Bangladesh Elections On January 7^th 2024 Likely To Elect Incumbent Shaikh Hasina To A Fourth Consecutive Term

There is a case for, and a tradition of, strong leadership in Islamic countries. The West often fails to understand the wisdom in this, and this has led to its trying to impose a version of democracy on a number of these countries. The result has been disastrous, unless such ‘democracies’ in turn, impose a version that resembles a near dictatorship.

Several Islamic nations are still absolute monarchies, with strict police state approaches to law and order, dissent and debate.

Others have uniformed  military men at the top. Wherever such governments have been toppled, as was the case after the Arab Spring movement, general chaos ensued, until another tough no nonsense leader emerged. Where no such one leader is thrown up, the country is generally ruled by factional warlords that each hold sway over different parts of the country, as in Libya.

In Pakistan, from which East Pakistan broke away to form Bangladesh in 1971, democracy has not really taken root, unlike India. This, even though it has elections, and a parliament. It is de facto run by the Pakistan Army and its intelligence wing, the ISI. And it has seen its share of political assassinations over the years since its founding in 1947.

 President Shaikh Hasina escaped harm during the assassination of her father, by being in West Germany at the time along with her sister Shaikh Rehana.

The legendary Bongobondhu Mujibur Rahman, her father, the founder president of Bangladesh, and most of her immediate family were killed by a group of Bangladesh Army personnel on 15 August 1975. It was a bloody coup d’etat barely four years after Bangladesh came into being, followed by a series of counter coups over several years.

Sheikh Hasina was barred from returning to Bangladesh immediately. She was given sanctuary by India, and was only able to return to Bangladesh on 17^th May 1981. When she got to Dhaka, she inherited leadership of the Awami League, the political party founded by her father, and came to power for the first time after the elections of 1996. 

Her political rival was, and is, her erstwhile collaborator Khalida Zia of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP). Khaleda Zia won her first term in 1991 but resigned to a caretaker government followed by Sheikh Hasina winning her first term in 1996. The precedent therefore for the demand for President Hasina to handover to an impartial caretaker government, comes from this 1996 election.

In 2001, Khaleda Zia and the BNP won again, as it turned out, probably for the last time. During 2006-2008 Sheikh Hasina was in jail on extortion charges. When she was released, she won the elections in 2008, and has been in power ever since. As of 17^th November 2023, Sheikh Hasina is the longest-serving female head of government in history. 

Now at 76 years of age, Sheikh Hasina presides over a rapidly expanding economy and has reined in both Islamic radicalism and a military with a history of meddling in politics. Her rival Khalida Zia’s BNP is backed  not only by radical Islamists, but also the Pakistan Army and ISI to boot.

However, Sheikh Hasina is walking an image tightrope for her staunchly authoritarian ways. She is virulently criticised by the Left in the West as well as her political rivals.

The US has crafted some curious visa restrictions against Bangladeshis who obstruct a free and fair election process, from coming to visit. Earlier, in 2021, the US Treasury sanctioned Bangladesh’s Rapid Action Battalion (RAB), implicated in extra judicial disappearances. Shaikh Hasina sees much of this as the application of double standards that ignore much of the good work she and her government has done over the years.

However, she enjoys the continued confidence of India, that was very helpful in the birthing of Bangladesh in 1971, and this goes on under the Modi government today. There are increasing trade, commerce and transportation linkages between India and Bangladesh that are aiding India’s Look East Policy. China is also an investor in Bangladesh and Shaikh Hasina is quite keen on joining BRICS.

The US, as the principal importer of Bangladeshi readymade garments, (the raw materials come from India), at $ 55 billion, 85% of all its exports, and some 16% of its GDP, wants her to hold free and fair elections.

There is a wage agitation amongst the garment workers, most likely instigated by the opposition, despite their emoluments being increased from $75 a month to $ 114. The workers want more, but the government has refused further increases, in order to maintain the competitiveness of Bangladeshi garment exports. 

Khalida Zia’s BNP and other supporting political parties have threatened to boycott the elections (once again, having done so in 2014), unless Shaikh Hasina resigns and appoints a caretaker government. Khalida Zia is gravely ill now and under house arrest for alleged corruption, and other senior leaders are in exile.

However, under the circumstances of deep political hostility from the opposition, and violent agitations ongoing, this seems unlikely. Shaikh Hasina has survived 19 assassination attempts over the years as an illustration of the political atmosphere. And the device of the caretaker government at election time, used widely between 1996 and 2008, is no longer necessary following a constitutional amendment in 2011. This was necessitated by a military backed caretaker government that clung to power for nearly a year from 2006.

The elections have just been announced for January 7^th 2024 by the Bangladesh Election Commission.  A boycott from the opposition, despite exhortations to the contrary from the EC, will result in a certain victory for the Awami League and Sheikh Hasina.

(935 words)

November 17^th, 2023

For: Firstpost/News18.com

Gautam Mukherjee

 

Will Amit Shah Succeed Narendra Modi Or Will It Be Yogi Adityanath?

Union Home Minister and Minister of Cooperation Amit Shah has come a long way. He is not only the internal security maven but jockeys the nation’s varied cooperative movements. This, in addition to his invaluable contribution to election strategy via the current BJP Party President, his own handpick, JP Nadda.

It all began, in a sense, when he and Narendra Modi, one an RSS Karyakarta then, and the other who entered the fray via the AVBP, were tasked to infiltrate the powerful co-operative movement at the grassroots level in Gujarat.

This meant the credit cooperatives, and principally, the vast milk cooperatives, that have some 36 lakh members today. In rural Gujarat political terms, the money and influence/patronage the cooperatives wielded were crucial.

The most influential and well-known, Amul, a brand in its own right to rival any, accounts for a turnover of over Rs. 60,000 crores today, and exports its products to various countries as well.  

The cooperative movement in Gujarat, in the nineties, was controlled by the Congress Party that also ruled the state. The then BJP leadership saw it as a potent political avenue to come to power in the state.

Modi and Shah delivered in spades, and developed a special bond travelling the dusty mofussil roads of Gujarat on foot, motorcycle, and bus. This success catapulted both to power a few years later, Modi as chief minister of Gujarat, when he won the elections in 2001. By then he was a well-known figure in rural and urban Gujarat. And Amit Shah came in as his multi-bagging home minister. Shah was also put in-charge of several other ministries.

The multiple and consecutive terms that Modi won with a BJP majority in Gujarat, with Amit Shah alongside, next paved his way to the centre as prime minister. Here too, he won with the first absolute majority for the NDA in over 30 years. The last majority government at the centre had been that of Rajiv Gandhi, won in the aftermath of the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.

Modi has now been in power for two consecutive terms at the centre, and is likely to deliver another win for the NDA in 2024, just round the bend.

Amit Shah, in his late fifties now, is widely seen to have the heft, the election winning savvy, and the administrative experience at the centre and state, to succeed Narendra Modi. He also enjoys the unwavering confidence of the prime minister and that of the ideological fount, the RSS.

The key to his likely elevation to the top job when the time comes, is partially his work with the cooperatives as its first union minister, as of 2021. This, in addition to the Union Home Ministry, traditionally regarded as the No.2 position in the hierarchy of the Union Cabinet. The crucial thing, of course, is to be a charismatic vote-getter as well as a election strategist. In this too, Amit Shah has had considerable nation-wide experience.

Amit Shah has accomplished quite a lot with the Cooperation Ministry too. The centre is now in the business of controlling the cooperative movement nationally in a much more pointed way. It has, even in the past, overseen the activity from the Agriculture Ministry but it was neglected and not very effective. But now that the cooperative movement has gone beyond just agriculture, to labour, construction, and other new areas, in replacement of moribund and often corrupt unions, a new ministry was called for.

Cooperatives are also a state subject, with a registrar for cooperatives in each, but even the RBI oversees the cooperative rural banks.

Some analysts have described the cooperative movement as the ‘scaffolding’ that holds up rural India, to give an idea of its importance. For a start, the budgetary support from the centre for the cooperation ministry has been increased seven-fold in under two years. Some taxes on the sugar sector have been removed outright. The MAT (minimum alternate tax), has been reduced to 15% from 18%. The surcharge on cooperative organisations has been reduced to 7% from the erstwhile 12%.

The Centre is computerising cooperative societies, in order to connect them directly to NABARD (National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development), for which Rs. 6,500 crores has been set aside.

Most recently, a newly created National Cooperative Organics Limited (NCOL) will offer organic products under the brand name Bharat Organics. It will ensure the availability of certified organic products in the market. Some 439 laboratories are to be set up around the country for the certification of farm produce. About 50% of the profits from the sale of Bharat Organics products will be transferred directly to member farmers.

Six products have been launched already- namely tur dal, chana dal, sugar rajma, basmati rice, and sonamasoori rice. These will be sold via Mother Dairy and Safal outlets, as well as various online platforms. Two more such cooperatives, like NCOL have also been set up, these for seeds and exports.

The attempt here is to strike a balance between high fertilizer use in commercial farming, very popular during the Green Revolution that led to India becoming food surplus despite a four-fold increase in population. This because chemical fertilizers in high use are harmful for the soil and water. So organic is an essentially ecofriendly approach and intended balancer.

Amit Shah is also using the Police that come under his Home Ministry to reenergise a national tree plantation drive, with species chosen carefully for their longevity and oxygen creating abilities.

In the big picture, the Ministry of Cooperation is making out model bye-laws in order to make the cooperatives multi- purpose/functional. Computerisation of cooperatives is well underway. To drive the movements to the grassroots some two lakh new societies are being formed at the Panchayat/Village level.

There are many cooperative activities on the anvil. A thrust is being given to decentralised granaries/ grain storages under the cooperative movements, to ensure near home food security. Common e-service centres are being set up for ease of access. The cooperatives are to be used to distribute LPG, set up retail stores at petrol pumps, take on new petrol/diesel dealerships.  They are to set up generic medicine outlets, establish fertilizer distribution centres. They will set up drone manufacturing for multiple uses. Develop more extensive micro-financing and rural credit centres. Maintain the piped water supply. Set up decentralised Solar plants for electricity, and so on.

The cooperative movements can well be an alternate method to energise the hinterland apart from the rural mandi system. The sugar cooperatives of Maharashtra, for example, are the basis of the strength of the NCP and the Pawar family. When it is driven from the centre by the BJP, it has implications and great potential at the national level.

It may be early days for the Ministry of Cooperation, set up only in July 2021, but the prospects are excellent as a power driver in five years-time. That Amit Shah could benefit hugely from his administration of this ministry is in no doubt.

His competitor for the prime ministership is also young and charismatic. Yogi Adityanath has won two consecutive terms in Uttar Pradesh, an electoral feat not seen for decades past. He is bulldozing his way ahead to transform the economy of Uttar Pradesh to the level of $ 1 trillion per annum. He is also cooperating fully for the largely centre driven infrastructure development in his state. The UP Defence Corridor, and the vast development in Ayodhya and in Varanasi are major propellants. Yogi Adityanath’s main attractiveness for the top job is his effective handling of law and order in the state. He has been so good at it that a large section of the BJP voter base wants to see him as prime minister. Or, if that is not possible, in five or so years, given his lack of experience at the centre, as Home Minister. People think Yogi Adityanath will be a very good fit in Amit Shah’s present job. That, of course, may work out very well for both.

The question is, can Uttar Pradesh stay with the BJP without Yogi Adityanath at its helm? Can BJP do without Uttar Pradesh and still win in 2029? Can Yogi Adityanath win UP for BJP by making election forays from the Centre?

(1,382 words)

November 9^th, 2023

For: Firstpost/News18.com

Gautam Mukherjee

 

Has The Dragon Scuppered The India Bhutan Relationship?

When the King of Bhutan state visits India for eight long days, family and official entourage in tow, you can surmise something is amiss in the traditionally warm relationship. The status quo has been threatened by 25 rounds of border talks between China and Bhutan with two agreements signed, one a ‘three-step’ agreement in 2021, and another just a fortnight ago. Bhutan is about to establish diplomatic relations with China according to its Foreign Minister Tandi Dorji who led the talks in Beijing.

Ostensibly however, the King’s visit is to sell a brand new project expected to generate thousands of Bhutanese jobs even as its youth are restive about lack of opportunities in the land-locked kingdom.

Bhutan’s Prime Minister Lotay Tshering said Prime Minister Narendra Modi was the first King Wangchuck contacted on the ‘Gateway City’ project at Gelephu on its border with Assam. It is to become Bhutan’s first Smart City. After King Wangchuck met with Prime Minister Modi in New Delhi on November 5^th, the Bhutanese prime minister announced India will give the project its full support.

Beijing has been leaning hard on Thimpu to settle the issue of the Doklam Plateau that contains the strategic Tri-junction between China-Bhutan and India. It overlooks a narrow strip of land called ‘The Siliguri Corridor’ that connects India with its North-Eastern states.   

Ever since the military stand-off there with India in 2017 that lasted over 93 days, the Chinese have been building roads, bridges and townships on Bhutanese land on the plateau that it claims as its own. It has been seven years. India has done nothing about it unilaterally to avoid a flash-point, and Bhutan has been in no position to resist.

Also, there is a section of the Bhutanese people, particularly when China was doing better economically, who questioned the lack of diplomatic relations with China, a UNSC P5 country, and what they saw as over dependence on India.

Things are a little different again in 2023, when China is in an economic crisis and two countries, Italy and the Philippines, have recently pulled out of its BRI Projects, even as a number of others are in disarray.

Pakistan, China’s so-called all-weather ally, is also facing its own difficulties on the brink of utter bankruptcy, and the China-Pakistan CPEC is in deep trouble. It is also under attack by terrorists, both in Balochistan which contains the expensive China built port of Gwadar, and in central areas of Pakistan including Karachi. Many Chinese have been killed in Pakistan and the parts of the CPEC road that are ready are subject to frequent attack.

Bhutan would, no doubt, like to wriggle out of the dragon’s increasingly uncomfortable embrace under present circumstances. After all, it has the makings of a stranglehold that has been building ever since Chairman Mao claimed not only Tibet, which China occupied in 1950, but Bhutan, as Chinese territory too. Even now China claims large tracts of Bhutan along its borders, and that is what these border talks have been unavoidably about.

To wriggle out of the dragon’s clutches then may be a desire, but how is the question. Would an ambitious economic project, the first of its kind for Bhutan, be a method to balance its situation between China and India?

India is principally concerned with its own national interests, even as Bhutan has been conducting these many rounds of border talks with China, inclusive of Bhutanese visits to China to hold them. So, to an extent, Bhutan seeks to leverage its geographical position, and new found quasi-relationship with China.

However, the matter is delicate, because India has already calculated in the consequences of China capturing the Tri-Junction area and how to deter it in the event it has designs on cutting off Indian access to its North East. The Doklam Plateau and the Tri-Junction Area is in India’s advanced military sights, along with the narrow strip of Indian territory under 30 km wide it overlooks. In addition, India has been building roads, airports, train lines, tunnels and bridges, for faster and better connectivity with its North East. It also enjoys a good relationship with Bangladesh. The neighbouring country is already providing river, sea, and train connectivity to India in multiple places to promote trade and commerce between the two countries.  All this combined with satellite and aerial surveillance, collectively and jointly blunts the Chinese threat at the Tri-Junction.

The King, Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck, looked slightly sheepish of visage on arrival. His government’s border talks with China resulting in an agreement signed barely a fortnight ago, have not been objected to by India.

 The King stopped first in bordering Assam on November 3^rd, where he was received by the expansive Hemanta Biswa Sarma, the dynamic CM of Assam, and major influence in the states of the North East. King Wangchuck discussed infrastructure with Sarma, including a 57 km rail line connecting Korajhar in Assam with Gelephu in Bhutan, where an international airport is to be also built. The King will also visit Mumbai after Delhi, where he will talk to prospective investors in the Gelephu project, called the Sarpang Special Economic Zone.

He was received at the Delhi airport by a slightly stiff S Jaishankar, the storied Indian External Affairs Minister. Pictures have been released of the Prime Minister Narendra Modi walking and talking unctuously with the King in the corridors of his 7 Lok Kalyan Marg residence. The Governments of India and Bhutan have been largely tight-lipped about the actual bilateral and strategic talks between the two sides. This is understandable with China waiting to pick up clues.

 However a lot has changed. If China threatens India at the Doklam Tri-Junction, not only can it expect stiff resistance there, but it could find India acting in PoK where China’s interests in Tibet and the Siachen could be compromised, along with the mouth of the CPEC from Xinkiang through  Gilgit-Baltistan.

Geopolitically, it is India that is the darling of the West now, led by the US. It is not only a member of QUAD, with strong relationships with Japan and Australia in the neighbourhood, but a strategic and military collaborator/ partner of the US and France in particular.

It is increasingly seen in the Western camp opposed to China and its satellites such as North Korea and Pakistan, on the South China Sea and Taiwan. Its relationship with Iran and Russia now brooks alternatives. It has stood firmly with Israel against the terrorists from Hamas, without damaging its friendships with Egypt, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia.

It is steadily drawing away parts of the supply chain from China, as in the production of Apple phones, and has halved  imports across the board from China. It is also banning more and more Chinese apps, Chinese companies, and has practically stopped Chinese investment in India. India is growing at almost 7% in GDP year on year, the best performance amongst major economies in the world while China is struggling below 4%.

The point of Bhutan’s situation is that India may have quietly bypassed its strategic concerns with the Himalayan kingdom. It is up to Bhutan to maintain the traditionally close relationship with India for its own sake. King Wangchuk realises this. Hopefully he will  return to Thimpu satisfied with India’s continuing and abiding interest in his picturesque country.

(1,221 words)

November 7^th, 2023

For: Firstpost/News18.com

Gautam Mukherjee

 

Singur Of Tata Nano Fame Is The 15 Year Old Saga Of A Political Potboiler & An Industrial Wasteland

At independence, and for a couple of decades after, West Bengal was the most industrialised state in India and a great deal of business and industry was head quartered in Calcutta, as it was known as then. People flocked for employment and commerce to a cosmopolitan and elegant former capital of the British Empire in the sub-continent.

But all this changed drastically, and as if forever, with the advent of 34 years of Left front rule, after the earlier Congress governments were vote out. This, soon after a vicious Naxalite agitation, that was brutally suppressed by Congress.

By the time the former chain-smoking Left Front Chief Minister of West Bengal, Buddhadev Bhattacharya finally came into his own, he was keen and eager to turn a page and reindustrialise the state. This was some time after the passing away of anti-capitalist industry, the long-term Chief Minister Jyoti Basu.

Basu enjoyed a titanic stature, reputation and affection amongst the people of West Bengal. This was mainly due to his land reform that gave land to the landless. Then there was his abiding sympathy for the labourer and farm worker. His policies against caste discrimination and a secular approach that enthused the minorities in the state in favour of the Left Front. Basu’s Brown Saheb sophistication endeared him to the middle class and the intellectuals too.

British educated Basu’s three decades at the helm, saw every industry strike- bound, locked-out or closed down, till they all fled West Bengal. All except for  the firms associated with tea and cigarettes. And these two businesses were geographically strapped to stay put. The only person who ran a factory successfully in Jyoti Basu’s time, the joke goes, was his son Chandan Basu, who has since seen fit to repair to Canada, out of the reach of inconvenient questions.

Jyoti Basu was many things to the Left Front and even as a support to Indira Gandhi’s government at the Centre, but he effectively ruined the industrial climate in West Bengal. So much so, that it is much the same today with most investment refusing to come to West Bengal despite exhortations from its government, its intelligent and educated population.

Bhattacharya, in perhaps a Stalinist move in retrospect, had the West Bengal Industrial Development Corporation (WBIDC) sign an agreement with Tata Motors. It was to set up a green-field factory to manufacture the revolutionary Tata Nano 600cc petrol-powered motorcar that was to be sold initially for just Rs. 1 lakh. It could, the prototypes showed, transport five people comfortably. Ratan Tata’s dream child, it was intended to revolutionise transportation for the lower middle class. The Singur plant would employ about 2,000 persons directly, and provide employment to over 10,000 people indirectly, when it became operational.

The Bhattacharya led government  acquired nearly 1,000 acres of the ‘three-crops a year’ fertile agricultural land at Singur for the project from the none too happy farmers, providing meagre compensation in the bargain. Knowing the political climate in West Bengal, it was an agitation waiting to happen. The Tata Motors and WBIDC jointly chose Singur for its proximity to Kolkata, just  40 km away, and its good connectivity with the highways nearby. It did not, it appears, take care of local sentiment in using a high hat colonial land acquisition law.

But when Trinamool Congress started its agitation against the location of the plant, the contention was why it wasn’t sited in designated industrial areas instead of on fertile agricultural land. Trinamool Congress alleged that the Left Front government had forcibly acquired the land despite farmer protests, and the project could not go ahead.

Despite early trouble, Tata Motors began to pour in an estimated Rs. 1,800 crores into the project from January 2007. Thirty of its vendors set up plant buildings alongside for an investment of over 170 crores.

The Left Front government, despite best efforts, were not able to settle matters with the Singur farmers to their satisfaction. Fed up with the turmoil, then Tata Chairman Ratan Tata decided to relocate the project to Sanand in Gujarat, towards the end of 2008 - on October 3, 2008.

That the Tata Nano was not a great success in terms of sales, despite incentives offered by the Gujarat government, is another story. It is likely, according to some reports. to see a new avatar as an electric car soon.

But all the while, the Trinamool Congress agitation intensified along with attacks against plant personnel. So much so, that the Left Front government of Buddhadev Bhattacharya was brought down by the Trinamool Congress over this matter. Trinamool Congress came to power in its stead, and has been running West Bengal for three consecutive terms ever since. It is no wonder that the Singur agitation has been inserted into the school text books in the state.

Singur is back in the news after 15 years, with the unanimous arbitration award of Rs. 765.78 crores in compensation to Tata Motors payable by WBIDC, one crore in legal expenses in addition, plus 11% interest from September 1, 2016, till the money is paid in full. With interest, the compensation to Tata Motors tops Rs. 1,350 crores if it were to be paid today.

The West Bengal government headed by Mamata Banerjee intends to challenge the award either in the Calcutta High Court or in the Supreme Court.

One argument goes that the initial acquisition of the land was declared illegal later by the apex court in 2016, as it had failed to meet the requirements of the Land Acquisition Act 1894, and was ordered to be returned to the farmers.

However, this may have come as too little and too late. The Leader of the West Bengal Opposition, BJP’s Subhendu Adhikari, has stated that the agricultural land has been ruined by the works put in by the proposed plant, and  was rendered unfit thereafter for cultivation afresh. Industry, as usual, lost out in the bargain.

 Ironically, the arbitration award with its resultant bad publicity has come when the West Bengal government is gearing up for its Global Business Summit shortly on November 21-22. However, previous business summits have never gone well either, with most pledges and promises unfulfilled.

The ruling Trinamool Congress is also battling widespread corruption charges with as many as five of its ministers under arrest or in jail, and crores in unaccounted money confiscated by central authorities like the Enforcement Directorate.

(1,067 words)

November 1^st, 2023

For: Firstpost/News18.com

Gautam Mukherjee