Politicising Encounters

After having driven Ratan Tata out of Bengal, Mamata Banerjee seems to have forgotten about getting acquired land back for the farmers of Singur. And she's now doing a good turn to Amar Singh who was there to lend her moral support on Singur. So Mamata-di and Singh are chorusing on the Batla House encounter and demanding an enquiry.

Mamata-di has said if the inquiry proves the encounter was not fake, she will resign. Singh was thundering in Azamgarh today that the youth arrested on terrorism charges were innocent and if it is proved that they are terrorists, he himself will shoot them.

The antics of these two is amusing but this entire debate over the Jamia encounter and the so-called branding of all Muslims as terrorists raises several issues.

One, are probes any use? If the findings don't suit a section, the report will be debunked. If an inquiry finds the encounter was a genuine one and the slain youth were actually terrorists, will Singh, Mamata, Mushirul Hasan and sundry others insisting the youth are innocent accept it? They won't. Just like the BJP won't accept the U C Banerjee report on Godhra and the secular brigade won't accept the Nanavati report. Each side will question the credentials of the author of the report, no matter how upright and honest he/she is.

Two, always questioning the police version on everything, if it doesn't suit us. I am no admirer of the Indian police force. It is perhaps the most venal, corrupt and insensitive force in the world. Yes, it has sullied its hands with fake encounters and some which are bizarre mistakes (like the Connaught Place shoot out, where it was just a case of mistaken identity). But to question every arrest or encounter is carrying things a bit too far. The media is also to blame for this. Every time a suspected terrorist is arrested, off it goes to interview the parents who then say their son is innocent, he wouldn't harm a fly, he is being framed. What else will a parent say? Regardless of what the charge - drunken driving or rape or terrorism - parents will always say their child is innocent. But whether it is the Jamia shootout or the arrest of Yahoo engineer Mohammed Mansoor Asghar Peerbhoy for sending terror emails, the police is unearthing evidence, incriminating documents etc. Surely all this can't be fake?

It is a bit hard to believe that the police randomly pick up innocent youth without any leads and then put them behind bars or engage and kill them in an encounter. Why does the police zero in on only XYZ innocent Muslim youth and not ABC or GHI? These charges that the police are picking up innocent youth gives the impression that the police does eenie-meenie-mina-mo every morning with a list of Muslim names and then just goes and arrests/kills them without any proof. This is ridiculous.

That brings me to the third issue - this whole fuss about racial profiling and the lament that all Muslims are being viewed as terrorists. I think that is exaggerated. Ordinary people are not branding all Muslims as terrorists. It is the Amar Singhs and the so-called secular brigade who are giving terrorists and ordinary criminals a religious identity. A terrorist is a terrorist. Why, if he has a Muslim name, should it mean all Muslims are being targeted? If a terror suspect happens to have a Muslim name, should the police not arrest/question him? The counter to that may well be that how come only Muslims are being picked up? But if the terror is being unleashed in the name of Islam, are Hindus, Christians and Sikhs to be picked up? During the Punjab trouble, Sikhs were picked up, in Sri Lanka Tamils are picked up, in Ireland, Irish were picked up. That is natural. Terrorists are known by the cause they espouse.

These people who claim to speak on behalf of the ordinary Muslims are doing them a terrible disservice. By rushing to sympathise with a terrorist (instead of distancing themselves and saying the law must take its own course) just because he has a Muslim name, it is these people who are indulging in racial profiling.

Finally, it is not my case that the police don’t pick up innocent people or torture suspects. The human rights of all have to be protected. But the right way of doing that is not to rant against arrests, but ensure that those arrested get whatever rights are due to them. It was appalling that the police did not allow the families of the Delhi blast accused to meet them even as it allowed journalists to interview them. That is absolute nonsense and it is good that Prashant Bhushan and other public spirited citizens got a court order to allow a meeting with the families. That is a perfectly valid way to help the accused. But to say that all arrests are frame ups and all encounters are fake is a bit much.

Don’t get involved with this Tiger

It was quite distressing to read about the Prime Minister giving in to pressure from the DMK and making a statement calling for a negotiated political settlement in Sri Lanka and the need to respect the human rights of minorities, particularly Tamil minorities in Sri Lanka.

This came after an all-party meeting in Tamil Nadu where a resolution was passed giving the Centre a two week ultimatum to the Centre to stop the war against Tamils in Sri Lanka, failing which all 39 MPs from the state would resign from Parliament. DMK supreme Karunanidhi’s daughter Kanimozhi has already sent in her resignation to her father.

This is utterly ridiculous. Sri Lanka, these Tamil MPs need to be told, is not an Indian state that can be pulled up by the Centre. Even within India, the federal structure puts limits on what the Centre can do. Sri Lanka is another country altogether. The Indian government cannot do anything that will impinge on its sovereignty.

The government is treading on extremely dangerous grounds here. It is nobody’s case that human rights in Sri Lanka should be given the complete go by. Remember, however, that the country facing a separatist movement, which it is trying to address through a mix of political and military means. Remember also that the violence is not one-sided. The Tamil terror groups also have the blood of thousands on their hands.

India, coping with its own problems, cannot get involved in this. If it does, then it will have no right to get worked up every time Pakistan makes a similar charge about India in the context of Kashmir. Indians cannot get all hot and bothered when other countries ask us about Muslims killed in riots or attacks on Christians. India’s Tamil politicians will probably argue that the two cases are not similar, that what is happening in Lanka is far more serious than what is happening in India. But that is all a matter of perception.

We have already paid a heavy price for our involvement in Sri Lanka – Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated by Tamil militants. It is surprising that a government run by a party headed by his widow should go soft on Tamil terror.

More than that, the principle of respecting another country’s sovereignty has to be respected.

Politicising Development

I had, to take a dig at the Luddite leftists and tongue firmly in cheek, drafted the following press release the day the announcement of the Nano plant to Gujarat happened.

REACTION OF SECULAR FORCES ON NANO IN GUJARAT

We, the self-appointed upholders of the secular fabric of India, strongly condemn the decision of Tata Motors to shift the Nano plant to Gujarat. This is nothing but a victory for communal forces in the country. It is shocking that industrialist Ratan Tata who is a member of a minority community - perhaps the smallest minority community in India - has decided to shake hands with Narendra Modi, that unrepentant butcher of minorities. Ratan Tata's ancestors may have hailed from Gujarat but that is no mitigating excuse.

This action of Ratan Tata is doubly damned because it came after he spurned the abject pleadings of a communist government and preferred to go along with a communal government instead. He also did not seriously consider the offer from a relatively secular Maharashtra government, which is the state where Tata Motors head office is located.

It also puts a greater burden on all secular socialist forces to fight this evil combination of capitalism and communalism. We will not be found wanting in this fight. Our failure to get Modi out of Gujarat will not dampen our spirits. We got Tata out of Bengal, we can drive him out of Gujarat too.

To continue our struggle, we allocate the following work to the following persons - Medha Patkar to sit on dharna at the Tata site, with her ragtag bunch; Arundhati Roy to write a cover story in Outlook on the capitalist-communal conspiracy, Teesta Setalvad to devote an entire issue of Communalism Combat to ranting about this unholy, oops sorry, un-comradely nexus, and Tehelka to reveal previously undisclosed footage on Modi, Tata and Mamata planning a grand conspiracy to keep Bengal in a de-industrialised state.

When I wrote this, I had stopped watching the news, so didn't see Sitaram Yechury's reaction, when he said it was sad that Tata had shifted to a BJP-ruled state! So I was bang on, as it turned out.

Would it have been better for Bengal if Tata had chosen a site in a non-BJP state? Yechury's reaction is understandable; he is in politics and politicizing development is second nature for our politicians.

But how does one account for journalists writing about the Nano plant shifting to Gujarat giving credibility to Narendra Modi? When I had emailed the above press release to some friends, one of them wrote implying that I was trying to convert people into a Modi fan!! After that there have been edit page articles bemoaning how Modi will use this to his advantage.

I have a few questions to all these people.

# Must business decisions be based on politics? Shouldn't business environment and infrastructure be the guiding principles?

# Assuming that politics must be a factor, then, if industrialists should shun Gujarat because of Modi's inaction during the 2002 riots, should any industry go at all to China, where state-sponsored genocide in Tibet is no secret? Why shouldn't all countries boycott China and snap all economic ties with it? And why should new businesses be set up in Delhi, where hundreds of Sikhs were butchered in 1984, and which now has had a Congress government for 10 years?

# If industry doesn't go to Gujarat while Modi is chief minister, who will suffer? Modi? Or the people of Gujarat? Or is it the case that the Gujarat public deserves to be punished for electing Modi?

Rajiv Gandhi's Legacy

Haven't had time to write though there are so many issues I want to comment upon. But am taking the easy way out and posting an excellent article on Rajiv Gandhi's legacy by historian Ramachandra Guha in Hindustan Times.

Rajiv: The other side

Ramachandra Guha

Hindustan Times 14 September 2008

I think it was Voltaire who said that while we can flatter the living, the dead deserve nothing less than the truth. I recalled that injunction when reading Vir Sanghvi's tribute to the late Rajiv Gandhi (Remembering Rajiv, Sunday HT, September 7). This praises Gandhi as a compassionate visionary who helped heal the wounds of a divided nation and then gave it a charter for the future. Gandhi's achievements are marked and celebrated. At the same time, no failure or flaw is admitted.

Sanghvi's one-sided approach is (as I shall presently show) at odds with the historical record. But it is also at odds with his own record as a political analyst. I have long admired Sanghvi for the elegance of his prose and the independence of his opinions. He refuses to see the world in black and white. Unlike many other Indian liberals, he is honest enough to criticise Muslim bigots as harshly and as often as the bigots of his own faith.

In this particular instance, however, Sanghvi has shown a conspicuous lack of historical judgement. Consider this statement, which appears early in his column: "It was Rajiv Gandhi's five years in office... that showed the world that India was here to stay. We had our problems. But our survival was not in doubt."

This is an audacious claim, that does serious violence to our history, and gross injustice to those who actually assured India's survival as a free and democratic nation. These were our first generation of nation-builders, Nehru, Patel, Ambedkar, and others, who forged a nation from a thousand different fragments, against a backdrop of famine and civil war, and then gave it a democratic constitution and a plural political culture. By the time India held its second general elections in 1957, it had successfully confounded the Western sceptics who claimed that it was too diverse and divided to survive as a single nation. At this time, if memory serves, Rajiv Gandhi was playing with his Meccano set.

Sanghvi makes much of Rajiv Gandhi's modest means. "He was the first Prime Minister to have ever held a job," he writes, "to have watched with alarm as his provident fund deduction went up and to have struggled to make ends meet." This he contrasts with "the unexplained wealth of political families". Once more, one is obliged to remind him that Indian history did not begin in 1984. Rajagopalachari, Patel, Ambedkar and many others gave up lucrative legal careers to serve the nation. Then, speaking of Prime Ministers, there was a certain Lal Bahadur Shastri, who was so poor that he had to swim across the Ganges to college since he could not afford to pay for a ticket on the boat. Austerity and integrity were for a very long time the very hallmark of Indian politics. If Rajiv Gandhi is to be compared to the politicians who followed in his wake, then he must also be compared with those who came before him.

Sanghvi exaggerates when he says that "the only reason India is a software power today is because he [Rajiv] had the vision to see the future" (other reasons include the emphasis on technical education in the 1960s, the nurturing of domestic capability after IBM was kicked out in the 1970, and, of course, the entrepreneurial drive of the 1990s). However, the most remarkable thing about his column is not what he says but what he is silent about. Among the words missing from his assessment of Rajiv Gandhi's record in office are Shah Bano, Ayodhya, and Kashmir.

In April 1985, in awarding alimony to a divorced woman named Shah Bano, the Supreme Court called for honouring the constitutional commitment to a Uniform Civil Code. The Congress had a two-thirds majority in Parliament. However, instead of taking the Court's verdict forward, Rajiv Gandhi had a Bill passed overturning it. Less than a year later, the locks of the shrine in the Babri Masjid were opened. As the political analyst Neerja Chowdhury wrote at the time, "Mr Rajiv Gandhi wants both to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds." Chowdhury remarked that "a policy of appeasement of both communities being pursued by the government for electoral gains is a vicious cycle which will become difficult to break".

This was a prophetic warning. A quarter-century later, Indians are still living with the consequences of those altogether disastrous acts. The BJP won a mere two seats in the 1984 general elections; helped by the appeasement of the mullahs and the concession in Ayodhya, they marched on to become a national party. The rise of Hindu fundamentalism encouraged the Muslim fundamentalists, leading to the cycle of riots, bombs, and more riots that is now apparently a permanent feature of the Indian political lansdcape. The religious polarisation has been hastened by the rise of the insurgency in Kashmir, in whose making, too, Rajiv Gandhi's government played a part, by its rigging of the 1987 elections, among whose defeated candidates were some future leaders of the jihad.

One person who would certainly have disapproved of Rajiv Gandhi's twin capitulation was India's first Prime Minister. After Partition, Jawaharlal Nehru's principal aim was to ensure that India did not become a "Hindu Pakistan". In the country's inaugural general election, his party's main plank was the safeguarding of the secular fabric of the Republic. The tone was set by Nehru's first election speech, at Ludhiana, where he declared "an all-out war against communalism". He "condemned the communal bodies which in the name of Hindu and Sikh culture were spreading the virus of communalism as the Muslim League once did...". These "sinister communal elements" would if they came to power "bring ruin and death to the country".

As the leading liberal born in a Hindu home, Nehru keenly understood the importance of encouraging liberal tendencies in traditions other than his own. He had hoped that Sheikh Abdullah would be the voice of progress and reason among Indian Muslims, but the Sheikh had other ambitions. Then Nehru put his faith in the brilliant, Cambridge-educated scholar, Saifuddin Tyabji. Tragically, Tyabji died in his early forties, just as he was making his mark in Parliament.

In the 1950s, Ambedkar, as Law Minister, and Nehru, as Prime Minister, reformed the personal laws of Hindus, allowing Hindu women to choose their marriage partners, to divorce, and to own property. They believed that when Muslims were more secure and had developed a liberal leadership of their own, such reforms would be made to their archaic laws, too. The conjunction that Ambedkar and Nehru had hoped for finally arrived in 1985.

Rajiv Gandhi had 400 MPs, a Supreme Court verdict, and a liberal Muslim willing to bat for him (Arif Mohammed Khan). That he still flunked it may be attributed either to a lack of a sense of history or a lack of a robust commitment to liberal principles - or perhaps both.

I do not want to make the reverse mistake, of seeing Rajiv Gandhi's record in office as wholly flawed. He did reconcile the Mizos, he did encourage technological innovation, and he did promote panchayati raj (a contribution strangely unmentioned by Mr Sanghvi). At the same time, his policies encouraged the most reactionary elements among Hindus and Muslims, whose rivalry has since promoted a huge amount of discord and violence, the very discord and violence that Sanghvi himself, in other columns, has tried bravely to combat.

Disgusting Churlishness

What can one say about Sushma Swaraj’s remark that the blasts in Bangalore and Ahmedabad were to divert attention from the cash for votes scandal, and that it was a ploy to raise a bogey about the BJP to woo back the Muslims whom the Congress had alienated because of the nuclear deal. Bilge, as a friend, Sunil Varma, describes it. When, in 2004, she threatened to shave her head and sleep on the floor if Sonia Gandhi became Prime Minister, it was just very funny (not the least because she became the butt of ribald jokes by journalists even as they were waiting for the BJP briefing to start at the party headquarters). But this is not funny. It is disgusting. It is sickening.

What it brings to mind is the United States immediately after the 9/11 attacks and former President Bill Clinton immediately declaring all support for incumbent President George Bush. No finger pointing, no blame game. Dignified support. Bush’s post-9/11 policies may be attacked by the Democrats but at the time of crisis, there was no name-calling.

What’s surprising is how the BJP is not distancing itself from her remarks, with its top leaders preferring to keep quiet. Are we to believe, then, that the party endorses her views?

But why blame Swaraj alone? She has only taken to an extreme and disgusting degree what all our politicians are adept at – blame the other party, especially the ruling party, for everything that goes wrong. So what if when your party was in power you did exactly what the present one is doing. We are all reacting now because of the words she used, but after every blast in any state, there is an immediate cry from the opposition in that state that the government has failed in its duty and should resign. So every time there is a blast the BJP will accuse the Congress of going soft on terror (forgetting what it did in the Kandahar hijack case) and every time there is a communal riot when the NDA is ruling, the Congress will blame the BJP for it. This cuts across politicians and parties. What can you do with a bunch of politicians who politicise even the Nithari killings and the Aarushi-Hemraj murder case?

Look at economic policy. Economic policy has a strongly political angle to it, but how can stands change depending on where a party is sitting –the ruling or the opposition benches? But that is precisely what happens. The NDA is now saying it will not support the pending economic reform legislation in Parliament. This is absolutely ridiculous, especially since the BJP-led NDA had done the groundwork for many of the legislations.

There are so many examples of opportunistic flip flops. The BJP opposed the opening up of the insurance sector when it was in the opposition. When it came to power, it passed the required legislation. Yashwant Sinha, as NDA finance minister, worked really hard to get the VAT system in place. He couldn’t complete it for various reasons. But minute the NDA loses the elections, he starts opposing the implementation of VAT. When the NDA makes a success of the privatisation programme, Manmohan Singh, as an opposition member, questions the ideological basis of a policy that he himself initiated when he was finance minister. As opposition leader in Punjab Amarinder Singh lambasted the Akali Dal’s freebies, especially free power to farmers. A few years after becoming chief minister, he himself did the same. One could go on and on with similar examples.

There’s another curious phenomenon – don’t take the same view as your opponent, even if the view is something you believe in. Take the dilemma of the Left in the run up to the trust vote. They were worried at being seen as voting with the BJP. If you strongly believe in something, does it matter that your arch enemy also believes in it and will you stop fighting for it just because of that? So the issue on which you withdrew support to the government suddenly became less important than being seen to be on the same side as a party you hate?

That is the only problem I had Omar Abdullah’s otherwise stupendous speech, especially his statement - `they (the left) want me to side with the BJP and bring down this government’. Does that mean that tomorrow if the BJP does something which is right in his opinion, he will keep quiet about it or oppose it just because the BJP is also on that side?

This is childishness, nay, churlishness. And when it plumbs to the level Swaraj took it to, it is. . . . words fail me.

Reforms RIP

So the Left has finally withdrawn support. In any other circumstance, that would have been reason to celebrate. But if its place is going to be taken by the Samajwadi Party batting for one industrial house (see my previous posts below) then there's not much cause to cheer. One blackmailer has been replaced by another. The latest is that Mulayam Singh wants his nominee for the post of CBI Director. The more things change, as they say....

What's amusing is the unanimous reaction that this will help revive the stalled economic reforms process. True, the Left has been the most strident of the opponents of economic reform, but it would be wrong to say that the Communists the only opponents of liberalization. There are many others who will not allow crucial reforms to be effected. These sections are not just ideologically driven political parties but a slew of vested interests - politicians (cutting across the political spectrum), bureaucrats, middlemen (who operate through politicians). The Left has been stupid in revelling in the label of anti-liberalisers. It has generated all the sound and the fury, but its opposition has been less effective than that of these groups, who have operated quietly in the background and let the Comrades take all the blame. To that extent, the Left has allowed its principled opposition to be used by manipulators.

The Left was hardly in the picture during the six years of the BJP-led NDA rule. But still a lot of reforms were stalled (though that government did manage to get far, far more done than the UPA has). Some of the stalling was done by parties that are part of the UPA now.

Remember also, that there is a sizeable section within the Congress that is opposed to any liberalisation. The socialist lobby within that party - Arjun Singh, Mani Shankar Aiyar, are its more well known members - can hardly be discounted.

The process of economic liberalisation reduces government meddling in the economy. In doing that, it also removes the power of patronage from politicians and bureaucrats and reduces the scope of corruption. It also reduces the role of middlemen. So all these groups are hurt by economic reforms, far more than the poor are (actually reforms are the only way to help the poor, but how and the costs will have to be the subject of another post). But it is in the name of the poor that the reforms are stalled. Then, of course, there is industry. Every established player in a business wants to restrict competition - the essence of market-driven economic policies - so that it enjoys a monopoly.

Let's look at a few pending economic reforms.

Agriculture. The economy's largest private sector is also the most regulated one. Sure the sector needs a heavy dose of public investment, but it also needs an equally strong dose of market-oriented economic reforms. The current policy regime, the large farmers benefit more than the small and marginal ones, who are in a pitiable state. One of the key reforms is the relaxation of the state-level Agricultural Produce and Marketing Committee Acts to allow competitive markets to come up. But that will significantly reduce the clout of the arthias and get farmers a fair return for their produce. So movement on this is slow. The arthias and the large farmers are the ones with money and clout in the rural areas. They are the ones who can bankroll politicians; not the small farmers in whose name the politicians act.

Privatisation. Why the government needs to be running a whole lot of businesses - airlines, hotels, to name the more ridiculous ones - is beyond understanding. The opposition to privatisation comes from powerful employees' unions (many of them affiliated to communist parties, yes) as well as politicians and bureaucrats. It is no secret that politicians and bureaucrats milk PSUs. The existence of PSUs also gives them power and patronage. All these will disappear once they are privatised. Recall that the so-called liberaliser Chandrababu Naidu had no compunction in opposing the privatisation of Rashtriya Ispat during the NDA regime because the PSU is located in Vishakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh and he didn't want to face the political backlash of people being rendered unemployed (never mind that a handsome VRS package was built into all privatisation deals).

Retail. Don't for a moment think that only the Left is opposed to the entry of foreign retailers. Large domestic retailers are working behind the scenes to ensure that Walmart and Carrefour and Tesco don't come in. There is also the small retailers lobby which is now opposing all organised retail. Small retailers form a large chunk of the BJP's support base, so opposition will come from there too.

Freeing up petroleum pricing. The NDA initiated the dismantling of the administered pricing mechanism in line with the Kelkar committee report. But it was NDA petroleum minister Ram Naik who started meddling in pricing again. Of course, Mani Shankar Aiyar carried it further. Petroleum products pricing is a highly emotive issue and few politicians are willing to see reason on this. Opposition to this will come regardless of who is in power and whether or not the Left is supporting the government.

Aviation. Foreign airlines cannot invest in Indian airlines (though foreign funds can) or operate in the local market. Yes, the Left is behind this. So are powerful Indian airlines owners.

Foreign investment in media (my industry). Again something the Left is vocal about. But powerful media groups will not allow this.

But above all, remember, this is an election year. Despite clear evidence that sensible economic policies reap political dividends, no party is prepared to take hard decisions in the run up to elections. In the mid-1990s, Narasimha Rao and Manmohan Singh stopped the reforms process they initiated in 1991, because the Congress lost several state assembly elections and this was blamed on reforms. The NDA in its last year in government removed a sensible finance minister like Yashwant Sinha and stalled reforms. This government will do the same.

So it hardly matters if the Left supports the government or not. Reforms will go into a limbo till the next general elections.

Nuked by Ambanis

DNA today has a story on the three demands of Amar Singh – an immediate ban on export of petro-goods by private oil companies; a “fair and transparent’’ policy regime to make spectrum available to telecom companies; rework the dollar-rupee exchange rate.
The first is designed to hit Mukesh Ambani and the second to directly benefit Anil Ambani. This only reinforces my belief (see the previous post) that the nuclear deal is not worth this kind of compromise. What’s the point of saying the government won’t be held hostage by the left and then agree to be held hostage by a corporate house?