Power & Politics/ Mail Today, November 23, 2009

IN the increasingly fragmented polity, the narrow line that divides the treasury and the opposition gets thinner by the day. As Congress leaders continue to strut around with an air of arrogance that is a perversion of their real strength — the party has after all 207 of the 542 Lok Sabha MPs — there is a real chance of the line disappearing altogether. Back to back victories in by- elections and the retention of crucial states like Maharashtra and Haryana have made Congressmen believe in their own invincibility.

The haughtiness of the Congress is forcing the disparate opposition and even some alliance partners to find common ground, as was witnessed when the winter session of Parliament opened last Thursday. UPA allies like the DMK joined the Left, BJP, RJD, TDP and Samajwadi Party in the massive farmers rally organised by Ajit Singh’s Rashtriya Lok Dal that disrupted life in the capital and brought Parliament to a standstill. It is an important moment.

Not since 1989 have parties across the political spectrum joined hands on a common anti- Congress platform. The issue being remunerative prices for farmers, it was perhaps foretold that the Congress led government would capitulate and revoke the ordinance on sugarcane pricing.

But that’s beside the point. My hunch is that the assorted non- Congress parties, whether allies or opposition, think the Congress has an attitude problem. A veteran opposition leader recently told me that he had not seen such arrogance even during the eighth Lok Sabha when Rajiv Gandhi’s Congress had occupied nearly four- fifth of the seats in the lower house. The arrogance is harder to digest because without the support from outside of parties like the SP and the BSP, the government is technically still in a minority.

Under sustained pressure from the opposition, the government backed down on the sugarcane issue. I suspect this is just the beginning and we will in the near future have plenty of opportunities to find the government with its back to the wall. This week, the prime minister is off to Washington. The Left parties, which opposed the Indo- US nuclear deal last year and the SP whose support bailed out the government in the confidence motion last year, will be keeping a close watch. Much hype was built around the visit which is the first state visit of the Obama administration. A lot of the hype was punctured last week during the course of Obama’s tour of China, Japan and South Korea; India wasn’t even a blip on President Obama’s radar. Worse, by asking his Chinese hosts to act as a middleman on Indo- Pak matters, Obama showed his priorities.

This has flummoxed even pro- US elements in the establishment. As Manmohan packs his Manmohan bags for the long journey, the news out of Washington is not encouraging either. PTI reports that the Obama administration has sought yet another “ assurance” from India on nuclear non- proliferation, in the absence of which, the US will not issue licences to US companies to enter into civilian nuclear trade with India. Though couched in diplomatese, in an interview with India Today magazine last week, the US Ambassador in Delhi, Timothy Roemer also made it clear that “ the Indian government has all along known about… our licensing procedures. These are not new demands”. The ambassador also spoke about the liability legislation that the US is pressing for, which, in the event of things going wrong due to faulty design or technology, would absolve American suppliers of all liability and put the onus of paying compensation on the Indian government.

Among the more than 80 bills that are to come up before Parliament during the ongoing winter session is the Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Bill 2009.
The government will be very eager to push it through but the opposition parties, having tasted blood once, will not let the government have it easy.

The Manmohan visit was finalised months ago, but as it nears, it appears to be a case of bad timing. The warmth of the reception he is expected to get and the elaborate fare at the banquet inside heated tents on the White House lawns notwithstanding, it appears that Obama will have far more on his mind when Manmohan is around. The last time he went to the White House, George Bush was in office and Manmohan gushed “ MR President, Indians love you”. He won’t be saying that this time.

Seedhi Baat / Aajtak, November 22, 2009

'I'm not a weak

Home Minister'

Maharashtra Home Minister R.R. Patil on the show Seedhi Baat says that he will take every step possible for the safety of the people of his state.
Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5

Seedhi Baat / Aajtak, November 15, 2009

Watch Bollywood actress Kareena Kapoor, as she talks on Seedhi Baat about her filmi journey and the forthcoming movie Kurbaan , relationship with boyfriend Saif Ali Khan, experiences of working with different actors and the kind of roles she would love to portray in her future projects.

'किसी चीज की प्‍लानिंग नहीं करती'

अभिनेत्री करीना कपूर का कहना है कि वो किसी चीज के लिए प्‍लानिंग नहीं करतीं बल्कि उन्‍होंने जो सोचा वही हुआ. करीना का कहना है कि फिल्‍म इंडस्‍ट्री में सफलता मिलने से कहीं ज्‍यादा महत्‍व अभिनय का है. करीना का यह भी मानना है कि बोल्‍ड रोल कुछ नहीं होता.
Part 2 Part 3 Part 4

Power & Politics/Mail Today, November 16,2009

WINTER is almost here and in normal times, the woollens should be out. But wait. There is enough heat being generated in Delhi’s environmental circles to keep us warm at least until next month’s meeting on Climate Change in Copenhagen. While Manmohan Singh’s aides finalise India’s agenda for the summit, his environment minister is locked in a very public spat with the doyen among Indian environmentalists. As anyone who has watched him will now, when Jairam Ramesh speaks, he creates a flutter.

Quite recently, at a news conference on environmental issues that he jointly addressed with Hillary Clinton in New Delhi, he made no effort to hide his anger when he thought the US Secretary of State was trying to lecture India on cutting down emission levels. Now, just three weeks ahead of the climate change summit, Jairam has locked horns with R. K. Pachauri, the chairman of the UN sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change( IPCC), the organisation which shared the 2007 Nobel Peace prize with former US Vice President Al Gore. The sparring began after Jairam released a government report that questioned the IPCC’s findings of abnormal shrinking of the Himalayan glaciers. The IPCC warned that at the current rate of shrinkage, the glaciers could disappear altogether by 2035 if not earlier. Jairam rubbished the IPCC’s findings while releasing the government report prepared by a group of Indian geologists. He said there was no conclusive evidence to link global warming with receding of the Himalayan glaciers and said he was “ ready to take on the doomsday scenarios of the Nobel Prize winners”. The controversy has sparked off a war of words between the ministry and environmentalists.

Stung by the Jairam offensive, Pachauri accused the environment ministry of “ arrogance” while the credible Science magazine in its latest issue quotes a senior Fellow at The Energy and Resources Institute, New Delhi saying that the “ Indian government has an ostrich like attitude in the face of impending apocalypse”. To that, the minister’s retort was “ we don’t need to write the epitaph for the glaciers”. Alarmists at home and abroad have warned that the Gangetic river belts which feed much of North India could dry up if the glaciers disappear. But Jairam’s ministry scoffs at such predictions. The truth as usual lies somewhere in between and what you are likely to believe depends on whom you spoke to last. Jairam quotes various R. K. Pachauri studies to say that the rate at which the glaciers have been retreating during the last 30 years is much less than the previous 60 years. On the other hand, Pachauri says Indian findings have not been “ reviewed by peers” and accuses the ministry of practising “ schoolboy science”. Ordinary Indians will find it difficult to understand what the big fuss is all about since it has nothing to with their everyday lives that revolve around rising prices, safety and security, education, medical care etc. My instincts tell me that it is basically a battle between NGOs. Pachauri’s wields enormous clout and has impeccable credibility but Indian officialdom sees him as an internationalist who takes a global view. The IIT- Harvard educated Jairam sees most NGOs as gravy train riders and is determined to show them their place. Jairam is particularly miffed that the IIPC has given short shrift to genuine Indian scientists and wants India — and China with which we entered into an agreement last month on cooperation in the run up to the Copenhagen summit — to make concessions that the West wants.

Jairam wonders why the domestic and international NGOs are mounting collective pressure to enforce emission cuts when the real threat is from the West. Even the US Congress is yet to approve the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009. US Secretary of Energy Steven Hun said in Delhi on Friday that “ the US government would have to go through the political process before committing itself to emission cuts”. It’s obvious that the US team will land in Copenhagen without any mandate while Jairam is being forced by powerful non- state and apolitical sections to toe the western line. As Jairam and Pachauri slug it out, it remains to be seen who gets the prime minister’s backing — the outspoken minister or the iconic environmentalist.

Power & Politics/ Mail Today, November 09, 2009

APART from the fact that both are governors, there is little that S.C. Jamir and H.R. Bhardwaj share in common. The former, despite being a popular leader of Nagaland, a four-time chief minister of the state and previously governor of Goa, has always remained on the periphery of Congress politics. Bhardwaj, on the other hand, has no mass base, has always opted for the safer route to Parliament through the Rajya Sabha, has been a minister at the Centre for nearly 15 years and is blessed with a sharp legal brain which has made him indispensable to the ruling establishment and particularly 10 Janpath.

Jamir presides over a state where a government took almost two weeks to take oath after the results gave the Congress-NCP coalition a simple majority; the other is in charge in Bangalore where inner party turmoil has brought the ruling BJP to the brink. This being the scenario, you would expect the 79-year old Jamir whom Jawaharlal Nehru had handpicked as his Parliamentary secretary in 1961, to play by the rules.
And we wouldn’t have batted an eyelid if Bhardwaj had lived up to his reputation and started fishing in Bangalore’s troubled waters on behalf of his benefactors in Delhi.

Quite the contrary is happening. Last week Jamir met the caretaker chief minister Ashok Chavan and the NCP’s Chagan Bhujbal and later in an unprecedented act of constitutional impropriety issued an appeal “to both the NCP and the Congress to respect the opinion of the people and form a government as soon as possible”. The statement came after it became clear that despite two weeks of haggling over portfolios, the leaders of the two parties were nowhere nearer to reaching an agreement on ministry allocations. Curiously, neither the Congress nor any of the opposition parties had staked claim for government formation. Also interesting is the fact that both Sonia Gandhi and Sharad Pawar who were expected to step in to resolve the crisis did not intervene at all and instead left it to the old fire fighter A. K. Antony to resolve the issue. Jamir’s conduct continues to raise eyebrows. Normally, a newly elected assembly is constituted before the expiry of the previous House, but Jamir allowed the crisis to persist to the point when the life of the last assembly ended before the newly elected one could be constituted. Technically, this means that the government cannot continue and Chavan should have stepped down, but since the Congress leadership had full faith in Jamir, it chose to remain silent on the many allegations of impropriety that the opposition parties continued to make even as the Congress struggled for an early resolution of the niggling differences between the coalition partners.

In giving the sparring partners a space that has clearly breached convention, Jamir has clearly gone far beyond his call of duty. His defence was that an incumbent chief minister could continue if the time lapsed between the last date of meeting of the previous assembly and the first meeting of the next assembly was less than six months.

Cut to Bangalore where the BJP government of B. S. Yedyurappa has been in crisis for nearly a week now. The party leadership in Delhi has always viewed Bhardwaj with more than a tinge of suspicion which isn’t surprising considering his proximity to the Congress establishment. In Bhardwaj, the BJP sees a throwback to the bad old days when every occupant of every Raj Bhavan was seen as a hatchet man of the party in power at the Centre, whose brief is to destabilise and dethrone nonfriendly governments.

When the crisis in Bangalore showed no signs of resolution, the BJP appeared resigned to the ace backroom operator getting down to his tricks to bring down the Yeddyurappa government and install an alternate “ secular” government.
Strangely this hasn’t happened so far, and last Friday, when journalists in Bangalore asked the governor about the impasse, his response, uncharacteristically low key, was :” I am merely watching the developments.
It is for the MLAs to sort out the problem that they themselves have created”. Is it a sign of a new, less aggressive Bhardwaj or of a new strategy the Congress is slowly adopting? My hunch is it is the latter.

There was a time when at the mere hint of differences within a non- Congress government, Akbar Road would dispatch cloak and dagger specialists to cajole and threaten non- Congress MLAs into supporting an alternate Congress government. Indira Gandhi pursued with this tactic till her very end and so did Rajiv. Sonia seems to be following a different path from her husband and mother- in- law.

After engineering two back- toback victories at the Centre, she clearly believes it’s the people who put you in power, not those who sit in Raj Bhavans. All credit to her.

Snippets/ Mail Today, November 09, 2009

Politics and cricket canserve up a spicy dish

TO SAY don’t mix sports with politics is like asking the waiter to keep the masala out of the tikka . Last week, three cabinet ministers feuded over whether the two should mix or not. When Farooq Abdullah proposed, Sharad Pawar just disposed by allowing the BCCI to disqualify the Services cricket team from this year’s Ranji trophy championships for refusing to play its scheduled match against Jammu & Kashmir in Srinagar. Defence minister A. K. Antony could do nothing but sit back and suffer the ignominy of his men in uniform being humiliated and derided as weak. The damage caused to the reputation of our forces is immeasurable and could have been avoided.

Farooq, we all know is a leader of impeccable patriotic credentials, but in this instance he chose to play politics. The fault lies squarely with the BCCI. An office bearer tells me that the Services team did write to the secretary, BCCI about its inability to play in Srinagar citing security reasons and asked for alternative dates and a change of venue.

When the BCCI sat over it, the Services took it as approval. The Services Sports Control Board ( SSCB) could not have taken the decision to seek alternate venue without the concurrence of the ministry and I understand that inputs from various agencies including military intelligence had advised that the team not play in Srinagar. Pawar being a former defence minister should have known that the forces have their own reasons.

But instead of taking action against erring officials, the BCCI punished the team. Now questions are being raised about the failure of the J& K Cricket Association to construct a modern stadium with proper crowd control and security systems during the last decade. The JKCA has already received over Rs 25 crore from the BCCI and IPL as its share from TV rights. But nobody has a clue where the money has gone. If proper facilities were available at Srinagar or Jammu, this embarrassment could have been avoided. But in the BCCI, it is the vote of each state association that is precious. Security be damned.

MOST of us thought until now that caste labels are important only in politics. It now appears that it is equally important in government, particularly in post retirement sinecures for babus. There is much titter and some heartburn after some recent appointments saw retired babus belonging to the same caste monopolising the membership of a Central commission.

Last week’s appointment of M. L. Tayal, the former principal secretary to Haryana chief minister B. S. Hooda as a member of the Competition Commission ( the successor to the MRTPC) makes the panel virtually the exclusive preserve of the one caste( Vaishya). Most of its current members were chosen when Prem Chand Gupta, another caste mate, was minister for corporate affairs.

The commission is headed by Dhanendra Kumar,( again a Vaishya) who was earlier India’s executive director at the World Bank and has as members H. C. Gupta, former coal secretary and Ratneshwar Prasad, ex- chairman of CBDT and Anurag Goel, former secretary ministry of corporate affairs. All of them are from the same caste and belong to the Haryana or Uttar Pradesh cadres and take up five of the seven seats on the board, the odd ones out being Geeta Gauri and Prem Narayan Parashar.

Strange it is that even civil servants are raising questions on the selection of their colleagues even if they have been chosen by a powerful selection panel headed by a sitting judge of the Supreme Court.

Rosaiah has a game plan for Jagan

K. ROSAIAH is a soft spoken mild mannered man who swallowed much humiliation at the hands of supporters of the highly ambitious Y. S. Jaganmohan Reddy. Not in the last 50 years has a regional leader held the Congress high command to ransom as Jagan did in the days following YSR’s death, openly defying New Delhi’s diktat and blatantly asking his supporter ministers to keep away from cabinet meetings. But as they say, even a worm will turn, and it appears that the 70- year- old has suddenly seized the initiative away from the young Reddy. With the mass hysteria that followed YSR’s death now ebbing, there are signs that Jagan may not be unassailable after all.

Last weekend, Rosaiah arrived in the Capital with half his cabinet in tow. The visit was ostensibly official, but that he chose to come on a weekend when government was on holiday was proof that everything about it had to do with intra- party politics.

Among those he called on were Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Sonia Gandhi, Pranab Mukherjee and P. Chidambaram. To each of them, he conveyed the same message: that he had sewed up an arrangement with filmstar Chiranjeevi’s Prajarajyam Party. With 151 of the 294 seats in the assembly, the Congress is just past the half way mark in the house, and though Jagan continues to claim that a majority of the MLAs are with him, it now appears that his numbers are vastly exaggerated. The fact that more half the cabinet accompanied him to New Delhi — many of them had earlier refused to attend cabinet meetings chaired by Rosaiah — is an indication that the ground is slipping from under Jagan’s feet. Congress circles reckon now that Jagan’s support among YSR’s hardcore followers is not expected to get into double digits which can easily be offset with the support of the 18 MLA’s of the Prajarajyam Party.
Sonset in the South?