Gehlot Cocks A Snook As Congress Party Discipline Is In Jeopardy

Running a political party on auto-pilot and remembrances of past glory obviously does not work. It is like King Charles 1^st invoking Divine Right in the face of Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell’s ‘Parliamentary Privilege’, after Cromwell won the civil war, leading the republican and puritan Roundheads against the royalist Cavaliers. That divine right ship had sailed. If only Charles 1^st had realised that, he might not have been the only British king to be beheaded in the Tower.

The present leadership of the Congress Party hinges on the judgement of an ailing and lonely senior citizen, cloistered like Miss Havisham from Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations, in her large compound in New Delhi.

Her able political aides of many years have died, leaving her to operate with second-rate talent and on her own acumen.  Almost powerless these days, she is under criminal investigation for past sins of alleged money-laundering and many other offences, now come back to haunt her.

Can this be the superannuated head of the grand old party? Why has she been allowed to continue at the helm so much after her effective years? The fortunes of the Congress Party have never been at a lower ebb. But Sonia Gandhi, a Roman Catholic, is too old and tired to respond to: ‘Awake, arise or be for ever fall’n’, to quote John Milton’s Paradise Lost.

Her hapless children, the dreaded fourth generation of their dynasty, if one does not count Motilal Nehru, have no talent for politics, and only work at it part-time. They have failed to given the party any traction, but the party, in turn, ostensibly cannot seem to cut this toxic umbilical cord and move on.

But is this narrative really true, or have the bolts been loosening for quite some time? The Group of 23 who wrote a critical letter to Sonia Gandhi about a year or more ago, have lost a few of their number to the BJP since.

Their suggestions have not been accepted. Many were shunned by the Gandhis and humiliated by others speaking on behalf. They are now regarded with forever suspicion. Still, in their own way, they have moved on. The group continues to make mildly critical public remarks from time to time. Some have retired in disgust.

And others, including regional satraps, who did not sign the letter, are no longer blind loyalists. They too have decided to self-determine more of their political future, even within the Congress Party.

The senior leadership was jolted most recently by the abrupt departure of Gulam Nabi Azad after forty years in the party. His subsequent moves, including a rally in Jammu and the launch of his new political party, peopled largely by former Congress J&K MLAs was telling. The Democratic Azad Party has eclipsed the possibility of Congress playing any significant role in Jammu & Kashmir when the state is returned to electoral politics.

Captain Amarinder Singh, the Patiala scion, who was ultimately treated shabbily by the Gandhis after decades in the Congress, also, was forced to resign. He has now merged his new party with the BJP and joined along with his family. Punjab meanwhile, has been lost to the AAP in the recent assembly elections.

Jharkhand received a fright when the allegedly corrupt Soren family nearly came unstuck with the Congress bringing up the rear. The government of Shibu Soren has survived for now, but for how long?

Maharashtra was lost to the Shinde Shiv Sena and the BJP, with a notable Congress MLA, a former chief minister, jumping ship too.

There are dramatic developments overnight in Rajasthan. Three-times chief minister of Rajasthan Ashok Gehlot, a veteran grassroots politician, is clearly not interested in becoming the Congress president. With recent developments, he is likely to be placed in the dissidents list anyway. But will his government survive?

Gehlot, not at all confident that anybody can revive the fortunes of the Congress, did not want to be the sacrificial lamb. He didn’t want to take the job at all, but was apparently put under pressure from 10, Janpath and new advisers like KC Venugopalan.  

So he issued a codicil.  He didn’t want it, unless he could simultaneously continue as CM of Rajasthan. Alternatively, only if he could install a Gehlot loyalist as chief minister in Jaipur. Both Gehlot and his sizeable number of MLAs are not willing to hand over the chief ministership to rival Sachin Pilot. Pilot does not have sufficient support in the Rajasthan Assembly to make any challenge from him stick. He was banking on the High Command, just as in the old days.

This dual charge formula was shot down publicly by Rahul Gandhi who said in the course of his Bharat Jodo Yatra that he would prefer it if the one-person-one-post principle was followed. Gandhi said the Congress president was not just an organisational position but the keeper of the party’s ideology.

Should the situation be forced however, Congress will lose the Rajasthan government, and have to face fresh elections. BJP would probably welcome such a prospect, given the unpopularity of the Gehlot government at present. They think they could win Rajasthan, and install fresh leadership. To take on right now may be a little precarious, given the numbers.

In the course of Rahul Gandhi’s pointless padayatra, supported by a convoy of truck-mounted airconditioned containers repurposed as accommodation, the Goa Congress collapsed. It merged 8 of its 11 MLAs with the ruling BJP in the state.

It was floated that the Gandhis would back Gehlot in the forthcoming Congress presidential elections scheduled for mid-October 2022. Other reports said the Gandhis would not back any candidate, so that free and fair elections could take place.

Till now, while the gate for collecting nomination forms is going to close, the only one who has collected one is Kerala Congress MP Shashi Tharoor.  And Tharoor promptly announced he had the blessings of the Gandhis for his candidature and the backing of many of the 9,000 in the list of voters. However the Kerala Congress announced they don’t want Tharoor as Congress president.  

Another possible contender, veteran Digvijay Singh, one-time chief minister of Madhya Pradesh, also chimed in supporting the idea that the Congress president should not hold any other post at the same time.

Another Gandhi loyalist, Kamal Nath, was mentioned in context either as a trouble-shooter or as an alternative. This, when the Gehlot supporting MLAs, 82-92 of them, according to various reports, submitted their resignations to the Speaker of the Rajasthan Assembly. The resignations have not been accepted.

The interesting thing is the half way mark is 100 in the Rajasthan Assembly. Does this suggest the remainder of the current Congress strength of 108 (including one from RJD), are largely Pilot supporters? In other words, Pilot could also send this government down the tubes if he chose to do so. BJP has 70 MLAs and there are 14 Independents. Can they cobble something together?

Kamal Nath who claims he does not want the job either, has been summoned by the Congress Interim President Sonia Gandhi.

The central observers Mallikarjun Kharge and Ajay Maken, miffed by the developments in Jaipur, have returned to Delhi to report to the Congress Party supremo. They are likely to suggest that the apparently rebellious Ashok Gehlot is dropped as a candidate from the Congress presidential election. That Gehlot has not collected a nomination form yet indicates that he won’t be exactly heartbroken.

What is writ large is that the Congress supremo and the Gandhis seem to be losing their grip on the party, with many of the leaders not shy about stating their preferences, even if it is at variance.

Several of the state Congress units have passed resolutions that Rahul Gandhi should reassume the mantle of Congress president again, and this is increasingly looking like the best option.

In the event, there will be no need to hold an election at all. The entire exercise seems to have descended into chaos, or is it farce.  

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September 26^th 2022

For: Firstpost/News18.com

Gautam Mukherjee

 

Government Power To Change Land Use Classification Mostly Skyrockets Its Value But Can Also Cut Price Of Prime Land

For an ostensibly democratic country, the most populous such in the world, India practices a great deal of privileged behaviour amongst its political classes. For a country will millions below the poverty line still, politicians from panchayats, municipalities, government cooperatives, local government upwards, enjoy elaborate pay, allowances and perquisites. This is on a scale not seen in most developed and rich countries with a fraction of our population and much higher per capita income.

India also has very high indirect taxation on practically all products and services and the direct tax base is very narrow  and small because of vast numbers exempted irrespective of their financial status.

Not only do elected politicians in the state assemblies and in the national parliament accord themselves pay rises and additions to their perquisites without any reference or accountability to the voting public, but  they have a bewildering array of other benefits.

Politicians elected to parliament in India, and still in the saddle, enjoy ‘parliamentary privilege’, which stops just short of putting them above the law as applied to ordinary citizens. It is akin to diplomatic privilege enjoyed by foreign diplomats that are accredited to this country, only grander. Diplomats can’t be prosecuted. Parliamentarians can be, but only after parliamentary permission is granted!

A perquisite of ‘recognised’ political parties is that they have been, till now, either been rented government-owned premises, at vastly concessional rents, or allocated prime land, particularly in the national capital, at economical ‘institutional category’ rates.

This, to build premises to suit, and run their offices. The central government’s Land and Development Office (L&DO) however is owed over Rs. 150 crores in unpaid bills by 14 political parties including the BJP. This is for ‘institutional’ land allocated to them between 2000 and 2017.

‘Institutional’ category land is a lot cheaper than ‘Commercial’ or ‘Residential’ category, with their accompanying floor area ratio (FAR) building permissions, for example. This, more so, in a developed central area in the capital, circa 2022, when land is scarce.

Originally done in ad hoc fashion, political parties began to be allocated government owned land, based on their strength in parliament at the time of the allocation. In 2006, the then UPA government framed the allotment rules. A party with 101 to 200 members in a combined total of the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha, was entitled to 2 acres. If a party had more than 200 members, it was entitled to 4 acres. BJP is the only party that qualified for 4 acres since the law was enacted, but only after 2014.

Institutional land was meant to be allocated to charitable institutions, socio-cultural organisations, and, till the Union Cabinet took a decision on 7^th September 2022, recognised political parties.

The latest position however is that political parties will be adjudged to have received the land allotted retrospectively via a ‘Government-to-Government’ category, which is some ten times cheaper than the institutional category. This even as the rates for institutional land, meant to be revised every two years, have not been increased since even before 2000.  

But, because of the new classification, most of the outstanding Rs. 150 crores is no longer payable, and certain political parties will get a proportion of their money paid, back from the government.

The BJP, which owed approximately Rs. 91 crores is the chief beneficiary. It is also benefitted by a special dispensation to allow it to build more, with a Floor Area Ratio (FAR) of 100, on its three land parcels allotted on Deen Dayal Upadhyay Marg. Its land dues have dropped to a mere Rs. 17.78 crores. The Cabinet decision on this reclassification, reported in the media, has not as yet been made public by the government.

Similarly, land use and floor area ratios have been amended multiple times lately to execute the building of the new parliament and houses for the prime minister and vice president, the central vista and kartavya path areas, demolition, consolidation, and rebuilding of ministries, the underground facilities and so on. The concept of public weal animates all these decisions, but sometimes it is not  quite so well motivated and intentioned.

 This near magical ability to affect land prices, particularly urban land prices in the metro cities and their satellites, by changing categories, determining lot sizes, floor area ratios, urban growth boundaries and zones, is not unique to India.

It is rife in the other great democracy, the United States of America too. There too, it is the province of the central and state governments all over the country. President Donald Trump and his father owe their early successes in the real estate business to savvy collaboration with the authorities. There too, land prices go up in the areas adjacent to big cities if an airport is announced or a highway is planned to pass near-by. Those with their ear to the ground, or in with the people in the know grow rich in this way.

In countries that are more authoritarian, the public and what they think is not a worry, but there too, those close to the centres of power, benefit massively from inside information, contracts, supplies etc.

Builders in India are never very far from the politicians who have the  discretionary power to change land use. In the states, it is the exclusive province of the chief minister who can sign off on it. At the centre it is the Union Cabinet but the prime minister has the big say.

The Justice SN Dhingra Commission, in 2015, concluded that Robert Vadra, son-in-law of Sonia Gandhi, and brother-in-law of Rahul Gandhi, made profits of Rs. 50.5 crores from a land deal in Haryana in 2008. The much-reported infamous case, had Robert Vadra buying some three acres of agricultural land for approximately Rs. 7 crores from Onkareshwar Properties in the vicinity of Gurugram,Haryana. This, allegedly with money lent to him by leading builders DLF. He then allegedly influenced the Haryana Congress government led by Bhupinder Singh Hooda to change the land use to residential, resulted in its value rocketing up to nearly Rs.60 crores. DLF was glad to buy it (back) after the licence changing the land use was granted to Vadra’s company Skylight. They wanted to build a residential colony on it.

The court cases related to this transaction are still on-going, with Vadra and then Haryana Chief Minister Hooda stoutly denying any wrong-doing whatsoever.

Other such narratives on instant riches created by change of land use are legion in India, both with regard to Vadra, and a host of others.

Political parties, seen as a public good in democratic and republican India, by law, and the rules governing the Central Board Of Direct Taxes (CBDT), are not required to pay income tax on their received donations either. These can be small or large, in cash or by cheque/digital transfer, domestic or foreign in origin, or even anonymous.

By the same token, they are expected to stick to using the funds for political activity for the benefit of the people at large. They are not allowed to go in for commercial activity of any kind. But sometimes politicians, long immune from so many things that apply to ordinary citizens, forget, or choose to ignore, the law.

This is what has famously embroiled the mother-son duo of Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi and a number of other Congress Party factotums, since dead, and still alive.

The Gandhi duo, squirming on this legal leash, despite massive legal manoeuvres and organised protests by their party, were both arrested and are out on bail since 2015.

They have been recently questioned for hours and days by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in the National Herald-Young India cases. They are alleged to have indulged in several wrong doings, including money-laundering, which attracts a criminal charge.

The duo, as the major shareholders in Young India, the operators of several prime properties allocated for a pittance to the near defunct  independence era newspaper National Herald, started by Jawaharlal Nehru,  are also slapped with income tax demands that are in somewhat under Rs. 200 crores. This, for illegally renting out National Herald properties and concealing the commercial gain from the income tax authorities. However, all this would probably have not come to light if the Congress party had not been routed in the general elections of 2014 and ever since.

Why can’t political parties operate land use changes according to an established and agreed law governing it? When it comes to environmental considerations or coastal regulations they have done and will do to a large extent. But expecting a major money spinner like this, that can fill party coffers, and others with the spill-over, to be given up, is probably naïve. And no more democratic in the way it is used, than it is in authoritarian countries. Reforming it just goes against the nature of power being wielded.  

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September 23^rd, 2022

For: Firstpost/News18.com

Gautam Mukherjee

 

The Hijab Is Considered Oppressive by Women In Iran But Desirable In Parts Of India

Most learned commentary on the treatment of women in Islam is inconclusive.  Those not of the faith are puzzled by the many contradictions and implications but are generally expected to mind their own business. Still, once in a while, one gets to see what those at the receiving end think of as their rights. And how this can come from within a hard-line Islamic country.

It is instructive, if concerning, to observe a rare revolt from women in Iran after many years of orthodox Islamic rule by the Ayatollahs, beginning with Ayatollah Khomeini, 43 years ago, (1979). It flared up since the arrest of a young Kurdish girl by morality police on 13^th September 2022. There are some 10 million minority Kurds in Iran’s Kurdistan province, often on the receiving end of repressive measures.

It particularly agitated women from Western Iran’s Saghez and other places in Kurdistan province, after the more or less custodial death of a 22 year-old woman, Mahsa Amini, who was one of their own.

The young woman, the police said, died of a heart attack. They released a statement denying any brutality on its part, in the face of growing protests from the women, and a government ordered probe.

Tehran Police Commander Hossein Rahimi said in a statement reported by the Fars News Agency: ‘The incident was unfortunate for us and we wish to never witness such incidents. Cowardly accusations have been levelled against the Iranian police. We will wait until the day of judgement but we cannot stop doing security work.’ A non-apology and refusal to admit any wrong doing writ large.  

Human Rights observers said Amini was arrested and punished by police in the process of ‘re-educating’ her, for not properly following stringent and mandatory hijab regulations.  Her family with whom she was en-route to Tehran from Kurdistan, says Amini was perfectly healthy moments before her arrest and confinement inside a police van.

Social media videos show outraged Iranian women cutting off their long hair and removing their hijabs before protesting on the streets in the face of tear gas canisters and riot police. They were shouting ‘Death to the Dictator’. The revolt has spread to the capital Tehran where the unfortunate woman died at  its Kasra Hospital’s intensive care unit.

The stringent hijab laws are being enforced on instructions from former hanging judge Ebrahim Raisi, the Iranian president.

Contrast this brave struggle of Iranian women, in the face of near certain retribution, with the reverse demand in parts of India demanding the right to wear the hijab at all times.

And this includes the time spent in schools, colleges, examination halls, and elsewhere, such as the armed forces and the police, even when a uniform is prescribed. The movement in India is being encouraged and aided by radical Islamic groups that have persuaded some young women, quite often their own relatives, to heed their call. The same groups and their supporters have also raised the issue in courts of law including the Supreme Court, thus far without success.

Here it is sought to frame the right to wear the hijab as a constitutionally protected fundamental right. That the legal battle, for and against, and also the objections raised by multiple sides outside the court-room is also political in nature, only complicates the issue.

While some commentary does incline towards the use of the hijab at all times in public under the broad tenets of Sharia Law, it is clear that India is purportedly a secular republic, and under no obligation to observe Sharia Law in the public domain. However, years of appeasement policies followed by earlier governments at the centre and a number of the states, may have emboldened the recent efforts.

The problem, seen as regressive to the issue of women’s rights, is apparent to people who are not followers of Islam. But most Islamic minority groups are more concerned about their religious identity and what they see as its tenets. There is also a political assertion at the heart of the hijab issue to do with opposing a perceived Hindu majority government in every way possible. To an extent it has been receiving moral, vocal and financial support from Islamic organisations abroad. These include ones with links to Pakistan, ultra-liberal groups in the West such as that of billionaire George Soros, out to oust the Modi government, and as always, China.

Soros plainly declared at Davos, Switzerland, before the Covid pandemic, that he was pledging billions of dollars to bring down the Hindu majoritarian Modi government,

Many Western governments are also struggling with the growing tendency of minority groups that seek to informally frame laws and practices for themselves. This ends up being a microcosm within the broader ethos of the larger communities. So much so that certain minority-heavy  city areas have become no-go zones for other communities and even the armed police.

However, in those nominally Christian countries, the percentages and absolute numbers of minority groups are small. Despite that, they are facing frequent law and order problems involving terrorist attacks, murders, rape , arson and public disorder involving such minority groups.

India however has 200 million Muslims, and some of this vast number are making efforts to impose their ways outside of the confines of their close knit communities. While India is theoretically pluralistic, this imposition also tries to restrict and deny the practices of the other, often much larger communities.

In mostly Shia Iran, it is the homogeneity that is proving irksome. It may suit the regime in power and the men to impose its dictates upon the women of the country. But the women in turn, do not like it. Similar feelings probably simmer below the surface in Sunni Taliban-run Afghanistan.

Most Afghan and Iranian women outside of both countries boldly state they don’t agree with the suppression of their sisters within the countries. But it is not easy to protest living inside such polities, and this is what makes the Iranian revolt, that too led by an oppressed Kurdish minority, particularly remarkable.

It will probably achieve nothing immediately given the overwhelming odds. But the death of one young woman for wearing the hijab so that some of her hair showed through, has not gone unnoticed by the world.   

(1,042 words)

September 20^th, 2022

For: Firstpost/News18.com

Gautam Mukherjee

 

New UK PM Liz Truss Will Need Her Erstwhile Liberal Democrat Instincts

The United Kingdom economy is tanking. The Pound Sterling is at a historical low and inflation is at a 40 year high. There is a cost of living and energy price crisis. The crisis is not just in household energy costs that have doubled, but also in industry, such as steel, that uses a lot of electricity and fuel. They are all crying out for more subsidies on top of the subsidies they have already been given. Economists are warning of the medium term consequences of this tsunami of subsidies given and being contemplated.

Supporting American President Joe Biden and the EU’s Ukraine War effort has been very costly for Britain, coming on top of the costs of exiting the EU, and Covid. Politically, Protestant Northern Ireland too is chafing at the bit even as  informal and localised talks are on to unify with Catholic Eire which is part of the EU.

Boris Johnson’s popularity and jaunty premiership had no impact on the British economy, except for the damage caused by Brexit and the lack of ready success to replace markets lost as a consequence. A Free Trade Agreement with India is moving at a snail’s pace because of British demands that are no longer deemed acceptable. Another, a work in progress with the United States is not yielding results either.

The economy has not improved, even with former investment banker Rishi Sunak running it as Chancellor of the Exchequer. And this may have been a major dampener for his chances to replace Johnson. And now, in any event, it’s the turn of Liz Truss.

Johnson and Truss have been congratulating each other after the results of the Conservative Party internal vote from 160,000 members, some accounts say 200,000 voters, came in on Monday the 5^th. Johnson sees Sunak as a backstabber and has backed Truss all the way.  Meanwhile Truss has already acquired a description in the media: shapeshifter. No point knocking it. It is a valuable political trait.

From a person who voted against leaving the EU in the referendum, she quickly changed over to become a staunch Brexiteer in league with Boris Johnson. In the conservative party governments even prior to Johnson’s term, Truss, now 47, has held a variety of portfolios over the last decade. She goes to the prime ministership after being the foreign secretary.

She started off her political career earlier, not in the Labour Party but in the middle-of-the-road-with-pink-tinges Liberal Democrats. And now she is the Conservative prime minister, only the third lady to win the job after Margaret Thatcher and Theresa May.

One of her first pass-the-buck statements even before taking over on Tuesday 6^th September 2022 was to say that fixing inflation was The Bank of England’s job. Meaning that when the Bank of England raises interest rates to curb inflation, it won’t be Truss who did it. There is some debate on the degree of autonomy the Bank of England and its Governor presently enjoy, but it is difficult to see how the prime minister could evade responsibility for such an important matter. Still, Truss must be hoping for the best.

She has announced, during the campaign against Rishi Sunak that she would cut taxes. Sunak mocked her for this, suggesting it was a fantasy, because the government coffers are highly stressed. It was one of the reasons Sunak could do little to alleviate national distress as Chancellor. But it is this Truss pledge, to cut taxes, that probably won her the election. She won a tad above 57% of the vote (81,326) to Sunak’s 42% plus (60,399).

The margin of the win however was lower than any for the conservative party leadership in the 21^st century. Almost 20% of the eligible did not vote, making Truss’ win representative of under 50% of the membership. Sunak did very well with the conservative party voters, despite being a ‘brown boy’, she wanted to get away from, per Liz Truss. Others have called Sunak, the richest MP in Britain currently, as something of an international smoothie.

The toffs in the City, ‘remainers’ mostly, understood what Sunak was saying, about controlling inflation being the first task. But Conservative voters in the countryside liked the sound of lower taxes.

Truss reiterated she would cut taxes again after winning the vote. This probably means no new corporation taxes for a start, and a scrapping of the green energy levies that will cost the exchequer more than 20 billion pounds sterling.

Several analysts think cutting taxes and subsidising energy costs and stressed businesses about to fail, will only fuel more inflation. There is already a run to dump the Pound Sterling and government bonds.

Liz Truss will probably pick African-origin Kwasi Kwarteng, currently business secretary, for her finance minister to replace Sunak. Kwarteng said there was likely to be some fiscal loosening, but that it would be done in a responsible way. He said he did not know if he was going to be Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Energy prices have doubled household energy bills, likely to be up another 80% by October, and even higher by 2023.There was a large subsidy to cushion the public against high energy prices given out in May 2022, but it seems to be inadequate. More energy subsidies are likely to be added. Many sectors of the British economy are planning to go on strike demanding government subsidies in order to survive as well.

Meanwhile inflation has made food items very expensive.  Ditto hotels, services, all things. This is certainly not a time for Indians to visit the UK with the rupee hovering at 80 to the US dollar.

Truss is on record stating she will increase Britain’s defence spending. With what money though?From all this, it is clear that her tenure in 10, Downing Street is likely to feature a higher fiscal deficit, because there are no resources in reserve, putting further pressure on the economy. However, it is a difficult time and the options available to her to provide quick relief are extremely limited.

The task may well be to out-labour-the-labour-party, with populist measures. This will reduce the inherited burden of less than dynamic conservative party economic policies over the last 12 years.

What next in foreign policy? Britain is closely allied to the US in this regard and will probably benefit India strategically and militarily via AUKUS, and a greater naval presence in our region. India will definitely be interested in nuclear powered engine technology for our navy, amongst other high technology strategic military know-how transfer from Britain. Will Britain under Truss deliver?

The good thing for India is that we have other options, including France, the US, Japan, and Russia, for state of the art technology. In other military cooperation, Spain seems keen in  aatmanirbhar areas including C295 aircraft from Airbus Spain to replace our ageing Avros.  

Whether Truss will take stern trade measures against China, to follow on from America, and warm up to Taiwan also, it seems quite likely.

Since Truss is a continuation of the Johnson line of thinking, it is expected that impediments in the way of a Free Trade Agreement with India should be removed by sometime in 2023, if not quite by Diwali 2022 as Boris Johnson had hoped.

For now, the less than threatening demeanour of Liz Truss, though she can be strident too, may be a reassuring factor in European politics. The provocations against Russia however may have to be toned down in favour of the long haul in Ukraine.

(1,252 words)

September 6^th, 2022

For: Firstpost/News18.com

Gautam Mukherjee

 

The Communist Dream And The Animal Farm Reality

When an Indian Communist stalwart and TV warrior like Kavita Krishnan leaves the CPI(ML) after a lifetime in it, it gives one pause. After all these long years, Kavita Krishnan sees a motivating vision, in which Stalin and Mao appear to her as red in tooth and claw fascists. They appear, no different in deed, tone, and tenor to Hitler or Mussolini. And indeed, as she sees it, in tendency, if not in fact, to Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

That our vegetarian and pacifist Prime Minister Modi, unless pushed by national security concerns, is not responsible for the murder of scores let alone millions, is somehow glossed over by Krishnan. The propagandist and leapfrogging rant of the Communist is perhaps too deeply ingrained to be shed.

Stalin and Mao have despatched over 60 million of their own people via repeated peace-time purges. Their paranoia as supreme despotic leaders knew no bounds, and self-serving and ever-changing Communist ideology evolving, rode rough-shod over human suffering.

This astounding Communist slaughter rivals not only Hitler’s genocide of 6 million Jews, sexual deviants , cripples, and the insane, but also the casualties from both the world wars. WWI had 20 million dead and 21 million wounded. WWII had 56 million dead directly owing to war, and another 28 million dead from war related disease and famine.

 While the Communist ruled states in India of which only one remains, namely Kerala, have never hesitated to intimidate their political opponents, with maiming, rape, murder, arson, and threats, the present government at the centre has shown an unprecedented tolerance to the opposition and its unfair attacks. No other democracy is visible that tolerates such daily abuse and treats its with such lofty and benign neglect.

That Madame Krishnan and her ilk find this infuriating is understandable. Still, we are talking here of the sudden volte face Krishnan has done, and are wondering if she thinks that Indian Communism has grown old, arthritic, unimaginative, ineffective, and fit to be jettisoned.

Krishnan was a member of the Politburo, the CPI(ML)’s top decision-making body for over two decades, and a Central Committee member too. She now feels it is not enough to call the Soviet and Chinese Communist regimes ‘failed socialism’. She wants to hold these regimes accountable as ‘some of the world’s worst authorianisms,’ that  now ‘serve as a model for authoritarian regimes everywhere’.  

This is, of course, a departure from the party-line that never criticises its own Gods. The long row of portraits above CPI(ML) grey-heads would perhaps come crashing down.

Krishnan, on her part, has thought it fit to become the lone ranger now on her further quest to set things right. While epiphanies like this are not uncommon, Krishnan seems to want to take on the historical wrongs of authoritarian Communism. Perhaps this includes the current doings of the Chinese CPC in Xinkiang, and its belligerent dealings with the world. This is quite a work load, and to draw equivalence to the present saffron regime right here in an economically resurgent India may prove difficult.

It is doubly difficult, because failed socialism has had a lot to do with lousy economics. Bad economics that has shattered lives, and brought down the USSR and the Berlin Wall. It has shattered the Communist Dream and replaced it with the dystopian prescience of Orwell’s Animal Farm, published in 1945.

 Animal Farm’s allegory began with ‘Four legs good, Two legs bad’, and ‘all animals are equal’. It progressed to ‘no one dared speak his mind, when fierce  growling dogs roamed everywhere, and when you had to watch your comrades torn to pieces after confessing to shocking crimes’.

It was just as well for posterity that George Orwell found a publisher after many turned his brilliant book down as they thought they couldn’t sell ‘animal stories’. It was a view almost as astounding as all those record executives who turned down the Beatles because ‘groups with guitars were on their way out’.

The Russian Revolution of 1917 put the first Communist government in power, taking over from the absolute monarchy of Tsar Nicholas 1^st, Tsar of all the Russias. This was the new world created by WWI it seemed to many enthusiasts. The new name was USSR- Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

Stalin made this entity even bigger than Tsarist Russia, conquering and occupying some countries, annexing them into the USSR, subjugating and installing puppet regimes in other satellite countries after WWII, and drawing the Iron Curtain tightly over them to preserve his precious Communism. This was the Communist dividend to WWII.

The Politburo of the USSR, headed by Vladimir Lenin and soon after, in 1924, by Josef Stalin, after a brief struggle for power on the death of Lenin, was not content to run the largest country in the world. The aim, from the start, was to further establish a Communist Internationale.

It was a direct challenge to the remaining monarchies, dictatorships, imperialists, as well as the democratic world order. That it didn’t work is something we can now see clearly. A few, like Cuba, outside of the direct control of the USSR, responded to the Soviet ideological call, overthrowing the Batista government on the island, to become communist too. Many other countries, emerging from the colonial yoke, were immediately socialist, and permitted Communist parties to be established. This was also true of much of South America that was not formally colonised, despite being under the sway of America’s Monroe Doctrine in the 20^th century.

Leon Trotsky, one of the celebrated founders of Soviet Russia, intellectual, ideologue and co-conspirator of Lenin, and thought to be his natural successor, was not only quickly ousted by Josef Stalin, but murdered in distant Mexico City after years in exile, on 20 August 1940.

China became Communist much later in 1949, more dividend from WWII, after chasing the nationalists into present day Taiwan. Under Mao Ze Dong, known as The Great Helmsman, it underwent several paroxysms of ideological change, the inevitable purges to cauterise revisionism, but fared poorly in terms of its economics.

This only changed after the purged Deng Xiaoping came back from the margins, since he had fled to keep from been killed, to preside over China’s near capitalist makeover. Today, the son of another purged father who ran away to save his life, is busy trying to go back to the ideology of the Mao era.

Mao was Communist, but put many an imperialist in the shade with his grabs of Inner Mongolia, Xinkiang and Tibet, all territories beyond the Han heartland demarcated by the Great Wall of China and the Pacific Ocean. With a peasant cunning, he knew he could get away with it in 1950 when the West was weary of war.

But the bloodthirstiness of the only remaining Communist great power has not diminished. It oppresses the Muslim Uigurs in Xinkiang, tries to makeover the Inner Mongolians into Han ways and Mandarin over the province’s native language. It is struggling to mould Tibet in its own image but having trouble with the high altitudes, temperatures, native indifference, and vast, underpopulated areas on the roof of the world.

Winning over hearts and minds, a Western 20^th century concept, is alien to the Red Chinese as they oppress even their own Han Chinese in Hong Kong, and try, in ham fisted fashion, to takeover Taiwan. Elsewhere they have multiple border and maritime area disputes with all the countries in its periphery including India, Vietnam, Japan, Indonesia, Borneo, Thailand, Malaysia, Philippines.

Being a global nuisance in the Indian Ocean and the Asia Pacific does not seem to faze the Red Chinese either. It has moved farther afield with its rapacious Belt and Road, Silk Route, String of Pearls initiatives that have taken multiple countries to the edge of bankruptcy.

As the No.2 economy Communist China is challenging America at No.1 both in terms of trade and with its military.  As a consequence, the world is slowly but surely coalescing against this Chinese highhandedness. Organisations such as QUAD and AUKUS have been established to stop China in its belligerence.

Trade with China, manufacturing in it, are both diminishing, and the latter’s export contracts are being cancelled. China’s growth statistics are less than half of what they used to be in the humbler Deng influenced years.

What has all this menacing and sabre-rattling have to do with the dream of equality that Communism promised? Karl Marx may not recognise what has become of his theories. Was it ever intended for the rule of the proletariat to resemble 19^th century imperialism?

(1,426 words)

September 5^th, 2022

For: Firstpost/News18.com

Gautam Mukherjee