MODI'S STRANGE AFFLICTION

Narendra Modi has a strange affliction. He gets verbal diarrhoea when his feet touches foreign soil but is constipated for words when he returns to India after the laborious task of acquiring frequent flier miles. His first reaction  to the lynching of a Muslim on the suspicion that he was eating beef was that it was 'unfortunate'. The second comment was a real tear jerker: it was 'saddening'. Both the comments came much after the victim was buried, his family evacuated from the village, and enough venom has been spewed by Union ministers and other stormtroopers of the Sangh parivar.  

An 'unfortunate, saddening' incident is when you miss your bus and arrive late for a job interview. What happened in Dadri was 'murder most foul'. The climate of violence and hatred to perpetuate this horrendous act and the assassinations of writers and thinkers in other parts of India has been created by the propagandists of the parivar. Modi is the public face of the parivar.  To that extent he is morally culpable.

THE ACHILLES HEEL OF THE SANGH PARIVAR

In the Mahabharata Yudhisthira led the Pandavas to victory  leaving much of the heavy lifting to his brothers and the divine help, Krishna. In this time and age the Modi government does not have any such luck. The duplicate or ersatz Yudhisthira  that the government picked to lead the Pune film institute is being worsted by the students with a lot of support from the public and media. And no one is doing the heavy lifting for Modi & Co.; not even its in-house spin doctor Arun Jaitley. In fact the only defence of Gajendra Chouhan has come from himself in the form of a plaintive cry: "give me a chance!" Hardly a dialogue that is kingly much less acceptable given the advisability of allowing a ham to strut upon a stage once occupied by the great names of Indian cinema.

The problem is not that the BJP has chosen a member or supporter of the sangh parivar to head a government body or organisation. All parties in power do this; it is the price we pay for governance. In democracies the choices are open and subject to criticism in the public domain; in totalitarian societies they are never commented upon. Often these appointments are sinecures; but in some cases they do carry responsibilities. Hence it is important that while the ruling party regrettably stuffs these posts with its own people it does not impose upon the country just any Tom, Dick, and Harry or a Yudhishthira. The party should place a premium on competence while complying with its requirement of political loyalty. While the appointments to head the Pune film institute, the National Film Development Corporation and the anti-democratic Censor Board get full marks on the political loyalty scorecard, the limited track record of the appointees do not inspire confidence on the question of competence.

The strangest part of this selection process is that with the whole wide  world of Indian cinema available to it, the sangh parivar ended up with these three: an actor whose field is limited to mostly serials and bit roles in films that have sunk without a trace; another who 

believes that a loud voice and muscle flexing can substitute for acting and who has little experience of finance or even the business of making and selling a movie but has a track record in doing charity; and finally, a producer whose only claim to fame is as a propagandist for Modi and a maker of truly forgettable B grade films. Despite all the managerial skills displayed by the BJP its headhunters has had access to Teams B to Z of Indian cinema!

Most commentators have remarked upon this and those like the Pune students who will be directly affected by the choice have taken to the streets in protest. Rightly so. However there is a deeper meaning to BJP's silly exercise of power. The mastery and manipulation of the social media have come up against the hard reality that the sangh parivar has little support amongst the elite, the creative and intellectual areas of Indian society. Whether it is cinema, history or education the party's choices are confined to those in Teams B to Z because it can't find anyone in the A team who will broadly agree with its so-called ideology. The reason is that this ideology is just a collection of myths and wishful thinking cloaked in simplistic religious slogans which cannot bear the light of reason.

The paucity of intellectual support is the Achilles heel of the Modi government and the sangh parivar. Because votes can only get you power; to govern you need the support of the elite in the civil society and not just business people who only look at balance sheets. Vajpayee knew this and if the Modi government has to get the support of the Indian elite it needs to move away from the constricted world view of the RSS and its khaki knicker klan.

 

ONE YEAR AFTER AND MODI'S DILEMMA SET TO WORSEN

When Modi completes one year in office today he would have accrued the maximum frequent flier points among any living or dead prime ministers. That uncertain distinction was worsened by the prime minister's really bad taste in telling NRIs that for the past sixty years Indians were shameful of being born in India! Losing his bearings in the miasma of his own rhetoric Modi forgot that out of the 60-odd years nearly six the prime minister was AB Vajpayee the recipient of the Bharat Ratna this year!

Modi also conveniently forgot that his rhetoric was a slander on foreign soil of all the institutions like parliament, judiciary, civil service, military, and media that have flourished here, "warts and all" for sixty years because of these prime ministers and the governments they led. Modi's problem is that he believes that India began with him.

The root cause of this illusion is his ego. An extreme example of that was his decision to wear a jacket with his name embroidered in place of stripes. To make it unforgettable the name, Narendra Damodhar Modi, was spelled out in full much like how mothers make tiny tots wear to lower KG school. Our media mangled the English language by calling it a monogram because, a monogram is actually just initials and not a full-blown name which no one who has any sense of style would display many times over on their torso.

In the Westminster cabinet system of government which we follow the prime minister is primus inter pares or first among equals. Modi has replaced this principle with "l'etat, c'est Moi" or "the State, that is Me", and the key to realising this is the PMO ( Prime Minister's Office) where all power is concentrated. In order to make the PMO a supra government Modi's "first act was to amend the time bar on the re-induction into government service of those who retire from regulatory bodies. This was done to facilitate the induction of a former chair of the telecom regulatory board as the Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister. The aim of the time bar rule was to prevent the re-appointment of a government official into a sinecure posting after retirement, and thus curb the bureaucracy's tendency to develop an unholy nexus with its political masters." (Blog post dated 4 September 2014.)

The first victim of Modi's power drive was the Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj. She and her ministry has been kept out of every major decision pertaining to external affairs. A case in point is Modi's announcement of allowing e-visas to the Chinese. Immediately afterwards the Foreign Secretary who was also in Modi's team to China said that the e-visas were not a done deed but the idea was under consideration. This was contradicted by the PMO's officials in Beijing. Clearly the Foreign Secretary, the highest ranking Indian diplomat was not in the know of what Modi was upto.

In fact, what was Modi upto? The delay in the issuing of visas to the Chinese has been an issue between the two countries for some years. The other issue was the Chinese government issuing stapled visas to Indians from Arunachal Pradesh and Jammu & Kashmir because Beijing regards these two states as disputed territories. Unless the border dispute between the two countries is resolved these two states will remain disputed territories in Beijing's eyes. However without insisting on China to give up its position since that issue has been under discussion between the representatives of the two countries for quite many years, India could have offered the e-visa as a quid pro quo to the Chinese for removing their policy of stapled visas. This is what a diplomat would have aimed for and it could have worked because the Chinese are keen on the India trade and simplified visa rules will be of great help. By insisting on running foreign policy from the confines of the PMO Modi missed this chance.

The cardinal rule of diplomacy is to keep talking whatever the provocation, and if the situation gets hairy, like a war, you move the talk out of the limelight. Modi does not understand this. He only knows how to make the grand gesture and to pout when the other side does not come to play. Hence between the gift to Nawaz Sharif's mother and the tantrum when the Pakistani High Commissioner followed the convention of meeting the Hurriyat leaders Modi's Pakistan policy is a still born child. The possibility of a land agreement with Bangladesh crafted by the Manmohan Singh government is the one silver lining in the foreign policy horizon. But it is too early to say "hurrah!" because this will require a constitutional amendment to become law.

In defence matters Modi has exhibited bipolar tendencies. On the one hand, he has cut down the sanctioned size of the Mountain Strike Corp, and on the other he has purchased 36 Rafale fighter jets for $6 billion. If the first was an expenditure control measure overriding the Indian Army, the second was an out of the blue decision bypassing the Defence Ministry's Acquisition Council and overruling the earlier decision to tie the purchase order to a production agreement between the French company and Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd. So much for Modi's 'Make in India' policy! The rapidity of the Rafale deal and the cloud of suspicion that surrounds it could well turn out to be Modi's Bofors.

On the economic front despite the decline in the gross capital formation (GCF) as a percentage of the gross domestic product (GDP) from 36% in 2012-2013 to 28.6% in 2014-2015 we have an improved growth rate in GDP. Though Finance Minister Arun Jaitley (given his more crucial other occupation of spin doctor to the Modi government) has spun a story of great improvement to the economy, the truth lies elsewhere: the Central Statistical Organisation had revised upward the base year for calculating most indices. As a part of this process the base year for calculating the GDP is now the year 2011-2012. The inflation index too has undergone this statistical surgery. Hence GDP is up and inflation is down. But it has not impressed the RBI governor Raghuram Rajan. In a press release dated 4 March 2015, the RBI said: "the picture...of a robust economy...is at odds with still low...growth of production, credit, imports, and capacity utilisation..."

Among the good measures of the Manmohan Singh government was the Right to Education Act and the centrally funded mid-day meal scheme in schools. Even if there were leakages and other problems with these measures there intentions were laudatory and the overall end results encouraging inasmuch as the enrolment in primary schools increased. The natural next step was to increase the quality of teachers and plug the leaks. Instead what the Modi government has done is to cut the spending on teachers' training to approximately Rs. 400 per teacher per annum. The budget for higher education too has been decreased. All this has been done in the name of the higher allocation of central revenue receipts to the states recommended by the Finance Commission. Historically the commission has always recommended an increase in allocation but this has never been used by the Central government to cut its spending on social welfare measures. The Modi government has gone in the other direction.

It has cut by 3000-odd crore rupees the allocation to the National Health Mission. Re-introduced old welfare schemes under new names. Thus the Aam Admi Beema Yojana is reincarnated as the Atal Pension Yojana. The other welfare schemes are all contributory in nature and to that extent reduced to the participation of those who have a job and disposable income. The welfare scheme which actually provided for both, the previous government's Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), has been left to die a quiet death by Modi because he does not have the courage to kill and cremate it. Another key legislation of the previous government was The Land Acquisition Act which was passed with the support of the BJP. That was when it was in the opposition. In power its second ordinance were to amend this act and remove any say for the villagers whose land was being acquired. This act of aggrandisement should be seen against the fact that the proportion of cultivable land to total land availability is decreasing in the country and the majority of peasants are marginal farmers. Modi's land act will tighten the noose around their necks.

Much of the economic improvement which the Modi government is claiming as the fruit of its labour is directly traceable to the decline in oil prices. That run of luck is changing and oil prices are slowly moving up. Along with this is the great possibility of the U.S. Federal Reserve raising the interest rate. When that happens the foreign investment inflow into India will be impacted and the Modi 'magic' will come face to face with the harsh fact that slogans and tweets cannot counter economic reality.

The Modi government has made a habit of conveniently forgetting election slogans and promises that turn out to be inconvenient to realise when in power. While in the Opposition and during the last Lok Sabha election the BJP manifesto said that the power would kill the law that allows foreign investment in multi-brand retail. One year later it has done nothing. Economically speaking this is a good decision because such a step would harm the growing consumer revolution and become a setback to overall growth. The problem is that neither Modi nor his party has the courage to admit that they were wrong and the Manmohan Singh government action on this issue was correct. The BJP election manifesto had declared that within 100 days after its government came to power the black money stashed in foreign banks would be forcibly repatriated to India. Modi went one grand step further and said that this money would be divided among all Indians and each of whom would get a gift of Rs. 15,00,000 in their bank accounts. A year later all that has happened is that multitude of Indians who didn't have savings accounts opened them in state-controlled banks with rupees five from their own pockets. These five-rupee accounts are actually a managerial problem for the already cash strapped banks! Anyone who has a modicum of common sense would have known that without the due process of law and lengthy court proceedings in foreign courts this money is unlikely to reach India. But Modi is our version of the Wizard of Oz with his wires and pulleys to create an illusion.

The people are getting tired of these tricks. If any proof is required look at the statistics compiled by the Delhi-based Centre for the Study of Developing Societies. The study compared the voting percentage of the BJP in the last assembly elections in four states against the figures for the last parliamentary polls. It  found that the BJP's total votes polled declined by 1.5 percent in Haryana, -9.3 in Jammu & Kashmir, and -8.3 in Jharkhand. Maharashtra was the only state showing a small increase with 0.3 percent. That the BJP formed the government in all the states is courtesy the vagaries of our first-past-the-post electoral system. 

However the biggest challenge to the Modi rule will come from within his party, the right wing organisation, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), which controls it, and the lunatic groups that make up the family called the Sangh Parivar. Modi's cabinet contains people who own him no loyalty. There are also people outside the cabinet who see him as a political upstart. In the second year of his government they would begin to question his performance, especially the failure to fulfil the poll promises. That some of the promises like the repatriation of black money is hyperbole will not hold them back from mounting an attack. Meanwhile his lunatic brothers-in-saffron will push their agenda to the point that governance will be a problem.

To effectively govern a country which is more varied than any other in this world, the idea that one religion, Hinduism or its militant form Hindutva, can be a unifying force or a mode of thinking is infantile. Because there are many Hinduisms, not one, and to force them to fit the womb of Hindutva will be provoke an abortion. There is also another factor. The very economic growth which Modi is so assiduously championing, the 50 smart cities and a land crisscrossed by super fast highways, will either make the khaki knicker boys change to bermudas or their ideology irrelevant to the people. Sooner or later Modi will have to choose between governing the country within the limits of the Constitution, or waste time changing textbooks and whatnot to please his mentors and his brothers-in-saffron. This is Modi's dilemma. In the years to come it will worsen.

DISSENT AND DEMOCRACY

A blog post dated 15 December 2014 on the first government of Kejriwal in Delhi concluded by saying, "A zealot is a zealot is a zealot...until time and age hopefully catches up with him before it's too late." That government was a short-lived one. In the elections which followed Kejriwal's party had an impressive victory. This seemed to have gone to his head: instead of ruling in a manner that would make people's lives better Kejriwal has decided to lop off the heads of the most intelligent leaders in his party. The hit list has two founding members, both well-read and articulate, and a retired admiral who was the conscious-keeper, the Lokpal of the AAP.

For a party which is literally a new-born one the accusations and counter-accusations that have been aired by AAP members in the last few days have an old ring to them. The style and substance to them does not herald a new dawn but is a reminder that the darkness in Indian politics is all pervasive.

AAP it seems is just a re-incarnation of the other parties in the Indian political spectrum with one important difference. In the AAP the difference is that the lack of diffidence to the 'Leader' is a crime punishable with demotion and expulsion. Kejriwal & Co. should do well to remember that dissent is the life-breath of democracy. Suppressing it makes a so-called saint just one more calculating person with pretensions to overarching political power. Pelf will not be far behind.

INSANITY RULES IN GOD'S OWN COUNTRY PLAGUED BY ITS DEVILISH LEGISLATORS

The letter of the law says that a person is innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.  This is the defence that Finance Minister KM Mani and the UDF Ministry has taken in the matter of what has come to be known as the 'Bar Bribery Case'. Strictly speaking at this moment there is no case in the sense that none have been filed on the allegation that Mani took a bribe to help withdraw the restrictions on sale of alcohol. Since no case has yet been filed and the matter is only at the enquiry level Mani is legally correct in refusing to resign from the UDF Ministry.  If ministers have to resign every time someone accuses them of wrongdoing, then we would have to exponentially increase the membership of the legislatures and their floor size so that we have enough MLAs and MPs to play musical chairs and enough space for the chairs!

But there is a catch. Chief Minister Oomen Chandy has conveniently overlooked  this while spouting his legal semantics. In the 'Bar Bribery Case' the allegation against Mani has not been made by a political rival or some unknown person. The accuser is the bribe giver and a leading member of the bar owners' association. This accusation is significant for two reasons. One, it has been made by a bribe giver who is as much culpable as the bribe receiver under the law. Two, it has been made by an office bearer of a trade body that is very dependent upon the largesse of the finance minister and needs to be on his good side. A psychologist would say that the accuser has a suicidal tendency; the common man would surmise that the unprecedented accusation points to the fact that the accuser is both angry and confident and hence there is a large kernel of truth in the charges against the minister.

In such a situation sheltering behind the letter of the law is the cowards' way and reeks of political opportunism. A higher law, the law of moral propriety says different: resign, clear your name, and return.

If Mani had opted for this 3-step programme he would have created an honest precedent. The problem is he is not certain that step three, 'return', is foolproof. In the event Mani returns unscathed by the scandal, there are enough claimants within his party to his ministerial chair that whoever steps in as a temp is likely to claim permanency. There is also another uncertainty: given the slow pace of the judicial process in the country there is every possibility that the Mani case will prolong beyond this ministry's term.

In these circumstances, the Left Democratic Front which constitutes the opposition should have known in its collective wisdom that its demand for Mani's resignation is unachievable. In the absence of wisdom the LDF decided to prevent Mani from presenting the state budget, an even more unachievable target. To make it achievable this meant, short of kidnapping the finance minister, the street was to be brought into the legislature. What followed was bedlam with fists, teeth, claw, and damage to property all brought into play in defence of democracy!

In normal times a finance minister reads out the budget speech, and this can take hours depending upon his inclination to verbosity. The fact of the matter is that the speech is unnecessary because what is required is for him is to table the budget papers in the legislature. Rarely has any finance minister confined himself to this simple act because speech-making is part of the genetic code of a politician. In the street fight situation prevailing in the Kerala legislature Mani was forced to cut short his speech and table the budget papers.

While the LDF's demand for Mani's resignation had a moral content its sanction of rowdy behaviour that would have got an ordinary citizen a plethora of criminal charges and fines is a sign that politics have given way to insanity. Likewise, Chief Minister Oomen Chandy's recourse to legal semantics throughout this affair reveals that he too has irretrievably lost his sense. 

Insanity rules in God's Own Country Plagued by its Devilish Legislators.