by admin | May 25, 2021 | Interviews
Salman Khurshid
By Sarwar Kashani and V.S. Chandrasekar,
New Delhi : A united opposition needs to decide about its leadership “sooner than later” based on “ground realities” to fight the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the next Lok Sabha elections, says senior Congress leader and former minister Salman Khurshid.
He also strongly favours a pre-poll arrangement between all opposition parties as he feels that post-elections it “becomes more of a number game and encourages horse-trading”.
“I prefer that there is an arrangement before the elections,” Khurshid, a former external affairs minister in the government of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, told IANS in an interview.
He said that issue of leadership would be decided at an appropriate time without falling “prey” to the BJP trying to create fissures and confusion in the joint opposition camp.
“For each one of us, our leader is important. But the fact is also that the Congress is the leading party. The leading party, however, is not the only party. You may be the first amongst equals.
“You may have the possibility or the potential of being the largest party. But what should be done in such circumstances? That is for the leaders to decide, instead of us speaking out of turn and making their job more difficult… but sooner than later they will have to decide.”
He said current political circumstances in the country have made coalition so necessary that you cannot even wait for five years, hoping that, maybe, a coalition would no longer be needed by then.
“Waiting for five years might put things in such a way that you will not have a chance at all. If there is a consensus of coalition today, we should go for a coalition. This I think is the rational and sensible view.”
Asked if the Congress was ready to be flexible and play second fiddle if needed and let a leader from a smaller party be in the driver’s seat, he said it was “a wrong way of looking at it”.
“We should be sensible. When I say ‘we’ it is all parties. And all parties should be objective, conscious of ground realities and possibilities and conscious of the experience that we all have.”
He said somebody better experienced to handle a state could be given that job and somebody better equipped to handle a government that deals with the world should be allowed to do that.
“Somebody may have a concentration of large number of seats in a state where the Congress doesn’t have that many seats. But when they come to Delhi, they will have to deal with the Congress that may have larger number of seats from different parts of the country. All of us should sensibly look at this to find the right solution.”
Six months after a CBI court ruled that there was no proven scam in the 2G case, Khurshid, who is also a former law minister, has authored a new book “Spectrum Politics: Unveiling the Defence” (by Rupa Publications), in which he suggests, among other things, that the Congress needs a bit of BJP like the BJP needs a bit of the Congress to survive.
What does it mean? Khurshid explained that the Congress didn’t fight the BJP allegations of corruption and minority appeasement before the 2014 elections as aggressively as it should have. Resultantly, its leadership was demoralised and had accepted defeat even before contesting.
“The Congress has already realised that we had become the target and vulnerable to an unfair attack on us both on the grounds of corruption and grounds of appeasement.”
Asked how the Congress was countering the BJP narrative with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, its biggest crowd puller, Khurshid said his party needed to become a better story-teller.
“We should not worry only about arithmetic. We should also worry about the poetry of democracy. We must know how to talk, converse, dialogue and sell dreams. This is how we must train all our leaders to be. That’s the way we will succeed. We have (less time). Therefore we have to work hard. Work overnight.”
He said the Congress also needed to draw “strategically correct balance between issues related to majority and minorities in the country”.
“They (the BJP) have found fault with our strategy and we must now rectify our strategy.
“We have to understand that the majority has a stake in this country. You can’t vaguely ever assume that majority doesn’t have the stake because majority is the power of democracy. Why should the BJP have a monopoly or claim a monopoly over the majority?”
He said this “soft belly” of the Congress that the BJP has often targeted “has to be hardened”.
Asked if Congress President Rahul Gandhi’s temple runs was the party’s “soft Hindutva” strategy, the former minister said he was going to temples as part of “a strategic message that we will balance the rights of majority and minority”.
He said it was not a tilt or a shift towards majority, but a message of the Congress’ strategic equality “that we have always believed in”.
“But periodically you might need something to show more of it.”
He said there was no need for the minorities to get “wrong signals unnecessarily” about it.
(Sarwar Kashani and V.S. Chandrasekar can be contacted at sarwar.k@ians.in and chandru.v@ians.in)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Opinions
By Amulya Ganguli,
It will be a mistake to ascribe the defeats of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the Kairana, Noorpur and Bhandara-Gondiya by-elections in Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra only to the tie-ups among its opponents.
While there is little doubt that in Kairana, an alliance of the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD), the Samajwadi Party (SP), the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and the Congress led to the BJP’s defeat, it is also undeniable that the combine wouldn’t have worked if the Muslims, Dalits, backward castes and the Jats hadn’t turned against the BJP.
It is for the BJP to ascertain why they did so when a section of the economists is sanguine about the party’s prospects because of low inflation and high — 7.7 per cent — growth.
But the economy may not boost the party’s fortunes in a context of social fissures. As those associated with the Muslim and Christian communities like former Vice President Hamid Ansari and the Archbishop of Delhi, Anil Couto, have said, both the communities are living with a sense of insecurity. The reason apparently is the fear of suddenly being attacked and even killed by saffron groups on one pretext or another.
The unhappiness of the Dalits, too, has been obvious in the wake of several instances of lynching and the continuing tension in Uttar Pradesh’s Saharanpur area between the upper caste Rajputs and the Dalits, one of whose leaders, Chandrashekar Azad “Ravan”, has been in indefinite detention.
It is obvious that with sizable sections of the Muslims, who constitute 14.2 per cent of the population, Dalits (16.6 per cent) and Christians (2.3 per cent) alienated from the BJP, its chances of electoral success cannot be very high. The party did beat the odds against it in this respect in 2014, but that was because of the expectations of rapid, employment-oriented development raised by Narendra Modi.
Arguably, these hopes may still be fulfilled if the present growth rate continues. But jobs cannot provide any solace to people who feel that they are second class citizens in today’s India, as a retired police officer, Julio Ribeiro, has said.
The angst of the minorities has combined with the realisation among the BJP’s opponents that the only way to defeat it is via electoral tie-ups among themselves. This is what happened in Kairana, where a combined opposition seamlessly garnered the votes of the Muslims, the Dalits, the backward castes and the Jats.
It was the same in Noorpur, where the SP candidate received the support of the other opposition parties, and in Bhandara-Gondiya, where the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and the Congress successfully put up a untied fight against the BJP.
The formula, therefore, for success against the BJP is clear — unite or perish. As West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee once said, the objective should be to offer the BJP a one-to-one fight by parties which are the most influential in a certain region.
If this is done, victory is assured as the Rashtriya Janata Dal’s three successive victories in Araria, Jehanabad and Jokihat in Bihar against the ruling Janata Dal-United have shown.
If the BJP managed to win in Palghar in Maharashtra against the Shiv Sena, it was because the latter’s over-confidence made it go it alone. Yet, the Sena’s leader, Uddhav Thackeray, recently spoke of the need for an opposition alliance against the BJP.
There is little doubt that the recent by-election victories, along with the formation of the Janata Dal (Secular)-Congress government in Karnataka, are being seen as precursors to a combined opposition at the national level.
If such a unity is achieved, it presages troubled times for the BJP because there is no way it can withstand such a concerted offensive. In a way, the united opposition will be a replica of the 24-member coalition government under Atal Behari Vajpayee which began to fall apart in the aftermath of the 2002 Gujarat riots.
In the present instance, the threat to an anti-BJP alliance is posed by the ambitions of several of its players — Rahul Gandhi, Mamata Banerjee, Mayawati, Sharad Pawar — to be the Prime Minister.
The BJP may be banking on such dissonance to stave off any challenge. But the party will nevertheless be aware that the ease with which it ascended to power in 2014 will be absent during the next general election for two reasons.
One is the sign that Modi’s appeal is not as overwhelming as it once was, if only because the anticipated revving up of the economy is taking time. And the other is the sameness of his criticism of the Congress — corruption, dynasty, et al. The party paid a heavy price for these sins in 2014 and lambasting it over and over again on the same issues runs the risk of what is known in legal terminology as double jeopardy where a person cannot be convicted of the same offence twice.
The political scene is poised, therefore, between the possibility of Modi not being as effective a campaigner as before and the opposition trying to counter him while battling its own fissiparous tendencies.
(Amulya Ganguli is a political analyst. The views expressed are personal. He can be reached at amulyaganguli@gmail.com)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Opinions
By Amulya Ganguli,
If Narendra Modi expected Karnataka to be the icing on the cake on the eve of the completion of his four years in office, he must be disappointed.
Yet, the setback in the southern state is only one of the several reverses which the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has suffered in the recent past. These include a series of by-election defeats in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar and UP, which have not been adequately compensated by the party’s successes in the northeast. That’s because electoral outcomes in the country’s heartland have a greater salience than those in a region generally regarded as remote.
Considering that three more assembly elections are due in the next few months where the BJP is facing the anti-incumbency factor, it is obvious that Modi’s fourth anniversary is not the happiest of occasions. Several things appear to have gone wrong for the Prime Minister and his party. Foremost among them is the general bleakness of the economic scene because of the paucity of jobs and the continuing agrarian distress.
But even more than the economic woes — which have led to the blanking out of the phrase ‘achhe din’ (good days) from the saffron lexicon — what may have hurt the government even more is an intimidating atmosphere generated by a political project of virtually remoulding Indian society by obliterating all the supposed ignominy which the country is said to have suffered during the 1,200 years of “slavery” under Muslim and British rule. Not surprisingly, the 60-odd years of Congress rule have been included in this period of “alien” governance.
Hence, the rewriting of history textbooks and the packing of autonomous academic institutions with people in tune with the ruling party’s thinking. These have been accompanied by the veneration of the cow and the targeting of “suspected” beef-eaters.
It is this imposition of the saffron writ which made former Vice President Hamid Ansari say that the Muslims were living in fear and led to protests by writers, historians, film makers and others within the first 12 months of Modi’s rule who returned the awards which they had once won.
Instead of analysing why so many distinguished people were expressing their disquiet, the government and the BJP chose to dismiss them as “manufactured protests”, in Arun Jaitley’s words, and the dissatisfaction of a section which has lost the privileges which it had enjoyed under the previous dispensation. Evidently, the BJP believed that it was on the right track — in fact, the protests may have reinforced this self-perception — and that there was no need for a rethink.
Little wonder that the government took no notice of the two open letters written to it by groups of retired civil servants and a third by more than 600 academics, including those in the US, Britain and Australia. While the bureaucrats expressed distress at the decline of “secular, democratic and liberal values”, the educationists regretted that not enough was being done for the vulnerable groups.
There is little doubt that the government has taken a number of initiatives to reach out to these groups. In a way, these “small” measures have mitigated to some extent the effects of the faltering on the macroeconomic front.
Among these measures is the Jan Dhan Yojana relating to small savings by ordinary people via a large number of bank accounts. However, although nearly all the households are now said to have access to banks, the number of people with inactive accounts is embarrassingly high.
It is the same with cooking gas connections, where consumption has not kept pact with the higher number of households with such facilities. There have been similar shortfalls on the cleanliness (Swachh Bharat) and electrification programmes as well.
According to official figures, 72.6 million household toilets have been built since 2014 and there are now 366,000 defecation-free villages. But the absence of independent verification of these claims has led to the World Bank withholding a $1.5 billion loan for these rural programmes.
Similarly, the official assertion about cent per cent electrification of the country has generally been taken with a pinch of salt since government data shows that there are still 31 million households without power and that the percentage reaches 60 in UP, Jharkhand and Assam.
It is on the highways’ front that visible progress has been made with the raising of the construction target to 45 km per day from 27 km. The employment potential of such infrastructure projects is also high. Since 100 per cent foreign investment is allowed in this sector, an estimated $82 billion is expected for it in the next four years.
But all these initiatives should really have been an add-on to an atmosphere of economic buoyancy which is absent. This has been noted by a pro-Modi economist, who has said that the people are yet to see their lives improve materially. Unless this perception changes with, say, an implementation of the Modicare programme of medical insurance in the next few months, the government will not be able to look forward to next year’s general election with high hopes.
(Amulya Ganguli is a political analyst. He can be reached at amulyaganguli@gmail.com)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Corporate, Corporate Governance, News, Politics
Venkaiah Naidu
Agartala : Vice-President M. Venkaiah Naidu on Wednesday said that the GST and demonetisation were “revolutionary steps” taken by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, adding that many international institutions were highly appreciative of India’s growth.
“With the introduction of GST (Goods and Services Tax) and demonetisation, the Prime Minister took revolutionary steps. The GST revenue in April has crossed Rs 1.4 lakh crore, indicating high hopes for the new tax regime,” Naidu said in his convocation address at the Tripura University here.
He said: “Due to such reforms,India’s growth was projected around 9 per cent in 2022. Now is the era of LPG — Liberalisation, Privatisation and Globalisation. The mantra of our Prime Minister is Reform, Perform and Transform.”
Asking the students to learn and promote their mother tongue, the Vice-President said that if they wanted to go abroad they should study there but return to India to enrich its human resource.
“For higher education and any other purposes, English is not necessary. Respect your mother, mother tongue and motherland. British cheated our minds. People of many countries do not speak English. You can learn English, but not at the cost of your mother tongue.”
“Do not celebrate any festival in memory of Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru. Respect and celebrate the real “guru” (teacher) of your life. Don’t always go for Google search, replace Google by “guru.”
He also emphasised that horticulture, floriculture and cultivation of medicinal plants could hold great prospects for northeastern states.
The 11th convocation of the Tripura University was held after five years. As many as 142 scholars received Ph.D. degrees and around 400 students from many streams received gold and silver medals.
Vice-Chancellor Anjan Kumar Ghosh said that since 2015, the central varsity had decided to admit international students.
“Nearly a dozeen students from Bangladesh applied online and were admitted to various programmes. Now, students from Bangladesh are joining our Ph.D courses,” he added.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Opinions
By Amit Kapoor,
The drama revolving around the Karnataka state elections refuses to fade away. The assembly election results were not able to provide a clear mandate to any party. The BJP emerged as the single largest party but popular rivals Congress and JD-S forged an alliance within hours of the announcement of the result after realising that the coalition will have the numbers to form the government.
This paved the way for the controversy about who should first be invited by the Governor: the party with the largest number of seats or the post-election alliance with majority seats. The Governor sided with the BJP, and B.S. Yeddyurappa was sworn in as the Chief Minister. But this decision was challenged by the Congress and petitions were filed in the Supreme Court. The Court ordered a floor test but Yeddyurappa resigned before this could be conducted.
Amidst all this chaos and despite the final verdict, BJP has emerged as a clear winner. Its vote share increased from 19.9 percent to 36.2 percent, and the party was able to up its tally by almost 64 seats and gained the much-needed momentum for the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. On the other hand, Congress and JD-S both have suffered losses in the number of seats — that of the Congress going down from 122 to 78 and the JD-S securing three less that the 37 seats it had in the outgoing house.
One of the biggest questions that emerges from these results is what went wrong for Congress or to put it in other words, how was the BJP able to swing public support in its favour? Was the electorate just living up to its reputation of not re-electing the ruling party since 1985 or was it the way parties conducted their election campaigns? The search for the answer leads us to the bigger question of what makes Indian voters tick.
An analysis of the electoral outcome provides the answer. The analysis predicted that Congress party has just 18 percent chance of coming back to power in Karnataka. It took into account a) average growth in per capita GSDP for the last three years, b) the average change in Social Progress scores for the last three years, c) consumer and business confidence and d) media presence to understand the voting dynamics of world’s largest democracy.
The growth in per capita GSDP and change in regional social progress reflect how the economic and social benefits accrued to the citizens due to the policies of the state government. Consumer confidence and business confidence captured the trust that people have in the central government. The last indicator captured the interest enjoyed by the political parties.
There are three things that shape up the voting behaviour in India.
First, social issues. The analysis brings out that while casting their vote, people keep in mind two major social issues – inclusion and wellbeing. Inclusion encompasses indicators that capture how acceptable a region is towards minorities and other socially backward groups, and how they treat women. An inclusive incumbent increases its chances of coming back to power by 3.6 percent. And if the voters feel that the party will work towards basic wellbeing such as healthcare and education, its chances move up by 2.1 percent.
The BJP was able to target both issues. The BJP rallies focussed on the pro-poor initiatives and welfare schemes. The issues included providing gas connections, electrifying rural India, Swachh Bharat Mission for an open defecation free country, health benefits, housing for the poor and financial inclusion et al.
Second, media interactions. Media is among the major factors that help voters form their opinion and affects voter’s perception about the leaders and political parties. According to the analysis, an incumbent’s chances of re-election increase by 28 percent if it enjoys more social media interest than the rival parties. The interactions on media are of high significance because it provides voters with the facts and figures that can help them to make informed choices.
Nowadays, apart from traditional sources of media, social media platforms are being leveraged by the political parties to interact with voters. Citizens also use social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook to participate in political discussions and communicate with leaders. The right use of social media can help political parties swing public opinion in their favour. Although all the parties upped their social media game compared to the Gujarat elections, data shows that 51 percent of the tweets were in favour of BJP. The Google trends data also shows that the interest was in favour of BJP and not the incumbent.
Third, confidence in the party. The analysis predicted that if the citizens trust the central government and the same party rules the state then the chances of an incumbent getting re-elected increase by 9 percent. The BJP banked on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s popularity to attract voters in Karnataka. Modi is known for connecting with the voters, and therefore he enjoys overwhelming support from the citizens. Congress President Rahul Gandhi has still not been able to build that trust in the minds of voters, and this drives down the confidence that party has in the party.
All these factors together worked in favour of BJP. The lesson in the run-up to other state elections is that parties should bank on the social issues that people face and leverage traditional and modern media platforms to garner interest in their favour.
(Dr Amit Kapoor is chair, Institute for Competitiveness. The views expressed are personal. He can be contacted at Amit.Kapoor@competitiveness.in and tweets @kautiliya. Manisha Kapoor, senior researcher, Institute for Competitiveness has contributed to the article)
—IANS
