Sleeping With The Enemy: Getting Screwed And Loving It!

We are seeing the contours of a new road map on strategic and security issues, quietly being implemented by the government, surreptitiously, stealthily, without public debate, and finally to confront the nation with a fait accompli

In the past week or so, three or four changes in Government of India's stand in various international forums have briefly been reported. They appear seemingly unrelated; however there is a clear possibility that there may be a strong inter-connection.

At L'Aquila in Italy, where the G8 summit took place last week, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was one of the few non-member invitees who participated in this annual meeting of the heads of eight developed countries. In the joint declaration of G8, apparently India has agreed on a formulation on 'climate change', essentially agreeing to a two-degree rise cap on global temperatures from the pre-industrial era. G8 leaders also issued a statement, while Singh was still at the venue, linking the supply of nuclear fuel to power plants to the issue of joining the NPT/CTBT regime.

About the same time, the commerce ministry announced that the final preparatory meeting for the Doha Round of trade negotiations under the auspices of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) will be held in India, with a significant statement that India will ensure that finally an agreement will be reached at this conference.

A few days later, at the NAM Summit in Cairo, India and Pakistan, at the highest executive levels, apparently formally delinked terrorism from an all-encompassing bilateral dialogue. All of above appear quite independent of each other but can one see the elements of a grand plan, a change in India's basic strategic position?

It almost appears as though the new government has decided to restate its policy position on national and international issues, without notice or debate, even as Parliament is in session in India. Take the Doha Round of WTO negotiations. India, along with leading developing countries, like Brazil and China have strongly articulated positions on a number of issues, especially Trade in Agriculture.

Considering the critical importance of the agricultural rural economy to India, there has been extreme caution in the past about supporting initiatives to liberalise trade in agriculture. Our classic position over two decades now has been, rightly, that US and Europe should first significantly roll down the massive subsidies that they provide to their domestic farmers before the question of trade in agriculture can be seriously discussed.

The US and EU have staunchly refused to consider this, while trying to bind developing countries to a new discipline. Making India host of the next round of discussions is a clever tactical move by the developed countries to mute the Indian opposition; besides India has also agreed to 'find a solution'!

Have we changed our policies overnight, even without a discussion? Is there a connection between the departure of Kamal Nath as commerce minister to a relatively less prestigious assignment and his replacement by Anand Sharma, to ensure that India will play ball?

Very similar is the Indian acquiescence to the cap in global warming without any consideration to the differential contribution to climate change by USA and the developed countries on the one hand and the developing countries on the other. Our consistent posture in the past has been that India can look to join any regime provided USA and the rest, who have been the major polluting culprits till now, take major steps in controlling their emissions.

Indeed, USA has not even subscribed to the Kyoto declaration on climate change. Yet the recent joint communication from Italy which makes no distinction between developed and developing countries comes as a total surprise. One has not seen any debate or recent discussions preceding this massive change in posture, in the Parliament or elsewhere.

Equally puzzling is the recent Cairo communiqué, tacitly dropping any prior condition relating to addressing the terror issue, before an all-encompassing bilateral dialogue between India and Pakistan. Is there a connection between this and the week-long visit of the US secretary of state to India?

For the first time, a high US dignitary has visited India and bypassed Pakistan. Is this the quid pro quo? What has India received, in giving up so much negotiating room? We need some clarity on these bizarre developments of last week.

A mention also needs to be made of the new conditions imposed by the West on supply of nuclear fuel, linking it with international treaties on the subject. Clearly there is an apparent conflict between these new conditions and the interpretation of the Indo-US nuclear deal as rendered to Parliament by the Indian leadership. Hillary Clinton's clear agenda is to open up the Indian market for US exports, particularly on technology areas; witness the proposal for two nuclear power plants during this visit. All of these do not appear to add up.

Are we seeing the contours of a new road map on strategic and security issues, quietly being implemented by the government, surreptitiously, stealthily, without public debate, and finally to confront the nation with a fait accompli?

By TSR Subramanian. The writer is a former Cabinet Secretary, Government of India. Having been privy to State secrets at the highest level of decision making, he knows what he's talking about.

Courtesy: DNA/Mumbai

India Budget: Fat Cats Never Had It So Good

If more proof was needed that the aam aadmi for the Congress means the super-rich, just see the huge tax breaks given to the fat cats. While crumbs have been thrown at the ordinary middle class folks, the movers and shakers have a bonanza awaiting them when it comes to filing tax returns next year.

Thanks to the 2009-10 Budget proposals will have people in the higher income strata laughing their way to the bank or mall for LCDs which are now cheaper. Indeed, the richest must be doing cartwheels after Finance Minister Pranab Mukerjee on Monday raised the basic exemption limits for all income groups.

For men and women, the basic exemption limit was hiked by Rs 10,000. For men, the hike is from Rs 1.5 lakh (Rs 150,000) to Rs 1.6 lakh (Rs 160,000). For women, the rise was from Rs 1.8 lakh (Rs 180,000) to 1.9 lakh (Rs 190,000). For senior citizens, the limit was increased from Rs 2.25 lakh (Rs 225,000) to Rs 2.4 lakh (Rs 240,000), a rise of Rs 15,000.

However, the important move was to do away with the 10 per cent surcharge imposed on annual income of above Rs 10 lakh.

All About Tax Proposals

This means the government has returned Rs 11,700 crore (Rs 117 billion) to individual taxpayers. This amount was slated to be collected from the 10 per cent surcharge, according to the interim Budget estimates.

“While the hike of Rs 10,000 was not too significant, the removal of 10 per cent surcharge would allow an additional benefit of 3 per cent a year and increase the investible surplus,” said NC Hegde, partner, Deloitte, Haskins and Sells.

The benefits kick in as soon as your salary crosses Rs 10 lakh. That is, for persons who have taxable income of Rs 10 lakh, the saving is only Rs 1,030 a year.

If the income rises by even Rs 1 from there, the tax burden falls from Rs 232,265 to Rs 210,120, a saving of Rs 22,145. And for incomes of Rs 15 lakh-50 lakh, the savings would be between Rs 37,000 and Rs 145,000.

The New Tax Slabs

Another reason to smile for taxpayers in the higher income strata has been the hike in the wealth tax limit from Rs 15 lakh (Rs 1.5 million) to Rs 30 lakh (Rs 3 million).

At present, wealth tax is charged at 1 per cent. The highest bracket (30 per cent tax limits) starts at Rs 500,000. However, 80 per cent of Indians live on less than Rs 10,000 per year. And thereby hangs a shameful tale.

Aam Aadmi or Mota Seth: Whose Budget Is It Anyway?

Watching the “Budget Specials” today, I was struck by the monotony of the responses coming from most panellists. Most were circumspect. Many were plain “disappointed. Reason being that finance minister Pranab Mukerjee failed to enthuse the stock market. In fact the market tanked by 870 points on the Bombay Stock Exchange.

But once you crunch the numbers, it is evident that once again India Inc has been given more sweeteners than they deserve. For example, the series of direct and indirect tax concessions in the wake of the global economic crisis has led to the tax revenue forgone – taxes that India Inc should be paying - reach as much as Rs. 4.18 lakh crore (Rs 4.18 trillion) in 2008-09.

Rather than withdrawing these concessions to enable greater resource mobilisation and spending in critical areas, Mukerjee has chosen to extend these concessions for the entire financial year of 2009-10.

In fact, the abolition of the Fringe Benefit Tax and Commodities Transaction Tax will also adversely impact tax mobilisation. Despite the welcome increase in the Minimum Alternative Tax levied on corporates from 10 per cent to 15 per cent of their profits, the Budget is revenue neutral on the direct tax front and direct tax revenues are expected to increase by 7 per cent only, which is much less than the nominal growth of GDP.

Not surprisingly, India Inc is mighty pleased. HDFC Chairman Deepak Parekh proclaimed on a TV show: "I think I am overall very happy with the Budget." Stating that he did not see any reason for being negative on the Budget, Parekh noted that the Finance Minister mentioned the role of the private sector and private finance in the speech.

Indeed, looking at the fine print it comes as no surprise that contributors to the Congress Party's kitty have been rewarded in ample measure. For example, Mukesh Ambani has come out a winner – Mukerjee has restored the seven-year tax break on natural gas production. “We are very happy about the clarification as it ends the ambiguity," said PMS Prasad, President and CEO (Oil & Gas) of Reliance Industries.

Similarly, the finance minister's has extended fiscal benefits available to the IT-BPO sector under Section 10A/10B for one year to “help the industry mitigate the impact of the current economic environment and help India retain its competitiveness.” Translated in plain language it means companies like Infosys, Wipro and Mahindra Tech (Satyam) will continue with the tax holiday they have enjoyed for the past decade.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh sees nothing wrong with granting largess to these companies, which have not contributed to innovation and have no patents to their names. Instead, he trotted out a lame explanation: “The main aim of the Budget is to minimise the impact of global recession,” adding that its focus was to ensure that short-term requirements of the economy as well as medium-term goals were achieved.

Really? Is foregoing revenues to the extent of Rs 4.18 trillion minimise the impact of the global recession? The Prime Minister may hail the Budget as an “admirable job”, but the hosannas are being sung by the fat cats on business channels and pink papers, not the much-vaunted aam admi.

“It is essentially a rural development-oriented Budget," claims the Prime Minister. And the likes of Montek Singh Ahluwalia, P Chidambaram, and Kapil Sibal – the neo-liberal cabal that guides government policy nowadays – are shouting from the rooftops that in the Budget handsome additional allocation has been made for inclusive growth and other flagship programmes like Urban Renewal Mission and National Rural Health Mission.

Those who had hoped to make a fast buck in these times are complaining that there was no announcement on privatisation of PSUs, banking “reforms” and throwing open the insurance sector to foreign finance capital. “Nothing that was expected has happened except for some bit of focus on infra. But he (Mukerjee) did not say anything about divestment, he did not say anything about insurance. All of that are having an impact on the market,” complained Saurabh Nanavati, CEO of Religare Asset Management.

But talk of the Budget being “socialist” or “populist” is sheer bunkum. In fact Parekh was being honest when he said, "You must understand that he (Mukerjee) mentioned the role of the private sector and private finance...Disinvestment will happen. The government needs more money...I don't see any reason for (being) negative at all."

In fact the “captains of industry” openly said on TV that disinvestment and other “reforms” were not mentioned in the Budget precisely because Mukerjee did not want to raise a storm in Parliament – he would do all this, and much more, without much fuss at a later date, preferably when Parliament is not in session.

So where does that leave you and me? Sure, some crumbs have been thrown to the middle class by way of raising personal tax exemption limits marginally. LCD TVs may become slightly cheaper and mobile handsets could go the same way. So what?

Looking at the big picture - After all, India is a billion strong country - the numbers tells us the Budget is grossly inadequate in meeting the challenges of economic recession, growing job losses and declining purchasing power of the masses.

The total expenditure is slated to increase by a mere 2 per cent of GDP only, essentially to meet non-developmental expenditures like interest payments and implementing Sixth Pay Commission recommendations. So this Budget neither provides a stimulus for growth nor meets the needs of “inclusive growth” for the aam admi.

While Mukerjee has failed to provide the resources required to stimulate the economy, the neglect of its role in terms of allocations is more significant in areas that touch on the lives of the mass of the people.

Crucial sectors, like agriculture and rural development, where the effects of the prolonged agrarian crisis and the agricultural growth slowdown of 2008-09 have been severe, have been provided little support in terms of Plan outlays. The required lowering of interest rates to 4 per cent on farm loans has not been done. Instead, only an incentive to repay loans on time has been announced.

The allocation required to implement the Right to Education is shockingly absent in the Budget. The increase in budgetary allocation for elementary education is less than Rs 200 crore. In fact the non-seriousness of the Government for the universalisation the Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS) is seen in the meagre increase in allocation of only Rs. 360 crore.

The allocation for the social security schemes for the unorganised sector workers is only Rs. 100 crore more than last year, belying the claims made by the Finance Minister. While the increase in minimum wage for the NREGA to Rs 100 makes sense in States where the wage rate is lower, a meaningful expansion of NREGA would have required a much larger allocation than the Rs. 2350 crore increase over what was spent in 2008-09.

Similarly, the Rural Health Mission has been allocated only Rs 1730 more than what was spent last year. And it is indeed unfortunate that the Finance Minister has given his stamp of approval to an increase in the price of foodgrains by Re 1 per kg for Antodaya families and a cut in the allocation of food quotas by 10 kg to BPL families in the name of the Food Security legislation. None of the promises made to women including the widow pension scheme has received increased allocations. All this even as the well off get tax exemptions, cheaper LCD TVs and, of course, BMWs.

Indeed, far from meeting the requirements of the people, the Budget will further widen the gap between the haves and the have-nots. Mind you, this is the first Budget of this government. There are four more to go. For the aam admi, the struggle to protect and improve his livelihood has just begun.

Yet the fat cats are whining. “Somehow I was thinking that the Railway Budget was a little populist. Now this one seems to have outdone that. Honestly, there seems to be too much of social spending," complained Saurabh Nanavati of Religare Asset Management. Yeh dil mange more?

Meaning Of The Verdict

By Prakash Karat

What is the meaning of this verdict? How is it to be interpreted? The first point to be noted is that while there has been a pro-Congress trend in some parts of the country, taken overall, there is no big shift in favour of the Congress. In terms of vote share, the Congress has got just about 2 per cent more than in 2004.

According to the Election Commission's figures, the Congress party has got 28.55 per cent of the vote. In 2004, it had got 26.53 per cent. The Congress made big gains in Kerala and Rajasthan and improved its position in Punjab, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra.

Its allies like the DMK in Tamil Nadu and the Trinamool Congress in West Bengal were also successful. That there was no wave or a strong all-India shift in favour of the Congress can be seen by the party losing ground in states like Orissa, Jharkhand, Assam, Gujarat, Chattisgarh and Karnataka to mention a few. Here the Congress vote share and seats have gone down compared to 2004. In Andhra Pradesh, while its seats increased, the vote share of the Congress has gone down.

Another feature is that while Congress gained 2 per cent, the BJP lost around 3 per cent. The loss of the BJP has gone to the Congress but the combined percentage of vote of both parties stands more or less as it was in 2004. In 2004, the two parties combined got 48.69 per cent of the vote and in 2009 it stands at over one per cent less at 47.35 per cent.

This is at a time when the Congress and the BJP fought more seats than in 2004. This is particularly significant since it shows no reversal in the long term decline of the two parties. The non-Congress, non-BJP parties continue to have more than 50 per cent share of the vote.

BJP Rejected
The second point to note in interpreting the verdict is the failure of the BJP and its political platform. The people have rejected the BJP's claim of providing good governance and defending national security. What they saw in the election campaign was the recurrence of communal rhetoric and the ingrained penchant for communalising all problems including terrorism.

Varun Gandhi's virulent hate speeches and the eulogising of Narendra Modi as the future leader symbolised this campaign. The failure to capitalise on a host of issues such as price rise, unemployment and the continuing agrarian distress by the major opposition party underlines the depth of the rejection of the BJP.

The only NDA partner to do well was the JD (U) in Bihar and that is not due to the BJP but the positive impact of the Nitish Kumar government and the care he took to demarcate himself from the communal platform of the BJP.

Another pointer to the rejection of the BJP comes from Orissa. The BJD, which broke from the BJP just two months before the election, won a spectacular victory getting 103 of the 145 seats in the assembly. In the 2004 assembly election, the BJD-BJP alliance won 93 seats. Thus, the BJD improved its performance after breaking with the BJP.

Reasons for Congress Success
The third point to understand the verdict is that despite the neo-liberal predilections of the Congress-led government, some of the measures adopted have had a positive impact on the people. These are the NREGA, which now extends to the entire country, the Tribal Forest Rights Act and the increase in the minimum support price for rice and wheat, the loan waiver scheme for farmers and some such measures, many of whom were brought under the pressure of the Left parties.

Despite the agrarian crisis, such measures provided some relief to the rural people. Along with this should be seen the measures taken by some of the state governments such as the Rs 2 per kg of rice scheme in Andhra Pradesh and the Re 1 per kg scheme in Tamilnadu and other social welfare measures.

In Orissa too, the Rs 2 per kg of rice bolstered the support for the Navin Patnaik government. At the same time, the fact that four years of high growth of the GDP did not lead to redistribution of resources and incomes and instead sharply increased economic inequalities did play a role in restricting the Congress's capacity to expand its popular base.

The Congress gained more support amongst the minorities who were keen to ensure that the BJP does not make a come back. The non-Congress, non-BJP parties were not seen as a viable alternative in most parts of the country and this accentuated the shift in minority support to the Congress.

The Congress party has also benefited from the concern of the people that the country should face unitedly the threat of terrorism and their fear that communalism can only aggravate the situation.

Setback for the Left
The CPI (M) and the Left have suffered a serious setback with the losses in West Bengal and Kerala. It was expected that the Left would get a lesser number of seats in these elections given the fact that in Kerala, the LDF had won an unprecedented 18 out of the 20 seats and the Congress got none in the 2004 elections.

In West Bengal too, the odds were heavier given the Trinamool Congress and Congress combining and all the anti-Communist forces launching a concerted attack against the CPI (M) and the Left Front. But the extent of the defeat in both these states has led to the CPI(M) getting only 16 seats, the lowest ever in the Lok Sabha.

This calls for a serious examination of the causes for these reverses. We have to conduct a self-critical review to ascertain what are the factors which are responsible for this poor performance.

Both national and state level factors have to be analysed. The electoral-tactical line formulated by the Party at the national level and the national political situation which influenced the Lok Sabha polls must be studied. Along with that, the specific state factors in both West Bengal and Kerala must also be taken into account.

The Politburo, in its meeting held on May 18, 2009, has initiated such a review which will be completed by the Central Committee in its meeting to be held in June. After identifying the reasons for the failure, the Party will have to take the necessary political and organisational measures to overcome the shortcomings and mistakes.

On this basis, the Party will strenuously work to regain the support of those sections of the people who were alienated from the Party and the Left-led fronts. Such a self-critical exercise will also pave the basis for the Party taking up the organisational tasks set out in the Party Congress to strengthen the Party and to expand its mass influence.

Third Front Alliance
In the discussions held in the Politburo, there was a preliminary review of the Party's effort to forge a non-Congress, non-BJP alliance and present it as an electoral alternative. The Central Committee, in its meeting held in Kochi in January 2009, had worked out the electoral-tactical line and given the direction that “the Left parties along with the secular parties should work together to make a non-Congress, non-BJP alternative realizable.”

The CPI(M) and the CPI had an electoral understanding with some of the non-Congress, non-BJP parties in Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Orissa and seat adjustments in Karnataka. On the basis of these state level understandings forged on the eve of the elections, we attempted to project them as a national level non-Congress, non-BJP alternative.

The defeat of the Left in West Bengal and Kerala and the failure of the alliance in Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu to win a majority of the seats undermined any effective presence of the “Third Front” at the national level. It is evident that such a combination which had its relevance in the concerned states was not a credible and viable alternative at the national level. Further, the electoral combinations, which were forged state-wise, precluded any national policy platform being projected.

There have been two consequences of the projection of a Third Front. Firstly, the BJP-led NDA was adversely affected by the formation of a non-Congress secular combination. The BJP and the NDA's tally has come down since they were denied any significant ally in the states of Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Orissa.

The second point to be noted is that the secular non-Congress combination has got 21 per cent of the vote and this shows the potential for building up a third alternative on the lines suggested by the CPI (M) in its Party Congress. That is, an alternative which is not merely an electoral alliance but a coming together of the parties and forces on a common platform through movements and struggles for alternative policies distinct from that of the Congress and the BJP.

Money Power
A disturbing feature of this Lok Sabha election was the use of money on a scale not seen before. States like Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka saw an unprecedented use of illegal money. The Madurai constituency in Tamil Nadu was the worst example of the brazen use of money.

In other states too, this trend has grown which is vitiating the democratic process. More and more tickets are being given to moneybags and parties are collecting huge sums of money to be deployed for bribing voters. This is a threat to the entire democratic process and is particularly inimical to the Left's interests which cannot indulge in such unscrupulous use of money power.

Yechury Admits Leadership's Failure

Sitaram Yechury's interview to Karan Thapar for the programme Devil’s Advocate


Karan Thapar: Prakash Karat has accepted that the election results are a major setback, but the truth is actually much worse than that. Can you deny that this is the worst electoral performance in your party's 45-year-history?

Sitaram Yechury: Not at all. I don’t deny it. This is the worst debacle we have had. Soon after we were formed in 64, the first election we contested in 1967 we won 19 seats--today we won 16.

Karan Thapar: So you have literally gone back below your starting point.

Sitaram Yechury: And this is a serious matter. It is a matter which the politburo has admitted is a very big debacle and we have to understand why this happened and seriously introspect.

Karan Thapar: Let’s for a moment pause over the statistics of your performance. You have gone from your best ever electoral performance to your worst ever in just five straight years. This time around you have lost 63 per cent of the seats you had, or to put it differently you have lost 68 percent more seats than you have won. Those statistics are worrying and actually they are appalling.

Sitaram Yechury: Statistics are statistics and you can always manipulate them but that is not the point. The fact is that you cannot escape from this reality that this has been a very big debacle for us. It’s been the worst performance electorally by the party.

Karan Thapar: Let’s then come to why you did so badly. To begin with, can you accept that breaking with the UPA (United Progressive Alliance) was a mistake? The voters didn't understand why you did it and worst of all it made CPI-M look like a party which was promoting instability.

Sitaram Yechury: All these issues we have decided will be discussed--both national and state-level issues—introspected upon and a very serious, honest, self-critical review will be made by us.

Karan Thapar: Let me quote to you what your defeated MPs are saying. Prashant Pradhan, your defeated MP from Kontai, says: "People have not taken kindly to the withdrawal of support from the UPA government. The poor and the farmers never understood why we wanted to topple the government."

Sitaram Yechury: You see these are points of views which have come across. As I said all issues will be discussed by us and on all of them we will come to some honest, self-critical conclusion.

Karan Thapar: Let me quote to you Amitabh Nandi, a defeated MP from Dumdum. He says: "From day one of withdrawing support from UPA our slogans, our activities have proved we are against stability."

Sitaram Yechury: These are opinions that have come and as I said all these issues will be discussed thoroughly and that process has already begun. By the middle of June I think we will come to our conclusion.

Karan Thapar: But can you accept that these are very valid opinions?

Sitaram Yechury: These issues will be discussed, definitely.

Karan Thapar: These are not inexperienced, foolish people talking. These are some of your most senior, cherished MPs, now defeated. They know what they are talking about.

Sitaram Yechury: They have been our leaders in Parliament. There is no way we are going to discount anything anybody says within the party. Everything will be taken seriously and discussed.

Karan Thapar: Now the second problem with breaking with the UPA was that you forced the Congress into the arms of the Trinamool Congress, thus creating a coalition that was able to attract the anti-Left votes in West Bengal at a time when you were yourself suffering from Nandigram, Singur and beginning to realise that the Muslim population could be disaffected. Rather than divide your opponents you ended up uniting and strengthening them.

Sitaram Yechury: But remember that the Congress and the Trinamool always had a ground-level understanding even without an alliance. What happened this time was that the de facto converted itself into de jure.

Karan Thapar: Which was a disaster for you...

Sitaram Yechury: This had its impact, definitely. There’s no doubt about it. We anticipated that this would have an impact on the marginal seats, but there are other reasons why this defeat has occurred in Bengal and those have to be seriously examined.

Karan Thapar: Absolutely. No one denies there are other reasons in Bengal. But given those other reasons, the worst tactic for you was to unite your opponents on a single platform. You should have divided them, not united them.

Sitaram Yechury: Like I said we will review all of this.

Karan Thapar: But can you accept this was bad tactics?

Sitaram Yechury: Not just this, all other questions will be discussed and reviewed. All that I can say right now is that on any one of these issues we have not come to any conclusive decision.

Karan Thapar: But you accept that given that you already had problems in Bengal, devising a strategy that unites your opponents was a pretty silly thing to do?

Sitaram Yechury: But it could well be that our opponents were going to unite any way?

Karan Thapar: Maybe but you prodded them into it. If you hadn’t broken with Congress they might not have gone with Trinamool and then you would have faced a divided opposition not a united one.

Sitaram Yechury: In the last elections, remember, of the 61 Left MPs 54 came to the Lok Sabha defeating Congress candidates. So going into elections with the Congress was never the issue.

Karan Thapar: But the problem was that this time, by breaking with the UPA, you pushed the Congress into the arms of the TMC and thus created a platform of unity against you which otherwise would have been two divided parties.

Sitaram Yechury: That is the reason why I am saying that what was de facto has become de jure.

Karan Thapar: And that was a disaster...

Sitaram Yechury: We will review that...

Karan Thapar: Is it true that Jyoti Basu advised the CPI-M leadership not to break with the UPA?

Sitaram Yechury: He may have had his opinions within the committees but there is no advice that has come to us.

Karan Thapar: What opinion did he express in the committees?

Sitaram Yechury: That I can't tell you. That is something which even he won't tell you.

Karan Thapar: Can I infer that within the committees he expressed a measure of dissent about breaking with the UPA?

Sitaram Yechury: You see breaking from the UPA was not a one-time decision or which happened one-off. It was a series of developments which were taking place as a result of which it culminated in our withdrawing support. On various steps in this process he had some issues to tell us which he told.

Karan Thapar: So there were various moments when he expressed his opinion; there were issues he had to speak about which he did speak about.

Sitaram Yechury: Yes, definitely. Inside the party all of us will give our opinion but once we collectively decide that is our party matter.

Karan Thapar: Thank you, I think you have said it all. You can't confirm it but within the party at various stages he had opinions to express and he did express them.

Sitaram Yechury: He conveyed what he felt at a number of times.

Karan Thapar: He conveyed what he felt at a number of times, not (just) once or twice.

Sitaram Yechury: Even today he does.

Karan Thapar: The second biggest mistake was in fact the Third Front. We all knew what it didn't stand for--it was anti-Congress, anti-BJP—but no one actually knew what it stood for. As a result of which it lacked credibility and it projected negativity.

Sitaram Yechury: We in the politburo have come to the conclusion that the Third Front …. you understand how this Third Front emerged? It was state-level alliances in various states. Now this was brought together as a national alternative, which people obviously found had neither credibility or viability. Both were lacking. Thus the result. That is what we have accepted.

Karan Thapar: Finish the sentence you half began before you interrupted yourself: “We in the Politburo have to come a conclusion about the Third Front” and then you stopped. What is that conclusion?

Sitaram Yechury: That it was neither viable nor credible...

Karan Thapar: Would you therefore say that it was a mistake?

Sitaram Yechury: The way it was projected was a mistake. I’ll tell you why. The CPI-M always had this opinion, which we still continue to have, that India requires a third political alternative. This third political alternative will have to bring about a shift in the policy trajectory in the country. But that cannot be a cut-and-paste job on the eve of elections.

Karan Thapar: This was a hastily put together cut-and-paste job?

Sitaram Yechury: A cut-and-paste job, and to achieve our objective of a third alternative there are no short cuts. It will have to be done through sustained, prolonged, popular struggles. .

Karan Thapar: This was an attempt at putting together a Third Front, not just by cut and paste but by short-cut methods and that was a mistake.

Sitaram Yechury: Yes. That is something which will be a subject of our review in the central committee (of the CPI-M).

Karan Thapar: But in fact it was not just the projection of the Third Front, it was not just the haste and the cut-and-paste manner in which it was put together. Even the composition of the Third Front was wrong. To begin with, almost all its members were former BJP allies. Two of them, Jayalalithaa and Mayawati, face serious charges of corruption. As a result of its composition this front undermined your cherished principles of probity and secularism. These people should have never been your allies.

Sitaram Yechury: That is why in retrospect we are saying that people didn't find it credible. They did not find this front credible.

Karan Thapar: No doubt the people did not find it credible. The election results prove that. But can you accept that at a prior stage you chose the wrong allies? You should not have approached people like Jayalalithaa, like Mayawati.

Sitaram Yechury: In the states we had electoral understandings—with Jayalalithaa it was an understanding in Tamil Nadu; with the TDP it was an understanding in Andhra Pradesh. But we brought all this together as a national alternative. That did not find credibility with the people.

Karan Thapar: You’re accepting that projecting a state level understanding into a national understanding was a mistake. But even at the state level it was a mistake. Just look at the speed with which Jayalalithaa left you. She left you immediately after the elections and before the counting. The TRS left you after the voting and before the counting. As soon as the counting was over the JD-S and the BSP left you. They showed no loyalty to you at the state or national level.

Sitaram Yechury: The AIADMK has not left us formally, but you are right about the BSP, JD-S and TRS. That is precisely the point I am making--the front was neither credible nor viable. This (election result) has only confirmed that.

Karan Thapar: One other thing. At a time when the country was yearning for a strong and stable government, no one believed that the Third Front could offer it and more importantly the prospect of Mayawati as Prime Minister put a lot of people off, maybe even frightened them.

Sitaram Yechury: I don't think it was only a question of stability that people wanted. If it was stability then they would have found little to choose between the UPA and the NDA. They wanted stability with a commitment to the secular, democratic foundations of India. This was the combination which they found the Third Front lacked the credibility to give. And Commitment to secular, democratic foundations the NDA would never give. Hence the result.

Karan Thapar: The reason you lacked credibility in terms of secular foundations of India is not just because of the composition of the Third Front. But if you look at what your party did in Kerala your alliance with (PDP leader) A N Madhani was another mistake.

Sitaram Yechury: There was no alliance with Madhani.

Karan Thapar: Your own local partymen in Kerala have called it an alliance and say it is a mistake.

Sitaram Yechury: In Kerala, not only Madhani, various other issues that have impacted on these elections, all of them will be reviewed.

Karan Thapar: Let us briefly talk about the manner in which your two bastions--of West Bengal and Kerala--undermined your performance. To begin with, how did you permit yourself to go into an election when your entire Kerala unit was not just feuding but acrimoniously tearing itself apart?

Sitaram Yechury: But remember in Kerala this sort of situation prevailed in the 2006 elections and that time there were street-level demonstrations (as well).

Karan Thapar: Except that the situation had got much worse. On the eve of elections your state secretariat wanted V S Achutanandan removed as Chief Minister.

Sitaram Yechury: No, that was not true. That was only a media-created rumour. But the point is in 2006 what was seen as acrimony between our leaders resulted in a two-third majority victory in the Assembly.

Karan Thapar: Except that by 2009 you were no longer the beneficiary of doubts in the minds of the people. They were convinced by then 3 years of feuding meant that you were tearing yourself apart and you were allying with people like Madani. You were losing credibility.

Sitaram Yechury: Remember the elections in 2009 were for the Central government not state government. In Kerala and Bengal people are very conscious, they know what choices they want and whom they want where (i.e. at the Centre).

Karan Thapar: All right let me quote to you Hanan Mollah, one of your defeated MPs. This is what he told several papers: "We have been severely punished. Did we lose touch with ground reality?" What is your answer to that question?

Sitaram Yechury: That is precisely what we are examining. That is the answer we will give in our Central Committee when we meet in June.

Karan Thapar: What is your hunch? You are a political man, no doubt a definitive answer will come after the analysis but what is your instinct?

Sitaram Yechury: Obviously we have lost touch otherwise this sort of result would not have come. But to what degree, why we lost touch, what were the inadequacies, that is something we are seriously examining.

Karan Thapar: But you agree that you lost touch?

Sitaram Yechury: Of course, the results show that.

Karan Thapar: Now let’s come to the question: where does responsibility lie. I want to quote to you what one of your defeated candidates, Amitabh Nandy, has said. He says: "When we complete our introspection it will certainly emerge that the party's top leadership has failed." Would you agree?

Sitaram Yechury: Please understand one thing that this has been a very big debacle for us. Also understand the fact that this is for the first time in the last two decades that a secular government is being formed in India in which the CPI-M has no role. This is a big setback. People, therefore, are expressing their disappointment. All these sentiments
will be taken into account by us.

Karan Thapar: When you say this is the first time a secular government is being formed in India for two decades without any role or presence of CPI-M, you are underlining how irrelevant or marginalised you have become. So let us come back to Amitabh Nandy. Will you accept that the party's top leadership has failed?

Sitaram Yechury: That is what we are examining. Of course the top leadership of the party will have to take the leaderships role, I mean play the leaderships role. That it will.

Karan Thapar: Will the question when you do your examination be raised:has the leadership failed? Will that question be raised?

Sitaram Yechury: Of course it will come. Of course it will be discussed. Remember a Communist party functions by what we call the Leninist principles of organisation, where it is collective functioning with individual responsibility.

Karan Thapar: Both the collective functioning of the leadership will be inquired into as well as the issue of individual responsibility?

Sitaram Yechury: Of course. Yes. All of this will come in to the review. Definitely.

Karan Thapar: Your allies have absolutely no compunction at all in pointing the finger of blame straight at the Delhi leadership of CPI-M. Debabrata Biswas has done it, Abani Roy has done it and now increasingly AB Bardhan is doing it. They say the CPI-M leadership was arrogant and it had lost touch with the masses.

Sitaram Yechury: We have also heard these comments but all of them were party to all the decisions that were taken together in the Left parties' meeting.

Karan Thapar: No doubt but is there any truth in their claim that your leadership was arrogant?

Sitaram Yechury: If our allies are saying all this we will definitely take that into account in our review. Definitely.

Karan Thapar: You won’t turn a deaf ear?

Sitaram Yechury: No, definitely not.

Karan Thapar: You won't sweep it under the carpet?

Sitaram Yechury: No, it is for our own survival to get back the people who have been alienated from us and to advance further that we have to be candid, honest and rigorously honest in this self-critical examination.

Karan Thapar: If you want to be candid and rigorously honest then I put this to you: after facing a similar disastrous electoral performance, LK Advani offered his resignation to the BJP as Leader of Opposition. Why in similar circumstances in the CPI-M has Prakash Karat not found fit to make a similar gesture?

Sitaram Yechury: Leader of Opposition is a position in Parliament and that Parliament has ceased - the 14th Lok Sabha. And that Parliament has ceased to be. So whether he resigns or not that Parliament has finished.

Karan Thapar: We are talking about the need for candidness, for transparency and for winning back the people you have lost. Surely therefore Prakash Karat must make the gesture of accepting responsibility as General Secretary.

Sitaram Yechury: The point again here is that it will have to be a collective assessment that we will make of these results, of why these results have resulted in this sort of manner. And remember, resignation also can be escape from responsibilities.

Karan Thapar: You said a very interesting thing. A collective assessment will be made.

Sitaram Yechury: Yes.

Karan Thapar: Now your Central Committee is due to meet in June. At that meeting what are the chances that Prakash Karat will either step down voluntarily or be stripped of his responsibilities.

Sitaram Yechury: Again let me tell you the Central Committee is going to discuss the reasons for our debacle.

Karan Thapar: And they are going into the question of leadership?

Sitaram Yechury: Leadership of course. In that process. But it will not be on the basis of who is going to resign or not--that is not the issue. The issue is what are the mistakes, why were they committed and how can they be corrected.

Karan Thapar: But can you rule out the possibility of Prakash Karat accepting responsibility at that stage and resigning?

Sitaram Yechury: The Central Committee, as I said, will comprehensively review. Beyond that I cannot go today.

Karan Thapar: Let me put this to you. There is no doubt that the two issues on which you ended up losing seats were the break with the UPA and creation of a less than credible Third Front. Of both those Prakash Karat was the central architect. Is it not therefore the case that, as the Press is saying, he has the greatest measure of direct responsibility for this defeat?

Sitaram Yechury: Prakash Karat is the General Secretary of the CPI-M. These were the decisions of the CPI-M and he as General Secretary will articulate these decisions, naturally.

Karan Thapar: In most organisations when things go wrong the man at the top takes the responsibility.

Sitaram Yechury: But I think that is also one way of escaping responsibility.

Karan Thapar: Are you going to hold him to the job to punish him rather than let him go?

Sitaram Yechury: It is not a question of an individual. As I said, we will collectively assess what are our mistakes.

Karan Thapar: And therefore if you are going to collectively assess his future depends on the outcome and decisions of the central committee.

Sitaram Yechury: Well, the future of the party depends on it.

Coping With Victory And Defeat

By Siddharth Varadarajan

With the poorly conceived Third Front promising little more than political instability and the Bharatiya Janata Party standing for greater social turmoil and division, the victory of the Congress is a vote for calm, centrist stability of the kind the country has not seen for more than two decades.

That voters have attached a premium to both the formation of a stable government and to the pursuit of social-democratic policies should come as no surprise given the spectres of economic hardship, terrorist violence and communal polarisation that haunt our collective psyche today.

The only irony is that the Left and the Congress, whose partnership for four out of the past five years provided the United Progressive Alliance both the aura of stability and the caché of populism, should have ended up such bitter rivals on the eve of the election.

On the eve of the general election, the coming together of major challenges like the world financial crisis, the implosion of Pakistan and the rising tide of religious intolerance within India and the region had shifted the matrix of rational policy in such a manner that the issues on which the Left and the Congress had parted company last year made no sense at all to voters in 2009.

On most issues of consequence, domestic and foreign, the distance between centrist and leftist policy was getting eroded. Having resisted the National Rural Employment Guarantee scheme when activists first mooted the idea in 2004, the Congress took it up seriously only after the Left parties made it a priority.

Even then, conservative elements within the ruling establishment like Montek Singh Ahluwalia of the Planning Commission remained sceptical and sought to limit the Central government’s fiscal commitment to it.

Only when the economic slowdown hit India in 2008 — and the importance of NREGA as both a politically convenient safety net for the poor and an accelerator-multiplier to kickstart the economy became apparent — did the Congress make its implementation a priority.

The Congress may have been a late and even reluctant convert; but what matters finally is that the party and the Left ended up on the same page.

On other economic matters which divided the Congress and the Left like financial sector liberalisation, the fact that the Indian banking and insurance sectors were insulated from the global turmoil which felled giants like AIG and Lehman Brothers provided a further basis for the two sides to speak the same broad language.

Instead of celebrating the return of the social-democratic paradigm and using this to leverage a further shift away from neo-liberal dogma, however, the Left found itself holding the can on the one free-market policy its rural support base viscerally opposed: land acquisition.

If nationally, the CPI(M) and its allies were pilloried for a leftism that was largely declaratory, the Left Front paid the price in its bastion of West Bengal for the “rightism” of its policies that allowed Mamata Banerjee to emerge as a defender of the peasantry’s right to till the soil.

Consider the irony: the Left broke with the Congress because it felt the latter had deviated from the Common Minimum Programme of 2004. But in 2009, it allied itself to a diverse set of political parties without any programme other than the desire to establish a “non-Congress, non-BJP” government.

So it was that the Left found itself at election time with allies such as the Telugu Desam Party, the All-India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, the Biju Janata Dal and the Bahujan Samaj Party — groups that had no interest in pushing the direction of national economic policy one way or the other and which had all, in recent times, been closely associated with the BJP and its communal politics.

This programmatic dilution of the ‘Third Front’ allowed the grouping to look strong on paper but it was devoid of any political ballast. But even this might not have proved fatal except for another factor: As a result of its break with the Congress over an issue that was not so decisive to the direction of Indian foreign policy in the long run — the nuclear deal — the Left facilitated the creation of a coalition that went on to storm the seemingly impregnable red fortress of Bengal.

To be sure, there were and are valid reasons for the CPI(M) to have wanted to build a Third Front. But its failure to articulate a positive pro-people programme around which such a front could be established rendered the exercise electorally and politically futile.

As it looks towards rebuilding itself in Kerala and West Bengal and enlarging its prospects as a genuinely national alternative, the Left will have to be self-critical about its preference for conjuring up expedient top-down coalitions rather than organic, bottom-up alliances based on the kind of struggles and movements the communists know best.

Unless it does so, the parliamentary communist movement will find itself increasingly squeezed by Maoist extremism on the left and the electoral machine of ‘bourgeois’ parties on the right against which it cannot easily compete. If the Left needs to introspect, what of the BJP, which paid the price for believing that the Indian voter would prefer divisiveness and strife to the comforting anchor of centrism?

The rot in the party runs so deep that it cannot be reversed by the resignation of LK Advani. The very fact that its spokesmen thought Narendra Modi’s name would generate a wave in favour of the BJP despite the Supreme Court ordering a probe into his role in the 2002 mass killing of Muslims in Gujarat shows the extent to which they are out of touch with the pulse of the country.

But since the party did relatively better in Gujarat and Karnataka, especially the coastal region where Christians, Muslims and ‘immoral’ Hindus have been targeted by the Sangh Parivar, it is possible the RSS will conclude that religious polarisation is a good electoral strategy for the BJP to pursue. If this is the direction the party takes, its capacity to generate tension and insecurity in civil society will increase even if its national political prospects continue to remain dim.

As for the Congress, the party needs to guard against the hubris that usually accompanies the kind of dramatic, unexpected victory it has just received. The INC defeated the Left fair and square but must realise that its success owes more to the social-democratic elements of its economic policies than to the ‘reforms’ the party’s more affluent backers espouse.

Second, vanquishing the politics the BJP stands for requires more than electoral success. The socio-economic and administrative support structures on which the politics of communalism thrives need to be dismantled through careful, sensitive intervention.

The party must resist the old Congress way of pandering to identity politics as a low-cost way of doing the right thing by India’s diverse electorate. India’s Muslims, for example, want equal opportunities and justice, not the banning of a book or the expulsion of a Taslima Nasreen. Providing these will involve taking on entrenched interests and attitudes, especially in the police and administration, something the
Congress has always shied away from doing.

Finally, the re-election of the UPA must not be seen as a licence to indulge in the ‘Congress culture’ of the past. The public got a glimpse of that culture when some leaders started pushing for Rahul Gandhi to be made Prime Minister as soon as the scale of the party’s victory became apparent.

Sonia Gandhi did well to nip these demands in the bud. If she can go further by pensioning off entrenched interests and democratising the functioning of the party’s leadership, the Congress will be better placed to meet the expectations of those who have voted for it.

Courtesy: The Hindu

Left Out

By Roger Alexander


The results are out and the verdict is unambiguous. Contrary to predictions and analysis, including that of this writer, there is only one winner – the Congress, even though it has won just 205 seats. And every other party, including the Congress's own allies, are losers.

Till the night of May 15 it was believed the Congress would have to beg estranged friends, especially the Left, to return to the UPA fold to reach the halfway mark. Nothing of the sort was required for the Left has been decimated. Indeed, the Left is the biggest loser in this election.

While details of voting patterns and other details will be available only after a few days to enable an in-depth analysis, it is evident that in Kerala factionalism led to a rout of the Left. Indeed, a faction-ridden Communist party is an oxymoron. And that's what seems to have dismayed even die-hard supporters outside the party fold, not to speak of disgruntled allies and disenchanted workers who seemed to be working at cross-purposes during the campaign.

No amount of semantics over pre-poll hiccups over seat sharing, community preferences, or minor swings can explain the debacle especially since the Kerala state government was supposed to be doing a decent job.

But it is the storming of the Left citadel, West Bengal, that has everyone - party bosses, sympathisers and independent observers alike – flummoxed. Indeed, all exit polls predicted around 26 seats for the Left Front. The result is worse – a paltry 15 seats.

This performance is worse than its previous low of 16 in 1984 when the election was fought in the shadow of Indira Gandhi's assassination. And the argument that the Left was against a formidable Trinamool-Congress 'mahajot' does not explain the crushing defeat.

It will be remembered that a similar 'mahajot' existed in the 2001 state assembly elections. But the Left Front easily met that challenge. Even in the panchayat elections last year, the Left Front emerged victorious – though battered and bruised - with a 52 per cent vote share.

So it all boils down to the failure of the CPI(M)'s fabled party machinery to convince the Left's traditional supporters – the working class, farmers, sharecroppers, and other poor sections – to once again vote for the Left.

Remember, the Left citadel was built on the land reforms post 1977 when it won a decisive victory in the assembly elections after the Emergency. Though the Zamindari system was abolished by an enactment in the West Bengal State Assembly way back in 1957, the land holding pattern had undergone little change.

A vast majority of the cultivators had little or no land in their possession. In an effort to penetrate and widen its support base in the rural areas, the CPI(M), after coming to power, initiated steps to correct the existing imbalance in land relations.

For this adopted a two-prong strategy. On the one hand, it stressed the empowerment of the landless and marginal farmers – ‘Operation Barga’. Additionally, it tried to complete the unfinished task of distributing surplus land vested from the landlords.

On the other, the Left Front government introduced a three-tier panchayat system and in 1978 held its first election. The panchayat system was important for it was expected to give the people a participatory role in the process of rural development.

So along with its deep roots in the working class movement the CPI(M) also won the allegiance of the rural poor as Operation Barga empowered not only the tillers of the land but the rights of sharecroppers as well. And that's the way it remained for the next 30 years.

But when the CPI(M) decided to take economic development to the next higher plane through industrialisation as the gains of land reforms were petering out, it made a monumental tactical blunder: it failed to convince farmers and sharecroppers that land acquisition for industrialisation was in their interest.

For this the CPI(M) does not have anyone to blame but itself. First, the Left Front was divided over land acquisition with the Forward Bloc and RSP bitterly opposing the policy.

Second, even after the Doubting Thomases within the Left Front were arm-twisted into accepting the new reality, the party cadre were neither ideologically equipped nor trained to take the all-important message to the grassroots.

In fact, the whole exercise was entrusted to the government bureaucracy without the participation of the gram panchayats and zilla parishads, led by party members, that were supposed to be part of the decision-making process.

Ironically, the very forces led by the Congress that had determinedly fought for the 'rights' of the jotedars (landlords) when their holdings were expropriated in the Seventies have now emerged as the 'saviours' of the beneficiaries of the land reforms undertaken by the Left.

The farmers, of course, have no future as land fragmentation has made most holdings economically unviable. It will be remembered that compensation for the 1000 acres acquired for the Tata Nano plant in Singur was distributed amongst 10,000 title holders, meaning one family eking out a living on one-tenth of an acre.

Yet the party cadres at the village level failed to convince the farmers that they could become more prosperous if industry came up on their land. Politically that was a fatal error.

Of course there are other issues – arrogance of party cadres, complacency, revisionist tendencies, an unhealthy reliance on bourgeois democracy to achieve revolutionary goals, and revisionism - that contributed to the rout of the Left, but at the moment
the failure to address the concerns of farmers seems to be the biggest factor that led to the shock result.

Imagine, if in a politically conscious state like West Bengal where the choice is between a pro-poor and progressive Left Front and a mercurial and retrograde Mamata Banerjee, the electorate chooses the latter, there must be something really wrong with the politics of the CPI(M) and its allies.

(If there is one lesson to be learnt from this election, it is this: Electoral arithmetic does not always work. That is why the Left Front decisively lost an election this writer earlier felt was a no contest.)

BJP denies tickets to quarter of MP MLAs

Nov 1, 2008

The BJP has denied tickets to nearly a fourth of MLAs in Madhya Pradesh, in its first list of candidates, reports The Economic Times. The list, announced on Friday, comprises 115 candidates, accounting for half of 230-member assembly. As many as 28 sitting MLAs, including one minister have been dropped.

Minister in the public works department, Narayan Prasad Kabirpanthi, has been dropped. He had contested from Naryaoli in the last elections and will be replaced by Pradeep Lariya. Of these 115 seats, the BJP had won 75 in the last assembly elections; 47 of the sitting MLAs have been given a ticket.

This exercise of letting go of MLAs to counter the adverse effects of incumbency proved to be succesful in Gujarat. The party has stuck to this formula in Chhattisgarh as well. It is expected that a similar exercise will be undertaken for Rajasthan.

Madhya Pradesh is one of the three poll-bound states where the BJP has been in power for the past five years. The BJP brass, in consultation with the local units, has decided to neutralise the damage by denying tickets to candidates whose report cards as sitting MLAs in the past five years were not found up to the mark.

In its first list the party has fielded 14 women candidates, 19 OBCs, 20 Scheduled Caste and 33 Scheduled Tribe candidates. Ram Pal Singh, who represents the Vidisha parliamentary seat, which he contested in a bypoll after he vacated his Budni seat in favour of chief minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan, is marking a return to state politics.

He will be contesting from the newly formed constituency of Shilvani. Chief minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan will contest from his home constituency of Budni. other notables who have been given a ticket are Sundarlal Patwa’s nephew Surendra Patwa from the Bhojpur seat, which he lost to Congress candidate Rajesh patel in the last elections.

Assembly speaker Ishwar Das Rohani will be contesting from the Jabalpur Cant seat.

Meanwhile, the Congress stuck to the quota script and awarded nominations to loyalists of powerful state leaders in Madhya Pradesh. While backers of Mr Digvijay Singh and Mr Kamal Nath walked away with a major share, the party took care to guard political interests of Mr Arjun Singh, Mr Suresh Pachouri and Mr Jyotiraditya Scindia.

The first list of 117 candidates released by the Congress clearly indicated the party was adhering to the ‘quota system’ although there was talk of abandoning it.

Mr Digvijay Singh and Mr Pachouri will not contest the assembly poll. Raghogarh, which is being represented by Mr Singh, has gone to his associate Mool Singh. Mr Singh was chief minister of the state for 10 years.

The list released by the party for the next month’s poll includes several former ministers and senior leaders including leader of opposition Jamuna Devi and former deputy chief minister Subhash Yadav.

While Ms Jamuna Devi has been renominated from Kukshi, Mr Yadav will contest from Kasrawad. Mr Ajay Singh, son of Mr Arjun Singh, has been renominated from Churhat. Former assembly speaker Sninivas Tiwari is the party nominee from Sirmour.

Hazarilal Raghuvanshi, who is the deputy speaker, has been nominated from Seoni-Malwa. Among former ministers who have been given tickets include Satyadev Katare, Mahindra Bodh, Raghavendra Singh, Parvatlal Ahirwar and Radnesh Solomon, brother-in-law of former chief minister of Chhattisgarh Ajit Jogi.

Roger And Out

Congress, BJP Groping In The Dark In Madhya Pradesh

By Roger Alexander

Exactly a month from now, Madhya Pradesh goes to the polls. Yet, both the ruling BJP and the Opposition Congress have failed to announce their candidates for the 230 seats even though some names have been cleared by the respective ‘high commands’. Indeed, both parties had said earlier with a lot of fanfare that the names of candidates would be announced well in advance but nothing of the sort has happened till now.

Reports in the media suggest that the lists will be made public only after Diwali and campaigning in earnest would start only in November 10, giving candidates three weeks to reach out to the electorate.

According to speculative reports, one factor that could be responsible for the delay could be that neither the BJP nor the Congress wants to be the first to declare candidates and both appear to be waiting for the other to make the first move. Besides, Bharatiya Janashakti Party president Uma Bharti has queered the pitch for both parties by holding out hope for aspirants who fail to get tickets from either the BJP or the Congress to contest elections on her party’s ticket. Similarly, Mayawati’s BSP and Mulayam Singh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party are also eyeing rebels from the Congress and BJP, though to a lesser extent.

If reports are to be believed, the BJP is toying with the idea of adopting the “Modi formula” of dropping unpopular legislators as a strategy to minimise the anti-incumbency factor. Speculation is rife that around 40 of the 173 MLAs in Madhya Pradesh may miss their names in the list of candidates as the party leadership feels that the state government has done well and cannot afford to lose because of the unpopularity of individual leaders.

The Congress, as usual, is groping in the dark. Even though around 70 candidates have been approved by the ‘high command’, their names have not been made public for fear of driving the losers to revolt (as if they won’t later). Besides, the four top leaders from the state – Arjun Singh, Digvijay Singh, Kamal Nath and Jyotiraditya Scindia – are pulling in different directions. 

To complicate things further, the BSP has emerged as a strengthened force after the elections in Uttar Pradesh. It has used its base among the Dalits to build a wider coalition of caste politics in the areas adjoining UP, besides the tribal areas. Indeed, the party will be an important factor in Madhya Pradesh even though it has announced that it will not ally with any other party for the elections.

In the 2003 assembly elections, the BSP had obtained 7.6 per cent of the vote resulting in two seats. In the present scenario, it will certainly play the spoiler because it remains squeezed in between the Congress and the BJP which have not declined in the state as in Uttar Pradesh. However, some observers feel that the BSP will hurt the Congress more than the BJP as it draws on same social combination of Dalits and Muslims as the Congress.

Meanwhile, the CPI(M) has announced it will field its candidates in 12 of the 230 constituencies in Madhya Pradesh for the assembly elections on November 25. The party will contest the elections in coordination with the CPI and other secular forces, including the JD(S). The Left parties would appeal the voters to give an opportunity to a third alternative, whether it is the BSP or any other party, to form the government in the state.

Roger And Out!

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Political Uncertainty In Rajasthan

By Roger Alexander

Rajasthan elects its next legislature in six weeks and politics in the hot weather state is hotting up further. While it is a direct contest between the ruling BJP and Congress, a new set of political developments are queering the pitch for the traditional rivals.

The most important, of course, is the rise of the BSP and Mayawati’s growing popularity in the state. The other is the ‘Gujjar conundrum.

The BSP may not have big names on its rolls but has an early-bird advantage of starting is poll campaign much before the BJP and Congress. In fact, the party released its list of 155 candidates for the Assembly polls in Rajasthan and 13 for Lok Sabha elections way back on September 1.

The list included the name of Jagat Singh, son of former External Affair Minister K Natwar Singh. The remaining 45 candidates will be named in the next few days. “We are hopeful of the successful implementation of the UP formula that brought us to power in Lucknow,” says state party chief Durgaram Gader.
Apart from the traditional Dalit votes, the party is likely to garner sizeable minority and Jat votes. The inclusion of former Congress MP Natwar Singh and his son Jagat Singh has facilitated its entry into Bharatpur district, a Jat stronghold.
The Jats are visibly upset with Congress over the issue of making a Jat CM. They can vote in favour of BSP with the hope of a Jat CM in Natwar Singh. Also, the minority, having tested both the Congress and BJP can give a chance to the BSP following its favourable attitude towards them in UP.

In the last elections, the BSP polled 5 per cent of the votes to win two seats out of 124 constituencies it contested. “Last time, we went for the poll with only eight-month preparations. Even then, the margin between our candidates and the winning MLAs was barely 4-5 per cent. This time, we are fielding our candidates on all the 200 seats. We have our plans cut out with hard work of four-and-a-half years behind us. We will definitely upset all political calculations,” claims Gader.
Indeed, the BSP has already fielded its grass root workers in a door-to-door campaign in areas where it hopes to make inroads even before the Congress and BJP have finalised their candidates. With a strong presence in eastern Rajasthan districts adjoining Uttar Pradesh — Bharatpur, Karauli and Sawai Madhopur — the BSP is also trying to make its presence felt in tribal areas of southern districts Udaipur, Banswara, Pratapgarh and Dungarpur.

“We have the right mix of candidates. We have given tickets to candidates belonging to 40 castes. Around 100 are Meenas while 40 are Brahmin and Rajput candidates; we want to give a comprehensive image to the party,” claims Gader.
Besides the BSP, the Gujjars too have skewed all political calculations. The Gujjars can tilt the scales in around 17 seats in the Sawai Madhopur, Dausa and Bharatpur districts and their leader Kirori Singh Bainsla could well play the role of kingmaker in Rajasthan in the case of a hung assembly.

There is said to be huge pressure building on Bainsla from within the community to float a Gujjar-specific party. However, this commentator believes that it is rather late in the day for such a move, even if the limited aim is to win a few seats and a voice in the state assembly.

Indeed, Bainsla has indicated publicly that rather than float his party, he would rather support the BJP, which means he’d rather extract as many tickets from the BJP for the Gujjar candidates. However, that is easier said than done as the BJP has a strong following among the rival Meenas. So watch out for some tightrope walking from Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje.

She is sure to make the pitch that she was instrumental in carving out a special quota for them. Indeed, recently at a public meeting in New Delhi Bainsla said the state BJP had done whatever best it could for the Gujjars and that it was Congress-led UPA which was refusing to grant the Gujjars ST status.

The waters may be muddies at the moment and a clearer picture will emerge next week when electioneering will resume in right earnest after Diwali.

Roger And Out

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Between A Rock And A Hard Place

By Roger Alexander

The election season is finally upon us. With the Election Commission announcing the poll schedule for Chhattisgarh (Nov 10 & 14), Madhya Pradesh (Nov 25), Delhi (Nov 25), Mizoram, and Rajasthan (Dec 4) , the ball has been set rolling for the grand finale – the Lok Sabha elections in March or April next year.

This is a critical round for the two chief claimants to that seat, the Congress and the BJP. Although these are state elections, both parties see them as a “semi-final” for the 2009 Lok Sabha polls. The results would assume a larger-than-life importance because they will be an indicator of the shape of things to come.

All four states have been with the Congress and the BJP locked in a straight contest ever since the Swatantra Party went into oblivion. However, this time, there is a wild card entry, the BSP, which hopes to upset the applecart of the two national parties by emerging with the support of smaller outfits as the dreaded third force. 

The BJP will be defending its government in MP, Chhattisgarh, and Rajasthan while the Congress will be trying for a third consecutive term in Delhi. Being so close to the centre of power and with the general elections nearing, the campaign will see a mix of local and national issues, with security, terrorism, and price rise dominating the discourse.

So which way is the political wind blowing? Received wisdom has it that usually incumbent governments face the voters’ wrath that results in the main opposition party making major gains. By this yardstick, the BJP that is leading the governments of Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh has a lot to worry about. Similarly, the Congress is on shaky ground in Delhi and the Mizo National Front should be chewing its nails in its backyard.

Alas, things do not usually work this way. This writer, for one, takes the so-called anti-incumbency factor with a generous pinch of salt. The mantra is supposed to work this way: the incumbent government makes such a hash of things that voters automatically plump for the opposition. However, the wily Indian voter is known for delivering nasty surprises and the 2004 verdict is still fresh in the public mind. And they keep their cards so close to the chest that even the governments’ intelligence gathering units fail to gauge the public mood. Independent pollsters are even more clueless.

If elections were to be held tomorrow, in Madhya Pradesh (230 seats), Rajasthan (200 seats) and Chhattisgarh (90 seats), the BJP retains an advantage in Madhya Pradesh, and has a fighting chance in Rajasthan given the disarray in the Pradesh Congress. On the other hand, Congressmen claim they have an in Chhattisgarh, but with Ajit Jogi incapacitated and the Shuklas over the hill, it remains to be seen if this is bravado or hard fact. The electoral race in these states is very finely poised and minor swings can change the nature of the outcome.

True, corruption was emerging as a major electoral issue in the BJP-ruled states where corrupt administrations, ministers and legislators have made it into a salient issue but since the BJP-led state governments have generally delivered on other fronts and there aren’t many other big-picture themes for the opposition to try and exploit during the electoral campaign.

For example, in a move to prop up its prospects in the forthcoming assembly polls, the Vasundhara Raje government on Sept 11 played its trump card: it obliged over 7.3 lakh state employees by announcing a pay hike of 30 to 50 per cent, which is even higher than what the Centre announced for its staff. The hike will have retrospective effect from September 1, 2006. Besides state employees, three lakh pensioners in the state will receive the new pay package from the same period. 

It must be remembered that disgruntled state government employees played a large role in the unexpected and decisive defeat of Ashok Gehlot-led Congress in 2003.

The BSP factor is another headache for the Congress. The BSP has virtually no history in this region, except in parts of Madhya Pradesh. But after the party surprised all including Mayawati by winning 17 municipal seats in Delhi last year, Mayawati has developed ambitions of spreading her wings outside UP.

That victory was put down to sheer fluke at that time but since then, Mayawati has spent considerable time cultivating political space for her party in these states, all of which share borders with UP. It's a moot point how many seats the BSP will succeed in winning. But it could influence results in enough constituencies to tip the balance. And with Mayawati pinning her prime ministerial ambitions hinge on her ability to snatch the Congress party's vote bank of Dalits and Muslims, she will certainly go for the Congress’ jugular. Ironically, a resurgent Mayawati, rather than being a threat to the BJP, could in fact indirectly help its prospects.

In 2003 assembly polls, the BSP won two seats each in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh and polled 4 per cent of the popular vote in Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh and 7 per cent in Madhya Pradesh. If the BSP were to, say, secure 10 per cent of the popular vote (comprising mostly the traditional Congress vote, which appears likely), the BJP would return to power in these states delivering devastating defeats to the Congress. In other words, the BJP’s hopes of returning to power in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, may well depend on the BSP’s ability to cut into the Congress’ Dalit vote bank.

Moreover, two acts of the UPA government could also emerge as new poll issues in these highly polarised states and could hurt the Congress’ prospects. One is the union government’s controversial submission to the Supreme Court that Ram Sethu cannot be worshipped because Lord Ram himself had destroyed it hence was not an integral part of Hindu religion requiring protection under Articles 25 and 26 of the Constitution (dealing with right to freedom of religion). Government counsel argued before the bench hearing the case that religious texts showed that though the bridge had been built, it had been broken by Lord Ram himself and that anything broken could not be worshipped.

The other issue that the BJP is already using to whip up religious passions is the J&K government’s decision to withdraw transfer of land to the Amarnath board owing to pressure from Muslim groups. This issue is likely to find many takers in north India.

The outcome of these state elections will set the tone for general elections in 2009. If the Congress fails to win at least two of the three BJP-ruled states, the game could be over for the Congress at the Centre. If the BJP fails to retain two of the three states, the party’s hopes of coming to power in New Delhi may appear to be misplaced. Not surprisingly, neither party looks confident about its prospects. Both are ridden with factionalism and may soon be busy putting out bushfires in the form of rebel candidates and defections to the BSP once the process of ticket distribution begins.

Ends