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Nitish again Breather for
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An unholy nexus
Debate over US
AfPak policy
99 + 1 = 100 per
cent
HOW THE BATTLE FOR
BIHAR WAS WON End of
the road for Lalu
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Breather for Yeddyurappa
Bharatiya
Janata Party President Nitin Gadkari’s decision on Wednesday to retain Karnataka Chief Minister B.S. Yeddyurappa in his post despite his alleged involvement in many land scams comes as a rude shock to those championing the cause of value-based politics. Clearly, it proves the BJP’s hypocrisy and double standards on the issue of tackling corruption. Its campaign against the UPA government at the Centre for scandals such as the 2G spectrum allocation, the Commonwealth Games and the Adarsh Housing Society has taken a beating. Now that the BJP leadership has allowed a tainted Chief Minister like Mr Yeddyurappa to continue in office, the party has lost its high moral ground. More important, its demand for a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) to probe the three major scams instead of an inquiry by the Public Accounts Committee — an issue that has paralysed the winter session of Parliament — has lost the moral force and will not carry conviction. The developments in Karnataka are bound to disappoint every conscientious citizen because the BJP is not taking action against corrupt leaders and has reneged on its promise to deliver good governance. While the Chief Minister got prime land in Bangalore and other places de-notified and sanctioned at throwaway prices to his sons, daughter and others, many ministers, too, are embroiled in questionable dealings and transactions. The Bellary brothers’ wheeling-dealing and hold on the state government is well known. True, Mr Yeddyurappa has ordered a judicial probe and returned the land allotted to his kin. But his refusal to quit office on moral grounds to facilitate an impartial probe has nullified the effect of his prompt action. Unfortunately, for short-term gains, the BJP leadership succumbed to the pressure tactics of a Chief Minister who played every trick to cling on to office. Issues such as his Lingayat caste identity, ensuing elections to panchayats, his hold over the legislators and MPs may have all weighed in his favour. But what is disturbing is the BJP leadership’s failure to tame a regional chieftain who reportedly threatened to split the party and go to the people if he was removed. The BJP did not want to risk its first government in the south and decided to play safe. But this bodes ill for the party system and shows the party in poor light. |
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An unholy nexus
That
criminals and politicians help each other out in our electoral system is well known. But it is amusing, if not shocking, to find a criminal facing a murder charge and declared a proclaimed offender sharing the stage with Punjab Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Singh Badal, who also holds the Home portfolio, at a gurdwara in Fatehgarh Sahib on Tuesday. Sukhbir has given himself the tightest possible security cover and it is unlikely that the district police did not know that a small-time Akali leader, Lakhbir Singh Thablan, was wanted in a murder case and was declared a proclaimed offender in June this year. He had even issued advertisements in newspapers inviting Akali workers to meet the Deputy Chief Minister. Interestingly, Punjab Agriculture Minister Such Singh Langah also shared the dais with another proclaimed offender at a political function near Amritsar on November 11. The police was deployed in strength at the function since former Finance Minister Manpreet Singh Badal was expected but he chose to stay away. These are two instances which have got highlighted in the media lately. Otherwise, it is common knowledge that criminals and former militants are hand in glove with Punjab politicians in general and those in power in particular. By publicly projecting themselves as being close to the powers-that-be, the wanted men send a clear message to the police. Harbouring criminals used to be an offence. No longer so. The politician-criminal nexus assumes a serious dimension in Punjab if one considers the government order making MLAs virtually in charge of police stations. A latest decision has divided the state into five clusters, each reporting to officers attached with the Chief Minister and the Deputy Chief Minister. This disturbs the administrative hierarchy and paves the way for direct political interference in day-to-day administrative affairs. What to talk of depoliticising the police and the bureaucracy, the political leadership in the state seems to have buried even the basics of good governance. |
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The Catholic and the Communist are alike in assuming that an opponent cannot be both
honest and intelligent. — George Orwell
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Debate over US AfPak policy At
a meeting at the White House “Situation Room” on October 26, 2009, attended by his top security advisers, including Defence Secretary Robert Gates, President Obama indicated that while he was willing to approve of a short-term increase in American force levels in Afghanistan, he also wanted a “realistic ramp down” of troops to an “equilibrium that is manageable” and a “better described closure” of the US war effort in Afghanistan. Rejecting calls for a prolonged counter-insurgency in Afghanistan, the President concluded the meeting with the words: “I want an exit strategy”. In his speech in New York in December 2009, Obama made it clear that he wanted a drawdown in American troop levels to commence in July 2011 and that he expected a progressive handing over of counter-insurgency responsibilities to the Afghan National Army. President Obama’s policy led to the Taliban leadership concluding that, with the date for the commencement of withdrawal of American forces set, the Karzai government in Kabul would get demoralised and that, like the Soviet Union, the Americans would soon quit Afghanistan defeated by a group of radical Islamists. America’s NATO allies also readied to pack their bags to quit Afghanistan. The ISI was delighted at the prospect of yet again converting Afghanistan into a client state and demanded that they should be involved in any talks on “national reconciliation” between the Karzai government and the Taliban. The Obama administration then received a rude shock when Faisal Shahzad, an American national of Pakistani origin, attempted to blow up the Times Square in New York after being trained in Taliban strongholds in the tribal areas of Pakistan, straddling the Pakistan-Afghan border. Moreover, in several rounds of talks with Taliban representatives, in which top Taliban leaders like Mullah Omar and Sirajuddin Haqqani declined to participate, it has become clear that far from agreeing to abide by the Afghan Constitution, the Taliban leadership has no intention of scaling down its demand for an immediate and unconditional American withdrawal. With the Republicans now controlling the House of Representatives, President Obama will find it difficult to advocate any strategy that leads to an ignominious US exit from Afghanistan, especially when the badlands along the AfPak borders remain as breeding grounds for international terrorism and a launching pad for attacks on the American homeland. Amidst these developments the Obama administration has given high-level access to a bipartisan “Task Force” of the Council for Foreign Relations (CFR), co-chaired by Clinton Administration NSA Sandy Berger and Bush Administration Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, to prepare and publish a report on the future AfPak policy. This report will constitute an important input for future AfPak policies which India should take careful note of. The CFR Task Force defines the American objective in Pakistan thus: “To degrade and defeat terrorist groups that threaten American interests from its (Pakistan’s) territory and to prevent turmoil that would imperil the Pakistan state and risk the security of Pakistan’s nuclear programme”. American policy in Afghanistan is to be geared to “preventing the country from becoming a terrorist base that threatens the US and its allies” and to “diminish the potential that Afghanistan reverts to civil war”. The usual incentives for Pakistan, which have failed in the past to change its orientation towards jihadi groups, are advocated. These include preferential market access, participation in G-20 discussions and increased economic and technical assistance. The report speaks of making it clear that American assistance is conditional on action by the Pakistan government against the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT), the Afghan Taliban, the Haqqani group and related terrorist groups. The report, however, notes that things may change if there is a terrorist strike on the US, in which case attacks on terrorist strongholds will become inevitable. It also notes that if Pakistan does not change its relations with groups like the LeT and the Afghan Taliban, “frustration could cause the US to shift its approach towards Pakistan. It could then resort to a policy of carrot and stick by cutting military and economic assistance and getting the IMF to do likewise”. It also advocates that in these circumstances, the US may pursue closer ties with India at Pakistan’s expense. The debate within the Obama administration over a withdrawal schedule from Afghanistan has been intense. Shortly after President Obama announced a commencement of withdrawal in July 2011, Defence Secretary Robert Gates told the US Congress that what the President had said was “the beginning of a process and not the end of a process”. He added: “I have adamantly opposed deadlines. I opposed them in Iraq and I oppose deadlines in Afghanistan”. But both Gates and Hillary Clinton have now indicated that they hope to transfer combat responsibilities to the Afghan security forces in 2014 — a measure which has been endorsed by America’s NATO allies. It remains to be seen whether the NATO-trained Afghan security forces can undertake this role in 2014. But it is clear that earlier expectations that they could do so in 2011 have not been met. The most encouraging development has been the growing Russian readiness to increase its profile in Afghanistan, both in the supply of military equipment and the training of Afghan forces. Moreover, American and Russian drug enforcement agencies recently cooperated actively in destroying narcotics production facilities along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. Russia is making its transportation networks and airspace more easily available to the US. The task force astonishingly advocates seeking Chinese cooperation to get Pakistan to act against terrorist groups like the LeT and the Afghan Taliban. It overlooks the fact that for over two years China blocked efforts in the UN Security Council to get the Jamat-ud-Dawa (another name for the LeT) banned as an international terrorist organization. Moreover, Pakistan has, in the past, facilitated Chinese contacts with the Taliban and Hekmatyar’s Hizb-e-Islami. Significantly, ISI-backed groups have never attacked Chinese interests in Afghanistan. It thus appears that the Obama administration will have to move towards continuing its military role in Afghanistan, at least till the end of 2014. But American policies on Pakistan are destined to flounder, as they are based on seriously flawed premises. The Americans refuse to acknowledge that Pakistani support for terrorism is not the work of “elements” in the ISI, but constitute the considered decisions of the entire Pakistani Army establishment. It is not the fear of India, but the fear of Pashtun nationalism and a revival of Afghan territorial claims over the Durand Line that drive the Pakistani military’s efforts to convert Afghanistan into a medieval, isolated and extremist client state, which is shunned by the international
community.
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99 + 1 = 100 per cent MAN has overcome innumerable insurmountables. Impossible feats attract him like a moth to a flame. Death as a fact and the dark unravelled mystery accompanying it has however, defied him and the inevitability of it is often attributed to destiny which more or less is a synonym to it. Hospital is a dreary place where an uncertain saga of life and death is played out every day. The dark shadowy corridors symbolise pessimism and death, while its dimly lit portions are the islands of optimism. On one visit to the hospital, I noticed a rustic man who stood outside the nursery meant for distressed children. His clothes suggested he was not a man of means. The doctors informed him that his child had a surgical problem and apprised him of the required expenses. With unconcealed desperation he asked: “Will he be all right?” The doctor replied: “99 per cent he will be all-right, but 1 per cent is up to ‘Him’.” The poor man sank to his knees clutching his wallet in one hand and the bank passbook in the other. Obviousl,y he was short of money required for the surgery. I watched this tragic moment when a man is confronted with a cruel choice to ensure life for his son by providing money or choose death, on the failure to do so. Adversity has a strange way of bonding people which is absent in “elation”. The latter invokes jealousy and envy while the former triggers a surge of sympathy prompting one, to reach out to another to help. Responding to his plight, people around, including me, provided him cash and kind as per their affordability to help him tide over the crisis. I remembered the saying of elders, that when in trouble, always look to a person who is more distressed than you are, and when enjoying blessed moments, always look to a person who is lesser blessed than you are and you will realise your own fortunate situation. Thus wiser, I came back. His child came through surgery successfully for I spotted him in the hospital a month later cradling his child and I recalled the words of the doctors which had left an indelible print on my mind that “99 per cent he will be all right, but 1 per cent is up to ‘Him’.” Meaningful words which convey man’s helplessness, captive to uncertainties over which he has no control. A man even though fully confident about his abilities, still wants to leave that like chink for such vagaries of fortune, which even though quantified as 1 per cent can rob a man of his contribution of 99 per cent to eventually defeat his effort. It is, thus, imperative to have that 1 per cent in your favour and recently when a close relation of mine was hospitalised and the doctor repeated the same words, I smiled and knew that I necessarily had to have that 1 per cent on my side to make it 100 per cent otherwise the result is inevitable i.e. 100-1= 0 per
cent.
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HOW THE BATTLE FOR BIHAR WAS WON
A year after Nitish Kumar took over as Chief Minister in 2005, a Non-Resident Bihari went back on a short visit and came back gushing.
He had never known about the existence of a municipality in Sitamarhi, he had confessed. But he was pleasantly surprised to find on his visit that the local body appeared to be alive. Bihar, he said with satisfaction, was changing. The new Chief Minister's promise of "Su-shashan" or good governance did sound like an idle boast at that time. Political rivals had a field day mocking at him. But it is Nitish Kumar who has had the last laugh. He wanted people of Bihar to give him five more years as 'loan' , he declared at one election meeting after another. " If you are satisfied with my sincerity of effort and believe in my vision, then only give me five more years to carry forward the work," was his stark message. And people responded with a resounding
mandate.
Challenges AHEAD
Even during the campaign, the JD (U) leader had declared that he had reposed his trust in the women and youth of Bihar. " They want a break from the past; they want to break away from the shackles of caste. Bihar must develop and they must vote for people who can govern without fear or favour," he had asserted confidently. During the long-drawn election spread over a month and six phases, it was clear that women were coming out in large numbers to exercise their franchise. And an Election Commission report confirmed the trend. While 44 per cent of the women voters had cast their votes in the 2005 elections, this time the turn-out of women was over 54 per cent, it stressed. The turn-out among men had also improved from 47 per cent to just below 51 per cent. No prizes for guessing which way they voted. They voted for Nitish because he had made Bihar safer for them. Criminals and gang-lords had been put behind bars, even those belonging to his own party were not spared. Fast-track courts quickly convicted the trouble-makers and sent them to jail. The odd crime continued to take place but people were no longer afraid to venture out after dusk. Couples could go out at night and travellers no longer waited for dawn to break before coming out of railway stations. Women had more reasons to root for Nitish. He had empowered them by reserving 50 per cent of the seats at the panchayat level for them--at a time when Lalu Yadav was seen vehemently opposing 33 per cent reservation for women. The state government had also distributed half a million bicycles to girls who attended schools. Road connectivity improved rapidly and cut down on travel-time, reviving parallels with Lalu Yadav who had promised roads as smooth as the cheeks of the dream-girl Hema Malini but left them like the cheecks of Om Puri, people joked, full of craters and pot-holes. During the last five years of the RJD rule in Bihar between 2000 and 2005, the state's economy grew at 4 per cent on an average per annum. In the next five years under Nitish, the growth was sustained at around 11 per cent, largely due to a real estate boom. Prices of apartments in the state capital and other towns went through the roof. As infrastructure developed, Bihari labourers, who earlier flocked to Punjab and Mumbai in search of work, started staying back, creating a labour shortage in the short run. Above all, to Nitish Kumar goes the credit of dispelling the myth of caste pulls. The administration, he insisted, would not be swayed by caste and will be even-handed. This was a radical departure from the past and one cannot honestly say that caste no longer matters in the secretariats ( there are three of them) at Patna. But their power has certainly been weakened. The engineering graduate from Bihar Institute of Technology, Sindri ( now in Jharkhand), took enormous political risks in jettisoning friends like Lallan Singh, for example. There was a time when the two were inseparable but Nitish would not put up with his friend taking advantage of the friendship. He alienated many in his own party when he decided to take in people like Shyam Rajak and Ramai Ram, discarded by Lalu Yadav, and gave them party tickets to contest the Assembly election. Above all, he appears to have won over the minority voters by firmly demanding and getting for the Bhagalpur riot victims the same kind of relief and rehabilitation package as the Centre had offered the victims of the anti-Sikh riots of 1984. He went out of his way to woo 'Backward' Muslims and ensured that the minority community did not suffer from any insecurity. His public stand-off with the BJP on the issue of a poster showing the Chief Minister and Narendra Modi holding hands at an NDA rally in Ludhiana in the 2009 General Election, helped stamp his secular credentials. He in fact went to the extent of cancelling a dinner he was to host for all senior BJP leaders who had assembled at Patna for a meeting of the national executive. Finally, the 'Sher ka bachcha', as a Muslim voter described him, stopped Narendra Modi from campaigning in Bihar. " One Modi is enough for us," he joked in private, referring to the Deputy CM, an old friend and BJP leader from the state, Sushil Kumar Modi.
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End of the road for Lalu
Lalu Yadav had captured the imagination of his people by playing the backward card to the hilt. It was time for the OBCs to rule, he would say, and promise that for the next 20 years the upper castes in Bihar would have to put up with him. People received vicarious satisfaction when he humiliated senior bureaucrats in public. He deliberately subverted the system and began giving orders directly to the police stations. He was the new messiah who would deliver Bihar from poverty, drought and unemployment, he promised. His vociferous support for Mandal Commission's recommendations over reservation for the OBCs and his decision to arrest Lal Krishna Advani and bring to a halt the BJP leader's somewhat comic but effective 'Rath Yatra' to Ayodhya, delighted people. Lalu mastered the art of remaining in the headlines and used Television to devastating effect. He would keep TV crews waiting at his home throughout the day before ordering them to record his one-liners just before prime-time. Like magicians pulling out rabbits, he would pull out one gimmick after another, promising 'cars for bekars' ( cars for the unemployed) or roads as smooth as Hema Malini's cheeks. He would supervise cleaning of the roads and stand there to ensure that illegal hoardings are dismantled. He would make a great show of visiting villages and ordering fire tenders to give a 'shower' to the children. Charwaha schools, sari-dhoti schemes, stipends to pregnant women--promises and announcements rolled out at breath-taking speed. But things began to fall apart. Bureaucrats began avoiding him. The treasury was empty and his schemes flopped one after another. Deeply distrustful of both Babus and politicians, even those belonging to his own party, he created a cult around himself. Administrative decisions stopped being taken and the police stopped taking action against criminals, specially those belonging to the backward castes. Extortions and kidnapping for ransom peaked during his tenure and well-heeled businessmen started approaching the Chief Minister, rather than the police, to report abductions or cases of car-snatching. The fodder-scam , which surfaced in 1996, dealt a blow that finally turned out to be the beginning of the end for him. While he held both the Home and the Finance portfolios, as much as Rs 1,200 crore were found to have been siphoned off from the treasury by the Animal Husbandry department over and above the budgeted provisions. It was possibly a coincidence that the Chief Minister lived in a quarter in the premises of the Patna Veterinary College, where his brothers were employed. There is little doubt that in this election Lalu Yadav has paid a price for his misgovernance during those days. The nightmare of lawlessness, corruption and anarchy that spun out of his control is something that people in Bihar remember with horror and, given a choice, would like to bury. His decision to foist his wife as the CM may not have been questioned by his MLAs in 1997 but Rabri Devi, a loyal housewife more comfortable in the kitchen and the kitchen garden, was a disaster as both CM and later as the Leader of the Opposition in the Assembly. Lalu's decision to field Rabri Devi from two different constituencies in this election was both an indication of desperation and political bankruptcy. His decision to push his youngest son into campaigning also strengthened criticism that he was promoting his own family. After all, he had politically rehabilitated two of his brothers-in-law, Subhash and Sadhu Yadav, as well during his stint in power. While Lalu's shrill campaign against Nitish Kumar, accusing the latter of corruption and basking in the glory of central funds, clearly failed to cut much ice, his promise of a miracle similar to the one he claimed to have performed as the Union Railway Minister, too failed to convince the voters. Not surprisingly really because despite a disproportionate number of Railway Ministers hailing from Bihar, the rail network in the state remains poor. Lakhs of people commute on the roof of trains on a daily basis in the absence of adequate number of local trains. The people clearly had no reason to believe Lalu. He had simply lost the plot and whatever credibility he still was left with. — Uttam Sengupta
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Nitish Kumar gambled heavily in the election and campaigned on a ‘development’ plank. Not once did he appeal for votes on the ground of caste or community. The result appears to have vindicated his faith in his electorate. Bihar, as he says, has left ‘caste’ behind.
"Earlier I never saw my cousin, a school teacher, leave home before lunch. This time he was kick-starting his scooter at eight in the morning. What's wrong with you, I asked in jest and my cousin made a face and said that he could no longer bunk classes because the village sarpanch now had the task of recording his attendance."
"Jab tak hoga samose me
aloo/ tab tak rahega Bihar me Lalu " was once his war cry. He and his
wife did remain at the helm of affairs in the state for 15 long years as Chief
Minister between 1990 and 2005. But results of the Bihar election indicate a
dead-end for Lalu Prasad Yadav. It has exposed him like nothing else has done
so far and vindicates the confident assertion of Nitish Kumar that Lalu Yadav
cannot give up his spots (Laluji sudhrenge nahin; we aadat se lachaar hain).