Nutan Thakur Deserves Our Support

Newspapers reported yesterday about the Supreme Court chastising the Uttar Pradesh government and its counsel, Kapil Sibal, for opposing the CBI probe in Yadav Singh case. We all know the Yadav Singh saga — a chief engineer with the Noida Authority who had bribed his political bosses in two regimes (that of Mayawati and Akhilesh Yadav) over the last decade to build an empire of his own. When the Income Tax officials raided his premises in November last year, Mail Today reports that they seized diamonds worth Rs 100 crore, 2 kg of gold and Rs 10 crore cash. Subsequent reports tell us that his family and relatives own more than 300 plots in Noida and Greater Noida.

And what happened in the aftermath of the IT raid? As is the wont with all corrupt governments which set up an enquiry to buy time and bury the case, the UP government too instituted an enquiry commission.

It was left to an intrepid RTI activist, Nutan Thakur, wife of an IPS officer of the UP cadre, who moved the Allahabad High Court to demand a CBI enquiry. The HC, appraising the gamut of the political-bureaucratic nexus in the corrupt deals, which could not have gone on for close to a decade without the involvement of top bureaucrats and politicians (who have supposedly cornered prize plots themselves), ordered a CBI enquiry.

And how did the UP government react? It challenged the HC decision in the Supreme Court and fielded Kapil Sibal, a lawyer and a former law minister, to argue its case. Last Friday, the SC had one question each to the UP government and Kapil Sibal. It asked the UP government: if it was a case of the Centre trying to use the CBI to frame false cases, then that grievance should have been aired by Yadav Singh. Why was the UP government so perturbed?

One conclusion is inescapable. The fear was that if Yadav Singh was indicted, then many skeletons would tumble out of his cupboard implicating his bureaucratic and political bosses. These bosses desperately needed to save their skin. Hence, the last ditch effort to prevent the CBI probe.

The Supreme Court’s next poser was to Sibal — you say that you  think CBI is only a political instrument to terrorise the states into submission. You say that the CBI probe is an anathema in a federal system of government. Why was it then that you approached the SC a few weeks ago, as the lawyer of Digvijay Singh, to ask for a CBI enquiry into the Vyapam case? Didn’t you have great trust in the CBI then?

As is the characteristic of mercenary, high-profile lawyers, Sibal tried to make some excuses which did not cut much ice with the Supreme Court.

Clearly, the white-collar criminals have banded together to save Yadav Singh to save themselves.

Nutan Thakur deserves support of all right-thinking citizens who want to see these white-collar criminals on their knees.

Do you agree?

Can We Make the Supreme Court Work?

In my last post, I wrote that the Supreme Court would do well to convert all life sentences to death sentences so as to spare the life convicts the indignities they are condemned to till their last breath in the jail. I knew that It was a cynical argument and that it would invite sharp rebuttals. Hasan Imam, in fact, commented that he did not expect such pessimistic arguments from me.

Sarda Nanada Patnaik and Karunamay Subuddhi made general observations about the consequences of death penalty. Binoy Shankar Prasad opposed death sentence as he thought ‘execution sets one free’ and a life-convict gets the opportunity to atone for the crime committed by him.

Gunjan Sinha argued that no life-prisoner would be ready to ‘buy death in lieu of prison.’ He said that by extending my logic, most of the humanity would be hanged as they were unhappy with the conditions they were living in.

According to Pankaj Mohan, a quarter of Indians are living in hell-like conditions and presenting death as an alternative to them is a negation of our civilisational ethos.

Sudhir Patnaik made the most forceful argument against the death penalty as that is a potent instrument at the disposal of the repressive state to snuff out dissenting voices. He called for prison reforms to restore dignity to the life of the prisoners.

I agree with most of these observations. As Sudhir rightly said, the rich get away with murder, but the poor are made to suffer for years even if they are innocent.

Who can remedy the situation? Who will bring about the prison reforms? The political establishment? But it is captured by the rich and it will serve their interests.

The Supreme Court is the only institution which could force the government to set a deadline to bring in perceptible reforms. But, as we know, in most cases of institutional reforms, the Supreme Court has acted only perfunctorily.

Take the case of police reforms.It made the big noises, issued notices to all state governments, set a deadline. But those judges retired and and then the Supreme Court has been virtually sitting over its own directions motionless. It wakes up to life once in a while when nudged, but the state governments ignore it with impunity, because they know that the SC is merely going through the motions. Prakash Singh, who had piloted the police reforms case in the Supreme Court in 1996, is quite frustrated with the lackadaisical response of the apex court. But, frankly, there is no other institution to turn to in our democratic system.

The same is true about the prison reforms. The Supreme Court has made the customary noises in this case as well, but it has turned a Nelson’s eye to the violations of most of its directions.

Judges come and go but the institutional reforms remain a non-starter.

Given this reality, I thought, if we make a plea to the Supreme Court that life-prisoners in jail would prefer death to a degraded life in jail, perhaps this desperate argument would make the judges sit up and take notice; perhaps it would stir the judges’ conscience enough to ensure prison reforms become a reality.

I know, this expectation is far fetched. Just as the political executive knows what it needs to do and what it need not, the Supreme Court judges are also very clear about their priorities. Prison reforms is clearly not one of them.

Can we think of ways to force the Supreme Court’s hand on this issue?

Life Convicts should be Sent to the Gallows!

Was it a travesty of justice that Yakub Memon was hanged? Would it have been a just decision if he were handed a life imprisonment instead of the death sentence? There have been fierce debates in newspaper columns and on TV sets on this issue in the last one week.

Those who argued for the death sentence did so to use the verdict as a deterrent against any future terrorist activity; they also did so out of the consideration for the victims of 1993 serial blasts of which the Memon family was the key conspirator.

Those who argued against Memon’s hanging were generally dismissive of the view that capital punishment served as a deterrent to heinous crime. They thought of death penalty as barbaric and a relic of the feudal times. Some felt that there were mitigating circumstances that warranted the remission of death sentence to life imprisonment in Memon’s case.

There were forceful arguments on both sides. But, finally, naysayers lost their case. Yakub was sent to the gallows yesterday. The 22-year old saga came to a dramatic end, though the justice debate continues and will do so for days to come.

Personally, I am against death sentence as a philosophical argument,. But on a humanitarian consideration, I think all those who have been given life imprisonment should be put to death, especially after the Supreme Court ruled in 2012 that a life sentence meant imprisonment for the whole life, not for 14 years or even 20 years.

If someone is condemned to a life in prison till the last breath of his life, what is there for him to look forward to? Isn’t death a better choice? Someone may argue that life convicts develop a community of their own inside the jail and they cherish every moment of it.

Somehow I cannot bring myself to agree to this. We know the deplorable conditions in jails of India. I have personal experience of a life in jail for 21 days. It was more than 30 years ago when hundreds of us from JNU were lodged in Tihar jail during a student agitation. We saw inhuman conditions in which the jail inmates lived. We, the JNU students, were handled with care by jail authorities as the top non-Congress leaders were visiting us in jail everyday to express their solidarity and many prominent lawyers of India were vying to fight our case gratis.

But the average prisoner did not have this luck. To see the food they ate, the bed on which they slept, the toilet they went to and the grind they had to go through day after day was a heart-wrenching experience. Only a pathological optimist could find a silver line for a life prisoner in these circumstances.

I am sharing this three-decade-old experience In Tihar which is supposed to be a model jail for the whole country. The condition of jails in different parts of the country can only be left to one’s imagination. And over the years, there has been severe overcrowding of jail, due to the criminal delay in the dispensation of justice, and the jails have been turned into living hells.

In such circumstances, only the enemy of a convict would ask for remission of death sentence to life imprisonment. It is more dignified to die than to spend the whole life in sub-human conditions. I think the Supreme Court of India did well to grant deliverance to Yakub Memon by awarding the death sentence.

On humanitarian consideration, the Supreme Court would indeed do great justice to the cause of the poor life convicts if it converts their life sentence to death sentence and ensures their expeditious execution.

Do you think it would be a travesty of justice?

Kalam as Conscience-Keeper?

A lot has been said about President Kalam by a lot of people in the last 36 hours: those who knew him intimately have spoken about his sterling qualities of integrity, humility and dedication to work; those who had no personal connection but have followed his life-history closely have written how he elevated every position he held in his long career by extraordinary accomplishments at each stage.

Let me first add to the chorus of praise and then make a slightly disagreeable point.

When I was working with the Hindustan Times at Patna, Anirban Guha Roy, a brilliant young reporter of our team, was assigned to cover an event (I have no recollection what the event was) where Abdul Kalam was to be present (I suppose he had not become President then; the event was possibly in 2001). Apparently, Kalam chose to walk through the field a couple of kilometres to reach a village. Anirban came back to tell us that it was difficult for him to keep pace with Kalam as the latter walked very fast. Mind you, Kalam was almost 70 then, and our colleague was in the early 20s. That indefatigable energy distinguished Kalam till the last moment of his life.

Another thing that struck me was a report in the media during Kalam’s Presidential years:a large number of his relatives from his native place were visiting him in the Rashtrapati Bhawan; he ensured that food was served to them but he insisted that he would pay for it. He considered them as his personal guests, not state guests; he did not want the tax-payers’ money to be spent on them. That level of integrity in public office is unparalleled.

Abdul Kalam radiated a positive energy. Nobody has heard him speak against anything or anybody; he always spoke for something, be it a person, an idea or a mission. He had great faith in the younger generation and he wanted them to be the vehicle for change. He did not believe in criticism; he believed in providing solutions\alternatives.

But let me strike a discordant note.

I think if President Kalam would have used his high moral standing to chastise the politicians, corporate class, the lay citizens and even the youth for many wrongs committed by them, he would have done a bigger service to the vision of India.

The chastisement would have made Abdul Kalam less popular, but he would have gone down in history as the conscience-keeper of the nation.

Do you agree?

CEO Naidu Should Be In The Doghouse

Chandrababu Naidu likes to call himself the Chief Executive Officer (CEO), rather than the Chief Minister, of Andhra Pradesh. A chief minister merely sets out the guidelines for policies and lets the bureaucracy do the implementation. But a CEO is a hands-on administrator who leads in action and takes responsibility for both policies and execution. Naidu tends to believe that his style of functioning adds a corporate visage to his political standing. But successive developments have shown how pretentious his self-image is.

The recent Godavari Mahapushkaram tragedy is a clear pointer. Naidu, in a corporate build-up, had sold the religious festival as a mega tourist event in the national media. The government is supposed to have spent more than Rs 1500 crore for its success. We were told that it was worth it because while the Godavari Pushkaram was a celebration every 12 years, the Mahapushkaram comes in a cycle of once in 144 years.

The build-up was in the media. What was there on the ground? Though there are more than 250 ghats on the basin of river Godavari, the Pushkar Ghat at Rajahmundry, where the river enters the Bay of Bengal, was highlighted in all advertisements in television and newspapers. The auspicious time for the start of the festival was set at 6.26 am on 14th July. So thousands of pilgrims waited overnight on the banks of the river at Pushkar Ghat to be among the first to take the dip in the holy river after the festival was thrown open.

But the restive crowd had to wait for more than two hours after the auspicious time set in — because His Excellency Chandrababu Naidu, his wife and his son — did not just take the dip but carried out elaborate rituals for more than 100 minutes under heavy police protection. When Naidu’s convoy finally left after 8 am, the thousand-strong policemen who had thrown a ring round him, also disappeared.

As soon as the gates to the ghat were opened tens of thousands of devotees surged towards the river, there was no system of crowd management in place. Every one had to fend for oneself. In the stampede, 27 died the same morning, and more than a hundred were critically injured, many of them succumbed to their injuries later.

And what was the response of this CEO-Chief Minister? That his government did not expect such a big crowd; that is why the mishap occurred. There was not a word of regret that he and his family’s exclusive use of the ghat over such an extended period might have exacerbated the problem. There was no regret that simple regulatory mechanism such as forming queues for entry was not followed; that there was no provision of water there to resuscitate scores of women and children who fainted; that the police force dispersed after his departure.

This CEO, who is steeped in the VIP culture, deserves to be in the doghouse for both corruption and incompetence; corruption because his team clearly defalcated most of the Rs 1500 crore that was supposed to have been spent for the arrangements; and, of course,he has proved again that he is a shining example of incompetence.

Don’t you think ‘CEO Naidu’ sounds like an oxymoron?

The flip side of Naveen Patnaik and Manmohan Singh

Naveen Patnaik has been widely feted as the man the people of Orissa have fallen in love with. After all, he has just won the third successive elections in the state. This time it is all the more significant as he has won a landslide victory, largely on his own, without the  support of a national party like the BJP.

Patnaik, who claims that his ‘every bone is secular’, has defended his 11-year cohabitation with a ‘communal’ outfit like the BJP as a political compulsion. Because of this compulsion, he had to defend Narendra Modi, when his goons ravaged the lives and property of Muslims in Gujarat. Because of this compulsion again, he had to wink at the depredations of the saffron outfit in the Kandhamal region. As soon as he consolidated his position, his supporters say, he snapped ties with the BJP. And with this one action, a ‘secular’ Naveen was born, both in bones and flesh, so much so that the Left leaders who considered him a pariah till the other day literally begged him for an electoral embrace. Thus a ‘secular’ alliance was born in the state which swept the polls.

But, then, exactly five years ago, the ‘communal’ alliance had also achieved an equally spectacular success. How does one describe Orissa’s electorate then? Were they communally driven in 2004 and have turned secular in 2009? Well, the supporters of Naveen Patnaik would say that the people of the state love him and they don’t care who he consorts with.

His astounding victory for the third time in a row is a testimony to this claim. You may ask, have the people of Orissa been better off since he came to power in 2000? Many would consider it a foolish question. Why should the people of Orissa vote for him otherwise, they would retort.

Well, didn’t the people of Orissa elect J B Patnaik for three terms as chief minister not long ago? And what do the people say about him now? The common voter today thinks that he was the man who institutionalized corruption and criminalized politics. If that is the case, then why did the same people prop him up in power for a decade and a half?

Most political analysts romanticize the success stories. They have to invent an explanation to idolize the man (or the woman) of the day. For them, J B Patnaik was a man of organization; he enlivened the moribund state Congress with his astute political management. It was only when he lost the electoral battle decisively that these analysts found skeletons in his cupboard.

The same would inevitably happen to his successor who is now being feted as the icon of integrity and development. When his stars begin to wane — and that would inevitably happen, sooner or later — then the people of the state and the intelligentsia will wake up to the realization that the other Patnaik sold jobs to make money; this Patnaik has sold the state, lock, stock and barrel.

And what was the logic? That they would set up industries that would benefit the state and the country. Pray, you set up industries by all means and mine as much minerals as you need for the industries in the state, but why should you have the right to export the minerals out of the state and the country?

But who will raise this issue? With the mainstream media eating out of the hands of the business giants in the form of advertisement revenue, there is a corporate censorship over any news that would adversely affect the interests of a large business establishment. When the big media maintain a conspiratorial silence, how will the issue come to limelight?

Of course, the political rivals are expected to do it. But then if the ruling party can be bought for a consideration, why not the opposition? That explains why the Congress, the leading opposition party in the state, never made the siphoning of the mineral wealth an issue. The BJP was in the ruling alliance and its leaders were the beneficiaries of the largesse doled out by the two MNCs. The astonishing part was that the Left parties in the state too adopted a policy of studied silence.

The only opposition came from the ordinary people in the region where the mining was to take place, as that would adversely affect their livelihood and life as well. Local political leaders were left with no option but to take part in the resistance struggle, lest they become politically irrelevant.

Many local communist leaders took part in and at places led the struggle. But the communist parties made it clear that they were doing so in their individual capacities, and not as party members. Bhakta Charan Das, who has built a successful political career based on mass struggle on popular issues in the western district of Kalahandi, had spearheaded the movement against the Vedanta. But as Samadrusti — a fortnightly Oriya journal which has positioned itself as the conscience-keeper of the state — pointed out, Das was given the Congress party ticket to contest the Lok Sabha elections only after he gave in writing that he would not be involved in the anti-Vedanta struggle any more. Such is the power of the corporate behemoths!

Now that Das has won the election, it would be worthwhile to see if his undertaking was just a tactical ploy and he would return to his instinctive spirit to fight injustice or if he has also surrendered his fighting spirit to the corporate blackmail.

But, then, Bhakta Das, the political activist, could take part in the local struggles. Das, the Congress MP, can’t. It is true that he belongs to a party which is the political rival of Naveen Patnaik’s BJD. But then his party, the Congress, is a partner in crime. The Manmohan Singh government at the Centre had given Naveen Patnaik the go-ahead with this brazen anti-Orissa policy.

Naveen Patnaik and Manmohan Singh are supposed to be two leaders known for personal honesty; but they clearly presided over a corrupt administration which was in thrall to the big business and big money. The corporate giants greased the palms in a big way both at the state and the centre and got the dream deal. And the irony was that these two leaders – Naveen Patnaik and Manmohan Singh – who should have been in the dock for parceling out Orissa’s long-term interests, were hailed as icons of development.

Both have now won sweeping victories. Their media-driven image as honest and development-oriented leaders have been reinforced by the people’s verdict. Clearly, the state of Orissa and its people are the losers in this confluence of interests of big business, big media and big politics.

Nitish owes his success to development plank as well as identity politics

  Nitish Kumar and Naveen Patnaik are the biggest regional success story in the Lok Sabha elections of 2009. They are being hailed as the ambassadors of a new brand of politics: politics of development. They deserve every bit of the accolades being showered on them. But in this hour of triumph, let us not be rushed into the herd mentality and be oblivious of the larger political reality.

 The cases of Orissa and Bihar are different and must be handled separately. In this write-up, let me discuss only Bihar. There is no doubt that Nitish Kumar has embarked upon a huge development agenda for Bihar. The law and order situation has improved; roads and bridges are being built and there is a perceptible feeling that the government has got its act together. That is a huge difference from the days of Lalu regime (direct and proxy) when the ruling party’s vision of development was symbolized by its election symbol, lantern. Lalu Yadav pushed Bihar into the darkness. Nitish is trying to redeem its past glory. He has not succeeded yet, but he comes across as someone who is sincerely trying to change the face of Bihar.

 Lalu Yadav, in his heydays in Bihar, believed that development did not fetch votes. He had an uncanny feeling that if he embarked on a path of development, it would give rise to a ‘revolution of rising expectations’, which, in turn, would prove electorally counter-productive. He thought the best way to devise a winning formula was by resorting to identity politics.

 Nitish Kumar, a close colleague of Lalu Yadav for decades, instinctively knew that the latter had a feel for the pulse of the people. He had understood that Lalu Yadav lost the plot in Bihar after a decade and a half not because of the lack of development of the state, but because he gave a short shrift to wider caste alliances. His prolonged success in the bid for power made him discard the policy of accommodation of the less assertive and less privileged caste groups. His arrogance was reflected in his M-Y (Muslim and Yadav) formulation, that Muslims and Yadavs alone could steer him to power.

 When Nitish kumar broke away from Lalu, he had limited support base. He was the recognized leader of the Kurmis, a relatively prosperous backward caste group like the Yadavs, but not as numerically preponderant. Even the upper caste vote that came with the alliance with the BJP was not enough to oust Lalu from power. Then Nitish Kumar devised an electoral strategy to beat Lalu in his own game of identity politics. He clutched on to a formula — devised by Karpoori Thakur, a former chief minister and mentor of both Lalu and Nitish — that called for special privileges for Extreme Backward Castes (EBCs). Nitish mobilized the EBCs on a political platform that assured them separate reservation in jobs and in panchayat bodies. The EBCs, who had been largely ignored by the Lalu dispensation, except for token representation in the ministry, jumped to Nitish bandwagon. The overwhelming support of the EBCs, which constituted about 35 per cent of the electorate, finally brought victory to Nitish Kumar.

  When Lalu was trounced, the media played it up as a verdict against misgovernance, but Nitish knew it well that he owed his success to social engineering. But he wanted to live up to the media image. So he made development the major plank of his administration. But he was certain that development alone would not fetch him enough votes to sustain his power base. So he set out to build new communal alliances. Just as he brought about a division within the backward castes by propping up the EBCs, he also sought to split the Dalits as a vote bank. He set up a Maha Dalit Commission to ostensibly identify the underprivileged among the Dalits and give them special benefits.

 Chamars, who owed their allegiance once upon a time to Jagjivan Ram and now to his daughter Meira Kumar, and Paswans, owing allegiance to Ram Bilas Paswan, were excluded from the Maha Dalit community. There was a sense of disaffection among a large section of the Dalit community against Chamars and Paswans who enjoyed political patronage. Nitish cashed in on that discontent.

 But Nitish’s bigger master-stroke was to split the Muslims on forward and backward lines. He realized that given the huge number of Muslims in almost every Lok sabha constituency (on an average, 15 to 20 per cent), he could not achieve assured electoral success without breaking the Muslim vote bank. The Pashmanda (backward) Muslim campaign, which alleged that the forward Muslims had cornered all the benefits of the association with the ruling dispensation,  had urged Lalu to undertake special measures for their uplift and give them a share in political power. But Lalu ignored their entreaties as that would have caused dismay among the forward Muslims who were more influential.

 Nitish seized on it and extended open support for the cause of the backward caste Muslims. He sent two of the leaders of the Pashmanda Muslim forum – Ali anwar and Dr Izaj ali – to Rajya Sabha, much to the chagrin of his long-standing political associates whose chances to go to the Upper House were marred. By this political patronage, Nitish clearly weaned the backward Muslims away from Lalu Yadav. He even tried to appeal to the larger community by providing monthly pension to the families affected by the Bhagalpur riots, which had taken place even before Lalu Yadav came to power.

 There are many other measures he undertook to win over these distinct vote banks. And he succeeded in his mission. The sweeping success that he registered in the current Lok Sabha elections owes a great deal to this painstakingly devised and enforced social strategy.

 This is not to discount the goodwill that he has garnered by his developmental work. But the fact is that, in a caste-ridden state like Bihar, all such goodwill would not have translated into such a decisive victory. It is true that the people’s yearning for a better quality life is increasingly taking hold in their minds. But, at the same time, there is no denying the stranglehold of caste remains firmly embedded in their electoral considerations.

 That explains the apparent paradox: in Nitish’s case, it is not development vs. identity politics. It is the juxtaposition of both. Nitish’s development plank alone would have fetched him a respectable number in the Lok Sabha elections; but his landslide victory has much to do with his skilful intervention in identity politics along with the development initiatives.

Is it a mandate for development?

There are two broad explanations about the UPA’s spectacular victory in the 2009 General Elections. The first one is a negative one: that the electorate in India has rejected the communal political platform. But then this assertion is not borne out by facts. Varun Gandhi and Narendra Modi are the two diabolic communal faces of the BJP. But their electoral fortunes have been rather dissimilar in this election. Varun, who became an instant hit with saffron bandwagon after his venomous utterances against the Muslims, has won the Pilibhit seat in Uttar Pradesh, with a huge margin. To that extent, he has got the endorsement of the majority of voters in his constituency. But the same cannot be said of Narendra Modi, who can be legitimately called the role model for Varun Gandhi. Modi had scripted huge electoral successes in the aftermath of 2001 Gujrat riots riding on the hard Hindutva campaign. But this time he has failed to carry the people of Gujarat on a communal platform in a decisive manner. So it is difficult to say that the Indian electorate has either endorsed or rejected the communal politics. If there was an endorsement, then the BJP would not faced the relatively dismal performance in Uttar Pradesh as also Gujrat. And if the electorate rejected this brand of politics, then Varun Gandhi should have got a severe drubbing. But just the opposite has happened.

 

The second explanation is a positive assertion: that the election outcome this time is a vote for development. Many credit the UPA government with inclusive development process and pro-poor policies like the NREGA and the loan waiver scheme that won it the support of a large section of rural population. Well, these two schemes certainly helped the poor, but they were in the form of subsidy; there were hardly any measures by the UPA government which ensured that the 9 per cent growth was actually inclusive.

 

The government records, of course, tell us that there has been considerable poverty reduction during the period the country has been on a growth path, but the absolute number of people without the basic amenities is still large. That suggests that the rising inequality has not allowed the benefit of growth to change the quality of life for the poor.

 

Consider some basic facts: while India experienced spectacular economic growth, the benefit of that growth was hardly reflected in the improvement of the health facilities of the needy. The 2006 National Family Health Survey (NFHS 3) showed an immunization coverage of only 44 per cent – an improvement of just 2 per cent compared to the 1998 NFHS 2 data. Similarly, 46 per cent of children under three were underweight in 2006, again a fall of only 1 per cent over eight years. It was small wonder that India’s position in global Human Development Index (HDI) did not improve during the high growth phase.

 

As a matter of fact, the high growth was mostly registered in industries and services sector, where as agricultural growth remained sluggish. This had serious implications for the poor as 55 per cent of the total workforce in India is still engaged in agriculture.

The NREGA that the government launched in February 2006 had enormous potential in ensuring that funds reached the rural landless unemployed and the necessary rural infrastructure is built in the bargain, but its success has been only patchy. It has delivered results only where the social audit campaigns initiated by Jean Dreze, Aruna Roy and other social activists are strong. Elsewhere it has got lost in the proverbial bottomless pit of corruption, callousness and unaccountability.

 

Just see what Rahul Gandhi said while on a whirlwind election tour of West Bengal two weeks ago: “There are four lakh NREG cardholders in Purulia, but I have heard only 950 people have got 100 days of employment.” The Congress leader might have said this to score a brownie point with the Left rivals during election time, but what is true of Purulia is also true of most parts of India.

 

Education is supposed to be the key for social mobility of the poor. Rapid growth in quality primary and basic education as well as higher education is considered critical in providing access to a better life for the poor But Manmohan singh government could not provide for the right to decent education for all. The Right to education Bill was not passed in 2007 citing financial constraints!  That showed the clear priority that the government had in mind when spearheading the economy with a spectacular growth rate.

 

So to say that the 2009 mandate for the Congress-led UPA is a mandate for development is a travesty of truth. Subsidising the poor is not the same as making them active participants in and real beneficiaries of the development process.

Rahul Gandhi must not repeat the mistakes of his father and grandmother

Rahul Gandhi has emerged as a likeable leader in the course of the elections. He seems to carry a mature head over his shoulders. He is respectful to the older leaders, at least in public; when he is critical of other parties, he makes political arguments, he does not spew venom.

That is how it should be for a leader of a democratic party. Of course, many would argue that Rahul’s position is not self-earned; it is on account of the dynasty. That is a legitimate argument. Nehru-Gandhi family perpetuated the dynastic rule in Congress. But then that charge has lost much of its bite these days because almost all the political parties, with the honourable exception of the BJP and the Left, are now dynasty-driven. Dynastic politics has, in fact, become the raison d etre of Indian democracy. It is as much true of Hindi heartland as of down south; even in the northernmost state of Jammu & Kashmir, politics today is a veritable battleground between two political dynasties. That is why dynastic debate does not any more create flutter in India’s political discourse.

Rahul Gandhi is the crown prince of the Congress. He may make a lot of polite noises denying his readiness to take over the mantle of prime minister if the Congress emerges as the leader of a coalition to form the government. But that is mere electoral precaution. The Congress does not want the debate during the elections to get diverted to the acts of omission and commission of the Nehru-Gandhi family. Manmohan Singh is a safe mascot for the party to sail through the electoral turbulence. Once the party emerges successful and the Congress returns with such a sizeable number that regional parties will flock to it to get a share in the booty of power, it is quite possible that Singh will express his reluctance to carry on the burden of the job of prime minister, citing health reasons. That would facilitate the crowning of the prince. It is also possible that Manmohan Singh will be asked to carry on with the responsibility for some time and Rahul will take over the baton in the midcourse. In any case, if the Congress manages to cobble together a winning coalition, Rahul Gandhi’s ascension to the top job is likely to happen during the life of the ensuing Lok Sabha itself.

If that happens, will that make any difference to the nature and character of the Congress party and the government? Well, Rahul Gandhi would be better placed compared to his father in beginning his innings. Rajiv Gandhi’s tenure began on a sour note, with a murderous attack on the Sikhs countrywide that cost several thousand innocent lives and huge loss of property. His uncharitable remark that ‘when a big tree falls, there will be tremors all around’ was interpreted as an endorsement of the anti-Sikh riots following Indira Gandhi’s assassination by her Sikh bodyguards.

Rajiv Gandhi managed to tide over the temporary loss of credibility by initiating development measures that made him popular again. He became an icon of youthful energy, vigour and dynamism. But soon after the Bofors scandal hit him on the face; then the question that came to everyone’s mind: such a man, with a good bearing, good track record and immense goodwill – if this man was indeed corruptible, what hope is there for the country?

Rahul Gandhi, like his father, has also become a youth icon. His bigger asset is his simplicity and informality. He has succeeded in establishing rapport with the hoi polloi. He has traveled to the remotest of places, spent time with the poorest families, shared food with them. Some argue that he is doing all this not because his heart is in it, but because his mind ordains him to do so – to get a good media. Switch off the TV flashlights, Rahul Gandhi will return to the ways many rich scions act – do politics in the lap of luxury, they say. But then if he is bonding with the people, even as a means of photo opportunity, that is a good thing; at least he gets to see and understand their plight.

Rajiv Gandhi, during his probation days, did not spend much time trying to build the party; as he did not perhaps need to. The Congress was in a position to win election on its own. It was the only national party the country had then. But the halcyon days of the Congress are now over. The Congress cannot dream of coming to power on its own any more, not at least in the current circumstances. So Rahul carries a greater burden, that of resurrecting the party from the morass in which it wallows in many crucial states. Many credit Rahul Gandhi for the Congress decision to go it alone in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, a decision that has infused new life into the party.

It is possible that Rahul Gandhi succeeds in getting a better mandate for the Congress; but there lies the problem: the success might go to his head. He must guard against the arrogance of success. He must remember how Rajiv Gandhi, with all his amiable demeanour, lapsed into arrogant behavoiur once and paid a heavy price. That was in 1982 when he snubbed the Andhra chief minister T Anjiah publicly at the airport and told the media that they would get a new chief minister soon. The people of Andhra Pradesh refused to take the insult lying down and sent Congress packing in the next election.

Rahul can take lessons of arrogance from his grandmother’s political life as well. When Indira Gandhi took over as prime minister, she had to confront challenges both in polity and economy. Senior leaders of the party were not prepared to accept her leadership. But the greater challenge was in the economy. Due to successive years of drought in 1965 and 1966, there was more than 20 per cent fall in food crop production, leading to a famine-like situation and very high rate of inflation (over 12 per cent). How she managed to tackle the situation on both the fronts is part of the legend.

But her overreaching ambition proved her undoing. Triumphantly elected for her second term in 1971, she tried to make the party an instrument of her personal power. She let loose her unbridled son, Sanjay Gandhi, to run riot over the party and government institutions. When her election was declared invalid, she threatened to pack the Supreme Court if it did not give a verdict in her favour. Such arrogance led to her downfall. Her party was wiped out in the north of Vindhyas in 1977 election.

If Rahul Gandhi wants long term success, he must learn from the mistakes of his father and grandmother. It would serve him well in the long run if he internalizes the democratic values cherished by Jawaharlal Nehru, his great grandfather.

Manmohan Singh’s growth without equity

In an interview to the Times of India (published on April 25), Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has claimed that if re-elected, he would bring the economy back on the path of high growth, to the point of 9 to 10 per cent. Well, it may not be an empty boast. After all, when he took command of the Indian economy in his second stint in 2004, he placed India on the ‘take-off’ stage by registering 9 per cent growth in 2005-06, followed by 9.4 per cent growth in 2006-07.(with per capita income growing at 8.4 per cent during that period).

This spectacular growth of the India economy may have faced temporary setback due to the global economic recession in the last year and a half, but that does not take away the credit that is due to Manmohan Singh for turning around the economy, first as finance minister in 1991-96 and deepening its effect while serving as the prime minister, almost a decade later.

As Manmohan Singh said in the interview with TOI, “Yashwant Sinha – when he was finance minister in the Chandra Shekhar government – sent the country’s gold abroad. When we came back to power, we brought the gold back”. The prime minister was referring to the developments in March 1991 when the Chandra Shekhar government was forced to sell 20 tonnes of gold to the Union Bank of Switzerland to tide over the immediate foreign exchange crisis. That incident brought India to the brink of a ‘basket case’ and there were speculations worldwide that our country would soon fall into the debt trap, as it had happened to many African and Latin American nations.

But barely three months later, Manmohan Singh, as Narasimha Rao’s finance minister, undertook the momentous challenge to prove the Cassandras wrong. He presided over a monumental economic reform programme. And his record was outstanding. India was able to stage one of the fastest recoveries from a deep macroeconomic crisis. The growth rate of India’s GDP which had fallen to an abysmal 0.8 per cent in the crisis year of 1991-92 recovered quickly to 5.3 per cent by 1992-93 and rose further to 6.2 per cent in 1993-94. Over the next three years, the India economy averaged an unprecedented growth rate of over 7.5 per cent, a rate closer to high performers of East Asia.

So, as far as growth rate was concerned, Manmohan Singh’s track record has been enviable. That is why, his emphasis in the TOI interview was high growth. It is worth noting that he did not mention about inclusive growth. It cannot be an oversight. There were many occasions in the past, when he has harped on the need to make growth more .
But he knows that his high-sounding statements have not been matched by bold decisions. That is why he did not want any debate to ensue on his patchy record on inclusive growth, when the elections are under way.

And that brings us to the central question: is growth a laudatory achievement by itself, or should growth with equity be our primary concern? Let us take a look at Singh’s track record in this regard. Well, the government records tell us that there has been considerable poverty reduction during the period the country was on a growth path, but the absolute number of people without the basic amenities has been still large. That suggested two things: one, the economic growth was not fast enough; second, the rising inequality did not allow the benefit of growth to change the quality of life for the poor.

Consider some basic facts: while India experienced spectacular economic growth, the benefit of that growth was hardly reflected in the improvement of the health facilities of the needy. The 2006 National Family Health Survey (NFHS 3) showed an immunization coverage of only 44 per cent – an improvement of just 2 per cent compared to the 1998 NFHS 2 data. Similarly, 46 per cent of children under three were underweight in 2006, again a fall of only 1 per cent over eight years. It was small wonder that India’s position in global Human Development Index (HDI) did not improve during the high growth phase.

As a matter of fact, the high growth was mostly registered in industries and services sector, where as agricultural growth remained sluggish. This had serious implications for the poor as 55 per cent of the total workforce in India is still engaged in agriculture.
The NREGA that the government launched in February 2006 had enormous potential in ensuring that funds reached the rural landless unemployed and the necessary rural infrastructure is built in the bargain, but its success has been only patchy. It has delivered results only where the social audit campaigns initiated by Jean Dreze, Aruna Roy and other social activists are strong. Elsewhere it has got lost in the proverbial bottomless pit of corruption, callousness and unaccountability.

Just see what Rahul Gandhi said while on a whirlwind election tour of West Bengal: “There are four lakh NREG cardholders in Purulia, but I have heard only 950 people have got 100 days of employment.” (Indian Express, April 25, 2009). The Congress leader might have said this to score a brownie point with the Left rivals during election time, but what is true of purulia is also true of most parts of India.

Education is supposed to be the key for social mobility of the poor. Rapid growth in quality primary and basic education as well as higher education is considered critical in providing access to a better life for the poor But Manmohan singh government could not provide for the right to decent education for all. The Right to education Bill was not passed in 2007 citing financial constraints! That showed the clear priority that the government had in mind when spearheading the economy with a spectacular growth rate.

The challenge before a new government today, unlike in the early decades after freedom, is not so much of trying to achieve high levels of economic growth. The challenge is to ensure effective governance that would harness the economic growth and make it sustainable and inclusive.

But Manmohan Singh does not seem to rise to this challenge. Because this needs very tough decisions about fiscal prudence, about allocating resources in a manner that allows the real poor to get benefit, and not those who speak in the name of the poor.