Race Course Road/ The Sunday Standard/August 28, 2011

PM’s Crisis Managers Lack Political Skills

The success of a leader depends on the team he chooses. His effectiveness also lies in trusting some who may have been part of his predecessor’s kitchen cabinet. If Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is passing through an agonising phase, it’s because he ignored those who possess formidable skills in political manoeuvering and negotiation. Many senior Congress leaders feel that by drafting in his team only those who haven’t handled political crises in the past to deal with Crisis Anna, the Prime Minister walked into a trap laid by civil society leaders and the Opposition. Some feel that those who were once associated with Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi have been kept out. While they admire both the commitment and talents of the negotiators led by Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee, Congressmen also argue that involving experienced persons would have yielded better results. For the past few months, a high power group comprising Mukherjee, Home Minister P Chidambaram, Law Minister Salman Khurshid, Human Resources Minister Kapil Sibal and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pawan Bansal have been dealing with various political catastrophes, including the Anna Hazare and Baba Ramdev agitations. The team is adept at legalese and procedure, but none among them has the necessary experience to deal with complex, relentless social activism. For Team Pranab, excessive use of authority, instead of dialogue, or invoking statutes appears to be the best tool to defeat dissent. Even Manmohan has no experience in handling powerful social or political agitations. Congress insiders are wondering why ministers and leaders like Ghulam Nabi Azad, Kamal Nath, Anand Sharma, Veerappa Moily, Bhupinder Singh Hooda, Ambika Soni et al were kept out of the negotiating team. All of them are known as champions of political wrestling. They possess enough talent to tire their opponents out, and do whatever it takes to break the opposition. Both Indira and Rajiv used them to handle difficult political situations in various states as well as at the Centre. They may have got ministerial berths in Manmohan’s Cabinet, but the Prime Minister seems to be more comfortable with those who carry no past baggage.

Sonia’s Civil Society Allies Ignored

If the Government left out political leaders from the Indira-Rajiv era from the mainstream dialogue with Anna, even the few VIP civil society leaders associated with Congress President Sonia Gandhi have also become irrelevant. Some of them are members of the powerful National Advisory Council. They have always been part of the Government’s consultative process for formulating any new legislation. But when Sonia fell sick and left for a surgery abroad, the Government didn’t involve even highly vocal NAC members like Aruna Roy and Harsh Mander in the process of finalising the Lokpal Bill. Finally, Roy had to submit her version of the Bill to the Standing Committee for consideration, forcing the Prime Minister to include her speech in his proposal as well. In the absence of a direct invitation from the Prime Minister or the Government, Mander and Roy are actively participating in TV debates and pushing their own variants of the Lokpal Bill.

Manmohan’s Governor Surprise

Even as the entire nation was discussing the Lokpal Bill, the Government sprang a surprise by appointing 78-year-old K Rosaiah as the Tamil Nadu governor. The former Andhra Pradesh chief minisiter was charged by the state Anti-corruption Bureau in March for passing an order regularising occupation of prime land worth over Rs 200 crore. The Centre delayed his appointment till the court acquitted him. However, an appeal has been filed against the lower court’s order. Rosaiah is one of the four new governors appointed; two others were merely shifted from one state to another. Another surprising feature of these gubernatorial appointments is the preference given to antiquated politicians. Both Ram Naresh Yadav, a former Uttar Pradesh chief minister, and Vakkom Purushothaman, a former speaker of the Kerala Assembly, are in their mid-eighties. But the Prime Minister seems to have learned some lessons from the conduct of Hans Raj Bhardwaj, the governor of Karnataka. Manmohan has chosen as governors only those Congressmen who do not have a reputation for confrontationist posturing. Purushothaman, Yadav and Rosaiah are known for their objectivity and genteel behaviour. Even MOH Farook, the new Kerala governor, has always avoided confrontation with chief ministers. Rosaiah and Yadav have been sent to states ruled by non-Congress governments like Tamil Nadu and Madhya Pradesh. According to top government officials, the Prime Minister was under pressure to appoint aggressive Congress leaders in various Raj Bhavans, but he resisted. He, however, agreed to move Farook to Kerala, which is now ruled by the Congress. It’s obvious that these appointments didn’t reflect the hand of Congress President Sonia Gandhi.

Ministers Make Their Own Drafts

Anna Hazare has not only made duly elected representatives irrelevant, his movement has also made the steel frame of the Indian civil services dispensable. For the first time, the political class took over the function of formulating laws and legislation. Normally, the Cabinet Secretariat and its senior officials are involved in drafting legislation, along with the officers of the concerned ministry. But this time round, the ministers themselves decided to do the job. Various drafts were circulated, written by politicians; these reflected their politics, instead of being feasible or legally robust. The newly appointed Cabinet Secretary was, in fact, learning about the contents of the proposed laws from television debates. Ministers and interlocutors were so confident of their skills that they even kept the officials from the Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs and the Law Ministry at bay. Only the private secretaries of the concerned ministers were trusted. But civil servants are having the last laugh as none of the drafts have cut any ice till now.

Race Course Road/The Sunday Standard/May 15, 2011

Whose governors are they anyway?

Do governors report to the president or the prime minister? According to protocol, no governor can travel out of his state without the president’s prior approval. They also have to put down in writing the purpose for which they are leaving the state. If any governor makes frequent journeys to Delhi, the visits come under closer political scrutiny. When Karnataka Governor H R Bhardwaj landed in the capital on Saturday and drove straight to 7 Race Course Road, many eyebrows were raised. Many other governors such as M K Narayanan of West Bengal and E S L Narasimhan of Andhra Pradesh have also been visiting Delhi quite often for covert reasons. They hardly call on the president though they don’t miss an opportunity to visit 10 Janpath and 7 Race Course Road. Both Narayanan and Narasimhan have one thing in common—both are former intelligence czars and police officers who have worked closely with each other. As governors, both were dispatched to troubled states to monitor political developments and report to their political masters instead of their constitutional boss. What was intriguing about Bhardwaj’s arrival in the capital was that it was a few hours after a Supreme Court judgment which restored the House membership of 16 MLAs who were disqualified by the Speaker on the eve of last year’s trust vote. The BJP has charged the governor with destabilising a duly elected state government. Bhardwaj’s unplanned visit to the prime minister’s house has bolstered the BJP’s claim that governors are acting as Congress agents. The recently concluded conclave of BJP chief ministers in Delhi warned the Central government against misuse of the gubernatorial office to paralyse governance in Opposition-run states. The Congress is concerned about the growing erosion of its popular base in the southern states. It won Kerala by a whisker, its survival in Andhra Pradesh is threatened by the rise of Mother and Son power in the state versus Mother and Son power in Delhi, and it has been reduced to a non-entity in Tamil Nadu. Since it can’t do much in other states, the party expects to push the BJP on the backfoot in Karnataka with a governor who is a Gandhi family loyalist and a master of manoeuvres.

Manmohan’s southern discomfort

Though he hardly played any role in the Assembly elections, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has to deal with the results. Both Jayalalithaa and N Rangasamy—the chief ministers-in-waiting of Tamil Nadu and Puducherry—have made it clear that they wouldn’t like to work with the existing occupants of their respective Raj Bhawans. Tamil Nadu Governor Surjeet Singh Barnala has overstayed in Chennai, thanks to his proximity to both M Karunanidhi and the Prime Minister. Puducherry Lt Governor Iqbal Singh has been linked with Hasan Ali. In fact, Rangasamy had hinted that he would not take the oath if it is administered by Iqbal. Since appointing a governor involves consultations with the chief ministers, the prime minister is in dilemma. There have been many instances where chief ministers were informed about the appointment of new governors only after the deed was done. For Manmohan Singh, the problem is that in Tamil Nadu and Puducherry, the Congress would like to appoint governors who can open a dialogue with the new chief ministers. After all, with Andhra Pradesh expected to go out of Congress control, Tamil Nadu may be instrumental in formation of the next Union government in 2014. The search for yet another set of pliant governors has begun.

Antony’s talking heads

When it comes to Pakistan, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh believes in freedom of expression. That Union ministers such as Home Minister P Chidambaram, Defence Minister A K Antony or Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee speak in different voices is known. Now even secretary-level officers have started delivering sermons on Pakistan. Recently, V K Saraswat, scientific adviser to Antony, said India was capable of duplicating an Osama-type operation in Pakistan, but “our democratic system and policies do not allow us to go into another country and start killing people”. Was he speaking for Antony or is he simply a loquacious peacenik? Antony has many such talking heads in his ministry who he hasn’t been able to rein in.

Defence deals are the biggest pie

While the 2G scam and CWG contracts are under the glare of the Opposition parties and investigative agencies, a few highly motivated individuals are quietly working on the role of middlemen in various defence deals. So far, no credible evidence of direct corruption has surfaced in any of the deals, but the wealth and political power acquired by the usual defence dealmakers have attracted more than their fair share of attention. The government has signed defence deals worth over Rs 100 crore in the last four years. According to a rough estimate, India will be spending over Rs 450 lakh crore—almost 500 times the estimated scope of the 2G scam—during the next 10 years on defence purchases. Surprisingly, none of the big deals are being probed, though many indirect beneficiaries are under the scanner. Under the new guidelines, any foreign company that is awarded a defence deal has to plough back at least 50 per cent of the tender amount into Indian companies engaged in defence-related manufacturing. Investigators are now locating these firms and their owners to find whether any of them also represented defence suppliers directly or indirectly during the dealmaking. Most are situated either in Delhi or Mumbai.

Let’s elect our Guvs/Mail Today, July07,2008

We love to make tall claims about being the world’s largest democracy but when you look at those men and women who live in the Raj Bhavans around the country, we realise how far we are from being areal democracy. The unelected office of Governor is the most misused and abused one in the country. There have been governors who have brought infamy to their offices. Last week, one more joined that disgraceful list. NN Vohra was in office for less than a week when, in an attempt to bail out the Ghulam Nabi Azad Government which had been reduced to a minority after the withdrawal of coalition partner PDP, he revoked the decision of his immediate predecessor, Lt Gen SK Sinha to allot land to the Amarnath Shrine Board. AGovernor is bound by the advice of his council of ministers and Sinha's decision had been cleared by the Cabinet. No such constitutional niceties for Vohra. He was faced with adouble whammy: The militants were making the predictable noises and aCongressled government in peril. So, he unilaterally decided to withdraw the offer his predecessor made. You wouldn’t expect aseasoned bureaucrat, who has been Union Home and Defence Secretary to be so shortsighted. But he was and missed his target by miles. He wanted to douse Muslim anger but has ended up pitting community against community. This is the kind of response one expected from boorish governors like Buta Singh. Vohra was thought to be cut in the mould of governors like SK Singh, SS Sidhu, and TV Rajeshwar or ND Tewari, RL Bhatia or SS Barnala. The first three, like him, are retired civil servants while the rest are experienced politicians. Not the kind that acts first and thinks later. In fact, as abureaucrat, Vohra was known to think so much that he often forgot to act. An exemplar of such dithering is the Vohra Committee Report that looked into the alleged nexus between criminals and politicians and found nothing more substantive than the fact that there was a nexus. As if that was astate secret. No wonder the report was not fit to be made public. This is not to suggest that Lt Gen Sinha was the epitome of gubernatorial propriety. His political leanings were no secret, dictated in part perhaps by his supercession for Army Chief by the Indira Gandhi government in 1983. But as governor, he must have been doing something right. What else explains the fact that though he was posted in Srinagar in 2003, by the then NDA government, the UPA continued with him till the end of his tenure afortnight ago. In this instance, he did what is expected of any good administrator: To give better sanita- tion facilities to the lakhs of pilgrims. So he got the land transferred. Then followed ugly scenes of PDP leader Mehbooba Mufti holding Sinha responsible for the riots and the latter responding by calling her party anti- national, not to forget that Yasin Malik got yet another chance to fast unto death. Enter Vohra. Government saved, but the two communities are divided like never before. Ideally, governors have no place in aset- up like ours. If they are amust, let them get elected.