by Harish Gupta, National Editor, Lokmat Group
Of late there are disturbing signs that Prime Minister Narendra Modi is losing one of his main character traits: equipoise. In the 13 years that he led the government of Gujarat, many a times did he face strong headwind. But he took it in his stride. He seldom made a move that wasn’t planned with care. Nor did he take wrong steps during the long Lok Sabha campaign either, to retrace them later. What is it that now makes him wobble? Or rather to make a move with motives not clear?
The assembly election in Maharashtra took place only a few months back and a power-sharing agreement between BJP and the Shiv Sena was achieved amid a lot of public show of gripe from the Sena, and BJP’s evident discomfiture. Relations between the two traditional partners had considerably deteriorated since the demise of Sena founder Bal Thackeray in 2012 and the emergence of his blunt-speaking son Uddhav Thackeray as the inheritor. Therefore, seeing the score card after the assembly poll and discovering that NCP had enough strength to be the new alliance partner, Modi had begun veering towards Sharad Pawar, the NCP boss. But Pawar has a long history of what RSS, the ideological center of the saffron brotherhood, calls “minority appeasement”. Playing hard on this issue, and the long history of association between the two organizations, Thackeray Junior ultimately won the day and the deal was done. But trouble began erupting soon afterwards. Most Sena ministers complained they were not being given any responsibility. One of them, Sanjay Rathore, MoS Revenue, recently exploded as he called the arrangement between BJP and the Sena a “farce”.
He had reason to go ballistic as it was on the eve of Modi’s recent sharing of dais with Pawar in his home turf of Baramati. During the election campaign, Modi, ever keen to grab the headline with a witty turn of phrase, no matter how stale, had described NCP as a “naturally corrupt party”. But now the bon homie is so unexpected, if not embarrassing, that Modi, in his Baramati address, asked the audience to “forget” what he had said in the heat of the moment as politicians (like he and Pawar) might fight “only two days in a year but they serve the nation over the remaining 363 days”. In other words, he was preparing ground for swapping partner, from the Sena to the ‘Badshah of Baramati’.
And the Sena did sniff it for quite some time. It began with Rathore who had discovered that his senior, BJP’s Eknath Khadse, had been guarding the Anti-Corruption Bureau under the revenue department like a precious secret under his charge, and would not let him come anywhere near the files to get a hang of the cases under the Bureau’s lens. Rathore has written a five-page letter to his leader, Uddhav, complaining that the BJP cabinet minister was “humiliating” him by not taking him into confidence on sensitive issues.
Surely there is no dearth of “sensitive issues” in the closet of the Anti-Corruption Bureau that might interest the Shiv Sena which, as senior partner, has run for decades the corruption-ridden Brianmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), India’s richest municipality with a budget of more than Rs 34,000 crore. It is usual practice in Mumbai that the political authorities of BMC and the Mantralaya would share the spoils of office. But two things of late seem to have put question mark on this cosy nexus. First, the exit of old Patriarch Bal Thackeray, making the old arrangement appear uncertain in future. Besides, under the overall command of Modi, whose declared motto is “neither will I put my hand in the cookie jar, nor will I let anybody else try it”, it became obvious that the old arrangement of corruption through syndicate system could not be viable any longer.
If there is any substance in Rathore’s observation, the government under Phadnavis could have activated the Anti-Corruption Bureau on cases that might leave the Sena red-faced. It is quite likely that Modi knew the script, and could well have authored it himself. His visit to Baramati is perhaps an invitation to Pawar and his NCP to join the bed that the Sena would keep warm, assuming that it would quit in a huff. Modi is in fact mollycoddling Pawar no end. His Baramati visit synchronised with a government proposal to permit blending of 10 per cent ethanol in diesel in order to make the fuel cleaner. Sugarcane being the source of ethanol, the news should warm the hearts of Pawar and his large and rich constituency of sugar barons. Plus lifting ban on sugar exports will further gladden his heart.
So Modi hasn’t quite taken an unpremeditated step in visiting Pawar’s lair and renewing old ties. But why did he choose to shower praises on Pawar and making unsolicited disclosures the day when the AAP cabinet under Arvind Kejriwal was sworn in at Delhi’s Ramlila Ground, and Kejriwal had even personally invited him for the ceremony?
I think Modi is not blindsided to the message of AAP’s victory. But he has read it as a challenge in the urban space, particularly in Mumbai, where AAP is consolidating its base. Over a thousand volunteers from the city had actually moved to Delhi to help in AAP’s campaign. Maharashtra contributed to the AAP campaign kitty maximum funds. Mumbaikar Mayank Gandhi is a prominent AAP face. It is obvious that the continuance of BMC under the Sena’s lackadaisical and venal administration will be both a cause and a catalyst for AAP to feel the ground under its feet in a state as large and rich as Maharashtra. If the BJP government in Mumbai, with NCP’s willing cooperation, can lay its hand on some of the suspected shenanigans of the Sena, it can then go to town claiming to be anti-corruption crusader itself, thus snatching away AAP’s trademark banner.
If true, it is a clever move. But it is doubtful if BJP can accept NCP, which Modi aptly described as “naturally corrupt”, and still keep its own nose clean. It seems Modi is taking AAP as a political challenge, something that is to be countered with strategy, and not as a wake-up call to stick to the ethical path. I may be wrong but I think it would have been a bold and humane gesture if Modi had attended the swearing-in ceremony of a small city (where he lives permanently now) government instead of spending the day to find ways of leaving one stale partner to pick another.
