‘BJP Under Modi is Vulnerable to the Emergence of Several Dev Kant Barooahs'

This article was first published by Tehelka (www.tehelka.com) on 9 November 2014 under the headline BJP Under Modi Will Become Like Congress Under Indira

KN Govindacharya is not given to making statements merely for effect. Expect plain-speaking from the 71-year-old former RSS pracharak and former BJP ideologue, especially when the issues at hand are something he feels strongly about — the rise and rise of Amit Shah, the pitfalls of being a Narendra Modi or the degeneration of the BJP into an electoral machine. In an interview to RAMESH RAMACHANDRAN, he also says that the prime minister must be seen to act on black money and that the next Union Budget will be the best indicator yet of the thought process of the NDA government. Edited excerpts from an interview :

"Quote Unquote"

'BJP under Modi is vulnerable to the emergence of several Dev Kant Barooahs'

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'Indiscipline will become the order of the day in the BJP. If the party gets degenerated into just an electoral machine and the party, instead of being a party of workers with a mission, gets degenerated into a party of candidates for power — and instead of holistic growth, electoral gains become their parameters — then all this is bound to happen'

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'The next Budget will definitely be the indicator of the thought process of the BJP'

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'The Modi government has to present itself as pro-Bharat and pro-poor. There is a widespread perception that on certain issues the government is pro-Bharat, but it has to be translated at the policy level'

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'The Modi government needs to be much more forthcoming as far as actions are concerned. Just fond wishes won’t do. Just exclamations won’t suffice'

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'Mukesh Ambani patting Prime Minister Modi does not go down well with the cadres. The self-respect of the cadres is hurt'

It is nearly six months since Narendra Modi was sworn in as prime minister. How do you view his performance?

After Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi, Narendra Modi has proved himself to be the most hardworking prime minister. He is also the most proactive. He has exhibited these two qualities. However, he has yet to learn the ropes of governance at the Centre. Now he is facing the arduous task of taming and then steering the bureaucracy because the whole structure, in spirit, is status-quoist, inert, corrupt and insensitive. Right from the peons to the secretary-level officials, passing-the-buck has been the greatest surviving strength of government employees. So, indecisiveness is another characteristic of the bureaucracy. As far as out-of-the-box thinking or breakthrough thinking is concerned, it is a far, far dream. So, now, Modi is facing this aspect of governance. It will be interesting to see how he fares in this context.

Similarly, you cannot differentiate between the two personalities of Modi and Amit Shah (BJP president) or, for that matter, between the party and the government. All rolled into one is the present picture. And it will continue to be so because Shah will not be seen as having any separate identity of his own. He will be just a shadow. He is yet to make a mark. So, with these things, naturally, there is always a liability or vulnerability of the emergence of several Dev Kant Barooahs. (Barooah was a former Congress president who famously said, “India is Indira. Indira is India.”) Only one was sufficient to damage the reputation. Here, that will become the way of working or the order of the day. So, it will be interesting to see how all these aspects are tackled.

What do you make of Prime Minister Modi’s pro-business image and some of the recent pronouncements by his government, particularly on issues such as black money?

Without imputing motives, I feel that the government needs to be much more forthcoming as far as actions are concerned. Just fond wishes won’t do. Just exclamations won’t suffice, but they have to be in unison with the action also. As Murli Manohar Joshi has also recently said (about politics and corporates), and I agree with him, a (Reliance Industries chairman) Mukesh Ambani patting Prime Minister Modi does not go down well with the cadres. The self-respect of the cadres is hurt. Because in this party, Nanaji Deshmukh (a founder of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh) used to have the best of relations with the industrialists but none of them could get into so much proximity and they were not given even the primary membership anywhere. But in the past 20 years, corporate houses have won Rajya Sabha seats also for some of their officials or ex-officials. So this nexus of political power and money power will definitely influence the formulation of policies also. It will be difficult for the political parties to strike a different line or mode that will be injurious or harmful to the interests of the corporates. So the people running the government must be aware of it and they should take precautions about it. That is why Modi was categorical that black money (“ek ek pai”; Hindi for every penny) will be brought back because that is the money of the poor. But, you see, this cannot match with his hobnobbing with the corporate sector.

Some view Modi as being autocratic. How would you describe his style of governance?

Modi has been working very smartly, so to say; he is an extraordinary performer when it comes to image, message, signals and politics. Nobody can match (him) and for that (to happen), a structure, technology and resources are needed. He has those things because of the party and the Sangh Parivar structures. Therefore, he is able to synchronise those three ­factors and that is his genius. One has to admit that, but that has to be translated into achievements at the ground level and it is in this context that I mentioned about the bureaucracy.

The Congress party is in disarray. A section of the media does not quite seem to have an appetite for being critical of the government. The judiciary is in need of reforms. In this situation, who do you think can effectively play the role of an Opposition?

The Opposition political parties have failed in their duties and they are not able to put their house in order. They are not able to digest their defeat or accept the reality that they have to rebuild the party; but how, they don’t know. They are also not clear about what should be their future strategy or planks of politics. On that count, the Opposition is nowhere to be seen. The media, for its part, has been rational enough to give time to this government before judging it or criticising it. They are acting fair enough, that is what I feel. As for the judiciary, it has come out openly with strong comments on black money and with regard to many other things; it has been vocal enough, assertive enough in its role. So I think that the media and the judiciary are indeed playing their roles, but the same cannot be said for the Opposition.

Can the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) be more effective as an Opposition than as a government?

They have to acquire more skills for wielding power to protect and promote the interests of the people. So I think it was because of the distress and despair in the minds of the voters against the erstwhile ruling establishment that AAP was successful more than what they also might have expected. They have yet to build themselves into a political instrument. Their movement may have been helpful but consolidation was not there. So go-slow would have been the better strategy but they are the best people to judge for themselves.

Could the BJP-Shiv Sena split have been avoided before the Maharashtra Assembly election?

I think Modi is playing his game of politics in an assertive manner, given the numbers he has. And he has not trampled upon the toes of other political forces per se. Instead, for example, in Amritsar (Navjot Singh) Sidhu was sidelined; by whom? It was totally unfair and the BJP had to gulp it at that moment. About the Shiv Sena, that has not been the case but definitely, because of the split, realities have changed as far as Shiv Sena is concerned and, on the BJP’s side, they have not been unfair in demanding more seats. That was not good politics played by the Shiv Sena. So it is their fault. That fault can’t be heaped upon the BJP.

So where do the BJP and the Shiv Sena go from here?

They (Shiv Sena) also will learn lessons, which it is due for them. Efforts are always there but many a time efforts may not yield desired results. But I don’t think the BJP does not want allies or that it has become arrogant. That will be unfair to say. It depends on both partners; unilaterally, it is not possible. They should also be sensible enough to understand the change in the ground realities and the texture of politics. And it is not the end of the day; they should understand that it is a continuing process. What I am apprehensive about is how politics is turning power-centric and not people-centric, leadership-centric or personality-centric and not issue-centric. Politics is not merely about government or governance. It is about the direction in which the whole nation is to be steered by the State apparatus. It all depends on how you view the role of the State. Just winning elections or numbers is not the end of the road. The State is supposed to protect those who can’t protect themselves. So I see that in this respect, more sensitivity is required by all parties, including the ruling party.The issues of the poor and the deprived have to get more attention in this era of marketism and the State should be weighing itself in favour of the poor and the deprived rather than creating a perception that it is closer to the corporates.

Certain instances of indiscipline reported from Maharashtra have embarrassed the BJP…

It will become the order of the day. If the party gets degenerated into just an electoral machine and the party, instead of being a party of workers with a mission, gets degenerated into a party of candidates for power — and instead of holistic growth, electoral gains become their parameters — then all this is bound to happen.

The government has taken certain measures on the economic front but there is a view that more reforms are needed and quickly at that.

The situation will become clear in the next Budget because the last Budget was an extension of the previous government’s interim Budget. There was no original concept in it. The next Budget will definitely be the indicator of the thought process of the BJP. Till then, we have to wait as far as economic issues are concerned. Having said that, there is the issue of amendments to the Land Acquisition Bill, which the government is expected to bring in the winter session of Parliament. Then there are some cases on fast track against certain politicians… all of which is getting delayed. So I think one should not test the people’s patience beyond a limit. Six months is neither too early nor too late but the government has to present itself as pro-Bharat and pro-poor. There is a widespread perception that on certain issues the government is pro-Bharat, but it has to be translated at the policy level. For example, the ban on cow slaughter is not only an emotional issue; it is as well linked to economic and environmental aspects and also the direction of the development model. Breeding centres are needed. A couple of centuries ago, the cattle-to-man ratio was 7 to 1. At the time of Independence, it became 1 to 1 and now it is the reverse; today, the cattle-to-man ratio is 1 to 7. This is an alarming situation. It will definitely affect the health of the country, lead to malnutrition among children and the socio-psycho atmosphere will be hurt if this ratio further declines. The government can take certain steps such as ensuring that the export of beef and fodder is banned altogether. These seemingly innocuous steps can go a long way in addressing some of the problems. I intend to submit a memo to the government on the issue of cattle, specifically cows and their progeny.

The ‘trickle-down’ development model is a proven failure, so a departure is needed. Whether this government indeed does some out-of-the-box thinking remains to be seen. It will be interesting to see what is there in the Budget.

The government may be emotionally inclined towards being pro-Bharat but I think a lot needs to be done for the government to adopt a pro-poor approach. This aspect has to be geared for not merely lip service but a genuine commitment is needed. Eco-centric development is the need of the hour. fdi (foreign direct investment) and trickle-down theory won’t work and they will be detrimental to those people who are dependent on natural resources. Their livelihood will be threatened. Therefore, sensitivity and continuous exposure to that section of the people is needed, not investor summits.

Instead of practising the failed dictum of trickle-down theory, they should proceed towards eco-centric development and not merely anthropocentric development. An overdependence on the trickle-down theory can be counterproductive as it could encourage disparities and inequalities. Inclusive development and empowerment are needed, not through doles and charities but by the active participation of those sections of society and opening up avenues for that is the task of the government. There is a lot of talk about smart cities but hundreds of villages could vanish or be affected by the development of smart cities. Should smart cities then be a priority?

BJP veterans such as LK Advani and Murli Manohar Joshi have been sidelined. Could they have been treated differently?

If electoral politics is the approach, then whatever has been done is correct; but if politics is to be viewed holistically, then some more options could have been there. But, then again, there is no use discussing all those options. Gatham Gathaha… what has happened, has happened. One has to move on.

Concerns have been expressed in some quarters over the future of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) and the Unique Identification (Aadhaar) Number — two schemes that had been launched by the erstwhile UPA government. Where do you stand on this issue?

Continuity and change are to be blended together. As it is said, old is gold but everything new may not be the best, so change and continuity should go hand in hand. Many alterations to MGNREGA are needed but more changes are needed in the legislation on land acquisition so that agricultural land is saved and the land that protects the interests of animals, birds and other living beings is protected. The interests of jal (water), jameen (land), jungle and jaanvar (animals) should be at least as important as that of humans. So I feel if the approach is altered from an anthropocentric development to eco-centric development, it will do more good.

What are your impressions about the government’s foreign policy?

I think the government is in a learning mode and needs more time to understand the ropes of foreign policy. It could definitely have better diplomatic and economic relations with Russia because they have been natural allies, geopolitically, in the past. China can be a competitor, if not a rival, but we will have to see how far this competition can be healthy.

The Challenge Before Rahul Gandhi: If the party survives, so will the Gandhis

This article was first published by Tehelka (www.tehelka.com) under the headline The Challenge Before Rahul.

Will the Gandhi scion be able to overcome the prevailing sentiment against the politics of dynasty?

DK Shivakumar’s mandate may be confined to Karnataka by virtue of his being a minister there but his sentiments seem to transcend the state’s borders and find resonance with a section of the Congress party’s central leaders. That is not to say that no one in the party’s central leadership had thought on those lines before or aired similar sentiments in the past.

In fact, first off the blocks was Kamal Nath, who, soon after the Congress debacle in the recent Lok Sabha election, sought to suggest that the party organisation was in dire need of an overhaul. He articulated as much in an interview to NDTV, in which he spoke about holding of elections to the Congress Working Committee. Perhaps, he added for good measure, it was time to put an end to the prevailing culture of patronage, too. Most recently, P Chidambaram told the same television channel that an individual from outside the Gandhi family could “someday” take over the reins of the party.

Not being exceptionally media-savvy or not having a Twitter account should be the least of Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi’s worries today. (Not that having a presence on social media is a bad idea.) For one who claims to have spent the better part of the past seven years reorganising the Youth Congress, he does not have much to show by way of outcomes. A straw poll would indicate that there is still a deep-seated resentment among a section of the Youth Congress activists at the manner in which the Gandhi scion has gone about ushering in purported reforms, which have been implemented more in the breach.

When Rahul came to head the Youth Congress in 2007, he spoke about democratising the organisation by regularly holding elections, but a common refrain even today is that family connections matter more than merit in the party and its various organs.

One sentiment that clearly emerges from interacting with some of the workers is that the Congress party seems to be woefully out of sync with the prevailing sentiment, inside and outside the party and in India’s hinterland, against the politics of dynasty and entitlement.

The asymmetry between the two principal political parties in the country today becomes even more pronounced when one considers who the Gandhis — Sonia and Rahul — are pitted against: Narendra Modi, who rose from being a chaiwallah in his childhood to occupy the highest office in the land, and Amit Shah, who rose from within the ranks to head the BJP. In such a situation, to rope in another dynast from the same family — Priyanka Gandhi Vadra — in the hope that she would pull the party out of the morass it finds itself in, is hardly going to be a solution. (The irony is unmistakable: The same Congress worker who rails against nepotism sees Priyanka as a saviour who will wave the proverbial magic wand and, voila!, make it all look good again. For her part, she has indicated time and again that she is not ready and willing yet to play a more active role in the party’s affairs.)

It should not come as a surprise that the Congress rank and file feels a sense of despair, made even more acute by the perceived absence of Rahul from the party’s affairs post the Maharashtra and Haryana Assembly elections. Incidentally, Rahul is a key part of a 12-member Congress committee constituted to “look into future challenges” but the nature and contours of the deliberations undertaken by this panel remain a mystery.

Similarly, the conclusions or recommendations by a committee set up under the chairmanship of AK Antony to examine the reasons for the party’s debacle in the Lok Sabha election did not help matters by absolving the party office-bearers of all responsibility. Instead, the committee’s report sought to ascribe the party’s loss to unspecified organisational handicaps and, oddly, manipulation of the media by its rival. Admittedly, winning isn’t everything but then again, you don’t win silver, you lose gold!

For a party that practically invented the art of election engineering, to commit the same mistake that its rivals did some decades ago is unforgivable. (In a sense, it speaks to the bankruptcy of the Congress’ present-day leaders.) The late Indira Gandhi won a landslide in 1971 on the back of a simple yet effective slogan of “Woh kehte hain Indira hatao, main kehti hoon garibi hatao (They are saying remove Indira, I’m saying remove poverty.)” The more her rivals (who had banded together in a grand alliance) conducted a personalised campaign against her, the more she gained. Cut to 2014, and the same Congress party targeted Modi at the expense of everything else, and ended up handing him an unprecedented victory at the hustings.

The Congress strategists seem to have forgotten that there is something called a law of diminishing returns and the effectiveness of a unidimensional campaign begins to wear off after a certain period of time. And this stratagem of the Congress to selectively target Modi will continue to bother the party if, as is being anticipated, it gangs up with some of its ‘secular’ allies against a resurgent bjp and trains its guns on Modi in the states where elections are due. The Congress needs to change tack to counter the Modi phenomenon.

If Rahul is missing in action, so are certain erstwhile Congress ministers who seem to have gone into hibernation after the Lok Sabha election. The alacrity with which some of them have resumed their professional careers sends out the wrong signal that they are abandoning the party when it needs their services the most. Consequently, the task of articulating the party’s views has been outsourced ad hoc to individuals who lack the requisite skills or the stature to make forceful interventions.

For the Congress party and its brains trust, now is not the time for window dressing; now is the time for a dressing down. Cosmetic surgery won’t do anymore. Rahul will have to lead from the front and ensure that his interventions are consistent, not sporadic. His cameos such as the ordinance-is-complete-nonsense-it- should-be-torn-up-and-thrown-away or his aggressive speech at the All India Congress Committee session in January this year have proved inadequate, sometimes counter-productive. On 28 October, Rahul met with his colleagues in what was only his first formal interaction with them after the recent round of Assembly elections. On the occasion, he touched upon the issue of holding organisational elections that would be transparent and fair. It remains to be seen how effective those elections prove to be in infusing new vigour into the party.

A reluctant politician Rahul might be but there is a thin line that divides being reluctant from being (or coming across as being) disinterested. This was brought out starkly earlier this year in Rahul’s interview to Times Now television channel. He was asked: “Had you not been a Gandhi, would you have been in politics at all?” His reply was neither categorical nor in the affirmative. The import of that silence (reticence?) was not lost on a discerning audience, some of whom wondered why the tenets of equal opportunity and internal democracy should not extend to his job.

As the party introspects and contemplates its future course of action, it could begin with rightsizing its top-heavy organisation, rejigging its team of officebearers at the national and state levels and spotting new talent within and outside the party, instead of paying a lefthanded compliment to the bjp by iterating that the latter marketed itself better in the Lok Sabha polls. As Chidambaram warned, the morale is low and the party’s leadership must respond urgently.

The question before the Gandhis is: would they rather perpetuate themselves than see the party revive and reinvent itself in keeping with the times we live in?

If the party survives, so will the Gandhis.

Shah rides on Modi wave

This article was first published by Tehelka (www.tehelka.com) on 23 October 2014 under the headline Shah rides on Modi wave

Riding on the crest of a wave that catapulted the BJP to an unprecedented win in the May Lok Sabha election, the party swept to power in Haryana and came tantalisingly close to forming a government on its own in Maharashtra — two states that had been ruled by the Congress (along with its allies) for 10 and 15 years, respectively.

Although the BJP’s gamble of going it alone paid off (it won an absolute majority in Haryana and emerged as the single largest party in Maharashtra), it was not enough to push it over the finish line in Maharashtra. By some BJP leaders’ own admission, the tally could have been higher if the BJP-Shiv Sena Mahayuti (or grand coalition) had not broken.

The fact that the Modi juggernaut stopped short of a simple majority of 145 MLAs in the 288-member Legislative Assembly means that the BJP could be forced to cohabit with its estranged ally, the Shiv Sena. Unless, of course, as is being advocated by a section of the BJP’s unit in Maharashtra, the party deems it politically expedient to form a minority government a la Narasimha Rao in 1991 in the belief (hope?) that neither the Shiv Sena nor the NCP would precipitate a crisis at the time of the government seeking a confidence vote.

The NCP’s unilateral decision to offer unconditional, outside support to a BJP government in Maharashtra could come in handy — a scenario that the BJP would have factored in when its 25-year-old alliance with the Shiv Sena was called off on 25 September and, as if on cue, the NCP-Congress split within hours the same day.

The option of forming a minority government is being seen either as a BJP ploy to forestall hard bargaining by Shiv Sena or to avoid the albatross of coalition compulsions, a phrase that Manmohan Singh in New Delhi and Prithviraj Chavan in Mumbai conveniently cited to explain away their inability to call the shots, but which is an anathema to some in the BJP. However, how stable such a government would be is anybody’s guess as the index of Opposition unity will determine how long it lasts.

At the time of writing, the BJP camp was sanguine about forming a government, with or without the Shiv Sena. That Anant Geete of the Shiv Sena attended a dinner that Prime Minister Narendra Modi hosted on 20 October for his council of ministers and that the BJP’s support to the Sena continued in the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) suggested that the doors were open for talks.

On balance, while the BJP achieved one of its objectives in Maharashtra, that of maximising its tally of seats, it could well end up with something it wanted to avoid — a coalition of compulsion. The Congress, on the other hand, has been relegated to the third position in both states and it is barely struggling to stay relevant in the national polity, losing more states than it gains. Therefore, to that extent, the Maharashtra results are sobering for the BJP just as they are sombre for the Congress.

In the midst of all the hectic political activity in Maharashtra, Haryana is the lesser-known success story of the BJP where its turnaround is nothing short of spectacular. In a state where the BJP bagged only four seats in 2009, two in 2005 and six in 2000 and where it was fighting on 74 seats for the first time, the party won a record 47 seats. However, unlike Haryana, which contributes only 10 Lok Sabha seats and five Rajya Sabha seats, Maharashtra sends 48 MPs to the Lok Sabha and 19 to the Rajya Sabha. That should explain the disproportionate focus on Maharashtra as opposed to Haryana.

As the results show, the BJP won 122 seats in Maharashtra as compared to 46 in 2009; its vote share rose from 14 percent in 2009 to 28 percent in 2014. After 1990, this is the first time a party has won 100 or more seats in the Maharashtra Assembly. In the 1990 Assembly polls, the Congress had secured 141 seats. Not only has the BJP nearly trebled its tally but it has also appreciably increased its strike rate (ratio or percentage of seats won against contested) and its vote-share and swing. This, when the BJP had never contested more than 119 seats (in 2009) in the state.

Not only did BJP president Amit Shah have to build the party organisation from the ground up in 150-odd constituencies but he also had to find suitable candidates on most of those seats. The BJP coopted some defectors from rival parties, mainly from the NCP and the Congress. However, only about 20 out of the 50-odd turncoats managed to win on a BJP ticket. Compounding matters for the BJP, only one of its allies, the Rashtriya Samaj Paksha, won a lone seat.

Man of the match

A triumphant Shah says the BJP has created history in Maharashtra and Haryana by not only positioning itself to form its own government there but by ensuring that the Congress would not even get the post of the Leader of Opposition in those Assemblies. “We have moved two more steps towards a Congress-Mukt Bharat (Congress-free India),” he says.

Shah feels that the results establish beyond any doubt that the programmes, policies and performance of the Modi government have found universal acceptance among the voters of the two states. He blames “circumstances” for the BJP going it alone in Haryana and Maharashtra.

Apparently, one of those circumstances was the BJP’s urge to capitalise on its performance in the Lok Sabha election by contesting more seats on its own in both the states, which was resisted by the Haryana Janhit Congress (HJC) in Haryana and the Shiv Sena in Maharashtra. Doing so would not only have given BJP a better chance at increasing its tally, it would also have helped to strengthen its organisation in those states. An added incentive was to increase its footprint nationally.

While Shah was quick to rebuff the HJC’s suggestion of a 50:50 division of the seats (90 in all), the seat-sharing talks in Maharashtra went down to the wire although a week before the nominations closed on 27 September, it was already being talked about that the two parties can be expected to go their separate ways.

The Shraadh period (8-23 September), which is considered inauspicious for starting anything new, added to the anxieties as four days were lost to it. (The nominations opened on 20 September.) Yet, ironically, the BJP-Shiv Sena split was announced on a day when, as per the Hindu calendar, the Navratris began.

Shah, for one, was confident of a creditable performance by the BJP but chose to play along as he did not want to be seen as a deal-breaker; instead, he waited for the Shiv Sena to make a false move before making the split official. He insists that the decision to go it alone was the Shiv Sena’s, not the BJP’s.

“Neither did we try to break our relations with the Shiv Sena nor did we break it,” he told a news conference at the party headquarters in New Delhi. At the same time, Shah, whom Modi called the man of the match for the BJP’s win in the Lok Sabha election, maintains that the alliance could not have been saved at the expense of, or by sacrificing, the BJP karyakarta (worker.)

Ekla Cholo strategy

As a TEHELKA report (Will Modi’s Big Gamble Pay Off? 18 October) pointed out, a creditable performance by the BJP in Maharashtra and Haryana would come as a shot in the arm for the Modi-Shah duo and re-establish their pre-eminence in the party and beyond.

In Modi and Shah, the BJP has a formidable duo that can lead the party into unchartered territories based on a combination of the former’s administrative skills and the latter’s organisational acumen. It is Shah who devised the party’s strategy of consolidating the non-Maratha and the non-Jat votes in Maharashtra and Haryana, respectively, while projecting Modi’s development agenda to beat the caste and regional arithmetic.

Shah is the perfect foil to a Modi who thrives on challenges and the results have disproved some sceptics who had begun to wonder whether the results of the bypolls in 54 Assembly constituencies across 14 states (Uttarakhand in July; Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Punjab and Karnataka in August; and Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Assam, West Bengal, Tripura and Sikkim in September) since the BJP-led NDA came to power on 26 May were indicative of the waning of the Modi magic. (The BJP and its NDA allies had held 36 of those 54 seats but they managed to retain only 20 of them.)

Predictably, Shah could hardly conceal a chuckle when he told the news conference, “Some people rejected the Modi wave after the bypoll results but I want to tell them that the Modi wave is intact and the tsunami is still capable of vanquishing all opponents.” (However, an editorial in the Shiv Sena’s mouthpiece Saamana dismissed the wave as “nothing more than froth that receded before it reached the shores”.)

Shah asserts that “people have accepted Prime Minister Narendra Modi as the undisputed leader”. Modi had addressed 27 rallies in Maharashtra and 11 in Haryana while Shah had addressed 17 rallies in Maharashtra and 22 in Haryana. (In comparison, Congress president Sonia Gandhi addressed only four rallies in Maharashtra and three in Haryana while her son and vice-president of the party Rahul Gandhi addressed six rallies in Maharashtra and four in Haryana.)

It was anticipated that a BJP win in Maharashtra and Haryana would impart a greater momentum to the government’s promise of a fast-track development agenda in general and economic reforms and foreign and security policies, in particular. It could also nudge Modi to effect a reshuffle of his council of ministers.

Therefore, it did not come as a surprise when Finance Minister Arun Jaitley acknowledged on 20 October that the BJP forming governments in Haryana and Maharashtra will be a big plus for the Centre’s reforms push. Jaitley addressed a press conference in which he announced coal sector reforms; on the same day, Union Minister of State for Commerce and Industry Nirmala Sitharaman said in Bengaluru that the government is closer to finding a solution to approve a legislative scheme that enables the introduction of Goods and Services Tax (GST). On 18 October, the government announced oil sector reforms, including deregulating diesel prices.

While the results of the Assembly elections may not have an immediate bearing on the composition of the Rajya Sabha (where the BJP has 43 members and the Congress 68), but going forward, it could impact the elections to fill up the vacancies that will arise in the upper House of Parliament. The Rajya Sabha would become even more important when the government seeks to push through legislations.

Marathi Manoos and Asmita

Uddhav Thackeray, who led the Shiv Sena into the first electoral battle after the demise of his father Bal Thackeray in November 2012, acquitted himself better than his cousin Raj Thackeray, chief of the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena. While Shiv Sena increased its tally from 44 seats in 2009 to 63 this year (the highest number of seats it won was 73 in 1995), the MNS could win only one seat, down from the 13 it won in 2009.

The MNS’ rout has taken the sheen off its slogan of Marathi asmita (pride) just as the BJP’s development agenda has posed a challenge to the Shiv Sena’s and the MNS’ Marathi ‘manoos’ ideology. In contrast, the Hyderabad-based Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (MIM) won two seats in the Marathwada region.

Where Uddhav erred was in not reconciling to the new ground realities and insisting on a 151-119 seatsharing arrangement with the BJP, which the latter could accept only at its own peril. Unlike the relationship that existed between the late Thackeray, the late Pramod Mahajan and the late Gopinath Munde, the new men at the helm of the BJP today, Modi and Shah, do not have any affinity towards Uddhav.

Shah was clear from the word go that the BJP, having tasted blood in the Lok Sabha election, would go for broke in Maharashtra. That meant contesting on more seats than the BJP ever has but the Shiv Sena’s reluctance to accommodate what it saw as a junior partner’s excessive demands coupled with Uddhav’s claim to the post of chief minister should the Mahayuti win, unravelled the negotiations.

As the Maharashtra election results poured in, Shah had the last laugh. The BJP had not only won more seats than the Shiv Sena was willing to offer it, the hitherto junior partner in the Mahayuti had become the single largest party in the Assembly. “The results have proved who was correct,” Shah was heard telling reporters afterwards. “The BJP will be forming the government in Maharashtra.”

After an initial burst of bravado, when he asked the BJP to make the first move (“I am sitting at my home peacefully, if somebody thinks our support is needed, they can approach us”), a chastised Uddhav called up Shah and Modi to break the ice. A Saamana editorial sought to strike a conciliatory tone by indicating its willingness to let bygones be bygones.

However, the BJP seems to be in no hurry to reciprocate although the RSS and veteran BJP leader LK Advani made it known that they would like the BJP and Shiv Sena to come together again. A section of the BJP, which feels that Uddhav has earned his spurs in this election, sees it as an ideological necessity to align with the Shiv Sena.

Even before Rajnath Singh and JP Nadda were to fly to Mumbai, the BJP led by Nitin Gadkari had opened informal talks with the Shiv Sena on the possibility of a rapprochement and what it will entail. For one, the Shiv Sena favours a united Maharashtra; it is opposed to the carving out of a separate Vidarbha state. Meatier portfolios in Maharashtra and at the Centre are another bone of contention. For its part, the BJP will have its way on its choice for the post of chief minister.

 

         

 Implications for regional parties

The BJP win in Haryana can be attributed to the BJP strategy of consolidating the non-Jat vote while at the same time ensuring that the Jat vote split between the INLD and the Congress. The fact that an overwhelming majority of the BJP’s MLAs are non-Jats explains the party’s decision to project Manohar Lal Khattar as its chief minister-designate.

The Haryana results are particularly significant for the Janata Parivar as the Janata Dal (United), Rashtriya Janata Dal, Samajwadi Party, Rashtriya Lok Dal and the Janata Dal (Secular) had sought to come together on a common platform with the INLD to take on the BJP. However, the BJP did one better than them at social engineering and weaned the BJP and Dalit votes away from them, as the election results bear out.

Going forward, an assertive BJP not only poses a threat to regional parties in the states where elections are due in the next year or two but also runs the risk of cannibalising some of its own allies, existing and potential. (Elections are soon due in Jammu and Kashmir and Jharkhand. Bihar in 2015, West Bengal in 2016 and Uttar Pradesh and Punjab in 2017 would be a few of the elections to watch out for.) For its part, the BJP wants to position itself as the default ruling party in key states.

The results of the Maharashtra and Haryana elections have come as an advance warning for the Congress and some regional parties. From a BJP standpoint, they seem to herald a unipolar moment in the Indian political landscape, which its rivals can ignore at their own peril.

THAROOR, INTERRUPTED

This article was first published by Tehelka (www.tehelka.com) on 16 October 2014 under the headline Tharoor, Interrupted

Shashi Tharoor, like Manmohan Singh before him, knows only too well the fate that would befall Congress loyalists if they even as much as, by your leave, demur. Manmohan learnt it the hard way when the Gandhi scion and Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi famously remarked, “My personal opinion about the ordinance on convicted lawmakers is that it is complete nonsense, it should be torn and thrown away,” leaving the then prime minister red-faced.

Manmohan understood the Congress dynamic (in his book The Accidental Prime Minister, Sanjaya Baru quotes him as saying that “I have to accept that the party president is the centre of power”) but what has confounded some in the party is how Tharoor could end up committing the same mistake twice, that of taking on the sacred cows dear to the Congress president, Sonia Gandhi, and her team of hand-picked advisers.

This when Tharoor himself is no stranger to party politics, having got his fingers burnt a few years ago, when he mixed up his idioms to explain flying economy (“in cattle class out of solidarity with all our holy cows!” he had tweeted.) In Tharoor’s defence, he had clarified that by the words “holy cows” he was not referring to any individuals. “Holy cows (sic) are not individuals but sacrosanct issues or principles that no one dares challenge. Wish critics would look it up,” he had said, explaining himself.

If Tharoor’s savvy for Twitter made him controversial then, it has come to haunt him again. His tryst with the latest controversy has as much to do with his celebrity status on Twitter as with his unconventional approach to politics. On 2 October, the birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi, Prime Minister Narendra Modi threw Tharoor a curve by inviting him and eight others — Goa Governor Mridula Sinha, former cricketer Sachin Tendulkar, yoga guru Baba Ramdev, industrialist Anil Ambani, actors Kamal Haasan, Salman Khan, Priyanka Chopra and the cast of Hindi TV comedy serial Tarak Mehta Ka Ulta Chashma — to join him in the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan (Clean India Campaign).

Modi was inspired by the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, which went viral on social media in August, to promote awareness of the Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) disease. (The activity involved pouring a bucket of ice-cold water on one’s head and inviting others to do the same.) The idea, as Modi was to explain, was that “they (the nine nominated by Modi) will nominate nine people each, and this chain will continue through social media. When you upload a video of cleaning, nominate nine others to do the same.”

Tharoor, who was on his way to Romania when the prime minister made the announcement, reacted upon landing there but by then politics had taken over. To be fair to him, he would have been damned if he did and damned if he did not accept the prime minister’s invitation. Tharoor’s explanation as to why he accepted the invitation was lost on some of his colleagues.

In a signed article Tharoor wrote for the NDTV website a few days later, he said: “Which Indian worthy of the name would not be humbled to be tapped by his prime minister for a national cause? … (His) invitation to nine people who are not part of his government helped portray it as a people’s movement rather than a government drive. Who would be churlish enough to refuse an offer to participate in a people’s movement, inspired by Mahatma Gandhi, that would improve the lives of all Indians?”

Probably sensing a barrage of criticism that could come his way, Tharoor qualified it by saying: “At the same time, as I also said in accepting his invitation, I am not a fan of tokenism, and I was worried the campaign would descend to symbolic photo opportunities for grandees who would never touch a broom again after 2 October.”

On 8 October, the Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC) met in Thiruvananthapuram to discuss the fallout of Tharoor’s alleged misdemeanours. “Tharoor has hurt the sentiments of the party workers and it should have been avoided. The KPCC will submit a report to the AICC (All India Congress Committee) leadership, which will talk in detail of the sentiments of party workers in the state on this issue. This should not be repeated again,” KPCC president VM Sudheeran told reporters after the meeting.

As Tharoor is an AICC member, the KPCC could only recommend the party leadership to take appropriate action against him. By 13 October, the Congress had issued a terse press statement announcing Tharoor’s sacking from the post of a spokesperson of the party. “Congress president Sonia Gandhi has accepted the recommendation of the AICC disciplinary committee to remove Shashi Tharoor from the list of spokespersons of the AICC with immediate effect,” it read.

Congress general secretary Janardhan Dwivedi said that the AICC disciplinary action committee took the decision based on a “complaint” submitted to it by the KPCC. The three-member committee comprised Motilal Vora, AK Antony and Sushil Kumar Shinde.

According to Congress sources, the KPCC felt that Tharoor’s conciliatory statements about Modi would do more harm than good to the party in Kerala. Sudheeran promptly welcomed the action against Tharoor, saying it was an “appropriate decision”.

For his part, Tharoor sought to draw a line under the episode by saying that “as a loyal worker of the Congress party, (I) accept the decision of the party president to relieve me of my responsibilities as a spokesman” though with a caveat that: “While I have not yet seen the KPCC complaint referred to, and while I would have welcomed an opportunity to respond to it and draw the attention of the AICC leadership to the full range of my statements and writings on contemporary political issues, I am now treating this matter as closed and have no further comment to make.”

Factional feud

The controversy surrounding the death of Tharoor’s wife Sunanda Pushkar added grist to the political rumour mills. A postmortem report did not rule out “poisoning” as the cause of her death. Sunanda was found dead in mysterious circumstances in a hotel room in New Delhi on 17 January. (The party has since iterated that the decision to sack Tharoor as a spokesperson should not be linked to the controversy surrounding the post-mortem examination of his wife.)

However, the report came in handy for Tharoor’s detractors in the party, particularly those hailing from Kerala, who see him as an outsider and resent his growing profile in the party and outside.

Some former ministers in the UPA government such as Mullapally Ramachandran and Vayalar Ravi have been more than forthcoming in sharing the contents of the report with the media in the state and in the national capital in a bid to fix Tharoor. They see Tharoor, a suave and sophisticated politician with a big fan following on social media, as a threat to their preeminence.

Needless to say, there is no love lost between them. Tharoor’s retort that his Kerala colleagues should at least read his articles and comments before preparing their report for the AICC did not help matters either.

Compounding matters for Tharoor, Kerala Chief Minister Oommen Chandy further distanced himself from an already isolated Tharoor by saying that a “series” of issues involving the MP had hurt the sentiments of the party leaders in the state.

Among the many other indiscretions that were cited against Tharoor were:

• Tharoor’s article published by The Huffington Post, a US-based online news site, in June in which he said, “For an Opposition Member of Parliament like myself, it would be churlish not to acknowledge Modi 2.0’s inclusive outreach and to welcome his more conciliatory statements and actions. The moment he says or does something divisive or sectarian in the Modi 1.0 mould, however, we will resist him robustly. India’s people, and its pluralist democracy, deserve no less.” The party immediately dismissed it as his personal view. That it had not gone down well with a section of the party can be had from the fact that Tharoor has not been asked to address the media as a spokesperson since then; and

• Tharoor holding forth on the prime minister’s speech at the United Nations General Assembly in New York to an Indian television channel which had invited him to a panel discussion. According to some in the Congress, Tharoor had not been authorised to do so. Tharoor had variously described the prime minister’s speech as “impressive”, “well done” and “all together an ‘A’ ”. He felt that the speech was “spot on”, although he did find fault with certain portions of the prime minister’s remarks.

Mullapally Ramachandran and (right) Vayalar Ravi

A pre-emptive strike

Tharoor’s sacking should be seen as a preemptive strike by the Congress to make an example of him and send out a message to the party rank and file that it will not brook any indiscretion, however innocent it might seem, in the interest of the party. However, on balance, the punishment meted out to him seems disproportionate to his alleged crime.

To some observers, the sacking of Tharoor is more a symptom of a deeper malaise afflicting the Congress party than anything else. The irony is that a Congress loyalist (a fifth column?) such as Mani Shankar Aiyar is treated with kid gloves even when his uninterrupted and uninterruptible diatribe against Modi cost the party dear in the General Election. His chaiwala remark, in particular, did nothing to project the Congress as a party worthy of a popular mandate to govern.

Also, the party didn’t pull up a Milind Deora when he took aim at Rahul and some of his advisers for the party’s defeat in the Lok Sabha polls.

Most recently, Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi praised Prime Minister Modi’s ambitious Sansad Adarsh Gram Yojana (SAGY) or Member of Parliament Model Village Scheme and also had participated in the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan in Guwahati. (Under the SAGY, MPs from both Houses of Parliament would be asked to develop one village from their constituency by 2016 and another two by 2019.)

However, Gogoi soon made amends by explaining his position. The fear of a reprimand from the party leadership was evident in the manner in which he clarified that he was not following in the footsteps of Modi by launching a Clean Assam Campaign and that his inspiration even as a child was Mahatma Gandhi.

Tharoor’s sacking raises more questions than answers, especially when the Congress has more pressing issues at hand. To begin with, it needs to reinvent itself by reorganising the party apparatuses and revisiting its strategy of how to take on the BJP and Modi; revive its political fortunes in the states; and also pave the way for a more robust intervention by Rahul in the party’s affairs.

Then there is a larger question of why Indian politicos don’t seem to have a sense of humour?

The irony is that some in the Congress seem to be taking themselves more seriously than perhaps the electorate, which did not see it fit to bestow on the party the status of the principal Opposition party in the Lok Sabha, by limiting its strength to a mere 44 MPs in the lower House of Parliament.

Speaking at a function to celebrate his The Great Indian Novel in New Delhi some years ago, Tharoor had said that when he wrote the book, he was not sure whether there could be humour in politics. It doesn’t seem so yet.

PRIZE AND PREJUDICE: The fine print of the Norwegian Nobel Committee has defied conventional wisdom

This article was first published by Tehelka (www.tehelka.com) on 16 October 2014 under the headline Prize and Prejudice

Monday evening was relatively peaceful after the media scrum over the past weekend. A few hangers-on could be seen waiting outside the L-6 office of the Bachpan Bachao Andolan in Kalkaji, a south Delhi neighbourhood, while the staff flitted in and out of the hallway, escorting visitors at the appointed hour to meet with the 60-year-old Nobel Laureate Kailash ‘Satyarthi’ Sharma. Others are turned away because Bhaisahabji, as he is affectionately called, would not meet anyone without a prior appointment. A man with a bouquet walks in to felicitate Mr Satyarthi (Hindi for “a seeker of truth”; the name has stayed with him from the days of his association with Swami Agnivesh, a social activist, with whom he collaborated on social causes such as bonded labour, and after his marriage to Sumedha, his wife of 36 years) but he is politely told to wait his turn. Some journalists who fail to meet him in his office are asked to try their luck at his 73, Aravali Apartments residence in Alaknanda before he flies out to Germany on a short visit later that night.

Kailash Satyarthi (Photo credit: Ram Kumar S)

It was on Friday afternoon India time when the Norwegian Nobel Committee announced Satyarthi’s name as the co-winner of the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize (along with 17-year-old Malala Yousufzai of Pakistan who lives in exile with her parents and siblings in Birmingham, UK after surviving a 9 October 2012 attack on her life by extremists in Mingora, Swat Valley's main town) at a function in Oslo. Everything has been a blur since then for Mr Satyarthi and his family. As coincidence would have it, the announcement of the award came a day after the second anniversary of the attack on Malala and two days after the wedding anniversary of Mr Satyarthi and on the eve of the International Day of the Girl Child, which is celebrated on 11 October.

Mr Satyarthi’s office has seen a steady stream of visitors over the weekend. A notice board displays newspaper clippings about his winning the Nobel Peace Prize and a modest seating area for guests showcases some of the awards and plaques that have come his way in a 35-year-long career. A black board hung on a wall proudly proclaims that the Bachpan Bachao Andolan has rescued 83,525 children till 30 September. Between receiving well-wishers and entertaining media interviews, the Satyarthis – Mr Kailash Satyarthi, his wife Sumedha, son Bhuvan Ribhu, daughter-in-law Priyanka Ribhu and daughter Asmita – were received by Prime Minister Narendra Modi who congratulated him on winning the award. Mr Satyarthi’s wife and son are equally involved in the activities of his NGO. The Bachpan Bachao Andolan’s activities are carried out under the banner of Association of Voluntary Action, which handles funds and whose financial audit reports are shared on the Bachpan Bachao Andolan’s website.

For the son of a police constable born in Vidisha, Madhya Pradesh, Mr Satyarthi’s journey through life is nothing short of remarkable. He quit engineering to plunge headlong into activism, influenced as he was by the discrimination he saw around him when was of an impressionable age. To his credit, he did not allow the occasional aspersions cast at him sotto voce to distract him from his goals. Mr Satyarthi is the first Indian citizen to win the Nobel Peace Prize (Mother Teresa who won the Peace Nobel in 1979 became a naturalised Indian citizen in 1948) and only the eighth Indian to win a Nobel award. “I am thankful to Nobel committee for recognising the plight of millions of children who are suffering in this modern age. It is a huge honour for me,” Mr Satyarthi said immediately after the Norwegian Nobel Committee announced his name to an unsuspecting nation caught in the midst of two Assembly elections and ceasefire violations by Pakistan at the Line of Control and the international border in Jammu and Kashmir. The Peace Nobel to the Satyarthi-Malala duo made as loud a thud as the artillery shells that were fired across the border, prompting the peoples, the governments and the militaries of the two South Asian nuclear-armed neighbours to pause, however fleetingly, and reflect on the burden of a Peace Nobel that had just been thrust upon the warring Indian sub-continent.

Religion and nationality

What confounded some, at home and abroad, was the Norwegian Nobel Committee’s 10 October press release announcing the award. A relevant portion from the text of the press release said, “The Nobel Committee regards it as an important point for a Hindu and a Muslim, an Indian and a Pakistani, to join in a common struggle for education and against extremism.” The references to religion and nationality (and the re-hyphenation of India with Pakistan) have been variously described by some Indian commentators as condescending, patronising, gratuitous and eminently avoidable. Those references seemed to compound the embarrassment of (and disbelief in) both countries of not only having to live down the recent border skirmishes but to live up to the expectations of the international community now that a Peace Nobel has been jointly awarded to an Indian and a Pakistani national. However, if the resumption of the ceasefire violations after a hiatus and the Pavlovian response by their respective bureaucracies is any indicator, India-Pakistan peace might be premature just as the Peace Nobel for Barack Obama in 2009 was controversial. The Norwegian Nobel Committee had said the following about Obama then: “The Committee has attached special importance to Obama's vision of and work for a world without nuclear weapons[.] Obama has as President created a new climate in international politics[.] Dialogue and negotiations are preferred as instruments for resolving even the most difficult international conflicts.” Obama not only failed to shut down the Guantanamo Bay detention facility as promised but the US sees itself returning to Iraq only three years after it pulled out its troops from there. Also, the situation in West Asia (be it the Israel-Palestine issue or Syria) and North Africa (which is still to recover from the after-effects of the Arab Spring) does not inspire much confidence either.

Yet, there are constituencies in both India and Pakistan that are keen to see a normalisation of relations through dialogue but, as with all things subcontinental, patience will be of the essence. As Norwegian Nobel Institute’s Director Geir Lundestad said, he was more hopeful about the Peace Nobel helping to further reduce child labour than the likelihood of it leading to a rapprochement or a detente between India and Pakistan. What he left unsaid though was that peace would be a bonus and a welcome consequence of the Peace Nobel – especially if the afterglow of the Peace Nobel were to have a salutary effect on the prime ministers of India and Pakistan when they meet in Kathmandu for the SAARC Summit next month. In her statement to media, Malala – at 17, the youngest person ever to win a Nobel Prize – took the initiative of inviting both Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif of Pakistan and Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India to grace the 10 December award ceremony at Oslo. For her part, Malala described the award as “a message of love between two religions”. She thanked her father for “not clipping her wings” and said she was proud to have shown that “a girl is not supposed to be a slave”. She dedicated her award to “all those children who are voiceless”, saying that “my message to children around the world is: Stand up for your rights.”

Malala Yousafzai

Struggle for rights

At the same time, there are those who insist on treating the Peace Nobel for what it is: A recognition of the Satyarthi-Malala duo’s struggle against the suppression of children and young people and for the right of all children to education. As the Nobel Committee said in the press release, “Children must go to school and not be financially exploited.  In the poor countries of the world, 60% of the present population is under 25 years of age.  It is a prerequisite for peaceful global development that the rights of children and young people be respected.” The efforts made by NGOs and individuals around the world are paying dividends, too. As the Committee noted, “It has been calculated that there are 168 million child labourers around the world today. In 2000 the figure was 78 million higher. The world has come closer to the goal of eliminating child labour.” A former Indian diplomat echoed similar sentiments when he said that too much should not be read either into the timing of the Peace Nobel being awarded to the Satyarthi-Malala duo or to the situation at the India-Pakistan border. The award was not meant as an intervention in the recent border skirmishes or an attempt to play the peacemaker.

Mr Satyarthi’s name, as indeed that of some of his compatriots, has been doing the rounds of the Nobel nominations for some time now. Some Americans such as Tom Harkin, a lawmaker from the state of Iowa, and University of Iowa law professor Lea VanderVelde and some European lawmakers are known to have re-nominated him since 2005. (When Mr Satyarthi began receiving death threats, he moved to the US at the invitation of Harkin. His daughter joined him in Iowa where she was enrolled as a student.) However, one will have to wait till 2064 or wait for a member of the Norwegian Nobel Committee to break his/her vow of silence, whichever comes earlier, in order to say with any degree of certainty as to how and why Mr Satyarthi was awarded the Peace Nobel. According to the statutes of the Nobel Foundation, “Proposals received for the award of a prize, and investigations and opinions concerning the award of a prize, may not be divulged. A prize-awarding body may, however, after due consideration in each individual case, permit access to material which formed the basis for the evaluation and decision concerning a prize, for purposes of research in intellectual history. Such permission may not, however, be granted until at least 50 years have elapsed after the date on which the decision in question was made.” According to Norwegian Nobel Institute’s Director Geir Lundestad, Mr Satyarthi’s name was among a dozen-odd names of Indians who were nominated for this year’s Peace Nobel. The number of Indians being nominated for the award is increasing year on year, too.

Shot in the arm for NGOs

The Peace Nobel to Mr Satyarthi and by extension his NGO, the Bachpan Bachao Andolan, would have come as a shot in the arm for the NGO movement in India today. An Intelligence Bureau (IB) report, the contents of which were published by the media in June, had targeted certain foreign-funded NGOs and Indian NGOs supported by foreign NGOs for fuelling protests with a view to obstructing developmental projects. It claimed that the pursuit of such an agenda had a negative effect on the GDP growth. Following the media reports, some members of the civil society had voiced their anxieties and concerns at the attempts to discredit the NGOs. Mathew Cherian, CEO of HelpAge India, says that governments, past and present, would do well to change their viewpoint on activism and rethink their attitude towards civil society in general and the NGOs in particular. “Both the UPA and the NDA always viewed civil society with suspicion, especially those who receive funds from foreign sources,” says Cherian. He feels that the NGOs and genuine people’s movements must not be unfairly criticised or made a scapegoat for the failings of the governments, be it labour issues, women’s rights or acquisition of land. According to data collated by the Bachpan Bachao Andolan, there are an estimated 168 million children globally who are engaged in child labour. India accounts for five million child labourers as per government data and 50 million, as per NGO estimates. India needs to pass the Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Amendment Bill pending before the Rajya Sabha and ratify the ILO (International Labour Organisation, a United Nations agency) Convention Number 182 on worst forms of child labour and Convention Number 138 on the minimum age of employment.

A double-edged sword

Another reason for the disquiet in diplomatic circles is the possibility of the Peace Nobel being used as a disruptive tool of intervention or being motivated by geopolitical considerations. If it was a Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo in 2010, it could be a similar figure from the developing world, India included, in the future. (Irom Sharmila and her relentless campaign for the repeal of the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, or AFSPA, is a case in point.) This writer was witness to the developments in India and certain other world capitals leading up to the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize ceremony in Oslo when China warned countries of “consequences" if their diplomats attended the ceremony. The Norwegian Nobel Institute had invited 58 ambassadors based in Oslo of which China, Russia, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Morocco, Cuba, Indonesia, Vietnam and the Philippines, among others, excused themselves from the ceremony. (Russia and Indonesia ensured that their envoys were not in Norway at the time.)  India joined at least 36 other countries, including the US, the UK, France, Germany and the Netherlands in participating in the event. As diplomatic sources then pointed it out to this writer, New Delhi recognises that the Nobel prizes are a political issue; they are in a sense like the Miss World contests that are accused of being driven by market considerations. The dissonance was clearly brought out in the international discourse that followed the announcement of the Peace Nobel to Liu Xiaobo, too. As Kishore Mahbubani, Dean and Professor in the Practice of Public Policy of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore, then argued, “[The] West has double-standards when it comes to judging human-rights violations. It does not condemn American society because it violated every canon of human rights by being the first modern Western society to reintroduce torture. Instead, it sees Guantanamo as a blemish that should not take away from all the good that American society has done.” This inability of the West to understand that there may be an alternative point of view could well create a major problem for the world, Mr Mahbubani said, responding to Norwegian Nobel Committee Chairman Thorbjorn Jagland’s argument that silence undercuts the most basic tenets of human rights and that supporting a Chinese dissident could not worsen conditions for the opposition in China. Already, doubts are being raised about whether the Peace Nobel for Malala would increase hostility in Pakistan towards her and everything she has come to represent. Some of the commentary published by a section of the Pakistani media and the opinions voiced by Pakistanis on social media indicate a deep suspicion of the Nobel awards, with some calling it motivated or a conspiracy by the West.

All of which begs the question: How noble is the Nobel Peace Prize?

* * * * * *  

The Nobel Peace Centre in Oslo, Norway, showcases the ideals that the award stands for. Photo: AFP

Facts about the Nobel Peace Prize

Alfred Nobel, a Swedish chemist and engineer who invented dynamite, is the founder of the Nobel Prizes. His fortune was used posthumously to institute the annual awards.

The Nobel Peace Prize is awarded in Oslo, Norway. (The Nobel Prizes in Physics, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine, Literature and Economic Sciences are awarded in Stockholm, Sweden. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awards the Nobel Prizes in Physics, Chemistry and Economic Sciences; the Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet awards the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, while the Swedish Academy grants the Nobel Prize in Literature.)

On 10 December, in Oslo, the Nobel Peace Prize Laureates receive their awards from the chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee in the presence of King Harald V of Norway. (The Nobel Laureates in Physics, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine, Literature and Economic Sciences take centrestage in Stockholm, Sweden, when they receive the Nobel Medal, Nobel Diploma and a document confirming the Nobel Prize amount from King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden.)

An important part is the presentation of the Nobel Lectures by the Nobel Laureates. In Oslo, the Nobel Laureates deliver their lectures during the Nobel Peace Prize Award Ceremony. (In Stockholm, the lectures are presented days before the Nobel Prize Award Ceremony.)

Nomination process

Each year, the Norwegian Nobel Committee receives more than 250 valid nominations suggesting candidates for the Nobel Peace Prize. The Nobel committee reviews all nominations before creating a shortlist consisting of 20 to 30 candidates. This list provides the basis for further investigations and candidate analyses submitted by the committee’s permanent consultants and other local or international experts. As a rule, the committee reaches its conclusion at the very last meeting before the announcement of the prize at the beginning of October. The committee seeks to achieve unanimity in its selection of the Nobel Peace Prize Laureate. On the rare occasions when this proves impossible, the selection is decided by a simple majority vote.

Criteria for nominators

A person who falls within one of the following categories can nominate:

• Members of national assemblies and governments of states;

• Members of international courts;

• University rectors; professors of social sciences, history, philosophy, law and theology; directors of peace research institutes and foreign policy institutes;

• Persons who have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize;

• Board members of organisations that have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize;

• Active and former members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee (proposals by members of the committee to be submitted no later than at the first meeting of the committee after 1 February); or

• Former advisers to the Norwegian Nobel Committee.

Deadline for nominations

The Nobel committee makes its selection on the basis of nominations received or postmarked no later than 1 February of the year in question.

Nominations that do not meet the deadline are normally included in the following year’s assessment.

Selection process

At the first meeting of the Nobel committee after the 1 February deadline for nominations, the committee’s permanent secretary presents the list of the year’s candidates. The committee may on that occasion add further names to the list, after which the nomination process is closed and discussion of the particular candidates begins. In the light of this first review, the committee draws up the so-called shortlist — i.e., the list of candidates selected for more thorough consideration. The shortlist typically contains 20 to 30 candidates.

The candidates on the shortlist are then considered by the Nobel Institute’s permanent advisers. In addition to the institute’s director and research director, the body of advisers generally consists of a small group of Norwegian university professors with broad expertise in subject areas with a bearing on the Peace Prize. The advisers usually have a couple of months in which to draw up their reports. Reports are also occasionally requested from other Norwegian and foreign experts. When the advisers’ reports have been presented, the Nobel committee embarks on a thoroughgoing discussion of the most likely candidates. In the process, the need often arises to obtain additional information and updates about candidates from additional experts, often foreign. As a rule, the committee reaches a decision only at its very last meeting before the announcement of the prize at the beginning of October.

50-year secrecy rule

The committee does not itself announce the names of nominees, neither to the media nor to the candidates themselves. In certain cases, names of candidates appear in the media because of sheer speculation or information released by the person or persons behind the nomination. Access to information about a given year’s candidates and/ or nominators is not given until 50 years have passed.

Nominations for the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize

There were 278 candidates, including 47 organisations, for the Nobel Peace Prize for 2014 — the highest number of candidates ever. The previous record was 259 from 2013.

Nobel Committee

According to Alfred Nobel’s will, the prize to champions of peace is to be awarded by a committee “of five persons, to be elected by the Norwegian Storting (Parliament)”. The rules subsequently adopted by the Storting for this election state that the members of the committee are elected for terms of six years, and can be re-elected. The committee chooses its own chairman and deputy chairman. The director of the Nobel Institute serves as the committee’s secretary.

Source: www.nobelprize.org

For Modi, the 2014 SAARC Summit in Nepal will be a challenge and an opportunity

This article was first published by Tehelka (www.tehelka.com) on 9 October 2014 under the headline Will Modi’s Gamble Pay Off?

A creditable show by the BJP in Maharashtra could propel the PM to explore talks with Nawaz Sharif on the margins of the SAARC summit next month, says Ramesh Ramachandran

For Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the road to peace with Pakistan will likely pass through Maharashtra. A creditable performance in the Assembly election to be held on 15 October will have consequences far beyond the ordinary, setting him on a trajectory that few could rival.

How well the BJP performs in Maharashtra will determine the following:

♦ Balance of power between his government, on the one hand, and the party and its ideological mentor, the RSS, on the other. A handsome win in Maharashtra, leading to the installation of a government with the BJP playing a key role in it, will further cement his authority in the party and vis-à-vis the RSS. But for that to happen, first Modi and his protégé Amit Shah’s gambit of going it alone in Maharashtra will need to pay off. A BJP win will also silence some, if not all, of his sceptics, critics and naysayers who wondered whether the party’s unprecedented win in Uttar Pradesh in the Lok Sabha election was a flash in the pan or the result of a carefully-crafted strategy executed by Shah, who, as BJP president, now represents a formidable duopoly along with Modi. No doubt, therefore, that the results of the Maharashtra election will be an acid test for the duo

♦ The extent to which Modi would be able to free himself from the pulls and pressures from the BJP, the RSS and their core constituents (who run the risk of becoming restive if Prime Minister Modi doesn’t quite continue to catch their fancy as much as Candidate Modi) and go about fulfilling his mandate, that of delivering on his promise of a fast-track development agenda, putting the economy back on rails and creating jobs, among others. Modi could go in for a reshuffle of his council of ministers, too; and

♦ Last but not the least, whether Modi will be able to transcend the dichotomy between his image and reality and steer his government’s foreign and security policies, particularly vis-à-vis China and Pakistan, in a direction he wants to

The SAARC (South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation) summit to be hosted by Nepal in November will pose a challenge and an opportunity for Modi. The summit, sandwiched as it will be between the Assembly election that would have concluded by then in Maharashtra and the Assembly election due in Jammu and Kashmir, could well see Modi hold a meeting with his Pakistan counterpart Nawaz Sharif.

While a favourable result in Maharashtra would likely shape Modi’s “intent” to re-engage with Sharif, the talks, structured or otherwise, could well go on to impact the “outcome” of the Jammu and Kashmir election, whenever they are held. Not only would re-engaging with Pakistan find a resonance in the Kashmir Valley, it could induce a salutary response from a section of the voters, if not towards the BJP then at least to one of its potential allies.

If the Modi-Shah duo redeem themselves in Maharashtra after a less-than-spectacular performance in the 54 Assembly constituencies across 14 states (Uttarakhand in July; Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Punjab and Karnataka in August; and Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Assam, West Bengal, Tripura and Sikkim in September) where bypolls were held since the BJP-led NDA came to power on 26 May, then a possible meeting with Sharif on the sidelines of the SAARC summit could lay the groundwork for resumption of talks between the officials of the two countries, to begin with.

India called off foreign secretary-level talks a week before they were to have been held in Islamabad on 25 August, after Pakistan High Commissioner Abdul Basit went ahead with his meeting with a Hurriyat representative disregarding New Delhi’s objections. Sartaj Aziz, adviser to the Pakistan PM on national security and foreign affairs, has since said that probably the meetings with Hurriyat representatives were a mistake and they could have been avoided. For his part, Basit has said that in diplomacy one leaves the door ajar, implying that talks in the future could not be ruled out.

External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj echoed similar sentiments at her maiden press conference in September, when she said, “Diplomacy mein kabhi bhi poorna viraam nahin lagta, there is no full stop in diplomacy. It’s always (a) comma or semicolon. And, after all this, people always move forward. There are no full stops in (the) diplomatic journey.”

As if on cue, National Security Adviser Ajit Doval held talks with Basit on 13 September. This was followed by a meeting between Basit and Foreign Secretary Sujatha Singh a few days later.

For his part, Modi iterated in his United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) speech, “I am prepared to engage in a serious bilateral dialogue with Pakistan in a peaceful atmosphere, without the shadow of terrorism, to promote our friendship and cooperation. However, Pakistan must also take its responsibility seriously to create an appropriate environment. Raising issues in this forum is not the way to make progress towards resolving issues between our two countries.”

The message to Islamabad was clear: Choose between the Hurriyat or the Indian government, and between bilateral engagement and raking up outstanding issues in international fora. Although the two PMs did not meet in New York on the margins of the UNGA later that month, they could meet in Kathmandu.

A meeting on the sidelines of the SAARC summit in Kathmandu seems “unavoidable”, says former foreign secretary Kanwal Sibal. “Provided there is no major provocation” from the Pakistani side between now and the summit on 26- 27 November, he hastens to add. Sibal was in office when India and Pakistan signed a ceasefire agreement in November 2003.

MK Bhadrakumar, a former diplomat, feels that either side could have pleaded scheduling difficulties in New York but a Modi-Sharif meeting in Kathmandu “cannot be avoided”. He says that it will be embarrassing for Modi if he does not follow up on his talks with Sharif in May, when the latter was invited to New Delhi for the inauguration of Modi as PM.

A strategic analyst with a New Delhi-based think-tank, who did not want to be identified, said that a bilateral meeting would be par for the course but cautioned that should Modi decide to meet Sharif in Kathmandu, they should go beyond restating their respective positions. Otherwise what purpose would be served by only exchanging courtesies? he asked.

Some others cite the asymmetry between the two prime ministers (Modi came to power riding on the back of a huge mandate while Sharif has been rendered weak even as the Pakistani Army gains in influence) to question the wisdom of exploring the possibility of talks.

If the two principals indeed hold a meeting next month, the expectation in some quarters is that it will be followed by an announcement that their foreign secretaries would either meet soon or that they will remain in touch and explore how to move forward.

A house damaged by cross-border shelling in Arnia sector near the India-Pakistan border

Victims undergo treatment at a government hospital in Jammu

However, repeated ceasefire violations (more than 150 this year) by Pakistan at the border and the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir, which claimed the lives of five innocent Indians on 6 October — the highest toll in one day since 2003 — and left some injured, has compelled the BJP to take a position that is patently different from that of its predecessor, which was perceived to be soft on Pakistan.

Home Minister Rajnath Singh warned Pakistan to stop violating the 2003 ceasefire agreement. India, he said, will not tolerate Pakistan’s ceasefire violations anymore and that it should understand the reality that times have changed in India (“Zamaana badal gaya hai”).

Defence Minister Arun Jaitley, in turn, said that the Indian Army was “fully ready” and was responding to the Pakistani provocations.

The Indian Army and the Border Security Force say they retaliated effectively with the same calibre weapons used by Pakistan to repeatedly violate the ceasefire, which was variously described by security sources as an attempt by Pakistan to push in infiltrators into India before winter set in, with a view to disturbing the peace ahead of the Jammu and Kashmir Assembly polls; to deflect attention from political turmoil inside Pakistan; and to keep the Kashmir issue alive and not allow it to recede into the background.

In spite of the recent provocations by Pakistan, a resounding victory at the hustings in Maharashtra could yet resolve Modi’s Hamletian dilemma of how to solve the Pakistan conundrum.