Sunday rallies: Modi, Rahul & Kejriwal





VIEWPOINT
AMITABH SHUKLA


Sundays always had special significance in northern India, particularly Punjab, ever since the colonial days.
As it’s a holiday, weddings and other auspicious functions are fixed on this day so that maximum well-wishers find time to attend it without any pressure of work. Not surprisingly, the election managers of BJP and Akali Dal chose a Sunday afternoon for BJP’s prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi’s rally in Jagraon in the heart of Punjab.

Attired in a saffron colour pagri, Modi touched all issues which the Punjabis wanted to hear and given the long association with the Akali Dal, reminded the people how Parkash Singh Badal’s pro-farmer and traditional approach complements the modern approach of his son and deputy Sukhbir Singh Badal’s vision on industrialisation, IT and related sectors. As Modi has a grass roots understanding of the entire northern belt comprising Haryana, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh and Jammu & Kashmir due to his organisational

responsibilities before becoming the Gujarat Chief Minister, his understanding of the issues did not surprise many.Modi talked about the Hindu-Sikh unity in his rally and how the Akali Dal-BJP alliance was working for it. As he was in a minority dominated State, had he spoken about the need to bring the Muslim minority on board for inclusive development, right note would have struck across the country. But perhaps that is not in the agenda, at least not before the Lok Sabha elections.

But watching Modi in Jagraon and other issues which he highlights in his speeches all over the country, what is apparent is that there is a judicious mix of local and regional issues with that of national ones. Modi has clearly realised that federalism is too important an issue and you cannot carpet it under so called pan-Indian issues. What is important to a person in Ludhiana or Amritsar could be different to that of a person in Gandhinagar, Guwahati, Kochi or Vijayawada. Realising this difference, identifying the regional issues, highlighting them and promising to make them a part of the mainstream is the way to go about it.

Perhaps this is why Modi talked about the wastage of foodgrains in the State which is the food basket of the country, the menace of drugs, agriculture, along with his economic vision of 33 per cent each — agriculture, manufacturing and services sector for the growth of the country. As the region has the largest concentration of ex-servicemen, targeting Congress on the delayed ‘One Rank One Pension’ scheme found many a sympathetic ear in Punjab and the region.

Contrast it with the speech of Congress’ prime ministerial candidate Rahul Gandhi’s speech in Dehradun soon after Modi’s speech ended. Rahul as usual concentrated on talking about empowerment of women, right to health, eradication of poverty, schemes for poor etc — issues which the party has been talking for the last over 60 years without finding a solution for them.

At Jagraon, one found Modi talking about trifurcation of the Food Corporation of India, a practical solution to the problem of storage and distribution of foodgrains in the food basket of the country. In Dehradun, one found Rahul talking vaguely about some vague issues without connecting to what the people wanted. Of course, the live audience at both Jagraon and Dehradun was “captive”. In Jagraon, they were Akali Dal-BJP supporters while in Dehradun, they were Congress supporters. So whenever there is a slogan in favour of Modi or Badal, people responded in Jagraon while whenever a Zindabad was demanded from the crowd for Rahul Gandhi, the people responded.

Rahul spoke of the natural tragedy of Uttarakhand only once perhaps as a lip service. He must have realised that the party had to change its Chief Minister of the State for poor rescue, relief and most importantly rehabilitation and reconstruction.  Apart from that he had nothing to offer to the people of the Hill State who are yet to recover from the tragedy even as the next season of the Char Dham yatra approaches and there has been little effort in the State to restore the facilities.

It was ironic when Rahul said that the party gave 12 LPG cylinders realising the pain of the women who needed 12 cooking gas cylinders. Come on Rahul, wasn’t it your Government which brought in nine cylinders and linked it with Aadhaar scheme and then raised it to 12? You take from one hand and then deliver from another and make the entire thing look virtuous. I don’t think, people are that naïve to buy such an argument.

Days of being vague are gone. You cannot simply say that you will empower women and bring employment for the youth. Even Jawaharlal Nehru talked about that in his election speeches. Now, people want to know how you would achieve that. Give a blueprint, a practical solution. 

In all his speeches so far, Gandhi invariably talked about his father bringing computers in the 80s. It was time, he spoke on what the Manmohan Singh Government did in the last 10 years, particularly a list of its achievements and a frank admission of its failure. It would only add to your magnanimity if you admit that your party indeed presided over the mega scams like spectrum allocation and coal scam and thwarted development through inaction and sitting on decisions.

Also, perhaps Congress under Rahul Gandhi sees the entire country as one unit with the same set of problems not realising that each State has specific issues and needs specific grievance redressal mechanism. The third rally of the Sunday was at Rohtak in Haryana, the home State of Arvind Kejriwal. Many analysts might be calling Kejriwal the star of T20 style of politics but his supporters insist that he has a long term gameplan. But in Rohtak, he continued to bank on issues which he thinks paid him dividends in the Delhi Assembly polls last December and would again help in the April-May Lok Sabha polls.

Kejriwal’s rally in Rohtak was largely on expected lines and there was nothing out of the ordinary. Attack on the two parties — Congress and BJP on corruption along with Mukesh Ambani, land scams, etc. So far, he has not come out with  a vision for governance and the plan for the future — what will he do on industrialisation, generating employment, farmers, service sector, youth, etc.

After resigning as Delhi Chief Minister, perhaps Kejriwal has started believing in the opinion polls which predict that he will be getting around 20 seats and would not be in a position to have any say in the next Government formation as NDA is way ahead and UPA way behind. Or May be, the AAP is still in the process of formulating its opinion on the national issues as it tries to grow from a Delhi specific regional party to a pan-India party. (February 24, 2014) 

AAP’s national ambitions far-fetched




VIEWPOINT
AMITABH SHUKLA


As the country inches towards the Lok Sabha polls, Aam Aadmi Party has clearly emerged as the joker in the pack after its dramatic and well scripted exit from Delhi. Whatever Congress and BJP say and do in the national Capital, they are clearly a step behind the maverick Arvind Kejriwal.

No one for sure knows what the next step of AAP would be and this is why it remains an untested commodity in the Lok Sabha polls even though it had a questionable outing in governance for 49 days.

The other day, there was an opinion poll by Times Now-CVoter clearly suggesting that Narendra Modi will be the next NDA-led coalition’s Prime Minister. But the opinion poll was conducted before Kejriwal resigned as Delhi Chief Minister. The stock of Kejriwal has risen after his dramatic resignation and his success in making the people believe that a new style of politics is in the horizon.

Had Kejriwal gone to the Lok Sabha polls with the baggage of chief ministership of Delhi, his party’s fate would have been miserable. Now that there is a small halo of martyrdom on his head… I resigned to fight corruption, I resigned as the entrenched parties did not want a Jan Lokpal Bill passed, I resigned because I took on Mukesh Ambani etc… Kejriwal could go to the polls with a fresh slate of being a fighter against the “well entrenched corrupt system”. This is what many say is the new avatar of the angry young man of Indian politics in the year 2014.

So resigning from chief ministership was a political masterstroke of AAP and its boss Kejriwal. Even the ardent admirers of AAP would admit that like Mamata Banerjee in West Bengal, it would take a long time to transform AAP into a party of Governance as it is more suited for agitations, rabble rousing and protest. This is what keeps the party and its support base going and if it comes on the eve of Lok Sabha polls, there could never be a better script.  Moreover, no one would now bother to scrutinise its performance and dramatics which unfolded before the people of Delhi in the seven weeks in which it was in power. No one would even dub it as an anarchist, urban Maoist outfit which has picked up the mike in the style of a perfect demagogue instead of the gun to further its cause of gram swaraj and mohalla sabha — styles of democracy practiced 600 years before Christ in Vaishali.

A section of the urban middle class might go with this confrontationist style of AAP for a while which only has hype but no substance. This is the section which is also supporting Narendra Modi as the Prime Minister and they would be faced with a dilemma now. This section and even AAP support base was veering away to Modi after watching the antics of Kejriwal. But they could find fresh virtues in the party after the resignation of Kejriwal on a flimsy pretext and practically being defeated on the floor of the Delhi Assembly on introduction of the Jan Lokpal Bill. Kejriwal simply did not want to expose himself for long in Government lest he got exposed and faced anti-incumbency.                                                                                                 

Now that the burden of going to Players Building, the headquarters of Delhi Government no longer there, Kejriwal would immediately assume the role of a street fighter even though there is no immediate cause to fight for. As Delhi has been put under the spell of President’s rule and Sheila Dikshit  no longer there as an “icon of corruption and an agent of the power companies and Commonwealth Games contractors”, it remains to be seen what issues Kejriwal takes up now to agitate. Of course, the perennial issue of corruption is there and agitation for taking forward his FIR against Mukesh Ambani and Union Ministers is very much on the cards.

Coming back to the opinion poll by Times Now-CVoter, the third or the fourth front, whatever you call it, are getting 205-225 seats, 215 to be precise and this group includes AAP. This is tantalisingly close to what NDA is expected to get. What if AAP surpasses all predictions and does reasonably well after Kejriwal’s Delhi dramatics and gets two dozen seats all over the country. Wouldn’t the Congress think of pitching AAP and this front against NDA by offering its unconditional support of 90 odd MPs it is expected to get in the 2014 polls? After all, it was Congress which offered unconditional support to AAP in Delhi, facilitating the Government formation. Talk to Congress leaders about this possibility and privately they are already looking at this scenario to keep Narendra Modi and BJP out. So will Kejriwal be a 49-day Prime Minister as well?

Even as Congress supporters would like to believe that, the scenario could be far-fetched. There is many a slip between the cup and the lip. The opinion polls suggest that the gap between Congress and BJP and NDA and UPA is widening consistently. They also show that if AAP gains nationally, it could be at the cost of the Congress, BSP and also the minuscule Left votes in some States.

Moreover, if one scrutinises the composition of the 215 odd MPs who are likely to constitute the third or fourth front, there are many parties who simply cannot be on the same side of the fence, come what may. The number 215 comprises both SP and BSP who can never be on the same side. This comprises Trinamool Congress and the Left Front, DMK and AIADMK, Janata Dal (United) and RJD —parties which can never be together. The entire politics of these parties is based on countering each other in the States where they are dominant and if they are seen on the same side, they would be finished in their States.

This so called anti-Congress and anti-BJP regional parties are so diverse ideologically, temperamentally and as per the realities at the grass roots in their respective States that they would again divide with half of the 215 coming together for one cause while the other half espousing some other cause. So this block of 215 is too fragmented with many of them already looking at joining NDA and offering it unconditional support if it was at a striking distance of forming Government. BJD in Odisha, TMC in West Bengal, AIADMK in Tamil Nadu, and TDP in Andhra Pradesh have all been a significant part of the NDA in the not so distant past and they would find little merit in staying out of a grand anti-Congress platform under Modi’s stewardship.

The latest opinion poll also suggests a major rise in the NDA’s vote share, from 26 per cent in 2009 to 36 per cent with UPA’s down from 36 to 22 per cent. This gives NDA around 230 seats and UPA around 100 seats. The gap is too huge for the UPA to play any meaningful role in the next Government formation.

Coming back to Kejriwal and AAP, they are at best looking at the next Assembly polls in Delhi, possibly to be held along with the Lok Sabha polls. There is little doubt that AAP is the new regional party of Delhi and will stay there like DMK and AIADMK in Tamil Nadu and TMC in West Bengal, squeezing the Congress and carving out a support base for itself on the ruins of the grand old party. (February 17, 2014) 

Dynasty emerges as bane for Congress




VIEWPOINT
AMITABH SHUKLA


Narendra Modi sold tea at a Railway station and comes from a lower middle class family having hand to mouth existence in the tiny Vadnagar of Gujarat. Arvind Kejriwal’s father was a typical middle class person, worked in a private company in Haryana’s Hisar and was an engineer by profession. The Delhi Chief Minister himself was an engineer before he appeared for the Civil Services examinations and got through the Indian Revenue Services, which he later quit.

On the contrary, the third prominent leader ahead of the 2014 general elections — Rahul Gandhi — comes from a family of Prime Ministers and given the family background was never required to work for a living unlike his main competitor Modi who sold tea and to a lesser extent Kejriwal who worked in the Government. Rahul’s family controlled Congress and the Government ever since the country became Independent 66 years ago except for 10 years and privilege came naturally to him.

Gandhi is the symptom of the disease which plagues Congress and the opinion polls are suggesting so even though the party is refusing to accept it. In 2014, the youth want to look beyond family, dynasty privilege and patronage. The emergence of Modi and to some extent Kejriwal clearly suggests so.

But in Congress, it is only the “family” which keeps you going in politics. Except some of the regional parties where the family saga is endless, Congress perhaps remains the only party in the world where the son and if they do not have the son then the daughter, naturally succeeds the father. Patriarchy and dynasty is the buzzword in Congress and this is only strengthening its grip even as Rahul himself keeps harping on superficial experiments like democratising the organisation and holding primaries before giving tickets. I can safely stick my neck out and bet that when the final ticket selection is done, at least half of the contestants from Congress would have MPs, Union Ministers, MLAs and Ministers in State Governments, former or serving, as their fathers.  

Ironically, the de facto prime ministerial candidate of the Congress had at one time described politics as a closed system in which one could get entry only through “dynasty and patronage”. However, he never made any efforts to remove this ceiling and it continues unabated and in fact has strengthened. You name a Congress Chief Minister or legislature party leader in a State and you will invariably find that his son or if he has no son then his daughter is in politics. The latest in this list is Jaivardhan Singh, the son of irrepressible Digvijay Singh, former Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister and AICC General Secretary. While the son was elected MLA from father’s traditional seat the father got into the Rajya Sabha not wanting to test political waters in the BJP stronghold of Madhya Pradesh. This all happened right after Rahul openly abhorred dynastic politics. Come on, hypocrisy does not pay in politics. People are sharp and they realise it sooner than later.

The youngest MP of the outgoing Lok Sabha, Muhammed Hamdulla Sayeed, is the son of Congress veteran and former Union Minister PM Sayeed. MPs Sandeep Dikshit, Jaganmohan Reddy, Supriya Sule and Nitesh Rane are all sons of former Chief Ministers.

Haryana is a classic case where dynasty rules the roost from the ruling Congress to the Opposition. You simply cannot aspire to achieve anything worthwhile in politics if you are not the son or daughter of a prominent leader. Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda’s son Deepender Hooda is not the only son of a neta getting entry due to his father. Two Ministers in the State Cabinet, Savitri Jindal and Kiran Chaudhary have their son and daughter respectively in Lok Sabha. While Naveen Jindal is MP from Kurukshetra, Shruti Chaudhary is MP from Mahendragarh. Kuldeep Bishnoi is MP from Hisar and may not be in the Congress at present but his father Bhajan Lal was a Congress Chief Minister for several years. The Opposition Indian National Lok Dal also is a story of the dynasty of former Chief Minister Devi Lal.

The list is not exhaustive. Just do a simple homework. Look at the CVs of the MPs of Congress and the Ministers in the UPA Government you will clearly find that a lot of them come from strong political families and it was family and not grass roots work which got them party nomination and helped in their victory. This is true for almost half of the over 200 MPs of the party. So there is no moral fabric when Rahul says that politics is a closed system and dynasty and patronage get you there.

As Congress has turned into a party of sons and daughters of leaders and there is hardly much scope for a new entrant, BJP and the Aam Aadmi Party seem to cash in on the sentiments against such a closed system. In BJP except perhaps for Prem Kumar Dhumal who was a Chief Minister and his son Anurag Thakur MP and Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje whose son Dushyant Singh is a low profile MP, the examples are difficult to come by.

The message is simple. If you want to join politics and aspire to get a party ticket to fight elections, you should either join AAP or BJP. The relative openness of the two parties in getting new candidates is perhaps appealing to the younger generation and is a contributing factor for the popularity of Modi and Kejriwal. “If a tea seller can bid for the highest post in the country, why not me?” is the message which has gone through a lot of educated youth. They might not be aspiring to contest the polls straight away but obviously their sympathy lies with the parties where politics has not been closed.

When Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar said that Modi could serve tea to the AICC delegates, it was not a leader speaking but the attitude which comes through privilege which he enjoyed all his life as a student of St Stephen’s, Indian Foreign Service, being close to Rajiv Gandhi, being a MP and Minister in several Congress Governments.

He does not want a non-privileged tea seller who cannot speak the Queen’s language as a competitor to Rahul. It is this attitude which is being challenged successfully by Modi and to a lesser extent Kejriwal.  (February 10, 2014)      

Dissecting Congress' slide in fortunes




VIEWPOINT
AMITABH SHUKLA


All opinion polls held so far point to the decimation of the Congress in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls. The only point on which these polls differ is about statistics — whether the ruling party would be in double digits or will it manage to cross the 100 figure mark. But these polls are unanimous that the party founded in 1885 is heading for its worst performance ever since the first elections were held under a new Constitution in 1952.

If the opinion polls prove to be correct, the Congress mangers would indeed find it interesting to analyse and dissect all the political events which took place between 2009 and 2014. Of course, none of the analysis would come out in the open but they would be discussed amongst the party circles. In fact, privately the senior Congress leaders are already analysing what they could have done better and where they went horribly wrong in the last five years.

One of the major reasons for the poor polls prospects of the party is the demystification of the Gandhi family and law of diminishing returns applying to the first family of the Congress. In the last 10 years, people of the country perhaps realised that giving perks of power to the Gandhi family without them taking any responsibility will not help in a democratic set up. More so, when the youth dominate the electorate now and the number of first time voters is huge. For them, there is no value attached to a surname and this is becoming apparent now in places like Delhi where a Kejriwal can upset a Dikshit or her boss, a Gandhi.

For the youth of 2014, a Gandhi would not be able to get power without working his way up through the system. Till now, they have seen Rahul Gandhi enjoying all the respect in the party, perks and position simply due to his surname and not due to any big political idea, vision or thought that would propel the country forward. The first time voters and the youth saw in the last 10 years how Rahul Gandhi missed the chance not once but repeatedly and refused to convert the massive Congress infrastructure into a winning idea. Talk to the youths across the country, some even in the NSUI, and they will tell you that the only qualification of Rahul becoming the de facto prime ministerial candidate of the Congress was his surname and nothing else. This section believes what Narendra Modi and Arvind Kejriwal are saying but not what Rahul is saying or doing. The reason is simple. Rahul does not inspire confidence for a new India and his vision is too outdated, reminiscent of the 1950s, 60s and 1970s when glorification of poverty made you victorious in elections.

Watching television commercials of Bharat Nirman and listening to the promotions on FM radio about the changes which took place in the last 10 years, I was left wondering how and why falsehood was being peddled about progress and development.

I keep going to my hometown and my native village in Bihar and hardly find anything different in 2014 as compared to what it had been in 1994. Several stretches of roads, particularly National Highways, seemed to be in far worse condition than it had been in my childhood (NH-28A), nearest ATM was in the bank branch and it too was non-functional, the nearest airport was in Patna, around 260 kms away, there was no sign of any private investment or job creation.

Come on, why peddle falsehood like this and who will vote for you in the rural areas of the country if you continue to humiliate them through blatantly false advertisements. BJP was defeated due to "India Shining" campaign in 2004. Instead of learning from the mistakes, you are simply repeating them. In fact, in his entire 2009 campaign for the Congress, Rahul had severely castigated BJP for creating two India - shining India and non-shining India. Now, he is himself promoting the same concept. Why bank on an idea which has been defeated by the people?

Corruption and inflation have always been poll issues and will again be relevant. But you do not win or lose elections merely on these. Lack of a big idea definitely costs and it is here where the Congress is down in its popularity ratings.

Not that the BJP has a great idea and a vision but Modi is showing promise and remains an untested phenomenon at the national level which the people are lapping up, at least this is what the opinion polls suggest. The demystification of Modi is yet to happen and this is helping the BJP to get perhaps the largest number of seats ever even as the Congress is heading to get the lowest number of seats ever.

Congress could also ponder over Manmohan Singh's ineffectiveness as Prime Minister and how it contributed to the sliding of its popularity in five years. Singh, a Sikh, hails from Punjab and members of his extended family still live here. I failed to understand all these years why didn't he contest a Lok Sabha election from the State.

I bet, he could have easily won a seat and even the Akali Dal could have decided not to field a candidate against him as the Prime Minister was going to be from Punjab. But he didn't do so and that perhaps is the reason why Sikhs in Punjab do not identify with him. His poor communication skills could be a reason but the bigger factor was that he failed to assert himself at any point in his career in politics.

 The bureaucratisation of the post of Prime Minister was complete in his tenure like never before and this contributed to the weakening of the party. Despite a Sikh Prime Minister, Congress lost the Punjab Assembly polls in 2012, an election which it was widely expected to win, triggering the downslide from which it is yet to recover. (February 3, 2014)

Selja in Rajya Sabha, setback for Hooda


 
Amitabh Shukla | Chandigarh

The nomination of Kumari Selja for Rajya Sabha from Haryana has changed the factional equations in Haryana Congress and is being seen as a setback for Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda in the election year.

The sitting Lok Sabha MP from Ambala also resigned from the Union Cabinet and is expected to be drafted for party work — either as the Pradesh Congress President of Haryana or as a senior functionary in the AICC Secretariat in Akbar Road, New Delhi looking after election related work.

The double anti-incumbency in Haryana — almost 10 years of UPA rule in the Centre and over 9 years of Congress rule in the State — has severely dented the prospects of the party in the state and it needed an immediate facelift before facing the electorate in May for the Lok Sabha elections and then in November for the Assembly polls. Even in 2009 Assembly polls, Congress under Hooda had barely scraped through and could form Government only after breaking the Haryana Janhit Congress Congress and winning over Independents.

Selja had been quite vocal against Hooda in the fight for factional supremacy in the state Congress and had repeatedly alleged that her constituency was neglected in development. It was understood that had she contested the Lok Sabha polls, Hooda would have gone all out to ensure her defeat to finish her politically. Sensing trouble in the state unit, the central leadership quickly shifted her to the Upper House.

A dalit leader and a woman, sources said 51-year- old Selja could be drafted as the PCC President to replace the ineffective Phool Chand Mullana who had resigned over two years ago after the party lost the Hissar bypolls. Mullana, also a dalit, is a camp follower of Hooda and the chief minister was apparently lobbying for his candidature for Rajya Sabha. Another contender for the post, Sirsa MP Ashok Tanwar could also be drafted in AICC as he is close to party Vice-President Rahul Gandhi.

Sources said that Selja’s name was finalised by Vice-President Rahul Gandhi in New Delhi and she was informed about the decision and greater role for her in the organisation. As she had won the 2009 polls narrowly and given the anti-incumbency in the state, she gleefully accepted the offer. “Being a woman and dalit was considered before making the choice,” a party leader said.

It is understood that Rahul Gandhi also wants to create an alternative leadership in Haryana, parallel to Hooda. Chaudhary Birender Singh, who too has been quite vocal against Hooda is not trusted and does not fit the profile which Team Rahul wants. Birender Singh was first removed from AICC as General Secretary and later at the last moment his name was struck off the probable list of ministers in the Manmohan Singh Cabinet.

In the last Lok Sabha polls, Congress had won nine of the 10 seats in the state, a strike rate which was one of the highest in the country. The lone seat won by the Opposition was by Bhajan Lal at Hissar but he too was from a breakaway faction of the Congress.

“It is a dramatic shift,” admitted a senior Congress leader on the nomination of Selja to the Rajya Sabha. The party leaders are anticipating bigger role for her in the state unit as PCC President but are apprehensive if that would be prudent given the antipathy of the Hooda camp and loss of synergy between the Government and the organisation in the election year.

Though relatively young, Selja entered Lok Sabha way back in 1991 and was drafted as a Minister of state in the PV Narasimha Rao Cabinet. What goes in her favour is a taint free image and a silent worker besides being a woman and a dalit.  (29 January 2014)