Fly on the wall | Mamata's game of 50

Harish Gupta, National Editor, Lokmat Group

Mamata's game of 50
The Game-2024 for the Lok Sabha polls has already begun. While the Congress Party is desperately working hard to revive itself and putting its entire might to win a couple of states in the ensuing round of Assembly polls early next year, the BJP is trying hard to defend its citadel in four states; UP, Uttarakhand, Goa and Manipur. Punjab is being watched very closely as its an open game with pollsters predicting a win for the dark horse AAP though its early days. These polls are also crucial for some of the regional players like SP, and BSP who have been facing BJP's onslaught for the past seven years in UP. But for most of the regional Satraps in the East, West and Southern regions, these Assembly polls are not of much consequence.

In the East in West Bengal, Chief Minister and TMC supremo Mamata Banerjee is rather waiting for the Congress to suffer a setback. She knows that she is not a player in North Indian politics and remains unruffled as her honeymoon with the Congress is virtually over. She is now on her own trip with poll strategist Prashant Kishore advising her actively. If grapevine has it, she is now targeting to secure 50 Lok Sabha seats during the 2024 parliamentary polls as she can be a player in any non-BJP government formulation. This is a huge target considering her appeal confined to West Bengal with 42 Lok Sabha seats. She hopes to polarize the state the same way as Modi did in 2014 and 2019. Rather, she will have an added appeal to the voters saying; vote for me as I can be PM, a first Bengali. She may be anywhere between 34-37 Lok Sabha in 2024. But to win extra 13-15 seats, is an Herculean task. She is working hard to replace Congress in the North East comprising 22 Lok Sabha seats. She has already brought senior Congress leader Sushmita Dev into the party and was rewarded with a Rajya Sabha seat to influence voters in Assam and Tripura. She is also making a strategy to get a couple of seats each in Odisha, Jharkhand and even Bihar and enter into strategic adjustments with parties in states where Bengali voters are in large numbers.

The DarK Horse Uddhav
Until the other day, NCP Supremo Shaarad Rao Pawar was the only name that always cropped up for the post of PM probable. But knowledgeable sources say that unassuming Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray could be a new player in the Game-2024. He has changed the entire culture and ethos of Shiv Sena during the past two years in power. Uddhav is in the driver's seat and shown to the people how a coalition government is run. With no one around to take on the mighty BJP juggernaut Uddhav's style of working has given some hope as well. He has been a successful manager, measured in his responses, doesn't mince words either and knows when to keep quiet.

He is managing two very ambitious leaders, Sharad Pawar and Nana Patole with tremendous skill. Political pundits say if India gets a hung parliament, Uddhav is the man to watch. Uddhav has mastered the art of retaining his hard line Hindutva credentials and at the same time running a secular government without big jerks.

He continues to be close to the RSS, goes to Ayodhya, meets Modi and still keeps his secular partners happy. In addition, he also takes pride in his Maratha identity. The Sena has also shed its anti-minority violent image too. In a way, Uddhav Thackeray can be India’s first secular Hindu nationalist. It will be difficult for the BJP to use the minority appeasement bogey against a Hindu party. In addition, big corporate houses in Mumbai also like him. Interestingly, they are the same houses who bow before Modi in Delhi, But keep Thackeray in good humour in Mumbai.

Rising graph of Stalin
After two powerful southern leaders; K Kamraj and J Jayalalitha, failed to grab power in Delhi, DMK's M K Stalin is contemplating trying his luck. But he is not in a hurry and is slowly consolidating his position. He is looking beyond 2024 even if there is a hung house three years down the line. Poll strategist Prashant Kishore is a common factor between Stalin and Mamata Banerjee. If Mamata is targeting a 50 seats game, he is not far behind either. Currently, he is creating an identity raising issues like “federal structure” etc without talking politics directly. He is busy mobilising non-BJP Chief Ministers on key issues.

1 Maharashtra Police personnel get Home Minister's medal

by Harish Gupta, National Editor, Lokmat Group

11 Maharashtra Police personnel get Home Minister's medal

Lokmat news network

New Delhi, Aug.13 

Prashant Shriram Amrutkar, a deputy superindent of Police of Maharashtra Police is among the eleven police personnel who have been awarded the “Union Home Minister’s Medal for Excellence in Investigation” for the year 2019.

In all, 96 Police personnel have been accorded this award in the country. This medal was constituted in 2018 with the objective to promote high professional standards of investigation of crime and to recognize such excellence in investigation by investigating officers. Among the personnel receiving these awards, 15 are from CBI, 11 are from Maharashtra Police, 10 are from Uttar Pradesh Police, 9 are from Kerala Police, 8 are from Madhya Pradesh Police, 6 are from Delhi Police and Karnataka Police and the remaining from the other States/UT and Central Investigating Agencies. These include thirteen (13) women police officers. The names of Maharashtra police officers are given below: 

Avinash Laxminarayan Aghav, PI 

Smt. Shradha Ashok Waydande, API 

Suresh Nanabhau Rokade, PI -

Bhanushali Pradeep Vijay, PI 

Hemant Subhash Patil, PI 

Smt. Priyanka Mahesh Shelke, API 

Sagar Jagannath Shivalkar, PI 

Sanjay Devram Nikumbe, PI 

Sudhakar Dattu Deshmukh, PI

Sachin Sadashiv Mane, API

BJP breaks Opposition parties in Rajya Sabha, Gains Majority to get RTI amendment bill passed

by Harish Gupta, National Editor, Lokmat Group

BJP breaks Opposition parties in Rajya Sabha, 

Gains Majority to get RTI amendment bill passed

Harish Gupta

New Delhi, July 25

The BJP has done it in Rajya Sabha what was unthinkable until the other day. The BJP and the NDA have the support of 102 members in a House of 240 members and the Opposition had 138 MPs on its side. But it created history when it secured the support of 117 votes and the contentious Right to Information (Amendment) Bill was passed.

Interestingly, the Congress and some of the Opposition parties walked out of the house realising that they would lose the vote. However, they took the plea that some of the ruling party members were trying to influence members when the voting was going on.

The support of 117 showed that the government is now comfortable in the Rajya Sabha too.

Though the Congress successfully mustered the support of TMC, NCP, SP, BSP, Left parties and others. But the BJP succeeded in persuading non-allies like the AIADMK, YSR Congress and even the TRS to support the Bill. Congress leaders Jairam Ramesh conceded defeat while making his intervention during the debate saying, “I am aware that telephone calls were made to the state Capitals to muster a majority”. The YSR Congress has two MPs. It si learnt that the two MPs of the PDP and lone MP of the JD-S preferred to remain absent at the time of voting. Surprisingly, even two member TDP also was soft when its leader spoke in the Rajya Sabha.

The Janata Dal (U) which had categoricallystated its opposition to the Triple Talaq Bill, decided to vote in favour of the amendment.

Another ineresting fact also emerged that except for the BJP and its allies parties, no other Opposition party except the Congress issued a whip to its members to attend the House when voting takes place. It is largely because of this very reason that fewer number of members were present in the house when the voting took place.

The TRS wanted an assurance from the government that it would maintain the independence of the Information Commission which was galdly given by Minister of State in the PMO Dr Jitendra Singh.

Ends

Opposition needs French lesson

by Harish Gupta, National Editor, Lokmat Group

The routing of the opposition in the Uttar Pradesh assembly elections by the BJP under Prime Minister Narendra Modi had a stunning effect which will not subside anytime soon.

The initiative that Congress president Sonia Gandhi began since April to meet individual opposition leaders—from Sharad Pawar to CPM’s Sitaram Yechuri, both Nitish Kumar and Lalu Yadav of Bihar, or West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee—is a direct fallout of the defeat in Uttar Pradesh.

However, it is the seemingly irresistible rise of BJP, and the anxiety that it may after all change the rules of the game of politics set in the past decades, that has spread across the length and breadth of the country. In Chennai, the possibility of matinee idol Rajanikanth carrying the flag of BJP into peninsular India has made the Opposition worried. It lent  to the birthday of nonagenarian leader K. Karunanidhi, into a matter of national urgency, on the scale of Udyog Parvin the Mahabharata. In Uttar Pradesh, Samajwadi Party leader and former chief minister Akhilesh Yadav has resumed calling BSP supremo and his sworn enemy Mayawati “bua” and they are talking again directly now. Besides, unfazed by the new anti-corruption inquiries he is facing, Lalu Yadav is holding a joint rally of opposition parties in Patna on August 27, its battle cry being “BJP hatao, desh bachao”.

Nevertheless, achieving opposition unity is easier said than done. It’s because it was hopelessly disunited to begin with, so much so that the BJP could manage to come to power in 2014 due to, inter alia, its disunity. The vote share of NDA was 38 per cent yet it bagged 336 (61.87%) of the 543 Lok Sabha seats.

And now, after the UPA parties’ misfortune, their internal problems have compounded. Mayawati is no longer the monarch of her Jatav community as the Dalit youths of Saharanpur in Uttar Pradesh, have taken their destiny in their own hands instead of leaving it to BSP. They were oppressed by the rich and armed and politically influential Rajputs. Now they have formed Bhim Sena which promises to become the community’s new platform. Within SP, the Yadav family tussle involving  Akhilesh and Mulayam Singh Yadav, his father and the party’s founder, is far from being resolved. Also doubtful is the Congress’ ability to project itself any longer as the ‘natural cradle’ of potential prime ministers. Sonia Gandhi’s ‘unity luncheon’ (for selecting opposition candidate for President election), coinciding with the NDA government’s third anniversary, skipped by Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar, was an impressive photo-op, and just about that.

In fact, Nitish rubbed it in by abstaining from Sonia’s conclave yet meeting the Prime Minister over lunch the very next day. Pawar was present at the lunch but he’d earlier turned down Sonia’s call-in to be UPA’s presidential candidate. “The job comes with a great house but I enjoy talking to you”, he later told journalists. Obviously, the job he’s aspiring to is to lead the next government from Parliament, not Rashtrapati Bhavan. Nitish Kumar, too, has got his sight set on the prime minister’s job. In his earlier meeting with Sonia, he’d recommended a second term for Pranab Mukherjee, the outgoing President. However, he said little about the nature and leadership of a future opposition alliance. The Congress is desperately looking for an alliance with H D Deve Gowda in Karnataka. But Gowda is deeply hurt as the Congress government had put his son H D Kumaraswamy in jail. He did attend Sonia’s lunch after persuaded by Sharad Yadav and Sitaram Yechuri. But no further political deal in Karnataka.

The opposition turf has no shortage of vaulting ambition, inflated ego, or pulses racing doe to Modi’s taxmen and cops closing in on piles of allegedly ill-gotten cash. But that doesn’t a leader make. The big change that has hit the electoral process in democracies worldwide is that it has become almost entirely personality oriented, like in the presidential system, with little room for the opposition except that of “also ran”. Most recently, it has happened in France, with centrist and globalist Emmanuel Macron getting  66 per cent votes while Marine Le Pen, the right-wing populist being left with only 34 per cent. What’s noteworthy is that Macron, who had been the finance minister in the previous socialist government of Francoise Hollande (something comparable in its ineptitude and venality to the Manmohan Singh-led UPA-2), quit it, formed his fledgling party En Marche, and targeted and grabbed his bull’s-eye—the huge middle ground that’d shiver to support Hollande’s  party yet would have voted for Le Pen if there was no option.

Incidentally, Britain is heading for a similar situation as it goes to poll on Thursday, June 8. In this mid-term poll, the British voter will be caught between prime minister Theresa May’s pro-Brexit Conservative Party and the Labour under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn, a rather loopy communist who worships Venezuelan ex-president the late Hugo Chavez and says if elected PM he’d nationalize mail, rail and energy firms. That’s a bit too much in a nation that still respects Margaret Thatcher, the ‘iron lady’ of privatization, and the country reshaped by her. The country became the bedrock on which two ‘new Labour’ PMs, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, could thrive. Corbyn is a hater of their ‘neo-liberalism’ while May is clearly devoid of political ideas. Therefore, it is likely that, come June 8, voters will move one way in large herds but none will be there to represent the sensible middle ground. Significantly, Macron polled 84 per cent of the top 20 per cent highest educated voters.

India did not (and does not) have a Macron-type leader primarily because it lacks enlightened voters. But that is no excuse for leaders being so bereft of ideas about the direction that India may follow. When called upon to govern states, their ideas are limited to banning alcohol, or denying land to industry. It’s not Modi’s opposition, India is waiting for his challenger.

ACHHE DIN NOT TOO FAR

by Harish Gupta, National Editor, Lokmat Group

In May 2014, Narendra Modi, on assuming power as India's Prime Minister, seemed an epitome of strength in stark contrast to UPA in its last leg. But it took only a few months to find the Modi administration's Achilles Heel—its deficit in numbers in the 245-member Rajya Sabha. Pitted against an opposition determined to crush Modi's reputation as a human dynamo, if not his credibility, the government had to sit out as scores of its bills got stalled in the upper house. The government was crippled and the opposition thought it had won.

 However, the Congress' fencing in the Rajya Sabha is showing gaps that may soon be wide enough for Modi to ride through. Come August 1, when biennial elections fall due to 56 seats across 15 states, and seven more nominated members are replaced by 'eminent' personalities chosen by the present dispensation, the NDA/UPA difference will be greatly neutralised. But the real change lies in the growing pull of BJP among large regional players, like TMC in West Bengal, BJD in Odisha and, significantly, both SP and BSP in Uttar Pradesh.

But the number game in Rajya Sabha has only begun. In Andhra Pradesh, one has to watch if TDP gifts an assured seat to BJP minister Nirmala Sitaraman or INLD offers an olive branch in Haryana. And how many seats are gained by BJP's 'frenemies', like SP, YSR Congress and TRS is yet to be seen. And AIADMK, always a supporter of Modi except on the GST Bill, may get even closer to him if it is returned to power in the state for another term. No doubt it is Modi's skill as a player on India's vast political chequerboard that has begun to reap dividends. 

But he is lucky not only on the political front. The met department's forecast of 106 per cent of July-September "long period average" rainfall, after two years of below-average showers, has given a boost to demand which is so overwhelming that it kicked off a week-long stock market rally. Perhaps, rain Gods are also smiling at Modi after two years of drought. The Index of Industrial Production has registered a two per cent rise in February after months of contraction. Of course this rate of growth is midget sized compared to the 6 per cent that India has clocked on an average in the past ten years. But it is the first green shoot after a long drought. It synchronises with yet another happy tiding, that of the consumer price index rising only 4.8 per cent in March from over 5 per cent. Significantly, this drop in retail inflation is due to moderation in food prices, a key factor that can put more disposable income in the hands of the rural population. Besides, it signals the prospect of agriculture turning the corner at last, after a minimal growth of 1.1 per cent in 2015-16 and generally lackadaisical performance in the past. Tied to that is the destiny of half the country's population engaged in agriculture, a sector that contributes only 15 per cent to GDP.

Optimism about India under Modi is not limited to his loyalists and RSS bhakts in the country. It is shared by some of the world's largest Private Equity funds who specialise in the art of investing in businesses that has the prospect to grow in the future, often on a 10-year horizon. Carlyle, the world's second largest PE fund, in a note circulated by its director of research, has noted: "The most optimistic forecast for 2016 GDP growth in China (7%) matches the most pessimistic for India". It quotes IMF data to put India's expected returns on incremental capital (a single unit of capital newly deployed) between 2016 and 2020 at 24.7 per cent. It is twice that of the global figure and 1.7 times of the Emerging Markets. Be it power, railways, roads, airports and ports, the signposts of future growth, India has come a long way in the past two years.

Under Modi, India's politics is moving away from its traditional populist mould. Earlier, Congress was identified with its populist programmes—be it MGNREGA, PDS or doles. The real gains from them remained doubtful due to lack of strict monitoring mechanism and corruption. But Modi, the pragmatic leader, is doggedly pursuing Jan Dhan Yojana, Mudra and Aadhar, projects that bring welfare within the scope of audit. Only future can tell how much of wasteful expenditure Modi's fiscal filters are going to save. He is painted as hardhearted but that did not deter him, or his colleague, Maharashtra chief minister Devendra Fadnavis, to send wagons of drinking water to parched Latur. Modi may have failed to keep his election promise of bringing black money hoarded abroad back to the country. But his government is taking plenty of measures to raise the cost of tax evasion within the country. He is determined to regulate the sectors that shelters black money, such as property, jewellery, natural resources etc.

 He took the bold decision to allow 100% FDI in e-commerce companies thereby eliminating circulation of black money in retail and wholesale trade. He may have been opposed to some of the UPA’s schemes as Gujrat Chief Minister. But he is a fast learner. Once he realises the gains of a scheme, he doggedly pursues it. The way he is going after domestic black money and didn’t yield an inch is an indication of his well crafted strategy. He knows that he is creating an army of Modi-haters. But he had an inkling that the wheel of economy will surely turn. With RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan showering praises on him, the ACHHE DIN are not too far. Narendra Modi is not a hasty reformer. But nor was Deng Xiaobing, the maker of modern China, who said it is a good policy “to cross the river by feeling the stones”

(The author is National Editor, Lokmat group)