Snippets/ Mail Today, March 29, 2010

Crackdown on brokers

IT IS nearly a quarter century since Rajiv Gandhi delivered his inspirational speech to “ rid the country of middlemen and powerbrokers” at the Congress Centenary celebrations in Mumbai. But they continue to thrive. Visit any of the bhavans in Lutyen's Delhi that house key ministries and their presence is overwhelming.

This despite the Prime Minister's Office and the cabinet secretariat regularly issuing circulars to all ministers and senior bureaucrats to stay away from these parasites and every now and then, the CBI compiling and circulating a list of “ Undesirable Elements” — people who are persona non grata.

But circulars alone cannot keep them away. Things have got so bad that a handful of ministers handling key infrastructure ministries have decided to crack down. Shipping Minister GK Vasan has told officers of his ministry that any official found liaising with such people would be immediately suspended.

As Health Minister, Gulam Nabi Azad has to deal with hundreds of private medical colleges that are mushrooming across the country. Promoters of many of them are hard- boiled businessmen who are in it for the money and wouldn’t bat an eyelid before cutting corners. Azad recently sent letters to Vice Chancellors and Deans of medical colleges warning them to keep away from people making promises “ of getting things done by proclaiming themselves to be close to me". Azad's letter is as tough a warning as can be. While reiterating his intention to maintain absolute transparency in the functioning of his ministry, he has threatened colleges that engage middlemen with stringent action including withdrawal of recognition and even banning new admissions for a year or two.

Considering that some colleges charge up to Rs one crore for a seat, it is hoped that the promoters of these institutes will think a dozen times before letting the parasites loose in the corridors of power.

Cong & DMK take to stamp diplomacy to boost ties

HERE'S something to scotch unending speculation that the Congress and the DMK, allies both at the Centre and in Chennai, are drifting apart and will go their separate ways before next year's assembly elections in Tamil Nadu.

The alliance has always been an uneasy one and in the last thirty years, both parties have swapped partners. The Congress has been in alliance with Jayalalithaa's AIADMK while the DMK had embraced the NDA during the Vajpayee regime.

Right now, the alliance looks strong but there is a feeling it will remain so only as long as M Karunanidhi is in the driver's seat. There are apprehensions that once he hands over the baton to one of his sons, the alliance will come unstuck.

Such speculation gained weight after Rahul Gandhi went on an overdrive to revive the Grand Old Party in the state where it has not tasted power for 33 years now. His Youth Congress enrolment drives have met with spectacular success with over two lakh youngsters joining the party on one day in big cities like Chennai and Madurai. Rahul's initiatives are his own and alarmed seniors in both parties who feel his revival offensive will harm relations between the two parties. So how do you mend the rift? A bit of stamp diplomacy would do, feels the DMK's Union Communications Minister A Raja. He has decided to issue a stamp in honour of C Subramanian, former AICC chief who was also the Union industry and finance minister. The proposal came from Home Minister P Chidambaram and Raja promptly gave his stamp of approval. It's only fitting that the Department of Posts will issue the stamp this year which is Subramanian’s centenary year. But in honouring the man who is widely credited as the architect of the Green Revolution and was responsible for Tamil Nadu’s rapid industrialisation in the 1960s, the DMK may just manage to wean away some Congress votes.

YOU would be mistaken if you think Rahul Gandhi spends much of his time scouring for Dalit hamlets to sleep in or trying to revive the Youth Congress in states where the party’s fortunes are at an all time low. The young man’s interests are varied and there is nothing that doesn’t arouse his curiosity. Two weeks back, without any of the fanfare that accompanies VVIP arrivals, the young man quietly walked into the India Today Conclave at the Taj Palace Hotel to listen to Professor David Bloom of Harvard University talk about the impact of population on economic growth.

He then stayed on to hear Alan Mullaly, CEO of Ford Motor Corporation of the USA tell the audience about how his company beat the economic downturn and thrived.

The grapevine has it that apart from meeting political scientists and thinkers, Rahul has also been meeting up with some renowned religious scholars of all faiths, including Hindu, Muslim and Sikh. One of them is Dr Karan Singh, whose interests range from art and culture to music and literature and who has authored several books on Hinduism. I understand that Rahul frequently drops by at Singh’s place. He merely sits back and is all ears as Singh extols the teachings of the Vedanta and the Upanishads . Hindutvites, please note. You may be in for some serious debate.

Power & Politics/ Mail Today, March 29, 2010

WHO GOES there? Friend or foe? Indo-US relations have been on the up and up ever since Atal Bihari Vajpayee went on an official visit to Washington in September 2000. Just a few months back, the world’s two largest democracies celebrated the special friendship as President Barack Obama hosted the first state dinner of his administration at the White House for Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his wife Gursharan Kaur. But now there are signs of the relationship turning sour. The UPA government and the Congress party are now deeply divided on the issue of dealing with the United States vis a vis Pakistan.

As a cynic observed, the Obama administration’s mantra seems to be: words of wisdom for India and weapons for Pakistan; treat India as a market to be conquered and Pakistan as a mission to be accomplished. There are red faces in South Block over the red carpet reception given to Pakistan Foreign Minister Makhdoom Shah Mehmood Qureshi and his delegation.

There’s much hangwringing over Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s statement that Washington had opened up a “strategic alliance” with Islamabad and her remark that “Pakistan’s struggles are our struggles”. It has upset even those in the UPA who have traditionally been in favour of strengthening Indo-US ties, whatever the political cost involved.

The prime minister and most of his senior cabinet colleagues like Pranab Mukherjee, Sharad Pawar, P Chidambaram, Kapil Sibal, Kamal Nath and Anand Sharma have been advocates of stronger strategic and economic ties with the US which they think is India's best long term ally.

Under US prodding, the UPA government tried to push through the Nuclear Liability Bill which later had to be abandoned following stiff resistance from the opposition benches. With the US now bending over backwards to accommodate Islamabad’s demands for more financial and military goodies, even the pro-US lobby in the government is beginning to have a rethink. Despite its public censures of Pakistan for holding terrorist training camps within its territory, the Obama administration seems to be following Richard Nixon’s path: Pakistan is in the wrong, but they are our friends.

Our ministers are not in the habit of indulging in plain-speak on matters relating to ties with friendly countries, but trust Chidambaram to call a spade a bloody shovel. On an official visit to London last week, the home minister minced no words when he squarely put the onus of taming Pakistan on the US and Britain. In an interview to the BBC, he virtually accused Washington and London of doing nothing to force Pakistan to close the terror camps operating in the country. “ Certainly we ( in India) have not been able to persuade Pakistan. It’s Pakistan’s friends, mutual friends who have to put the pressure”, he said before signing off with a warning: “ Don’t think India alone is under threat. Once you allow these terror groups to train, recruit and be able to build capacity to strike, they can strike in India, they can strike in UK, they can strike in Denmark as they were planning out of the Karachi project”. New Delhi is also livid with Washington for its tepid response to Indian requests for the interrogation of David Headley who confessed to US authorities of his role in the 26/ 11 attack. There have been contradictory signals from the Americans, with the visiting U. S. Assistant Secretary of State Robert Blake saying in New Delhi last week that Indian investigators could be given access to Dawood Sayed Gilani aka David Headley, only for the US Ambassador in India Timothy Roemer to state two days later that Washington was yet to take a decision on the matter. Party insiders say the leadership is now convinced that India could do without such one sided friendship. Don’t be surprised if India starts cosying up elsewhere.

Recently, Manmohan Singh, while welcoming Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin, described Russia as a “ tried and tested friend” that has stood by India in “ times of need”. It was the second meeting between the two in less than three months. Three months ago, Manmohan was in Moscow. He is due to fly to Washington next month. If Obama again mouths those platitudes about “ great democracies and shared values”, the prime minister should simply turn around and tell the president what he thinks about him.

Seedhi Baat / Aajtak, March 28, 2010

'I will not join politics again'

Talking on Seedhi Baat show, actor Amitabh Bachchan says he has accepted his failure in the field of politics and never wishes to join it again.

Part 2 Part 3 Part 4

Snippets/ Mail Today, March 22, 2010

Gadkari loses fight at start of innings

THERE is something rotten in the BJP and it has taken barely three months for Nitin Gadkari to show that he is not the man for the clean- up job. This is the only conclusion I can draw from his exercise last week to recast the BJP’s team of office- bearers.

The party’s youngest ever president evidently thinks that the road to Raisina Hill starts at Nagpur. Of the 200 named to help him revive a demoralised and demolished party, over 75 are from the RSS stable. Thirty per cent are either Brahmins like him or from Maharashtra. Add a dash of Bollywood retirees and you have a prescription for self- destruction.

As its president, Gadkari was supposed to lead the BJP from the front but he has chosen to be led by the same set of losers. He was expected to present to his kartas and karyakartas a basket of ideas and an ideology that would revive its right- wing national agenda. While the Congress confidently looks forward to a future under Rahul Gandhi and his brand ambassadors, Gadkari fell back on poor cousin Varun and the likes of Smriti Irani. Gadkari’s team reflects the extent of the rot.

Two successive electoral reverses don’t seem to have taught any lessons and he has chosen to depend on the same set of televangelists who have never fought elections or have a record of only losing and are themselves responsible for the party’s defeat. It’s an oligarchy that’s in place consisting of about 20 leaders who are more bothered about securing their own future than the party’s. If the party is in power, they make sure they are ministers; out of power, they become office- bearers.

Gadkari was supposed to be the talent scout who would discover the Vajpayees, Advanis, Modis, Shekhawats, Mahajans and Uma Bharatis of the future. A second- rung leader himself, Gadkari would have justified his elevation had he done so. Instead, he has fallen back on those a rung below him.

Bachchan hit by Yechury’s political correctness

A MAN is known by the company he keeps. By that logic, Sitaram Yechury, who relishes the company of Amar Singh who, in turn, is “ like family” to Amitabh Bachchan, should be good pals with the Bollywood superstar. But perish the thought. The former Jawaharlal Nehru University ( JNU) activist, who was among CPM’s first campus recruits in the politburo admits he is a fan of Bachchan but does not want him to be the brand ambassador for the Marxist- ruled state of Kerala. Why? Because Bollywood’s Badshah is also the brand ambassador for Narendra Modi’s Gujarat. Queer logic, right? Read on. Evidently, after Bachchan professed his love for Kerala and Keralites, the state tourism minister wrote to him requesting him to be the department’s brand ambassador. Enough to make Yechury see red. He reckons that any association with a man who sees Modi as an icon would cost the CPM- led alliance dearly in terms of minority votes in the assembly elections next year.

Bachchan is an icon in Kerala as he is anywhere else in the country or abroad and the votes of the literate people of the state are not likely to be swayed either way by star endorsements. Last year, the CPM expelled one of its MPs, Abdullah Kutty, after he praised Modi’s industrial policies. Kutty joined the Congress and won the last Lok Sabha election from a predominantly Muslim constituency thumping a former Marxist partymate.

When L. K. Advani’s book My Country My Life was released in Kerala last year, the chief guest was Kerala’s top film star Mammootty, aka Mohammed Kutty. Yechury’s assessment of minority votes is an insult to the community’s collective intelligence. And it’s laughable when you consider that the only popular election that Yechury himself contested was more than three decades ago while a student at JNU. It is such absurd calculations that make even many CPM leaders say the party’s future is behind it.

RAJ Thackeray, eat your heart out. Take a leaf from the original architect of regional politics and learn how to be a better Indian. Last week, Tamil Nadu chief minister M. Karunanidhi won the hearts of Biharis by hosting a mass thanksgiving lunch for construction labourers who built the new Tamil Nadu Assembly building in Chennai. His decision to acknowledge the efforts of thousands of migrant workers from Bihar has earned praise from friend and foe alike. The newly appointed Bharatiya Janata Party spokesman Ravi Shankar Prasad as well as arch foe Lalu Prasad lauded the 86- year- old DMK patriarch.

Even the normally reticent Jayalaithaa is said to have confided to an aide that the Kalaignar has killed all enemies with a single stone. For years now, unskilled workers from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh have migrated to Tamil Nadu in search of a living and many found work in the construction sector where strict working and living conditions have ensured that their lives now are better than the ones they left behind.

Karunanidhi was among those at the forefront of the anti- Hindi agitation that gave rise to the Dravidian parties and is to a large extent responsible for the Congress being out of power in the state for more than four decades. The paper tiger cubs of Mumbai should draw some lessons from the magnanimity and large- heartedness of the DMK boss.

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.