Long holiday for RS after 7 days ruckus

by Harish Gupta, National Editor, Lokmat Group

Long holiday for RS after 7 days ruckus

Rift continues between BJP & Opposition

Harish Gupta

New Delhi, Dec. 19

The Rajya Sabha will go for a long holiday beginning December 22 to December 26 and resume functioning from December 27. Initially, the Rajya Sabha was to close down on December 25 for the Christmas holiday. But the members wanted that December 24 and December 26 be also declared as holidays. It is unlikely that the Rajya Sabha will be able to function for the next two days either as ruckus is continuing in the Upper House between the Opposition and the ruling party.

The proceedings in the Rajya Sabha were washed out for the seventh day today after the opposition and treasury benches clashed over the Rafale deal and members from Tamil Nadu continued protesting over the Cauvery issue.

The Rajya Sabha was adjourned for the day after Congress members holding placards seeking a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) into the Rafale deal trooped into the well of the House soon after official papers were laid on the table.

They joined members of the AIADMK and DMK who have been trooping to the well of the House over the Cauvery issue ever since the Winter Session of Parliament began on December 11.

Treasury benches countered the Congress by raising banners seeking an apology from Congress President Rahul Gandhi following the Supreme Court clean chit to the Rafale deal.

Amid the uproar, Parliamentary Affairs Minister Vijay Goel demanded that Congress deputy leader Anand Sharma withdraw the remarks made by him in the House on Tuesday.  Naidu also allowed Bhupendra Yadav (BJP) to make his submission on the statement made by the newly sworn-in Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Kamal Nath on migrant workers from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.

As the slogan shouting from both sides continued, Naidu said, “It is very clear that none of you want the House to run... I don’t want this (ruckus) to be seen by the people,” he said, while adjourning the proceedings for the day.  The Chairman had categorically told the members that he would adjourn the House within minutes if they did not maintain discipline rather than summoning the house repeatedly and then adjourning several times.
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Didi may challenge Modi in 2019

by Harish Gupta, National Editor, Lokmat Group

Since Narendra Modi bulldozed the parliament in May 2014, and repeated the feat three years later in Uttar Pradesh, the largest state, the opposition is overwrought with frustration. With the chances of its electoral recovery rather distant, it is unable to paper over the lengthening, and deepening, lines of its internal fissures. Like Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar’s exit from its camp; his JD(U) facing an existential crisis; or the CPI(M), which is convulsing with internal dissensions so deep that its general secretary Sitaram Yechury fails to get his party’s nod for returning to the Rajya Sabha with Congress support.

The opposition is hamstrung for other reasons too. Faced with BJP, RSS and their ideological challenge, the traditional ‘secular’ politician seems to have lost the plot. His response to incidents of serious cultural onslaught is feeble, at best. For example, no opposition party has worked out a coherent strategy to combat the Hindutva groups nursing their private militia in the name of cow vigilantes. They attack cow vigilantism as though it were the handiwork of extreme bigots sheltered by the Hindutva groups. But they have failed to present it as an integral part of an agenda to turn the religious minorities into second class citizens. Their bankruptcy surfaced when Congress workers attacked a BJP leader in Chhattisgarh responsible for cows death. On the rare occasions that Congress president Sonia Gandhi, or Rahul Gandhi, the vice president, comment on contemporary issues, they fail to strike a chord. While Rahul shoots and scoots, his mother has limited grasp of India’s social and civilizational issues. BSP supremo Mayawati, always shy to venture beyond Dalit issues has become even more tongue-tied. Down south in Tamil Nadu, ruling AIADMK and two other factions are getting sucked into the BJP rather than trying to redefine themselves in India’s political landscape after the end of multi-party rule. In Maharashtra, so total is the hold of BJP that Shiv Sena, its ideological sibling and local rival for power, outshines other opposition parties. In the states where the Congress is ensconced, such as Karnataka, there is not much certainty about its continuance.

In such bleak scenario for the opposition, two things are missing—leadership and strategy. Some of the opposition parties assumed that, in fighting BJP, the best strategy would be to forget past differences with the Congress and tie up with it. In Uttar Pradesh, former chief minister Akhilesh Yadav tried it, and paid heavily for that mistake. In West Bengal, the CPI(M), by fighting the 2016 assembly election jointly with the Congress, fell into the same trap.

With the passing of years, if there is a single opposition leader to cobble up a strategy against BJP’s divisive politics, she is Mamata Banerjee. The West Bengal chief minister is a master player of the caste and sub-caste cards. In 2011, she succeeded in putting the 34-year-old CPI(M) rule to an end my mobilising the subalterns against a party which, though highly regimented, had only higher castes in its upper echelons.

Her Bengal is in BJP’s crosshairs for a long time. During CPI(M) rule, there was no entry for the Hindutva politics as the state’s poor were entirely identified with the hammer-and-sickle. BJP thought that, following the Marxists’ exit, it may be able to polarize votes.

But the BJP’s strategy against Mamata Banerjee has not succeeded so far. It brought limited dividend in 2014 with BJP getting 16 per cent votes (only two seats). But the BJP share came down to 10 per cent in the assembly elections two years later. Banerjee ruled the roost as her deft ‘salami slicing’ of the state’s huge OBC and dalit population did not allow the BJP to herd all non-Hindus under the saffron shamiana. It is a strategy that has worked.

In India, with ‘forward caste’ population estimated to be around 25 per cent (that leaves three-quarters of the population comprising the entire panoply of OBC and dalit, plus minorities), it is tough for BJP, to win elections without support from a large section of non-caste Hindus. That explains why Modi, and party president Amit Shah, have been reaching out to those on the lower rungs of the caste ladder, with a Dalit being made the President of India. Ram Vilas Paswan, a Dalit, heads the LJSP, an important partner in the ruling NDA. During his tours aimed at the 2019 general election, Shah makes it a point to have lunch (well publicised) one day in a dalit home.

In India’s social fabric of mixed hue, it is not possible to win elections on the support of one or two castes. Mayawati, for example, won elections in Uttar Pradesh whenever she could broaden her appeal beyond the jatav community of dalits to which she belongs. But Mamata Banerjee’s appeal is subtler. It works on the ‘class animosity’ among castes, thus posing a challenge to the BJP strategy of appealing to an all-embracing Hindu identity. Last year, as there were minor skirmishes between Hindus and Muslims at Dhulagarh in Howrah district, BJP bent over backwards to give it a communal tinge but the Trinamool leader used a mix of her understanding of subaltern politics, and executive power, to deny BJP any leeway.

The answer to religious identity politics is the politics of subaltern identity. Nitish Kumar realised it as he introduced the mahadalit concept and re-embraced Lalu Yadav. But he has hung up his boots in opposition politics. In today’s scenario, if Modi’s BJP can face a serious contender in 2019, it has to be from Mamata Banerjee.

It's Modi Vs Gandhis, let India wait

by Harish Gupta, National Editor, Lokmat Group

As a joke, it is clever but contrived. As a jibe in parliament, it is rank graceless. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s latest remark in the Rajya Sabha about his predecessor Dr. Manmomohan Singh—only Doctor saab knows the art of bathing wearing a raincoat in the bathroom—looks like having put paid to the budget session when it resumes on March 9 after a month-long adjournment. The Congress, which is Lilliputian in the Lok Sabha but ‘big brother’ in the Upper House, has threatened to keep out of the rest of the session if Modi doesn’t apologize. And that’s asking for the moon unless the stand is changed after March 11.

However, beyond the frightening display of “indigestion”  at the highest level of India’s political life, the incident also highlights just what CPI(M) party chief and Rajya Sabha member Sitaram Yechury  remarked, that it is not a reply (to President’s address) but an election speech. For that matter, on demonetisation, none from the treasury benches, including the Prime Minister, ventured to respond to the fact of the GDP dropping a full percentage point post-note ban. During the winter session, it was Dr Singh who had got Modi’s goatby forecasting that GDP would be dented by a percentage point, and even upped the ante, in an uncharacteristic way, by calling demonetisation as “organized loot” and “legalized plunder”. Dr Manmohan Singh’s sharp attack on the Modi government surprised all because he rarely spoke in such strong words before, even when Rahul Gandhi tore his Ordinance in full public view. Modi who was sitting in the Rajya Sabha then, kept his cool and waited for an opportune time to strike back. And when he did, all hell broke.

Congress’ leaders did their best to counter Modi’s offensive, but it was not enough. BJP president Amit Shah promptly sprinkled salt on the wound by reminding Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi about his mother Sonia Gandhi’s famous invective at Modi during the days when he was chief minister of riot-hit Gujarat, that he’s maut ka saudagar (merchant of death). Shah did a bit more chest-thumping as he claimed that BJP has given a prime minister who “speaks” and before him “there was one whose voice could be heard only by you and your mother”.

It is evident that if the existing ill will between BJP and Congress continues—and there is not a snowball’s chance in hell that it will go anytime soon—there will hardly be any significant legislative action in the present Lok Sabha. Modi’s ‘raincoat’ jibe was undoubtedly unbecoming of him, but so was Manmohan Singh’s “organised loot” and “plunder”, words that the Prime Minister said Singh had been “made to utter” (implying off-stage prompting by the Congress president). Looking backward, it is obvious that what was mere obstructionism by BJP during UPA 1 (2004-09) turned into splenetic outbursts in the UPA 2 (2009-14) period, when the opposition led by BJP blocked every legislative move by the UPA. Political analysts gave it a sober name, ‘policy paralysis’, but it was actually a series of outbursts against the Congress’ dynastic leaders.

Now the table has turned, and it is ‘Modi V. Dynasty’. At an election rally in Haridwar last week, Modi was at the height of vexation with the Congress’ top leadership. “I tell the Congress leaders: hold your tongue, else I have your detailed horoscope. I do not want to desert dignity and reason, but if your desert dignity and reason and speak nonsense, your history will always chase you”. It can well be empty bluster; but who knows if it has ammunition?

Beyond the clash of ego, however, there is a looming threat that the medium to long term effects of demonetisation by the Modi administration may put India on an unexpectedly slippery slope of economic slow growth against strong global headwinds. IMF has trimmed India’s growth forecast for current (2016-17) and next fiscal by one percentage point (giving some credence to Manmohan Singh’s forecast though he said there will be two per cent fall ) and 0.4 percentage point, respectively, primarily to choking of consumption due to cash shortage and payment disruptions across the economy. But the same IMF, in its World Economic Outlook (WEO) update, has upped China’s growth estimate for 2016-17 from 6.5 per cent to 6.7 per cent. China is an aging country with a per capita GDP over five times that of India. It will be difficult, if not impossible, for India to catch up with economies that have raced ahead if it has no national strategy to put its youthful population to productive use. But, going by the Modi-Gandhi feud, national consensus on any issue is unlikely.

It is even more unfortunate that India’s electoral politics does not hold out any prospect for political unanimity on national cause. It is because over time, particularly in the present decade, the two warring parties, BJP and Congress, are increasingly becoming driven by personalities. Modi and the Gandhis, to be precise. If there are others, they’re bit players. Or like new organs growing from original stem cells, like Sasikala has grown out of the late Jayalalithaa of Tamil Nadu. The party system is under pressure, not merely in India but all over. The Grand Old Party of America, the Republican Party, has been totally eclipsed by Trump, who is anything but a republican, be it a small ‘r’ or capital. The British Labour Party is on stretcher and the Conservative Party died with Brexit. In India, the Congress resembled a party in the classical sense so long as it had a full-scale party as its main adversary, the BJP. But the fig-leaf is gone. And a couple of battling individuals have taken the charge to define the destiny of the world’s largest democracy!