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Politics and Public Policy in India

May 22, 2012 • 3:40 am 0

Pratap Bhanu Mehta on BJP and its affairs

Pratap Bhanu Mehta has an OpEd in the Indian Express today on the BJP this time with the upcoming National Executive in mind. PBM’s dissection of the BJP is mostly on the ball on how the Party in Delhi has been struggling to come to terms with the imperatives of a federal polity. PBM’s critique of the incoherence and drift in Delhi is brutal and perhaps rightly so. He goes on to lament the absence of a center to balance the federal divergence across states to then go on to paint a dismal picture for the BJP’s future.

There is one snag with PBM’s analysis though. Perhaps the OpEd was written before the recent spate of Opinion Polls but PBM fails to see a sliver of opportunity that is starting to open up within this opinion mass of doom and gloom.

Discounting the mandatory reference to 2002 and allies, PBM’s analysis on Narendra Modi misses the point on mass communication that has already happened albeit by default. The two Opinion polls – CNN-IBN and STAR-ABP confirm what was revealed earlier by the India Today Poll. The mainstream media and Narendra Modi’s detractors across the political spectrum have done the job for him building up a national profile by drawing him into campaigns where he had not even set foot – the recent Delhi MCD polls and the UP Polls are good examples of this.

Opinion Polls can be treacherous in a country like India and PBM is right, an effective mass campaign will have to go beyond the electronic medium and Urban India. Perhaps we will have to wait till after the 2012 Gujarat polls to see that.

It is interesting nevertheless to note  that, barring the customary objections, PBM is half convinced that the only mass leader with even half of a chance to get the BJP out of its rut is Narendra Modi.

Filed under: Offstumped

May 17, 2012 • 6:46 am 6

BJP and its affairs

Well before the Uttar Pradesh elections were beginning to look like a complete washout for the BJP one witnessed a curious phenomenon play out in the media – a series of unattributed reports that sought to prempt the outcome to suggest that a negative outcome would be of no consequence to a possible second term for the current incumbent.

How the BJP chooses to conduct its internal affairs is a matter between it and its members. To those of us on the outside and sympathetic to its cause, the opaqueness of this conduct is of mild curiosity most of the time but of late it has turned into a matter of acute concern.

It would be redundant to recount all of the episodes and reasons, it would also be speculative given the backroom intrigue surrounding most of them.

But it is in order to point out where the concern mainly arises from:

#1 – The manner in which the BJP has emulated the Congress in turning “failure” into a resume enhancer. This is not the first time it was sought to be argued that choice of Organizational Leadership was divorced from success or failure in elections.

#2 – The manner in which the BJP has further emulated the Congress in scapegoating regional leaders

#3 – The manner in which the BJP and some in the Sangh look to the Communists as a role model for touting the flawed idea of collective leadership as an excuse to either undermine mass leadership or to pass the buck on accountability.

All of the above have in varying degrees contributed to the drift in BJP since the loss in 2004.

Nitin Gadkari’s elevation as BJP President brought the promise of a refreshing change. To some degree that did happen. For the first time you had a BJP leader on television in Delhi who didnt sound angry or outraged all the time. It is hard not to like Gadkari given his disarming humor and relaxed demeanor.  He also brought a sense of energy to campaigns.

But a dispassionate appraisal of the Gadkari term would reveal 3 marked failings:

#1 - Failure to chart a clear path to power in Delhi - BJP has failed to recover ground it previously held in with the exception of Goa. It has not broken any new ground with the exception of the odd bypoll win in Telangana.

#2 – Failure to make bold moves - BJP continues to take muddled positions on most issues with a reactive stance. In states where it has attempted a recovery it has failed to project new credible leadership while it its attempt to recycle old faces has fallen flat.

#3 – Failure to a create a positive “for wave” - Far too much energy and time has been spent on scams, expressing anger and outrage rather than on creating a positive wave “for the BJP”.

The BJP in Delhi has come to be a party of “scam chasers” much like Accident Lawyers in the West who are “Ambulance Chasers”. The “anger” constituency has far too many claimants. And “anger against Congress” is an opportunity with diminishing returns. There is a fatigue factor from frequent superlative claims of scams where the only visible impact is disruption in Parliament and a circuitous Legal Process that barely lends itself to political one-upmanship.

A second term for Mr.Gadkari may have its merits (see discussion below on weak party system) but the opaqueness of the process of decision making and the backroom intrigue surrounding it leaves us no more enlightened on how he or the BJP proposes to address the above three marked failings.

Making this opaqueness worse are the juvenile political games being played in the media. How the BJP proposes to manage its affairs is its business, but this backroom intrigue is clearly not helping it keep our sympathies or earn new sympathies.

One doesn’t have to look too far to extrapolate on what happens to a Party that is unable to reconcile mass politics with dogmatic loyalties to a clique. Those who look to the Communists as a role model on how to run the organization must realize a fate not much unlike the Communists will likely befall them.

A far more relevant role model for the BJP is the “weak party” system that is predominant in western democracies where concentration of power is  federated across regional leaders within a political party and where the national organ of the political party plays largely a secondary role of campaign coordination and funding.

In such a “weak party system” it doesnt really matter who the National President for the Party Organization. A key aspect of that model though is  the Institutionalized Mechanism by which all the regional power centers and the national organ coalesce around a Mass Leader ahead of an election once chosen.  While the process of federating power has been underway in the BJP for sometime it is clear that its core DNA is still at odds with the imperatives of mass politics.

The sooner the BJP reconciles this contradiction and comes to terms with the imperatives of Mass Politics within a “Weak Party” system the better prepared it will be for 2014 or whenever the next General Election may be.

Filed under: Gujarat Polls 2012, Narendra Modi, Nitin Gadkari

May 14, 2012 • 8:01 am 7

Show your faith in The Republic, Accept the Outcome of your Process – OpEd in The Pioneer

Originally Published in The Pioneer. Also read related blog posts here and here.

A heinous crime took place in Gulbarg Society in the suburbs of Ahmedabad in Gujarat in February 2002 during the post-Godhra violence. Justice for that crime, that saw former Congress MP Ehsan Jafri falling prey to mob violence, has to be about bringing to book those within that mob. Unfortunately, justice for the real crimes of Gulbarg has been sidetracked by a parallel pursuit for a criminal conspiracy behind the mob violence. The pursuit of that criminal conspiracy has been muddied further by the politics injected into it, making it a high-stakes game of ‘politics by litigation’. This has since left far behind the prosecution of the perpetrators of the crimes of Gulbarg.

The process of justice for the 2002 violence was politicised from the start, with Supreme Court interventions coming as early as 2003. Setting aside all arguments and counter-arguments including misgivings about extraordinary judicial activism, everyone had accepted in good faith that the process set about by the Supreme Court, through the Special Investigation Team constituted by it, was to be the final word on the complaint filed by Ehsan Jafri’s Zakia Jafri alleging a conspiracy.

This process, steered by the Supreme Court-appointed SIT with former CBI Director CK Raghavan at its helm, has since brought closure to a number of cases at varying stages of trial, conviction and sentencing. Having expressed dissatisfaction with the previous agencies, it is incumbent upon those who sought this extraordinary Supreme Court intervention to stand by the SIT and to accept fully its report.

The SIT has delivered an exhaustive 25,000-page closure report on the most high profile of complaints to emerge from the game of ‘politics by litigation’. In that closure report the SIT has conclusively established that neither was there any political conspiracy at the highest levels of Government to allow the 2002 violence nor was there any wilful negligence on the part of Gujarat’s Chief Minister, Mr Narendra Modi.

The SIT did not arrive at this conclusion by merely going through the Chief Minister’s replies during its interrogation of him. Instead, it has based its observations on a comprehensive body of evidence that it put together which it further put to extensive scrutiny.

A lawyer appointed by the Supreme Court to look into the evidence and provide opinion has further validated that evidence, by agreeing with the SIT’s conclusions on all most all counts barring one. The amicus curiae’s opinion that there may be possible grounds for prosecution of the Chief Minister has been analysed threadbare in media reports to highlight its many infirmities and speculations.

Be that as it may, the SIT’s final closure report deals with this divergent opinion as well in an exhaustive manner. It calls out every single observation by theamicus curiae. It further puts to logical test every one of the observations, to highlight those that are not supported by facts or laws, to finally conclude that theamicus curiae has erred by relying solely on the fabricated claims of a delinquent police officer with a dubious record. The SIT then finally recommends that there is no case to be made against the Mr Modi.

The SIT has prepared this final closure report after the ‘conspiracy’ theory surrounding the Gulbarg Society case was investigated and re-investigated by it and also after that re-investigation was reviewed independently by the amicus curiae under the supervision of the Supreme Court at every stage. This level of scrutiny of a sitting Chief Minister is unprecedented and extraordinary by the justice standards of any mature democracy.

Hence, it is outrageous to see shallow commentary emerging from the editorial desks of various English-language newspapers and news media outlets. They have not only accused the SIT of lazy logic but have also insinuated unprofessionalism on the part of Mr Raghavan, and even stooped so far as to launch personal attacks on his family. The bottom line here is that the SIT lead by Mr Raghavan has set the gold standard for how a highly-politicised charge of conspiracy theory must be investigated in an environment of high political stakes. The thorough and complete nature of this investigation cannot be cast aside just because its outcome is contrary to what was desired by some. Having demanded this process of the Supreme Court, the NGO activists, their media collaborators and their sponsors in the Congress have no choice but to accept this outcome, howsoever adverse it may be to their political goals.

The SIT was not appointed by Mr  Modi. It was appointed by the Supreme Court. The multiple investigations and reviews were not ordered by Mr Modi. They were ordered by the Supreme Court. This was the process sought by the activists and influenced by a lawyer with well-known sympathies for the activists. Thus, for the activists to now disown the process just because the outcome was not what they had hoped for all along is both bogus and dishonest.

While the investigation into the  crimes commited in Gulbarg must go on undistracted and unhindered, one hopes that Ms Jafri and her family accept the reality that there was no political conspiracy leading to the violence in Gulbarg. They must focus their efforts on finding the real perpetrators of the Gulbarg violence rather than become political pawns in the agenda advanced by activists and their  political masters in the Congress.

To those in the media who have been dishing out constipated editorials on the SIT report, their inability to digest the  report is fully understandable. This is the end of the road for those who have been seeking a conspiracy theory behind the riots. This outcome was the result of a process that could not have been any more independent or non-partisan, having been steered and supervised by the highest court of the country going far beyond what the Constitution explicitly provided for.

To those who still cannot find closure from this outcome, one can only say that their faith in the Indian Republic is suspect.

Filed under: Gujarat Polls 2012, Narendra Modi

May 14, 2012 • 8:00 am 0

Celebrating 60th anniversary of Parliament with a National Project to restore Public Trust

Originally published on Rediff.com. 

Also read on the same topic of Restoring Trust to our Public Discourse:

Why “restoring trust” must become the overarching theme of the political narrative

Column in Rediff August 2011 on reforms

Parliament is due to mark the 60th anniversary of its first sitting in 1952. Interestingly, Parliament also had a distinguished visitor in 1952 when it was addressed by Mrs Franklin D Roosevelt. Her remarks reported by the Milwaukee Journal back in 1952 are as much relevant today as we look forward to the role this institution shall play in the future of our great nation. To quote Eleanor Roosevelt:

‘Democracies who take their freedoms too much for granted sometimes lose them.’

‘We forget that we must work for those things we hold dear.’

As I set about to pen this column, I was seized of the request on how can Parliament make India [ Images ] Great. At the outset I must disagree with other columnists who I am afraid have taken a rather dim and cynical view.

I for one believe that we are a Great Nation. We are a democracy in progress. We are a Republic in its adolescence. We may have wide disparities in income or otherwise. But none of that in any way diminishes the fact that we are a Great Nation.

We are a Great Nation because we survived as a civilisation for over 4,000 years even as others perished. We are a Great Nation also because we as a people have outlasted all those who sought to imperialise us.

The history of our nation may not always have charted a linear trajectory to greatness. But that must not distract us from recognising that we as a nation continue to find new and innovative ways to reconcile contradictions, transcend fault-lines thus avoiding the pitfalls of so many of our neighbours.

So heeding Eleanor Roosevelt’s remarks from 60 years ago to Parliament let us recognise that we must not take for granted those things we hold dear and we must work for them.

The greatness of our nation over the centuries arises from an innate sense of justice rooted in the ancient Indian idea of Dharma. My good friend Nitin Pai from The Takshashila Institution raises an important point that the motto for our Constitution should not have been ‘Satyameva Jayate’, but instead should have been ‘Dharmo Rakshati Rakshitah’.

During the Constituent Assembly debates the makers of our Constitution like Dr S Radhakrishnan foresaw the need for that innate sense of justice flowing from Dharma to be reflected in the spirit of the Constitution if not in its words.

The Constitution makers imagined the Parliament of India to be the supreme institution in our system of government. They envisaged a division of power with ultimate accountability to the people through the elected representatives of the Lok Sabha.

Thus, the Parliament of India was not just the custodian of the interests of the people of India, but it was also envisaged to be the vanguard of Dharma that holds the fabric of our nation together by its actions.

Today, the Parliament of India may appear to be a raucous madhouse at times, its sheen diminished by the actions of those within and by the words of those from the outside. Today, Parliament may also appear to be lacking in credibility when viewed through the prism of the politics of the moment.

Its actions at times may appear to be contradictory to both the original intent of the Constitution and the spirit of Dharma. Its agenda at times may appear to be swayed by a value system that is motivated by alien political ideologies working against the spirit of Dharma.

Nevertheless, Parliament has distinguished itself with a sense of rule of law to rise to the occasion whenever it was put to the test by our democratic experiment. Let us not forget we are an adolescent Republic and a democracy that is still a work in progress.

The wide disparities across our nation have created a deep trust deficit between people and politicians, between political parties and between various identity based groups and across many of our public institutions.

The solution to bridging this trust deficit does not lie in further fostering grievances and victimhood by seeking refuge in alien political ideologies that widen fault-lines while exacerbating the trust deficit.

Instead the solution lies in rediscovering that spirit of Dharma so we can restore trust to our public transactions and trust in our public institutions. There is no other project of greater national interest for the next decade and beyond, than the national project to restore trust by rediscovering the spirit of Dharma.

The Indian Parliament being at the head of all of our public institutions has the greatest responsibility towards this national project.

As our Parliamentarians sit down to mark the 60th anniversary I fully expect that there will be empty platitudes in words and much cynicism in many hearts. But a small beginning must be made somewhere towards this national project to restore trust.

So even if one member of Parliament manages to resolve himself or herself within his or her mind on a commitment towards this national project it would be a start.

A commitment from our Parliamentarians to rediscover the spirit of Dharma in our laws and transactions would go miles towards keeping the hope alive that we as a great nation will continue to survive and thrive

Filed under: Ambedkarite Constitutionalism

RSS Now Playing on Offstumped Live

  • On Third Front day dreams and Uttar Pradesh nightmares – Wrap up Podcast March 14, 2012
    A podcast conversation with  @dubash (http://phalaka.com) where we wrap up the Uttar Pradesh polls discussion with a look at the final numbers and analysis of vote shares. We also look ahead on all the buzz around Akhilesh Yadav, the rise of the Samajwadi Party and all of the day-dreaming over a possible Third Front Government [...]
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