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.

Nemesis rides a Bicycle

by Harish Gupta, National Editor, Lokmat Group

It is the last week-end before the fate of the Maha Gathbandhan or Grand Alliance of the non-BJP parties in Uttar Pradesh is decided. While the SP and Congress have finally agreed to a seat-sharing arrangement, others have yet to chip in. In the state with 403-strong assembly, the young SP supremo and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav inarguably holds an image hugely surpassing that of Congress’ Rahul Gandhi. While SP won 224 seats in the 2012 election, the Congress got only 28, or a little over a tenth of the former. However, while SP bagged 29.13 per cent of votes, Congress tally was 11.65 per cent, which is not so abysmally low in relation to the winner. While the ‘grand old party’ had very few strong candidates in any region, including Awadh, its historical forte, it had, and possibly still has, flocks who’d still swear by the centenarian party.

And that perhaps explains why the 2017 alliance between SP and Congress is crucial for both SP and Congress. Akhilesh has just maneuvered his way out of the grip of old-timers led by his father Mulayam Singh Yadav, SP’s founder, and his crafty brother Shivpal Singh. Despite being the young, affable and smart CM of UP much of Akhilesh’s inability to pull it out of its disappointing image of being a lawless land lies with his father and his associates. These old-timers had imposed their authority on the young leader. After a lot of public spat, and jousting with an army of “uncles”, Akhilesh has finally secured the liberty to shape his legislative party the way he wishes. But he is neither cut in the mould of the Yadav clan’s rebellious child, nor would it give him any electoral percentage if he does so. SP under Akhilesh has to be a ‘compromise’ with SP of his father, who still enjoys some following. It’s a necessity that has driven Akhilesh to offer a ticket even to Shivpal and Azam Khan.

That is quite a tight-rope walk and is risky as Akhilesh alone cannot bring about an image makeover of the SP, which is identified with patriarchy, misogyny and gangster-worship. An alliance with Rahul, the young leader of an old national party, is expected to go a long way in wrapping up the Akhilesh-led combination in an aura of youthfulness. Besides, the Congress party’s traditional link with the state’s large Brahmin community (12 per cent) is a bonus.

The alliance looked wobbly until the last minute as Congress was playing pricy by demanding more than it deserved based on the 2014 Lok Sabha polls. The Congress won just two seats, those of Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi while the SP managed to win 5 against the ‘Modi storm’ and the decline in its vote share was much less than Congress’ cliff diving.  To nurture its pocket-boroughs, the VIP Lok Sabha constituencies of Amethi (Rahul Gandhi) and Rae Bareli (Sonia Gandhi), Congress demanded maximum assembly seats in that area.  

In the tough bargaining between Akhilesh and the Gandhi clan, the latter’s leverage is the Brahmin support it has always attracted. In Uttar Pradesh, Brahmins are more than a caste. They’re opinion makers as they interface with the public—be it in the local media, educational institutions or the bar associations or religious institutions. It is from these platforms that the hawa, or the popular consensus, moves as to which side is ‘winning’. And this verdict motivates fence-sitters, who represent majority of voters in a state like Uttar Pradesh where ideology, unlike, say, in Kerala, counts for very little. In 2007, it’s the hawa fanned by the upper caste that had made fence-sitters believe it was Mayawati’s turn, and she made it to the top office. In the last Lok Sabha election, the upper caste voters including Brahmins voted overwhelmingly for Narendra Modi as they saw him as a symbol of both conservative Hindutva and a modern reformer. But, over the years, BJP in Uttar Pradesh is perceived as an outright communal party with OBC groups at its core. Keshav Prasad Maurya, an OBC leader, now holds the post of BJP state president. BJP MP Yogi Adityanath, much criticised for his communal hate-mongering, has been chosen among the party’s main campaigners. Besides, the memories of riots at Moradabad and Saharanpur are still raw. It peeved the educated class that expected Modi to usher in a wave of modernisation, but got communal slugfest in its place.

From Akhilesh’s perspective, Congress’ demands of 125 seats were undoubtedly irksome. But the dividend he can expect from an SP-Congress unity, extending to JD(U), RLD and even Mamata Banerjee’s TMC being on board, goes a very long way. If the future alliance ultimately trounces BJP in India’s most populous state—and that too three years after BJP had grabbed 73 of its 80 Lok Sabha seats—it will get flagged as evidence of the 2014 victory of Modi being a purely temporary phenomenon, something like a flash flood. If the BJP-Akali Dal combine also flounders in Punjab, it will lead to considerable diminution of Modi’s stature as winner in 2019.

By emerging as the new face of his party to defeat the old cabal of men with backward ideas and orthodox mindset, Akhilesh has already positioned himself as an icon of young voters. If he can forge and lead a powerful alliance in the next two years, he can  become the unquestioned national alternative. That should make BJP see its nemesis coming on a bicycle (SP’s poll symbol). 

Little promise of break-out

by Harish Gupta, National Editor, Lokmat Group

2017 has begun on a heap of misconfigurations from the year that is just over. Brexit, Donald Trump’s victory in the US presidential election, rise of ultra-nationalism, and potential ‘great dictators’, at all corners of the world. 

At home, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s aggressive foreign policy has begun losing its sheen, with traditional India-baiters China and Pakistan wresting old ally Russia from India’s embrace. Trump’s entry into the White House still a few days ahead, and with his legendary unpredictability, events in 2017 may put India in a diplomatic isolation it never experienced. On the economic front, the post-2010 stalemate continues, with demand subdued, exports stunted and consumer prices ruling high. There is little promise of the new year being a break-out year either for India or the world. 

However, Modi’s shock move on November 8 to scrap the high denomination notes of 500 and 1,000 rupees has come with the promise of bringing about a series of systemic changes in the economy. The demonetisation exercise has brought large amounts of money into the banking system, thus enabling the government to take a host of fiscal measures to address India’s enduring problem of inequality. It looks like note-scrapping is only the first of a series of measures on the anvil, and may extend to locking up the channels through unmonitored cash flows—property, gold, etc. The biggest distortion caused by unaccounted money is in politics as the untold cost of elections is met from illicit ‘donations’ from persons and organizations with elaborate post-poll agenda. Much of UPA-2’s (2009-14) troubles over price and distribution of natural resources, for that matter, had originated from shadowy poll financiers insisting on their demands being met by the government after election. Under Representation of the People Act, a political party is not liable to disclose identities of donors below Rs. 20,000. Modi, in his new year’s eve speech, has used strong language to remind all parties of their moral duty to help change the elections laws so that election finance becomes transparent, thus clogging perhaps the most toxic outflow channel of unaccounted cash. There is a possibility that some action may follow in the days to come.

Modi’s position in the world, which looked robust till last year, may be badly amiss now. Apart from the diplomatic isolation which I mentioned at the beginning of this article, what he may face is some chilling after-effect of growing protectionism which is threatening global trade and, consequently, the hope of India using FDI as fuel of future growth. 

It is evident that Modi is not without an early apprehension about global investment drying up. That may be the real trigger for his de-monetisation move, as all that he wanted, perhaps, was to mobilise domestic cash for giving a push to the economy. May be it will work even in the medium term as the promises he has made in his new year’s eve speech focuses on housing for the poor which, by itself, can be catalyst for general growth. The government banks, reeling under bad debt (the stressed advances to gross advances in June 2016 being 12%), were compelled to shut their doors to all sorts of borrowers, including the small and medium sector, in the recent past, that being the main reason for economic slow-down. 2017 may witness the banks resuming advances to the SME sector which contributes 40% to exports and 45% to the total manufacturing output.  

However, in the rapid course corrections the Centre will be forced to make this year on practically all fronts, its success will greatly depend on Modi’s ability to ride out the political storm at home. It appears that the Congress had put all its eggs on the single basket of de-monetisation, thinking that it could not but fail miserably, leading to a massive backlash. Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi happily stayed in this bubble of illusion, and was supported by Mamata Banerjee and Arvind Kejriwal. But Rahul’s de-monetisation ‘bomb’ turned out to be a damp squib with no visible backlash. As he is reportedly holidaying abroad, there is slender chance of his party clawing its way back to a respectable height in near future. 

In Uttar Pradesh, the election is likely to be bellwether for general elections in 2019 owing to its size and also due to the closeness of the race between BJP and the ruling Samajwadi Party. In 2012, SP won over half the 403 assembly seats and Akhilesh Singh Yadav, the young chief minister, became the poster boy of the party founded by his father, Mulayam Singh Yadav. But the Yadav family’s primacy was severely dented when, in 2014, BJP grabbed 73 of the state’s 80 LS sets. Trouble erupted in the Yadav clan since then, as Mulayam and his aides began doubting Akhilesh’s capability to measure up to BJP’s challenge while Akhilesh held his father, and his proneness to drive the government from back seat, squarely responsible for the defeat. 

The state’s third player, Mayawati, has somehow lost the charisma that enabled her in 2007 to cobble together a multi-caste canvas in which upper castes coexisted with the jatav—her own caste. It did not last in the 2012 election. Nor is there much indication of its revival this time round. Akhilesh is still a leader who commands respect for bringing about some improvement in the quality of life in Uttar Pradesh—a so-called ‘bimaru’ state—by investing in electricity, roads and girls’ education. But doubt persists about his family feud ending before elections, thus giving BJP a valuable edge in a state which is home to a fifth of the country’s population. Armed with Modi's December 31 largesse and project the PM as  messiah of the poor, the Sangh Parivar has launched massive blitzkrieg in UP. Undoubtedly, round one has gone to Modi post-demonitization.  

Not enough to be secular

by Harish Gupta, National Editor, Lokmat Group

The Dadri incident may have dented the image of the Modi government. But it has also exposed the emptiness of the secular lobby's bluster. Of course Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal visited Bisada village in Greater Noida. But the visitors' list ends there.