Grow The Saffron Ecosystem

Grow The Saffron Ecosystem

This is a crossroads moment to grow the Saffron ecosystem, not for vanity or righteousness, but to push aside and eclipse the vast Congress/Left one, deeply embedded in our consciousness.

It is very important, politically, and not just culturally, to do this, as it is the only way to rejoin the broken pieces of a polity deliberately fractured into classes, castes, religions and regions, to suit the machinations of a Congress, in continuation of the British policy of divide and rule.

In that generous euphoria that followed the great win of May 16^th, 2014, nothing substantial was done to defang the UPA’s elaborate  communications infrastructure. 

So, it wasn’t very long, taking this government to be naïve, inept, and gauche, that Congress, with 44 seats in the Lok Sabha, still felt fit to mount a fresh challenge, accompanied by a veritable manufacturing plant of scurrilous propaganda.

It was decided to damn parliamentary etiquette, or reasoned argument, and amplify all the staged outrage and belligerence via a substantial presence in the Congress loving media. Money paid and advertising revenue gleaned naturally plays its part, but does not seem to be quite so effective for the BJP/NDA.

By way of contrast, the tiny AAP uses relentless advertising and controversial soundbytes to leverage its media profile quite masterfully.

The big mistake for the government, in hindsight, was not going on the offensive on UPA corruption and that of some of its allies and media supporters, from day one.

But now, suddenly, a humbled BJP, after two ignominious losses in state elections at Delhi and Bihar, has had its mojo restored. With the non-traditional Assam victory, the BJP/Sangh Parivar have been given another chance to set wrong to rights. So, what should the government’s communication strategy be at this juncture?

First of all, it should look to its resolve. To lack determination now, when opponents are once again lying defeated and supine, would be a fresh tragedy in the making.

If this opportunity is grasped firmly, and used properly this time, both as to changed election strategy/tactics, and the broader but yet vital universe of the public relations battle, it will lead to good fortune and victory, in 2017, ’18 and 2019, and perhaps, even another big one in 2024.

It could not only become a Congress mukt Bharat, but be enough years in the saddle for the BJP/NDA, to transform the country economically, politically, culturally, and militarily.

To cut through the jungle of misinformation and calumny that is assiduously propagated, what is needed now are some sharp new intellectual machetes; some moderation in the pitch and tone, and a broad sense of organisation.

Still, epithets like bhakts, chaddies, and trolls, are bandied about as if they were a birth right. Broader accusations against the saffron brigade include - escapees from the freedom movement, appropriators of history, obscurantists, misogynistic, communal. Modi has been likened to Hitler more times in these 24 months, than ever before.

This is a perfect time to increase the visibility and articulation of the broader saffron universe, as the party and government continues to relentlessly mainstream, broaden its appeal, and increase its national footprint.  It now rules in 16 states and 45% of the population there, plus the centre.

The BJP and its affiliates certainly, but also its many friends, need to ramp up their visibility in the visual electronic/digital media/ on You tube, as well as in print. This implies beefing up the media presence inclusive of acquiring/investing in media assets and infrastructure. There is only so much good coverage that one can expect from rival platforms.

The hundreds of ‘warriors’ or ‘Yodha’, as BJP president Amit Shah calls them, are doing an exuberant job of it on social media already.

Saffron think-tanks such as the Vivekananda Foundation and the Shyama Prasad Mukherjee Foundation must articulate a public vision, and raise their level of media commitment and interaction, both via the visual and print mediums.

The official spokespersons from BJP’s media cell need their flanks covered by sympathetic others from the broader saffron ecosystem, including the corporate world, columnists that are right-of-centre if not party-line perfect, and people from the armed forces, the bureaucracy, the sports world, public intellectuals, the financial markets, the expatriates and NRIs, foreign- based think tanks/academia, manufacturing, software, construction etc.

These people, drawn into a saffron communications ecosphere by deliberate and coordinated induction, could add much nuance and shading to the bare-faced party-line.

Their advantage and credibility lies in the fact that they are NOT official spokespersons, but are nevertheless in sympathy with the general thrust. These soft-sellers could go a long way to counter and mitigate some of the provocative  propaganda unleashed by the other side, as also the outrageous and offensive remarks made by some parliamentarians/MLAs from the Lotus pool too.

Their involvement could add layers of commentary, strategic depth, and sophistication to the saffron narrative, broadening the appeal and  embrace of a centrist position, to draw in people who may not subscribe to, and are put off by, strident Hindutva tropes.  

This approach has worked very well for the other camp. Look at various from The Obsever Research Foundation, and Pratap Bhanu Mehta’s one man band, for example.

The celebrity universe too can be most useful and the saffron tent can gain by adding its own contingent of writers, poets, artists, actors,  comedians of the saffron kind. There is MP Paresh Rawal, of course, but others too have been drawn in, bringing both their star power and /or expertise to the table. Think of the much reviled Chetan Bhagat, who speaks his mind undeterred. And most recently the sticks and stones braving ‘Chintu’ Randhir Kapoor.  ‘Khilari’ Akshay Kumar declared a while back, and later so did the beautiful Raveena Tandon and the bald and bold Anupam Kher.

To win the mind and hearts game, as the Union HRD minister Smriti Irani fully realises, it is necessary to dismantle the old indoctrinating ecosystem too. It is no less pernicious than any Wahhabi madrasa, even though it is a house built by Congress and the Left. It is a formidable and tentacular thing, extending into the media, the universities, amongst the bureaucracy, in schools, colleges, into their staff selections and curricula.

Today Congress is weaker than it has been in decades, with just 7 states and 7% of the population in them, and so is the Left, with just the state of Kerala in their kitty.

It is therefore an excellent season to capture the initiative and build a superstructure for the saffron ecosphere that puts paid to the old order once and for all.

For : The Pioneer

(1,100 words)

May 23^rd, 2016

Gautam Mukherjee

2016: The Importance of Being Subramanian Swamy

2016:The Importance of Being Subramanian Swamy

Dr. Subramanian Swamy, the most significant recent BJP inductee into the Rajya Sabha, is also an indomitable and energetic 76 now.  

But why was he nominated into parliament at all? Was it because he successfully dragged Sonia Gandhi and her son Rahul to the courts in the National Herald scam?  And the backing RSS, hugely pleased by this, demanded that he be included?

After all, he doggedly pursued the case through several twists and turns just as a private citizen, and on the strength of his self-taught legal acumen; though he does lean on his Parsi wife, who is indeed a very good Supreme Court lawyer.

The Gandhis, who did their best to have the case squashed, using the duo of  Kapil Sibal and Abhishek Singhvi, amongst India’s most expensive lawyers, in the end, had to brazen it out, walking in to the criminal courts at Patiala House, with all the swagger they could muster. 

 They were arrested, surety had to be posted, as in the case of any common criminal, before being released on bail; even as the trial grinds on.

Or is it because the BJP contingent in the Rajya Sabha, albeit in a minority, was perceived by prime minister Modi, to need a shaking up.

Modi ,who was keenly present at Dr. Swamy’s swearing-in, might be thinking that the BJP MPs in the Rajya Sabha lack sufficient fire in the belly, and  a necessary unfazed presence under fire.

How, after all, can the government put the vociferous Congress/Left/TMC opposition on the back foot, or preferably on the mat, during the debates? 

That is the question for  the less than happy parliamentary sessions so far!   Also, and in addition to Swamy's new palatability in Nagpur,does the BJP need some fresh blood, not necessarily grown out of the RSS incubator?

Right on cue, on the very first day after being sworn in, Swamy mounted a full-frontal attack on Congress president Sonia Gandhi, quoting Italian court sources, that suggested that ‘Signora Gandhi’ had personally received millions of euros in bribes in the AgustaWestland helicopter scam.

Predictably, the sizeable Congress ecosystem reared up in defence of their revered leader, shrieking there was ‘no proof’, but clearly shaken and knocked off-centre.

Between debut, paranoia, and the outcome, the sizeable Congress-backing media, plus a clutch of loyal Congress parliamentarians, in both Houses, have been working up quite a lather.

But Swamy knows what to ignore. He was talking via the live TV cameras in parliament, and through them, to the nation. They, the public, in turn, soon understood, even as defence minister Parikkar joined issue, that SS means to send Sonia Gandhi to jail.

This, despite noises that persisted that Rajiv and Sonia Gandhi were once very good friends of Dr. Subramanian Swamy. But then, when it comes to corruption, Swamy’s eyes tend to glaze over. He sent his friend Jayalalithaa to jail did he not? And of course Raja of the DMK, who is not a friend of Swamy’s.  

But, overnight, come the 19^th of May, things on the ground, and in terms of the national mood, changed, and just like that.  

Once  again, the Modi government  is seen to be on a winning streak, after a bleak 2015 and the first quarter of 2016.

Now, it is highly doubtful that Dr. Swamy’s attackers, at least in the media, will have the stomach for taking him on with quite the same vehemence.

They realise now that Congress is electorally finished, and cannot come back to power in 2019. The fight has been knocked out of them, with several despairing at the rout of a ‘viable opposition’.

This,  after the latest election results point towards the terminal decline, and imminent demise of the Congress Party.

Besides, Dr.Swamy, disparage him as you might, is no mean quantity.

With a PhD in economics from Harvard, and a family penchant for mathematics, former prime minister Manmohan Singh credits Swamy with producing, in 1991, the economic blueprint for liberalisation of the Indian economy.

Swamy apparently did this while he was Union Commerce & Industry minister with additional charge of Law, in the short-lived Chandra Shekhar administration.

Manmohan Singh, coming in as finance minister shortly thereafter, in the PV Narasimha Rao administration, acknowledged that he drew upon Swamy’s documented ideas when he implemented many of the features that dismantled the licence-permit Raj, and set India on its relatively high-growth path.

It has been 25 years since, and second-generation structural reforms, such as GST and the Bankruptcy Code, are only now beginning to see the light of day.

 Meanwhile, the Congress/Left ecosystem, built up over decades of rule, is feeling suddenly orphaned - Congress, admit the most trenchant amongst them, is in terminal decline, perhaps headed towards oblivion.  

 Subramanian Swamy's acceptability may grow if he is seen with less inherent bias.  He has been a man of many parts. He has taught at Harvard, in the IIT at Delhi, worked in the erstwhile Planning Commission, been a multiple term MP, a minister, as well as an early and abiding advocate of economic liberalisation.

Dr. Swamy flies in the face of the prevalent norm, often taking positions contrary to his travelling companions, being a good family man, taking the time to raise worthwhile children, finding the equanimity to  acknowledge the inner-self,  brokering the opening of the Kailash-Mansaovar route via Tibet with the Chinese, way back in 1981.

 But now that the political tide has turned, along with the mood of the nation, Dr. Subramanian Swamy’s pronouncements may well have greater resonance outside the core supporter group. 

But for the moment, he intends to keep the Gandhis and Chidambarams under pressure for corruption. The purpose of his attack on  Raghuram Rajan however may not be all that serious. He might be doing it to harbinger a desired change anyway or simply to prevent Rajan from growing even fuller of himself, complacent, and  keen on generating a  media soundbyte a minute. 

As the next set of assembly elections loom though 2017 and 2018, it is enough to paint the Congress leadership into a corner and keep the evidentiary pot boiling. Actual prosecution might backfire politically, and will probably be put off for as long as possible. Besides by the time the judicial process comes to something, it might already be close to 2019.

It is clear now that BJP is growing its footprint once again, and beyond the northern ‘cow belt’. The win in Assam is as exciting as when the lotus first bloomed in Karnataka.

Ironically, now, Karnataka is the only large state that is still under Congress rule, despite the bad press its chief minister and family have been getting. But it too will likely slip away, also to the BJP, in the elections coming up.

Congress currently runs just seven out of 29 states of the union. Apart from sizeable Karnataka, the rest are all small hill stations in the North and North East. Together, they account for just 6-7% of the population, of which Karnataka alone accounts for about 5%.

BJP, in contrast, rules 16 states out of the 29, accounting for over 45% of the population.

Down the road, with a Congress that has lost both its heft and credibility, the other regional parties are unlikely to follow its lead in parliament.

Present developments also have major implications on the kind of anti-NDA front that can be formed in 2019.

Subramanian Swamy is very successful at bringing down those he targets, almost always on moral grounds. This tends to strike a certain amount of fear of the man wherever he goes, with regard to his quirky lone-ranger persona.

But his reputation precedes him : Swamy took down Jayalalithaa of Tamil Nadu, sending her to jail for corruption. Likewise, Raja of DMK, caught up in the 2G scam, and no matter how much he wiggled.

But apart from the shock of recognition, sometimes of our own flaws, when Dr. Swamy cuts into issues, he epitomises and points out what people of energy and calibre can always achieve.

Modi may-or-may-not break his own age limit rule of thumb, to give Swamy an opportunity to run the finance ministry in place of a lacklustre Jaitley. 

The cabinet reshuffle is already in the works reportedly, part of it with an eye to the UP elections. Will it go far enough?

Even if nothing more happens in this round of being in parliament, and Swamy’s role is confined to cutting through the opposition strategies, turning them ineffectual, he will have fulfilled his purpose.  

For: Swarajyamag

(1,303 words)

May 20^th, 2016

Gautam Mukherjee

Chabahar Versus Gwadar: The Great Game Redux

Chabahar Versus  Gwadar : The Great Game Redux

Prime minister Narendra Modi, no doubt feeling chipper after the BJP’s recent electoral success, will travel to Tehran on May 22^nd for a geopolitically significant two-day standalone visit.  

Not only does it balance Indian diplomacy in its extended neighbourhood after his recent visit to Saudi Arabia, but it expects to take forward initiatives that were begun in  2003, over a decade ago.

Modi is expected to meet Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei, and president Hassan Rouhani during his short visit.

Top on the agenda are great expectations on the signing, on a bilateral basis, additional Indian/Iranian investment commitments to the tripartite Chabahar Port and SEZ agreement of 2003, signed between Iran, India and Afghanistan.

The back story to this expected strategic development, however, is indeed fascinating.

Once Afghanistan, rugged, romantic, wild, strategically placed, was the epicentre of the Great Game of empire, with the imperial British and Tzarist Russia vying for advantage. Later, this devolved, as inheritance, to the US versus the USSR, spawning infamous children, such as the Mujahideen and later, the Taliban. And now it is the China-Pakistan axis, versus the India-Iran-Afghanistan troika.

The recent China-Pak bid, has its splendid $46 billion China-Pak Economic Corridor, snaking its way from Kashi in China through the length of Pakistan, terminating at Gwadar Port, on the Arabian Sea, in Pakistan’s restive province of Baluchistan.

The India-Iran-Afghanistan troika, nestles close by too, around the port of Chabahar on the Gulf of Oman, in Iran’s own Sistan-Baluchistan province.

India has, since the agreement of 2003, built a short link highway of 218 Km, between 2005-2009, using its famed Border Roads Organisation, at a cost of about Rs. 600 crores, and over 130 lives lost to raids by the Pakistan influenced Taliban.

The road connects Delaram in Afghanistan with Zaranj on the northern Iran border, and is located in Afghanistan’s Nimruz province.

And Iran, on its part, built a road from Zaranj down to its Chabahar Port, on the Gulf of Oman. India has also provided an $150 million line of credit for making jetties and berths, plus $400 million worth of steel rails for the project.

Chabahar Port, once fully developed, will provide land-locked Afghanistan an alternative port/infrastructure/ and linkage, via Iran, to that of Pakistan; and India will gain full-fledged cargo handling facilities on a large scale on the Gulf of Oman as well.

All three countries will acquire both terrestrial and marine trade access to each other, the oil and gas resources extant, other countries of Arabia nearby, plus the resource rich Central Asian countries.

The waters of Gwadar and Chabahar abut, via the Gulf and the Indian Ocean, large parts of Africa, Asia, Arabia and Australasia.  

However, the Great Game rivalry is alive and well. The battle for dominance is expected to see the Pakistan-China axis do everything possible by way of terrorist attacks and diplomacy to prevent the Chabahar initiative from succeeding. Knowing this, however, the troika have decided to go ahead anyway.

To clear the decks for swift progress, India has initiated process for the payment of the $6.5 billion worth of Iranian crude owed, in Euros, as requested, via Turkey’s Halkbank. This oil was bought by India when Iran was under strict US government nuclear and trade sanctions that ended up freezing all payments. These have now been lifted in their entirety, but only as recently as January 2016. Iran, is still hugely cash strapped, and welcoming of the proposed Indian investment, not to mention the settlement of pending dues.

India, in order not to lose its historical and competitive advantage as various nations flock to Iran now, was prompt in showing fresh interest via petroleum minister Pradhan, who visited Tehran in April 2016. It has declared that it wants to invest $20 billion, to develop the port of Chabahar and downstream industry, including an LNG and gas cracker plant, plus petrochemical/fertilizer industries, in the vicinity.

India has prepared its ground with resource rich but capital starved Afghanistan as well, including its gift of a spanking new parliament building in Kabul, which prime minister Modi had gone to inaugurate in February; and a $300  million Salma dam and hydroelectric power plant at Herat, which he is expected to inaugurate in June 2016.

Not only will the Chabahar outlay yield rich off-shore commercial gains and strategic resource stability for India, while benefitting its partners Iran and Afghanistan simultaneously; but it will prevent the  China-Pakistan axis from establishing its unbridled dominance in a sensitive and resource rich region.

Additionally, given the present Shia-Sunni tensions, particularly between Saudi Arabia and Iran, India is likely to be made very welcome.

Also the broader geopolitical pressures on India/Afghanistan, from the US or the NATO powers will be negligible, given their disapproval of Pakistani and Saudi Arabian aid and abetment of global Islamic terrorism, and the disquieting Chinese quest for hegemonic expansion.

Narendra Modi is likely to have a very pleasant and successful trip to Persia, a beneficiary of being at the right place at the right time.   

For: The Quint

(835 words)

May 20^th, 2016

Gautam Mukherjee   

Congress: The End Game

Congress: The End Game

Albert Camus wrote: “What is a rebel? A man who says no”, in a novel by the same name, back in 1953, shortly around the time Narendra Modi was born.

When you have an essential rebel of an honest kind, who is also the prime minister, some very interesting reactions start to take place. The corrupt, first of all, on all sides of the fence, are very discomfited. Then, then there are those who hate change, because it threatens to destroy the established order that they have learned to exploit. And, of course, many variations on these themes.

The Congress Party  and its agents and assigns, looted a full third of the  contents of the PSU banking system,  piled procurement scam upon scam like bodies that came out of the gas chambers at Auschwitz, and shredded as much of the evidence as they possibly could, when they realised the UPA would finally lose in 2014.

And lose drastically they did, to a man they had tried their very best to destroy, for over a decade. And lose in such a way that their friends on the other side of the aisle, fellow travellers in the stratosphere of Lutyens Delhi, would not have a say in how rebellious the winner chose to be.

No namby-pamby easily pressurised coalition came up in place of the UPA, but a solid majority government that was impossible to shake from its perch, for a five full years.

Narendra Modi, a provincial politician from Gujarat, with question marks raised over his educational qualifications recently, is an outsider to the ways of Lutyens’ Delhi, and peculiarly incorruptible by its ways. He is an austere, god-fearing bachelor, who keeps his family at a great distance, a teetotaller, a workaholic, a man seemingly with no need for personal wealth.

But Modi has demonstrated a great fondness for political power, democratically, electorally, arrived at, to use ostensibly to change the country and right its wrongs. He says it is development he is after, even as many of his followers are under no illusion that they want to create a ‘Hindu Rashtra’, shorn of pseudo-secularism of the Congress kind. This because it has amounted to Muslim and other minority vote-bank politics, plain and simple, almost anti-Hindu in its thrust.

A new self-appointed spokesman, Subramanian Swamy, also just inducted into the Rajya Sabha, one who claims to have Modi’s confidence, has promised a start to the construction of the Ram temple at Ayodhya in 2016. Swamy has also promised abrogation of Article 370 in Kashmir in 2017.

Swamy, a distinguished economist himself, has also written to the prime minister to terminate the   services of the RBI governor Raghuram Rajan, when his present 3 year term expires in September, or even before, stating that his  skills and ideas are ‘inappropriate’  to India’s current needs. Rajan has kept interest rates unnecessarily high, says Swamy, and this has been an impediment to the revival of business and industry.

Swamy has also expressed a degree of unhappiness with the functioning of the finance ministry under Arun Jaitley. There are steady rumours of an impending cabinet reshuffle, plus a change of chief minister in Gujarat, to prepare for their assembly elections in 2017.

The Congress high-command has always underestimated and misread both Modi and Swamy, and now might continue to do so at its own peril.

Given the problems looming over the Gandhis via the National Herald case, and the moves towards prosecution in the AgustaWestland issue, they need to be worried.

But, as in most ivory towers, the Congress leadership has, and continues to, listen to its own fantasies and confabulators. It had decided its best strategy was to try and destroy Modi’s credibility as prime minister, mock his 56 inch chest as it were, learning nothing from its failed attempts to do so, when Modi was chief minister of Gujarat.

It set about doing this by calling him names, casting aspersions on his motives, calling him a fake and a liar, and preventing Modi from being effective in the legislature right from May 2014 till date.

To a greater extent than is acknowledged within the NDA, the Congress realised it had been beaten, not by the BJP as they knew it, but by a force that they had underestimated, a man alone, who ran a presidential general election campaign to win a parliamentary election.

Modi won, and not so much the BJP, albeit with strong RSS and Industry backing. Without Modi, it is reckoned, the BJP might have won 160 seats, and had to cobble together a coalition with partners and allies, replete with accommodation and compromise, and as best it could.

In the failed endeavour to contain Modi, to some extent, it was supported, not only by other elements in the opposition, but also by the  soft dissidents in the BJP, who  believe in the so-called ‘160 club’ doctrine. Others, more vocal, have been firmly side-lined for challenging Modi’s ascendancy during the long campaign in 2013-14.

Congress however, expected a repeat of the accommodative Vajpayee regime at worst.  Instead they have got what we have now.

For these two years, since the advent of the Modi government, Congress worked hard and successfully to prevent any major legislation like the GST Bill and the Land Acquisition Amendment Bill from going through.

One reason is these two pieces of legislation alone have the potential to add a percentage point or two to the GDP rate.  Even as the passage of the long pending OROP and the coming of the 7^th Pay Commission may indeed set off a mini consumer-led boom, via the armed forces and the central bureaucracy. But GST, a single country-wide trade tax at source,  in place of dozens of leaky impositions, could do very much more, not only for growth, but also government revenue.

So it was not something the rump that Congress is reduced to, with 44 seats in the Lok Sabha and 67/68 seats, till lately, in the Rajya Sabha could allow, as long as it could still help it. Its dream was to claw itself back to power at the head of an anti-NDA coalition in 2019, having thoroughly  trashed Modi’s tall claims on governance, and everything else he stood for.

Congress has also tried to foment an internal BJP rebellion against ‘dictator’ Modi- almost anyone from the Lutyens Delhi BJP wallahs would do in his place!

But, the personal popularity of Modi with the masses, if not the partisan Congress/Left bred intelligentsia, or the Congress spawned media, prevented this gaining any traction.

But now this situation is changed. Not only has its numbers fallen in the Rajya Sabha due to retirement, but it is on the brink of losing Assam to the BJP and its allies.

This is particularly significant, because Assam has a third of its population who are Muslims, many wilfully allowed in from Bangladesh over the years, to form durable Congress vote banks.

But now, probably for the first time, here comes the BJP, able to unify the Hindu vote for once. It is likely to pull it off by winning the state election, despite the other 33% voting en bloc for Congress and its allies.

All will be revealed on the 19^th of May. But the larger lesson is that if the BJP can consolidate the Hindu vote in one state, it can do so in another.

When it did so in the general election, for example in UP and Bihar, the consideration was national, and there was indeed a strong Modi wave.

But now, Assam will be the first in a state election when the influence of Bangladeshi immigration unchecked, assertive rioting on the part of both  native Assamese groups and the erstwhile alien Muslims has hardened the stance of the majority community, in their own defence, and quest for survival. Congress did nothing to hurt their vote banks, and this is going to be the reason for its exit after three consecutive terms.

The Assam win, if it comes, might form a political strategy prototype for future elections for the BJP, particularly in UP.

Meanwhile, Congress hardly has any states left in its direct/coalition administration. It is widely expected to lose Kerala as well to the Communists. It might however win in the union territory of Puducherry, in coalition.

Its similarly scam-ridden partner DMK might help it to a win in Tamil Nadu, but AIADMK is not quite ruled out still. And TMC will, in all probability, retain West Bengal.

Down the road, on the way to 2019, in the remaining state assembly elections, Punjab is threatened by the AAP, it will be difficult to wrest Gujarat from BJP, and Congress chances of winning Uttar Pradesh are bleak, the proposed fielding of Priyanka Gandhi  notwithstanding.

Very shortly, Congress will lose the last vestiges of being called a national party. In parliament, they have already lost some numbers in the Rajya Sabha to retirement, and will lose influence with the AIADMK and TMC and the BJD, all likely to keep their own counsel, going forward too.

Sonia Gandhi is said to be ailing, and Rahul Gandhi cannot seem to come out of his perpetual apprenticeship in order to lead the Congress towards 2019. Neither can win elections anymore!

Meanwhile, while other regional parties, are reviving now, Congress continues in its precipitous decline.

The Modi government will likely pick up speed and dynamism in its second half, and Congress won’t be able to stop it.  

Without states to run, without parliamentary power to block, and without influence over other opposition formations, Congress could well disintegrate. It has already begun to do in states such as Arunachal and Uttarakhand.

And lastly, it is not just Rahul Gandhi who is inept. The entire band of political and dynastic inheritors in the Congress party and elsewhere, Scindia, Pilot, Prasada amongst them, are far from capable of clawing back from the edge of the abyss.

The Congress old guard on the other hand, people in their seventies and eighties, are immensely rich and tired, much too filled with realpolitik and cynicism to take on a crusading Narendra Modi.  

Basically therefore, the Congress day is done. We are here witnessing the throes of the end-game, and considering the pass it has come to, not a moment too soon.

The disintegration will accelerate once Sonia Gandhi leaves the arena.  To give the 18 years president of the Congress Party her due, there is no one worthy of replacing her political acumen from behind the arras,  certainly not from her family.

And the way things are constituted and constructed, without the Gandhi family capable of guiding it, there is no Congress Party capable of cohesion or survival.

For: SirfNews

(1,785 words)

May 17^th 2016

Gautam Mukherjee 

Second Anniversary BLUES

Second Anniversary BLUES

On Sunday the 15^th,  a day before the 2^nd anniversary of the NDA’s thumping win,  the social media space was treated to pictures of prime minister Narendra Modi wheeling his nonagerian mother around the pathways of the 7RCR garden.

They show him pointing out the flowers and shrubs, sitting with mum on bench, being tenderly attentive.  But what was the broader point being made?

Modi, the quintessential solitary bird, and not just amongst close relatives, tweeted that mother was leaving for Gujarat shortly, having made her very first visit to 7RCR.  

Endearing indubitably, but was Modi actually pointing fingers at the embattled Sonia Gandhi and family, living large at government expense, while fighting multiple corruption charges?

On the 16^th, the day the extent of the landslide victory from two years ago was made known, also came exit poll forecasts that the BJP and its allies was likely to win a majority in Assam.

If this proves true on the 19^th , it will certainly add zest to the 2^nd anniversary celebrations, coming after the two resounding losses in Bihar and Delhi.

But besides this timely morale booster from the North East, the report card after 24 months is not particularly encouraging.

The vikas plank that won the day, and is still being vigorously promoted, is both cracked and fractured. There are many initiatives, mainly long term infrastructure moves in power, roads and the railways, that may well yield excellent results in time.

But the economy as a whole is unmoved; business, industry, exports, jobs, the rural economy, construction, banking- all are subdued, with no second generation reforms initiated to kick-start it.

This government has squarely failed to address the short to medium term recovery, the somewhat dubious 7.5% GDP growth rate, meant to be the best in the world, notwithstanding.

Modi’s personal popularity and performance rating are still very high, but 21 out of his 36 ministers are found wanting. Inexperience would be the obvious conclusion, given that many in the cabinet and council of ministers are first-timers.

But then Modi pointedly excluded many of the experienced stalwarts from the Vajpayee administration, who don’t particularly like his ascendancy.

Nevertheless, if the GST Bill and the Land Bill amendments that could add percentage points to the GDP, have come a cropper, it is not so much the very real internal dissidence, as lack of numbers in the Rajya Sabha that is to blame.

The trouble is, the truncated Congress could not afford to be reasonable if it wanted to avoid political oblivion. But now, even that belligerence may not save it. The exit polls for four states and a union territory all point towards an end game and a post-Congress future. And these death throes in the founding firm, may prove to be Modi’s trump card going forward!

Congress has also largely lost its ability to obstruct legislation in the Rajya Sabha, after a reduction in its bench strength.  With no national presence anymore, and having opposed the TMC and AIADMK in these elections just concluded, it is unlikely to win wider support from them,  and possibly others, in future. If there is an anti-BJP coalition formed later, Congress now will certainly not lead it.

Meanwhile, only the second rung bills have got through. Amongst them are the Aadhar Bill, good at targeting subsidies etc., the Real Estate Bill, which will greatly help new home buyers, and the Bankruptcy Code, that will put some muscle into lenders and creditors to help themselves.

The first bold administrative reform, the deregulation of diesel prices, lost some of its public approval, because the government did not pass on a good chunk of the benefits to the public.  However, the massive diesel subsidies were indeed abolished.

Other plusses include FDI, which has reached unprecedented levels, and the hard currency reserves are also at an all-time high. The passage of OROP after 40 years in the works, and the advent of the 7^th Pay Commission should set off a mini consumer boom via the armed forces and the bureaucracy.

There are many other administrative improvements, in ease of doing business, self-attestation of documents, multiple cuts of red tape. The push to open bank accounts for the unbanked, reduction of fraud in all subsidy administration, and indeed a drastic reduction in high level corruption all around. 

The abuse of their charters by certain foreign funded NGOs, posing security and other threats, has been curbed. ‘Coating’ subsidised Urea has prevented it from being put to non-fertilizer use.  

Insurgency and Maoist activity, because of crimps put on their funding,   has reduced. The advent of small banks and payment banks to come, will help promote micro-lending to financially weak entrepreneurs and general convenience for the underdog.

However the government has failed to get a say in the appointment of judges, and backed away meekly from a confrontation thereafter.

With a cabinet reshuffle, long awaited, and greater dynamism, the Modi administration should do much better in its second half. This is crucial if it is to fulfill the very high expectations it has provoked, and if it wants to win another term in 2019.

For:  The Quint

(853 words)

May 16^th, 2016

Gautam Mukherjee

Modi's 2nd Anniversary Blues

Modi’s 2^nd Anniversary Blues

By now the government should have been firmly in the saddle. It’s not as if no progress has been made. Some second rung laws have indeed been passed. And a host of incremental administrative steps have been taken to tone up the functioning of the bureaucracy.

But no, the NDA government, absolute majority notwithstanding, is far from settled. Why?

Probably inexperience, with governance at the centre, even without a decision making diarchy crippling it, as it had the UPA.

The lack of majority in the Rajya Sabha has effectively stymied this government’s legislative agenda in the face of  a hostile opposition.

Despite this, highlights of the Modi administration successes are not sufficiently well amplified. These include passage of the Aadhar Bill which will greatly help the accurate rendering of subsidies at a minimum; the Real Estate Bill which will, in time, bring considerable relief to new home buyers; and most recently, the Bankruptcy Code, that will assist lenders and creditors take over assets before it is too late.

Then there is the marked rise in FDI over that of the previous administration. The steady increase in the country’s foreign exchange reserves to all-time highs, despite remittances from the Gulf coming under pressure, due to the  sharp downturn in oil prices. There are the increased successes in the power, road and railways sectors under three able ministers, even though a recent poll on two years of this administration, has 21 out of the 36 central ministers getting poor ratings. The finance ministry may have pulled off no big bang reforms, but has doggedly adhered to fiscal discipline in the face of temptation to ease up and promote growth instead.

The elimination of high level corruption in the government is a great achievement that is being callously overlooked, given that the entire system had been vitiated recently during UPA rule! But no, there is no dynamic growth in its place either.

The sanctioning of OROP, stuck in the works for 40 years, and the passing of the 7^th Pay Commission, will both put millions of rupees in the hands of serving and retired defence personnel and bureaucrats, resulting in a mini consumer boom. This may add a percentage point to GDP in 2017.

The very real gains from Modi’s  personal diplomacy and that of minister Sushma Swaraj in the MEA, particularly in the area of cooperation with regard to terrorism intelligence sharing, needs to be more robustly acknowledged. As also the huge pledges of investment against the government’s Make in India and other programmes in the areas of defence, the railways, and electronics in particular. Japan, China and the US, are beginning to put their money down already.

But apart from a hesitation and timidity of demeanour in government, at wide variance with Modi on the stump, resulting in considerable mockery, there are real failures too.

The GST and Land Reform amendment bills being still stuck is frustrating.  The judiciary’s rejection of the parliamentary law to have a say in the appointment of judges is a slap in the face that has gone unchallenged. 

Our judiciary claims to be over-burdened, and under-staffed, and yet, handles ‘dockets’ of cases per judge at a rate less than  one third of that in the US, and this with crores of pending cases clogging the judicial system.

However, if there is one key indictment to be made, it is in the area of economic revival, which is still proving elusive, despite low oil prices and  relatively low inflation. Unless there is a substantive change of gear, the remaining three years of this administration are bound to similarly disappoint.

The RBI has taken a conservative line when it comes to lowering interest rates, and the government, including the finance ministry, has been unable to induce substantial growth in business and industry, or indeed in the badly needed jobs sector.

Exports are on a deep downward trajectory, but apart from the fact that India exports nothing strategic in nature, part of the problem is the weakness of the importing economies at present.

This is affecting software exports, let alone items like garments and polished diamonds.

Even though the statistics say we have a GDP  of 7.5%  or so, up from under 5% before the coming of this government, something is wrong. The government nevertheless touts it as the strongest growth rate of any large economy in the world. Still, critics consider these figures suspect, and credit the new basis of calculation for the seeming bump up in GDP. Otherwise, it is no better than about 5.5% p.a. and considerably below the near double-digits necessary to alleviate poverty.

 The stock markets, euphoric with high expectations in 2013 and 2014, have slumped into despondency because of belied hopes. And, to be fair, the end of quantitative easing in the US and even the first uptick in interest rates there. The rupee, though stable for the moment, is expected to slide into the seventies to the US dollar before long.

The construction sector, contributing more in percentage terms than agriculture does to GDP, is in trouble too, with millions of high-priced but unsold units around the country .

Two years of consecutive drought, with a number of devastating floods in some parts, has put the entire swathe of rural India in distress. This year, the rains are expected to be normal, and this will revive both the water situation and rural income/growth.

On the public relations and communications front, prime minister Modi remains head and shoulders more popular than any other politician in the NDA and the country, and gets high marks for his personal efforts too.

But overall, this government seems embattled, with the experienced opposition Congress blocking its moves, despite it being riddled with a legacy of corruption, far-left posturing, and anti-national activity charges.

A Congress, decimated, reduced to a shadow of its former self electorally,  is still being able to put considerable pressure on prime minister Narendra Modi personally, let alone his council of ministers.

The Congress is also able to cast all of the NDA in a relentlessly negative light, via the media, including the party, the government, and its associates such as the RSS/AVBP et al.

In the popular perception, Congress has usurped the position of arbiter of what is right and wrong, national, anti-national, constitutional, tolerance, intolerance. It appears to decide what is appropriate or otherwise, even sitting in the opposition, and atop its own mountain of corruption allegations!

And it has successfully hung on to an army of media supporters, intellectuals, and establishment functionaries that have long benefitted from Congress patronage, and seem to believe that this term of the NDA is no more than a pause in the Congress’ uninterrupted run in power.

This is, after all, what has happened in the past to non-Congress governments; collapsing, sometimes even before completing a full term.

It is even being suggested that there are elements within the BJP, the so called ‘160 club’ that is upset with Modi’s runaway absolute majority, even without counting the NDA constituents. These BJP people spend time surreptitiously undermining Modi’s efforts. 

These 160 seats, they believe is ideal, so that with a weakened coalition formation, they too can wield considerable power and influence.

The periodic flare ups of dissidence, particularly from those who were  prominent in the Vajpayee government, but are seen to be either too old now and/or rigid LK Advani acolytes; gives credence to the thesis of the ‘160 club’.

Advani tried his best to prevent Modi, his protégé once, from being declared the PM candidate in 2013-14, and has expressed his points of difference with Modi’s style of functioning, if not the substance, in public, on more than one occasion.

Advani undermines Modi, by dismissing his achievements as the work of an impresario, long on hyperbole and short on actual substance, ‘a good event manager’. This is then gleefully repeated by Congress! All the angst from the old guard left out in the cold exposes an internal weakness in the BJP.

It may even put the confidentiality of ruling government strategy and tactics also under threat. After all, opposition elements are only too eager to mine and exploit whatever insights they can come by in advance.

It is also suggested that there are other BJP members in the cabinet who are politically soft on Congress, anticipating that softer NDA coalition government in 2019, if not having to contend with a winning anti-BJP coalition.   

This, if it is the internal impediment, has enough coming at it also from outside opposition. It is busy conducting a more or less unopposed propaganda war, accusing the government of following a communal agenda, saffronisation of the education system, following an inconsistent and soft policy towards Pakistan, not having very much to show for all Modi’s globe-trotting, trying to undemocratically grab some of the few remaining Congress led state governments, and so on.

What is most humiliating and dismaying for those who voted for  Narendra Modi in person, roaring like a lion on the campaign trail, is how meekly he and his government have taken the torrent of insult and propaganda, without effective rebuttal or retaliation.

This either suggests inexperience and incompetence, or an ineffective ameliorative strategy that has only resulted in sharpening the attack from the Congress.

Instead, what little success it has had by way of retaliation has come through the efforts of the maverick Subramanian Swamy, recently inducted into the Rajya Sabha, acting in his private capacity in the National Herald case.

Now the AgustaWestland matter has also been precipitated onto domestic politics afresh, because of a judicial verdict arrived at in Italy convicting the Italians involved. Will this too result in a prosecution of Sonia Gandhi? Time will tell.

Modi’s first two years have not dented his personal popularity despite the humiliating state assembly election losses in Delhi and Bihar. And this is the nucleus around which a more assertive prime minister, perhaps with a reshuffled cabinet, could yet pull off another five years, but based on the next three.

For: Swarajyamag

(1,671 words)

May 15^th, 2016

Gautam Mukherjee