity

China's unsettling actions have provided India with an uncommon opportunity to enhance its interests and influence in the region. Countries such as Japan are already looking at India as a major destination for their investments.
As for trade with the Asean, the sky is the limit and the US has made its interest in enhancing its ties with India very obvious.
Instead of talking about strategic autonomy, we need to practice it, and come out with a proactive policy which has two components - the consolidation of a South Asian economic region around Indian leadership, as well as a deeper engagement with Asean, Japan, South Korea and the US.
With our combined heft, we can send a message to Beijing that it is in our common interest to remain engaged with each other and resolve our disputes peacefully. And as for muscle flexing, if Beijing wants to do so, so can others.

Mail Today December 23, 2012

Our future: Bright but uncertain

What is the connection between Mayawati's tirade against Rajya Sabha chairman Vice President Hamid Ansari, and a report by the US National Intelligence Council (NIC)?
Nothing direct, except that the report on Global Trends 2030: Alternate Worlds tells us that India's time as an economic superpower is coming, and why, while the BSP leader's dysfunctional ways could illustrate why the heady conclusions it has arrived at may not work out.
The report observes: "As the world's largest economic power, China is expected to remain ahead of India, but the gap could begin to close by 2030. India's rate of economic growth is likely to rise while China's slows. In 2030 India could be the rising economic powerhouse that China is seen to be today." 

Indeed, the report goes on to add that through the 21st century, India could actually overtake China.
But then, cut to the present. State leaders like Nitish Kumar, Narendra Modi and Shivraj Singh Chouhan have been praised for focusing on development and transforming their respective states.
But India's sad reality is that we also have leaders like Mayawati, Mulayam Singh Yadav, Mamata Banerjee, Parkash Singh Badal, J Jayalalitha, M Karunanidhi, and BS Yeddyurappa who have squandered their opportunities and have been a drag on the country's growth.

Taxes

But why blame them alone. What has the Union government achieved in the past couple of years? But for a flurry of activity in the last two months or so, little. Even otherwise, it has focussed on huge social welfare programmes like MNREGA or the loan waiver of 2008, more by way of shoring up its electoral base, rather than boosting the economy.
And even the sound and fury of the recent weeks mean little when you look at the issues in perspective. We need to only recall that earlier this year, the government sought to recover tax on a case it had lost at the Supreme Court by retroactively amending the rules.
Taken together with the General Anti- Avoidance Rules (GAAR) that it proclaimed, it egregiously changed the climate for foreign investment into the country for the worse. That few lessons have been learnt by the tax authorities became evident when, last week, they issued a series of advertisements asking people to pay their advance tax by December 15.
The ads were accompanied by dire warnings about the consequences of not paying and the fact that government had a great deal of information through credit card, bond and mutual fund purchase and bank transactions to collar the evaders.
Just what was the purpose of this exercise is difficult to say. True, the government tax collections have been below par this year. But is this coercion, which could well drive many of the wealthy back into the black economy, or to the purchase of gold, the best method?
But the instinct of the government seems to be to use the danda (stick). Actually, the tens of crores the government could collect through such techniques are nothing compared to what it could achieve by ending its corrosive subsidy regime.
According to reports, the April-September underecoveries of oil prices amount to Rs 85,586 crore, which extrapolated will take it above Rs 150,000 crore for FY 2012-2013. Of this, over Rs 1 lakh crore is on account of diesel.
Take it in combination with other subsidies- another Rs 60,000 crore for LPG and kerosene, Rs 80,000 crore for food and Rs 60,000 crore for fertilisers and you have a good idea as to how India's tax revenues are being used.
This is money that could well be deployed to plug the gaps that the NIC reports- inequality, lack of infrastructure and deficiencies in the education system. It needs to be emphasised that the key driver for Indian economic achievement, according to the report, is its demographic advantage.
In 2030, India will be the youngest among a group of large nations like China, the US, Brazil, and Russia.

Demographics

Its median age will be just 32 compared to 43 for China and, according to the report, its demographic window of opportunity will extend to 2050, where that of China will have closed in 2025, and those of the other countries even earlier.
Of course, demographics by themselves do not do much. They provide you with a productive working age population. But that population must have a certain level of educational attainment and live in a society which is well governed and has the requisite infrastructure to generate economic growth.
There are many other areas that will make up the challenge- access to drinking water, cheap energy, food, the need to end rural-urban inequities, the issue of inequality.

Destiny

Anyone looking at the India of today will agree that meeting the challenges outlined is a tall order. Shoddy policies - the subsidy regime and taxation policies being two of them - are the order of the day.
As for governance, parliament and state assemblies work only fitfully. The condition of our state legislatures is particularly bad. And we have landed up with a generation of politicians who think that their job is to squander tax revenues in votegathering schemes, rather than lay the foundations of a prosperous state.
If the NIC predictions come true, the world of 2030 will be radically different from the world of today. But neither for China, nor for India, will the progression be inevitable.
Even now there are significant hurdles that both must overcome to achieve what the NIC says is in store for them.
This is especially so for India since China has moved much further ahead in terms of economic and military strength. But at the end of the day, our destiny lies in our own hands.

Mail Today December 13, 2012

The Saffron dilemma on Narendra Modi suggests that perhaps it is too early to calculate his impact

In the past two years, as the ruling Congress-led UPA has faced the anti-corruption agitation, stumbled on the economy, and then managed to pull itself up again, political observers have been struck by the response of the BJP.
The country's leading Opposition party has appeared divided, incoherent and bereft of any policy ideas to offer to the bemused electorate.
Narendra Modi's massive election win in Gujarat could be the catalyst that could change all that, but only with the interplay of other important factors - the issue of the party's central leadership and Modi's role in it, the way it plays out in the NDA and the attitude of the RSS. 

 

 

When asked about what the Sangh felt about Modi's putative PM candidacy, top RSS functionary Suresh Soni was laconic: "It's a good thing."
But political scientist Pratap Bhanu Mehta feels it is too early to bring Modi into the central picture.
"In fact, the central BJP leadership will also first try to consolidate the NDA alliances and then decide on leadership issue," he said. Mehta, though, agrees, that "Modi has his share of legitimacy to claim that stake".
The BJP may have cleared the decks to give Nitin Gadkari an unprecedented second term, but he remains entangled in a controversy relating to his business practices. 

RSS leader Suresh Soni

 
Modi does not get along with Gadkari, but even the Gujarat strongman's enhanced stature may not be able to prevail over the calculations of the RSS and some of the powerful factions in the party.
None of the top BJP leaders that Mail Today spoke to were willing to categorically comment on the leadership issue, remaining content, as Tarun Vijay MP was, to declare that "we will work to put up a picture of solidarity in 2014".
There is heady talk among Modi loyalists of the party under his leadership getting 200 Lok Sabha seats in 2014. But this is a tall order for a party - it will have to come up with a new version of the NDA.
The balance of power between the BJP and its allies will determine the choice of the PM candidate. If Modi's influence can gain the party 180-plus seats, then he is the natural choice.
But a lower tally could result in a candidate more acceptable to allies. In that event, the prime ministerial race would be wide open. In 2013, Modi may not be the only BJP CM to win multiple terms, there could be two others - Raman Singh and Shivraj Singh Chouhan - both known to promote good governance.
The third issue is the attitude of the RSS. Modi is a pracharak (ordinary member) of the organisation. But it is no secret that his relations with the outfit, which does not brook the kind of personality cult that he fosters, are not the best.

 

Modi's relations with Suresh Soni are also not particularly good. Asked about Modi's autocratic style of functioning, all Soni was willing to say was, "We will talk about it (Modi) then (in 2014)."
But the RSS knows that Modi has great appeal with its core Hindutva constituency and his win has shown that he is a votegatherer par excellence.
Mehta sees a "diminishing influence of RSS doing some good for BJP" in the long run.
According to him, the most important issue for the party is "to clear its stand on reforms" and send the message to the electorate on what kind of support, or opposition, it holds to economic reforms.''

(With inputs from Krishna Kumar in Mumbai and Maneesh Pandey in New Delhi)

Mail Today December 22, 2012

Modi has a plan for the BJP

For the past few months, it has been fashionable to speak of the disarray in the Bharatiya Janata Party and its inability to do anything else but oppose everything that is proposed by the ruling Congress-led United Progressive Alliance.
But this week we may have seen a riposte-Narendra Modi's manifesto for the Gujarat state assembly polls.
As has been reported, the manifesto focuses on what he says is the "neo middle class" which, presumably, comprises people who are above the poverty line, but not quite the middle class in terms of orthodox definitions.

 

Gujarat Chief Minister Naredndra Modi, State BJP president R C Faldu and Senior BJP Leader Arun Jaitley, releasing an Election Manifesto in Ahmedabad

They could be people earning anywhere between Rs 10,000 and Rs 25,000 per month, with young children in schools, living in chawls or slums but with a yen to climb up the social and economic ladder in their own lifetimes.
Addressing them, the manifesto has promised not just 30 lakh jobs, but 50 lakh houses over the next five years.
There would be a network of hostels for 40,000 students, as well as a scholarship for the needy.
To facilitate development of skills in a big way, the government would set up a skill development corporation and skill development university, a promise, if carried through, will make Gujarat the only State to boast of such services.
Besides promising insurance for all Gujaratis, Modi has promised to build speciality hospitals in all the principal cities of the state. Now election manifestos-Modi calls it a "commitment letter" -are old hat in elections.
But the significance of Modi's manifesto lies in its wider ramifications since it can provide the BJP, otherwise seemingly bereft of ideas, with a national scheme that could take on the Congress party's pro-poor and social welfare plank.
Gujarat's urban population is currently 43 per cent, well above the national average of 32 per cent. But surely and relentlessly, the whole country is urbanising and the demands of the urban population are generally ignored by politicians who think that the key to their salvation lies in the rural areas.
This is demographically true for the India of today, though it is also a fact that the "farmer" has an almost mystical electoral power-witness the agricultural subsidy regimes in developed countries like the US, Japan and the EU.
But the middle class is the core of a country- it produces the teachers, office-workers, artists, writers, bureaucrats, engineers, technicians, media personnel and so on who define the ethos of its society.
Modi's gamble, ostensibly aimed at the Gujarat assembly elections, becomes the only workable challenge to the all-encompassing aam admi of the Congress party.
But where the aam admi is wooed by entitlements, Modi is promising the American dream- the creation of opportunities. In other words, he is telling the hard-working "neo-middle class": You keep on working hard, and the state is with you and will facilitate your aspirations.
Here, there is no appeal to caste, community or ethnicity. The message is to "Gujaratis". Tomorrow, of course, the same message could be the killer app to attract all Indians.
The neo-middle classes are not the hapless poor who are completely without hope, education or even adequate employment.
They are those who by the dint of their hard work have managed to establish themselves in the urban and semi-urban centres and are looking for the government to facilitate their social and economic ascent.
They want an enabler, not someone who grants them their rights as a political boon. In the 2009 elections, the Congress led UPA swept all the seats in the four metros- Delhi (7 seats), Mumbai (6) seats, Kolkata (4) and Chennai (3). According to a study of the 2009 elections, in the smaller towns and cities the UPA captured 67 seats with a success rate of 56 per cent. In other words, "in the urban constituencies, the success ratio of the Congress and its allies was much better than in rural areas."
Actually the study by Vanita Leah Falcao in the Economic and Political Weekly, based on the National Election Study, shows that while there was not much of a change from the Congress performance in the urban areas in 2004, the NDA was a heavy loser with the BJP and its allies losing more in cities than in rural areas.
The BJP's poor showing among the urban middle classes was surprising since the BJP began as a largely urban phenomenon. Urban voters are driven by issues like employment, provision of bijli, sarak and makaan, public transport, healthcare costs, as well as issues like terrorist strikes. In India, in contrast to their counterparts in the developed world, they also tend to be less inclined to vote.
Though as Falcao points out, in the 2009 elections, there was not much difference between the rural and urban turnout.
It is clear that in coming up with his "neo middle class" manifesto, Modi and his advisors have been doing some thinking.
Clearly, they see the importance of its application nationally where it could rejuvenate the BJP's erstwhile base, and capture newer supporters. Nothing here indicates any intention on Modi's part to dilute the BJP's anti-Muslim stance.
Indeed, the strategy is probably to ignore the Muslim community, just as it has been done in Gujarat.
The kind of influence that Muslims have spread out in rural areas of India could well decline were they to become part of the urban landscape.
Then, it is a well known phenomenon that the urban middle classes do not like Muslims who get ghettoised in urban environments.
This prejudice, will no doubt, extend to the "neo middle class" as well.
While the numbers of Muslims in many other parts of the country are much larger than in Gujarat, their impact would be managed by a strategy that defeats the current caste and community based mobilisation and replaces it with one that focuses on a class.
The BJP under Modi is seeking to reach its elusive "Hindu" majority via the neodevelopmental platform, rather than the Ram mandir.

Mail Today December 5, 2012