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Winning trust |
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Descent into chaos Profile On Record
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Winning trust They were not keen to win a point, but to focus the nation’s attention on the issue: Is the government led by the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) in minority in the 543-member House? The UPA won handsomely by a margin of 19 votes, 275 against 256. Ten members abstained and two stayed away. As many as 28 MPs switched their loyalty on the last day. The maximum number was from the BJP, as many as eight, the party which is honking principles and values all the time, knowing well that all are naked in the bath. Pappu Yadav, a criminal, brought from jail to vote unhinged the party when he went up to the BJP leader, V.K. Malhotra, in the House to say that he had come to him (Pappu) to offer him money for voting with the BJP. Manmohan Singh’s attack on BJP leader L.K. Advani was severe, but understandable. Advani had called him a “nikhama” Prime Minister and the weakest Prime Minister since Independence again and again. Manmohan Singh has given him a blow which will make Advani reel for the rest of his life. Manmohan Singh said: “Shri Advani should do some introspection. Can our nation forgive a Home Minister who slept when the terrorists were knocking at the doors of our Parliament? Can our nation forgive a person who single-handedly provided the inspiration for the destruction of the Babri Masjid with all the terrible consequences that followed? To atone for his sins, he suddenly decided to visit Pakistan and there he discovered new virtues in Mr Jinnah. Alas, his own party and his mentors in the RSS disowned him on this issue. Can our nation approve the conduct of a Home Minister who was sleeping while Gujarat was burning, leading to the loss of thousands of innocent lives?” To the Left, Manmohan Singh said that they should “ponder over the company they are forced to keep because of miscalculation by their general secretary…Our Left colleagues should tell us whether Shri L.K. Advani is acceptable to them as a Prime Ministerial candidate.” We lost this Manmohan Singh at the very beginning of his tenure. Indebted to Congress president Sonia Gandhi as he was, he would even accept instructions from 10 Janpath, on the telephone. It is an open secret that he wanted former Foreign Secretary Shyam Sharan to be the Commonwealth Secretary-General and even mentioned his name to the Ministry of External Affairs. But Sonia Gandhi had Kamlesh Sharma, brother-in-law of her family friend, in mind. Sharma got the post to the embarrassment of the Prime Minister. Now that Manmohan Singh has asserted himself. Let the word go around that 10 Janpath is not running the government from the back seat and that he is at the wheel. The victory, no doubt, is attributed to the UPA. But this is his victory. He took up the gauntlet thrown at him by the Left when it withdrew the support to his government. He has delivered the majority, although the number on the day of voting on the confidence motion got reduced. Still the margin was good enough. His personal integrity has never been doubted and I do not believe that he was a party to the horse-trading which the Congress or the Samajwadi Party is alleged to have done. In the days to come, it would be known if the party or its allies had promised a quid-pro-quo arrangement. Still, a lot of blame will come to the Congress. Unfortunately, the change on the Sethu bridge stand at the DMK’s asking is clearly a concession. If means are vitiated, the ends are bound to be vitiated. These are the words of Mahatma Gandhi, who led the party from subjugation to freedom. He must be turning in his Samadhi because he found the Congress using every trick, throwing principles to the wind and executing different manoeuvres to stay in power. After all, the government has won with the support of defectors. Speaker Chatterjee witnessed this entire scene but stayed patient. He never raised his voice nor did he turn away any member from the House. His tact and sense of humour stood him in good stead to conduct business in the worst kind of Lok Sabha since Independence. The CPI(M) wanted him to resign. But I shudder to imagine what would have happened if he had done so. He has served the nation in a tense situation in an The CPI(M)’s decision to throw him out of the party does not make sense. He was not a member of the party in the first instance. As the Speaker, he resigned from the CPI (M) more than four years ago. Imagine the Politburo with members who have never fought an election turning out Chatterjee, a person who has been returned to the Lok Sabha for the last four decades. The Lok Sabha verdict will have an impact on the political scene. The Left is determined to create the Third Front with the motley crowd it gathered under the leadership of Mayawati during the Lok Sabha debate. With her reputation of making money even by creating a corridor to the Taj, India’s prestigious monument, she will lack credibility. True, she can attract the Dalits but the Marxist philosophy envisages a casteless society. Isn’t the Left making the same kind of mistake which it has been committing since Independence and not having influence beyond Kerala, West Bengal, Tripura and a few pockets? No ideology will string the parties of Mayawati, N. Chandrababu Naidu, Om Prakash Chautala, Parkash Singh Badal, Ajit Singh and such other leaders together. It will be seen as an opportunistic alliance to seize power in the next election. The voters in India are not naïve today. They can see through the parties and their leaders, however highfalutin are their programmes. The Congress may realign itself with new regional forces. It appears as if Nitish Kumar, the Bihar Chief Minister, has caught the fancy of the party despite Lalu Prasad Yadav’s opposition. Nitish Kumar, with limitations of ties with the BJP, has improved the state’s law and order situation. His assistance to the common man during the recent floods will go down in history because without getting financial assurance from the Centre he staked the state assets to help the flood victims running into lakhs. The Congress may also try to retrieve Biju Patnaik’s Janata Dal because its relations with the BJP are indifferent. But the problem in Orissa is that J.B. Patnaik, an old Congress hand, does not want to step down and his reputation continues to keep the party members and people at distance from him. Much will depend on Manmohan Singh. If he is his own master, he may bring honest and dedicated workers on the same platform. But his political advice is seldom heeded. Will this change after the Lok Sabha verdict?
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All I had asked our Left colleagues was: please allow us to go through the negotiating process and I will come to Parliament before operationalising the nuclear agreement. This simple courtesy which is essential for orderly functioning of any government worth the name, particularly with regard to the conduct of foreign policy, they were not willing to grant me. They wanted a veto over every single step of negotiations which is not acceptable. They wanted me to behave as their
bonded slave. Dr Manmohan Singh CPM politburo member Brinda Karat Lord Ram himself destroyed the bridge in order to ensure that no one could come from Sri Lanka. What is assumed as Ram Sethu really does not exist. What really exists is merely a channel. Fali S. Nariman, the Centre’s counsel Somnath Chatterjee, Speaker, Lok Sabha P. Chidambaram, Finance Minister I am a Muslim and I am an Indian. And to me, they are the same thing… The real enemies of Indian Muslims are poverty, hunger and unemployment as they’re enemies of the poor in the country. Omar Abdullah, National Conference leader I must say Atal Bihari Vajpayee also saw the problem (energy security) and worked to find a solution… Zara taali to maariye (at least clap for this). Rahul Gandhi, Congress General Secretary Lalu Prasad, Railway
Minister
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Descent into chaos EVEN as I finished reading the last few pages of Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid’s latest offering (“Descent into Chaos”; Allen Lane/Penguin; Rs 495),TV screens across the world were showing the devastation caused by the terrorist bombing of the Indian mission in Kabul in the war-torn land of the Afghans. Nothing drove home better the chilling conclusion that this entire region is an explosive can waiting to blow up, and what is needed here is a new brand of leaders who are courageous and wise enough to not only face up to their detractors of the home- grown variety but are also determined to expeditiously curb the horrendous depredations of the ever-increasing tribe of religious fundamentalists operating from some nearby neighbourhood. Also very worrying is a situation where the international community continues to meddle in this region and is concerned about fighting grandiose wars against terrorism and anything else that you care to name and pretty flippant about the actual rehabilitation and reconstruction of a people and their land which they continue to exploit for their own reasons and purpose. Much before Rashid came to write his insightful books about these parts and some years back during my time in Afghanistan the neighbour-sponsored Mujahi-deen were giving Noor Mohammad Tarakki and Hafizullah Amin sleepless nights; then the Soviets came in charging down Wazir Akbar Khan in their tanks and started their own game of subjugation and reprisal, and years later it were the bloody clashes between the Northern Alliance and the Taliban that tore apart a brave and proud nation. Presidents Babrak Karmal and Nazibullah whom I knew were but small players on a big stage, and they came and went away into oblivion soon enough. Those were troubled seasons and dangerous times but nothing can beat the present mess-up where none of those in authority are able to either remedy the disease or are prepared to get out so that the people of this region can shape their own destiny and future. This is the real tragedy that confronts the wild lands across the Khyber and the mighty Oxus river where once Rustam and Sohrab had battled it out for supremacy. Rashid, while setting to reason out the main thrust of his book, which is that the war against Islamic extremism is being lost in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia, has also given a well-researched and in- depth analysis of how and why this region never seems to have any peace or stability,and how unbridled opportunism on the part of the local leaders has only made matters worse. On the leadership and rule of Hamid Karzai, whom Rashid seems to know well (incidently one of the pluses of the book is the author’s unquestionable proximity to leaders and contacts in the region), the jury is still out as far as I am concerned. The Afghan by nature look for heroes of the mould of the late Panjsheri commander, Ahmad Shah Masud, and has always been a bit easy on those who have been foisted on them like Karzai, who had a prolonged residence in Pakistan and has refused to even reduce his contacts with some of his troublesome warlord friends even today. What will happen as the Taliban grow in strength in Afghanistan or in the FATA or the NWFP region(the latter kind are termed as “Pakistani Taliban”), and as the NATO-ISAF forces mired in their own controversies cut down on their presence and interest in fighting in southern Afghanistan, where the fighting has been severe and bitter, is a worry that will continue to trouble Karzai and with it the whole of Afghanistan. In so far as the future of the Muslim predominant Central Asian states is concerned Rashid is not far wrong when he writes that, “the United States lost a major opportunity to influence Central Asia for decades to come while gaining greater access to its energy resources”. However, I feel they may gain all the oil and gas but this region will remain a troubling catalytic agent for decades to come. Ahmed Rashid’s account has uncovered some hitherto unknown nuggets of information and a few insightful observations about the role being played by some of the leading players in the region. He writes of Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott’s “Silk Road Strategy” for supporting democracy in Central Asia,but which, as we all know, never really ever got off the ground. He talks of a “humiliated Indian government (that)freed Azhar, Sheikh, and another Kashmiri militant” when “Jaswant Singh delivered the three men to the hijackers on the tarmac of Kandahar airport”, in reference to the infamous IC 814 Indian Airline hijack. Without saying much Rashid has said all that needed to be said about the buckling under of the NDA government at the time. He assesses Hamid Karzai, who is not very popular in his own country,is being used by George Bush as much as is necessary for American interests,and a Musharraf next door who manages to manipulate him (Karzai) whenever so
needed. He writes how the war in Afghanistan in 2008 is costing the USA $ 3.5 billion a month, and how corruption flourishes in the country where nearly 30 per cent of all aid by the donor countries goes waste. On another plane Rashid’s viewpoint that it was the infighting between the Parcham and the Khalaq factions that was a main cause for the Soviet Union moving into Afghanistan in late1979 during my watch (when Iran was increasingly turning unstable and the Americans were aggressively marking their presence in the Gulf courtesy Pakistan), this reviewer will withhold his own assessment for another day. All said and done, this is a definitive study of India’s volatile neighbourhood, written candidly and without fear, and deserving of a very serious read. The world needs to watch very carefully the radical extremism that seems to be sweeping a nuclear-armed South Asia, where even a slight haste or misjudgement on any leader’s part could prove catastrophic. Pakistan would need to always remember what Rashid has said about it that, “Two relationships have dominated the politics of the country: that between military power and civil society and the one between Islam and the state”. The writer has served in Afghanistan during 1978-82 as a Military Attache during the Soviet invasion.
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Profile A farmer’s son, Yadav made a remarkable journey to occupy the highest post in the new-born republic that abolished the 240-year-old monarchy. He defeated the Maoist-backed rival 73-year-old former revolutionary, Ram Raja Prasad Singh. Yadav, who has turned 64, will replace the ousted King Gyanendra as the Head of the State. He is the general secretary of the Nepal Congress, the second largest party in the Constituent Assembly. He joined politics in the 1960s when the autocratic King Mahendra banned the activities of political parties blocking democracy and heralding the absolute rule of the monarchy. A relatively unknown figure outside Nepal, Yadav was a last-minute choice of major parties to oppose the Maoist candidate. In the polls he trounced Singh by 26 votes. Yadav has learnt the fine art of politics from Nepalese Congress patriarch B.P. Koirala and Ganesh Man Singh. Apart from politics, Ram Baran is an accomplished medical doctor, having worked for over two decades in hospitals in South Nepal’s Terai region. He was in the team of doctors who treated Nepal’s first Prime Minister B.P. Koirala during the last days of his life in the 1980s. Hailing from the Indian-origin Madeshi community, he received his MBBS from Kolkata and MD from the Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research, Chandigarh, spending about 11 years in India. After practising medicine for eight years, Ram Baran joined the Nepali Congress soon after the 1980 referendum held to choose between party-less panchayat system and
municipality system. A three-time MP from Dhanusha, he entered Parliament as a Nepali Congress candidate for the first time
in 1991. He was re-elected in 1999 and made his way to the Constituent Assembly in the landmark poll on April 10 this year, which saw the Maoists emerging as the single largest party. Yadav has already set his priorities, having pledged to take the peace process to its logical end and maintain friendly relations with both India
and China. He has reportedly said: “I am committed to taking the peace process to its logical conclusion and to end the politics of violence and terror
for ever.” He feels it is not enough to turn the country into a republic, but it is equally important to consolidate democracy. “There is need for strengthening national unity and safeguarding national integrity by bringing communal harmony in the country”. Even though Ram Baran has set his agenda, he may face hurdles from the former Maoist rebels. They have won the maximum number of seats in the Constituent Assembly and were hoping to get both the posts of President and Prime Minister to guide the destiny of Nepal. Having received support of three major political forces — the Nepali Congress, the Communist Party of Nepal and the United Marxist Leninist, Yadav asserts he would try to move ahead with the politics of collaboration and cooperation to draft a democratic constitution. “This is our goal”. The Maoists are not happy at the election of Yadav but they are confident of forming the government with their supreme leader Prachanda heading it. A Maoist leader, Dr Bhattari, called the new alliance as “unholy and un-progressive”.
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On Record However, CPM general secretary Prakash Karat’s action against their erstwhile leader of parliamentary party for over a decade seems to be unilateral. It is clear that the other three Left parties were equally upset with the Speaker for not returning to his Left/CPM moorings when it came to the crunch about fighting a government which they were supporting till the other day. The Tribune raised the issue with CPI general secretary A.B. Bardhan whose party is the second largest constituent of the Left Front. Excerpts from an interview: Do you approve of the CPM action against Speaker Somnath Chatterjee? It is their decision and I think they were left with no choice. What is the justification for such an action? Yes the post of Speaker is a very important post. But he became a Speaker only because he got elected to the Lok Sabha as a member of the CPM. It is not a question of applying any whip to him. No whip was applied to him. They expelled him not for the defiance of any whip but for other reasons. So I think we need not go on discussing this issue any further. But the office of Speaker is above party politics. Besides, the whole House elected him the Speaker so now he belongs to all sections of the House and not just the CPM or the Left. Who is saying this? Is it the Congress? Is it the BJP? After becoming the Speaker, Manohar Joshi became an active leader of his party fighting everybody else. After being a Speaker another gentleman lost the elections and became the Home Minister of the nation. It is a hypocrisy to say once you become the Speaker you have lost all party moorings. This is really trying to create all kinds of misgivings in the minds of the people, besides being hypocritical. Anyway let us go over to something else. I know. I can say that it is unfortunate of course. But when a thing can’t be helped, it can’t be helped. You supported the UPA government on the plea of preventing communal parties like the BJP from assuming power and you withdrew support at a crucial time when the threat of the BJP returning to power after the next general election is looking so real. I don’t think so at all. If the BJP has come to power in some states, it is because the Congress has lost there and it is because of the Congress policies that there is discontent among the people. And the BJP took advantage of this in states where they could pose as an alternative. If anybody is responsible for the BJP coming to power in a number of states it is the Congress and its wrong policies. We are no longer in a two-party system. One can no longer say that the alternative to the Congress is the BJP. Other forces are coming up and the BJP will be left by the wayside, unless it is the Congress that paves the way for them. You and the CPM had been rejecting the third front for many years now and instead talking of a third alternative. But then what is this new alignment you have come up with, if not the third front? We are still thinking in terms of a third alternative. That is why the first thing that we have talked about is a campaign. We are campaigning on five or six issues, which include the price rise, anti-people policies of this government, the chronic agrarian crisis and the Indo-US nuclear deal for which a trust vote has not provided a clear mandate. Another issue with us will be the campaign against the communal forces and against subverting all institutions of government like the CBI to serve the political purpose of the ruling party.
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TWO persons who have emerged taller from the vote of confidence in the Lok Sabha are Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee. Both conducted themselves during the nearly two weeks preceding the debate with dignity and decorum.
Why did he agree to be a bonded slave for four years and two months? Was it for holding on to power?
Parliament of India is reaching its worst position… nadir. Time has come when Parliament members should face the elections so that the country can give its verdict.
There are some people in the country who do not want India to catch up with China… They do not want India to be ahead of China. Some people want China to become a superpower.
Everybody wants to be PM. Mayawati, Mulayam Singhji want to be PM. Even I, Lalu Prasad, want to be PM, but I am in no hurry.
THERE was dancing and slogan-shouting as Ram Baran Yadav of the Nepalese Congress made history, having been elected the first President of the Himalayan nation.
THE decision of the CPM to expel Lok Sabha Speaker and their 10-time MP Somnath Chatterjee did not surprise many who have been closely watching political developments starting with the Left withdrawal of support to the UPA government and leading to the confidence vote earlier this week. But it did shock most thinking people.