On completion of Indian Prime Minister Narandra Modi’s first year in office, an influential foreign magazine described him as a “one-man band”. From outside, India under Modi indeed looks like a one-man show. But the ordinary Indian who spends his or her life in today’s India will understand the growing disconnect between the Centre under Modi and the states, where authoritarian figures are emerging to run their territories like fief. The democratic principles that bind the country are at their weakest in the states, where a slew of despotic leaders have interpreted Modi’s pet phrase, “cooperative federalism”, to their own liking. To them, it means the licence to loot and plunder, and behave like tin-pot dictator, all as a trade-off against remaining nice to Modi on some of his pet national and international issues.
It is a trade-off nonetheless. West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee is an example. After initially going through the motions as a part of the “secular” lobby against Modi, she made an about turn during the budget session, when she supported the Goods and Services Tax (GST) Bill. Now Modi wants her as an ally on two more fronts: first, on the land acquisition bill which is before a joint select committee, and also in improving India’s ties with Bangladesh. Friendship with Bangladesh, a Muslim-majority nation, can be a feather in Modi’s cap who is still disliked by many for what happened in Gujrat under him. Mamata’s support holds the key to refurbishing Indo-Bangla ties for a bilateral agreement for sharing waters of the Teesta river and success of historic Land Boundary Agreement. And Teesta is precisely Mamata’s bargaining chip in her dealings with the Centre on another matter—the CBI investigation into Saradha ponzi scam.Modi is going to Dhaka, the Bangladesh capital, on June 5. The early idea was that Mamata would go with him and return to Kolkata as the Prime Minister leaves for Delhi, on June 7. But she has changed her plans, following which she goes to Dhaka on her own June 5 to attend a ceremony announcing the new land boundary agreement. But she will return the next day, avoiding the bilateral meeting between Modi and Bangladesh prime minister Sheikh Hasina where the Teesta issue is likely to crop up. Earlier, she torpedoed former prime minister Dr. Manmohan Singh’s talks with Hasina by backing out of the tour at the last moment. And now she is again playing the Teesta card.
What she is possibly demanding in exchange of her cooperation is an absolute roll-back of the Saradha investigation by CBI. After being invited to conduct the probe a year ago, the agency has already turned it into a tepid effort, coincidentally after it became clear that Mamata’s TMC was ready to bargain for its strength in the Rajya Sabha. Most of the TMC MPs who were questioned by CBI, including film star Mithun Chakravorty have since then miraculously escaped the embarrassment of detention by the agency. However, CBI seems in no mood to show leniency to a star accused, transport minister Madan Mitra, who is in custody for over 150 days. Mitra, considered very close to Mamata, can reportedly turn into a key witness if the Saradha prosecution ever heads towards its logical culmination. Saradha owner Sudipta Sen bought Mamata’s amateurish painting for a price that even M. F. Hussein would have blushed to ask for, and Mitra was canvassing for the brand even when its collection had begun falling below the payouts. It is Saradha and several other similar ponzi schemes that had reportedly robbed the state’s poor to fund TMC’s election campaign in 2011 which brought it to power. And now Mamata is worried that the Centre may eventually turn Mitra against her. That explains the backtracking on Teesta agreement.
In Punjab, however, looting by state leaders at the top is even more brazen. Deputy chief minister Sukhbir Singh Badal and wife and Union minister Harsimrat Kaur control an eco-tourism project, Sukhvilas, spread over 17 acres of forest land ringing an artificial lake. The Punjab Infrastructure Development Board (PIDB), of which the deputy CM is the chief, has bent over backward to allow ropeways connecting resorts on the lake. On the other hand, the Greater Mohali Area Development Authority (GMADA) has acquired land to build a 100-feet wide road providing access to the Badal family’s tourism complex. It is one of the landowners whose plot had been acquired who moved the Punjab and Haryana high court, and that brought the matter to public notice
Earlier, an incident at Moga of molestation of a young girl, and throwing out her and her mother from a bus, which became the trigger for a nationwide condemnation of the Badals as it became clear that they had owned the bus company, Orbit. As it transpired, the family had direct or indirect control over half a dozen other transport companies plying 230 routes across the state. Modi has little control, not even the right to reproach, the Badals for their horrendous public conduct. Their SAD may be an NDA partner but in Punjab they are law unto themselves.
There are signs of centrifugal pulls visible everywhere. The manner in which Tamil Nadu chief minister Jayalalithaa obtained acquittal from her disproportionate assets case shows the extent to which she stands above the law. Her prosecutor was engaged as late as April last, weeks after she had been acquitted in March by a single-judge bench of the Karnataka High Court, with only the order that was kept in abeyance. It was a first in India’s judicial history that an accused was held not guilty before a prosecutor is appointed. Haryana’s Manohar Lal Khattar may personally be honest. But he is heading a ministerial team full of corrupt leaders which may eventually sink the BJP ship in the state. The less said the better about Madhya Pradesh where Vyapam scam has led to the mysterious deaths of 41 persons and no eyebrows have been raised in Delhi.
With such disdain for the rule of law at the state level, if the ‘federalism’ Modi dreams of bears resemblance with anything, it is with the famous story of ‘Ali Baba and the forty thieves’ in the Arabian Nights collection. These forty men merrily acted on their own, till they got their just dessert from Marzina, the story’s young heroine.
