M.J. Akbar - Author and Veteran Journalist

Why the budget brings a smile to Bengal’s Muslims

2009-07-19T15:22:00.002+05:30

Why the budget brings a smile to Bengal’s Muslims
by M J Akbar
(In The Siege Within - Times of India column)

The most communal punishment you can inflict upon any community is to deny it an education. Ignorance is the other face of poverty. No one is illiterate by choice. Which child would bleed her fingers rolling a beedi in preference to a classroom?

Finance minister Pranab Mukherjee’s provision of Rs 25 crores for an Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) affiliate at Murshidabad in Bengal is only too little, and not too late. You can only get a degree college with such money. But one college is a million times better than none.

Two objections have been raised in Bengal: that AMU is too much of a Muslim, and not enough of a university. AMU is, today, about as Muslim as St Stephen’s College is Christian. AMU graduates do not emerge flaunting special degrees in ‘‘Islamic fundamentalism’’. You could check this out with our Vice President, Hamid Ansari, who was both a student and vice chancellor. It doesn’t seem to me that he was either a member of, or presided over a secret society of Indian Taliban, during his days at AMU.

If the 1940s are going to be dragged into the debate, then why restrict ourselves to that turbulent decade? Do we really want to revisit the acrimonious debates about the admissions policy of Calcutta University before the 1940s? Should one travel fast forward? When we were students in Presidency between 1967 and 1970, a Muslim could not get a place in its Hindu hostel for the simple reason that the hostel was reserved for Hindus. One does not recall any major media campaign urging reform at the time.

Reform came because Indians wanted it, not because media wanted it. A substantial, if quiet, Indian achievement is that we have retained the best from our past and jettisoned, without any fuss, the worst. Compare this with a certain neighbour, which tends to invest in the worst and deny the best of its history and culture. Indians are sensible heirs. Just as other institutions have moved away from a certain pre-Partition ethos, so has AMU.

Destroying the good in the name of the best is an old and faintly odorous tactic of the artful saboteur. It is perfectly true that AMU’s academic quality has deteriorated, but it remains a far sight better than the proliferating private money-churners that pretend to offer an education. Thirst has outstripped supply, and mercenaries are filling the gap. Those who can least afford expensive education end up paying the most. If there is hunger for an AMU in Murshidabad today, it is because through two decades of Congress raj, three decades of Marxist domination and one decade of intermediate confusion, no one did anything to assuage this hunger.

AMU does have serious problems that demand urgent redress: there is no reason why any quality Indian university should slip towards a lower common denominator. Its administration is, at this moment, a scandal fuelled by sectarian politics at which Delhi is adept. If AMU is required to create affiliated units then it must possess the administrative ability and academic quality needed, otherwise it will be cheating the very Muslims it claims to serve. Rather than lifting its affiliates, the children could drag down the mother even further.

There is a potential paradox in play as well. Many colleges in Aligarh city and Uttar Pradesh have demanded affiliation to AMU, but it has been resisted in order to prevent any dilution of AMU’s minority character. This minority status has, in any case, been transferred to a gray area through an amendment passed by Parliament in 1981. Doubt seems to suit both judges and politicians.

Muslims would be making a grievous generational mistake if they turned AMU into the sole answer to their educational needs. Education has to be community-specific, and the principal objective must be quality at the school level. That is what will make Muslims capable of finding a place in Presidency or St Xavier’s.

The Sachar Committee’s statistics tell many a revealing story about Bengal. The state’s literacy rate is 68.6%; among its Muslims, the figure drops to 57.5%. The urban situation is better; the figures travel up to 81% and 66%. What is truly encouraging, however, is the quantum leap taken in school enrolment. By 2004-05, 82.8% of Muslim children between the ages of 6 and 14 were in school, as compared to the state average of 85.7%. Here is the evidence, if any is required, of the growing conviction that education is the only route to a better future. But what happens after that? The percentage of Muslims who completed middle school in 2001 was 26%. Those who finished the next level and became eligible for college were a mere 11.9%. Some improvement will definitely have occurred since 2001, but the pattern is evident. The higher you go, the less education you get.

That is why the Rs 25 crore Aligarh Muslim University affiliate at Murshidabad is not too late, although it remains too little.

Appeared in Times of India - July 19, 2009

A statement out of joint

2009-07-18T17:45:00.001+05:30

Byline by M J Akbar: A statement out of joint

A principal purpose of diplo-speak, and more particularly diplo-write, is to state the obvious. Platitudes are the daily diet of dialogue. Prudent officials wander from the obvious with great trepidation, and when tasked to create a new approach, they agonise over every word. Babur was wise when he warned, in Baburnama, “He who lays his hand on the sword with haste/ Shall lift to his teeth the back of his hand with regret”. This tenet of war is applicable to diplomacy. He who lays his hand on the pen with haste on foreign shore, shall scratch his head on returning home with deep dismay.

One sentence in the joint declaration issued by Dr Manmohan Singh and Yousaf Raza Gilani is going to hover over the future relationship: “Action on terrorism should not be linked to the Composite Dialogue process and these should not be bracketed.”

You do not need a dictionary to decipher its meaning. This absolves present and future governments of Pakistan from any guilt in cross-border terrorism, a scourge India has to face for decades. It is a commitment that governments should continue the process of dialogue no matter how much havoc a terrorist group from Pakistan creates in India. If this principle had been in operation last year, India and Pakistan could have continued their Composite Dialogue in December after the savage Mumbai terrorism in November.

It reverses a consistent position taken by India from the time Mrs Indira Gandhi was Prime Minister, and General Zia ul Haq financed and armed a massive terrorist upsurge in Punjab, even as his intelligence agencies trained and prepared young Kashmiris for a decisive “Jihad” in the valley. The role of the Pakistani state in this strategy of “war by other means” has now been documented in countless books and research papers. President Asif Zardari admitted as much when he said, very recently, that “yesterday’s heroes are today’s terrorists” — although officials tried to dilute the implications by suggesting he was talking about the Afghan war against the Soviet Union, they could not obscure the fact that he was referring to the hero-terrorist syndrome in operation against India.

There is no evidence, as far as the Government of India is concerned, that Pakistan has changed this policy. Terrorism remains its major export to India. The joint statement was signed on 16 July 2009. On 9 July, just seven days earlier, Foreign Minister S.M. Krishna told the Indian Parliament, “Notwithstanding Pakistan government’s assurances to us, terrorists in Pakistan continue attacks against India.” If Mr Krishna was misleading Parliament, he should be dropped from the Cabinet. If he was reflecting the Government of India’s considered position, then one can only infer that Delhi had decided to delink Pakistani terrorists from Pakistan’s government even before the Prime Minister left for Egypt. Otherwise there would have been no consensus in Sharm el Sheikh. The delegation accompanying the Prime Minister, including Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon and National Security Advisor M.K. Narayanan, was aware of this change and party to it. Junior minister Shashi Tharoor was clearly not considered important enough to be kept in the loop, since, as he told a television journalist, the media had seen the joint statement before he did.

The Prime Minister has been very keen to resume talks with Pakistan, as he wants to expand his legacy. One can see some merit in this desire. The Indo-Pak gulf is infested with sharks. One treads with care. Some thought on how to handle the language would have given him what he wanted without compromising India’s options. Here is an alternative formulation, without the now infamous brackets: “No peace process can go forward without the support of the people, and people will not offer support until terrorism is eliminated, since they are its direct victims, as evident in the tragic events in Mumbai last November. The Composite Dialogue shall resume as soon as possible, but only after the Indian people are convinced that credible action has been taken against the perpetrators of the Mumbai havoc.” The second sentence is, in fact, precisely what the Prime Minister said at his explanatory press conference after the joint statement.

The problem is that press conferences have no status in international affairs; signed statements are the only documents that matter. Who recalls what was said before, during or after the Shimla summit in 1972? The signed agreement is what holds.

The Pakistani delegation used some very thin fudge to explain its impotence in the case of Hafeez Saeed, head of the Lashkar-e-Tayaba or whatever that terrorist organisation’s current name is. It passed the blame on to the state government of Punjab, run by Shahbaz Sharif, brother of the more famous Nawaz Sharif. Any reading of the government lawyer’s statements to the Lahore High Court, widely reported in media, would make clear that Islamabad was complicit, since the judges were not convinced that Islamabad was certain that the LeT was a terrorist organisation. There was deliberate ambiguity in the official stance. Moreover, action against a single individual would be inadequate. The danger is organised and spread across more than one network.

This leads us to a fundamental flaw in the joint statement, which may have escaped those who drafted it.

The text repeatedly uses the term “terrorism”. It is very easy for India and Pakistan to agree on terrorism. What they do not agree on is a collateral question: who is a terrorist? Pakistan still refuses to admit that any “Jihadi” who uses terrorism in pursuit of an independent Kashmir, or in support of Kashmir’s merger into Pakistan, is a terrorist. Pakistani diplomats and interlocutors repeatedly sought to condone the Mumbai attacks through the “root cause” theory. Kashmir was the root cause of terrorism, and therefore unless the Kashmir problem was sorted out (presumably to Pakistan’s satisfaction) terrorism would never end. America has bought this argument, because Pakistan has some excellent advocates in Washington. Should one surmise that Delhi is now nodding its head in the same direction?

Curiously, the joint statement includes a reference to Balochistan, lending implicit credence to Pakistan’s accusation that India is behind its troubles in Balochistan. If this were not the case, why mention Balochistan in an India-Pakistan statement? We did not make any effort to include the Naxalite violence in the statement, did we?

India may have gone to Sharm-el-Sheikh as the victim of terrorism, and returned as the accused.

Politicians can learn about change from Grandma

2009-07-13T20:24:00.001+05:30

Politicians can learn about change from grandma
by M J Akbar

If you want to know where India is heading, check out the grandmothers. A chance flick of my television remote, perennially restless with boredom, took me to one of those imitative dance competitions that apparently keep millions transfixed in the name of talent. My reaction was a mere fix, rather than a heavy transfix, but that glimpse was sufficient to reveal the contours, literally, of a rising phenomenon. Preteeners, inbetweeners (that aggressive demographic segment between child and adolescent) and nubile fantasists were gyrating with enough sexual innuendo to embarrass a Bollywood choreographer.

That, however, was not the story. We are all aware that celebrity is the new morality and many young people will do whatever it takes to reach within camera-distance of glamour. Popping eyeballs in countless homes are, for the fetishists, a reason for celebration, not reticence.

The story was in the front row of the seated audience watching this televised show, where steely mothers and intoxicated grandmothers cheered every pseudo-sexual pirouette with increasing hysteria. The intoxication was not from something as pedestrian as alcohol, but from the prospect of stardom and its attendant wealth. These were not cosmopolitan-liberated women. They were from small towns, and had trained their children in the arts of public seduction to help them break into the glamour palaces of Mumbai. These mothers were not born in 1980; many looked four decades older. Their parents would have blushed if two flowers got too close on the cinema screen. They have abandoned this soggy morality, including its notions of dutiful sex, in their thrust for the material and sensual gratifications of an evolving multinational world. Do not sneeze at the upwardly senile; they are having fun.

A social revolution in values is visible across India, in public and private entertainment; in the lifestyle of campuses and the elasticity of leisure. Politics was and is economics. That is the core. But politics is also a cultural fact.

Culture, in its traditional and respectable manifestation, has been heavily influenced by religion, or religiosity, and the ethical codes it demanded. The grip of religion over identity has loosened, particularly among the majority communities that together constitute the Hindu population.

Religion remains a vital existentialist force among minorities because it defines the difference. And so, the use of the headscarf, or even the burqa, is rising among young Muslim women while young Hindu women are celebrating the fusion of western sauce with Indian fashion.

There is an internal logic, even if you may not consider it a justification, in the fact that the mosque, gurdwara and church continue to play a far greater role in minority politics than the temple does in majority thinking. This is why the BJP’s promise to build a worthy temple on the site of the Babri mosque now provokes a yawn instead of a war cry. Jawaharlal Nehru once called dams and steel mills the temples of modern India. The temples of post-modern India are malls, television studios, dance halls and stock exchanges. This new culture is edging towards a new politics, even as it tests the endurance of established virtue in the process. This is not to suggest that the establishment is dead. You can see its vigorous rearguard action against the liberalization of homosexuality laws.

A political party must, of course, spread its attention span beyond a single section of the electorate, but parties that become so embedded in their past that they cannot come to terms with a new and growing influence in public life, pay a heavy price in elections.The practical way of dealing with change is pragmatism. The BJP and the Communists are mired in post-electoral ideological confusion for a very good reason: they have an ideology. Ideology gets brittle when it remains locked in the fetters of its birth. Flexibility is always a difficult call for believers, and every debate about the exact degree of dilution necessary is an invitation to acrimony.

The Congress is comfortable because it replaced ideology with pragmatism in 1991. It can adapt its cultural and economic stresses according to circumstances, sometimes even at the same moment. It can represent the liberal face of the Delhi High Court judgment on Section 377 even while it conducts a placatory dialogue with the church on how far to go. Pragmatism gives it the leeway to shift its stresses from one problem area to another in its budgets. Pranab Mukherjee can switch the gear from urban to rural seamlessly and without internal dissent because there is no dictum in the party’s prayer book.

Matthew Arnold is a name that might, or might not, stir the memory of a student of English literature; he was not top of the class even among the great range of Victorian poets. Even fewer will have heard of his "Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse", written in 1855. But forgettable poets can leave behind unforgettable lines. This couplet seems eminently suited to India 2009:

Wandering between two worlds, one dead,The other powerless to be born.

Appeared in Times of India - July 13, 2009

A Monsoon Without Music

2009-07-10T21:00:00.001+05:30

Byline by M J Akar: A Monsoon Without Music

There are two ways of checking out the state of the monsoons. You can always enquire from the meteorological department, and take their variable word at face, or faceless, value. The more pleasant option is to switch on the music channels of All India Radio; the radio jockeys of their Hindi film song programmes look out of the window. AIR has a fabulous stock of saawan and barsaat songs that it reserves for the season beginning from around the second week of June, its monsoon music.

There has been a faint edge of panic — or is it helplessness? — around the umar ghumar kar aayi re ghata and dum dum diga diga mausam bhiga bhiga songs this year. The clouds have not arrived with the customary charm of sky-wide turbulence. [I fear the onomatopoeia of the lyrics is beginning to affect the phrases of the column.] Mumbai’s radio jockeys can occasionally sprinkle a bit of moisture into their chatter, but those in Delhi are parched and in central India completely arid.

You can sense the onset of depression in the mood. The Indian economy escaped the international collapse because its capital was not tied to the world of capitalism. It is more dependent on nature than bankers. If the kharif crop is depleted, as now expected, the consequences will be an inflationary Diwali and bleak winter. The omens are ominous. The price of Lord Ganesha idols being prepared for the festival season is expected to rise by 30 to 40% over last year.

Pranab Mukherjee’s budget was not designed with a future drought in mind. It had an economic message and a political purpose. The man who was hailed as the best Finance Minister by the World Bank during Mrs Indira Gandhi’s time sent a sharp signal that his India was far larger than the stock exchange or the tie-suits who have usurped economic policy in the name of economic reform. This was important course correction. Pranab Mukherjee may not have been the principal activist in Nandigram, but he has absorbed its meaning. There is a growing feeling in rural India that the much-hyped economic reforms are a cosy arrangement between industrialists and the urban middle class from which they have been minused; their only role is to hand over their lifeline, land, as and when commanded to do so by the lords of industry and their obedient political servants. Pranab Mukherjee did not create jobs through an agrarian-industrial revolution, but he changed the internal equation of the budget. Rural India got 60% space instead of 40%. That is roughly equivalent to the demographic divide.

In ten weeks at least some of the industrialists who feel that they have not been sufficiently appeased by lollipops and cola could be thanking Mukherjee for having put some purchasing power into rural India. Nearly 70% of the telecom industry is now village-dependent. The days of cottage industry soap in small-town shops are over. National and multinational brands dominate the shelves. But we are not talking good news here; merely that without this budget the situation in rural India would have been much worse.

Urban India will be squeezed by a triple whammy: higher prices, lower production, fewer jobs, and retrenchment. Since the overwhelming majority of India’s working class is still in the unorganised sector, and the Left has done absolutely nothing to move beyond its traditional trade union constituency, the voiceless will be worst hit.

A crisis is visible. Why, then, does everyone seem so sanguine in Delhi? The absence of tension is easily explained. Politicians, of all hues, turn tense only when their jobs are at stake. Other lives will be affected; theirs will go on, in enviable comfort. Delhi soaks up the tax wealth of the nation under the excuse of some extravaganza or the other. This budget was no exception in its generosity to the home of the all-party ruling class.

If the monsoon had failed last year, the sound of alarm bells would have woken up every household from here to Washington. The next general elections are now too distant to disturb the even tenor of the recently-rewarded. The only signs of worry are on experienced foreheads — those of Dr Manmohan Singh and Pranab Mukherjee, for instance. They have seen an India tortured by food shortfalls. The last serious droughts were when Rajiv Gandhi was Prime Minister, in 1998, more than two decades ago, and in 2002, when Atal Behari Vajpayee was Prime Minister. Nature’s seven-year itch is back, but excellent disaster-management and comfortable reserves have dimmed the memory of punishing food shortages. Most MPs, particularly the younger lot, tend to lapse into a complacent confidence. The careful and the experienced understand the value of precaution.

Urban and rural are not homogenous labels. At the very least there is the hunger line divide in both categories, with poverty being more intense in rural India. More than half of rural India is still beyond the reach of Mukherjee’s allotments. Governments are always reluctant to admit the truth of poverty; numbers below the poverty line have actually risen in the last five years in absolute terms. The poorest suffer the most in any weather. There is no music in their brief lives; they are outside the range of the radio of all-India.

We can continue to ignore this nether India, but are we sure that it will continue to ignore our self-satisfied approach? How many times do Naxalites have to blast our police-protected comfort zones for us to get the message? Pranab Mukherjee has seen what Nandigram did to the most entrenched political system in the country, the Marxists in Bengal, before the elections. He has watched what Lalgarh has done after the elections. He has just taken a tentative step towards telling the India of budgets that those without budgets are knocking at the gates with axe and arrow.

Another of AIR’s favourite monsoon songs is the Jaya Bhaduri number Ab ke sajan saawan mein, aag lagi jiwan mein. This year, the fire, which once spoke of love, might have a totally new connotation.

Does Justice matter after 17 Years?

2009-07-05T17:28:00.001+05:30

Does Justice matter after 17 Years?
By M J Akbar

The first inquiry into the demolition of the Babri mosque on December 6, 1992 was completed within seven days. On the morning of Sunday, December 13, Sharad Pawar, then defence minister, invited a group of friends and colleagues to the home of an associate MP. He watched a film - live footage of the whole episode, taken by some government agency, possibly intelligence. Those antique reels should still be somewhere in the archives. There was little that any inquiry committee could have added about the sequence of events on December 6 that ended with the fall of the mosque by the evening.

The causes of this historic event were also a matter of public record. L K Advani's rath yatra was not a surreptitious journey. Indeed, extensive media coverage may have been part of the purpose, since he wanted to create mass momentum for his political project. Neither was there any secrecy when Congress laid the foundation stone of the temple to Lord Ram in the middle of the 1989 polls. Babri was a central theme, along with Bofors, of those dramatic elections. The 1989 BJP versions of Varun Gandhi were full-throated, not muted, in their slogans as parties sought votes with a rhetoric that has been subsequently banned: Mandir wahin banayenge! and Mussalman ke do sthaan, Pakistan ya kabristan! No one hid anything: We shall build a temple on that precise spot! Muslims have two options, either Pakistan or the graveyard!

Democracy is a volatile game played in the open. What was there left to inquire into?

All that an official inquiry could do was place a stamp of judicial impartiality on known facts. It did not seem strange, then, that Justice M S Liberhan, appointed on December 16, 1992, was asked to deliver his report in three months. If he had extended it to six months or even a year, it would have been reasonable. Why did he take 17 years?

The key actors were known and available. No sleuths needed here. Why did Liberhan take more than nine years to obtain V P Singh's deposition, and nine-and-a-half for P V Narasimha Rao's? Surely they were not evading his orders? Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi and Uma Bharti were ministers in a BJP-led government when they gave evidence. Former RSS chief K S Sudarshan appeared only on February 6, 2001. Rao could have said all he had to long before April 9, 2001, four years after he lost his job as prime minister.

Had the commission already served its first purpose by 2001? It had outlived Rao's term in office and thereby, ensured that its findings could not be used to demand Rao's resignation. Rao survived December 6, 1992 by the cynical expedient of buying out those he feared most, Muslims within the Congress. Some inside government were given promotions; most outside were inducted in a January 1993 reshuffle. Conscience purchased, life went on.
It would be interesting to know if the Liberhan Commission has disclosed the one mystery of December 6: what was Rao doing that entire day? Babri was not destroyed by a sudden, powerful, maverick explosion. It was brought down stone by stone, the process punctuated by the rousing cheers of kar sevaks.

So, what was Rao doing during those minutes and hours from morning till sunset? Sleeping. That is what his personal assistant said to the many agitated Congressmen and women who phoned to ask why the government was asleep. They were shocked to learn that this was, literally, the official explanation. Their agitation cooled when they realized that the party would have to pay a horrendous price if government was destabilized. Plus, of course, there were concrete benefits in silence.

There may not be a rational explanation for a 17-year inquiry, but there is a political explanation. Every government between 1992 and 2004 had a vested interest in delay. The minority governments of H D Deve Gowda and Inder Gujral could not have survived a day without support from the Rao-Sitaram Kesri Congress. (Mrs Sonia Gandhi was not party president then.) Neither Gowda nor Gujral would have wanted a report that indicted their benefactors.

The BJP-led coalition that ruled for six years had the guilty on its front row. Only Uma Bharti has been candid enough to say that she was delighted when the mosque fell ("I'm ready to own up to the demolition and will have no problem even if I'm hanged"). Justice Liberhan could have punched mortal holes into the BJP front row when it was in office. And so when he sought one extension after another, there was public silence and private relief.

Whether advertently or inadvertently, Justice Liberhan protected politicians on both sides of the great divide. There remains a curiosity question. Why did he not submit his report in 2004? Admittedly Dr Manmohan Singh was finance minister in the Rao government, but he had nothing to do with the politics of Babri. When delay becomes so comfortable, why bother?

Appeared in Times of India - July 5, 2009

The dangers of political capitalism

2009-07-04T18:03:00.001+05:30

Byline by M J Akbar: The dangers of political capitalism

Power is the pre-eminent value in Delhi’s value system. I was tempted to write ‘only’ instead of ‘pre-eminent’, when some passing sympathy for exceptions interfered with the syntax. A sidelight of this week’s main event reminded me of this basic principle of what might be called political capitalism (how else should we describe the culture of a capital?).

But first to the highlight; a sidelight can only follow.

Mamata Banerjee pulled off a spectacular budget on Friday. There is no doubt about that. She was always a master populist. She has now rounded off this quintessential virtue with just that touch of maturity that enables a politician to pole-vault over the rest of the tribe. Her visage was blooming with the confidence that victory brings; what used to be dismissed as querulous once had transformed into good humour. She might still jump a little over the top while pole-vaulting, but that is a manageable and even agreeable excess. She was very much a Bengali railway minister, distributing as much largesse as she possibly could to the people who made her railway minister, and reminding her voters back home that a successor to A.B.A. Ghani Khan Chowdhury had finally turned up in Parliament.

But she also made sure that it registered that she was the nation’s minister as well, parking a gift in every corner. Her railway budget was drawn up on a map of India much more than on a ledger. Politics was written all over it, and why not? A decisive turn in the Muslim vote had brought her to power, and she remembered that children of the country’s madrasas are also students who deserve discounted tickets. Her cultural appeasement (the Urdu couplet at the end, accompanied by the mention that she was speaking on a Friday) fell a bit flat, but who cared?

You can bet that even if some of her promises remain paper decorations a year later, the train line between Nandigram and Singur will be completed. The much-dedicated freight corridor might remain dedicated to the future rather than the present, and those SMS-es that the Railways have so grandly promised could end up as no more than a theoretical blessing, but that power station near Lalgarh will materialise. [Check this out: for how many decades now has Indian Railways taken your telephone number for further communication? Has anyone got a single call helping the customer in all these years?]

Mamata Banerjee has many points to prove in Bengal. Her strategy is uncomplicated: she is sending her voter a simple message. ‘If I can do so much for Bengal with control of just one portfolio, how much more will I be able to achieve if you give me the state government!’
She remembered that she was a member of the House in addition to being a member of the Cabinet. Every MP was given a chance to distribute some largesse through her ticket scheme for the poor. Sharp. There is no easier way of getting the support of the House. Amethi and Rae Bareli were mentioned more than once when the Santa Claus bag was opened. That was appropriate. She knew that all last-minute hitches in the Trinamool-Congress alliance were cleared by the direct intervention of Mrs Sonia Gandhi. It is always good in public life to make your gratitude public. Her triumph was visible on the ashen faces of the Left Front MPs. She reversed their attempts to disturb with a potent jibe: “What have you done in 32 years?” Since they did not have a credible answer they opted for retreat. They knew that this speech, being watched avidly in Bengal, was a major leap forward in the credibility stakes as Mamata Banerjee strides towards her real goal: to enter Writers Building in the heart of Kolkata as Chief Minister of West Bengal. With such nimble political virtuosity it will be difficult to stop her.

The great adage of political capitalism was not at work in the budget speech, but in a derivative. One cannot easily comprehend why Lalu Prasad Yadav chose to become the Left’s chief ally during the railway budget. Surely he does not believe that he is the permanent superstar of railway ministers, nonpareil and beyond emulation. Has he become a victim of the Harvard hype — the adulation of economic capitalists who lured into believing that he had turned into a miracle CEO because he fell into the trap of believing that profits were the only criterion of success? That is one man’s folly. But the political capitalism story lay askance of Lalu’s cracking self-image. It was amazing to behold all those suit-and-tie types who till yesterday were pumping Lalu Yadav up as the biggest balloon since man invented a ledger book, the middlemen who thought that Lalu Yadav deserved a separate chapter in the Harvard curriculum, the tour operators who ferried American students to guided tours of Lalu Yadav’s office and cattle-packed Patna grounds, suddenly seeing merit in the announcement that a white paper on his last five years was the compulsion of the hour.

When the mighty fall there is a thud gleefully recorded by media and transmitted to millions who take vicarious pleasure in the pop and crackle of a bursting ego. Why are there no questions when the sycophants who have inflated any ego into a monstrosity switch their attentions to the next object on their agenda? When Lalu Yadav became railway minister Harvard simply did not exist in his thoughts. On Friday afternoon in Parliament he was possibly thinking of nothing else. Who were the misleaders of this leader?

The misleaders are part of the record. Unfortunately, they are not part of our attention span.

The batter is the matter

2009-06-29T17:48:00.003+05:30

Byline by M J Akbar: The batter is the matter

The batter is the matter Take a guess. What would be the answer to this question in an India-wide opinion poll: which has upset you more, India’s early departure from the T20 world championship or the toxic wars against Maoists raging across the heartland of the nation?

No prizes for getting the answer right.

The spoilt brat of Indian cricket used to be an individual who had better be left nameless since he has finally departed from the team. He has been replaced by a collective noun. The utterly spoilt brat of Indian cricket is the cricket fan. This silly idiot has come to believe, for no worthwhile reason, that cricket is a game with only one result, a victory for India. All of us want our team to win more than it loses. But the fun of sports lies in unpredictability. No one can be sure what the particular chemistry of a set of men will be on any given day, or when luck will bend its momentum in one direction or the other. The part that media plays in publicising stupid tantrums following a defeat convinces me that this is not the work of genuine sports fans. They are publicity-seekers. If television cameras did not hover around their stupid protests, there would be no protests.

No one expects a captain to celebrate after his team loses, but the grovelling apology by Captain-Commander-General-Admiral-Marshal-President Dhoni strikes me as well-planned humbug of the sort encouraged by PR agencies. If you depend on the fans to buy all the products you advertise, then it makes sense to pamper even the most petulant with a pre-emptive apology. An apology costs nothing. Ads bring big bucks.

Media is clearly desperate for anything to fill the page or occupy the screen. We do want to know why Ravindra Jadeja was sent up the batting order when the tic in his eye is sufficient evidence to prove that he will not be able to see a rising ball, but do we want the answer from Aamir Khan or John Abraham? Their terribly inane reactions were turned into news stories. I just hope we do not see the day when Dhoni and Virender Sehwag are expected to double up as literary critics.

A panoramic sports championship has one undisputable merit: it reveals a great deal about any national frame of mind. The churning point of the cricket fiesta in England, at least for me, was when a British master-of-ceremonies (face unseen on television, but accent unmistakable) asked everyone to stand up for the national anthems that were played before the start of the match. “Be upstanding!” he boomed. That the English language is subject to various forms of torture, many of them unknown even to Dick Cheney, is a recognised fact. But this was murder of the language at home, matricide at its worst.What the chap meant was “Please stand up”. “Upstanding” means something else altogether. It is a synonym of honesty and virtue, a definition of morals. To deepen my anguish, an advertisement followed, trying to persuade me to buy a cellphone in “deep black”. What on earth is deep black? Have you ever seen “shallow black”? Blue or green or red lend themselves to variations of deep and light, but black is black. A paler shade of black is grey, not light black. This may not be on the scale of matricide, but it is a wound nevertheless.

In an effort to make the 20-over form of the game more American, the organisers have decided to change the language of commentary into American English. Hence the prolific and nonsensical use, in reportage, of “batter” for “batsman”. To begin with, “batsman” is perfectly adequate. The change does not add anything to meaning. A clever lawyer might argue that a change was needed to make the term gender-neutral, particularly with the growing popularity of women’s cricket. That would not be the truth, but it is an argument. If change is essential then you cannot usurp a word that already means something else. “Batter” is an existing term. It can be a verb, meaning “to hit repeatedly with hard blows”, derived from the French batre. Or it could be a noun, “a mixture of flour, egg, and milk or water, used for making pancakes or coating food before frying”. The Pocket Oxford English Dictionary does not recognise, as yet, a third meaning for “batter”, but it is possibly only a matter of time.

If it were elegant, there might be some aesthetic justification for murder. But all that is happening is that English is being battered to death. Can’t the Americans be content with taking over the world? Must they take over the English so completely? Or is it a case of mere subservience? Americans do not play cricket, and are unlikely to do so in the foreseeable future, so why should they care one way or another?

I had planned to end this column with a handsome flourish, a grand solution to the problem of finding someone to play in place of Ravindra Jadeja. Judging by the manner in which most Indian batsmen were getting battered by the rising ball, the coach, Gary Kirsten, could have summoned someone from the Indian women’s team to bat for the men. Alas, the women’s team also lost in the semi-finals. But at least its captain did not apologise.

(Byline for June 21, 2009)

The Secret Life of Foreign Secretaries

2009-06-28T19:59:00.003+05:30

The Secret Life of Foreign Secretaries
By M J Akbar

Secret extra-terrestrial sources, with reliable knowledge of the future, have revealed the full text of the dialogue between the Indian Foreign Secretary (IFS) and the Pakistan Foreign Secretary (PFS) on the sidelines of the next non-aligned summit. We offer this exclusive to our readers:

IFS: Hi! All well, my friend?
PFS: (Shrugs) Is sarcasm your normal opening gambit, or do you reserve it for the Indo-Pak dialogue?
IFS: We don’t do sarcasm in Delhi, not with a monsoon lost in transit.
PFS: You could have fooled me. As for all being well vis-a-vis the Taliban, read the papers. Your chaps getting on well with that little war against the Naxalites?
IFS: Well, at least our intelligence agencies didn’t fund the Naxalites to kill innocents and blow up hotels in Pakistan.
PFS: Actually, we are quite good at that ourselves; don’t need foreign expertise. Frankly, the Taliban were a terrible investment. Talk about biting the hand that feeds you...
IFS: The bite hasn’t got septic, has it?
PFS: Well... shall I be honest?
IFS: That would be such a pleasant change.
PFS: Very droll... You do seem to have acquired a splendid sense of humour since we last met. Very nice. Not in the manual for foreign secretaries, is it?
IFS: Ha ha. I take your point, however. Every country in our heavenly subcontinent is trapped in a desperate civil war — apart maybe from dear little Bhutan. Time for a little cooperation, then?
PFS: Precisely what I was thinking! We always have been the biggest poverty pit in the world — that’s where the Naxalites come from, isn’t it? Now we are also the bloodiest.
IFS: Not to mention the blood of innocents. Your only consistent export to India is terrorists. You ramp up the supply or scale it down depending on your political GDP requirements. You got a bit defensive after Mumbai, but you’ve put them back in business, haven’t you?
PFS: You give us too much credit. These militias have their own agenda. And unless you settle the root cause, Kashmir...
IFS: It seems to have escaped your notice that for the world — including your ally America — that this ‘‘root cause’’ argument has long crossed its sell-by date. You want to get stuck on this, we might as well use the rest of our time discussing which movie you last saw.
PFS: Saw a sexy picture of Angelina Jolie the other day in one of your newspapers! Wow! Our newspapers are so vegetarian compared to yours. It’s those mullahs, I’m afraid. Will neither have fun themselves nor let us have a bit on the side.
IFS: Oh, we’re getting some moral police as well, but our elections sort them out, so that’s a relief. You are good at changing the subject, my friend, but won’t work. Why do you get collective amnesia when it comes to Lashkar-e-Taiba chief Prof Hafeez Mohammad Saeed and his associate Colonel Nazir Ahmed? They were released because you ‘‘forgot’’ to include al-Qaida in your list of terrorist organizations! The lawyer you deputed for Sarbjit Singh ‘‘forgot’’ to appear in court. Forgot! Do lawyers get paid extra for forgetting?
PFS: Ah, the familiar blame game. Why don’t we move on? We are ready for demilitarized zones on both sides of the border — say five miles on either side. That would send such a massive signal of peace, and take your Army off the backs of the Kashmiri people as well. You don’t want me to dwell on that bit, do you, after Shopian? DMZs could enable Kashmiris to share electricity, get on with trade and increase travel on basis of special travel permits.
IFS: All so convenient: our Army moves away so that your surrogate militias and self-styled jihadis can breathe more easily. Simultaneously, you want us to dilute symbols of Indian sovereignty wherever possible. But you will not compromise on your absolutist stand. Why don’t we declare the Line of Control the border and really get on with life? That would close the chapter, and bring peace.
PFS: Peace! What a brilliant thought! But we can’t accept the LoC as the border. It would only mean that for 60 years we have fought for nothing.
IFS: I know it, and you know it, that the LoC is the only answer. The rest is keeping the ball in play to fool the world if not to fool ourselves.
PFS: (Gently) That’s not our decision, is it?
IFS: True.
PFS: (Smiles) Tell me, how long will it take if our political masters really want peace?
IFS: About six minutes.
PFS: And how long if we keep talking the way we did?
IFS: Another 60 years.
PFS: Touche! See you at the next meeting!

Appeared in Times of India - June 28, 2009

God isn’t saving the Left

2009-06-28T17:18:00.002+05:30

Byline by M J Akbar: God isn’t saving the Left

Bertolt Brecht, the leftist German playwright, was brilliant enough to give cynicism a good name. Parliamentary democracy, for him, was a moveable feast. He once suggested a great alternative to dissolving the legislature and electing a fresh set of representatives. “Wouldn’t it be easier,” he asked, “to dissolve the people and elect another in their place?”

He might never say so publicly, but Bengal’s Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee is probably ruing the fact that Comrade Brecht’s admirable suggestion cannot be implemented. It is useful to remember that the CPI[M]-led Left Front got hammered in the elections before the Maoist insurgency in and around Lalgarh became front-page news. How much worse have the prospects of the Left Front become in Bengal since Lalgarh?

The news is not very good for the democratic children of Marx and Stalin. The conscience of the Left in Bengal, Mahashweta Devi, has expressed sympathy for the Maoists and contempt for the administration. The police probably did not take permission from the Chief Minister when they filed an FIR against filmmaker and filmstar Aparna Sen for visiting Lalgarh to assess the situation. If the police did check with the CM, he had no business authorising such a vindictive and counter-productive action. If they did not check with him, it means that Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee’s authority has crumbled. Would the Bengal police have filed an FIR against Suchitra Sen or Madhabi Mukherjee when Jyoti Basu was Chief Minister without consulting him?

Aparna Sen is not an ideologue, but her heart and mind are in the right place. She can see what Governments, whether in Kolkata, Delhi, Chhattisgarh, Ranchi or Bhubaneswar cannot. The Naxalites may be wrong in their tactics, but they are not terrorists sent by the Lashkar-e-Tayaba from Pakistan. They are born of an economy that has turned a handful of capitalists into the bloated masters of the nation, given the middle class the reality of a better life and the dream of riches, and left the poor to the whiplash of hunger and the misery of indifference. The overwhelming majority of Naxalites only ever wanted the self-esteem that comes from an honest wage. The CPI[M] has abandoned its core commitment by walking away from this reality. Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee seems to have become besotted with power, which is probably why he will lose. Nor will the police war against the Maoists end in celebratory triumph for Writers Building, draped for more than three decades in fading red. It will continue long after the Left Front and Delhi have declared victory. The Governments have state-power; the Maoists have time.

The people of Bengal have sensed that while Mamata Banerjee may not have the sophistication of Marxist dialectic on her side, she is instinctively closer to their sentiments. That is why they shifted so significantly in the general elections, and will incline even further towards her in the Assembly polls. The CPI[M] has been reduced to seeking brownie points in a university debate. Sitaram Yechury is currently engaged in a debate with Rahul Gandhi over which constituency is more wretched. Rahul Gandhi thought, during the election campaign, that the tribal regions of Bengal were more backward than the worst in Orissa. Yechury responded that Bankura and Purulia in Bengal had better socio-economic indicators than Amethi or Rae Bareli. Both may be right, which means that we should offer a round of applause to Naveen Patnaik. Quiz question: When was the last time Yechury dipped into Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth?

The Indian political class may not be doing very much for the poor, but it also seems to have lost all sensitivity to poverty. You can hear Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee’s indignation simmer and boil in his voice as he denounces Maoists before his Cabinet and Front colleagues while defending the ban on them. When was the last time he got angry over poverty in Bengal? Unless, of course, he believes that he has eliminated poverty already and that Lalgarh is nothing but a conspiracy between Maoists and Mamata Banerjee to destabilise him before defeating him?

The Left Front would be better advised to take a long and hard look a little to the east of Bankura and Purulia, at the Muslim-dense districts that sweep towards Bangladesh and then bend into South 24-Parganas. Mamata Banerjee is Union Railway Minister largely [though of course not solely] because the Muslims of this arc abandoned the Marxists. Justice Rajinder Sachar intended nothing more dramatic than an honest report on Indian Muslims when commissioned to do so by Dr Manmohan Singh. His bleak portrait of Bengal had a sharp counterpoint: Bengali Muslims could not believe Muslims had more Government jobs in Narendra Modi’s Gujarat than in CPI[M]’s Bengal. That was the turning point, exacerbated by the Chief Minister’s ham-handed insensitivity towards cases like Rizwan, the young Kolkata boy who died as a consequence of an inter-community love affair. Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee is not communal. It was not, to paraphrase another playwright that the Bengal CM should recognise, that he loved Rizwan less, but that he loved the Kolkata Police more.

I should amend my suggestion: both the CPI[M] and Mamata Banerjee should take a serious look at the marginalised Bengali Muslims. Their young have not been attracted to Maoists because Muslims will not give up Allah and Maoists will not give up atheism. The first will not change, but the second might. The CPI[M] became an electoral force in Bengal because it softened its rigid position on religion. The Maoists might too.Mamata Banerjee has been long enough in Bengal politics to understand that replacing the Left Front also means acquiring a crushing burden of aspirations. No one will be more demanding than the poor, particularly the tribals and the Bengali Muslims. The Left Front got 30 years. Mamata will get about 30 months.

Tony Blair had some non-Brechtian advice for those politicians who wanted to win elections, as recounted in the diaries of one of his associates, Chris Mullin. Go around smiling at everyone, he said, and get someone else to do the shooting.

Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee not only has stopped smiling; he also picks up the gun himself when there is any shooting to be done.

Silence is not an answer

2009-06-28T17:11:00.002+05:30

Byline by M J Akbar: Silence is not an answer

Every ruling system, no matter how radical its origins, develops a vested interest in silence. The most widely used justification for secrecy is national interest, of course; and, once in government, politicians quickly acquire the skill of extending the breadth of national interest to include their personal interests. This personal interest does not necessarily have to be venal. It can be partisan, in the sense that a party might opt for silence in the pursuit of a hidden agenda. But the culture of suppression works wonderfully for those who need to hide the unacceptable.

What happens when a politician begins to peel off the layers that have been used to hide a dramatic truth?

We do not know when the system will force Barack Obama back into the grooves of convention, but he is still young enough in his term, and radical enough in his thinking, to challenge the established wisdom of his own turf, Washington. Perhaps the most dramatic departure he has made is in upending American policy towards Israel’s nuclear programme.

The fact that Israel has a nuclear arsenal of over 200 bombs is surely the worst kept secret of the last few decades, but till Obama became President it remained an official secret in both Israel, and in its strongest ally, America. Israel jailed any citizen who dared to utter a word on the subject, and American Presidents, across party lines, resolutely avoided any mention of the “n” word in reference to Israel. George Bush repeatedly threatened Iran with war on the grounds that it had transgressed its obligation to keep its nuclear programme peaceful; and Bush went to war against Iraq, with appalling blowback for his own country and horrific consequences for civilians in the battle zone, in ostensible search for nuclear weapons. He never uttered a word about Israel’s illegal nuclear stockpile. He was following precedence.Obama has, bravely, ended this hypocrisy. He understands that this duplicity cannot be sustained. You cannot wink at Israel and scold Iran with the same face. It is, in essence, racist to justify Israel’s nuclear status with silence and deny a neighbour like Saudi Arabia the right to defend itself and the Arab world with matching weapons. The implication is that one nation can be trusted with restraint in its use of nuclear power, but another cannot.

Obama first permitted an official of the US government to speak openly about Israel’s weapons, and upped the ante with the demand that Israel sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty along with India and Pakistan. He has now made the same point, albeit less starkly, in his Cairo speech. The credibility of his Cairo oratory was strengthened immeasurably by the previous American recognition of Israel as a nuclear weapons power.

Such candour will not persuade Israel to abandon its arsenal, and no country can force it to do so either. Israel will remain a nuclear power as long as any country in the world has a single bomb, which probably means forever. But recognition of this fact changes the dialectic of the Middle East discourse completely. It lends greater legitimacy to American pressure on Iran, and strengthens the argument for some form of a nuclear umbrella for those of Israel’s neighbours who ask, rightly, whether this institutionalised imbalance in strategic strength can be justified. So far, America has avoided a response to such a question through its non-recognition of Israeli capability. This, in turn, has persuaded nations like Iran to pursue a clandestine programme.

The history of nuclear weapons is the story of fear, cause and consequence. America and Britain developed the atomic bomb during the Second World War in the Manhattan Project for fear that Germany might do so before them. (It was a joint scientific effort, although America got all the public credit.) Stalin could not afford to be without a nuclear response once the hot war changed to a cold war. Britain was part of the original partnership; France developed an independent capability for reasons of status. China perceived both the American and the Soviet arsenals as a threat; and India, which had fought a war with China in 1962, had to find its answer. Pakistan responded to India.

Israel used regional conflict as its rationale; and Israel is Iran’s implicit justification. There is a cyclical logic in operation. North Korea also has an argument; its war for survival in the early Fifties. The rest of the world does not have any sympathy for this argument, which is why China has joined the United States in condemning North Korea’s brazen behaviour. But the very fact that the Security Council can do very little about disarming even a nation as weak and unstable as North Korea indicates the difficulties inherent in the very laudable concept of disarmament. Anyone with a couple of bombs, and the capability to launch them, has the ultimate blackmail mechanism. It might be suicide for North Korea to actually launch a bomb at Japan or South Korea, but this is surely the ultimate suicide mission. Anyone who is sane has to shudder at the sheer havoc such insanity would cause. This, of course, leads us to the existential dilemma: what happens if a weapon ends up in the command of terrorists, or those who believe that such havoc will destroy their perceived enemy? The civil war in Pakistan is tinged by the dread that if the Taliban, or its clandestine supporters in the political establishment, succeeded, the world would enter an unprecedented age of dread. This seems unlikely just now, but the future is another story.

What is the answer? I do not know. What I do know is that silence is not an answer.

(Byline of 14th June 2009 : posted on 28th June 2009)

West Bengal: Next time, the Volcano

2009-06-21T14:54:00.001+05:30

West Bengal: Next time, the Volcano
By M J Akbar

The Left may have lost the plot in Bengal, but has anyone found it? The Congress lost the plot between 1962 and 1967, and it was a while before anyone found another narrative.

In 1962, the Communists were on the wrong side of nationalism, since they refused to condemn China as the aggressor in the traumatic October war. The venerable Jyoti Basu spent a few months in jail along with his comrades. The party corrected this error internally; the pro-China extremists moved away, developing their own tactics for revolution. The Naxalites (named after Naxalbari, a small village in North Bengal) proclaimed Mao Zedong as their chairman, although it was never made clear whether Mao himself was enthused by the honour.

The Communists had already split formally. The breakaway CPI(M) found the correct balance. It was sufficiently radical for the first post-Independence generation that had begun to filter into Kolkata's College Street, and non-violent enough for the parents who had jobs that the Naxalites seemed determined to destroy. The classic Indian formula for conflict resolution, after all, has been to stop on this side of conflict.

The Congress was not immune from turmoil. Pranab Mukherjee should remember that age well. He was the principal lieutenant of the man who broke the Bengal Congress, Ajoy Mukherjee, and went on, as head of the Bangla Congress, to become chief minister of the United Front that was sworn in after the 1967 elections. Jyoti Basu was home minister, and for the first time the street lamps of Kolkata were covered in red paper to celebrate the rising of a red sun.

The alliance was unsustainable, because ideology was still alive in the 1960s. The chronic instability of coalition politics brought the Congress back to power in 1971; Pranab Mukherjee moved, deftly, to the centre when Mrs Indira Gandhi split the organization in 1969.

The great game-changer of that decade was the Kolkata riot of 1964, a consequence of violence in East Pakistan and some wildly inflammatory reporting in the Kolkata media. It is often forgotten that Bengal is a Partition province. The CPI(M) won the confidence of Muslims when its cadre mobilized to protect the community in 1964. Biman Bose, now CPI(M) state secretary, was one of the young men who stood at the corner of a Moulali street, daring arsonists and killers to cross the Marxist line. A relationship of over four decades was finally broken when Muslims deserted the CPI(M) in 2009.

The Left emerged out of the chaos and violence that fractured Bengal; as it dissipates, will the vacuum be filled by violence? It is tempting to see the immediate future as a mirror image, with variations, of the 1960s. The Maoists are back, without Mao graffiti on the walls or urban terrorism, but better organized. The images of men and women armed with bows and arrows in Midnapore are eerily reminiscent of the 1960s and early 1970s. They also prove that many parts of our country still live in the bow-and-arrow era.

The battle for Lalgarh (Red Fortress) is both literal and metaphorical. Although they never admitted as much, the CPI(M) and Congress cooperated in the first war against Naxalites, between 1967 and 1973. They are being forced to do so again.

But their political strategies were different. The Congress used state force against Naxalites and thought it had done its job; the CPI(M) finessed the Naxalites politically, through land reform. It is a pity no one remembers Harekrishna Konar and Promode Dasgupta, its architects. They gave food security to the peasant, while Jyoti Basu, as home minister and chief minister, ensured life security. Nandigram is a powerful symbol of departure, because a Left government snatched the peasant's land and then attacked those who protested.

Nature, and political nature, abhors a vacuum. The space vacated by the CPI(M) retreat is being visibly occupied: those who vote are with Mamata Banerjee; those who don't vote in rural Bengal are gravitating around the Maoists. The first category has larger numbers, but fluctuations are a matter of opportunity. Courage and consistency could take Mamata Banerjee to Writers Building, but this alone will not keep her there.

Radical is as radical does, not just as it says it will do. The peasantry, once nourished by Konar, wants the next level of prosperity. This will need phenomenal growth in the agricultural-industrial economy to meet the extraordinary upsurge in aspirations that accompanies generational change. Mamata Banerjee has about a year to prepare for a radical government that will be more than a patchwork of prematurely tired faces. It would also be unwise to forget the game-changer of the 1960s, the riots. Violence is an infectious plague, and demographic tensions always have a fuse in the tail. Bengalis believe that they are not communal. No one is communal, except in that brief moment of madness when the civilized mind crumbles.

The drama of Bengal is full of actors making powerful speeches. We need a plot, very quickly.

Appeared in Times of India - June 21, 2009

The US Advice on Kashmir is Lunacy

2009-06-14T15:04:00.001+05:30

The US Advice on Kashmir is Lunacy
By M J Akbar

If you want to sell arsenic, the kindest way to do so is to disguise it as medicine heavily coated with sugar. There is nothing particularly new about the proposal of an interim balm for the wounds of Kashmir, demilitarization on both sides of the Line of Control. What is novel is the heavy Washington endorsement of this Pakistan-promoted option.

This is not all. Unusually for a senior diplomat of a super power that affects neutrality, US under secretary of state for political affairs, William Burns, chose Delhi as the venue for a message designed to disturb the equanimity of his hosts, when he said, "Any resolution of Kashmir has to take into account the wishes of the Kashmiri people". That must have been music to Islamabad's ears.

Demilitarization sounds so sweetly reasonable, a definitive gesture of de-escalation. The Obama administration is delighted by the prospect of collateral benefit. This would release more Pak troops for the war against Taliban. Pakistan has shifted some brigades from the Indian border, but not from the Line of Control.

Self-interest may have blinded Washington to an obvious fallacy in this "reasonable" formulation. In all three major Kashmir conflicts — 1947, 1965 and Kargil — Pakistan has used a two-tier strategy. A surrogate force has served as a first line of offense. The Pakistani term for them has been consistent; they have come in the guise of "freedom fighters". India called them "raiders" in 1947 and 1965, and defines them as terrorists now. This surrogate force has expanded its operations far beyond Kashmir, as the terrorist attacks on Mumbai confirmed.

DMZs (De-Militarized Zones) would guarantee the security of Pakistan and weaken India's defences, since there is no suggestion that terrorist militias are going to be "demilitarized". Should the Indian army leave the Kashmir valley to the mercy of well-organized, finely-trained, generously-financed indiscriminate organisations? India has no corresponding surrogate force, because it is a status-quo power; it makes no claims on any neighbour's territory.

If America wants a DMZ (De-Militarized Zone) in India they will first have to ensure a DTZ (De-Terrorised Zone) in Pakistan.

India and Pakistan may have a common problem in terrorism, but they do not have terrorists in common. Those who have inflicted havoc already in India, and those who intend to do so in future, are safe in their havens in Lahore and Multan and Karachi. Pakistan's ambivalence on terrorism was exposed yet again by the release of Prof Hafeez Mohammad Sayeed, emir of Jamaat ud Dawa, from house arrest on June 6. It needed an official sanction by the UN Security Council to send him into soft detention. The government's duplicity was evident in the frailty of the case against him. The Lahore High Court, which ordered his release, discovered that Pakistan had not even placed al-Qaeda on its list of terrorist organizations.

Islamabad may have taken action against militants in the Frontier who pose a threat to Pakistan, but it continues to mollycoddle those who threaten India.

Islamabad's leverage has risen in Obama's Washington for good reasons. America may have outsourced flat-world, high-tech jobs to soft-power India. But America has outsourced a full-scale Af-Pak war to Pakistan.

Rewards for India come in corporate balance sheets and middle-class jobs. Compensation for Pakistan comes in billions of dollars for the army (as much as $5 billion of which has been diverted, so far, to the purchase of conventional weapons meant primarily for use against India) and much more in aid and soft-loans. Pakistan believes that money is insufficient. It wants the bonus of political rewards. It expects a Pak-US nuclear pact, not because it is in need of fuel for peaceful or martial purposes, but in order to quasi-legitimize its status as a nuclear power. Islamabad also wants some settlement on Kashmir that it can sell to its people as a victory.

Former president Pervez Musharraf may be out of circulation but ideas that jumped out of his box a few years ago are back in play. He has just given an interview to Der Spiegel in which he suggests that India and Pakistan were close to an agreement over his proposals:

"demilitarization of the disputed area, self-governance and a mutual overwatch." Delhi insisted on the conversion of the Line of Control into a formal border, but the thought that the two countries came close has given Washington reason to believe that it can now pressurize Delhi to make some concession, perhaps by agreeing to make the Line of Control "irrelevant" by "opening transit routes".

There is great danger in this "soft border" thesis. How can you have a "soft border" unless both sides recognize it as a border? Moreover, what does the phrase "mutual overwatch" mean? Both would dilute symbols of Indian sovereignty in Kashmir.

Musharraf, who sounds bored by his new routine of bridge with friends at his flat in London, says he is ready to broker a peace deal.

The search for peace might prove to be tougher than starting a war in Kargil.

Appeared in Times of India - June 14, 2009

Some Dangerous Liasons in July

2009-06-08T12:04:00.002+05:30

Some Dangerous Liasons in July
By M J Akbar

A turbulent whisper is surging through Washington. Barack Obama wants peace in the life of his first term. He has discovered the magic potion that will kill the roots of two poisonous plants, Palestine and Kashmir. He has told Israel that he wants a definite route map towards an independent Palestine state by July. July is also the month during which Hillary Clinton is scheduled to visit the Indian subcontinent. In her baggage will be a war manual for Af-Pak and a peace prescription for Ind-Pak.

Here is some good news for Hillary Clinton. The Kashmir problem has already been solved.
It was solved on January 1, 1948, the day India and Pakistan froze their troops along a Cease Fire Line recognized by the United Nations. In 1972, through the Shimla Agreement, they renamed this the 'Line of Control'. There are few international pacts that have stood the test of so much turmoil. This one has been tested by war in all its forms, regular and irregular. Pakistan tried to change the map of Kashmir in 1965. In January 1966 it sheepishly reaffirmed its relevance at Tashkent when India and Pakistan exchanged territories won and lost across the Cease Fire Line in the battles of 1965.

Six decades of conflict have not shifted six inches of grass from one side to the other. Six more decades of furious sabre-rattling or squalid impotence will not change the geography either. Hillary Clinton could sort it all out in the minute it takes India and Pakistan to affix their signatures to a document converting de facto into de jure, and declaring this Line an international border. Punjab and Bengal were slashed; Kashmir will become the third major province to be formally divided, and the ashes of 1947 can finally be interred with the bones of Partition.

India is ready to accept this reality. Pakistan might need persuasion. It has to be told that there is nothing to be gained by the complications of discussion, and everything to achieve through clarity.

What about the aspirations of independence widely attributed to Kashmiris? This is a chimera. The terms of British departure in 1947 were unambiguous. No part of the British empire or its surrogate dependencies, the princely states, was offered independence. The list of those who flirted with the possibility is long: Jodhpur, Junagadh, Travancore-Cochin, Hyderabad, Baluchistan, Swat, to name only those states that come readily to mind. Hassan Shaheed Suhrawardy and Sarat Chandra Bose thought an independent, united Bengal would be a splendid idea. Pakistan did not arm and send tribal raiders towards Srinagar in October 1947 in order to create an independent Kashmir. Karachi wanted to absorb the Muslim-majority valley into Pakistan. It began to promote independence only when its dreams of acquisition were aborted by the intervention of the Indian Army. These are cold facts, and 60 years of heavy breathing by Kashmiris have not boiled them into a different concoction.

Pakistan could have opted for a peaceful resolution in 1947 and 1948. The final status of Jammu and Kashmir had been kept in abeyance. Nehru, in a note to Lord Mountbatten, suggested that talks could begin after the spring thaw of 1948. It is possible that Pakistan might have gained a shade more territory through a negotiated partition of Kashmir than it did through violence. But history does not offer premiums for stupidity. The sensible thing to do now would be to close this hideously expensive chapter on the page where history left its bookmark.

It is common knowledge that Washington acutely wants the next round of Indo-Pak talks to be between the chiefs of the two armies, rather than the heads of the two governments. There is a substantive challenge, from terrorists and ideologically motivated theocratic groups like the Taliban, to the stability of the region between Kabul and Delhi. This can best be met by cooperation between Indian and Pakistani forces. That will not happen until the warriors are tired of war without objectives. India does not want any parcel of land inside Pak-Occupied Kashmir. Pakistan cannot get a yard of what India holds. So what is the conflict about except a self-destructive ego?

The elimination of war, even were it to come about, is not synonymous with the arrival of cooperation. It will take time before India and Pakistan fully appreciate how much they can mean to each other. Trade, the true lubricant of prosperity, is susceptible to more factors than Islamic identity. Dread of India's industrial power and capital will need to be carefully eased through sedatives. Terrorists who hate everything India stands for will not disappear quietly into a soft sunset. But nothing could be potentially worse than two nuclear nations trapped by intrinsic virulence on the one side and contemptuous indifference on the other.

The obvious can stare you in the face, but you must also have the vision to recognize it. Hillary Clinton would do well to pack some specially-powered spectacles in her handbag. They would make a good present for her friends in Islamabad.

Appeared in Times of India - June 08, 2009

Thank you for the Nildus Speech, Mr President

2009-06-06T14:01:00.001+05:30

Byline by M J Akbar: Thank you for the Nildus Speech, Mr President

Dear Brother-Husain,

I am certain about two things. I am a Muslim, and I live in this world. Now the uncertainties begin. On 4 June you gave what was heavily advertised as a major speech to the “Muslim world”. Does that mean that while every Christian believes in the divinity of Jesus, he can be legitimately and widely varied in his political interests, but Muslims must have both Allah and politics in common?

As an Indian Muslim I belong to the second largest Muslim community in the world. I also live, proudly, as an equal, in India, a nation that contains the largest Hindu community in the world. Do you think I have the same political views as my fellow Muslims in Pakistan or Bangladesh or Nepal? You did mention that there are around six million Muslims in America. Were you speaking to them, or on their behalf, in Cairo? But for the accidents of life, you could have been an American Muslim, a Kenyan Muslim or an Indonesian Muslim. Would the same speech serve for all three?

Muslims live not only in different cultures and geo-political spaces, but also under different Constitutions. Indonesia, which is the largest Muslim nation, does not believe in a state religion. Pakistan, the second largest, became the world’s first Islamic republic. There are kings and autocrats and elected heads of government in the “Muslim world”, and one category that can only be described as “immoveable object” unopposed by any irresistible force. Many Muslims live on the margins. Not many seem aware of this fact, and it is possible that none of your speechwriters pointed it out, but 10% of the Russian population is Muslim. Islam came to that vast Eurasian region around the same time as the Christian church. Do Russian Muslims belong to the same “Muslim world” as Indonesians and Moroccans? The Chinese keep their Muslim-majority province, Xinjiang, a sort of closely guarded state secret, frightened that Islam might jump up and bite off Communism’s ear. Which world do these Muslims belong to? And what about the chaps in Britain, who probably went over on the assumption that Britain was still Great. Or the French Muslims, whose ears are still ringing with the famous Sarkozy diktat: “Off with their headscarves!” Where would you place them? In Above-Saharan Africa?

At one point you were kind enough to suggest that “America is not – and never will be – at war with Islam”. But no sane person ever accused America of being at war with Islam. America would have to be a theocracy, with Inquisition as its preferred domestic policy, and conversion as the principal instrument of foreign affairs, to declare war on Islam. I hope you will not accuse me of being pedantic, in the sense of calling a toothache a gum-ache. The conflation of Islam and Muslims is precisely the kind of misconception that encourages pre-nation-state fantasies like the revival of a Caliphate. One might add that while every Muslim was deeply committed to his faith, political disputes among Muslims began with the election of the very first Caliph, Hadrat Abu Bakr. Muslims see themselves as a brotherhood, not a nation-hood. If Islam is sufficient glue for nationalism, why would Arabs be living in 22 countries? That should have been obvious while you were snacking on Arab cookies and Islamic lemonade in Cairo.

“Islam and the West” is another phrase wandering through a dialectic shaped within the Queen of Alice’s Wonderland. Islam is a faith; the West is geography. How do you construct a relationship between faith and geography? You can have a debate on Islam and Christianity, or indeed between the West and West Asia, or the West and South Asia, or South East Asia. There is a past and a future to discuss. “Islam and the West” is straight out of 19th century Orientalism, laden with a subtext that is best left to warmongers. Peace requires a different idiom.

We understood your problem as you weaved through political and rhetorical swamps, because your predecessor managed to achieve what the mightiest of Muslim rulers failed to do – unite Muslims, albeit against him, rather than for something. But every Muslim does not need a homily on democracy. Muslims of Indonesia, Malaysia, Bangladesh and India, who add up to nearly half the Muslim population, are not democracy-deficit.

The appropriate venue for a speech on Islam would have been Mecca, Medina or Jerusalem. But the first two cities are barred to non-Muslims or apostates; and the third would have been too toxic for an American President.

Cairo was the perfect podium for the speech that we did hear, since your true theme was not the “Muslim world” but the region between the Nile and the Indus, which I have, elsewhere, called the “Arc of Turbulence”. Those searching for a convenient caption for the Cairo oration might want to call it the “Nildus Speech”.

For the citizens of this region between Egypt and Pakistan, and particularly for Muslims, this was a brilliant gleam in the gloom to which they have become accustomed. Its great merit was justice and fairness, virtues that are repeatedly exalted in the Holy Quran. You did not deny Palestine its rights because you wanted to preserve what Israel has acquired. Of course you will be criticised for being even-handed, but you have survived worse.

It was extremely important that a President of the United States quoted the Quran’s unequivocal condemnation of terrorism, through a verse that is particularly beautiful. This will go a long way to correct the propaganda unleashed by those who controlled the White House and influenced media before you.

There was one element of your speech that did address almost the whole of the Muslim world: your stark, unambiguous condemnation of gender bias, one of the besetting sins of the “Muslim world”. If Muslims do not eliminate gender bias, they will not be permitted into the 20th century: who is going to send them an invitation to join the 21st? Barack Obama has offered the key, but it is up to Muslims to open the door.

Will India ever have a Muslim Code Bill?

2009-05-31T17:43:00.001+05:30

Will India ever have a Muslim Code Bill?
By M J Akbar

As power settles into the comfortable grooves of a five-year plateau, a useful question awaits a response: what does India want to be by 2014? If the answer was simple the query would not have been raised.

To suggest that Indians want a better, more egalitarian economy is both obvious and inadequate. Indians have demanded a high growth rate since 1947. They desired independence because they believed it would offer a better life, free from exploitation by a taxing state and accompanying layers of smug middlemen. The horizon has not remained static for 60 years, even if the poor and the indigent might still wonder if the State cares quite as much for them as it does for middlemen.

What is the skyline like in 2009?

What Indians seek more than anything else is the economic equity and cultural freedoms of a modern nation-state. Poverty is anti-modern. It stinks of a colonised past we would rather forget. But modernity is much more than money. There are countries that have money beyond the definition of avarice, or resources beyond the limits of good fortune. But they are neither modern, nor do they show any sign of trying to become modern.

Modernity is a basket of aspirations interlinked in the subtleties of an expanding mind, from gender equality to bakeries to highways to English medium schools to elections to a thirst for newspapers in unknown small towns. Modernity is not about an immature rejection of habits or tradition. A muffin may sit easily beside a dosa during breakfast in Kottayam or Hubli; and a croissant beside a parantha in Rampur. The bar in Mangalore is not about alcohol. It is about choice and freedom from the grey shadows of a moral police. But this is the easy part.

A modern nation is defined by four non-negotiable rights: equality of citizenship across origin and gender; secularism; liberty of speech; and economic equity. It is obvious that the politics of our country works, which is why every election result is a surprise to politicians.

If Mahatma Gandhi is the Father of the Nation then Jawaharlal Nehru is the Father of the Modern Nation, for the alchemy of India's transformation into modern India can be sourced to the passage of the Hindu Code Bill. This remarkable legislation, pushed through serious internal opposition, released Hindu women from the coils of bias and, by the '80s, had made them productive equals in a nation that would be unrecognisable from a telescope rooted in the '50s. Nehru's modernising vision was deeply etched in the imagination of his grandson Rajiv Gandhi, whose ideology might be called liberation-technology. Every computer in India is a living child of a Rajiv dream.

But Jawaharlal and Rajiv were also guilty of one massive failure. Nehru refused to offer Indian Muslims the gift he had given to Indian Hindus; there was no Muslim Code Bill. It is perfectly true that social legislation in Muslim personal law was much in advance of the rights of Hindu women until Nehru altered the dynamic. But it would be self-delusional to suggest that it is perfection. The accidents that control history offered Rajiv a chance to complete his grandfather's unfinished agenda, and his initial impulse was precisely what a modern mind would suggest. But Rajiv was betrayed by the same vested interests that had stopped his grandfather, a powerful class of Congress Muslims for whom the status quo is both comfort food as well as lucrative sustenance. It is entirely logical that those who used the most vituperative language against Rajiv Gandhi over the Shah Bano case should be considered stalwarts of Congress today, without having changed their views.

The price of compromise is rarely paid by the powerful. It is paid by the girl child who is thrust into the seclusion of purdah and driven into forced marriage before she has learnt to discover her social and economic potential. The visible rise of the veil in Indian Muslim communities requires little elaboration. It is a paradox of secular India that one definition of secularism has become the right of minorities to retreat into conservatism. Politicians accept the consolidation of communal identity as the inevitable antidote to insecurity, but that is a dangerous diagnosis. It implies a helplessness on the part of the State in eliminating threat and seeding educational and economic opportunity.

A sedative is not a cure. Will Rajiv's son Rahul Gandhi seek what might be called a Shah Bano moment, or will the need for votes sabotage the compulsion of reform once again?
The pleasant facade of the moment should not delude us into believing that the turmoil of history is now behind us. Such a moment will come, uninvited if we do not seek it out deliberately.

India does not want to become a Hindu-majority Pakistan, and cannot understand why Pakistan refuses to become a Muslim-majority India. This is not criticism of Pakistani nationalism; every Indian today is either delighted or relieved that Pakistan has gone its own, separate way. Only those who truly mean well seek a neighbour that moves towards the 21st century instead of sinking towards the 19th. However, India cannot afford the option of a curate's egg, and be modern in parts, leaving sections that drift slowly towards the mindset of tribal behaviour. The pace of India's advance will be curtailed by a septic limp if Indian Muslims do not march in step with Indian Hindus and Sikhs and Christians towards the horizons of 2014 and beyond.

A Political Safari

2009-05-30T21:49:00.001+05:30

Byline by M J Akbar: A Political Safari

Victory and defeat in an election are a judgement call between options, not an epic choice between good and evil. It takes a couple of days at most for the celebrations to peter out and the tantrums to ease; then it is back to the difficult business of delivering governance against the background of raised expectations.

Dr Manmohan Singh is showing every sign of being a sensible victor. Being sensible means taking decisions in silence, instead of churning out a statement a day to keep television channels in play. The wisest victor cherrypicks the best programmes in an opponent’s manifesto, takes note of any criticism that may have stung without being a fatal bite, and absorbs it without any fuss into the agenda of Government. The smart thing to do is to make this so much a part of your commitment that the voter forgets the origin when it comes to making a choice yet again. The evidence for this assumption lies in the decision to give Kamal Nath, one of the stars of the last Government, Road Transport and Highways.

It is possible to argue that Kamal Nath, now the oldest sitting member of the Lok Sabha (not in terms of age, but in number of elected terms) turned Commerce into a glamorous ministry by the force of his personality. By the measure of any political yardstick he has had every right to feel that he is both senior to and at least as competent as P. Chidambaram, who has had the better portfolios. However, politics is less about justice and more about being in the right place at the right time.

The most suitable metaphor for power in Delhi comes, appropriately, from the safari park, with variations to extend the nomenclature beyond the cat family. At the top are the Big Five. The Prime Minister is the lion, though hopefully with the diligence of the lioness rather than the feed-me indolence of the male cat. The Finance Minister would be legitimately the tiger. Defence and External Affairs would be elephants, controlling their patch with hauteur, but essentially vegetarian by nature. Elephants might trumpet and trample, but they don’t bite. I suppose the Human Resources Minister could lay claim to being the leopard. That gives the job status in the eyes of the jungle, but over the last decade the claws of this leopard have been manicured to non-existence. Both the BJP-led NDA and the Congress-led UPA allotted Human Resources to seniors in order to minimise the damage he could do to the Big Boss. Dr Murli Manohar Joshi and Arjun Singh considered themselves worthy of the Prime Minister’s job, and were convinced that it was only a matter of time before summons arrived from destiny. It may sound a bit cruel, but the fact is that P.V. Narasimha Rao, Atal Behari Vajpayee and Manmohan Singh converted the HRD office from a waiting room for promotion into the ante-room of oblivion. Dr Joshi left office with a faintly malodorous air, and Arjun Singh left in tears. His relevance in the Congress Party is more or less over. Kamal Nath’s name was bandied about as the HRD minister of this Government because he was considered too senior to take a lesser job. But being a sharp man, wise in the ways of the Congress, he decided to avoid the trap of a first class waiting room with second class prospects.

The Prime Minister has sent a signal, picked up early and clearly by Kamal Nath, that the quality of infrastructure development in the next five years will be a vital key to public perception of the success or failure of this Government. This was one area in which the BJP’s charge that the Vajpayee initiative had tapered off was received well by the voter. Dr Singh fought hard and successfully to keep the DMK out of infrastructure because he knew that this perception had some truth in it. These nodal ministries are much in demand because of the massive spending involved. Spending is a gilt-edged invitation to corruption. Road transport and highways is a responsibility that extends equally to every part of the country, urban and rural. It is the most visible measure of change. The manner in which Praful Patel transformed Civil Aviation into a dynamic development office, rather than a status quoist job riddled with babu-level favouritism, is an indication of what a good minister can do with opportunity. A quiz question will perhaps clarify what I mean a bit more. What was the name of the last highways minister? The fact that you would probably have to be the last minister’s close relative to recall his name is evidence of the decline it suffered in the last five years. Trust me, you will not forget that Kamal Nath is in charge this time. Neither will the contractors.

Every Government will have its share of file-shufflers. That is a demand of the Cabinet system we operate, in which political considerations have to take some precedence over competence. If Vilasrao Deshmukh was a disaster as Maharashtra Chief Minister, there is no earthly reason to expect that he will be a paragon of Harvard business school now that he has been put in charge of heavy industries. He is being, as they say, “accommodated”. I presume the Prime Minister believes that all the heavy industrialists in the state sector have competent managers and the best thing that the minister could do is limit his intervention in their lives. The case of Chemicals and Fertilisers must be similar. The only really in-demand ministry that he has given the DMK is Communications, and he has put two Congress Ministers of State as guardian angels -- to guard Congress interests.

There is no confusion this time about the pecking order at the top. Pranab Mukherjee is the clear second-in-command, while A.K. Antony comes next. The highest table has no fourth place. There is a high table after that, shared by the External Affairs Minister, Finance Minister, the Law Minister and the Road Transport Minister. The rest contribute to the attractions of the political safari, but they don’t sell tickets

Nothing personal, this is Business

2009-05-24T10:59:00.002+05:30

Nothing personal, this is Business
By M J Akbar

Fish, said Mao Zedong, do not swim in pure water. Dr Manmohan Singh is no Maoist but he should, by now, know a thing or two about swimming upstream. He could, of course, point out that pollution is not very good for the health of fish either.

Realists know that integrity is a variable virtue. If Dr Singh were to impose fiscal-virginity on his cabinet ministers, Saint Antony of Kerala would be burdened with too many portfolios. Those who choose to believe that the kerfuffle with the DMK was only about incompetence, or its elder brother corruption, or a triple-deck sundae with one family layer too many, is confusing facts with television coverage.

The operating law in politics owes much to a management principle made immortal by Mario Puzo in Godfather. There is nothing personal about it; this is business.

The Congress has begun its campaign for the next general election. It shed some allies during the polls; it has begun to pluck feathers from others after the results. It wants to check today those it seeks to displace tomorrow. Tamil Nadu has entered its radar screen since the Congress increased its share to 14 seats in the alliance. Why not 39 tomorrow?

As Kanshi Ram, the founder of BSP, used to say if there was anyone around to listen, elections are the only time that a party grows in substantive terms. Congress has done far better than expectations in Maharashtra, so it makes no sense to settle for stagnation. Its stark message to Sharad Pawar has political logic: merge, or find your own way to nirvana. Old allies may be tolerated during transition, but on a basis of diminishing returns.

The feast of 2004 was egalitarian. The menu at the high table in 2009 will differ sharply from that at the low table. Allies who want something better than peanuts are welcome to dine elsewhere. In 2004 the mood was inclusive, barring odd guests like Mulayam Singh Yadav. In 2009 the door is wide open for those who want to leave, and barred for late arrivals.

Neither tears nor trauma are useful in such circumstances. On Thursday evening Lalu Prasad Yadav, who once floated like a butterfly and stung like a bee, wondered why he was being treated like a fly without a wall. (The wall may be my contribution to the image, but the fly was certainly his metaphor even as he promised that he would return.) The sharper allies picked this up quickly. When it comes to political poker, Karunanidhi plays blind with his eyes open. When the stakes were raised, and his government in Tamil Nadu was threatened, he doubled the stakes. If he was at risk in Chennai so was Dr Manmohan Singh in Delhi. Karunanidhi was right.

Dr Farooq Abdullah’s flight to some salubrious Friday evening entertainment was equally to the point. Everything is political, even a ticket to a T20 semi-final. Sharad Pawar is the supremo of IPL. Pawar and Abdullah are close friends. The signal from South Africa was in double code. Delhi deciphered it quickly. On Thursday evening, Dr Manmohan Singh tried to disguise the hard news that there was no place for Farooq in the cabinet with a soft, even sentimental touch. By the time Farooq had landed in South Africa, the hard news had changed. He would become a cabinet minister by Tuesday. Two men leaving on a jetplane, one to Chennai and the other to South Africa, turned the inaugural ball of Friday evening into an interim arrangement.

The Congress has not won power in order to lose it. But a fundamental question has shifted on its axis. In 2004, it was about how many friends the Congress wanted. In 2009, it is about how many adversaries the Congress can afford as it maneuvers its way to the next plateau. A cost-benefit analysis is being done for every state. It is easy to be high-minded about Shibu Soren in Delhi, but his displeasure will draw blood in Ranchi.

Congress and Mamata form the perfect fit, because they are still only half-way to a common destination, Writers Building in Kolkata. She wants a stable government in Delhi because there is compatibility in Kolkata. Both are determined to destroy the Left. Mamata wants supremacy in Bengal, the Congress has primacy in India. Her needs in Delhi, unlike the DMK’s, are limited. She would not know what to do with a second cabinet post, for it would force to promote one person from a tier of deputies, creating volatile peer resentment as throwing up a parallel star within her orbit.

Sharad Pawar and Congress remain married but don’t look as if they are made for each other. Maharashtra, like Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, is an inevitable target for Congress expansion, and there is an Assembly election in four months. Congress won 15 seats, Pawar only nine. The Congress will demand a restructuring of the seat in the Assembly around that ratio. Will Pawar be able to absorb a cut without marginalizing his party? Or will try and emulate the courageous Naveen Patnaik, break free and offer himself as the next chief minister of his state?

The results were a verdict on the past; government formation is about shaping the future. A comprehensive victory has created some apprehensive allies.

Appeared in Times of India - May 24, 2009

Season of Mellow Music

2009-05-23T14:49:00.002+05:30

Byline by M J Akbar: Season of mellow music

Has the BJP got trapped in the Bosnia joke: nothing can succeed, not even a crisis? As the party thinks its way through the present impasse, it needs two things that politicians avoid since both come with uncomfortable demands: clarity and honesty. Arun Jaitley, the general secretary who played a significant part in shaping the campaign, summed it all up succinctly when he said, “Shrillness does not pay.” It would be too much to expect Jaitley to dwell in public on the shrillness that characterised the rhetoric of too many disparate BJP candidates, the most notable of whom was of course the overblown Varun Gandhi, but one presumes that he has made the point in private confabulations that must be taking place in the BJP leadership.

No one, and particularly not anyone young, wants the shriek of conflict to disturb the peace of India. Throwing pebbles at any caste, community or gender is a vote-loser. India still loves a preacher, as the epidemic of religious channels on television would indicate, but it has no time for the bully. Independence is not an esoteric political fact, handed down to us by Gandhi and his remarkable generation. Independence is now the motif of individual life. Young people who go to bars do not interfere with those who might seek solace in the brotherhood of the Bajrang Dal. In return, they expect the Dal to leave them alone to their definition of pleasure. It is with great difficulty that Indians tolerate the police; reason forces them to do so even when their instinct tells them to ride around or beyond the law in the small matters of daily existence. Why on earth would they have any patience with a moral police in a free society?

It is perfectly possible to note trends of political behaviour in the changing patterns of Indian life. Urban middle class Indians throng towards malls; the poor aspire for them. The mall is now a community centre for the young. They see merit in order, availability, convenience and of course the air conditioning. The corner shop is being replaced. The vendor will gradually be displaced. The old market, a collection of individual vendors, now represents haggling and uncertain quality. Regional parties are the vendors of the political marketplace, and the sound of their haggling, compounded with their uncertain quality, has begun to grate on the voter. He did not abandon the corner shop completely — neither has India — but he preferred the mall. Between the two principal centres available, he chose the tricolour variety in 2009.

The BJP can take comfort in the fact that it is also a mall, but in need of serious redecoration as well as a radical reorientation in its display of goods. In some basics there is no difference between the saffron and the tricolour malls. They share a common economic policy, which is after all the meat and bones of the political shop. There is not much difference in foreign policy either. The divergence comes in the culture of the environment. People want pilau and papad to coexist even if they are not available in the same restaurant. You cannot impose a vegetarian code on a public environment. Freedom means the right to choose, and you can choose only if there is choice.

A modern nation is much more than a collection of skyscrapers or fantasy cities shimmering in the middle of nowhere. It is an idea that permits the individual to live without fear. Sometimes (often?) this absence of fear can degenerate into licence. We need to go no further than the nearest urban street to see how an Indian can stretch freedom into chaos. I often feel that we need our new highways not for speed but simply for mobility, for they eliminate the Indian driver’s ability to overtake illegally, or cross lanes; the only real damage he can now do is to himself. But no Indian is going to exchange the confusions of intemperate behaviour for dictatorship. Governments have learnt to abjure dictatorship after the Emergency. Parties who feel that they can invoke fear, whether against women, or lower castes, or upper castes, or minorities have missed the social and cultural nuances of a changing India.

It is entirely symmetrical that Dr Manmohan Singh should be the first Prime Minister to be re-elected after Rajiv Gandhi gave the 18-year-old the vote. The young did not give the Congress all its 206 seats. And there were young voters who supported other parties as well. But I suspect that more detailed analysis will show that the young tipped perhaps forty or fifty seats towards the Congress, turning a victory into a decisive victory. In this fact lies a serious danger for the Congress.

The young are wonderful when enamoured; they turn deadly when disappointed. In 2004, India was a bit surprised by the sudden presence of a new government. This time, it was the turn of the Opposition to be surprised by defeat. A deliberate vote for continuity has raised expectations to a point where non-delivery is going to extract a heavy penalty. The days of politics, as usual, are over. You cannot be blasé about a claim that only five or ten paise per development rupee reaches the voter. You have to change this corrupt equation, because it is corruption, by the rich and middle class that is denying the poor their rights. We talk glibly of the young. Our image of them is the one promoted in media, in tees and jeans. But this fringe of rich or middle class youth is vastly outnumbered by youth on subsistence levels, in slums and villages. The Naxalite brigades are full of Indian young, and you cannot dismiss them as pernicious enemies or terrorists, without asking what has driven them to the safety of a jungle and the anger of a gun. They were born in India, and are asking for the jobs that can bring them food, T-shirts and jeans.

A party’s crisis is nothing compared to a nation’s crisis, and vast stretches of India are in an unprecedented crisis. If the BJP wants to get out of its Bosnia trap then there is only one way out: the rhetoric of conflict must be replaced by the calm of consensus; and the promise of wealth creation has to be accompanied by radical wealth distribution. As Jaitley has recognised, discord is shrill. India wants more mellow music.

BJP, Left face existential dilemma

2009-05-17T15:07:00.002+05:30

BJP, Left face existential dilemma
By M J Akbar

It may be difficult to deal with defeat, but the regret of a drowned dream is quickly overtaken by the compulsions of survival. Both the BJP and the Left now face an existential dilemma, and will require honesty to pare away that part of the dogma that has checked the growth of one and undermined the success of the other.

The BJP might want to consider a fundamental fact about our country. India is not a secular nation because Indian Muslims want it to be secular. India is a secular nation because Indian Hindus want it to be secular.

It would be wrong to dismiss everyone in the BJP as communal. But L K Advani's efforts to sustain the inclusive image fashioned by Atal Behari Vajpayee were constantly undermined by the rhetoric of leaders who did not understand that the language of conflict had passed its sell-by date. The turning point came with Varun Gandhi's immature speech. The BJP condemned it but did not disown it completely, for fear of losing the extreme in its search for the centre. What seems obvious now did not seem so clear then. Varun Gandhi should have been dropped as a candidate. Worse, Varun Gandhi fell in love with his new pseudo-aggressive image, and projected it in statements and pictures that went into every home through television. This young Gandhi even began to fantasise a future as chief minister of Uttar Pradesh. It is interesting that regional BJP leaders understood that this was toxic. The Madhya Pradesh party bluntly told Varun Gandhi he was not needed while the Bihar unit was relieved when Nitish Kumar refused hospitality to both Narendra Modi and Varun Gandhi.

The national ethos is shaped by one predominant desire: the hunger for a better life. Prosperity is impossible without peace, so the passions of sectarian politics, whether based on community or caste, have been replaced by the clear understanding that peace is non-negotiable. Prosperity, on the other hand, has always been negotiable, since it has never been a universal fact. India remains a poor country with rich people rather than the other way around. The poor want to be part of the India Rising story.

It is odd that the Marxists should have missed this. They lost the Muslim vote in rural Bengal, not because of Islam but because of poverty. The message from Nandigram and Singur was that land was being taken away from the poor in order to create jobs for the middle class. Nitish Kumar has won because he created peace, and took his promise of prosperity to those at the very bottom of the top-heavy caste ladder. He will be the envy of his peers at the next meeting of the nation's chief ministers.

It might be even odder if one draws a potential parallel between Bengal and Gujarat, but Narendra Modi's industrialization just might become a problem if he does not take corrective action. Taking the Nano that Bengal lost is only one chapter of a more complicated story. The poor are sensing that this cosy relationship between politicians and industrialists is benefiting either the rich or the middle class. The landless and peasants could turn against Modi if he does not resurrect rural Gujarat with the high-profile vigour he has offered industry. The DMK survived in Tamil Nadu because it gave the poor cheap rice and free entertainment. Buy shares in television companies. Every political party is soon going to hand out free television sets to voters.

The Berlin Wall has been breached in Kolkata. Is it only a matter of time before the Communist bloc collapses? Are Prakash Karat and Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee the problem or the solution? Is there any alternative chief minister in Bengal who can fashion correctives and implement them with a hammer? The CPI(M) politburo meeting on May 18 was meant to be a celebratory event in the game of thrust and parry that was supposed to follow the results. It will now have the excitement of a dirge. Prakash Karat summed up this election pithily when he said, "We failed". It was not an individual's failure, since Marxist decisions are collective.

It is easy to sneer at the defeated, but a paradox needs to be noted. The Left may not be missed in Kerala and Bengal, but it will be missed in Delhi, since it injected serious debate into economic and foreign policies. It is not important that the Left was right or wrong. What is important is that it generated a debate.

It is obvious that governance is being rewarded, and Naveen Patnaik's vindication is sufficient evidence. But there is also a model profile for a politician that has emerged. The voter wants three qualities in his leader: honesty, competence and modesty. This is what he saw in Dr Manmohan Singh. Rahul Gandhi added the flavour of the future to the Congress offer. He has won his place in power through this election. In all likelihood there will be a transition within the foreseeable future, particularly since the Congress has silenced its allies as effectively as it has neutered the Opposition.

Chief ministers like Nitish Kumar, Naveen Patnaik, Shivraj Singh Chauhan and Raman Singh delivered on all three qualities respected by the voter. Others got by on two, but they should not confuse reprieve with victory.

The dangers of success are more dramatic than the perils of failure. Complacence is an easy trap. Arrogance is seductive. Dr Manmohan Singh has been given freedom to govern, but his first watch has to be on a slippage by colleagues. By giving him freedom, the Indian voter has denied him an excuse.

Appeared in Times of India - May 17, 2009

The Real Game Changer

2009-05-17T14:55:00.001+05:30

Byline by MJ Akbar: The Real Game Changer

Contrary to a view inspired by late Raj fiction, the British valued India as much as they held Indians in contempt. The British Empire on the subcontinent owed far more to the man who saved it around the world, the Duke of Wellington, than to Robert Clive, who has got excessive credit from history. Clive defeated a tottering, self-indulgent Nawab of Bengal; Wellington buried Scindia’s ambitions at Assaye and destroyed Tipu Sultan at Seringapatnam. They were the two most powerful Indian princes of the 19th century, perhaps the only ones who could have checked the British. Indians, said Wellington, were “the most mischievous, deceitful race of people… I have not yet met with a Hindoo who had one good quality and the Mussalmans are worse than they are”. At least he was secular in his prejudice.

When the British Raj was on its deathbed, its great champion Winston Churchill sneered that Indians would never be able to understand democracy. He thought that they would be a disaster and come running back to Mother England. I shall spare you the precise quotations; we don’t want you to get unnecessarily angry on a day when there is so much else to digest. He was not alone. In 1967, the Times of London, now the pipsqueak of a fading power rather than a thunderer of the Empire, wrote the obituary of Indian democracy. It survived.

However, there was a growing view that the 15th general election would leave behind just the kind of mess Churchill predicted.

The Indian voter has just proved once again that those who underestimate India do not understand India.

The most important result of this election is that the elimination of regional parties from national space has begun. This was the message in north, south, east and west where Congress expanded its space at the cost of both friends and foes. Chandrababu Naidu will survive to fight another election, but the votaries of Telangana have probably been marginalised out of reckoning. The Congress did better than Sharad Pawar, grew in Punjab, hammered the Left, aborted Mayawati’s national ambitions and checked Mulayam Singh Yadav. In fact, Mulayam Singh Yadav may face the humiliation of being the unwanted guest at the party for a second time, since the Congress can now afford to sniff at the support he offers. The two regional powers that triumphed, Nitish Kumar and Naveen Patnaik, won because of their individual qualities rather than because of the parties they lead. The Congress and the BJP, between them, will occupy two thirds of the seats in the next Lok Sabha. This is the real game-changer because the next general elections will be a straight contest between these two parties in most of India.

This election was a successful base camp for a much higher ascent. The true Congress summit is the achievement of a single-party majority in the Lok Sabha after the next general election. When this peak was outlined against a still bleak horizon during the Panchmarhi resolution years ago, it seemed a thrust too high, but its moment has come. Just as it did in this election, it will seek to grow at the expense of either ally or enemy. The Congress already had candidates in 14 seats in Tamil Nadu; the next time, it might contest all 39. It will pressurise Sharad Pawar to merge into the parent party or perish. Mamata Banerjee in Bengal might be more resistant, because she knows that she cannot dominate the Congress as much as she can her own party, and total power can be very alluring. But the Congress can live with a variation or two, as long as Mamata does not through self-inflicted wounds revive the Left in Bengal. In any case, there are great pickings elsewhere for the Congress.

It will of course hope to exploit the anti-incumbency factor in the BJP States in the North, particularly if the BJP goes into disarray after its second collapse from high expectations. The last time the Congress had a majority on its own was under Rajiv Gandhi.

The restoration will be in the hands of the son, Rahul Gandhi, who has earned his political legitimacy in this election. Mrs Sonia Gandhi’s role as leader of the party will ebb as the pace of transition speeds up. It is highly likely that at some point there may even be a transition in Government, with Dr Manmohan Singh making way for Rahul Gandhi. Dr Singh has already done more than anyone expected for the party, and he might prefer the comfort of retirement since he has had a serious heart attack.

Will the BJP, suffering from a second unexpected defeat, be able to resurrect its fortunes and face an aggressive Congress? Some things are apparent. It will need to choose the person who can lead the party into the next general election without much delay.

The BJP realised that development and governance were the decisive issues. But although its venerable leader L.K. Advani tried to define the party around modern needs, he was tripped by the rhetoric of those who thought that the country still wanted to hear the war cry of social conflict. The swivel moment of the campaign came when Varun Gandhi, in a flurry of immaturity, revived every toxic memory that Advani wanted the electorate to forget. He compounded the mistake by glorying in its aftermath. BJP leaders realised the danger. The Madhya Pradesh party publicly asked Varun Gandhi to remain in UP, and not bother about the neighbouring State. But the leadership merely distanced itself from the young man, when it should have disowned him.

This is the major lesson for the next leader of the party: India wants peace with prosperity because Indians realise that prosperity cannot come without peace. Narendra Modi may be a powerful and effective leader in Gujarat, but the stamp of one defect will always mar his future. He can be a successful number two at the national level, but will remain a divisive number one.
We have also just witnessed the last election of the older generation. Youth is not just arithmetic; you have to be young in your outlook, and be able to identify with the aspirations of those seeking a profitable place in the international economy, as much as the poor who feel that they are being marginalised in the domestic economy. It is difficult to span both edges of this challenge, but no one said that public life was easy.

Defeat can be a moment of transition, unless you succumb to despair.

Prepare for a Marathon at the 2009 Racecourse

2009-05-10T15:49:00.002+05:30

Prepare for a Marathon at the 2009 Racecourse
By M J Akbar

Astrologers and bookies rise to the top of the trust-totem-pole in the last lap of any election because neurosis is healthy for both callings. Here is a less expensive option: those who want to look ahead might want to look behind.

The excitement of May 2009 has blotted out the excitement of May 2008. The seeds of this election were laid in the glory days of "Singh is King", when Dr Manmohan Singh celebrated independence from Left-slavery and pushed through the nuclear deal amidst chaos in Parliament and hallelujahs on television.

The curse of Prime Ministers is surely the adulation of journalists.

In May 2008, Congress not only undermined the alliance that had kept it in power for four years, but also the equilibrium that could have ensured its return to power. Instability is contagious; it has spread to every relationship within the UPA.

It is curious that the nuclear deal, on which Dr Singh staked the future of the Congress, does not even figure, except through stray references, in the party campaign. Kingdoms have been famously lost for want of a horse. Was a kingdom in Delhi lost for want of horse sense?

We do not know the results yet, and it would require a braver columnist than me to venture into that swamp. We can only read the tea leaves that are strewn after any press conference. But the wounds of actual or perceived betrayal are on public display. They will demand a price when the time comes to patch a government.

We have had many kinds of government in Delhi since 1952, from predictable to stable to ideological to accidental to opportunistic. The next one may be safely labeled a patchwork. It will be a quilt in which each patch struggles for more space than it has been allotted by hasty needlework.

Uncertainty has prompted the inexplicable. It is customary for parties to claim victory before the result, but why would they want to claim defeat? Digvijay Singh envisaged the Congress in opposition. Mrs Sheila Dikshit praised Nitish Kumar, implying that the two politicians who had been unstinting in their praise for Mrs Sonia Gandhi since 2004, Lalu Prasad and Ram Vilas Paswan, had collapsed. Rahul Gandhi, who has now taken over as leader of the Congress Party, snubbed Lalu Prasad on the eve of his crucial second election in Patliputra. Such flexibility suggests that Karunanidhi should not make the costly mistake of losing an election.

Dr Singh has suddenly remembered that Buddhadev Bhattacharya is his friend. Sentiment is a weak argument against hard policy. As Marx should have said, if he didn't, politics is not a tea party. There is still some legislation necessary (on liability-cover) in the next Parliament to implement the nuclear deal. Will Congress abandon the deal and the efforts it has made to become a strategic partner of the United States in order to remain in power with the Left's support? The Congress would prefer Prakash Karat and A B Bardhan to become as irrelevant to its needs as Mulayam Singh Yadav was in 2004. But would it be blowing come-hither kisses to the Left if it believed that the Congress would remain natural leader of a new coalition after May 16?

Both know that the only compulsion that could bring them together is a desire to keep the BJP out of power. That argument seems to have been overridden by other considerations. The Congress has said repeatedly that it would prefer to sit in Opposition rather than see anyone other than Dr Singh as Prime Minister. Dr Singh is unacceptable to the Left. What gives?

There is more than a single negative in play. Kings and kingmakers both know that there is a zero-sum game in the states. The Left and Mamata Banerjee will not sit at the same table, nor will Mayawati and Mulayam. Can Rajashekhar Reddy and Chandrababu Naidu co-exist? The government in 2004 was formed by straight arithmetic. The one in 2009 will need algebra.

Perhaps the only states where it might be reasonable to predict the outcome are Bihar and Tamil Nadu. The politician who has matured best in the rigors of battle is Nitish Kumar. Anyone who can keep his cool in the ebullience of victory, instead of slipping into fantasy, has the capacity for leadership. Bihar is giving him victory, and he has responded by reasserting his commitment to Bihar. He has the legs for a marathon.

For the rest of India, back to astrologers and bookies. Bookies are considered superior because they seem to put their money where their mouth is. A friend who was born intelligent but has grown wise over many an educational afternoon spent in the exquisite environment of the Kolkata race course, reminded me of the first law of racing. Bookies only make money when the favourite loses. What would a bookie prefer? To get it right, or to get rich? Dumb question.

Appeared in Times of India - May 10, 2009

Get ahead, get a headache

2009-05-09T15:55:00.001+05:30

Byline by M J Akbar: Get ahead, get a headache

‘The elections are dead. Long live the elections!’ This may not quite possess the grand flair of a Cavalier cheer for Charles the Second, but it does strike the more puritan populist chord so essential to the simpler creed of republicans.

Good Indians always take their time over weddings. Our funerals are faster. This is the obvious explanation for the Election Commission’s decision to drag the electoral carnival through six mind-numbing weeks. The results will be known next Saturday within six hours, bringing to an end one set of tensions and generating a new round of headaches. I sometimes feel that a stonemason should construct an Indian politician’s head. There is no other way to prevent headaches.

The relevant question, which cannot have escaped the reader’s traditional eagle eye and Einstein brain, is of course this: why have I pronounced the final rites of the 15th general election when there is still one round, with 86 seats (one more than the penultimate round) still left to deliver its verdict? If the results are obvious then an election is more or less over, isn’t it? I suppose apart from immediate kith and kin, and perhaps hardcore cadre, no one else in Tamil Nadu believes that the DMK is going to win this time. The Congress, which is the DMK’s principal ally, is obviously worried that it is going to lose big time in the state. You can see the depression on home minister P. Chidambaram’s face, and reporters are sending back stories that the candidate is snapping at voters with questions, always a bad sign (for the candidate, not the voters). It must be doubly depressing for him to imagine a scenario in which the Congress can form another coalition in Delhi, but there is no Chidambaram in the ministry. The Congress dilemma is reflected in the crisis created by Rahul Gandhi’s implicit overtures to Jayalalithaa. The overture might, or might not, be the prelude to a symphony after 16 May, but on polling day the atonal message will only echo in dysfunctional music for the 14 Congress candidates trying to get into Parliament from Tamil Nadu.

It is similarly obvious that the Akalis are under pressure in Punjab, and all the backroom boys with calculators have factored in Akali losses as they project the numerical mix of the next Parliament. The one place where the election is far from dead is Bengal, where there are 13 seats still waiting to decide whether the state will drive on the left side of the road or the right. There used to be a theory that heavy polling indicated bad news for the ruling party, since it meant that voters had been energised by anger. But such certainties are vulnerable in Bengal, since it is one state where the party cadre can be mobilised. The Left knows that this is its toughest election since 1984, and it will certainly have maximised what is politely known as booth management. Two remarkable aspects, however, have already emerged from the pattern of voting. First, violence has been minimal, so intimidation has not kept voters away. Credit for this goes to both the voter and the Election Commission. Second, there has been an exceptionally heavy turnout of women. Women constitute the most powerful silent vote in the country. The Left has been worried about the shift in the Muslim vote, and may have underestimated women as a distinct and independent category. There was 75% polling in the second round, which must be a record for a May election.

The good thing about time is that it passes — or is that a bad thing? There is less than a week left for the czars of democracy to fidget. But now that there is just a day left for the last shreds of rhetoric to wend their way through tired airwaves and desolate print, the next set of propositions are being put into place. They are not necessarily as simple as choosing either the UPA or the NDA at the Centre. The Left’s priority now will be to break the alliance between Congress and Mamata Banerjee before the Bengal Assembly elections. The easiest way to do so is to support the Congress in Delhi. This would force Mamata to go towards the NDA. But what if the Congress decided to stick to its ally in Bengal and dared the Left to support the NDA if they could? That would throw some exciting loops into the game, would it not?

Will Naveen Patnaik stick by his new friend Prakash Karat if he does not get enough seats to become Chief Minister again? He could ask the Congress for support, but that would dilute his identity, which has been created on Congress space. Can Chandrababu Naidu accuse the Congress of destroying Andhra Pradesh and then help it in Delhi to destroy the country? That is what the logic of a decision to shift towards UPA would amount to. Of course the Third Front parties, shuffling on the horns of a dilemma, would like nothing better than to get the support of the Congress while they enjoyed a year in government. But would Congress support a Cabinet that sought to reverse its economic and foreign policies? There may be some substance in the view that the Congress and BJP have already decided that they will not support any concocted government.

I hope you see why one suggested that a stonemason would be the man of the hour in Indian politics. The headaches of the second half of May might turn out to be migraine proportions.

Why Mumbai's Voters went Missing

2009-05-03T18:40:00.001+05:30

Why Mumbai's Voters went Missing
By M J Akbar

Normally, media chases news. Sometimes, news chases media. Occasionally, there is a deadlock. That is when media is forced to look for rabbits in a hat. After all, news can exist — albeit forlorn and forgotten — without media, but media can’t survive without news.

The media search for the missing Mumbai voter was a bit of a non-story.

In 2004, 47% of Mumbai voted, in 2009, 44%, or perhaps a bit less. The instant shock-horror analysis asked in a wailing monotone: whatever happened to the 100,000 Mumbaikars who stormed television screens after the Pakistani invasion of Mumbai and threatened to start a revolution armed with blazing candles? They went back to their smoke-and-spirits parties after their 15 minutes of fame was over, darling. Those demonstrators had exhausted their discomfort-quota for years. Voting in May requires some serious tactical negotiations with the elements. If the price of democracy is going to be sunburn, why not wait for the vote to reach the net? It can’t be too long. We are the champions of IT, aren’t we?

Facts lay hidden in a different question: not in the absence of the rich, but the boycott of the poor. Most non-voters of Mumbai are either edge-of-nerves middle class or edge-of-hunger poor. They did not vote five years ago, and they did not vote again. The drop of about 4% is easily explicable, as long as you are not transfixed on celebrities framed by candlelight. In 2004, Mumbai Muslims voted aggressively to defeat the BJP-led NDA because of the Gujarat riots and lifted the average turnout to 47%. This year, they are indifferent to the Congress and hostile to the BJP-Shiv Sena. There is no one to vote for. The Congress has once again fudged its way through five years over the Srikrishna Commission report, which named the guilty in the 1992-93 riots. As for their other demand, job reservations: the joke is that other communities get jobs, while Muslims get enquiry commissions.

Anger has fractured Muslim voters in 2009. They are hostile to the Congress in states where it is in power, like Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh and Assam. But many are voting for the Congress where it is not in power, like Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. But there is no consolidation, of the kind we saw in 2004. In Kerala, a section has responded positively to the Left’s anti-American stance, but only May 16 will tell whether this has reversed the prevalent anti-incumbency. In Bengal, which has the highest percentage of minority voters, they are split.

Disillusionment, however, might lead the way towards yet another illusion. The most popular hope now is for a ‘Muslim BSP’. According to some estimates, Muslim voters can influence the result in 74 Lok Sabha seats. There were only 37 Muslim MPs in the last Lok Sabha. The maximum number of MPs, 46, was in 1980 when Mrs Indira Gandhi wooed Muslims back from Emergency trauma with higher representation. Since then it has been downhill. The Congress wants every Muslim vote in Delhi, but is never ready to name a Muslim candidate on its slate. It rankles.

Success is easier sought than achieved. It took nearly two decades of effort by two generations of leaders, Kanshi Ram and Mayawati, to fuse the Dalit vote to the elephant symbol. Muslims seem to possess neither the time nor patience needed for unity. There are perhaps 30 small parties searching for minute conclaves on the electoral map, including exotic outfits like the Muslim Munnethra Khazhagam in Tamil Nadu. The only effective effort outside Kerala’s Muslim League has been Maulana Badruddin Ajmal’s AUDF in Assam which won nine seats in the Assembly and, more important, scared the daylights out of the Congress in 20 more.

It has spread its wings just a bit, moving into Maharashtra and Bengal. There is much interest, also, in how the Azamgarh-centric Ulama Council will fare in Uttar Pradesh. This group achieved lift-off after the UPA refused to order an enquiry into the encounter at Batla House near Jamia Milia last year, and the consequent demonization by the police of young men from Azamgarh.
Such varied efforts might result in just one MP, probably from Assam, where Maulana Ajmal could produce an upset. What will be significant is the post-poll phase of mobilization. Will collective interest overcome individual ambition and that pervasive bane of Indian politics, distrust?

An invention awaits the next genius: a camera that can photograph the mind. Television politics has become a screaming contest between politicians, perhaps because the camera has lost the art of stimulation. Since there is no hope of getting a different kind of politician, we need a different sort of camera. It will chase the mind for news.

Appeared in Times of India - May 3, 2009

Who lost Paradise?

2009-05-02T14:58:00.000+05:30

Byline by M J Akbar: Who lost Paradise?

Lesson of the week: it is perfectly possible to simultaneously fool the United Nations, P. Chidambaram, much of the media and M. Karunanidhi with the same ploy, and within the same 24 hours. The outbreak of self-congratulation in Delhi when Colombo announced that it would cease using heavy artillery and air power against the trapped LTTE was not really self-delusion, because the mandarins of Delhi are not foolish. It was a desperate attempt by ruling coalition politicians to chalk up talking points for the elections in Tamil Nadu, where this government is being blamed for abandoning the LTTE. Typically, Karunanidhi over-egged the pudding by undertaking a fast. The fastest thing about the fast was how fast it ended.

The only Union ministers from Tamil Nadu not in electoral trouble are those who defected to Jayalalithaa. The others, whether from Congress, DMK or smaller parties, are anxiously shopping for any fig leaf to hide their impotence. Delhi’s spin doctors even tried to hype up the “heavy artillery” announcement as a ceasefire. This spin stopped turning when Colombo clarified that it would never agree to any ceasefire. Why would it cease fire when it has Prabhakaran in its crosshairs? The Sri Lanka government and army have not fought its most difficult war in order to make Chidambaram home minister or Karunanidhi chief minister.

Colombo has measured Delhi’s impotence carefully, and knows that Delhi will swallow any fudge it hands out, because there is nothing else it can do. The rest of the world can make the perfunctory noise, but that is about it. Some pompous types in the European Union hierarchy tried to flex verbal muscle. Mahinda Rajapaksa, Lanka’s President, could well have asked, qua Stalin, how many divisions does the Pope have?

For the record, LTTE is a terrorist organisation in the books of most western governments, including those who have long permitted LTTE operatives to collect a “war tax” from Lankan Tamils living abroad. This money, much of it repatriated, has financed the LTTE for two decades.

Colombo’s “concession” is meaningless because the war has entered a phase when heavy artillery is useless and aerial strikes counter-productive.

The combat zone, at the moment of writing, has been reduced to about five square kilometres of beachfront on the northeastern coast, in which perhaps 50,000 civilians have become double-hostages. Prabhakaran, leading the rump of the once-fabled LTTE forces, is using them as his last shield against the victorious Sri Lankan armed forces. The war has entered the close-combat stage, where each LTTE post and boat will be identified and eliminated through a process of attrition, even as efforts continue to offer civilians a route out of the trap.

Why would Colombo stop a war at the very moment when it has drained the growl out of the Tigers? Prabhakaran must be ruing the day when arrogance, or misjudgement, stopped him from accepting a deal through negotiations. Both Colombo and the world community gave him this chance, the former under compulsion, but nevertheless agreeable. Prabhakaran now faces the option that made his tigers, and tigresses, an object study in asymmetrical warfare, with their trademark use of the poison pill. We cannot say what he will do next, or indeed what realistic options exist for him. How long will the human shield of terrified civilians hold? Will the trapped Lanka Tamilians revolt against the person who was once a demigod? The armed forces surrounding the last battlefield have time, and morale, on their side.

It was perhaps bad luck for Delhi that this war came to a climax at just the moment when India’s long general elections are also heading towards theirs. I suppose the Election Commission did not factor in events across the Palk Straits when it decided that Tamil Nadu would be among the last states to vote. Delhi is busy formulating, and discarding, plans. In one of them, Prabhakaran would escape and then be forced to negotiate with Colombo. But such a scenario is riven with difficulties. Would escape be possible when the Lanka navy is keeping a 24-hour vigil on the waters? If he did escape, would the assassin of Rajiv Gandhi receive a warm welcome from a Congress-led Union government? Open arms? I think not.

I hope not.

Delhi lost the Lanka plot some time ago. Rip Van Winkle would not make a good foreign minister. You cannot wake up suddenly after a long sleep, and imagine that last-minute hysterics are an adequate substitute for two years of lazy drift. Foreign policy is a continuous pursuit. A crisis needs to be monitored on a regular basis. Foreign policy means shaping events towards the national interest long before denouement.

Chidambaram’s recent statement on China’s role in Sri Lanka was mystifying. Is this the first time that he has heard about this? Then he has not even been reading the daily newspapers properly. China has been arming Sri Lanka for many years, as messages from our envoy in Colombo will surely have confirmed. Delhi did a whole lot of nothing when the first shipload of arms arrived in Sri Lanka, because it had no alternative strategy to offer towards a solution. Colombo played it brilliantly: it got arms from China even as it persuaded the UPA government to give it a favourable trade status. India nourished Sri Lanka’s war-starved economy. Perhaps Delhi never expected the LTTE to collapse before the Lanka forces. Did Delhi become a victim of LTTE propaganda?

The price of miscalculation in a game-changing crisis is very high. You have to be extraordinarily lucky to escape payment. The Chidambaram-Karunanidhi partnership may have run out of its share of luck.

Kaun Banega PM? Watch on May 16

2009-04-26T16:56:00.001+05:30

Kaun Banega PM? Watch on May 16
By M J Akbar

Sharad Pawar, it has been suggested, has thrown a cat among the pigeons by opening a can of prime ministers. He may have done something more worrisome than that. He may have thrown a pigeon among the cats.

Parties separated by geography, history, personality and ideology (or the lack of it) seem agreed on only one thing: that Manmohan Singh has had his moment. The NDA view is explicable; it has its own candidate in L K Advani. But why do politicians who have served in Singh’s cabinet for the last five years believe that they should get the job for the next five?

Marxists dislike Singh with exactly the same fervor that Singh dislikes Marx. The Left has a second reason for demanding a new order, which has not been widely recognized, far less appreciated. The Congress has accepted all conditions laid down by allies in order to forge anti-Left unity in Bengal and Kerala. But it refused to be equally accommodating to allies in key states where such unity could have hurt the BJP, whether in Jharkhand, Bihar or Uttar Pradesh. The Left sees a double game behind the Congress rhetoric.

The only nationally-known politician who has not cast an eye on Singh’s job is Karunanidhi, possibly because he can foresee the results of Tamil Nadu. Even the Congress is ambivalent. On the record, Singh remains the once-and-future PM. In its ads, the transition has taken place from Rajiv Gandhi to Rahul Gandhi.

In theory, the bidders in this auction house cannot be faulted. The prime minister is only the first among equals in a democracy, hence there is merit in the argument of meritocracy. But there has been a caste system in the UPA, with the Congress using its Brahmin status to seize all the major offices of state, and all the important instruments of state authority. Pawar, who made a serious bid to become Congress prime minister in 1991, was sent to the comparative wasteland of agriculture. The price of 58 months of silence is two months of questions.

Ambition is not restricted to one party. It is hardly a secret that the most vociferous defender of the government in this campaign, Pranab Mukherjee, would not mind becoming prime minister himself. If Congress numbers are fewer than its well-paid pollsters predict, Mukherjee’s name will be mentioned by allies, even if it is eventually rejected by his own party. This is why he plays word-games on whether he has an alliance with Mamata Banerjee or a seat-arrangement. The implication is that an alliance is a marriage while a seat-arrangement is flirtation. One of the many difficulties facing the next version of the UPA is that the Left will not support a government with Mamata in it, and vice versa. It was all so much easier when Mamata was such a good friend of the BJP. Her conversion to secularism is terribly inconvenient.

The path of ambition is paved with more than one theory. The simple one is the purchasing power of numbers. You have to bring MPs to the bargaining table if you want to sustain your claim. People underestimate Sharad Pawar when they think his numbers are only restricted to Maharashtra. He has received verbal assurances from other parties, some of which may even be sincere. But each assurance is subject to post-poll reality. Naveen Patnaik may want Pawar as PM, but that will be a secondary concern if he cannot get a majority in the Orissa Assembly. He will have to worry about who, between BJP and Congress, will want him as chief minister. A quid pro quo will be attached to the answer.

The second theory is more piquant. It believes in survival of the weakest. This least-resistance model has been tried and tested on Inder Gujral and H D Deve Gowda in the early days of the coalition era. It is a variation of the old hare-and-tortoise fable, in which the backrunner will be the only person in the race when the frontrunners have cancelled themselves out. In this scenario, a powerful personality will be perceived as too much of a threat to one or more of the partners, leaving Mr Humble Smiley the eventual winner.

But such tortoises are heroes of fables. Every contender has a right to dream till 8am on May 16. That is the hour at which the wake-up call will sound.

Appeared in Times of India - April 26, 2009