Trump's Art Of The Deal: Shake Up The Status Quo And See What Breaks Loose

Trump’s Art Of The Deal: Shake Up The Status Quo And See What Breaks Loose

President Donald Trump’s signature move is to challenge the status quo for his opening gambit, often preceding it with cryptic plainspeak on Twitter.

He has amply demonstrated this over 14 months in office. The actions range from frequent hiring and firing of senior administration figures, jeering at, and questioning, the ability and credibility of unflattering media critics and opposition politicians. Likewise, those of the ones conducting investigations into possible Russian collusion in his winning bid for the presidency.  

And then there is his other hallmark, a studied, all round unpredictability, with his personal cards held close to his chest, and a willingness to play push-me pull-you till he gets what he wants.

His handling of NATO allies with bills in hand, has caused consternation but pushed them onto the defensive. Similarly, the barbs and threats directed at a dysfunctional and rent-seeking United Nations (UN), has exposed the ineffectiveness of at least the General Assembly. It has also showed up the loggerheads the Security Council of five is in.

Sensationally walking out of “unfair” to the US Climate Control negotiations at Paris, hit its mark, only to have Trump hinting at a reconciliation on better terms. Ditto for his growling at the runaway dictats of the World Trade Organisation (WTO),  written over the years when the US sought to retain its role as the unconditional caretaker of the “free world” at all cost. But now, Trump is invoking national security to nullify pressure from others using the WTO as a forum.

Trump has also walked out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), with a characteristic hint that he may reenter as long as the others reduce their unfair advantages. He threatens to leave the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) as well, unless some other rank one-way beneficiaries join it quickly.

All this New York style arm-twisting is turning a lot of global leaders apoplectic in frustration. Thing is, they know that return sanctions on America will not hurt it half as much as they would like.

Trump is essentially putting the world, albeit lurching from one platform to the next at different times in his trademark manner, on notice - his mantra is: “America First”. And he leaves it flexible and ambiguous as to how he intends to flesh it out.

Trump’s foreign policy initiatives in the Middle East have departed from the shibboleths of 25 years. Moving the US embassy to Jerusalem, a strong pro-Israeli action, was presaged in his very first visit, when he chose to spend the night in Jerusalem, rather than Tel Aviv.

Trump has engaged with the new King Salman of Saudi Arabia and his son, the energetic and reformist Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman, with sales of hundreds of billions worth of military equipment. This bluntly underscores his desire to stymie Iranian ambitions in the region, including a roll-back of the Obama era accord and their nuclear weaponisation plans. However, he does not lean on Indian  linkages with the Iranians.

His basic willingness to do business with Russia’s Putin, even as he expels Russian “spies” for the nerve gas poisoning of a turncoat in Britain, is also a make-over of the chilly relationship between presidents Obama and Putin.

Trump has taken up where Obama left off with India. He has moved the US closer in a security and technology-sharing  sense. This is to counter Chinese hegemony both in the Asia-Pacific-Indian Ocean theatres, and its growing challenge overall to American global supremacy.

However,  the US engagement with India is very much a work in progress. The US attitude to Pakistan’s terrorism has hardened. Trump’s attitude to Afghanistan is still evolving, but tougher than that of Obama.

And now to the art of imposing international trade tariffs to secure “America First” advantages and create new jobs while putting China on notice. The US Congressional polls approach, and Pennsylvania is a steel state. Is the timing aimed at steel-workers there? The Democrats now admit they will be hard pressed to win on Capitol Hill at mid-term, let alone impeach Trump.

The opening gambit with China began early in Trump’s presidency in line with his campaign promises. Trump told China that it had a 100 days to do something about the gross trade imbalance in its favour. This was at his initial summit with Xi Jingping conducted at Mar-a-Lago, Florida. Predictably, nothing happened. China, seasoned through several US presidencies, sat on its hands, to test Trump’s resolve.

The US president also asked for help from China to rein in a belligerent North Korea. He wanted China to use it influence to stop its nuclear weapons’, satellite and nuclear-capable missile tests. When nothing happened here too and the tests continued, tough US/Western economic sanctions on North Korea followed. China stayed unimpressed, and even helped North Korea violate the blockade with fuel transfers on the high seas.

Now the long threatened trade tariffs have been imposed on Chinese goods- $60 billion via a 25% tariff on steel and 10% on aluminium products. This, though a blip  on the Chinese economy as yet, was thought to be unthinkable by many US experts for the harm it would do to the US economy, and indeed the world, in the event of a trade war ensuing.

But Trump has moved forward with it. He has pointedly chosen to single out China amongst the suppliers - exempting Canada, Brazil and South Korea, even though China sells no more than 35% of the total.

The same willingness to break through the logjam bypassing conventional wisdom has prompted him to indicate that he will hold direct talks with North Korea’s Kim -Jong-Un. This was brokered via South Korea, a staunch US ally,  where Trump sent daughter Ivanka recently, rather than China.

But to emphasise its relevance, China has just held a secretive summit of its own with the North Korean leader in Beijing prior to the expected US-North Korea summit.

China, now with a president for life in Xi Jinping, has warily countered the US tariff moves by imposing mild import duties totalling to $3 billion, on as many as 128  American imports. These include products from Trump voter country, such as pork and wine. Both sides have threatened escalation as necessary.

There has been a torrent of comment from observers since this news broke, most predicting serious consequences if a global protectionist trade war ensues in earnest. Goldman Sachs says there will be a 20% drop in equity prices. Others predict global recession.

Trump had, without causing any brouhaha, earlier slapped on tariffs on imported solar panels and washing machines, but not just from China.

But now, to prevent the rest of the world coalescing against his protectionist moves, Trump has concentrated tariff impositions just on China. Will it work to bring China to offer reparations on the massive theft of intellectual property rights (IPR), which is another spur to these impositions? Will China act to right some of   massive trade imbalance in its favour? Not if you believe the current Chinese posturing. But Trump as a businessman, if not a (very new) politician, does have a track record for getting his way.

Not all the commentary is critical either. Some, like the respected digital portal Quartz, think the steel and aluminium tariffs make “perfect sense”, seen from the historical perspective of US trade policy.

The purpose, says Carmen Dorobat, an international trade expert at Leeds Trinity University, is political. Trump has, as we know, linked the steel and aluminium tariffs to “national security”.

It is a “disruptive” approach to trade policy, says Harsha Vardhan Singh of Brookings India.

But what Donald Trump is looking for is renegotiation of trade agreements, on terms more favourable to the US. He wants to get an extension of the Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) to do this, from Congress. Trump says: “ When we’re down by $100 billion, the trade war hurts them; it doesn’t hurt us”.

While various countries have been exempted from this first salvo, they too have been put on notice to move away from their unequal treaties by implication. Trump is on record that he can forego tariffs altogether, given the right kind of cooperation.

Though the vilification from left-leaning economists is at a crescendo right now, Trump can hardly be faulted for taking this line on behalf of America.

For: The Sunday Guardian

(1,384 words)

March 29^th, 2018

Gautam Mukherjee

Reservation & Minorityism: Atishoo, Atishoo, We All Fall Down!

Reservation & Minorityism: Atishoo, Atishoo, We All Fall Down!

The divide and rule principle has been played out on the sub-continent over many chapters and centuries. In recent history- the Mughals did it, but then they were kings. The British used it too, but then they were imperialists.

Democratic, universal-suffraged, independent India, born after a bloody partition that killed half a million people, accelerated the pace, cynically prostituting divide and rule, in order to live off the proceeds. In 70 years of a professed secularism, in lofty if unrealistic terms, at first, turned, in the latter day, into blatant rod and staff to suit.

And now, the work has begun to break-up and exploit the biggest chunk of the population, an unwieldy and variegated 80% odd. Being easier to suborn the minorities, the Hindu majority was left mostly unaddressed so far, except for the upheavals of casteism. It was even discriminated against, constitutionally, and with impunity, for long years.

Now, threatened with electoral oblivion, the Congress politician seeks, at the top of the marquee, to distinguish between their self-serving version of Hinduism’s all-embracing liberal face; and a supposedly fascist, theocratic Hindutva, allegedly being projected by the very successful BJP.

In the detail, the idea is to pit mahant against seer, godman against lay zealots, confusion against convolution.  

Never mind that the same cheeseparing politicians make no attempt to reconcile the growing and sinister fundamentalism and jihadi element in the largest national minority, despite the dormant peace projection of Islam. And the daily battle of attrition in a sedition riddled J&K.

A consolidated Hindu vote is a nightmare for the Opposition that could sweep all before it, and recent showings of a 50% vote share in some places for the BJP, has shaken things up. It is causing disparate elements to try and coalesce in a bid to survive.

Every division, every appeasement, must therefore gradually rear its ugly head now. It is on the table for political leverage without apology. The whole caboodle and anything new one can think of- language, caste, religion, region, urban-rural divisions, farmer distress, student unrest, the armed forces, ageism, water, infiltration at the borders, external threats from China and Pakistan, economic issues, data collection and theft, phoney issues of intolerance and freedom of expression, foreign policy, age old Communist and Maoist insurrection. And now, sects and sections within religions- particularly the Hindu religion.

It could, of course, be an attempt to right ancient wrongs. Reservation, quotas, subsidies, write-offs, even bloody clashes, could all be seen as a consequence of uneven growth and division of the spoils, or reasonably, just as the other face of affirmative action.

It could also be regarded, more hard-heartedly, as the craven exploitation of vote banks in a country that adopted universal suffrage and has grown its population three-fold since independence. A lot of young Indians are joining the electorate every year. They are the target, with equal measures of disaffection and nationalism to motivate their voting behavior.

And then, if a leg up is good for the goose, how can the gander be left out?  

So much so, that the only logical way ahead in 2018, is to plunge on regardless for there is no turning back the clock.

This seems to be the course chosen by the BJP, ruling along with the NDA at the centre, in the matter of the 59 lakh Lingayats of Karnataka with the 90 sub-castes, constituting 9.8% of the population. This is per a disputed 2016 survey carried out by the Backward Classes Commission at the instance of Siddaramaiah.

Does Siddaramaiah’s demand for proclamation of a “separate religion” cover all shades of these Lingayats, or just ones that came to him or his surveyors? And are the Lingayats just 9.8% or 17% of the total, as is being popularly suggested today?

The same logic could apply to the Gorkhas in Darjeeling on another day, agitating for long for a separate state apart from West Bengal. And it has already created Telengana out of Andhra Pradesh.

Or indeed to the 1.08 crore Scheduled caste population, the biggest “group” constituting 18% of the total in Karnataka, with 180 sub-castes amongst them.  One can be sure this group is being canvassed vigorously by the BJP irrespective of their true number.

Then, there are the 49 lakh Vokkaligas with 10 sub-castes (8.16% of the total per the 2016 survey and 12% otherwise), or the 43 lakh Kurubas who have already called out for minority status of their own too.

Even the Muslims of Karnataka ( 12.5% of the total ), have 84 sub-castes amongst their 75 lakhs population. These figures were published by Kannada Channel Public TV, some websites and even the Times of India in April 2016.

While the numbers may vary, it is true enough that the Lingayats, the Vokkaligas and the Muslims are found in concentrations in the state, and will affect the electoral fortunes of all contenders.

Karnataka is going to polls on the 12th of May. Siddaramaiah,  is about to fight the most significant political election of his career. He is at the head of one of just two remaining big states in the Congress fold, and a loss will severely damage his own political future and have the Congress Party staring at near extinction from the political arena.

Siddaramaiah came to his present elevation via several political parties in the state. Most notably, he was with Vokkaliga heavy  JD(S), and enjoyed two stints as Deputy Chief Minister while there.  

But on joining Congress, and becoming CM in 2013, Siddaramaiah turned on his erstwhile mentors. He poached as many as 7 MLAs. He subverted the loyalties of Gowda clan arch-rival Ashok Kheny, who is also a prominent Karnataka businessman. The JD(S) door is therefore most likely closed to Congress, in the event of a close election result.

The BJP, which won Karnataka just once before on the back of Lingayat support was spearheaded then, as it is now, by its strongman BS Yedyurappa. But now, with BJP at the centre sitting on the decision to award minority status to the Lingayats creating an ambiguity, will they stay with Yedurappa? Will the Scheduled Castes and Tribes also vote likewise?

Karnataka has a history of not giving consecutive terms to the same side. JD(S) too, with its loyal votes from about 20% of the electorate, will probably support BJP post-election.

But Karnataka’s 6.15 crore population is being wooed by Siddaramaiah with a lot of regional fervor. 

And that includes a newly minted state flag and this attempt to split the Lingayat vote. Development, a key BJP plank, is also not the Congress’ strong suit. Neither is law and order.

In the long run, the bigger question of reservations, quotas and minorityism could in effect be devalued to the point of cancelling each other out. This recognition for all comers without serious resistance, disallows much bloodshed and conflict. It is the next best thing to never having begun on this path in the first place. 

The cake will just have to grow to accommodate it all. But isn’t that what “Vikas” really means? India will soon become the third biggest economy in the world, perhaps as early as 2025, and as late as 2030. There should be more than enough to pay the ever expanding bill.

For: SirfNews

(1,210 words)

March 27^th, 2018

Gautam Mukherjee

Venal Politico-Business Nexus & Plunder Of The PSU Banking System

Venal Politico-Business Nexus & Plunder Of The PSU Banking System

The State Bank of India, today’s public sector banking mother-ship, was the former Imperial Bank of India. It was the first to be summarily nationalized by the Nehru administration in 1955. Justifications for bank nationalisation include promotion of “social welfare, controlling private monopolies, expansion of banking, reducing regional imbalances and priority sector lending”.

Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, nationalized 14 banks in 1969. And again, another five of them, in post-Emergency 1980.

All this, in a frenzy of misguided socialist inspiration that never yielded more than 2% growth in GDP per annum, for five decades or more. But banking was not the only sector suborned to work for “social upliftment”, rather than “neo-colonial” profit.

The entire system and administration, including the Indian Administrative Service(IAS), the Judiciary, and the Planning Commission, was harnessed to promote Socialism.

Combined with the peculiar restrictiveness of the infamous Licence-Permit Raj, it was very difficult to be entrepreneurial indeed. At least, till the economy was first-stage liberalised in 1991. And this too was forced on the country due to a foreign exchange cum balance of payments crisis that hit the economy.

But quite soon after the advent of nationalisation, the record began to show, the public sector banking system (PSU banks), was disproportionately serving a witch’s brew of politicians and their crony businessmen. This, alongside the richer farmers and fixers, rather than the impoverished - with rural branches, loan melas, and the like. This distortion between intent and practice has not been resolved to date.

Gradually, as the banking pie grew, the farmers ended up with a small slice of PSU banking loans, and businessmen, sometimes proxying for the enabling politicians, got the lion’s share.

And as any bribe-giver will tell you-once he has paid-off banker and politician alike, for the money given out, he’s not about to give it back. The larger farmer, not to be outdone by his rich co-borrowers, also started merrily defaulting on those loans that were not wiped out by a vote-seeking government. The landless and marginal farmers, sincere about their debts, routinely commit suicide when unable to pay back what they owe.

Tax-payer money and government debt has been utilized meanwhile, without a by-your-leave, or any serious attempt to fix responsibility or punish the guilty, to recapitalize over Rs 1.5 lakh crores, spread over the last 30 years.

But now, thanks to the momentum and scale of plunder during the UPA decade between 2004-14, the banks will need a minimum transfusion of over Rs. 2 lakh crores. This is to partly amortise over Rs. 10 lakh crores ( $150 million), in “non-performing assets” (NPAs). Nearly 80% of these list private companies as the borrowers. These were exuberantly loaned large sums without adequate scrutiny or safeguards, in the boom years between 2000 and 2008.

When the tide went out, after the economic slowdown post 2011, the defaulters turned out to have come from textile, aviation, mining and infrastructure sectors. Basic metals had 45.8% gone bad. Cement had 34.6% in bad debt.

In 2016-17, the Modi government wrote-off PSU bank loans worth Rs. 81, 683 crores with the bland assurance that borrowers of these loans would continue to be liable for their payment.

Despite the number of sizeable scams and defaults flushed out of late, it is still a tenth or so of the entire loan book.  The PSU banks, could have, when all is tallied, bad debts at 10 -12%. It does place India with the second highest ratio of NPAs even at a 9.6% assessed so far. Only Italy has a worse figure at 16.4%. A small country like Greece has 36.3%. Ukraine has 30.5%. China claims to have just 1%  in NPAs, but this is doubtful given its internal debt at 2.5 times its $ 12-15 trillion GDP.

Europe saw a number of near sovereign collapses post 2008. The bailouts have been legion- at the rate of billions of dollars per month and zero interest rates. Otherwise the US would have experienced a second Great Depression, and the EU would have broken up. It has, in any case, taken a lateral casualty, in the form of Brexit that threatens, even now, to tear apart the United Kingdom.

“Moral Hazard”, despite its merits, was not thought to be a viable argument, in order to save the world economy. The malaise had spread too far and wide into the real economy to withstand the crack of a whip.

In India too, we are fortunate that we have the wherewithal to both absorb such blows, and move on to a better tomorrow. This is not to say the government is not making every effort to both recover monies and catch/punish the culprits.

All things taken together, this is an undeclared crisis. It is, after all, a vast sum to lose because of criminal neglect and collusive corruption. But, at the same time, it is mitigated by an economy grown to $2.5 trillion, with a GDP growth rate of over 7% per annum - the fastest for a major economy in the world.

One that is likely to double to $5 trillion by 2025, and become the 3^rd largest from a current 5^th largest. The bad debt problem, causing justifiable outrage because of a score of rich company promoters responsible, is not yet, in absolute terms, alarming. It won’t capsize India’s economic boat.

The PSU banks have strayed very far from their founding objectives. That it now accounts for 80% of banking credit in India is another reason why it is central to the problem.

Huge dubious loans have stayed hidden for years, as politicians, bureaucrats, bankers and borrowers colluded to restructure debt, kicking the can down the road. But, in 2015, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) issued guidelines that forced banks to own up. Still some are still trying to dodge the dictat, and have been censured and fined heavily, a couple of them, very recently.

Private and foreign banks, albeit fewer in number, also have their NPAs in the Rs.1 lakh crore region, suggesting much better loan-vetting and governance, and presumably, reduced levels of corruption/collusion. But the recent Nirav Modi/Mehul Choksi scam has not spared them either.

Would this bad debt balloon have gone up if the PSU banking sector stayed away from private enterprise? Would the reckless lending and subversion of banking systems have shifted to the private banking universe instead? It is hard to say. The borrow-and-spend boom in the West lasted twenty years, and when the party ended, it produced a hangover that has already lasted a decade too.

 India’s NPAs, bad as they are, did not come via bad property mortgages and fraudulent derivatives to trade in. Yet, everything looked very profitable in the West too, right up to the edge of the precipice.

Theoretically, the cure for the Indian PSU banking malaise could still be privatization, if only to keep the politicians out of the till. Any amount of regulatory tightening in reaction to the present goings on cannot keep the discretionary powers of  politicians at bay.

Instead, over-regulation is likely to dry up credit, thereby damaging the growth of the economy. Or it would shift the action to private banks and the stock/debt market instead. That could, of course, be a good thing.

On the fixit side of things, there is talk of using big data analytics and constant technology upgradation for automatic machine monitoring.

Reform of the PSU banking sector must happen. Some analysts say, keep the State Bank of India, to go back to basics – priority sector lending, distribution of subsidies, loans to the poor, etc. but get shot of the rest.

The politicians, beyond lip-service, won’t want to lose the funding and patronage the PSU banking system affords. They will want to wait for these scandals to blow over for resumption of business as usual. But if this Prime Minister can attempt the privatization of Air India, he can do likewise for the PSU banks too.

A proportion of the current NPAs, may well be recovered - though the banks are themselves reluctant to take a sharp ‘haircut”. By untangling stuck infrastructure projects, against which there are substantial borrowings, there will be substantial relief. Also, the vigorous implementation of the new bankruptcy law aimed at seizing unencumbered assets, and the Fugitive Defaulters Bill, about to be enacted, will allow the confiscation of every asset of those who run away.

For: The Sunday Guardian

(1,396 words)

March 7^th, 2018

Gautam Mukherjee

BJP Supporters Eat Beef, Pork, Worship In Churches

BJP Supporters Eat Beef, Pork, Worship In Churches

When Prime Minister Narendra Modi paused his victory speech at the mint-new BJP Headquarters  in New Delhi at the sound of the evening Azaan, it wasn’t for the first time that he has done it. It is his silent but eloquent way of conveying that this government respects Muslims - even if it doesn’t hold Iftar parties or wear skull caps to say so.

And it subliminally suggests to the biggest minority of some 170 million Indians, come vote for the BJP in the world’s most populous democracy, you have nothing to fear.

Leading Muslim nations of the world, irrespective of their own rivalries and differences, have joined the West and the Jewish State too in recognizing the exceptional energy and leadership provided by this current Prime Minister of India.

His Hindu religion and practice, including the fasting during state visits during Navratras, is not seen as an impediment. Hinduism does not, after all, annoy. All talk of Hindu terrorism has been unmasked as a sham. It does not have a reputation for aggression, evangelism, or territorial lust. Consequently, India is welcome as friend, ally, and interlocutor, in most parts of this troubled world.

Perhaps, the minorities in India, nurtured on division, need to update their attitudes and take a cue from this warm reception Modi gets in many countries abroad. And maybe the North Eastern Christians, modern by temperament, have already moved on.

However, while Muslim women are increasingly voting for the BJP, particularly after its support for the anti-triple talaq legislation; the men, particularly in the Sunni majority, have yet to overcome their prejudices.

They need to recognize the present reality of the only national party left standing. The Shias have been far more forthcoming for some time now. This has been both prescient and advantageous for them.

Long-standing minority opposition to the BJP is now self-defeating. The political parties that play that kind of politics have dwindled into nothing. The TMC of West Bengal, the only substantial minority enabled Modi-basher left,  is changing track as fast as it can. It is afraid that Muslim appeasement and encouragement of illegal immigration from Bangladesh may not work in future. A consolidation of the Hindu vote, and a backlash, as in Tripura, could cook its goose too.

The Communists, in cahoots with Islamists, in Kerala, have their faces to the last of their walls. And for all Muslims in the country, radicalised or otherwise, there is the realisation that, refusing to vote for BJP/NDA will no longer be enough to stop it in its tracks.

The BJP intends to usher in a Uniform Civil Code. It will build a Ram Temple in Ayodhya given a favourable court verdict. It will legislatively eliminate the historical distortion of Article 370 in J&K. All this and more, by way of levelling the playing field, with, or without, Muslim support.

The death of appeasement politics, attended by its pseudo-secular hypocrisies, is well underway. The train has left the station. There is only some catching up to do for those who won’t want to be left behind.

The Christians, now well beyond those in Goa, watching the march of electoral victories that has taken the NDA ruled states to 22 out of 29, have signaled recognition of this fact.

They refuse to be left out of the Vikas juggernaut. Particularly, when the now pathetically reduced Congress Party and its allies have nothing left to offer them.

Talk of uprooting the BJP at the next general elections in 2019 is not being supported by the BJP’s burgeoning vote shares and formidable electoral organisation.

The Christians know this now, and have acted upon their knowledge. It remains for the Muslims to follow suit.

Modi was addressing jubilant BJP workers and remembering those karyakartas from the RSS, who were martyred on the killing fields of Tripura. He was thanking the tens of thousands who worked for the spectacular electoral wins in the North East, when he paused for the Azaan. It was, like the speech itself, televised all over the country.

The election results announced on the 3^rd of March extended the day and full moon Holi celebrations by yet another. Rightly so, because  it was to celebrate a season of firsts in all three states polled.

BJP along with its ally IPFT, routed the entrenched Communists in Hindu majority Tripura. It also won decisively in Christian Nagaland, alongside its ally NDPP, reducing Congress to a zero tally. And it is well on its way to supporting a coalition government with Conrad Sangma’s NPP party (which includes sister Agatha and brother James as MLAs), in Christian Meghalaya as well.

Conrad Sangma, the likely new Chief Minister of Meghalaya, has made it clear he will not join hands with Congress to form a government. His father, the late Purno Sangma, the highly respected former Lok Sabha Speaker, was insulted, treated shabbily by Congress, and expelled. This, for daring to raise his voice against the legitimacy of Sonia Gandhi.

Amongst many other significances being commented on, these spectacular shifts in secular voter behavior in the North East, have put paid to the virulent Opposition propaganda.

That the “majoritarian” and  “communal” Bharatiya Janata Party cannot win outside the Hindu northern “cow belt”. That it wants to tell people what it can eat and how it may worship. That it seeks to impose vegetarianism, and certainly, a beef/pork ban on the whole country. In addition to its narrow version of the Hindu dharma. Narrow Hindutva, as Shashi Tharoor would have it, in place of the inclusiveness and vastness of Hinduism.

In the highly evangelized Christian North East, funded by foreign Churches and the Vatican, none of its surging number of Baptist and Catholic voters for BJP have paid heed though.The Church bigwigs on their part, repeatedly raised the bogey of religious interference, and exhorted its flock not to vote for the Lotus.

Regardless of this, the Saffron Party has been believed and welcomed by the people. Its promise of tolerance, harmony, peace, and Vikas has been accepted at face value. Its efforts at integrating the North East with more developed parts of the country have been noted. The Lotus has now bloomed in 6 out of the 7 North Eastern States. The last, Mizoram, will decide when it too goes to the polls.

The BJP won in partially Christian Goa, for the first time, years ago. There too, it did not seek to interfere in the local food and beverage habits, or the distinct customs of the former Portuguese colony, which is 40% beef/pork eating Catholic.  

But when there was just one such state in its line-up, it was easier for the Opposition to project the BJP live-and- let-live doctrine as an insincere aberration, likely to be eroded in time.

But when the BJP wrested power in Arunachal Pradesh from Congress, it did not interfere with the customs of its mostly Buddhist population either. Ditto when it formed a coalition government in Christian Manipur.

So does all this signal the end of the mileage the Opposition can extract from pseudo-secularism? How can it gain traction if the demonization of a so called Hindu revivalist party no longer frightens the horses?

And when the ubiquitous BJP voter goes to pray in Temple, Church, Gurdwara, Synagogue, and Mosque alike?

For: SirfNews

(1,215 words)

March 4, 2018

Gautam Mukherjee