The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

Modi’s scorn
Punjabis in Kutch suffer as minority

Hundreds of Punjabi families — mostly Sikh farmers — in the Kutch area of Gujarat have been unsure of their future since 2010 for the simple reason that the state government has refused to honour a promise made to them in 1965. Invited to start cultivating land there by then Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri as a second line of defence against Pakistan, Punjabi farmers faced adversities over the decades before they built a secure world around themselves. The state government has pulled out a flimsy law against non-agriculturists buying land to ‘freeze’ the Punjabi farmers’ land rights. This flies in the face of the fact that they were invited in the first place because they were hardy farmers. The government has been pulled up by a three-member Bench of the high court for its unreasonableness.

Why, one wonders, would the government have suddenly woken up to the fact that Punjabis were tilling land in Kutch? The foremost reason is the value of the land, which is today an enviable asset with lush farms. There is pressure from industry too, with cement plants coming up in the area. Held by ‘outsiders’, who are also a religious minority, the properties are seen as easy game by locals. The farmers say they have no issue with the common residents; it is the politician-investor nexus that is acting as land mafia, and the government is obliging it with the might of the administrative machinery, denying the farmers the right to tubewell connections, sale of farm produce, etc. The arm-twisting has already forced some farmers to sell off their land at throwaway prices.

BJP Chief Minister Narendra Modi, who already faces the taint of anti-Muslim riots in his state, should have been particularly careful about giving detractors another chance to point at harassment of a minority. Perhaps his confidence and past experience tell him it is not worth wasting his time over such niceties, and that it adds to his image of a ‘firm and decisive’ leader. However, all that the voter knows about the prime-ministerial candidate is based on his actions in Gujarat alone; his conduct vis-à-vis Punjabi farmers too would be watched in that context.

Punjab drug menace
Better coordination needed

Seizure of contraband worth Rs 120 crore only a couple of days after 24 kg of heroin was seized at Mullankot village in the border district of Amritsar reveals loopholes in the system meant to keep a check on narcotics in the state. As such, Punjab falls within the international drug trafficking zone referred to as the “Golden Crescent”, and is a major transit and destination point for drugs coming from Afghanistan and Pakistan. The latest hauls are more shocking because the kingpin caught was out on parole from a 15-year sentence after being caught with 54 kg of heroin by the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI).

This is indicative of serious lapses in the way prisons function in Punjab. The kingpin must have been in touch with other links in the chain of traffickers to be able to re-establish contacts immediately on release. Allegations of ‘narco-politics’ cartels being run by politicians and people in the security establishment in Punjab have been levelled by senior officers of the state police. Another worrying fact is the latest report of the Narcotics Control Bureau on drug seizures in the country, which reveals that the seizure of the high-worth heroin from Punjab is more than the seizures from all other states put together. Over the past three years, 814 kg of heroin has been seized by Central agencies and the Punjab police in operations along the border with Pakistan and within the state. Seizures from other states amounted to less than 700 kg.

The usual blame game over who is responsible for the situation continues between the Border Security Force and the state police, even as smuggling of the contraband remains unabated. The fact that the youth of Punjab is becoming the consumer as also the trafficker of these deadly drugs should be a cause of concern for all. A massive awareness campaign is required against the drug menace to save the youth. It also needs stringent implementation of the laws at all levels.

Thought for the Day

I have great faith in fools — self-confidence my friends call it. — Edgar Allan Poe

ARTICLE

Kashmir remains bilateral issue
Nawaz Sharif should pursue his own proposals seriously
by Kuldip Nayar

I do not know why Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif goes over the same exercise on Kashmir every two to three months. He raised the question at the UN General Assembly and again mentioned it during his meeting with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh at New York. Now he has brought up the matter before having talks with President Barack Obama at Washington. Probably, he sought his services. America has reiterated its stand that it considered Kashmir a bilateral issue which the two countries should solve. This is what India has been saying. By insisting that Kashmir is a core issue for any conciliation with India, Pakistan is not bringing the opportunity for any solution nearer.

What does not go with the style of Nawaz Sharif is his remark that both countries are nuclear powers. Is that a threat? How can any country even say that it has a nuclear weapon or, for that matter, its opponent has? It means extinction of Pakistan and northern India.

Another ominous change I have noticed on the part of Islamabad is that it has stopped the mention of the Shimla agreement. The earlier statements stated that the Kashmir issue should be sorted out according to the UN resolution and the Shimla agreement.

At that time, then Pakistan Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto had orally told then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi that he would see that the ceasefire line on the border became an international border. He went back on the undertaking because he could not sell the proposal to a country which had lost its eastern wing. Still Pakistan must realise that there is no solution to Kashmir except through talks. Therefore, the Shimla agreement has the greatest chance of making it to the page.

True, there is the pressure of rightists on Sharif. But this is not what an average Pakistani feels. Not long ago when I went to Pakistan and asked a cab driver what he thought of Kashmir, he replied: “I have to think of how to earn the next meal, not bother about Kashmir”. An expert in Pakistan once remarked that what they could not win in the battlefield, they could not expect to win at the negotiating table.

Sharif’s proposal, when he was in the wilderness, is worth implementing. He said that the two countries should set up a committee to talk about Kashmir without interruption. After having done that, both countries should open up for trade and business. And the visa should be made easy for people-to-people contact. In fact, the Pakistan Prime Minister should be pursuing his own proposals seriously.

In the meanwhile, the allegations by the former Chief of Army Staff General V.K. Singh that the Indian Army had been financing ministers in Kashmir to maintain “stability” in the state have taken a serious turn. The Speaker of the Jammu and Kashmir Assembly has ruled that he would summon the general to explain to the house the charge of ministers being financed. The Speaker has already issued a notice to General V.K.Singh.

However, some of us who have followed the situation in Kashmir since its integration with India are not surprised. New Delhi always had a finger in the pie. Even a popular leader like Sheikh Abdullah had to be subservient to New Delhi. Once he did open his mouth to say that they would rather starve than accept India’s diktat and he had to spend 12 years in detention.

In fact, there were no elections in the years soon after the state joined the Indian Union. Sheikh Abdullah, then called the Prime Minister of Jammu and Kashmir, accepted the fait accompli which was decided at Delhi. The practice was vigorously pursued when Bakshi Ghulam Mohammad replaced the Sheikh when the latter was detained. The decision about who should head Kashmir was taken at New Delhi.

There was a separate Department on Kashmir affairs in the External Affairs Ministry. Probably, it was meant to convey that since the matter was before the UN, it had to be dealt with by the External Affairs Ministry, headed by Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. The Department was transferred to the Home Ministry when the more sagacious Govind Ballabh Pant took charge after quitting as the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh. The Department is still part of the Home Ministry. To the credit of Nehru, that he did not accept Maharaja Hari Singh’s request to join the Indian Union until it had the approval of the then popular leader Sheikh Abdullah, who was in jail at that time. It is unfortunate that the Sheikh turned out to be a disappointment. He took New Delhi’s dictated arrangement like a duck to water.

Since then, chief ministers at Srinagar — Mufti Mohammad Sayeed of People’s Democratic Party or Farooq Abdullah—have understood that Srinagar has to tilt its sails according to the winds blowing from New Delhi. Chief Minister Omar Abdullah makes proper noises but it is no more than a storm in a tea cup. He is rightly strengthening the state police so that the use of Indian Army, stationed in the state, is as little as possible.

But he is defeated by the Pakistan army which keeps the pot boiling. It was a relief when the two countries agreed not to violate the LoC. But the line has been violated all the time in recent times. Pakistan is more to blame because it is giving covert support to Tehrik-e-Taliban, Pakistan, to infiltrate into India before the winter sets in and clogs the passes because of snow.

If insurgency in Kashmir is a part of Islamabad’s policy, what was the purpose of Prime Minister Sharif’s meeting with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh? They agreed to honour the agreement reached in 2004 to make the LoC sacrosanct. The Director-Generals of Military Operations of the two countries were to meet. True, no time frame was fixed but they should have met by this time, although their meeting may have turned into a formality. Political masters have to realise the futility of cross-border firing. Three wars should have made it clear to Pakistan that it cannot wrest Kashmir forcibly from the hands of India.

MIDDLE

Gauging the mood of the people
by VK Kapoor

With the General Election approaching, the mood of the people becomes relevant. Suddenly the extras and leftovers of life become important. It is the people who make opinion rather than the Napoleon’s notion that opinion is an idea, which has the weight of force behind it. Society is a mule, not a car; if pressed too hard, it will kick and throw off the rider. Debate, dispute and dissent is the diesel of democracy.

In the end, society depends on the mood of the people. Does mood follow a situation or does the mood create the situation? Both happen. I remember when the Emergency was lifted and elections declared, I was the Superintendent of Police of Sonepat, when, in a meeting being addressed by Bansi Lal, people started getting up and going away. When cops raised batons to stop them, Bansi Lal admonished them, calling them “Moti buddhi wale (thick-headed people).

The mood of the people was clear. The family planning campaign had backfired. The next day, Lala Amar Nath, the famous cricketer who was a coach in the Sports School, and I, after a game of tennis, discussed the mood of the people. He told me in Punjabi: “Sarkar di nasbandi ho jaani hai” (The government is going to get vasectomised — it is going to lose). After that, he recited an Urdu couplet: “Raste band hain sab/ kuchhe-i-katil ki siwa” (All roads are closed except the slaughterhouse). The Congress lost all the seats.

Then I saw the elections of 1984, which was a traumatic year in Indian history. Operation Blue Star, Mrs Indira Gandhi’s assassination, anti-Sikh riots. I was an SP in the border district of Sirsa. There is a sizeable population of Punjabis. I asked a sarpanch about the mood of the people and what people wanted. He said people wanted “Kuli, guli, te juli (shelter, food and clothes)”. He told me: “We had accepted 22 bags of country-made liquor and will vote for the candidate”. People’s mood is a collation and collection of perceptions in the mind of aam aadmi. The situation at the ground zero is different from what is perceived in the corridors of power. India is in the corridors of power and at ground zero it is Mother India. In Mother India, one discovers the abiding pain and agony of victims.

Life at the ground level is a gritty realism of hunger and want. It is like a direct fist on the face. In politics, it is economics before emotions, profit before principles, and wealth before values. The State is but a surrogate of self and politics is an extension of the family.

There is not much difference between reel life and real life. Neta and abhineta are two sides of the same coin. Opportunity and temptation go along with the territory. Being on the inside not only brings opportunity but also temptation. Indian politics is a functioning anarchy. Old walls are crumbling, but no one yet knows how to rebuild them. We have become guinea pigs of an unstable era. We do not know that expedient politicians, ineffective administration and unprincipled businessmen lobbies have induced a weary cynicism in the aam aadmi. It is an era of reduced expectations. Now, when a politician in Delhi asked me about the current mood, I told him that the current mood is “Sab chor hain”.

Oped Politics

When India casts its vote
With the next General Election round the corner, many are still looking for a credible leader as the country’s next Prime Minister
S. Nihal Singh

On the one end is Rahul Gandhi (below, left), scion of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty, often putting his foot in his mouth, while on the other end is Narendra Modi (right), the consummate politician, making a splash with his hi-tech election rallies

On the one end is Rahul Gandhi (left), scion of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty, often putting his foot in his mouth, while on the other end is Narendra Modi (right), the consummate politician, making a splash with his hi-tech election rallies. Photos: AFP

As the two main national parties, the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), intensify their campaigns for next summer's General Election, India is still searching for a leader. The choice offered thus far is dispiriting: A leader reared in the authoritarian and regressive social culture of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and a babe in the woods seeking to find his métier in a bewildering political world.

The mismatch in the two main contenders is plain for the world to see. Here is Narendra Modi, the consummate politician, splashing his hi-tech election rallies with an extravagance that knows no limits in his desire to make a splash.

On the other side is Rahul Gandhi, scion of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty, with little appetite for the world of politics bravely fighting his demons by putting his foot in his mouth, much to the glee of his opponent who has a whale of a time picking holes in his disjointed arguments.

The regional parties, with growing power and influence, are the inevitable kingmakers of the next coalition government and are now dreaming their dreams. The mess the succession of 'third front' governments made, with a cast of very unlikely prime ministers, is an object lesson for Indian polity.

Only India's enemies would wish the country to revisit the era of the 1990s in which the question often asked was: It is Monday, who is the Prime Minister?

How has India come to this pass? Much of India's post-Independence history, as indeed of the decades preceding it, is tied up with the illustrious Nehru family starting with Motilal, later hyphenated with Gandhi of the Indira variety.

The essence of India today in what Jawaharlal, the first Prime Minister, made it. He gave India a solid foundation of parliamentary democracy, inculcated in his party a modicum of democracy always on the presumption that his word carried most weight.

Jawaharlal gave minorities, particularly Muslims, the assurance of full citizenship after the bloody Partition of the subcontinent. He sought to lift the lot of the unfortunate by giving the Dalits a special dispensation in the power structure, time-barred measures that have become immutable in the political space. And he constantly dinned the importance of parliamentary governance into the people by his own example, unfailingly attending parliamentary sessions through boring debates.

Jawaharlal had his weaknesses. Highly conscious of the wider world and its influences, he was bitten by the bug of Asian unity and came to grief not only on misreading China but also in rhetoric substituting for India's weakness in the military field at the time. He gave away Tibet without extracting an appropriate price and suffered the ultimate humiliation of the 1962 Chinese invasion, which led to the Indian debacle, a factor that doubtless speeded up his own end.

After the Lal Bahadur Shastri interregnum, Jawaharlal's daughter Indira was of a very different mould. After her first tentative steps in learning the ropes, she was a practitioner of realpolitik and had absorbed enough of the game of politics as her father's official hostess to play a consummate hand as she settled into her job. She split the venerable Congress twice to have her way and, in repudiation of all her father stood for, declared an internal Emergency to save her skin.

To recount these events is to highlight the provenance of the Congress party and its evolution through a second general and the perennial dependency of the organisation to one family. Life and politics are full of ironies. After Indira's assassination came her elder son Rajiv, his more ambitious younger brother Sanjay having killed himself in an acrobatic air crash. Rajiv represented a second generation change and his own assassination led to the party being bereft of an obvious leading family contender.

The irony, of course, was that the resounding defeat of the Congress in elections held after the Emergency led to a botched attempt by an opposition government led by the unique Morarji Desai in an impossible coalition of opposites followed by a succession of puppet governments supported and dismissed by the Congress until Indira rose phoenix-like from the ashes to claim the crown again, her murder pitch forking Rajiv, an airline pilot, into the office of Prime Minister.

It is striking that after the Congress lost power leading to the first Bharatiya Janata Party government with some hiccups for six years, Rajiv's widow Sonia scorned a frontline political role in keeping with the tradition of mourning her husband's brutal death. Rahul, then, was too much of a dilettante to merit serious notice and his sister Priyanka, who seemed more of a chip of the old block, had married and was raising children.

The clamour building for co-opting Sonia in the leader's role grew in the Congress. It was a remarkable development in as much as an Italian married into the Nehru-Gandhi family acquired the political acumen — presumably partly learned by closely watching her mother-in-law — to manage the levers of power in the hoary Congress Party rather than her surviving son Rahul, who is still rebelling against his destiny in seeking the highest political office.

Narendra Modi comes from a starkly different background. He was reared in the cradle of the RSS, an authoritarian socially regressive organisation, run on the credo of military discipline to the extent of middle-aged men wearing khaki shorts having to do morning drills with lathis substituting for guns. The organisation swears by Hindutva, a creed of extolling a mélange of Hindu ideas wrapped into a street art version of gods and goddesses.

After a former member of the RSS killed Mahatma Gandhi, the organisation was in the dog house. It rehabilitated itself by promising to be a cultural organisation although no one doubts its political ambitions. And as the six years of the BJP-led coalition in the late 1990s and early 2,000 showed, it made many demands on the government and infiltrated its cadres into official positions at various levels of the power structure.

In terms of fielding its own promising cadres into government structures in the states, its long-standing policy has been not only to staff the higher levels of the BJP (the Jan Sangh in its earlier incarnation) at the central level and to get its faithful to take up chief ministerships in the BJP-ruled states. Modi was one such RSS faithful, seconded first to the BJP leadership structure in Delhi and later sent to Gujarat to lead the state. The great difference between Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the only BJP leader to become Prime Minister thus far, and the present aspirant for the job is that while the former grew out of his RSS tutelage by juggling with his original affiliation, the latter has subsumed his authoritarian rearing in a cynical running of the administration by the single-minded pursuit of power.

The taint of the Mahatma's assassination is now a matter of history for the RSS as it emerges out of the shadows to give full support to Modi's ambitions. The RSS's reasoning is that despite Modi's angularities and personal ambitions, he is the man who can win most seats in the General Election. And its overall goal is to Hinduise society at the national level to lead the country to greater glory by harking back to a mythical age of the past. Many in India are, therefore, still looking for a credible leader as the country's next Prime Minister.