Race Course Road/The Sunday Standard Magazine, October 2, 2011

Sonia Leaves Cabinet Illness to the Doctor

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh may pooh pooh all charges of growing dissension within his Cabinet, but the conduct of his senior colleagues leaves little to the imagination. Most are not on speaking terms; they communicate only during Cabinet meetings or through written notes opposing each other. Last week, the Congress party was pushed into a corner when a note written by a junior finance ministry official—concerning Home Minister P Chidambaram and spectrum pricing—to the Prime Minister was leaked. Both Manmohan and Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee made all the right noises defending Chidambaram. Pranabda even called his “valued colleague” Chidambaram from the US, as well as from New Delhi after he returned, but apparently did not have the inclination or time for a face-to-face meeting. He refused to make any statement on the note, even as other ministers and Congress functionary came out openly in the beleaguered home minister’s support. It was evident that even Congress President Sonia Gandhi is aware of the soured chemistry between the two UPA top guns. When matters careened out of control, she decided to play mediator. But Sonia discovered it would be calamitous to summon both to discuss the contentious note together. Perhaps she knew confabulations would be impossible with both Mukherjee and Chidambaram present at the same meeting. She didn’t want a third party around either. So, she decided to listen to each one individually. It is not clear whether Sonia was already in possession of the voluminous correspondence between the PMO and the finance ministry on the issue because both Chidambaram and Pranabda spent hardly 20 minutes each with her. It was their first meeting with Sonia after her surgery. According to insiders, both exchanged pleasantries with her and gave a short brief on the controversy. Chidambaram insisted that the finance ministry take some sort of action to remove the cloud of suspicion hanging over him. But Pranabda did not budge. Instead, he sent a long letter to the PMO supporting his ministry. Sensing a major confrontation, Sonia has now left it to the Prime Minister to clean up the mess and restrain his ministers from washing dirty linen in public.

Steel frame on show in America

PMO officials were baffled to see former foreign secretary and now India’s ambassador to the US, Nirupama Rao, in New York during Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit. Rao was not only present at the airport to welcome Manmohan, she also made it a point to attend all non-official functions held for the Prime Minister or External Affairs Minister S M Krishna. Normally, the Indian ambassador is not a part of India’s official UN delegation during the visit of the Prime Minister. Rao may not have contributed to the deliberations on Manmohan’s speech at the United Nations General Assembly, but she did provide gracious company to Gursharan Kaur, the Prime Minister’s wife. Rao sat next to her all through the Prime Minister’s speech. Along with her husband, Rao also checked into the same hotel in which other dignitaries were staying. She wasn’t the only senior Indian official hanging around in New York; around six Cabinet ministers also were present. Around half a dozen senior babus also found their way into Manhattan on one pretext or the other. It is evident that as the political leadership gets weaker, bureaucracy is regaining its steel frame once again.

Rahul sticks to comfort zone

Rahul Gandhi’s final destination may be 7 Race Course Road, but for the time being he has decided to stay away from India’s great plains after the rather rowdy welcome he received at a Delhi hospital following the High Court blasts. Instead, he has chosen to visit only those states which have Baba-friendly chief ministers. After keeping a low-profile for a few weeks, Rahul surfaced in Gangtok, Sikkim, last week to meet earthquake victims. Since he wasn’t entitled to official transport for what was a purely political visit, it was left to Sikkim Chief Minister Pawan Chamling to organise a helicopter for Rahul’s visit to the forward areas. Normally, the Prime Minister or Sonia Gandhi visits areas hit by natural calamities. Since neither could go, the Gandhi scion stood in. But Rahul sprang another surprise by landing in Srinagar without a formal programme. He visited the university in jeans and a kurta. He also followed the age-old Gandhi tradition of paying a visit to Hazratbal shrine. Rahul was the first Gandhi to go to the shrine after his father Rajiv visited Hazratbal in 1986. There is no record of Sonia ever having gone there. But Rahul wasn’t able to visit the Kheer Bhawani temple where his grandmother Indira Gandhi would pray without fail. But Rahul’s Kashmiri pedigree did help him in connecting with the local youth.

All leaks and no work in UPA

With the wicked leaks on the 2G Scam inflicting serious wounds on many UPA ministers, their babus have chosen to remain totally neutral and stay away from the corridors of power. For the past few weeks, no bureaucrat has sent any important file to their ministers for a decision, only routine files. Even senior secretaries have stopped looking at the Congress manifesto to draw up notes for legislation promised by the party. Over a dozen important ministers dealing with key social and infrastructure ministries haven’t been able to finalise a single note for the Cabinet to take a final call. Most of them don’t even go to work, visiting office only to meet important visitors. Chief ministers have stopped calling on Union ministers, including the Prime Minister, because they don’t get any response. Even the meetings of the Committee of Secretaries that handles inter-ministerial disputes have been rare as nothing is brought for discussion. The agenda for the Cabinet is shrinking faster than the image of the UPA government.

Power & Politics / The Sunday Standard /September 25, 2011

Between the Lines Wicked Leaks Saga is Collective Irresponsibility

If one goes by the antics of our politicians during the past few months, it seems Indian politics will soon be made compulsory reading in social science studies in all universities. It is a fascinating study in the Art of Impossibilities. Those who wrote the Indian Constitution laid down the principle of collective responsibility for all members of the Union Cabinet, including the Prime Minister. But now what we are witnessing is a new democratic mantra of collective irresponsibility: no one is held accountable and punished. Not a day passes without a minister in the UPA government blaming another one for inane wrong doings or committing administrative improprieties. Some of them even accuse their colleagues of taking decisions which could lead to criminal culpability. The latest round of note-leaking involving Union Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee and Home Minister P Chidambaram on the highly sensitive 2G Scam reflects the growing pass-the-buck tendency among even those who are considered to be the UPA government’s most productive assets. Both had earlier been in the news for the wrong reasons. While Pranabda suspected that he and his trusted aides were under electronic surveillance, Chidambaram was hurt by unsubstantiated insinuations made against him. But there seems to be some method behind this so-called Cold War between the two giants who owe their political rise to two generations of Gandhis. Mukherjee was discovered and promoted by Indira Gandhi and he became the most powerful Minister of State for Finance ever, during the Emergency. Chidambaram, a wealthy and well-spoken Chettiar advocate from Tamil Nadu, was patronised by Rajiv Gandhi. Coincidentally, there is also a similarity between them. Both left the Congress party briefly to join or promote their own regional parties. But the reasons were different. Mukherjee left because Rajiv ignored him. Chidambaram joined the Tamil Manila Congress only after Prime Minister Narasimha Rao implicated him in a stock scam. While Mukherjee has always seen himself a strong contender for prime ministership, Chidambaram does not nurture such an ambition. In fact, there was strong speculation about Mukherjee making a strong pitch for the top job soon after Indira Gandhi’s tragic assassination, which was nipped in the bud by the then President Giani Zail Singh who swore in Rajiv without the formality of even a formal Congress Parliamentary party meeting.

Political observers are now trying to find the genesis of the undeclared war between the two leviathans, which has led to a dangerous erosion of the Government’s authority. What baffles the Congress party veterans is the finance minister’s use of petty and middle-level officials to fight his proxy war. Even in the chewing gum controversy, it was a coterie of junior finance ministry officials that implanted a fear psychosis in Pranabda’s mind. He first hired a private detective agency to investigate and later wrote to the Prime Minister, instead of taking his colleague Chidambaram into confidence. The Prime Minister worsened the situation by asking the Intelligence Bureau to give its report directly to the PMO, and not to the home minister. It was obvious that even the Chief Executive of the country wasn’t aware of the concept of collective responsibility. At that time, Pranabda described the entire bugging episode as a non-event and made fun of the media.

Things haven’t changed. A lowly factotum writes a verbose note on 2G policy, making indirect comments about former finance minister Chidambaram’s role in the scandal and sends it to Pranabda through proper channels, for his eyes only. It is then dispatched to another joint secretary in the PMO. Finally it finds its way to the media through an RTI activist. Never before in the history of Independent India have Union ministers sought a certificate of good conduct through widely leaked official correspondence on controversial issues. Earlier, it was work done that spoke about the performance of each. But now, written words against each other differentiate the bad from the worse. Pranabda and Chidambaram aren’t the only ones to be caught in the Leakstorm. Others like Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh, Environment Minister Jayanthi Natarajan, Minister of State for Industries Ashwani Kumar, Telecommunications and HRD Minister Kapil Sibal, Tourism Minister Subodh Kant Sahai, Corporate Affairs Minister Veerappa Moily as well as senior law officers of the Government have been in the headlines for writing or speaking against each other, or for making controversial statements. Unfortunately, the art of governance has taken such an ugly turn that it is the posture of denial than the grace of owning up a mistake that has become the parameter of permanent political success.

prabhuchawla@newindianexpress.com