Time to leave, Rahul

I say this as a former long-time Congress supporter/voter. Feel free to correct me, but I don’t believe that in 18 years as MP, Rahul Gandhi has given even one sensible, well-meaning, and crucial suggestion to the govt in power on any issue. All he has done is whine, complain and exaggerate. And the issues he has raised in parliament have usually been overshadowed by the blunders he makes while speaking. And when he’s not doing all of that, he’s holidaying.

Many of us then felt that if Rahul had to take over the reins of the country someday, he needed to understand how to run a state machinery. Becoming chief minister of a Congress-ruled state would be the perfect place to start. But the reason given against that was that Rajiv Gandhi also had no administrative experience when he took over.

The truth is Rajiv took over at a difficult time for India. Most Indians born after 1950 had never experienced the trauma of an assassination. Indira’s death affected the country deeply. For whatever reason, the Congress party decided to impose the son on us. The country was too shocked to comprehend then. It was just relieved to see the young man step up and accept the responsibility.

But as events proved, the Rajiv Gandhi charisma unravelled pretty fast. Rahul had no such encumbrances. On the contrary, he has had the collective experience of senior Congressmen and women around him from a 100-plus-year-old party, whom he could observe closely and learn. He could have studied the political nuances and the nitty-gritty of running a party and country. But he didn’t. He didn’t think he needed to understand governance for that.

He believed, and his fawning courtiers around him have made him think to date in the illusion that he is anointed to lead, first the party and then the country, because he is a member of the dynasty that ruled India the longest. And that probably would have happened if one Narendra Damodardas Modi hadn’t decided to storm the citadel, which was the preserve of the Congress and its well-cultivated ecosystem.

It has been eight years, and the Modi wave shows no signs of abating. The BJP has stated that it is no longer willing to play second fiddle. BJP has stamped its presence, and Modi has become this larger-than-life persona domestically and globally, who isn’t an aberration like the Gujrals, Deve Gowdas, Charan Singhs and Chandra Shekhars of the world. Or even a full-term PM Vajpayee. He’s here to stay. And neither the 137-year-old Congress party nor the dynasty that straddled it for decades can do anything to stop him.

But even as Rahul’s ardent admirers (yes, he still has many) have been drumming it into us since 2004 that he’s a better choice than Modi, he has been found wanting in every box where you want to tick ✔️ you can only tick X — Political acumen, commitment, long-term stability… you name it. He’s failed everywhere. Listen to his speeches and stage-managed interviews. They are bereft of facts, figures and substance.

Even in parliament, he has come across as a politician who is more interested in having fun than engaging in serious debate with facts and figures. More often than not, he ends up looking like a joke. In politics, it is not enough to be a nice guy, which I am sure he is. But, as pictures have proved, he comes across as a personable, affectionate man. But is that enough to beat a ruthless Modi or anyone else who comes after him? BJP has shown that it is here to stay, and the majority (no pun) would rather have them and Modi in power than Congress.

Can this Rahul Gandhi change that?

The milking of the Dalit vote, even in a tragedy

I am horrified by the death of Dalit PhD scholar Rohith Vemula who committed suicide on January 17, 2016, by hanging himself from the fan in the room of his friend at the Hyderabad University. Whatever maybe the reasons for his death, enough has been said and done about the case for me to repeat here. He left a suicide note that has saddened and shocked the very conscience of the nation. And here is where I am even more horrified – by the behaviour of our politicians. I don’t mean all politicians, at least not the ones with a conscience, anyway.

What moved those politicians so much that they almost tripped over each other to be the first to land in Hyderabad? Surely, it couldn’t have been another Dalit student who committed suicide. Nor was it the votes that they could either see slipping away or coming their way. There have been almost two dozen suicides before this one. So, Vemula, for all practical purposes, was just another statistic. So what was it? Two reasons: The first, their visceral hatred for Narendra Modi and second, the fear that if he succeeds in these five years, they might as well pack their bags, lick their wounds, and limp away into the sunset. So, naturally they have to stop him. And I have no issues with that. After all, that is one part of the job of a politician. So all the best to them.

And what better way to do that than to crawl on all fours and prostrate themselves before the students at Hyderabad University, Rohith’s friends and his family. “Hey, remember me, I was there that day in Hyderabad University?” could well be the signature tune of these people in the days to come. I read on Twitter someone describing a politician rushing off to Hyderabad as a vulture. That is too polite. I would call them something else.

Now that Rahul Gandhi is back from Hyderabad University I hope he reads The Hindu of January 19, 2016, which had this to say indirectly about his government, which was in power at the Centre and in the State of Delhi: The Thorat Committee, constituted some years ago to investigate differential treatment of SC/ST students in just one institution, the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Delhi, had come out with a damning indictment of the way Dalit students were treated. Forced into ghettos in the hostel, discriminated against by teachers, denied access to sporting and cultural activities, SC/ST students in India’s premier educational institutions walk into an environment that’s virulently hostile to them. Not surprisingly, according to one estimate, in the last four years, 18 Dalit students chose to end their lives rather than continue to battle on in these dens of caste prejudice and social exclusion.

Eighteen Dalit students committed suicide in the last four years, most of it during the rule of his party, while he was busy mouthing inanities, or holidaying abroad, or disappearing somewhere without notice. It’s also been happening at AIIMs right under his government’s nose and he did nothing. Another Dalit student, Senthil, committed suicide in Salem in 2008, and Rahul G. Prasad, a final year B. Tech student at IIT-Madras committed suicide in 2015, but Rahul Gandhi and those of his ilk weren’t interested then. Wonder why. And yet, this vacuous upstart, who has raced up the political ladder by hanging onto the saree of his mummy, has the gall to talk about helping the Dalits, Muslims other deprived communities? So the UPA of Manmohan Singh quietly brushed it under the carpet and now their vice president is pretending to be the champion of the downtrodden?

But, it’s not just the politicians this blog is about. I am also thinking of the 13 Dalit teachers who were struck with a pang of conscience or guilt, or whatever, and decided to resign in support five whole days after Vemula’s death. What were they doing for those five days, weighing their options? How considerate of them. More likely, they realised that they were going to be the next target of the students and the HRD ministry for keeping silent through the current unsavoury episode. If they had reacted in time, who knows, things might have been different. I can lay a bet that six months down the line the faculty will be back at their jobs. How? Your guess is as good as mine.

But there is a larger issue. While I completely understand and agree that all those lesser fortunate must be educated, looked after till they can be self-reliant, and be made a part of this country’s mainstream, the way the Congress governments have gone about it is not the way. All that has happened is that in many cases it has become a question of give and take from both sides. And the fallout of this is every marginalised and not marginalised community has now realised that the best way to get jobs and money from the government is to dangle the carrot of votes and watch the politician running to them with freebies. It is unfortunate, but this the reason there is an anger rising against all those who call themselves ‘marginalised’ either through caste, class or economics. I am waiting to see where this ends.

The other group that has really done itself no service is the media of which I have been a part for 30 years. Whatever I leant about the profession, I did on the job and from my seniors. My seniors always taught me that a journalist should be anti-establishment and at the same time be objective. I am afraid, today the media is neither. Their reporting in recent times has been nothing short of disgraceful. I am glad I am out of it.

I hope the parents of the 18 students who have committed suicide earlier get together and file a civil action suit for a few hundred crores (much like the one filed against the Ansals in the Uphaar tragedy) against the various colleges, their faculty, and the respective state and central governments, who have stood by as mute spectators during these tragedies. It’s time someone was made to pay.

More power to the aam aadmi!

The other day, someone asked me why I had stopped blogging, because he felt the present moment would be the right time to express one’s opinion on the numerous issues surrounding us. To be honest, I had developed an aversion to writing these last few months for quite a few reasons. One of them was the politics. I love writing about politics, but it had turned into a no-holds-barred slanging match between those who hated Narendra Modi and those who admired him. Just like the infamous Dubya quote (“you’re either with us or against us”) Indian politics had been reduced to a slugfest and anyone interested in a third option was ridiculed, insulted and hounded into silence!

Some of my pro-Modi friends thought I was a Modi fan, just because I argued that the Gujarat violence happened in 2002 (and just like the horrific events in Delhi post the assassination of Indira Gandhi in 1984). Secondly, since no court in the land had either held him guilty or responsible for what happened in Gujarat, I was willing to move on and give him the chance to prove whether he was as efficient as some people thought he was. And that is when my friends who make up the anti-Modi club went after me. And frankly, their reaction was pretty vicious. People who I thought were rational in their thinking had suddenly become strangers. They were spewing venom at me, and that left me extremely disturbed.  That is why except for the occasional tweet I fell silent. I have never been extreme in my reactions or views on anything except maybe Indian cricket (!), so I was even more shocked by the reactions from people I thought I knew well. It was an eye-opener.

I also noticed that whenever I tweeted anything against the Congress it was either re-tweeted or ‘favourited’ . Good for me, because it increased my followers, but it also helped me understand, to a little extent, the mind of the people,  My antipathy to the Congress party is obvious and while I am not going to get into that now, I don’t buy into the Congress argument that the development in Gujarat is just a mirage.  Maybe it isn’t as high as Modi followers claim it is, but it couldn’t be worse than Uttar Pradesh or Bihar – two states that make me feel ashamed of being Indian. I have lived in both these states and both are a grim reminder of everything wrong with governance and politics in this country.

What politicians have done in these two states is nothing short of criminal and some of these fellows should rot in a jail for their misdemeanours. Unfortunately they still flourish because they feed off the poor and illiterate voter. Look at Odisha. People are still selling their children and other family members because they don’t have enough money to buy one square meal. When people living in villages feed of rats and cockroaches instead of rice and dal there is something fundamentally wrong with governance in the country. Take Maharashtra for instance. Farmers have been dying in Vidarbha by the dozens but yet politicians like Sharad Pawar shrug it away as something of little consequence. When dams dry up and drought looms on the horizon, ministers like Ajit Pawar ask if they should pee in the dams.  Who do I blame for that?

There is a section of liberals, fundamentalists and Modi-haters who may rant on about the fact that he doesn’t deserve to be prime minister for the sins of Gujarat, but unfortunately (for them), Modi seems to be the majority’s choice and if majority opinions translate into votes then Modi it will be – whether we like it or not. In other words, we get the politician and the government we deserve.

To me, Narendra Modi is no better or worse than any other politician this country has had since 1947. There have been many others like him who have pretended that they had no hand in riots that erupted in their States.  There have been so many politicians and prime ministers who have either engineered caste and religious riots in the country or have done nothing when riots occurred, and have then shed crocodile tears for the dead. Modi is just another one of the same breed.

That is why my admiration for Arvind Kejriwal has grown. A year ago no one in his right mind would have thought that Arvind Kejriwal and his Aam Aadmi Party would be taken seriously by the political class or the country’s media. Today he is being spoken of as a future prime minister – a bit far-fetched, I think, but what the hell – no harm in dreaming! Here have been many politicians who made a

Why has he suddenly become a political force, and more importantly, someone who is being feared by the political class? The feeling I get is they don’t really know what he’ll do next. They thought he would protest time and again and go back to governing, like they do. Instead, he spent a night on the street! They thought he would protest for his JanLokpal Bill and go back to his CM’s cabin. Instead, he put in his papers. How many chief ministers would do that? Heck, how many politicians would quit on principle on any issue in this country? When was the last time one did? Madhavrao Scindia, when he was civil aviation minister, following an air crash on December 5, 1992?

Look at what happened in the aftermath of the latest submarine disaster? The Navy chief quit, but the minister stuck to his chair like a leech, and what is worse is that the prime minister defended him. While he accepted that the Navy chief had done the right thing by resigning, he defended his minister for not resigning! But no one thought much about all that, because they were more interested in running down Kejriwal and his party.  And all these jibes and taunts from the media and rivals about his style of politicking have only given Kejriwal the publicity he so badly wanted to bring him onto the national stage.

To me, it is quite simple. Anyone who can make life miserable for the likes of Modi, Rahul Gandhi, Mulayam and the rest, gets my total support! Whatever may be the fate of Kejriwal and his fledgling party in these elections, one has to admit that he has brought in something different from the run-of-the-mill politicians we have been used to all these years. If he is showing them up for the crooks they have been all these years, good for the voter. So more power to the aam aadmi!!

The rise of AAP worries politicians…

The online dictionary describes ‘oxymoron’ (plural oxymora or oxymorons) as a figure of speech that “juxtaposes apparently contradictory elements (it is not however a contradiction in terms)”. Some examples are ‘dark light’, ‘living dead’, ‘little while’, ‘mad wisdom’, ‘mournful optimist’ ‘violent relaxation’ etc etc. Would ‘honest politician’ qualify as an oxymoron? But, we’ll come to that later.

The just concluded Assembly elections, more specifically the one in Delhi, have been the most exciting I have witnessed since the 1977 elections. Just like it was back then, and Jayaprakash Narayan and his rag tag bunch destroyed the Indira Congress, soon after the Emergency was lifted. I poured over reports in the Indian Express about the daredevilry of leaders like George Fernandes who always managed to escape from the clutches of the police. It was stirring stuff. Of course, in a few years the Janata Party belied the hopes of the millions who voted them to power. I am seeing the same excitement now, but let’s also hope the Aam Aadmi Party does not go the same way. It would be a tragedy for Indian politics. Are they employing the scoot and shoot method, as my friend Dr Shobha Shrivastava believes they are? Time will tell.

That brings me to the subject of numbers. Fans and supporters of the BJP seem to forget that in spite of the competent Atal Bihari Vajpayee and the work he had done in the five years he was at the helm of affairs his government was still removed from power. They must have done something wrong because in 2004, over 670 million people voted, some for them and more, against. For them India wasn’t really shining. Still it was a close fight, but in the end the Congress managed to gather up their friends and supporters and form a government. Whether the BJP couldn’t or didn’t want to will be left to history to decide. The Congress got 145 and the BJP managed 138. However, the Congress and its allies got 276 against the BJP’s 185. So, not too many ‘friends’ were willing to support the BJP even then. Wonder why…

So the question is, if the BJP thinks it is so damn good how come they only managed 32 seats in Delhi? And even if they haven’t, why don’t they form a minority government if they are so concerned about the people? I am sure both AAP, and the Congress will support them on issues that will help the people of Delhi. But since they won’t, they – the party and its self-appointed PR machinery – should shut up and let the people decide, instead of putting the blame on the AAP.  Suddenly everyone is worried about the cost of another election to the nation. Why weren’t they protesting when Sonia Gandhi’s government rammed the Food Bill down our throats or when they were busy pushing through other populist schemes?

And that brings me to the oxymoron bit…

The campaign being orchestrated to discredit and malign Arvind Kejriwal and his Aam Aadmi Party is quite ironic. Ironic, because calling Kejriwal and AAP corrupt, amoral and immoral, is like the old adage of the black pot and the kettle! Like they never had a party functionary who was caught on camera stuffing notes into a table drawer; or being caught on camera receiving cash inducements in return for raising questions in the Parliament; or built huge business empires overnight; or were photographed in bed with multiple partners; or sired illegitimate children; or had mistresses and more than one wife hidden away somewhere and pretended they didn’t exist; had illegal relationships; or rigged the elections; or killed their wives/mistresses/girl friends and stuffed them into unusual places; or were caught allegedly snooping; or allegedly massacred thousands in the name of dead leaders, God and religion (in that order)…The list is endless.

So pipe down, people! If Arvind Kejriwal and his party are as corrupt as some people claim they are, they will meet the same fate as the other politicians have around the country. The competence of a person can only be judged after you see him or her at work. So let the AAP do that for some time and then let the voter decide. The voter is no fool, and does not need friends and well wishers going on ad nauseam about the vices of the AAP. They brought the party to power so let them realise what they have themselves in. Isn’t that what elections are all about? If voters are to be brainwashed or coerced why not just tell them to sit at home and cast a vote on their behalf, or give them voting slips of other voters? Now, please don’t tell me that never happened. I’ve personally experienced at least one of the above, in a VVIP constituency! It was a shameful exercise by the party machinery, which was terrified that their blue-eyed boy was about to be thrown out. They did the only thing they were good at – they rigged the entire election process and sent him back to the Lok Sabha.

People are tired of the same old politician telling them the same old lies, year after year. Isn’t that what happened in Delhi? Politicians are also worried about the impact the Delhi results will have on the rest of the country. The very existence of the professional politician is being threatened by a bunch of nobodies and that has to be stopped at any cost. Right now Kejriwal seems incorruptible. The dirt being thrown at him and his party is not sticking and by the time it does, they could be well on their way to becoming a national entity. The fact is, the AAP did what no other party in India’s political history managed to do. What if they try out that experiment on a national scale and some of their candidates even manage to win? Imagine, if in big  states like Delhi, Maharashtra, UP, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, MP, Gujarat and Bihar the AAP and like-minded parties put up 50-60 squeaky clean, efficient and hard working candidates against the old boys club, and they win. They could then be a pressure group in Lok Sabha that could raise a lot of uncomfortable questions. That is what is scaring the hell out of political parties today. Serves them right!!

Sheila Dikshit had it coming…

I tweeted on Sunday that Arvind Kejriwal has proved to voters across the country that it is possible to win an election without pandering to caste and religion. To that I’ll add money and muscle power. What he has also proved is that you can be nobody but if you believe in yourself, nothing can stop you. In one short sentence, Arvind Kejriwal has rewritten the political rule book.

People like Mayawati, Mulayam Singh and Lalu Prasad won elections by creating this hoodoo that the existence of anyone who was not a Brahmin was under threat. This whole nonsense of social justice has been re-engineered to bring in votes and not prosperity to the Dalits. Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar championed the cause of the ‘downtrodden’ but those who use his name to climb up the political ladder don’t really care about Dalits or anyone else. Kejriwal has turned that stereotyped assumption on its head. What he does from here on, will be watched closely. If he can accomplish even 20 per cent of what he promised, in the first few years, I think he would have done his job.

I am also thinking whether all those who dismissed him as some kind of Dharti Pakad, are now looking for a place to hide. For those of you who are wondering who Dharti Pakad is, it is the nickname of at least three eccentrics who contested elections unsuccessfully. There was this one particular guy, with the same nickname in the 1980s and 1990s who had contested against every prime minister since Independence. He won only a handful of votes every time, lost his deposit, but he contested. And he became the ‘side show’ of every election.

Kejriwal has proved to everyone he is no Dharti Pakad. And I, for one am delighted, firstly, because I had predicted that he would surprise a few people; secondly because he rubbed Sheila’s Dikshit’s nose to the ground and thirdly and more importantly, because he showed both the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party that he wasn’t going to be cowed down by the dirt they threw at him.

And that brings me to Sheila Dikshit. I think the Delhi voter, especially women, had made up their minds to kick her out on this Election Day, exactly a year ago on that chilly morning in December, when they came out on the streets to protest against the gang-rape of the medical student. Dikshit, ever the smug politician, shrugged off responsibility by saying that the security of Delhi was the job of the Lt. Governor, and then added fuel to the fire by saying that she had two grown-up daughters and would ask them to come home early, because Delhi’s streets were not safe enough. These comments and others as the agitation picked up steam didn’t really do much for her image. It was only when Sonia Gandhi stepped out of her residence one night to meet protestors warming themselves around a bonfire on a chilly Delhi night that Dikshit decided to meet the protestors. When she did that she was jostled and roundly booed.

No amount of good work or infrastructure you usher in can take the place of a compassionate society. And when Delhiites, with the rest of the country prayed for that brave young girl who fought for her life even as she was strapped to a ventilator, Sheila Dikshit showed us that as a woman and as a chief minister she was callous and lacked compassion. She seemed more interested in scoring brownie points with her adversaries. No amount of damage control helped after that.

Information from the election coverage sent to me by a former student, who covered the polls, says that women and middle-aged voters spewed venom against Sheila Dikshit because of her complete apathy towards women’s safety. Every woman felt that despite the fact that it’s been a year since the gang-rape, nothing had changed. I am sure if and when there is a re-election in Delhi in the next six months and God forbid she decides to contest, they will come out in even greater numbers to vote against her. Dikshit never deserves to return if she cannot guarantee the safety of young women and girls in her State. And the results in Delhi should be a wake-up call for those who rule in Maharashtra, because they have been displaying the same blinkered attitude toward women’s safety.

Coming to the BJP, those people who would like us to believe that Narendra Modi did not play a role in the four states that went to the polls are only deluding themselves. The fact is that his presence helped bring in the crowds which became voters in large numbers on Election Day. I was one of those who said to a friend on Facebook that a big crowd doesn’t necessarily translate into votes, so I guess I was a little off the mark. I don’t know if there was a wave or whatever they want to call it, because things were pretty tight in two of the four states.

Had there been a ‘wave’ the BJP would have trampled over all opposition in all four states. Coming to Modi himself, while there will always be those who will continue to highlight his role in the Gujarat riots – and they have every right to do – I think a lot of people have moved on from 2001 – just like they have moved on from 1984. Modi and his cohorts will be and should be brought to justice if they can find anything against them, but the world isn’t going to stop for that. The voter has just told us that.