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| Saturday, December 16, 2000, Chandigarh, India   
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A ritual with meaning Haryana’s offer |
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Manipur Rifles’ revolt
RELATIONS WITH BANGLADESH Revamping defence R&D
Guessing game after
Sharif’s exile
The choice before politicians
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Nothing was expected to change either during or after the ritual debate in the Lok Sabha on the Ayodhya and related issues. And worryingly enough nothing has changed. Prime Minister Vajpayee is firm in his interpretation that the mandir movement is an expression of nationalist sentiments and compares very well with the construction of the Somnath temple and the celebration of the Khalsa tercentenary and the proposed 2600th birth anniversary of Mahavira. He also adds that his government will obey any Supreme Court verdict, perhaps not knowing that there is no case before the court about the temple and there is only a bunch of contempt pleas for defying the court orders on maintaining the status quo. The demand for the resignation of the three Cabinet Ministers was at best a side issue and did not merit serious consideration. And except for a passing reference, nobody attacked the theme with vigour. But the Prime Minister volunteered the information that a junior Minister, Mr Harin Pathak, quit on his own. Surprising, he was determined to stay put an hour or two before he sent in his letter and there has been no explanation why he suffered such a dramatic change of heart within such a short time. In his reply he also did not refer to his demand for the resignation of Mr S. Muthiah and Mr Buta Singh after they were chargesheeted. Until now his stock reaction has been that it is his prerogative to select his ministerial team or to drop someone. He could have stuck to it since there was no challenge to this well-established convention. But Thursday was different and he was his old combative self, even needling Mr Jaipal Reddy for leaving the Congress in 1975. He was the only Congress MLA to walk out of the party to protest against the Emergency. He provided the only bright spot during that period of darkness. He deserves praise in a country where abject political slavishness has become the norm. Perhaps, Mr Vajpayee was smarting under the unusually sharp comment of Mr Reddy that he had graduated from hypocrisy to theocracy (this had rhyme but not much reason) and is presiding over the process of fabian (gradual) fundamentalism. The Prime Minister had an excellent opportunity to nudge back to his earlier position. Instead he owned up the BJP stand of 1993 on the temple issue. Whatever be his party’s compulsion in UP, his loss of liberal innocence will tend to force some of the allies to distance themselves from the NDA. Ms Mamata Banerjee of the Trinamool Congress has already indicated that she will hit the exit door sooner than later. She described the demolition of the Babri masjid as a “barbaric and heinous crime” and walked out of the House with her partymen in tow just after the Prime Minister ended his speech. Even if one ignores her violent words as a genetic trait, her actions are volatile and understandably so. Muslims account for 22 per cent of the electorate in her state, West Bengal, and as in UP and Andhra Pradesh are concentrated in certain districts. She needs their support in full if she has to put up a credible fight. In Andhra Pradesh, another key ally, the Telugu Desam Party, faces a similar problem. The minority community accounts for more than 10 per cent of the electorate and can swing the result in several constituencies in Telengana, which is the stronghold of the party. It is not as though the reaction of the Trinamool and the TDP are election focused; both parties are secular to the core. They will not leave the NDA, not immediately. Even if they leave, they will not bring down the government. But they have shed the old bonhomie, never to embrace it again. Obviously the Prime Minister realises their compulsions and refuses to resile from his mandir stand even if the NDA alliance looks suddenly weak or unsteady. But he has still to pay a price. With two parties sulking, he will not be able to push through his famous tough decisions. And without that he will not have much to show for his present tenure as Prime Minister. This is the obverse side of coalition dharma. |
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A large number of industrial units operating from residential areas in Delhi have been affected by the Supreme Court directive. The Haryana Chief Minister, Mr Om Prakash Chautala, has now offered to relocate them in his State. He has directed officers of the State Industries Department to provide adequate infrastructure and space for resettling such units in the areas around Jhajjar and Badli on the one side and Kundli on the other. This area is quite close to the displaced units. About 500 acres of land is said to be available with the government in the Kundli area. Some infrastructure is already available and the rest can be put in place if this offer is sincerely followed up. The big imponderable now is the reaction of the industry. Hardboiled industrialists normally take government promises with a pinch of salt. Instead, they go by the real-life stories of their brethren already operating from a particular State. In this regard, everything from the attitude of the bureaucracy to the availability of water and electricity counts. Industrialists from Haryana are not exactly a contented lot, but perhaps the keenness of the government to woo new entrants will improve their lot as well. Mr Chautala has started canvassing with the entrepreneurs rather late, but a beginning is welcome at any hour. Haryana has been an agrarian State. Realisation seems to be dawning that its salvation lies in large-scale industrialisation. Locationwise, it is ideally placed. The proximity of Delhi is a major factor. The State itself provides an attractive market. The logical next step is to concentrate on building roads and improving the power supply. Unless basic infrastructure is adequate the invitation to the industry, both in India and abroad, may not evoke sufficient response. Haryana has done well to allocate 64 per cent of the total expenditure on infrastructure in this year’s Budget, but so much needs to be done that such a tempo will have to maintained for several years before the ground situation changes. Like Andhra Pradesh, Haryana also seems to have set its sight on the information technology pie. Its Finance Minister, Prof Sampat Singh, says that the State’s focus is on the three I’s — infrastructure, industry and information technology. That is how it should be. He must, however, add another vital “I” to it: inspector menace. Somehow, the government’s anxiety to roll out a red carpet for the industry is never reflected in the attitude of the middle and lower level bureaucracy. What the secretary of the industry promises you is not as important as what the district-level officer delivers. So far, nearly every industry has been treated as a milch cow, to be milked dry, both legally as well as illegally. If indeed it has been decided to reverse this suicidal policy, it is a welcome step. |
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The
criminal indifference of the political class to issues of national importance can be gauged from its lack of response to the dangerous developments in Manipur. For nearly a week several battalions of the 13,000-strong Manipur Rifles remained on strike, yet there was not even a murmur of concern in Delhi. In the uniformed services going on strike is considered an act of mutiny and invites harsh penalties. However, jawans of battalions 1, 2, 7 and 8 did not come out of their barracks from December 8 to December 14, but neither the Opposition raised the issue in Parliament nor did the government deem it necessary to take the nation into confidence about the reasons for the virtual revolt by a section of the uniformed services in Manipur. Given the volatile situation, because of the activities of insurgent groups, in the North-East the development in Manipur should have provoked a national debate. Newspaper reports have merely added to the confusion. According to one version jawans of the 8th battalion have resumed work, while another account says that the “mutiny has spread to other sections” with more jawans joining the strike resulting in the total collapse of the security cover provided to “at risk” category of politicians and bureaucrats. The apparent reason for the revolt is said to be the non-payment of dues, following the implementation of the recommendations of the Fifth Pay Commission, for the 1996-98 period. The money was evidently misappropriated by persons in authority. However, the revolt against the non-payment of dues by the jawans of some battalions made the government panic. Money for settling the legal dues of the jawans was raised from “other sources” and put in the General Provident Fund account of the personnel. The Commandants and other senior officers of the Manipur Rifles cannot escape responsibility for allowing the situation to get out of hand. They should have fought for the rights of their men, who are currently engaged in a grim battle, in an extremely hostile terrain, for protecting Indian territory from foreign-trained insurgents. There is no evidence of the complaints of the jawans having been forwarded, through proper channel, to the right quarters. It was only after the jawans took the extreme step of staying away from duty that the state administration woke up to the seriousness of the situation. An equally unhappy fallout of the forced act of indiscipline by the jawans of the Manipur Rifles was the reported “sympathy strike” by personnel of the Indian Reserved Battalion, fire services and civil police. The local reaction to the developments was predictable. A section of the treasury and ministerial staff in the home department struck work because some of them were reportedly beaten up by the agitating jawans. The strange silence of Chief Minister W. Nipamacha over the developments in Manipur has given his detractors the opening to demand is ouster. However, given the insurgency-induced state of perpetual unrest the buck must always stop at the Prime Minister’s office. Why? Because disturbance in any part of the North-East affects the overall security of the nation. The current unstated policy of treating as “out of sight, out of mind” most unhappy developments in the remote border regions is disturbingly similar to the one which Ahmad Shah “Rangeela” followed when Delhi was being plundered. |
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RELATIONS WITH BANGLADESH SPEAKING at a recent seminar in Calcutta organised by the Centre for Research in Indo-Bangladesh Relations, Bangladesh’s Industries Minister, Mr Tofayel Ahmed, stressed the need for circumspection in a crucial dialogue. Now that talks have been resumed at both the ministerial and official levels, we should remember that Dhaka is deeply dissatisfied at Delhi’s neglect of loose ends from the visit last year of Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee. It blames the Indian bureaucracy which is accused of thwarting another important political initiative. This is a sensitive relationship that has to be addressed in both its symbolic and substantive aspects. It did not help, for instance, that the Calcutta seminar was during Ramzan so that none of the Bangladeshi delegates, including the Minister and the High Commissioner, Mr Mostafa Faruque Mohammed, could break bread with their hosts at the excellent “working lunch”. Similarly, it may not have been tactful of Bangladesh’s Foreign Minister, Mr Abdus Samad Azad, to sit on the dais at a ceremony that though ostensibly to felicitate Mr Jyoti Basu, turned into a political assault on the Bharatiya Janata Party and its NDA allies. Crossed signals matter because there are enough rocks already on which cooperation can founder. The High Commissioner pointed out, for instance, that Indian industry took a jaundiced view of a joint-venture cement factory in Bangladesh which, it shortsightedly feared, might eat into Indian exports. Suspicion on one side is matched by sensitivity on the other, and avoidable atmospherics need not compound basic problems. I recall an embarrassing occasion in Dhaka’s Banga Bhaban when I unwittingly offended Zia-ur Rahman by adapting George Bernard Shaw’s comment about two nations divided by a common language. “So what?” he burst out. “So what? The English, Canadians and Americans all speak the same language! Does it mean they are all the same country?” A second occasion was a three-day international event in Dhaka where another Calcutta journalist cast aside his normal shirt and trousers to wear nothing but a dhoti and punjabi every day. He thought that he was impressing Bangladeshis by affirming his allegiance to a shared culture, not realising that his attire was exclusively Hindu and that Bangladesh had redefined its Bengali identity. “If we want to achieve national development and progress, we must speak of Bangladeshi nationalism,” Zia had declared. Mrs Hasina Wazed and her ministers have taken many positive steps to live down complexes, strengthen Bangladesh’s economic security and improve ties with India. Mr Ahmed, who had been a Mukti Bahini commander and political secretary to Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, underlined some initiatives. The one-time “international basket case” has become self-sufficient in food, literacy is up and poverty down. Reduced fertility is reflected in a lower birth rate, the Grameen Bank has won international recognition, and a recent World Health Organisation study of 191 countries ranked Bangladesh 88th in terms of public health. India stood 112th and Pakistan occupied the 122nd place. Had she not felt secure at home, Mrs Wazed would not have signed the water-sharing treaty in 1996 and the Chittagong Hill Tracts pact the following year. An agreement on riparian rights along the Muhuri river, the Calcutta-Dhaka bus service and renewed plans for railway links indicate the political will to mend bridges. Mr Ahmed accuses previous Bangladeshi governments of keeping the water issue alive only to have a stick to beat India with. But the very success of reconstruction reminds India that it must be serious in its dealings with a confident young neighbour who even while valuing its Bengali culture, is proudly conscious of its sovereign status while West Bengal is only a state of India. Not for the new Dhaka the sentimental diplomacy of Rabindrasangeet and rosogolla. In a position to demand the hard currency of economic dividend, it has argued its case for duty-free, quota-free market access for the least developed countries from Singapore to Seattle and won a lucrative market in the European Union. Bangladesh unilaterally slashed its own tariffs from 350 per cent to 60 per cent long before the World Trade Organisation was born. India’s exports have soared as a result. Now, Bangladesh wants the quid for its quo. It believes that the water treaty is not enough, and that much more will have to be done to augment dry season flows. More important, it complains that nothing has been done about Mr Vajpayee’s promise in June, 1999, to abolish all tariffs on a non-reciprocal basis on 25 selected imports from Bangladesh. In India, what Prime Ministers propose, bureaucrats dispose . A gleeful President Hussain Mohammed Ershad told me in 1985 that Rajiv Gandhi had promised to involve Nepal in future talks on water management and flood control. It was a tremendous feather in his cap vis-à-vis the “India lobby”, his term for the Awami League. But South Block soon put an end to Rajiv’s generosity. It had all the ammunition it needed to force the Prime Minister to renege on his promise when President Ershad told a public meeting only a little while later that China, too, should be a party to riparian talks. The Awami League government is too sophisticated to make such tactical mistakes. Nor can a mature Bangladesh be fobbed off any longer with delaying tactics. If Mr Vajpayee promised Mrs Wazed, he will have to deliver. If he does not, it will gravely affect all those regional groupings that reflect future hope. Bilateral cooperation will undoubtedly benefit from the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation, South Asian Preferential Trade Area, South Asian Free Trade Area, Growth Quadrangle of Nepal, Bhutan, India and Bangladesh, the Ganga-Mekong project and BIMSTEC —Bangladesh, India, Myanmar, Sri Lanka and Thailand Economic Cooperation forum, initiatives that I liken to post-dated cheques on a promising bank. But neither singly nor collectively can any of these ventures prosper if the bilateral relationship withers. It should also be borne in mind that most constructive events like the Calcutta seminar are occasions for believers. The participants are Awami League loyalists or leftist intellectuals who look kindly on India. The strongly opposing camp which denounced the water and Chittagong Hill Tracts agreements and constantly accuse Dhaka of selling out to Delhi is not usually represented. But it would be foolish to ignore Mrs Khaleda Zia’s Bangladesh Nationalist Party, the Jamaat-i-Islami or General Ershad’s Jatiyo Party. With their capacity for mischief, they can play a spoiler’s role. The only lasting relationship with India would be one that enjoys a broad consensus of support across the spectrum of Bangladeshi life, including all these elements that we might disapprove of. Whether Bangladeshis respond to the lilting tune of Tagore’s Amar Sonar Bangla, the national anthem that extreme Muslims dislike, or the stirring notes of Prothom Bangladesh, a song by Shahnaz Rahmatullah that Zia had wanted to elevate, their economic and strategic interests remain exactly the same. That India is not a player in Bangladesh’s internal dynamics is evident from the fact that the last water agreement was with Zia’s regime in 1977. However, the wrong cultural signals can play into the hands of irresponsible politicians who would not hesitate to cut their own nose to spite what they think is the Awami League government’s face. A BJP authority in Delhi has to be extra careful. |
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Revamping defence R&D ONE wonders why India’s government controlled sloppy military-industrial setup has not adequately harnessed our excellent corporate infrastructure to supplement the nation’s overall war effort. For the sake of having assured and affordable access to the technologies needed for the later-day lethal military machine, sincere efforts have not been made to exploit technological advances taking place in the nation’s enterprising commercial world which ought to have been aligned with defence establishment’s scientific and industrial pool. No doubt, periodically, high level seminars on military and industry interface between the armed forces top brass on the one hand and the captains of Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) on the other, are held from time to time in a bid to involve the leading tycoons of nation’s industry in vital field of defence production and allied dual use industrial research but strangely the burgeoning Indian private sector, including its R&D, has not been able to take befitting advantage of approximately Rs 65,000 crore annual outlay, earmarked for the defence sector in the Union Government’s budget. It appears that the understandings arrived at these high level military-industry parleys are not followed up to their logical end as these do not generally get translated into practice largely on account of the subsequent bureaucratic stonewalling, cumbersome decision making process and outdated financial procedures. A little above 6 per cent of this sizeable sum is earmarked for the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) for fabricating modern combat gears for the three services. During the preceding financial year approximately Rs 3,000 crore was allotted to the defence R&D sector. Yet the bulk of the armaments and related hardware worth billions of dollars still continue to be imported just because the capability to design and produce these high tech systems does not exist within the country despite a fairly large research establishment created in the country during the last half a century. Over the years, the DRDO has seen a phenomenal growth having transformed into a very large organisation with 50 labs backed by 5000 scientists and 25,000 other scientific technical and support personnel. It is engaged in developing defence technologies in various disciplines like aeronautics, combat vehicles, engineering systems, instrumentation, missiles, simulation, special materials, naval system, food preservation and even animal husbandry and agriculture for the overall national war effort. Defence Minister George Fernandes in a talk delivered at one of the army-CII seminar had admitted that in most core areas we look either for collaboration or transfer of technology from foreign sources. As a result, the objective of achieving self sufficiency despite existence of the DRDO with a mandate to provide the latest defence technology to 39 ordnance factories and nine large public sector units, may remain a pipe dream for a long time to come. It may, however, be rather premature to focus only on the darker side of the DRDO which also has some achievements to its credit. Its Integrated Guided Missile Development Programme (IGMDP) has made notable contributions in developing an array of guided missiles. Though most of them are still under various stages of testing, one of the tactical surface to surface missiles, “Prithvi” is already in operational service with the army after extensive user trials. Amongst the varied technologies developed by the organisation during the recent years, about a dozen have been identified as relevant to civilian use and hence could be profitably exploited by the corporate sector. Some of the companies in the metals and machine tools are reportedly buying DRDO developed expertise off the shelf to develop new products and improve the existing ones. Earlier, defence labs had transferred water treatment technology developed for military stations in far-flung areas for civilian use which should benefit the civic authorities to a great extent. Moreover, the organisation has considerable professional interaction amongst the nation’s leading scientific institutes and universities. Dr V.K. Aatre, scientific adviser to the Defence Minister and the organisation’s Director General, sometime back had emphasised the need to combine the expertise and dedication of DRDO scientists with utmost professionalism to meet the technology needs of the armed forces. No one will question the capabilities and devotion of our defence scientists who undoubtedly are among the best brains in the world. The problem lies with the slow moving bureaucratic behemoth of which they form an integral part. The meddlesome way of functioning of the official machinery not only kills their enthusiasm and sense of initiative but turns them into square pegs into round holes. The situation at times has compelled some of the brilliant scientists to look for greener pastures in the industry or abroad. The telling effect is on the various major weapon systems and platforms such as LCA, ALH, ATV, UAV and a few others which are under development for last two decades, have not yet fructified. The army decided to purchase T-90 tanks from Russia since the battle tank Arjun which was developed after considerably long delays did not conform to military’s GSQRs. Even technologically simple to fabricate but vital requirements in insurgency ridden and extremely cold weather region of Kashmir such as snow and frost protection kit, gloves, arctic tents and not the least bullet proof vests have not been designed for the soldiers who are ill equipped for operational action in sub-zero temperatures. The Indian army per force has to request the Ministry of Defence to import these items at a considerable cost in foreign exchange and is helpless when the usual bureaucratic spokes result in considerably long delays in their timely procurement. In accordance with the system in vogue, whenever one of the three services feels the necessity of introducing a new equipment or weapon system on its combat inventory, it has to project its requirement to the civil service mandarins in the MoD, which in turn refers it to DRDO. The R&D establishment puts its foot down on the import of the required equipment on the explicit grounds of having technological prowess to design such an equipment. When usual long delays occur in developing the combat system, the organisation puts the blame on the services for modifying the GSQRs in order to ward off the criticism. Such disgraceful warngling affects adversely none but the brave soldier roughing it out in the field against the heavy odds. The solution lies in revamping the DRDO, which has become unwieldy. It can be trifurcated into three smaller and cohesive establishments and placed under the three service chiefs in accordance with the functioning. All army related labs could form part of the establishment accountable to the army chief. Similar arrangement could be thought of in relation to aviation and naval related R&D projects. Such revamping will certainly bring a discernible change in the efficiency and work culture. Simultaneously, well meaning steps need to be taken to integrate the defence R&D efforts with fairly advanced private sector especially in the fields of military communications, defence related electronics, information technology and transport to achieve quick results at a much lesser cost. |
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Guessing game after
Sharif’s exile After the top secret and stunning deal between former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and military ruler Gen Pervez Musharraf, there is an interesting guessing game going on in Pakistan. What is the next deal the regime is going to come up with? Will it announce a general election in 2001, instead of 2002, the deadline set by the Pakistan Supreme Court, and manage the installation of a pliable government? Will former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto accept a Nawaz Sharif-style arrangement to secure freedom for her husband Asif Ali Zardari, in jail after his conviction in a corruption case? Or will she convince her husband to allow her to fight the “illegal regime” heroically, in accordance with the tradition set by her father, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto? She could not think of a better opportunity after the discrediting of Mr Sharif and General Musharraf in the public eye by their own acts of omission and commission. Even Mr Zardari can emerge a hero by refusing to agree to the kind of exile arrangement being discussed in the newspaper columns after the Sharif episode. It seems the people in general have started favouring the Benazir option under the circumstances. She has so far been campaigning against the military regime by remaining outside her country, in a self-imposed exile. She is a brave daughter of a brave father. She has the capacity to win an election even from outside and even for her nominee. Political thinkers agree that there is nothing wrong in fighting a battle from a safe distance when one is faced with a dictatorial establishment. Ms Bhutto has the experience of weathering a similar storm when there was another military dictator at the helm — Gen Zia-ul-Haq — who had hanged her father after securing a death sentence from an obliging court. But then there was a providential intervention that facilitated her return to Pakistan. Providence is playing a role again but of a different kind. All political parties with a credible base, big or small, have come together under an umbrella organisation, the Alliance for the Restoration of Democracy (ARD), under the leadership of Nawabzada Nasrullah Khan. Now that Mr Nawaz Sharif is out of the political picture, at least till the coming elections as per the Supreme Court ruling, Ms Bhutto has to play the leading role. The Nawabzada cannot lead the ARD to victory without Ms Bhutto’s active support. When it comes to bargaining for power, she is unlikely to settle for anything less than the post of Prime Minister. There can be a stop-gap arrangement till the new government clears the legal hurdle in her way. (In 1998 she was barred by a court ruling to hold any public office for a period which will be over by 2004.) Ms Bhutto has another advantage which Mr Nawaz Sharif destroyed in his case when he was in jail by not trusting his party colleagues. She continues to have unchallenged control over her party, the PPP, even from abroad like Muttahida Qaumi Movement supremo Altaf Hussain. The PPP being the biggest constituent of the ARD, she is in a position to guide the affairs of the grand alliance despite the Nawabzada being its chief. It seems some fresh understanding has been reached between the two leaders as the Nawabzada has made a very meaningful statement that the ongoing movement for democracy will not be allowed to get weakened despite the shock it has suffered after the exile of the Sharif family to Saudi Arabia. But will the elections be held as expected? General Musharraf is facing flak from the public,which is clear from the “Letters to the Editor” column of newspapers. The very authority of the ruling General is being questioned so far as the striking of deals with those convicted in corruption cases is concerned. It is being argued that Mr Nawaz Sharif committed crimes against his country as well as the people of Pakistan, defrauding them of millions of rupees. The case “falls under Haqooq-ul-Ibaad. Unless the aggrieved party agrees to forgive”, it is not possible to grant pardon, as Mr Naveed Afraz says in his letter carried in Dawn of December 14. “No one can do so on their (people’s) behalf.” The people seem to have lost the hope they had pinned on the army to cleanse the polity of corrupt practices. In such a situation, General Musharraf can think of inventing an alibi to stay put in power beyond the period fixed by the Supreme Court and prove his point that he is bent on eliminating corruption to the extent possible, and the Nawaz Sharif case has been settled in Pakistan’s favour. This is, however, a remote possibility. The battle for supremacy between General Musharraf and Mr Nawaz Sharif has caused an irreparable damage to the reputation of both, who have been fighting like cocks. The people strongly yearn for a democratic set-up. The General should find an honourable wayout. He has proved to be a great manoeuvrer. There is a possibility of his buying an honourable and safe exit from power from the ARD and the political forces sympathetic to him. The coming weeks should provide exciting hints about his next course of action. |
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The choice before politicians THERE is almost nothing more annoying for a columnist than to have something you have written overtaken by events. Last week I said Ayodhya was a dead issue and what happens? The Prime Minister personally makes it come alive again so strongly that it has made the functioning of Parliament impossible for a week. So strongly that every hack worth his byline has been forced to put ponderous brows together and speculate on why the Prime Minister found it necessary to announce that the building of a temple to Rama in Ayodhya was an expression of national sentiment. As for your humble columnist I have the choice of either eating last week’s words or defending what I wrote. I choose to defend what I wrote in capital letters: AYODHYA IS A DEAD ISSUE except in the cynical, calculating minds of our politicians. Cynical because they know as well as anyone else that the average Hindu’s interest in building that temple has waned as the years have gone by. And, that although Muslims still remember the Babri Masjid’s demolition on December 6,1982, they remember it mainly for the terrible violence that it caused. This is my humble view and I use the word humble-sincerely. As for calculating this should be clear to anyone who follows politics even cursorily; an election is inevitable in Uttar Pradesh and could take place when other states go to the polls early next year. So, politicians of every hue and creed want to revive Ayodhya in the desperate hope that this will help them win. But, why was it the Prime Minister who decided to dig up dead memories and not one of our “secular” leaders? For the simple reason that the Bharatiya Janata Party’s chances of winning Uttar Pradesh are grim. I base this not on speculation in front of a computer screen in Delhi or Mumbai but on having travelled in that state not so long ago. On my travels I visited villages and talked to ordinary people and everywhere I went there was a sort of consensus that the BJP has run a seriously lousy government. Not from any point of view of caste or creed — although in the wondrous, desperately divided state of UP that is always a factor — but because of bad governance. To travel in UP is to weep for the people of that state. Whether you talk to bureaucrats, policemen or ordinary people they made a comparison these days with Bihar and some conclude that UP is now worse off than our worst administered state. Worse, they say, because Bihar has been badly governed for so long now that nobody remembers better times. In UP the deterioration has been more recent and rapid. In Aligarh last month I met a businessman who said that things had become so bad in the past five years or so that it was hard to find an administrative decision that was not somehow influenced by corruption. And, hard to find policemen in the state who were not similarly affected by corruption in the fulfilment of their duties. The result: development work in the state is at a virtual standstill and criminals are now so caught up with the administration of law and order that they actually use the police to get themselves elected to political office. It is quite easy to meet policemen who will tell you that they find it hard to accept that they are forced to provide security to men they considered criminals till they acquired official cars with red lights on them. It is in the villages that you see the terrible consequences of this kind of governance, if governance it can be called. Rural UP till not long ago was a place of quite charming villages set in mango groves. Today it is a place of filthy, unplanned villages and hideous poverty. There are no jobs, nothing that can be described as a standard of living and despair so serious that UP’s villagers have little choice but to seek out the pavements of Mumbai and Delhi in the hope that even these pavements will provide more hope. In such a situation our political leaders have two choices. They can either consider providing better governance or they can turn to those old slogans of caste and creed to win the next election. Since the BJP has proved that it is incapable of governing the state even halfway will it needs those old slogans more than anyone else. And, since the Congress party believes fundamentally that it lost UP only because it lost the support of Muslims after the Babri Masjid came down it is keen to woo them back by appearing more secular than the rest. When it comes to secularism, though, it faces tough competition from Mulayam Singh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party which has shown an impressive ability to pick up Muslim votes in UP. So, the third most noise on Ayodhya comes from Mulayam Singh who has — correctly in my view — pointed out that the BJP and Congress are both responsible for the mosque coming down. Then, we have the Bahujan Samaj Party making much noise and they do this because their own main vote bank lies in that unfortunate state. And, in the next election Mayawati hopes to expand the party’s vote base by appealing to Muslims as well as other castes. Finally, we have that sundry bunch of supposedly secular parties, like whatever it is that our former Prime Minister V.P. Singh now heads and the Left parties. They have little chance of doing much on their own so they have thrown their lot in with Mulayam and we hear foolish talk, yet again, about reviving the Third Front. In this futile exercise they offer us as Prime Minister, yet again Comrade Jyoti Basu who since his retirement from West Bengal is inordinately busy making statements on national issue. You should be able to see then that Ayodhya is the one issue whose revival suits every political party that seeks to win the next election in UP. You can also see that instead of offering the people of that state real issues like governance and development every political party offers only caste and creed. The sad thing is that what all this means is that whoever wins the next election will make little difference to UP because issues of caste and creed produce divisions and not development. And, what UP needs more than anything else is development. It is India’s largest state and potentially a rich one. And, what is its main contribution to India’s development? It has the highest population growth rate, the largest number of illiterate people (the two seem to go together), nearly as low a rate of progress as Bihar and nearly as low a GDP growth rate and the most cynical politicians in the country. So, what else can they do but pin their electoral hopes on revising the dead issue of Ayodhya? It is sad, also, that it should have been the Prime Minister who led the revival. He appears to have forgotten that although he may be the M.P. from Lucknow he is, in fact, the leader of India. |
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Most men are so occupied with the factitious cares and superfluously coarse labors of life that its finer fruits cannot be plucked by them. *** The finest qualities of our nature, like the bloom on fruits, can be preserved only by the most delicate handling. *** Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other's eyes for an instant? *** No dust gathers on the grass, unless where man has broken ground. *** It is the luxurious and dissipated who set the fashions which the herd so diligently follow. *** What of architectural beauty... has gradually grown from within outward, out of the necessities and character of the indweller. *** One piece of good sense would be more memorable than a monument as high as the moon. *** Thy frequently starve, not for want of necessaries but for want of luxuries. *** My greatest skill has been to want but little. *** To maintain one's self on this earth is not a hardship but a pastime, if we will live simply and wisely. *** The devil finds employment for the idle. *** Let us first be as simple and well as nature ourselves. *** A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone. *** To be awake is to be alive. *** God culminates in the present moment. —Henry David Thoreau,
Walden, pages 3, 3, 6, 24, 24, 31, 39, 41, 47, 48, 49, 53, 55, 61, 65. |
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