Seedhi Baat / Aajtak, March 21, 2010

'Sleaze gurus a shame

to religion'

Baba Ramdev says people who are fooling public on the name of religion should be severely punished by the government.

Part 2 ; Part 3 ; Part 4 ; Part 5

Power & Politics/ Mail Today, March 22, 2010

SOMETIME in May, when UPA II completes a year in office, Manmohan Singh will do something he has done only once in his five and a half years as prime minister. I am reliably told that he will address what is only his second “ formal” press conference in the capital. The first happened in May 2005 when the UPA completed a year in office and Manmohan released the first “ Report to the People”, which was a detailed compendium of the programmes initiated in the government’s first year. Though similar reports have been compiled annually since, there have been no formal launches. But two months from now, the prime minister is expected to release the sixth volume for which a news conference is being scheduled.

In any functioning democracy, there are frequent interactions between the rulers and the media. The British Prime Minister routinely interacts with the press. Apart from regularly addressing press conferences, the US President keeps an annual date with the White House Correspondents Association where the interaction is more banter than business.

Compared, what’s happening in India is the closest thing to censorship. Manmohan has been in office since May 2004 and has formally met the press just once. Atal Bihari Vajpayee was perhaps the most popular PM we have had in the last quarter century. He knew a lot many journalists personally but was averse to addressing them as a crowd. It wasn’t always like this. Jawaharlal Nehru routinely held conferences and was on first name basis with several senior journalists, many of whom had unrestricted access to Teen Murti Bhavan, the official residence of the first prime minister.

Indira Gandhi was blessed with boundless charm and even more cunning and used both in equal measure in her frequent dealings with journalists.
In her early years, she met up with journalists almost every month, but as her popularity began to wane in the early 1970s, she began to avoid the media. Morarji bhai was in office for only two and a half years, but began two New Year’s days with a press conference. After her triumphant return to power in 1980, Indira began to befriend the media again, holding a news conference every quarter at Vigyan Bhavan.

Considering that there was no love lost between the host and the guests, these interactions witnessed much handwringing, incisive questions and sharp- tongued responses. Yet, Indira always welcomed everyone with a smile. A permanent curiosity of her press conferences was that the privilege of asking the first question always belonged to a gentleman from a little known Urdu eveninger published from Chennai. Many of us couldn’t figure out the reason for the special chemistry between the two— one who was then considered the world’s most powerful woman and the other a hack from an obscure newspaper— until a veteran journalist told us that the Urdu paper had been founded by a Congressman who was a close associate of Motilal Nehru. Rajiv’s interactions with the media weren’t as frequent as Indira’s and that may have had something to do with the fact that he had his own group of friends in the media. Yet, until Bofors began to weigh him down, he did meet the media at least twice a year.

After Rajiv, the tradition has taken a toss.

Vishwanath Pratap Singh was so busy balancing allies from the Right and the Left that he found little time. Chandrashekhar’s interactions happened on a daily basis, but were limited to four or five close “ journalist” friends and were held invariably at his kutir on South Avenue where he chose to live even after becoming prime minister. P. V. Narasimha Rao was perhaps the last one who tried to keep the prime ministerial tradition. His fiveyear term saw as many news conferences, which is not bad going considering that after December 6, 1992, he was no media darling.

Hopefully, in about two months, we will see Manmohan treading the same path as his mentor. I am told the prime minister truly believes that he has earned enough credits to flaunt the Progress Report at a press conference before live cameras and hundreds of unruly newshounds. Let’s hope it is only the first and that many many more press conferences will follow.

BJP? WHAT BJP?

BJP? What BJP?

This are the questions which come to a bharatiya's mind as he or she reads this excellent article on the state of the Labour Party in UK.

BJP should seriously introspect and figure out what went wrong with the party and what continues to be wrong with the party.

Somehow, there is a disconnect between the 5-star hotel lifestyles of BJP bigwigs and the aam-aadmi, the bharatiya whom it is supposed to represent. Has it moved far from the vision of integral humanism or karma vaad?

Let every BJP functionary give up his high chairs and lofty positions and get back to each of the 6 lakh + villages of Bharatam. Each member should submit a weekly progress report on the number of villages visited and the number of villagers with whom he or she interacts.
Is this too much to ask?

namaskaram. kalyanaraman
Read on...
Labour Party? What Labour Party?
Arvind Sivaramakrishnan, Published: March 18, 2010Updated: March 18, 2010 00:07 IST
AP The Blair-Brown transition and Mr. Brown's domestic struggles reveal a government in near-chaos, without a single coherent idea, and unaware of how the voters feel about it.Excellent inside sources illuminate a fascinating story of electoral triumph, illegal war, and internal chaos.
For Labour Party supporters, bliss was it in that dawn to be alive. On May 1, 1997, the British electorate all but crushed the ruling Conservative Party, which had held office for 18 years and had become what one major newspaper called the most venal and mendacious British government of the preceding century. Seven Tory Cabinet Ministers lost their seats, no Tory won in Scotland or Wales, and large parts of the southern English Tory heartlands fell to Labour.
This Labour victory, unlike the Party's sweeping win in 1945, was not based on the promise of a country genuinely for ordinary people, with hugely expanded public institutions and a first-class public health service. Instead, it resulted from voters' bitter resentment towards a Tory party which stood for finance capital, greed, and little else, and which had gone deeply against the grain of a modern social democracy by privatising major public bodies, selling them off cheaply in a process which was openly called theft. At the next election, in 2001, Labour won another huge majority, despite serious problems. These included the leaders' obsession with tabloid headlines, with spin amounting to mendacity, and a contempt for institutions which included traducing the parliamentary oversight function by bullying Labour MPs to reveal select committees' questions in advance. Other problems occurred over the leaders' cravenness to big business, which caused several episodes of sleaze or near-sleaze, such as the flirtations with the Hinduja brothers, who may have been trying to evade prosecution in India. On the credit side, major constitutional promises had been honoured. Labour had created the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly, had incorporated most of the European Convention on Human Rights into domestic law, and had had an unexpected triumph with the U.S.-brokered peace agreement in Northern Ireland. For ordinary voters, there was a prospect of substantial attempts to redeem two decades of Tory underfunding in the public services. Labour were set to continue winning elections, an unaccustomed position for them.

In a fast-paced book, Andrew Rawnsley, the chief political correspondent of The Observer, covers the next nine years of government by Labour, or, as it called itself until even its leaders realised that the emperor's clothes had fallen off, New Labour (Andrew Rawnsley, The End of the Party; the rise and fall of New Labour, London: Viking Penguin, 2010). The defining issue is the Iraq invasion. Using excellent inside sources, Rawnsley shows how Prime Minister Tony Blair committed the United Kingdom to aiding the U.S. in war. Mr. Blair did not provide the Cabinet with all the documents he himself used, rejected a last-minute chance offered by George W. Bush to withdraw, and then lied to the electorate, to Parliament, and to his Cabinet that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction and was an immediate threat to the United Kingdom if not the whole world.

Mr. Rawnsley also shows how Mr. Blair was used by Mr. Bush, who was even more cunning than Mr. Blair. Mr. Blair thought that he was the only leader who could restrain Mr. Bush and his messianic neocons, and that he could build a bridge between the U.S. and Europe; but that was soon “sawn away at both ends of the Atlantic,” and Mr. Blair had no influence on the U.S., which also drove a very hard bargain with the U.K. over steel tariffs. Mr. Blair, however, has not changed; he recently told the Iraq Inquiry in London that invading Iraq was the right thing to do, and that Iran is now posing the same kind of threat as Iraq had allegedly done.

The failure of institutions of the British state — the Cabinet and civil service, and above all Parliament — to stop the Iraq war crime is only tangentially indicated by Mr. Rawnsley. In 1997, the Labour Party had been demoralised by four successive election defeats and was terrified of an overwhelmingly right-wing written press. The simple-majority electoral system had divided the consistent 60 per cent opposition to the Tories, thereby delivering Tory governments for about 70 years in the preceding century, and the Labour MP Bernie Grant reputedly said, “We've had the stuffing knocked out of us.” Mr. Blair and the cabal around him had set their sights on winning above all, but once in government continued to behave like an opposition. Furthermore, to the dismay of supporters at every level, they intensified one Tory policy after another.

As the Labour Party's membership and highly-federalised structure withered and as the trade unions — which had founded the Party and are still its main funders — distanced themselves from the main policies, the leaders' personalities became decisive factors. Mr. Rawnsley shows how their inevitable flaws made for a series of débâcles. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, was progressively more embittered over Mr. Blair's repeated reneging on promises to stand down so that Mr. Brown could take over. Even in New Labour's first term, Mr. Brown controlled the domestic landscape by controlling the budget, and thereafter the relation between Mr. Blair and Mr. Brown reminded insiders of a marriage in serious trouble. Mr. Blair, never good at personal confrontations or detail, knew he needed Mr. Brown; Mr. Brown, never as good with people as Mr. Blair and far better on major economic issues than at making the rapid and varied decisions which confront a Prime Minister, knew he needed Mr. Blair. Yet he destroyed Mr. Blair's plan to take the U.K. into the European Single Currency and possibly ended any foreseeable prospect of an informed British debate on the European Union. Paranoid manoeuvrings, spinnings and counter-spinnings, and raging rows occurred all the time, but both protagonists always retreated before the government disintegrated.

Another person to dominate much of Mr. Blair's time in office was the former tabloid journalist Alastair Campbell, whose past included a “drink-fuelled psychotic breakdown.” Mr. Campbell's world was constituted by tabloid headlines, and his loyalty to Mr. Blair was absolute. He had enormous power in Mr. Blair's entourage, and insiders wondered whether Mr. Blair or Mr. Campbell was the boss. Mr. Campbell finally left some months after Mr. Blair chaired the inner-circle meeting where the decision was made to leak the name of the former U.N. weapons inspector David Kelly, who had told a BBC journalist that the infamous Iraq dossier had been “sexed up”; the leak resulted in Dr. Kelly's apparent suicide after ferocious publicity and a parliamentary committee grilling.

More recently, the Blair-Brown transition and Mr. Brown's domestic struggles — which contrast with his authority and decisiveness on the international stage when the world financial crisis started in 2007 and 2008 — reveal a government in near-chaos, without a single coherent idea, and unaware of how the voters feel about the destruction of their jobs, their pensions, and their children's futures, not to mention how they feel about unregulated bankers who have been saved by nearly a trillion pounds of taxpayers' money. Yet Mr. Rawnsley says little about substantive policy, about Labour's unseen achievements in doing a great deal, quietly so as not to wake the tabloids, for the substantial numbers of children in poverty after 18 Tory years. He says nothing about the money put into the public services routinely used by all but a tiny fraction of the public — an important omission, because vast amounts of the money went only into creating a target-obsessed managerialist régime in which former bus-company bosses run major hospitals, in which finance officers tell surgeons which operations to perform, and in which dozens of inspectorates intimidate dedicated front-line staff. Mr. Rawnsley also omits the unrestrained use of the Private Finance Initiative for capital projects, whereby the state indemnifies private corporations against all manner of documented waste, incompetence, and failure, and he says nothing about New Labour's introduction of reams of repressive legislation, some of which has been badly abused by central and local government.

Mr. Rawnsley is nevertheless always absorbing, and he closes with (New) Labour in tatters over the MPs' expenses scandal but before Tory troubles started over the tax status of their own deputy chairman Lord Ashcroft. The public-service cuts Tories love are also yet to bite; British universities alone face cuts of £600 million in the next two years. At the time of writing, opinion polls point to a hung Parliament, and even a possible Labour win. The most venal, mendacious, and repressive British government in over a century could be rescued by an electorate they have treated with contempt. Seldom can the Labour Party have deserved it less. Labour Party? What Labour Party?

Power & Politics / Mail Today, March 15, 2010

THERE’S considerable speculation surrounding the longevity of the government following the passage of the Women’s Reservation Bill in the Rajya Sabha last week and almost overnight, the UPA regime is seen to be as shaky as an alcoholic’s fingers.

By steamrolling the Bill through after evicting belligerent MPs from the SP and the RJD, the government is said to have annoyed “ allies”, leaving the minority regime weaker now than ever before. True, in purely numerical terms, the argument holds water even though the support of the SP and the RJD, led by Lalu Yadav, was at best symbolic.

Together, the two account for 24 Lok Sabha MPs and 16 in the Rajya Sabha. The latter will come down drastically further once the biennial elections to the Upper House are held in the next two months.

I don’t think such considerations were swirling in the minds of either Prime Minister Manmohan Singh or Congress chief Sonia Gandhi when they decided to end 14 years of procrastination and push through the Women’s Bill. A government is judged by the determination with which it pursues its agenda and delivers on its promises. But what we have seen in the last six months is the UPA- II abandoning many of its initiatives under pressure from unpredictable allies like the DMK, Trinamool Congress and others.

Several big ticket reforms on labour and land acquisition and disinvestment in Public Sector Undertakings are on the backburner.
The Women’s Reservation Bill was neither the most difficult nor the most contentious of the many pending legislations.

But tactically, it was the most potent weapon in the government armoury to bulldoze the opposition outside and tame the unruly ones inside. It is no secret that the BJP was a house divided on the issue. The opposition to the Bill in its present form within the Congress was no less as were the reservations of some of the alliance partners. But for Sonia, the bill was an article of faith and therefore, non- negotiable.

Once the government made clear its intention to introduce the Bill last Sunday, some Opposition leaders as well as sections of the Congress sought more time to discuss the Bill in meetings with senior ministers.

When the message was conveyed to Sonia, her reaction was said to have been: “ What were they doing for 14 years? How much more time do they need?” Once the message percolated down that it was the High Command’s wish, reluctant partymen and alliance partners kept Lalu Yadav their reservations under wraps and came out in wholehearted support of the Bill. For much of its first term and indeed in the eight months of its second term, UPA- II has been hounded by fear and pressure.

For the first time, we now see a government saying that we will not negotiate out of fear, or rule under pressure. By pushing the Women’s Bill through, both Manmohan and Sonia have sent out a clear message that henceforth, governance will be on the Congress’s terms. Thus, technically it is the UPA Government that is in power; the agenda will be that of the Congress. The allies should be happy with little slices of the power cake. Such arrogance would seem misplaced considering that the Congress has no more than 204 members in the 544- member house and withdrawal of support by one of the big alliance partners is enough to bring the government down. But the Congress also knows that the political contours of the 15th Lok Sabha rule out the formation of an alternate government. The BJP just doesn’t have the numbers to even make a claim. The alternative is fresh polls, which of course nobody wants.

That’s why I see the passage of the Women’s Bill as a milestone for the UPA. It has helped the Sonia- Manmohan duo stamp their authority on the alliance. The unpredictable allies, who have in the past held a pistol to the government’s head, will now think deeply before setting out to indulge in political blackmail.

It is to be hoped that the confidence does not get converted into arrogance. If the good doctor can continue with his trademark humility, the remaining four- and- a- half- years of the UPA will be quite different from the first five- and- a- half. Plans kept in deep freeze are likely to be revived, big ticket reforms will be back on the agenda. And four years on, it may be time for UPA- III.

Snippets/Mail Today, March 15, 2010

Gadkari gives up on radical change in BJP

IT’S been nearly three months since Nitin Gadkari replaced Rajnath Singh as the BJP president and almost a month since his appointment was ratified by the party’s national executive that met in Indore, but there is still no sign of the new “ captain” putting in place his new team of office bearers which is meant to take the BJP back to its glory days. It appears that the BJP’s youngest ever president has taken very little time to realise that the party is full of old warhorses who simply refuse to fade away.

He has also learnt to his horror that there are more factions in the BJP than there are political parties represented in the Lok Sabha. I know him well enough to realise that he has little faith in numerology, astrology and such occult sciences, so what’s holding him up? Last I heard, he was advised by someone to let the Ides of March pass, and I gather from very reliable party sources that on Tuesday, March 16, he will announce the new team. Lest you think he was simply whiling away time, forget it.

I gather that he has held consultations with more than 120 former and current office bearers of the party, ranging from presidents and general secretaries to RSS bosses, state satraps and others. At the end of the long exercise, Gadkari seems to have realised that it would be an uphill task to shake off the old ghosts, making his plans to usher in a new team a virtual non- starter. If current indications are anything to go by, no more than 30 to 40 per cent of the incoming team will be new faces, which means that the majority will be the old guard.

They may not be able to remote control him the way his predecessor was, but it is evident that Gadkari’s wings will be clipped, while the powers of the cabal that runs 11 Ashoka Road continue undiluted.

Cabinet Secy warns babus on corruption

CORRUPTION in bureaucracy is as old as the hills. But the reports coming in from states in recent times about bureaucrats being caught with their hands in the till are enough to make the few good men and women among them contemplate voluntary retirement.

That perhaps explains why after newspapers carried reams and reams about a few bureaucrats, including an IAS couple in Madhya Pradesh, being caught with tens of crores in unaccounted money, Cabinet Secretary K. M. Chandrashekhar shot off a letter to the bureaucratic fraternity demanding “ zero tolerance on corruption”. Chandrashekhar is what I would call a proactive bureaucrat.

Earlier this year, I had in these pages written about his plans to bring babudom in tune with the government’s policies in these fast- changing times.

Last month, he had invited chief secretaries of all states for a two- day conference where many Union ministers were also present. It was a first of sorts in many respects, for apart from the mandatory speeches by the prime minister and the cabinet secretary, even chiefs of the army, navy and air force for the first time directly addressed bureaucrats from the states on the security environment.

His latest missive therefore comes as no surprise. “ Of late, there have been some disturbing incidents which call for serious introspection by civil servants. It is important that we ponder over the manner in which we discharge our duties and fulfil our responsibilities and what we need to do to refurbish our image,” he wrote while reminding them that though they were appointed on the basis of a fair and open competition, they must respond to the faith that citizens “ have reposed in us and meet their hopes and aspirations of good governance.

The government’s policy of zero tolerance on corruption must be implemented fully and effectively”. It is of course too much to hope that the bureaucrats will start putting the country above their own self- serving interests.

THE recent reconstitution of the various committees of the Union Cabinet gives an indication of the ministerial pecking order. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh chairs eight of the 10 committees which were recast to “ lessen the workload burden of the Cabinet”. Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee and Home Minister P. Chidambaram figure in eight of them, followed by Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar who has a seat in seven, followed by Defence Minister A. K. Antony who sits on four committees. Manmohan predictably heads all the key committees including those on prices, economic affairs, infrastructure and matters related to the WTO. The Prime Minister has had to do a fine balancing act in dealing with the DMK ministers while recasting the committees.

M. K. Alagiri, DMK chief Karunanidhi's son and the Union minister for fertilisers and chemicals, finds a place in the committee on prices, while textile minister Dayanidhi Maran is in the committee on political affairs as well as in that of parliamentary affairs. The pride of place goes to A. Raja, who is in three important committees of infrastructure, economic affairs and Unique Identification Authority of India.

The placement of three DMK ministers in so many crucial committees leaves one with the feeling that the entire exercise was undertaken just to placate an ally.

Seedhi Baat / Aajtak, March 14, 2010

'Bal Thackeray is a big leader'

Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray's estranged daughter-in-law Smita Thackeray says politics and family are two separate things.
Part 2 Part 3 Part 4