Master Strokes At Amateur Hour

Master-Strokes At Amateur Hour

There were always two strings to the bow of the Shiv Sena. One, that of Hindutva, has been carried off-stage bound in chains by its “secular” partners. But, there is still the other, unfettered- that of the Marathi Manoos.

Uddhav Thackeray, Chief Minister of Maharashtra, as of the evening of the 28^th of November, asserted as much.

Amongst his first acts was the allocation of another Rs. 30 crores towards the 600 crore restoration of Chhhatapati Shivaji’s fabled fort in the Raigad mountains.

Uddhav announced this in front of a statue of Shivaji, at Shiv Sena’s own Shivaji Park, made the party’s launch pad from the 1960s. The stage for the oath-taking was built in a day to resemble the self-same Raigad Fort, by one of Uddhav’s Bollywood set-making friends.

Meanwhile, the former Chief Minister, Devendra Fadnavis, who looks more like a well-fed temple priest with a pretty wife, than a dynamic politician, is looking for another house. One to lead his 105 seat strong Opposition from. Fadnavis has made an unmitigated mess of round two, or is it three, in less than a fortnight, duped by the senior Pawar, and let-down by the junior one.

But Fadnavis has completed a full term of five years, very successfully, a rarity in Maharashtra politics, not seen since VP Naik of Congress, who was CM for 11 years. Sharad Pawar himself never lasted a full term, not once in three stints.

This time, Sharad Pawar, at 79 going on 80, has humbled the political acumen and dexterity, not only of the portly Fadnavis, but that of Prime Minister Modi, Home Minister and Party President Shah and his understudy Nadda, Governor Koshyari, and President Kovind too.

He was indefatigable,starting on Saturday the 23^rd of November, soon after the Devendra Fadnavis- Ajit Pawar swearing in, and stopping only three days later, on the 26^th, when the duo were forced to resign.

Sharad Pawar conducted the entire orchestra of leaders, including Sonia Gandhi in Delhi and Uddhav Thackeray, pretty much at his side.

This, plus over 162 MLAs in all three parties, that make up the Maha Aghadi. He personally exhorted them to stick together, herding them into pens in a number of five star hotels in Mumbai. He trooped them on or off buses, and into an anti-defection oath-taking ceremony under the gaze of national TV. Sharad Pawar also relentlessly pressurised rebellious nephew Ajit Pawar for all three days, till he had no option but to cry uncle.

But, now, after the restrictions have been lifted, and the spectacular oath taking ceremony for the chief minister and just six others has been concluded, can the surveillance and unity be sustained?

Sharad Pawar seems to think so, by virtue of ensuring all three parties are involved in the government. But, since this alliance is largely to do with the loaves and fishes of office, what about those MLAs who do not get a ministry or other jagir to milk? Will they remain loyal through the projected five years of the Aghadi government?

The threat of being thrown out of the party if any of them resign is balanced by the relatively slim majority the Aghadi will command at the floor-test on December 3^rd.  

Ajit Pawar, though back in the NCP fold without punishment, and possibly the Deputy Chief Minister and Leader of the NCP legislative party once more come the 4^th of December, has demanded a rotational CMship after 2.5 years. Congress too has also asked for a  second Deputy CMship, instead of the Speaker’s post offered to it. How long therefore before the Congress, with 44 seats, to the Shiv Sena’s 56 and the NCP’s 54, also demands a turn as Chief Minister- perhaps in a 2-2-1 year formula?

If some 15 or 20 MLA’s in aggregate, depending on how many independent MLAs are roped in, from any or all of the three parties were to resign, the Aghadi government would fall.

Given the strictures of the anti-defection law, this would trigger a fresh election. If these 20 odd MLAs resign with the encouragement of Fadnavis’s BJP, they would probably be assured of BJP tickets and funding for their re-election.

In the meantime the BJP will hopefully win the forthcoming assembly elections, both in Jharkhand and later in Delhi, to restore their prestige somewhat.

The hyper-critical intelligentsia and BJP backing middle-class, disillusioned by the recent unprincipled but failed power grab, may yet be mollified by a good budget, with sops in their favour. The general economy too may be in for a cyclic if not a reform fuelled revival. Public memory is best served by success.

Will the BJP try to wrest power back in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, both lost very narrowly to the Congress, to restore their diminishing national foot-print? The answer is probably yes, given the opportune moment. And then there is the battle for West Bengal.

In the potentially $1 trillion economy of Maharashtra, from the BJP point-of-view, there will be no redemption short of winning back the state. If this comes about, it will be not only payback to the old war-horse, but a significant setback to Opposition dreams, including those of Uddhav, of coming to power at the centre in 2024.

(873 words)

For: WIONEWS

November 29^th, 2019

Gautam Mukherjee

Takeover Balasaheb Thackeray Legacy

Takeover Balasaheb Thackeray Legacy

Devendra Fadnavis showed prescience, despite being heckled by Shiv Sena workers, when he visited Shivaji Park on November 18^th to pay his respects on Balasaheb Thackeray’s 7^th death anniversary.

This was particularly poignant because it is just seven years since Bal Thackeray passed away. And already, his son Uddhav, showing little political vision, was making ready to dump his Hindutva legacy. This in the thick of Shiv Sena-NCP-Congress’attempts at cobbling together a government.  

And Balasaheb’s once charismatic nephew Raj Thackeray has no influence beyond his bailiwick of Thane either. It is an irony that he made no attempt to split the party when he had the chance in Balasaheb’s declining years.

The orphaned MLAs born and bred in the Balasaheb vision can now head for the BJP along with large numbers of party workers. As the remains of the Uddhav-led Shiv Sena reaps the whirlwind for its past financial misdeeds, it won’t have much money to look after its flock either.

Bal Thackeray however is certainly a Hindutva icon worth the honouring. He stood firm when there were very few flag-bearers of the saffron ideology.  Despite his legacy being unceremoniously betrayed by the party he founded under the leadership of his son, it remains valuable. Uddhav saw fit to quickly dump the demand for a Bharat Ratna award for Veer Savarkar too.

Balasaheb  Thackeray however, supported Hindutva and the Marathi Manoos all along. His party belonged to the NDA from the days of the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government and through the decade of thick and thin after NDA1.

Today, the Shiv Sena, circa 2019, still invokes Bal Thackeray’s name, but apparently denies his explicit and implicit legacy. It is therefore there for the taking by Devendra Fadnavis in the state, and the BJP/RSS national leadership.

The situation is reminiscent of the legacy of Sardar Patel, adopted by the BJP, even as the Nehru-Gandhi led Congress tried to all but forget about him.

Balasaheb’s story is described in a new film starring Nawazuddin Siddiqui and probably does not need repeating. It all started decades ago, as did the story of Maharashtra as a state, with Bombay as its capital.

I too lived in the Bombay of the seventies - 1969 to 1979. Most of it was under the stable and low-key governance of Chief Minister VP Naik of the Indira Gandhi led Congress. His son went to St.Xavier’s College, as I did, and remember visiting him at Varsha on Malabar Hill. It was unfussy. Just like going to any other friend’s house.

It was a very pleasant Bombay in those days. There was enough room to sit down at the front of the double-decker B.E.S.T buses, upstairs, with the windows propped open to take in the sea breeze.

The Shiv Sena was then just a fringe pressure group. It had demanded the ouster of South Indians working in Bombay, then concentrated in the suburb of Chembur. The anti-Pakistan-anti-Muslim stance came much later, provoked, no doubt by terrorism and the bomb blasts in the wake of the Babri Masjid demolition of 1992.

But in South Bombay, Shiv Sena, under the early Bal Thackeray, with his occasional threats, trade unionist cum extortionist ways, his goons, did not matter very much. You heard names like Datta Samant, and later, George Fernandes, the former provoking factory lockouts. And the latter - railway shut-downs and road blockages at Fountain in Fort.

The infrastructure of Bombay those days was largely adequate, the trains ran on time, the electricity never went on the blink. However, water, gas, milk and other things that were obtainable against a ration card, Padmini cars, bakelite telephones and connections, were, along with many other things like foreign exchange, in typically socialist short-supply.

It must be remembered the Indira Gandhi years were hardly known for development or GDP growth. But the broad civic and policy neglect, carried on for decades, with little redress by a largely Congress government, either on its own or in coalition.

Meanwhile, Shiv Sena had grown into a considerable political influence throughout Maharashtra, if not much of a stable electoral presence, right through the Balasaheb years. Since his demise, truth be told, Uddhav Thackeray has led it to a terminal decline.

If the Balasaheb legacy is taken over by the BJP now, the Shiv Sena  may be presented with the uphill task of reinventing itself in its new found “’secular” role in the Opposition, both in Maharashtra and nationally.

Today, in the 21^st century, even as India boasts of its economic progress, people routinely die in pot holes in Mumbai, even as the richest municipality in the country run by the Shiv Sena, looks on unmoved. That the BJP, which has almost as many seats in the BMC, has kept quiet about this disgrace can perhaps now be remedied at last.

Even apart from the shortcomings of the BMC, the massive demands of a megapolis, often called the Maximum City, are badly unmet to this day.  

The first notable development, besides a carriageway towards the airport built long ago, and sundry flyovers, was the Bandra-Worli Sea Link, opened as recently as 2009, and of course, the 94.5 km Bombay-Pune Expressway, build in record time by Nitin Gadkari during NDA 1, in 2002.

The Fadnavis first term however, has been marked by movement in long-stalled infrastructure development, including the Mumbai Metro and the shortly expected first bullet train between Mumbai and Ahmedabad.

And now, with a second term in hand, pending the floor test and the misinformation swirling thick and fast, more confident and rapid progress can be expected.

Of course, the timely alliance with the NCP or a sizeable number of its MLAs in another configuration, should it choose this moment to split between the Supriya Sule (Sharad Pawar) and Ajit Pawar factions, has a glue to it.

The NCP has a number of corruption cases against some of its most prominent leaders including Sharad Pawar, Ajit Pawar, Praful Patel and could even rope in Supriya Sule and her husband. This will tend to keep the junior partner in this new configuration well-behaved during the five year term going forward.

(1,020 words)

For: Sirfnews

November 23^rd 2019

Gautam Mukherjee

A Change In The Weather

A Change In The Weather

When a regime changes, all who have benefited from the old order are suddenly deprived of their influence. They are left with little besides their litany of complaints and criticism.

Still, it is understandable, for those not nimble enough to change stripe, that contemplation of an interminable stretch, out of the limelight, is akin to the Roman Catholic state of purgatory. It is a suspension, in suffering, stuck indefinitely between Heaven and Hell. Except, that the old order admits to none of its sins.

Instead, it adopts a stance of indignation when a procession of their number, including the all powerful who thought themselves beyond the law, are prosecuted for corruption. It was corruption, almost institutionalised, that was a major reason for  the UPA’s humiliating rout at the hustings, not once, but twice in a row.

When Narendra Modi, a provincial but clean Chief Minister, with no first hand foreknowledge of the Centre, won  a majority in the Lok Sabha after 30 years, in 2014, the old guard was astounded. There were those in the capital who thought it was a massive over-reaction on the part of the electorate to his spectacular oratory. Modi’s popularity would surely wane by mid-term, they said, as it had in the case of the ill-fated Rajiv Gandhi administration. And he would be shown the door at the end of his one and only five year term.  It was a flash in the pan. All one had to do was be patient and disdainful. 

It was axiomatic to such people that no “Communal” government, with a nebulous grip on the economy and governance, and clumsy law-making, could possibly last more than a single term. Even the avuncular, get-along Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s saffron government from a decade ago, lasted only about six years.

Demonetisation in Modi 1.0, they cried, and do so still, as each anniversary of the November 8,2016 announcement approaches, was a disaster. It destroyed livelihoods of the MSME sector and the labouring classes. Then, GST bamboozled the shopkeeper. And the shortfall in its collections month after month point to both a slowing economy and its flawed architecture. Not for nothing was it kept in abeyance by the Congress for long years.

So, a second Modi term in 2019, despite spurious accusations of corruption in the 36 fighter Rafale purchase, in a forced re-enactment of the Bofors scenario that brough Rajiv Gandhi down, was most galling. And that too with an increased majority. What can the electorate be thinking? Do they not see the mismatch between performance and promise?

And now, six months into Modi 2.0, two daunting but long-promised Hindutva aspirations have been fulfilled. The first is the dramatic abrogation of Articles 35A and 370 less than three months into the second term - by simply voiding them both of all content. It was a spectacular bit of legal interpretation and execution.

This, and the resultant main-streaming of J& K via the creation of two new Union Territories -one of Buddhist majority Ladakh, and the other by combining Jammu & Kashmir. There is a new awakening of hope and ambition in both these territories. There has been very little by way of fall out. Pakistan has been reduced to near tears for the lack of support it garnered internationally. And domestically, there has been a broad acceptance of the move. Of course, most of the prospective trouble-makers were safely locked up, out of harm’s way.

The other major achievement within 6 months of this term, is the unanimous and positive Supreme Court verdict on the Ram Temple at Ayodhya. This will lead to the construction of the cherished temple soon, after a very long interregnum. Ayodhya itself is set to be transformed as well.

Other possibilities, to set right the distortions in secularism, is the promulgation of the Uniform Civil Code and the implementation of the National Register of Citizens nationally. Repossession of Gilgit-Baltistan and PoK could also come about through a fortuitous quirk of fate within this very term.

Even on the basis of its present successes, the NDA, increasingly becoming synonymous with the BJP till new allies come along, should be re-elected in 2024.

The only fly in the ointment is the Modi government’s handling of the economy. Not only is it imperative to improve performance for the sake of the hopeful masses looking for jobs and livelihood, but also to keep up with our raised international diplomacy.

To be taken seriously abroad, we have to spend money by way of aid, grants and ventures. Money which we patently do not have at present. Nor can we properly finance our own necessary development and welfare programmes domestically. Holding to the fiscal discipline we have set for ourselves is proving extremely difficult at a 5.5% GDP growth rate when we need 10%.

In today’s world, to raise one’s political profile, particularly in competition with China, without the assurance of a robust economy, simply cannot be sustained. The government will have to take many bold and reformist steps and quickly.

If there is anything that will upset the applecart politically from mid-term in 2021, it is a floundering economy. The cyclical and global position notwithstanding, Prime Minister Modi and his cabinet have no room for excuses or bluster in this regard. The economy is the keystone, and its neglect could bring the whole house down.

(893 words)

For: WIONNEWS

November 19^th, 2019

Gautam Mukherjee

Gautam Mukherjee is a perceptive commentator on current affairs based in New Delhi

The Transition To Complete Dominance

The Transition To Complete Dominance

What does the Bharatiya Janata Party stand for? Is it patriotism, nationalism with a saffron hue, and economic welfare of all? This will have to be made clearer. Others, allies and opponents both, are falling by the wayside. Political space is being ceded. And not by just those of the Lohiaite or Socialist persuasion.

The challenges have begun to come from BJP allies themselves. One in particular, that even professes Hindutva moorings. But, when the ideological position of the ruling dispensation, including its integrity, is challenged, a change must come.

An “ally”, may now be in apparent cahoots with their so-called political rivals. It is time to speed things up. Is this just brinkmanship?

Can the pre-poll alliance towards formation of the government in Maharashtra be stabilised by influential quarters from Nagpur?

But how much of the situation has been provoked by ideological drift, both in the BJP and the Shiv Sena, and how much is just a political battle for survival on the part of the latter?

How so ever the immediate situation pans out, in future it needs to be remembered that an assertive Hindu nationalist BJP provides proof of commitment and maintains its credibility. Being all things to all people is a political position that has long belonged to Congress.

The Congress has portrayed itself as liberal and inclusive. However the reality has unravelled over time. It is actually tightly dynastic and partisan. It bases its political power, what remains, on the 170 million or more Indian Muslims including a soft attitude towards separatists and terrorists rather than the Indian armed forces in the Kashmir Valley, and even a sympathetic, collusive view on Pakistan and China.

In addition, there are the numerically poor but vociferous and educated liberal-leftists of all hues and creeds fanning the flames.

There is, in common with almost all of the political landscape, the rank opportunism of the political draw that makes for instability and very strange bedfellows.

And then, there are the other minorities, including the small but influential number of Christians, particularly in a Western context.

This manipulation of people on the margins, against majority interests, over several decades since independence, has angered the vast Hindu nation.

This includes the OBC and Dalit masses, even though some of these sections enjoy reservations and other affirmative action benefits. Together with the upper castes, Hindus comprise, even today, nearly 80% of the populace.

The Congress-led partisanship has lost it, the UPA, and even its other allies in the erstwhile loose Mahagatbandhan, many votes. That, and its massive corruption.

In 2019, it is seen that the Congress also suffers from a vacuum caused by the lack of charismatic, articulate, intelligent leadership beyond its ageing seniors.

The public may have largely lost patience with Congress and its friends including the Communists, but a revival in its political fortunes might be forming. This is largely in reaction to the absence of a clear cut ideological position in the BJP.

However, the reforming of the status of J&K in Modi 2.0, and the imminent decision, probably favourable, on the Ram Mandir at Ayodhya have taken care of two long pending issues.

But to go the whole hog, the Uniform Civil Code is a must, as is the nation-wide implementation of the NRC and a concerted move towards a Hindu Rashtra to replace the false secularism we have known so far.

Prime Minister Modi did start his consecutive second term in 2019 with an enlarged mandate. But strangely, in the very first flush, he floated an extension to his winning slogan of 2014-namely ‘Sabka Vishwas”. This took many of his supporters by surprise, but wasn’t believed by his detractors either. Was it, in fact, a political experiment?

It was interpreted to primarily mean an inclusion of the Muslims, in particular, into the BJP’’s vision of “Vikas”. Did it intend to introduce special measures to exclusively help Muslims, just like the Congress? Was it an attempt to reboot the BJP image by edging from the right towards the middle? But why? Why, for that matter, did Modi 2.0 expend  so much political energy on passing the strictures of Triple Talaq into law? Does the BJP expect to garner much of the female Muslim vote? Is this a realistic aspiration beyond a weak 10 to 15 percent of Muslim women?  Is the effort put into Triple Talaq, by casting it in terms of women’s empowerment, commensurate with the political returns?

Try as it might, the opponents of the BJP including most Muslim leaders, never tire of depicting it as “divisive”. Echoes of this position come from parts overseas, not only from Pakistan, but from left-leaning journalists, intellectuals and academics in the West. But can this leopard ever change its spots irrespective of the inducements?

Could there not have been time saved and better yields from promoting Hindutva and right-wing economics for the faithful?

The present leadership of the BJP is honour bound to promote the core agenda of the RSS, which has long supported and inspired BJP. And straying far from this path makes it look very much like the Congress. Moving away from its core beliefs also confuses its solid mass of voters.

The Modi-Shah led BJP would have the public view the abrogation of Articles 370 and 35A and the formation of two union territories where J&K state once stood in purely nationalist terms.

But many, amongst the libleft and the minorities see it as a curtailment of Muslim freedom, and human rights violations. All this is projected as a political battering ram against the BJP. There is no acceptance on its part of the BJP line that it is a visionary move to foster the better development of the region. A reform designed to take the region away from the scourge of Pakistan sponsored terrorism. But what about promoting a demographic shift in the Kashmir Valley as the Chinese have effected into Tibet?

BJP wants the nation as a whole and the international community to see the changes in Kashmir as the setting right of a historical mistake. But, to make it stick it has to push onwards. Minorities need to be protected but the majority must assert irself.

The behaviour of the Shiv Sena in the formation of the new government in Maharashtra is a harbinger of things to come.    More NDA allies are likely to worry about being thrust into oblivion, via the submergence of their own distinct identity. This, more so, because their bases are in one or the other state of the union, rather than a national presence.

Shiv Sena was born and bred in Maharashtra. And even though it laid claim to the mantle of national Hindutva, this started slipping away to the BJP right from the start.Even as it was indeed the Shiv Sainiks who brought the domes of the Babri Masjid down in 1992.

And today, days before the decision by the Supreme Court to allow a new temple to come up in its place, the Shiv Sena itself is apparently about to self-immolate. If it bows its knee to BJP for the sake of government formation, it will be steadily marginalised for its extreme disloyalty. And for having used up most of its political capital.

If it forms the government with its ideological enemies, the NCP and the Congress, it will definitely be short-lived.  

Others in the NDA, most notably the Akali Dal, currently out of power in Punjab, with grave alleged charges of corruption against it, could in time, also become history. This, not just because of its loss of power to the Congress, led by the popular Captain Amarinder Singh of the Patiala royal family, but because they stand rejected by the Punjabis and Sikhs.

But even as regional parties in the NDA alliance discredit  and marginalise themselves, the resurgent RSS backed BJP has to fulfil its own promises. It must shake off other ideas and prepare to go it alone to fulfil the aspirations of its voters.

(1,331 words)

For: Sirfnews

November 5^th, 2019

Gautam Mukherjee