Why Sonia kept her Cool on NCP !

by Harish Gupta, National Editor, Lokmat Group

Why Sonia kept her Cool on NCP !

When Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha Ghulam Nabi Azad telephoned Praful Patel Friday morning inviting NCP to join the Opposition conclave, an angry Patel put a condition: Issue a statement that NCP did not betray Congress candidate Ahmad Patel in Gujrat and one of its two MLAs voted for the Congress.” Ghulam Nabi rushed to Sonia Gandhi who went into a huddle with other senior party leaders. The outcome: No statement came as none of the two NCP MLAs voted for the Congress. Secondly, the NCP is already hob-nobbing with Shankar Sinh Vaghela to float a “third Front” in Gujrat to weaken the Congress further. Vaghela revolted against the Congress and tried every trick to defeat Ahmad Patel. He himself didn’t join the BJP and pondering whether to join it or float a party and become part of the third front to cut into anti-BJP votes. Thus, the Congress is in no hurry to placate the NCP in Gujrat. The Congress believes that the NCP leaders are under extreme pressure ever since the CBI formally registered an FIR in the purchase of aircraft when Praful Patel was Civil Aviation Minister.

Medical colleges' scam shocks SC, & BJP too

The detaining of a Lucknow based journalist of a leading Hindi TV channel whose name was linked to a deal to get recognition for a medical college by the CBI recently came as a shocker to the ruling BJP. Even the Supreme Court was also shocked as recognition to the medical college was granted as it happened during the time when high-powered SC committee looked after the affairs of Medical Council of India. The CBI started probing the corruption in granting recognition to 34 medical colleges in May-June last year after reports surfaced that massive corruption took place in such cases. Surprisingly, the charges surfaced when Medical Council of India was superseded and its affairs were entrusted to three-member committee appointed by the Supreme Court. So disturbed was the Supreme Court was with the revelations of CBI's probe report, that it allowed the government to immediately de-recognize 32 out of 34 medical colleges. It also allowed the government to reconstitute another Over-site Committee (OC) to look after the affairs of the Medical Council of India. The new 5-member OC superseded the 3-member high-powered committee comprising of a former Chief Justice of SC and an eminent former top IAS officer. Incidentally, the former IAS officer is a favourite of the Modi government. The government pleaded with the SC that 5-member committee of reputed professionals associated with the medical profession will be able to handle the affairs better. The SC reluctantly agreed. The CBI which is probing the matter has informed the government that at least three kinds of middlemen were operating in securing recognition to these 32 medical colleges. Though the journalist was not formally arrested because it would have created a big political ruckus in the country as he is considered very very close to the leadership. But the TV channel sacked him. The fate of 4000 students who were admitted by these 32 medical colleges hangs in the balance until the 5-member OC reviews their cases afresh. But the medical colleges scandal is set to take a heavy toll. 

Amit Shah’s Phulpur waterloo

Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath quit his Gorakhpur Lok Sabha seat immediately after voting in the Vice Presidential poll on August 5. It was expected that his deputy Keshav Prasad Maurya will also quit his Phulpur Lok Sabha seat the same day. But to the surprise of political observers it didn’t happen. Why ? It transpires that BJP Chief Amit Shah directed Maurya to wait as Phulpur bye-election cannot be a cake-walk. While Gorakhpur is considered safe, Phulpur may see the fielding of a common Opposition candidate. One proposal is Mayawati who quit her Rajya Sabha seat may be fielded and other Opposition parties may support her. Amit Shah wants to assess the situation as it may be his another waterloo after losing face in Gujrat Rajya Sabha biennial polls. There is already a talk that Keshav Prasad Maurya may be brought into the Union Cabinet. The Fly is waiting on the wall to hear the final word.

The Ajmer Headache

Phulpur is not the only headache for Amit Shah. The new problem has arisen in Ajmer (Rajasthan) where sitting BJP Lok Sabha MP Sanwar Lal Jat died recently. Jat had shocked Congress’ Sachin Pilot in 2014 Lok Sabha polls. But winds of change are blowing in Rajasthan and it’s a new problem for Amit Shah.

Triple Talaq judgement soon

Before Chief Justice of India J S Khehar demits office on August 27, the Triple Talaq verdict is likely to be delivered. If the whispers in the corridors of the SC are to be believed, the verdict will come after August 22. The verdict will deal only with the legal issues relating to Triple Talaq rather than the whole gamut. 

Whom to Trust and When

by Harish Gupta, National Editor, Lokmat Group

Restraint surely has a “bottom line”, as the Chinese government spokesman reminded India. And that too after seven weeks of persistent effort by India to end, through negotiations, the standoff with the Chinese military in the Doklam plateau, a stone’s throw from the point where the boundaries of Sikkim, Tibet and Bhutan meet. India sent National Security Advisor Ajit Doval to Beijing to talk the matter over, but he came back empty-handed as China would not relent until hell freezes over.

China’s is typical bully’s logic. It questions India’s right to send troops, through a third country, Bhutan, into Doklam. But the ownership of the area is contested between Bhutan and China; it is anything but trespass by India to China’s territory. Further, the Indian action was in response to China constructing metal road that could bring artillery and tanks close to the thin land mass, the ‘chicken’s neck’, that connects the Indian plains with the eight north-eastern states. In 1962, when China and India went to war, the Chinese targeted that very spot as it moved its troops across Nathu La in Sikkim. Imagine how will China respond if India builds a string of missile bases that threaten the security of Tibet, or beyond?

While China says India must move back “with no strings”, and raises the pitch of its megaphone diplomacy, India’s policy-makers are in a double bind. On one hand, China is a goliath with GDP (in PPP terms) nearly three times that of India, and four times the southern neighbour’s military budget. On the other hand, India is saddled with a rather chaotic democracy in which the opposition turns even a foreign aggression into an opportunity to find fault with the government. China’s one-party rule doesn’t entertain the liability of gaining public support for its war efforts. In China, such leader’s accountability, if at all, may lie behind the closed doors at the forthcoming national congress of the communist party of China. There, President Xi Jinping’s return as chief of the party for another term is taken as given.  

The Indian opposition criticism of the Modi administration’s handling of the Doklam standoff has three layers, all of which have supposedly originated from the Congress. At one level, it cribs about Modi’s public displeasure with Beijing about President Xi’s One Belt One Road (OBOR) policy by not attending a widely attended meeting of the OBOR invitees earlier this year (Bhutan, India’s friend, was the other absentee). At another level, the opposition brushes aside the government version of the standoff. Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi dramatized his personal spite for Modi when he stayed away from an External Affairs Ministry briefing of the opposition leaders but had a well-publicised meeting with the Chinese envoy in India, as though he were hearing the truth from the horse’s mouth. Moreover, the opposition would put down the Modi government’s foreign policy per se and present the imbroglio in the north-east Himalayas as part of a general policy dislocation.

External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, in a robust speech in the Rajya Sabha last week, addressed most of these issues with clarity. She rightly expressed her dismay at some opposition politicians in India—a Congress member in this case—questioning India abstaining from the OBOR summit. “The OBOR link to Gwadar port in Baluchistan goes through Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (POK), which India considers as an integral part of our country. How does an Indian political party expect us to attend the OBOR summit?” Swaraj crafted a credible defence of Modi’s foreign policy—“for most of its terms, India under the Congress had Russia as ally and the US as enemy but, under Modi, both Russia and the US are friends”—and went all out against Rahul for his offensive gesture.

However, the opposition efforts to pin down Modi on the China issue can lead to a self-goal as public opinion generally turns red hot on patriotism during military confrontations with foreign countries, as it was evident in the 1962 war with China, the 1971 Bangladesh war with Pakistan or the 1999 Kargil war. Unless India gets a bloody nose in a decisive war with China, there is little chance of Modi’s popularity hurtling down (it happened to Jawaharlal Nehru after the 1962 defeat but there was plenty of public support during the war). Besides, much water has flown down the Brahmaputra between 1962 and 2017; there may still be a huge mismatch between the military prowess of the two countries but both have increased their power to wreak havoc on each other. That has minimised the chances of a full-scale war.

Still, there is little chance of India being able to clinch a deal with China anytime soon for peaceful resolution of the existing, and future, problems. Future, because China is known for shifting goal posts to cause unexpected problems. Like it is doing in South China Sea by rewriting history to lay claims on newer islands dotting it, or in twisting past agreements along the 4,000-km border with India and Bhutan. Beijing does not accept the McMahon line as it was an “imperialist legacy” but now swears by the 1890 Calcutta treaty between British India and China under the Quing government because it allows the country’s present rulers to move troops close to the Indian border.

China is in a hurry to establish its hegemony across Asia and fill up as much of the power vacuum caused by the US lowering its global profile. For India, it is a long-term diplomatic challenge. It is not a diplomatic chin wag for aspiring political amateurs to pompously show off their legacy connections.

Conscience vote goes abegging

by Harish Gupta, National Editor, Lokmat Group

In this space last week, I doubted if the secret ballot system in the presidential and vice-presidential elections could be entirely to the advantage of the BJP-led NDA. The opposition looked like having an ace up its sleeve as its candidate for Presidency, Meira Kumar, was bubbling over for what she thought could be “vote according to conscience”.

It wasn’t. Cross-voting had benefited not Kumar but Ram Nath Kovind, BJP’s victorious candidate. In Gujarat, as a prelude, perhaps, to former chief minister Shankar Sinh Baghela quitting the Congress, at least 11 Congress MLAs ditched Kumar to vote Kovind. In West Bengal, Kovind bagged the votes of 11 MLAs though BJP and its allies could have openly garnered only six MLAs. But its largely some dissidence in Congress & the Left that may have gone in favour of Kovind. Mamata devised a mechanism through which she ensured that there is no cross voting in her party except one MP who is suspended. In Maharashtra, Meira Kumar’s tally was 77, which fell short of her calculation by at least ten. In Uttar Pradesh, eight MLAs had violated their party instructions by voting Kovind; they could be ‘renegades’ from the Akhilesh Singh Yadav-faction of the Samajwadi Party. The numbers in the tiny north-eastern state of Tripura are baffling; in a state with no BJP legislator, Kovind found seven silent supporters. There were opposition reversals in Punjab too, as two of the Aam Aadmi Party’s four MPs are suspected to have for the BJP candidate.

There was a reverse trend as well. In Rajasthan, Meira Kumar was supported by ten more MLAs than her expected tally, a feat which is not possible without some BJP MLAs having been driven by the ‘call of conscience’. But volume-wise, the trend of cross-voting was overwhelmingly dominated by the BJP. Like Kumar, Gopal Gandhi, Opposition’s Vice Presidential candidate,  too has pinned his hope on the electors’ “conscience”.

The failure of the appeal to ‘good sense’ is not a recent phenomenon. In the years between Independence and promulgation of the Constitution in 1950, the so-called idea of India got delineated in the very preamble of the Constitution. It was made on behalf of the “people of India”, which is, by itself, an assertion that the country would make no discrimination on the ground of caste, creed, gender or religion. The preamble defined the Constitution’s four pillars: justice, liberty, equality and fraternity. B. R. Ambedkar, the acknowledged architect of the Constitution, said on the last day’s session of the Constituent Assembly on November 25, 1949: “Political democracy cannot last unless there is at the base of it social democracy. What does social democracy mean? It means a way of life which recognises liberty, equality and fraternity as the principles of life”. Ambedkar had also said that these three principles of liberty, equality and fraternity were “not to be treated as separate items in a trinity” because (a) equality without liberty would kill individual initiative, (b) without equality, liberty would produce the supremacy of the few over the many, and (c) without fraternity, liberty and equality could not become a natural course of things…it would require a constable to enforce them”.

I have cited this long passage from one of the most sparkling discourses in Indian politics because it provides, in a sense, the essence of the “conscience” or “good sense” that UPA, the loser, has vainly tried to invoke. Such ideal is embedded in the Constitution and is made explicit in Ambedkar’s radiant prose. As the first to form government, it was the Congress’ turn to follow the principles laid down in the Constitution. But it failed and failed the people of India.

It was during the Congress rule that equality got divorced from liberty by a bizarre quality of government and its myriad rules and regulations. It snuffed out “individual initiative”, exactly as Ambedkar had predicted. Again, it was in the Congress rule that equality of opportunity was denied to the poor while the rich had the liberty to influence policy and get richer. Another Ambedkar prophesy that came true.

However, the absence of fraternity has a long history. The communal holocaust and partition in 1947 itself is a testimony to the dismal fact that the Indian society was revelling in fratricide instead of being fraternal. Nor was the Congress any less divisive than what it accuses Modi of, in its handling of caste and communal issues. From the 1980’s, when infusion of militancy turned Islam into a security threat, successive Congress or Congress-led governments had, instead of promoting fraternity, tried to put the communities into their separate silos. In the Shah Bano case, by refusing to reform the obsolete Muslim marital system, Congress PM Rajiv Gandhi pushed the community back into its medieval isolation. A fraternal approach would have been to help the community to reform itself. On the other hand, the Rajiv administration, by allowing a Hindu group to perform worship of Ram in the Babri mosque, virtually ignited the communal fire which is still blazing. Equality and fraternity became victims of decades of vote-bank politics.

The problem with Congress’ recent and vociferous appeal to people’s conscience is that most people—the new generation, in particular—do not think of BJP’s adversaries as repositories of conscience. Instead, they are seen by the younger Indians as a picture of ineptitude and corruption. Its the loss of credibility on policy and conduct.  It is not that the Congress doesn’t understand it, but it has few options. If it must keep its own conscience clear, it has to snap ties with Lalu Yadav. With that vanishes its toehold on power in Hindi-speaking India.

Astrologers chose Kovind's swearing-in Timing

by Harish Gupta, National Editor, Lokmat Group

Special report

Astrologers chose Kovind's swearing-in Timing

Harish Gupta

New Delhi, July 24

It is well known that astrologers play a key role in the lives of politicians. It is also too well known that prime ministers religiously follow the advice of astrologers when they chose timing of their swearing-in-ceremonies. Recently, Prime Minister Narendra Modi took full ten days before taking oath after winning the polls on May 16, 2014.

But Presidents do not have this luxury as the date of taking oath is sacrosanct, July 25 every five years. They need not take any such advice in such matters as everything is virtually pre-decided. The out-going Presidents retire on July 24 and the new President takes oath the next day at the Central Hall of Parliament. The swearing-in-ceremonies of Presidents in the past have been held in the forenoon only on July 25. 

It has been held between 10 am to 12 pm in the past during the past two decades. But President-elect Ram Nath Kovind has decided to take oath at 12.15 pm tomorrow.

Earlier, it was signaled that the swearing-in-ceremony will be held at 10.15 am tomorrow. Now it transpires that timing was changed, perhaps at the instance of the astrologers. It was said that the Abhijeet Nakshtra begins after 12.14 pm. The most auspicious time will be 12.15 pm. According to senior BJP MP Prabhat Jha, this is the most auspicious time as Lord Rama was born in the Abhijit Nakshtra. 

It is learnt that changes have been made in the program and the two houses of Parliament will meet first at 11 am and then adjourn at 11.30 pm so that M.P.s move towards the Central Hall. The ceremony is likely to last for about 30 minutes and thereafter, Kovind will accompany the out-going President Pranab Mukherjee to his new residence, 10 Rajaji Marg. Union Finance & Defence Minister Arun Jaitley will then accompany the President, Ram Nath Kovind to the Rashtrapati Bhawan from 10 Rajaji Marg.

Kovind who is presently residing at 10 Akbar Road, will leave for the Rashtrapati Bhawan and will come to the Parliament House for swearing-in-ceremony along with Pranab Mukherjee.

Kung-Fu master's Indian friends

by Harish Gupta, National Editor, Lokmat Group

The US civil society is riled no end by the alleged Russian intervention in last year’s presidential election, with an eye on seeing Hillary Clinton defeated. The fact that she lost the election, and Donald Trump won, is read by a good section of the American media and public as the outcome of machinations by Russian president Vladimir Putin.

If true, it is unprecedented for the world’s biggest power to have its internal affairs remote-controlled by another country. However, for India, an even larger democracy than America, the “foreign hand” nudging domestic policy is an old chestnut. India under the late Indira Gandhi was regarded as ‘client state’ of the former USSR, with the government orchestrating its domestic and foreign policy in step with Moscow’s diktat. Similarly, there were tell-tale signs of American intervention in several key events in the nation’s life that shaped its destiny, like the allegedly CIA-sponsored air crash leading to the death of Homi J. Bhabha, father of India’s nuclear programme. If he were alive, India would possibly have achieved its present nuclear capabilities several decades earlier, with cheap power triggering Asia’s industrial revolution not on the eastern coast of China but on Indian soil.

And now, it seems to be China’s turn to do its bit. In this space last week, I described China as  India’s “dangerous” neighbour. Dangerous, because it poses serious security risk. It is building roads that can bring its artillery right up to the border of the Indian state of Sikkim, with its bulldozers that were at work in the territory of Bhutan, a tiny mountainous country that depends on India for its foreign relations and external security. In China’s perception, India is a weakling, a perception born out of its 1962 experience, yet India cuts a profile high enough for a hit on it to reverberate across the world as a demonstration of the Dragon’s might. 

However, China, like America and Russia in the past, has also emerged as a player on the chequerboard of India’s internal politics. Apparently, it is rattled by the rise of Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the global stage, as a decisive leader of India’s 130 million people who carries no ideological baggage that hamstrung the country’s previous rulers. And, like the USSR in the past, it has kept a close watch not just on Modi but the entire political spectrum, and must have observed the extent of antipathy towards him that some of the opposition leaders, notably the top leaders of the Congress party, harbour against him. There are reasons for China to be soft towards the Congress as, under its leadership, India resolutely desisted from crossing the red line in response to various urgings from America to be a party to the mission to contain China.

But India under Modi has shown more spunk than what makes Beijing’s tolerance limit. It has joined in strategic partnership with Japan, Australia, Vietnam and the US—countries that are worried by China’s flexing of naval muscle on the maritime rights of all over South China Sea. In 2008, the US gave India the legal right to build on its civilian nuclear capabilities despite being a nuclear nation and a non-signatory to NPT. But it was an ineffective largesse as India was not a member of the exclusive Nuclear Suppliers’ Group (NSG); without its nod, it is not possible to obtain either nuclear fuel or technology. For over two years now, China, as an NSG member, has made it its mission to stall India’s entry into the all-important nuclear marketplace.

Differences arose even on issues related to terror as China, as member of the 15-strong UNSC, flatly refused to ban Masood Azhar, head of terror group Jaish-e-Muhammad, which had attacked Indian parliament in 2001 and the Air Force base at Pathankot in 2016. It was China’s gift to Pakistan in exchange of the latter’s help in mobilising members of the Organisation of Islamic Nations (OIC) in support of China. And of course for gleefully offering China land to build rail and road communication from Kashgar, the oasis city in Xinjiang, to Gwadar port in Pakistan’s Baluchistan. Interestingly, the more Modi sought to befriend the US, the more China began putting pressure on him. It multiplied as Modi’s global image got enlarged, the latest being his historic red-carpet reception in Israel as the first Indian PM in that country. The irritation of his critics at home rose in direct proportion to China’s hostility. It was as if some of them were enjoying India’s humiliation. This is enigmatic, because Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Congress PM, was a victim of China's deliberate betrayal: he had taken China as friend, but was betrayed by an aggression of unmatched ferocity. Unable to bear the shock, he died within two years. However, in what remains of his family, there are elements making money by exporting handicraft and other objects to China against unrealistically high invoice, and some party leaders close to the family have strong Chinese links.

It is likely that the recent Chinese hostility north of Sikkim had a bearing on the Congress-led move to unite the opposition parties in India against Modi. And, as the opposition unity effort tends to fizzle out, it is a Chinese gambit that looks like having gone for a toss. The stand off in the Doklam area, therefore, may end sooner than expected. No wonder Modi and Chinese president X Jinping, in their meeting at the G20 summit in Hamburg last Friday, held a brief talk on the side line, disproving Beijing’s hawkish bureaucrats who’d discounted the chance of a meeting. But everyone was happy as they shook hands. The only unhappy soul was Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi who snarled: “Why is Modi silent on China?”