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.

Power & Politics / Mail Today, August 16, 2010

THERE is only one thing worse than being remembered and that is not being remembered at all. This is a dilemma that President Pratibha Patil faces as she enters her fourth year in office. The record books will, of course, show she is the first woman president of the republic, though hers has been a rather unremarkable stint till now.

But it would appear from some of her recent engagements that she is keen to make a mark and is busy making up for lost time. According to a senior bureaucrat, far from being a rubber stamp, Patil is on her way to becoming an “ activist president”. And coming as she does from an agricultural background, it was just as well that she chose the subject of farming for a recent extensive brainstorming session with experts.

Last week, she summoned Union agriculture minister Sharad Pawar, Union food processing minister Subodh Kant Sahay, the agriculture ministers from Punjab, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar and Haryana, the last represented by chief minister Bhupinder Hooda who holds the portfolio, besides 50- odd experts, a few dozen bureaucrats from the agriculture ministry and vice- chancellors of about 20 agriculture universities around the country, along with Dr M. S. Swaminathan, to Rashtrapati Bhavan for a “ colloquium on approach to sustainable farming in rain- fed areas”.

I know that is a mouthful, which many ministers from the states had difficulty comprehending. But the fact that the president frequently departed from her prepared text and made extempore remarks meant she knew what she was talking about. The brainstorming session that started around 5 pm went on till about 10 at night and at the dinner that followed, the president mingled with her guests where she is said to have touched on a whole range of subjects.

What makes Patil different from her predecessors is that despite spending a lifetime in politics, she lived in relative political obscurity until her election in 2007. She was a minister in the Maharashtra government but the media began to notice her only when some of her relatives began to indulge in activities that fall under the purview of the Prevention of Corruption Act.

Sonia Gandhi is said to have zeroed in on her only after coalition partners of UPA- I failed to reach a consensus on anyone else. As such, she was neither expected to scale the heights nor plumb the depths that some of her predecessors had in the past 60 years.

There was the humble Rajendra Prasad, the first president. He was followed by Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, scholar, philosopher and teacher. Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed is best remembered for signing the Emergency proclamation, allegedly without bothering to even glance through the document, though ironically he was a lawyer by profession.

There was Neelam Sanjiva Reddy, who lost to V. V. Giri in 1969 and came back eight years later to occupy the high office. There was also Giani Zail Singh who opened up the palace on Raisina Hill to the aam aadmi and whose backslapping ways with even visiting heads of state left mandarins in the foreign office red faced.

In between and since, there have been men of eminence who occupied the office and some who, amid all the pomp and ceremony, forgot the presidential script.

In more recent times, it was our good fortune to have APJ Abdul Kalam whose unconventional style led to him being dubbed the “ People’s President”. My most abiding memory of Kalam saab was when he arrived to address a conference organised by India Today magazine in 2004.

He came with a power point presentation, but somewhere along the way, crossed cables or whatever, the system malfunctioned. Before his ADC or the retinue from Rashtrapati Bhavan could react, Kalam saab was already on the podium floor, fixing the cables and I still remember the deafening applause from the vast gathering that greeted the president when the screen came alive.
President Patil is not as tech savvy as Kalam. But of late, in between hosting visiting presidents and releasing the occasional postage stamp, she has been taking serious interest in subjects ranging from judicial reforms to development of the north- eastern states.

Her sudden interest in all things has set tongues wagging and her adversaries are spreading word that she is aiming for another term.

If that happens, she won’t be just India’s first woman president but also first since Rajendra Prasad in 1950 to serve a second consecutive term.

Wait two years to know.

Power & Politics/ Mail Today, May 11, 2009

PRESIDENT Pratibha Patil came to office as India’s first woman Head of State two years ago amidst a blaze of controversy but apart from fulfilling constitutional duties and protocol requirements, she has mostly stayed away from the limelight. Not for long though. This Saturday, the election results will be out and assuming the elections throw up a hung and terribly divided house, who gets to govern will depend to a large measure on whom the president invites to form the next government.

In similar elections in the past where no single party won a majority, vastly different precedents have been set. In 1996, President Shankar Dayal Sharma went strictly by the book and invited Atal Bihari Vajpayee after the BJP emerged the single largest party winning 161 seats against 140 won by the Congress.

It’s a different matter that Vajpayee quit after only 13 days in office acknowledging his government’s inability to reach the magic halfway mark in parliament. Two years later, KR Narayanan authored what is now known as the Narayanan Formula. Though the BJP had won 182 seats against the Congress’s 141 and Vajpayee staked his claim for prime ministership, he tread a new path and gave both parties enough time to win over enough allies, insisting on written letters of support.

It wasn’t until Jayalalithaa faxed a message to Rashtrapati Bhavan that Vajpayee was finally invited to form the government and the NDA was born. In 2004 after the voters gave a stinging rebuke to the NDA, the Congress staked claim and hastily put together the UPA. Suprisingly, it lasted five years but now it is clearly coming apart.

It is in this context that various statements by Congress leaders in recent times have to be seen. Party leaders now flit from one TV studio to another essentially to reiterate the same point: that the president must invite the leader of the single largest party, which they believe the Congress will be. Just a little over a month ago, when the UPA seemed one big happy family, the emphasis was on alliances and not the single largest party.

Much has changed since then and the Congress is now the nominal head of an alliance that exists on paper. Lalu, Mulayam and Paswan are gone; fears of a Jayalalithaa revival have sent Karunanidhi to hospital; Sharad Pawar is so tense about the NCP’s fortunes he finds the IPL matches less nailbiting; record voting in West Bengal indicate the Congress- Trinamool Mahajyot will fall victim to the CPI(M)’s scientific rigging. On the other side, the BJP’s NDA allies, if reports from the states are to be believed, are all expected to fare better than last time. Barring perhaps the Akali Dal which may surrender a few seats, the JD(U) in Bihar, Chautala’s INLD, Ajit Singh’s RLD, the AGP in Assam and the Shiv Sena are all expected to better their last results.

Results out, there will be much scrambling for allies and President Patil will have to choose between the NDA’s arranged marriage which was fixed pre-poll and the many post poll shotgun weddings that the UPA has plans for. I am told she takes daily briefings from a panel of legal experts who are poring over presidential notes from 1989 when India’s first minority government headed by VP Singh was sworn in. It’s a tough task. But she has the chance to wipe her hands clean off the controversies that surrounded her arrival in office.

Snippets / Mail Today, February 16, 2009

ON VALENTINE’S DAY, a spate of newspaper advertisements announced Sonia Gandhi’s simultaneous presence at four different inaugurations: the new Srinagar international airport terminal, the direct flight from Srinagar to Dubai, the new rail line connecting Baramullah and Mazhom, and the flaggingoff of the first train between the two stations. You have to have super human qualities to pack all this into a few brief minutes. The mystery of the eventpacked afternoon later unravelled. The small print in the ad said the railway inauguration would be done “ through remote”. What it obviously meant was via video conferencing. The ad designer was either mischievous or a fool not to realise the import of the word in the current establishment. With Parliament in session, the joke doing the central hall was: how apt that a government which is remote controlled should inaugurate railway lines through remote.

A deluge of words as sedative

SPEECHES, even the most inspiring ones, can turn boring beyond a point. I am sure I am not the only one who felt sympathy for President Pratibha Patil when Parliament’s budget session commenced last week. She was merely following the tradition of our presidents who provide no inputs for the speeches, written by some babu sitting at Raisina Hill, which they have no option but to deliver. But at 9,000 words and nearly 80 minutes, it was among the most tedious speeches the Central Hall has ever heard. If cameras were allowed into Parliament, we would have all by now seen scores of MPs catching 4,000 winks — while the Head of State reeled out stats to tell us what a great job the government was doing.

But that’s not the point here. Inside and outside support put together, the ruling alliance has about 20 partners and if you take into account the disgruntled Congressmen with damage potential, there were too many people to be taken care of. So the president was forced to talk about the pride inspiring feat of Chandrayan in the same breath as the allocation of 158 new mining blocks to public and private sector players. For nearly two years, they didn’t even allot an office to the minority affairs minister A. R. Antulay, but post 26/ 11, Antulay was turning out to be an embarrassing nuisance and so his ministry got a pat on the back from the President. If Patil ever pens down her memoirs, she should call it, A Presidential Survivor’s Guide To Coalition Politics.

TO SAY that politics is business is to state the obvious. What is less known is that there is a huge business spin- off from politics, particularly in this election year. There was a time when inputs for poll campaigns, including coining of slogans, came from party functionaries and grassroots workers, but that era seems to be behind us now. Today, the job belongs to advertising agencies and professional spin masters. It was Rajiv Gandhi who started the trend in 1984 by hiring a private ad agency to market the Congress. The sales pitch had nothing to do with the 4/ 5th majority the Congress got then. Remember Indira had just been assassinated and the Congress was the beneficiary of a sympathy wave. But the ad agencies were there to stay. Now even regional parties like the RJD, NCP, BSP et al are taking the same route and an informed friend tells me that the pickings for the ad fraternity from the impending election campaign could be in the range of Rs 200 to 300 crore.

In recent days, the country’s top ad agencies have made presentations before the top brass of the Congress and the BJP. They include Grey Worldwide, McCann, BrandCurry, Euro RSG, and Percept. The BJP team that viewed the presentations consisted of L. K. Advani, Rajnath Singh, Sushma Swaraj, Arun Jaitley, Venkiah Naidu and Ananth Kumar. As for the Congress, Yuvraj Rahul was assisted by Pranab da , Ahmed Patel, Kapil Sibal, Janardan Dwivedi, Anand Sharma, Vishwajit Singh and Jairam Ramesh.

Final contracts are yet to be awarded, but the Congress has already stolen a march over the BJP. Posters and hoardings of the troika — Manmohan Singh, Sonia and Rahul — already stare down at us on the city’s roads. In the BJP, haggling goes on in the light of the recent disastrous campaigns in Delhi and Rajasthan which saw the party snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Hopefully they will sort out these problems before it gets too late. But the old- style campaigns that once drew us out of our homes and offices are now gone forever.

Transparency the best asset

H. D. DEVE GOWDA has enjoyed fortune’s favours more than any other politician in India. I thought the one- year stint as prime minister — a job he neither deserved nor was qualified for — would have familiarised him with some constitutional niceties. I was wrong. Gowda has been fighting a losing battle in his home state on the Bangalore- Mysore expressway project.

Recently, it was clear his cup of frustration had boiled over when he sent letters to judges of the Karnataka High Court and a Supreme Court judge wherein he is said to have made very uncharitable remarks about some of the judges and advocates involved in the expressway case. It’s unbecoming of an ex- PM to indulge in such base tactics, but the worrying fact is: instances of such pressure tactics are on the increase and in the last six months, almost a dozen judges have asked to be recused from hearing cases listed on their benches after aggressive advocates representing petitioners or respondents made insinuations of bias against them.

This is an ominous trend that could damage the country’s judicial system, which, despite its imperfections, has served us well. In a society where the political- corporate- criminal nexus is becoming tighter by the day, the judiciary remains one institution that is largely credited with the right instincts. This is not to deny that the legal system can do with a bit more transparency.
Back in 1997, the judges conference itself had passed a resolution calling on all judges to declare their assets before the chief justice every year. Far from heeding their own advice, the Delhi High Court is now faced with a piquant case filed by the Supreme Court seeking quashing of a Central Information Commission order that sought to know if all judges had declared their assets. It is the court’s stand that the 1997 resolution was just that — a resolution, and not a law that had to be complied with. I think like charity, the healing process should also begin at home.