Which, if you go back to the heady days of May-June 2009, needn’t have come to this sorry pass. Why did it, is a question the presiding triumvirate in the establishment can best answer; hacks like me can at best read the portents and offer opinions. If Verdict 2004 was a surprise one, so was Choice 2004. Dr Singh, pulled out of relative obscurity and promoted to the top job in the country not for any stellar administrative quality but solely for his unflinching loyalty to the Family, had every reason to be beholden for the same. But Verdict 2009 was different. Was the Congress’s and UPA’s improved showing in the hustings solely due to the Family’s charisma, or did the administration provided and policies pursued by the prime minister – no doubt with a nod from his political boss – play a role in the victory? When you win unexpectedly for the first time, you can be magnanimous in sharing the credit. But a re-election is a different affair; the first could be the result of a negative vote against the existing regime. The second is a clear endorsement and a positive vote. Which is why the Indian voter has been so miserly about voting in the incumbent, because there is so little around him for him to be positive about. The crisis in the UPA II goes back to its inception, Verdict 2009. And it will end only when this issue – whose victory was it, the party’s or the government’s? — is settled. Tied to this question is the prime ministership of In a democracy there will always be friction between the government and the ruling party and the bosses are expected to paper over the differences, smoothe things out. When Indira Gandhi fashioned her own version of the Congress party from the one that led to If she who grew up in the lap of the Founding Fathers that lived and breathed democracy could shrink the tradition to personal hagiography, it hasn’t been a difficult transformation for her followers. Sonia Gandhi’s Congress party is caught in this dilemma. It believes that she who led the party to electoral triumph should also be the prime minister. If not, one of her children. Sensing disquiet over her ascension to the top job, she has chosen to rule by proxy. But the crisis for the Congress party is that neither does her son Rahul, who has been leading a party revival campaign, show any inclination to replace the incumbent prime minister. In effect, how this percolates down to the rank and file is that there is a disconnect between the party’s programmes and the government’s, because they are led by two different people. In effect, how this percolates down to the public is that there is a governance paralysis, manifesting itself in different ways – from inability to control inflation to drift in economy to indecisiveness on policy matters to unwillingness to curb corruption. Popular disenchantment from all this could still have been kept under check but for humongous corruption which, if not in truth then at least in public perception has left hardly anyone untouched in the Union Cabinet. Corollary flowing from this: Of what use is an honest prime minister who cannot do anything about his corrupt ministers? Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is not a political animal – which is why he does not fight the Lok Sabha elections. Unfortunately for him, the prime ministership of And, it seems under UPA II, political solutions are not the Congress party bosses’ forte either. The popular disenchantment against UPA II, which denied it its customary honeymoon period with the voters, could have been better and easily handled but wasn’t. Drowned in their own smugness about winning a re-election, and beguiled by the disarray in its principal opposition the Bharatiya Janata Party, both the Congress party and the government slept, unaware of the ground shifting under their feet. It’s happened before in this ancient land. The British didn’t take the challenge of a ‘half-naked fakir’ seriously till it was too late. The politically astute Indira Gandhi, blinded by maternal love, saw in the Jayaprakash Narayan whirlwind a benign summer breeze. And Anna Hazare, whose worldview extends to all of a remote village in Faced with a challenge to their existence, one would expect the government and party to act as one. But the disconnect between the two shows no sign of ending. The government thinks it can deflect the challenge by diversionary tactics. So you have a political hot potato decision like foreign direct investment in retail trade taken when Parliament is in session, a decision which may benefit the government but not the party which stayed put in the barracks during the battle over it. As the FDI in retail trade showed, the government finds not just the Opposition ranged against it, not just its own party – but also its allies. Dr Manmohan Singh is thus besieged on all sides. His biggest misstep has been on FDI in retail. To break the perception that his government was paralysed, he chose an explosive issue – just as he did in his first term with the India-United States nuclear deal. As then, he expected to come out guns blazing in Parliament once again. Unfortunately for him, the script didn’t play out that way. If he was a Bollywood buff – which he isn’t – he would know that sequels work only in films, not in life – and certainly not in politics. Retreat 2011 has finally settled the question over Verdict 2011. If there are doubts still lingering in the mind of the prime minister, he should make way for someone more in tune with his party boss.
When governments feel the ground shifting under their feet, they resort to diversionary tactics. Dr Manmohan Singh’s government is faced with a groundswell against it – and not all of it is online. In fact, the vituperation against it online – which has forced Telecom Minister Kapil Sibal to advocate curbs on it – is but a reflection of the popular disenchantment with the United Progressive Alliance II.
Posts Tagged ‘Sonia Gandhi’
Dr Singh: What next?
December 8th, 2011Reshuffle reflects PM’s style: subtlety, not noise
January 20th, 2011Social networking sites have their use. They give you a sense of public sentiment over any hot topic. But being majoritarian in nature, the debate often swings the way of those who speak the loudest. Listen to them, but not necessarily to take them as the vox populi.
If you don’t do that, on hearing the internet chatter you will tend to believe that the United Progressive Alliance government is rudderless, even clueless that it is rudderless, and lacks a strategy — all of which is proven by the reshuffle, inasmuch as that word applies to Wednesday’s portfolio reallocation exercise by the prime minister.
It can be no one’s case that UPA II is going about its task bright as a button, and it certainly isn’t mine either. The thumb of rule for governments is that their honeymoon phase lasts for one or two years, after which it descends into a holding operation till the next election is called or forced on it. The UPA II is unique in that it almost never had a honeymoon period with the electorate – which is a tragedy, considering the enormous goodwill that propelled it into office.
To know a government is to know its political compulsions. To know a cabinet shakeup is to know the prime minister.
We have known the UPA II for one and a half years now, and its political compulsions were sought to be given a sheen recently by Rahul Gandhi, the Congress general secretary who is anything but that. Coalition governments have their limitations, he said, in a sorry attempt at deflection of the all-round criticism UPA II has been subject to. For instance, following the Supreme Court’s observations on various issues involving the government, which have become a sort of a daily sermon, are an eye-opener. Never before has a government in India been lectured and harangued by the apex court in so regular a manner, which makes you wonder, just who is in charge?
That, in my opinion, is the problem behind UPA II. Things were okay with UPA I, because it was a surprise victory even for the Congress. The prime minister and his political superior, Congress president Sonia Gandhi, hit upon a modus vivendi that didn’t cut too much into each other’s space. So while he could focus on governance, she could focus on the party.
But things seem to have changed with the 2009 electoral victory. The Congress, surprise surprise, improved on its previous Lok Sabha tally, and the party bosses suddenly seem to have woken up to the fact that maybe, just maybe, it could improve further and reach a position where it would form the government on its own.
Inherent in that belief is that it would see the return of the Gandhi family to the top political job in the country.
The problems of UPA II, then, stem from the classic case of party vs government. It was all hunky-dory when the party had less numbers and therefore was less assertive. This doesn’t apply only to the government — it applies in equal measure to the Congress’s relations with its allies too. Hence the uneasy equations with its various partners, from the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam to the Nationalist Congress Party to the Trinamool Congress.
Indira Gandhi foresaw this and wore two hats, of prime minister and party president. So far Sonia Gandhi has resisted the impulse, choosing to be the power behind the throne instead. The irony cannot escape her, the prime minister or us: power can have only one source. When there are more, as it does now, it causes confusion at best and demoralisation at worst.
And the UPA II is at its worst phase now. If it does well, Sonia Gandhi gets the credit; if it fails, it will be laid at Manmohan Singh’s door. The soft-spoken prime minister was aware of this when he agreed to take up the job which had no other claimant. And Wednesday’s reallocation of portfolio reflects his style of operation.
I am not one of those fortunate enough to be on familiar terms with the prime minister or his office, that’s a privilege reserved for a few for whom the downside was revealed recently in tapped telephone conversations. I have encountered the incumbent only twice, both on overseas visits he made. During these visits, contrary to public perception that the media gets to wine and dine with the high and mighty, all you get are a few minutes of interacting up close with the prime minister.
But these are precious minutes, where you get to observe, and even confirm your perceptions. From what I believe and know, this prime minister is not given to pomp and show — not because he knows his job was given to him — but because that is simply not his style. So no overt displays of either style, or authority. Why use a howitzer when a kirpan is enough, that could easily be his motto.
So all those castigating the government for a feeble reshuffle are missing the point. Which is that the exercise was not meant to be anything more than a message. And the recipients for whom it was intended, have all got it. Just a few examples will suffice:
Sharad Pawar has retained agriculture, but has lost the crucial civil supplies ministry. Plus, his foe Vilasrao Deshmukh is now in his trajectory with rural development portfolio.
His party colleague Praful Patel has been given a leg up, but only after paying the price: civil aviation.
Kamal Nath has been moved out of highways to urban development.
Murli Deora gives up petroleum, gains corporate affairs.
MS Gill loses sports, turns number cruncher with statistics and programme implementation.
The Congress party’s interests have been kept in mind, too, with Sriprakash Jaiswal and Salman Khursheed, both from Uttar Pradesh, getting promoted to Cabinet rank.
You can always ask why did the prime minister not go the whole hog if his intention was to clean up his administration? Why have laggards and looters been allowed to remain?
It is for those who refuse to read the signs that Manmohan Singh issued a statement later that a more expansive exercise will be done after the Budget session of Parliament.
Why after the Budget session?
For the government, clearly, the first imperative is to tide over that period – already facing the combined Opposition ire and the threat of Jagan Reddy’s MPs pulling out and endangering the government, neither wisdom nor survival instinct advise the opening of a third front of disgruntled ministers by sacking them.
This, to me, fits in with the prime minister’s style. Another leader from another era I think said it better: Speak softly and carry a big stick. That’s what I think Dr Singh has done.
2010: A mandate betrayed
December 28th, 2010
As an ancient civilization that has seen vicissitudes go by with equanimity,
As India has hobbled along these last 63 years trying to keep its long overdue tryst with destiny, there have been times more often than one can remember when the promise has been betrayed by a class that pretends to serve but in reality is only self-serving.
So it is that even the most hardened optimists — like this writer — will always qualify their rosy outlook for India with the words, ‘But, then, you never know…’ – only because we know that since time immemorial the curse of this land has been its men of destiny who have repeatedly let it down.
But not even hardened experience could have prepared one for the slide in 2010 where a government that assumed power a year ago on the back of a mandate of hope has simply squandered away its reservoir of goodwill and betrayed the mass of expectations which fuelled it to power.
After all, this was supposed to be a government of the aam-aadmi. But the unfolding scams during the year, involving sums that simply boggle the mind, show yet again that when it comes to decisions the common man’s interest is not at the core of decision-making.
Every government has its quota of scams, some artificial, some inflated, and some true. What separates the good government from the bad is how it reacts when scams break, what counter-actions it takes to punish the guilty, to recover the loss to the nation and to put in measures to prevent a repetition in future. Anything less would be seen as being complicit in the financial skullduggery.
Alas, judging by this yardstick, the Manmohan Singh government has failed, and failed miserably. Consider the two humongous scams to hit the headlines during the year: the Commonwealth Games, and the 2G spectrum allocation. In both cases, the government first pretended the scam did not exist, then denied the extent of the scam, before ordering a probe that satisfied very few. Even now, it seems more set on silencing the Opposition’s furore than on bringing the guilty to book.
Naturally, the opposition parties from both sides of the political spectrum, the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Left parties, in an unprecedented act paralysed Parliament’s winter session with their demand for setting up a joint parliamentary committee probe into the 2G spectrum scam, a demand the government is loath to concede for reasons of its own, despite the prime minister likening himself to “Caesar’s wife”.
The irony could not have been starker. In the last six months of the year, leaders of the P5 nations — the
Yet, even as a new
That Indians have an ambivalent attitude towards corruption, is a given. We do not mind winking at it if we felt the government was also doing our work. The CWG and 2G spectrum scams have shattered this delusional sense of security. Both the Games and the spectrum scams involved aspects that didn’t touch the aam aadmi’s life. The former was about showcasing India’s arrival on the world stage by hosting its biggest international extravaganza to date, while the latter involved — simply put — selling of airwaves.
The widespread dismay is that while the aam aadmi was being passed off with homilies about lack of resources to elevate his life from the miserable to the tolerable, millions of rupees were seen to be siphoned off by the political class, with no one punished till the final week of the year. It is a conspiracy of silence where self-preservation is the need of the hour.
That this should happen on the watch of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress president Sonia Gandhi, whose working combination seems to have struck a chord with the public – if you drown out the negative chorus on Twitter – is, in my opinion, the biggest disappointment of the year for those praying for a new dawn.
Sadly, when it comes to tackling the cancer eating into the vitals of the nation, the couple seems hamstrung. Speeches pour forth, condemnations are issued, but there are no worthwhile explanations coming about why nothing was done when the exchequer was actually being bled.
It could well have been this waffling over corruption that sent the aam aadmi away from the Congress party by the droves in the Bihar assembly election and into the arms of Nitish Kumar, a man who doesn’t merely stop at issuing homilies about zero tolerance for corruption but who lives by his word, realizing that it is not enough to personally incorruptible but also provide a corruption-free administration in order to make a difference.
It is a lesson the Congress party will do well to internalize, for as Bihar is to India what India is to the world: a land of glorious past belied by a miserable present which holds it back from its rightful future.
Instead, the Congress party and its government are unable to break free of the shackles of the past. Under attack over corruption, it has preferred to divert attention to bogeys from yore that are best buried and forgotten. It could have taken its cue from the
Clearly, this is a winter of discontent whose icy fingers are seeping through the warm coverlet of positive sentiment. With critical state assembly elections due next year – including in bellwether states like Uttar Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and
Will the real prime minister please stand up?
May 24th, 2010One year ago, when the second edition of the United Progressive Alliance came to power, one felt that we would be seeing a different government. There was unanimity among various groups that the first one was a holding operation; trammelled by its lack of parliamentary numbers and a fire-breathing Left, it stumbled through five years of staying in office without really doing much.
Apart from the prime minister’s pet project, the nuclear deal with the
But throughout those five years an impression was created, and the Left did little to correct it, that the UPA government wasn’t being given breathing space to do the things it really wanted to. Perhaps the voters too bought the argument last year, since Verdict 2009 cut the Left down apart from boosting the Congress’s numbers.
A year on, after it’s clear that the Left was only UPA I’s whipping boy. A year on, despite getting rid of Prakash Karat and his band of fiery men, the UPA has been as sluggish as it was in its first term. So was the known devil (Left) better than the unknown angels (Mayawati, Mulayam and Mamta)? The only hint came at the prime minister’s press conference today where, when asked if he missed the Left parties’ support, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said, “If wishes were horses beggars would ride.”
For those of us who resented the pressure the Left brought to bear on UPA I, it is clear in retrospect — as it is no doubt clear to the prime minister — that the Left was not in it to strike deals or cut corners. They approached decisions through the prism of principle and policy, there was no surprise about it. With the new bunch of friends the UPA has acquired, it is all about politics, pulls and pressures.
What it has meant to governance is to project an image that the centre cannot hold. That the prime minister is not in control (which is worse if you realise many think that the remote control to the government anyway lay in 10 Janpath).
The prime minister’s cabinet thus resembles a daycare centre where children are running riot, with the babysitter unable to maintain order.
The Union Cabinet posts are filled not on merit but based on allies’ intransigence. So a Muthuvel Karunanidhi is able to cock a snook at the prime minister, at the Congress party and its president Sonia Gandhi and retain a minister who caused pecuniary loss to the nation. We pilloried a prime minister for a scam worth a niggardly Rs 64 crore; but a mere minister who caused thousands of crores to vanish sits pretty.
Naturally when the prime minister opens his mouth about poverty alleviation in his second press conference in
Blame some of the last few incumbents for the erosion in its image, but the prime ministership of
Even if you put it down to personal style — I cannot be like my boss nor he like me, I know — the prime minister has not convinced that his style works.
It is not just that he has been unable to either gag his ministers who clearly believe words speak louder than action or rein in those who think they are not accountable to anyone for their actions. The prime minister’s worst achievement is that in the one year of his second government, he has not sent out the message that he means business.
And this time there’s no pesky Left around to pin the blame on.
What can be worse for a nation suffering the ill-effects of untrammelled inflation than having a celebrated economist at the helm who is unable to control it? You can draw two inferences from this failure. One is that the economist in him doesn’t know how to control prices. The other, less charitable, inference is that he doesn’t think it is cause enough to worry; in other words, Marie Antoinette like, he just doesn’t care.
You can tug at the leash to join the global high table. You can let out a collective gasp that
Alas, but of what use is any of it when our internal affairs is in a shambles!
If UPA I had no clue about warding off jihadi attacks, UPA II has no clue about preventing Maoist attacks. Terror earlier came wrapped in a green flag; today it comes covered in a red flag. Seeing how effete the government is in tackling their threat, it is a question of time before the Naxalites move out of the red corridor and into our cities and towns. Will the government’s wait for a strategy cost the nation dear?
After so much brouhaha over the women’s reservation bill, there’s been no squeak out of the government on its fate. Will its structure change, as the allies have been demanding? Considering how successful the latter have been in getting the government to include caste as a factor in the ongoing census, the signs are clear. This government is malleable on most issues.
What was also clear, thanks to today’s press conference, is that prime minister doesn’t have all the answers. Either he doesn’t have all the facts at his disposal, or you can contact the PMO.
But don’t blame me, I didn’t vote for this government!
