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,
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 | News, Politics
New Delhi : Congress leader and former Union Finance Minister P. Chidambaram on Wednesday criticised the Centre for the fuel price hike and claimed that the rate can be reduced by Rs 25 per litre but the government is not doing it.
“It is possible to cut upto Rs 25 per litre, but the government will not. They will cheat the people by cutting price by Re 1 or Rs 2 per litre of petrol,” he said over Twitter.
Across the four metropolitan cities, prices rose around 30 paise on Tuesday. In Delhi and Mumbai, the fuel was sold at Rs 76.87 and Rs 84.70 per litre, up from Rs Rs 76.57 and Rs 84.40 respectively on Monday.
“Bonanza to central government is Rs 25 on every litre of petrol. This money rightfully belongs to the average consumer.
“Central government saves Rs 15 on every litre of petrol due to fall in crude oil prices. It also puts additional tax of Rs 10 on every litre of petrol,” he added.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | News, Politics
Rahul Gandhi
New Delhi : In a blistering attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi following the resignation of Karnataka Chief Minister B.S. Yeddyurappa ahead of the trust vote, Congress President Rahul Gandhi on Saturday termed him “corruption” and that Modi, BJP chief Amit Shah and the RSS considered no institution “worthy of respect”.
Addressing the media here shortly after Yeddyurappa’s resignation, he said the Congress will work with other opposition parties to defeat the BJP in 2019 Lok Sabha polls.
Gandhi said Modi’s model of leadership is not that of democratic person but that of a dictator and “even Supreme Court knows that”.
Accusing Modi of promoting corruption in Karnataka to gain support for the BJP, which had emerged the single-largest party amid split verdict in by the May 12 assembly election, he cited attempts at horse-trading, including purported telephonic conversations of some BJP leaders to get support of Congress and Janata Dal-Secular (JD-S) legislators, who formed a post-poll coalition.
People saw “how the Prime Minister authorised directly buying MLAs in Karnataka from our party and from the JD-S”, he said, adding Modi’s talks of fighting corruption are a “blatant lie”.
“He is corruption. He is doing everything to subvert this nation and he is doing it across the board. There are phone conversations of MLAs being approached for purchase by the BJP and that was directly authorised from Delhi,” he said.
He alleged that RSS, the BJP’s ideological patron, wants to capture every institution “and that is what we are fighting” and will “work with the opposition to defeat the BJP”.
He hoped that the BJP and RSS will learn a lesson from the developments in Karnataka where Governor Vajubhai Vala had invited the BJP to form government, “that the institutions of this country, the will of the people of this country cannot be disrespected”.
The Congress had moved the Supreme Court following th3e Governor inviting Yeddyurappa to form government and giving him 15 days to prove majority. The apex court had slashed the time for trust vote and fixed it for Saturday.
Contending that the Prime Minister is not bigger than people of India, the Supreme Court or members of parliament and assemblies, Gandhi said: “I am doubtful that Prime Minister will understand that because he had been trained throughout his life by the RSS never to respect another institution except the RSS. But that is the message that people of Karnataka and the people of India have given to the Prime Minister.”
“I am very proud to say that they have been shown that in India, power is not everything, money is not everything, corruption is not everything. In India, the will of the people is everything. We have explained to the people in the BJP and the RSS that there are limits to your arrogance, there are limits to how you are trying to run this country,” he said.
Accusing Modi, Amit Shah and RSS of believing “that every institution can be destroyed”, he said:
“You can disrespect anybody in this country simply because you happen to be in power? And the BJP and the RSS does it again and again. That there is no institution in this country that is worthy of the respect of the Prime Minister, Amit Shah and the RSS.”
He also accused the BJP of disrespecting the proceedings of the Karnataka Assembly, saying the national anthem was not played after Yeddyurappa announced his resignation and the BJP legislators and the Pro-tem Speaker left the house. “In a way, this is what we are fighting today… The idea that you can rubbish every single institution in this country.”
Asked if the state Governor should resign, Gandhi said the power was completely controlled by the Prime Minister and the RSS. “So, it is a good idea to resign, but I can guarantee you that, under the BJP regime, the next man will do exactly the same thing,” he said.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Interviews
Sachin Pilot
By Prashant Sood and Sidhartha Dutta,
New Delhi : From a historical low in 2013, the Congress has bounced back in Rajasthan with support from all communities and will oust the BJP in the assembly polls later this year, says state Congress chief Sachin Pilot, who also feels that the BJP is finding it difficult to find a state unit chief as no one wants to be a scapegoat after the assembly elections later this year.
Pilot, 40, says that caste is not the pivot around which everything works in an election and young people were now looking beyond caste while voting.
Pilot said it had been almost four weeks since the state BJP president Ashok Parnami “was made to resign”.
“And for four weeks they have not found a person to do the job because nobody wants to be a scapegoat. They know in 5-6 months, they will lose the election. For four weeks, the BJP, the party with a difference and so-called largest party in the world, is unable to find somebody who is willing to do the job of a state president. This shows the reality of the government of Rajasthan and BJP itself,” Pilot told IANS in an interview.
Taking a dig at Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje, he said she had visited the national capital not to seek development funds “but to lobby for (appointment of) a state president.
“So there is obvious infighting (in BJP). There is a lack of coordination between the state and central governments, and people are suffering because of that,” he said.
Pilot said Raje has lost control over governance and there is “unemployment, agrarian distress, farmers’ suicides, atrocities against tribals and Dalits and scams relating to land and mining”.
Asked about former Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot’s remarks, apparently aimed at him, that younger leaders should stay in the queue and those who break the line risked a premature end to their political career, Pilot referred to Congress President Rahul Gandhi’s speech at the party’s plenary in March where he had talked of breaking down walls.
“I don’t think Gehlotji was trying to attack anybody. But I do remember that speech Mr Rahul Gandhi made, where he committed himself to breaking down the walls in politics and in the Congress party. So, when the Congress president is breaking down the walls, where is the question of any line and queues?” he asked.
Asked about Gehlot’s other remark that a PCC chief should not be automatically considered as chief ministerial choice, Pilot said the party has been fighting elections under the leadership of Rahul Gandhi and will do so in Rajasthan also.
“The aim and objective for all of us is to secure a mandate for the Congress and who will get what position is not a matter of concern for me or others. We are fighting as a team,” he said.
Asked about Gehlot’s appointment as a party general secretary and his remarks that he had not been separated from Rajasthan politics, Pilot said: “Even if Ashok Gehlotji wants himself to be away from Rajasthan, as party president I won’t allow him to be away from Rajasthan.”
On ticket distribution, Pilot, who was appointed state Congress chief after the party’s debacle in the 2013 assembly polls, said winnability and consensus will be the criteria and “people who have worked in the last four years to rebuild the party, their efforts will be rewarded”.
“We are focusing on booths. The fake voters that the BJP had included, we are taking them out. And we are taking the battle to the polling stations. At the right time we will declare the candidates,” he said.
Asked about the reasons for the party’s debacle in the assembly polls, he said a factor was the party not being able to translate the good work done into political dividends.
“It requires some sort of communication strategy, some sort of self-marketing, which perhaps we didn’t do well. But we lost (due) to many other reasons.”
Pilot noted that he was a MP at 26, a Union minister at 31 and made chief of the Rajasthan Congress at 35. “The party has given me so much; now it’s time for me to give back to the party,” he said.
On a query on the caste matrix, he said: “As far as caste communities are concerned, they will vote on issues and the Congress is the only party that has the capacity and the intent to carry all communities together, all castes together,” he added.
The Congress had been reduced to 21 seats in the 200-seat Assembly in the 2013 elections but won four of six assembly by-polls and the two parliamentary by-elections to Ajmer and Alwar earlier this year. The party led in all the 16 segments of two parliamentary seats.
Pilot said no ruling party in Rajasthan has lost a parliamentary by-election in the last 40 years and it showed the depth of anger against BJP across all communities and regions.
(Prashant Sood can be contacted at prashant.s@ians.in and Sidhartha Dutta at sidhartha.d@ians.in)
—IANS
