by admin | May 25, 2021 | News, Politics
By Mayabhushan Nagvenkar,
Panaji : Less than a week after Goa Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar, suffering from pancreatic cancer, was rushed to the US for treatment, his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led coalition government already appears to be shaky and dissent-ridden.
Signs of a seeming implosion in the coalition, caused by the absence of the authoritarian Chief Minister, can be seen in recent statements by not just coalition partners but also by frustrated BJP MLAs, who are now questioning their own party and government’s resolve to find solutions to an impending ban on mining.
BJP MLA Nilesh Cabral is one of the faces of dissent.
Cabral, who has in the past found fault with the government’s will vis-a-vis tackling the mining ban, has now also questioned the protocol created by Parrikar to govern Goa in his absence, which involves a three-minister committee and a slew of powers to Chief Secretary Dharmendra Sharma and Parrikar’s Principal Secretary, P. Krishnamurthy.
“Today, we have practically no government. With due respect to the Chief Minister it is very clear there is no governance happening,” Cabral said. “The CM is not here to take cabinet (meetings) and he has given some powers to the three. Who will chair the meeting? This has become confusing. I do not find any solution in this,” Cabral added.
Cabral represents the Curchorem constituency in the state’s mining belt, which is expected to bear the brunt of the Supreme Court-imposed ban on mining in the coastal state from March 16, to facilitate fresh issue of 88 mining leases.
The BJP MLA also claimed that no visible effort was made by the Goa government to find ways and means to resolve the issue, despite the fact that the Supreme Court order was delivered last month.
Deputy Speaker Michael Lobo, a BJP member, is also openly critical of his government’s lack of decision-making and has subtly dared the party’s central leaders, including Union Minister Nitin Gadkari, to urgently visit Goa and assure the state that a solution would be found to work around the ban.
“The BJP leaders who came down to Goa after the elections like Mr. Gadkari, should come to Goa now and assure the people that there is a plan to solve this problem. Over 100,000 Goans will be affected by the mining ban,” Lobo told IANS.
He also wanted Parrikar, who has already been admitted to a hospital in the US, to urgently speak to the party’s central leadership over phone and implore them to find a solution to the mining imbroglio.
Parrikar, as Chief Minister, has always been known to run a tight ship, cracking down on even the slightest whimper of dissent from his flock. But his absence has now emboldened leaders of the party’s coalition partners.
Deepak Dhavalikar, president of the Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party, following a meeting of its central committee, has raised a question mark over the future of the alliance — especially due to the severe nature of Parrikar’s ailment.
“Till he is the Chief Minister, we are there with the government,” Dhavalikar has maintained.
The legacy of controversial, unpopular decisions of successive BJP-led coalition governments, like renewing mining leases in favour of tainted companies, U-turns on assurances to ban the casino industry, support to increased coal handling at Goa’s only major port, nationalisation of rivers and now the intra-government chaos, as well as the shroud of secrecy surrounding the Chief Minister’s illness, has triggered a rising trend of criticism against Parrikar, especially on social media, a fact that former Deputy Chief Minister and a member of the three-member ministerial committee Francis D’Souza concurs with.
“It is quite disturbing… Lot of things are happening which are not very palatable and are not right. I do not know whether it is political or not, but the fact is it is coming up on the social media,” D’Souza said.
And fatalistic apprehensions by BJP lawmakers like Cabral appears to be only adding to the chaos.
(Mayabhushan Nagvenkar can be contacted at mayabhushan.n@ians.in )
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Opinions
By Saeed Naqvi,
The extraordinary feat the BJP has pulled off leaves one breathless. Which other Chief Minister in the country will have a decorated Director General of Police, B.L. Vohra, write in his book, “Tripura’s Bravehearts”, “Manik Sarkar was definitely unlike any Chief Ministers whom I had seen, met, worked with and heard about…. He was honest personally and that had percolated down to all echelons of the government — again one cannot find many examples of his ilk unfortunately in the country.” This level of decency has been traded by the Tripura electorate for mobs who pull down statues.
The universal assessment of Manik Sarkar even among opposition leaders in Tripura would flatter any politician. It was not just that he was himself a gentleman but he appeared to have instilled his qualities in his cabinet colleagues and the administration across the board. By all accounts, his predecessor and guru, Nripen Chakraborty, was even more admirable. The staff in the Chief Minister’s house had never ever dreamt that they would serve a boss whose groceries were purchased on a ration card and who never saved enough money to open a bank account. This may be syrupy stuff in an era when materialism is the mantra, but do, for a moment, reflect on the Chakraborty-Sarkar duo against the amoral wasteland that stretches as far as the eye can see.
Also, it is elementary that 25 years of CPI-M rule could not have lasted only because of the leadership’s decency. Despite the economic crunch, the government in Agartala implemented every central scheme with greater efficiency than any other state. Ninety-six per cent literacy? Show me another state. The gender ratio is something of a record. That is how Tripura’s middle class was created. True, having created a new middle class, the government found itself flat-footed. It could not cope with the next stage of aspirations. It produced distributive justice but found itself bereft of ideas to generate wealth to accommodate the educated unemployed and to promote two-wheel drivers to the four-wheel level.
Upon arrival in Agartala, I was able to find accommodation only in a government guest house. When I asked the Chief Minister if the absence of reasonable hotels was state policy, he was frank: “We are not in a position to cope with social imbalances that come with five-star hotels, bars and restaurants.”
This may sound odd, but the reasons for the rout of Sarkar’s Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) in Tripura are, to some extent, similar to the ones responsible for the decline of West Indian cricket.
Never again will the likes of Weekes, Sobers, Viv Richards, Michael Holding and Brian Lara adorn world cricket. In the 1970s and the 1980s, the West Indies cricket team was like Don Bradman’s invincibles. The culture of cricket was their inheritance from the British colonial period.
Aggressive globalisation of the 1990s placed the West Indies in the sphere of American media. US centered television beamed at the islanders, not cricketers but basketball and baseball stars like Michael Jordan and Jose Ramirez, with proselytising persistence. Within a generation, all that remained of the cricketing legends were their fading photographs in the scrap books of schoolboys of the 1980s in former British colonies.
A CPI-M government in Tripura was, likewise, as remote from any Left-ruled enclave as the West Indies are from cricket’s birth place. After the end of Left rule in West Bengal, it had no structure to lean on. In this friendless era it was exposed to hostile TV bombardment. Riding the crest of economic liberalisation, market fundamentalism galloped at breakneck speed to accommodate advertising for rampaging consumerism marketed by dream merchants, architects of plush malls and multiplexes.
CPI-M Chief Minister Manik Sarkar’s controlled austerities withstood this barrage of televised razzmatazz for 25 years. By this time another generation had arisen, torn between a lifestyle of simplicity and the Eldorado on the horizon that metropolitan centres of control teased and tempted them with.
Agartala is in trauma. Before they find their feet, the stunned CPI-M cadres are having to adjust to another reality: Party sympathisers are suddenly not making eye contact with them. Some, with an eye on the main chance, have been seen on the margins of mobs attacking CPI-M offices, even pulling down of the Lenin statue.
To a considerable extent, the outcome in Tripura and elsewhere in the northeast is the Congress’ gift to the BJP. Himanta Biswa Sarma, a genius in electoral management, walked out of the Congress because he could not bear Rahul Gandhi’s insulting silences. Tarun Gagoi, the former Assam Chief Minister, was eager to create his own dynasty, make his son Gaurav the Chief Minister. This would cut out Sarma whose political brilliance underpinned the latter half of the Gogoi years.
This kind of a dynamo, backed by money power that would make Nirav Modi salivate and an adversarial Centre controlling the purse strings — this is how the Left was uprooted in Tripura. Just imagine, when state after state is implementing the 7th Pay Commission, Tripura found itself stranded at the 4th Pay Commission. CPI-M dogma also stood in the way: “7th pay commission made some demands which were anti-people.”
The change of cultures was imminent from the day the BJP planted Tathagata Roy as Governor of Tripura. The genteel tone of Chakraborty-Sarkar gave way to a inelegant vocabulary. “They should be buried head first in pig’s excreta,” said the Governor by way of a recommendation for dealing with terrorists.
Pulling down of statues is a milder form of retribution compared to the coarse standards set by the Governor.
(A senior commentator on political and diplomatic affairs, Saeed Naqvi can be reached on saeednaqvi@hotmail.com. The views expressed are personal.)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Opinions
By Amulya Ganguli,
The Shakespearean phrase “fair is foul, foul is fair” can be one way of describing the contradictory nature of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) policies in different parts of the country.
The party’s penchant for trimming its sails in accordance with regional sentiments as, for instance, over the consumption of beef, can also be described in the words of a Hindi film song, “Jo tumko ho pasand wohi baat kahengey” (I will say whatever you want me to say).
While saffron mobs have been assaulting those suspected of eating beef or transporting cattle in northern India, the BJP’s stand in the northeastern states, and also in Goa, is that beef is kosher. When a party spokesman was questioned about this dichotomy during a television debate on the northeastern polls, he used the word, binary, to explain the BJP’s stand.
If this duality indicates an acceptance by the party of India’s diversity and a refusal to abide by the preferences of the orthodox elements that have had a dominating presence in the party till now, it is a welcome development. This step in the direction of multicultural norms can be seen as an accommodative approach which has not been the BJP’s strong point till now although it is the hallmark of all “secular” parties.
However, many people will suspect that this genuflexion towards northeastern sensitivities is no more than an expedient tactical manoeuvre. If the BJP can change its colour once, like a chameleon, it can do so again. It will be advisable, therefore, to wait to see if the BJP is serious or is merely playing political games by trying to pull the wool over the people’s eyes.
The reason for the doubts is that irrespective of the policies which the BJP pursues in the northeast, it is unlikely to change its stance on dietary preferences and other lifestyle issues elsewhere in the country. There is also little doubt that it will find it extremely difficult to pull of the trick of being different parties in different parts of the country without being tied up in knots.
It is unlikely, therefore, that the BJP will look on benignly if any beef parties are held in Nagaland or Meghalaya as they were earlier in Kerala and Tamil Nadu. In all probability, the BJP’s objective is to first establish its political authority in the northeastern states and then try, ever so slowly, to inculcate its culinary fetishes in the society as a whole.
Given, however, the fragile nature of the coalitions it has helped to set up as a “facilitator”, as a spokesman explained the party’s tactics, it is doubtful if the BJP will succeed in persuading the northeasterners to replicate the lifestyles of the denizens of the cow belt if only because the regional outfits which are currently its allies will not like to be seen dancing to the tune of a Hindu-Hindi party.
The gulf will remain, therefore, between the BJP in the northeast and elsewhere in the country. The political implication of this dichotomy is that the party’s ups and downs in its new areas of “conquest” will have only a limited impact on its fortunes in the rest of India in view of the perception of the northeast as a remote, exotic region whose society and politics have no more than a marginal influence on the mainland.
Even then, the BJP will have to come to terms, albeit reluctantly, with the lifestyle of the northeasterners. To do so, the party will have to tweak its own “lifestyle” as it did when it put aside three core items on its agenda in 1996 by shelving the issues of building the Ram temple in Ayodhya, introducing a uniform civil code and scrapping Article 370 conferring special status on Kashmir after it found that no other party was supporting Atal Behari Vajpayee’s first minority government of 13 days.
When he finally returned to power two years later, his emphasis was more on keeping his 24-party coalition together than on pushing the saffron ideology. Narendra Modi is lucky in that the BJP has a majority in the Lok Sabha. But the possibility that the party will not be able to fare as well in the next general election and, therefore, may lose some of the seats it won in northern and western India has made the BJP try to make inroads into the virgin territory of the northeast where it doesn’t have much of a base.
Its main disadvantage in this region is the predominance of Christianity. To win hearts and minds, therefore, the BJP is having to tone down its anti-minority utterances along with denoting its acceptance of the non-vegetarian eating habits of the locals.
What is more, since the BJP doesn’t have too many supporters at the ground level, it has had to co-opt the members of other parties such as the Congress in Tripura. However, what impact the induction of these fair-weather birds will have on the BJP’s organisational cohesion will only be known in the future.
(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 | News, Politics
Mumbai : UPA Chairperson Sonia Gandhi on Friday launched a direct attack against the Modi government, alleging that freedom of the people was “under systematic and sustained assault” as provocative statements from the ruling establishment were neither random nor accidental but “part of a dangerous design”.
Delivering the keynote address at the India Today Conclave 2018 here, the former Congress President all that was being done by attempts to rewrite history, falsifying facts and attacking nation builders.
“Our society, our freedom all are now under systematic and sustained assault. Make no mistake about it. This is a well sort out project long in the making to refashion the very idea of India,” Gandhi said.
“The freedom to think for oneself and differ and degree and to meet or marry according to ones wishes all this and more are under attack.
“Provocative statements from the ruling establishment are not random or accidental. They are part of a dangerous design,” she said and added that vigilante mobs and private armies have been let loose with state patronage.
She said callous remarks were being made about changing the Constitution of the country that “point to a deliberate attempt to subvert the very essence of India”.
“Parliamentary majority is being interpreted as a licence to stifle debate. Our freedoms are under attack. Our people are increasingly impatient,” Gandhi said.
She asserted that it was not in her nature to be a “voice of gloom and doom but we need to see things the way they are”.
“The evidence of this new and deeply troubling direction is there for every one to see. Fear and intimidation are the order of the day, alternative voices are being silenced. In far too many cases through violence and even murder.”
She spoke about the violence against Dalits and minorities saying there was “shocking insensitivity to atrocities on Dalits”.
“Society has been polarised with an eye for winning elections. Religious tensions are being fueled.”
Gandhi also took a dig at Modi for his frequent coining of acronyms in the name schemes and government programmes.
“We need to move fast, but fast, F.A.S.T., cannot stand for First Act, Second Think. Acronymising can be contagious,” she said to a laughter from the audience.
“India is a great country, a wonderful country, let us protect it, cherish it,” Gandhi said, ending her speech to a loud applause.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | News, Politics
By Mohit Dubey,
Lucknow : Having apparently succeeded in making some inroads into the Muslim community, specially among women, by aggressively campaigning against “triple talaaq”, the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) has begun a second and subtle round of wooing the minorities. The move assumes significance in the run-up to the crucial 2019 Lok Sabha polls, where the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) under Prime Minister Narendra Modi would be seeking a second term.
While the RSS — the BJP’s ideological parent — vehemently denies that it is “doing anything of this sort”, its affiliate organisations like the Muslim Rashtriya Manch (MRM) have undertaken an aggressive plan to romance the minorities, particularly women. And for this, they have started first-of-its-kind initiatives like monthly pensions for divorced Muslim women, and freebies like books and uniforms for orphans in many parts of the country.
In Uttar Pradesh alone, which accounts for 80 of the Lok Sabha’s 543 elected seats, the MRM has adopted some 700 families under its unique pension scheme that is being run in Varanasi, Gorakhpur and the Bundelkhand region. Muslims comprise about 20 percent of Uttar Pradesh’s 220 million population.
Denying any RSS role in these pro-minority moves, Indresh Kumar, the “guide” of the MRM, says the organisation was being run by “nationalist and well-meaning Muslims who wanted their community to shun dogmas and become progressive in life”. Talking to IANS, he said that they were moving fast in the direction of achieving their objectives. “Hum tez gati se aage badh rahe hain,” he mused while pointing out how the number of volunteers was swelling, “irrespective of the negative portrayal by the media”.
He added that initiatives like the monthly pension scheme of Rs 500 per divorced woman were efforts to “bring light” to the otherwise dark and gloomy setting these women are forced to live in.
“Ye rajnaitik nahin, ek imandaar prayaas hai ki jo ye andhera phailaya hai usme roshni bhari jaye” (this is not political, it is an honest effort to bring some light in their lives), Indresh Kumar told IANS.
Sources confirmed that while there is now ownership by the RSS of such public events and programmes, it was covertly moving to “inform and educate people about the nationalistic and people-friendly policies of the BJP governments, especially to Muslims who are not favorably disposed towards the saffron camp”.
Building on the initial “thaw in mindset” that began with the introduction of the bill against triple talaaq by the Narendra Modi government at the Centre, the organisation has increased its focus on the state, as is evident from the growing number of visits by RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat to Uttar Pradesh — and his longer stays — as well as “on-the-ground” activities that are being undertaken by the affiliates of RSS.
The MRM has also rolled out a free foodgrain scheme for Muslim families in Modi’s Varanasi parliamentary constituency. This scheme initially targets 800 families in poor slum dwellings and would be taken further as and when our resources increase, an official informed.
At a convention at the Ayodhya Shodh Sansthan auditorium this week, the presence of a large number of Muslim women buoyed the spirits of RSS mandarins who feel that the “outreach’s response is more than a trickle now”. Muslim women openly spoke of their support to Modi’s anti-triple divorce move and also extended their support to the demand of a grand Ram temple at the disputed site in Ayodhya.
Shabana Azmi, a professor with the Arabic Culture Department at Lucknow University, told the crowd at the Ayodhya convention that Lord Rama was “one of the 1.24 lakh Nabis sent by Allah and that it was only natural that his grand temple be built at Ayodhya”.
Salim, a middle aged driver from Badaut, Baghpat, in western Uttar Pradesh, is a Modi admirer and while driving along the Lucknow-Agra Expressway told IANS that “so far no harm has come to us during BJP rule” and added that he “knew that 2019 will be another term for Modi”.
“We are supportive of the development talk of Modi… as for the rest, everyone has some faults,” he said.
Insiders say the RSS has been trying to make inroads into segments that were not supporters so far — and hopes that these efforts will fructify by the time of the next general election.
(Mohit Dubey can be contacted at mohit.d@ians.in)
—IANS
