India Insight

Congress reshuffling an empty deck?

Ankush Arora

Apr 26, 2012 03:21 EDT

The clock is ticking for the ruling Congress party. Ever since the national auditor’s report blew the lid off the 2G spectrum scandal, the second term of the UPA government has been clouded by incessant talk of premature general elections or who will lead India in 2014.

As rumours do the rounds of a possible reshuffle of the Congress party after the Budget session, one gets the sense that India’s grand old party is starting to prepare for national elections, even if they are two years away. And rightly so, especially after its disastrous performance in Uttar Pradesh, the state that sends the largest number of lawmakers to parliament. While no political party is likely to secure majority if national elections were to be held today, regional parties could hold sway.

The Congress’ present situation is a throwback to the 1960s when the party was trying to revitalise its functioning in the face of declining popularity and vote share. Indira Gandhi ruled India for eleven consecutive years, followed by another term later that was cut short by her assassination. After her son Rajiv came to power and his destiny followed his mother’s, the Congress returned to power for only one term until the UPA government came to power in 2004.

This time it is unlikely the reshuffle will actually revive the party — with a generation of leaders close to retirement and a severe shortage of mid-level talent, Congress has few obvious options. There is still little clarity about succession.

It is also unlikely Manmohan Singh will be the prime ministerial candidate again. There is uncertainty over whether party president Sonia Gandhi’s son Rahul can run both the party and a government, if required. Nor does the party nurture its leaders to lead from the front. And with no other option in sight, Sonia Gandhi ailing and unwilling to lead, and the current PM conspicuously inert, the Congress party is increasingly faceless.

The Congress’ leadership vacuum could boost the fortunes of regional political parties, their rising power evident in the recently concluded assembly elections. As for the BJP, which has its eyes on New Delhi ever since its 2004 India Shining campaign bombed, there could be two scenarios — elections could cost the party dear if it doesn’t put its own house in order; or the unpredictable Indian voter might just have a typical mood swing and decide to elect the pro-Hindu party once again.

Advani’s “withdrawal” may come back to haunt BJP

As soon as former Bharatiya Janata Party president and political veteran Lal Krishna Advani announced that his role in the party and the Sangh Parivar “is much more than the post of prime minister” — he made it pretty clear that he may not be the preferred BJP candidate for the prime minister’s post in the 2014 general elections.

And soon the media and most political analysts made a pretty safe guess that the party would back current Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi as its next PM candidate. Yet others named Sushma Swaraj and Arun Jaitley as strong contenders.

But a lot may happen between now and 2014. And as things stand currently, our next PM may be a coalition leader from one of the regional parties. Let us examine why.

Both the Congress and BJP seem leaderless now in a way. Modi is seen as just too controversial and the burden of the 2002 riots will follow him wherever he goes in his political career. Arun Jaitley is just not perceived as a mass leader. And while Sushma Swaraj may be a good “dancer” and is very popular, she just does not have the same political clout as Advani or Atal Bihari Vajpayee.

“The party anyway and the RSS were uneasy about Advani’s rath yatra … He has had to deny that he was in the race … If his decision stands, I think it will be a negative for the BJP, as the party doesn’t seem to have anyone else,” said political commentator Amulya Ganguli.

It is the same issue with the Congress party. It is unlikely that Sonia Gandhi will put forward her candidature and Manmohan Singh will be PM for a third time running. Palaniappan Chidambaram and Pranab Mukherjee are more bureaucrats than mass leaders and Rahul Gandhi seems determined not to win any brownie points among the general public at all.

He is increasingly being seen as reclusive and uncomfortable with the mantle of Congress’ “crown prince”.

Anna Hazare: PR superstar?

So it has come to an end for now. A fast by a 74-year-old man sparked nationwide protests against the political class in the world’s largest democracy and forced a government, already suffering from graft charges, even further on the backfoot. While we are on the issue of sporting analogies, let’s ask ourselves, how many of the statements made in media and civil society, about the UPA government scoring own goals and making unforced errors, are justified?

To start from the top, a few days before Anna Hazare started his fast against the government’s reluctance to table his and his team’s version of a key anti-corruption bill, called the Lokpal bill, the government’s PR machinery made one blunder after the other.

It allowed a Congress spokesman to use rather strong language on TV against Hazare. And later statements on record by union ministers Kapil Sibal and Palaniappan Chidambaram did nothing to turn the tide of public opinion increasingly turning against the government at its inability to crack down on rampant corruption.

On the other hand, while Anna Hazare’s protest channelised the frustration of the Indian middle class, it certainly needed more than that to succeed. From the beginning, his close advisers, nicknamed “Team Anna” by the media, proved to be adept at handling public relations.

Just moments before he was detained by the police, Team Anna put up a video on YouTube with his message calling for nationwide agitation and for people to turn themselves in to the police. It was a PR coup, as by the same evening, thousands of people had gathered in protest in front of the Tihar Jail gates.

From then on till the fast ended, the ruling coalition stumbled and exposed itself as riven by a lack of leadership, indecision, poor judgement and out of touch with the concerns of a country of 1.2 billion people. This was maybe a chance for Rahul Gandhi to shine and be shown as bringing the situation under control. But in the end, his statement in parliament was certainly a case of “too little, too late.” Also, the government’s constant backtracking on its talks with Team Anna and contentious points in the bill, showed it to be fickle.

Team Anna called this a people’s movement and perhaps backed those claims. At the main protest venue in Delhi, everything from Anna Hazare caps and T-shirts, to daily “lectures” by Kiran Bedi on the various clauses in Hazare’s version of the bill, to updates on any meeting with the government being provided on stage, to the line-up of activists, writers, singers, movie stars et al. turned it into a people’s movement, a circus and a reality show, all rolled into one.

VIDEO: Reactions to Anna Hazare’s agitation

Ankush Arora

Aug 22, 2011 06:00 EDT

Anna Hazare’s fast against corruption united tens of thousands of people across India. The social activist is now recovering from the near-two week fast in his home village of Ralegan Siddhi in Maharashtra. But the government still faces the challenge of passing the Lokpal Bill. Reuters spoke to a few people on the streets to get a sense of what the common man thinks about the anti-corruption debate.

Is the world’s largest democracy yielding to politicians before its citizens?

Reuters Staff

Aug 2, 2011 10:38 EDT

By Annie Banerji

One would think India would be able to have a parliament worthy of its name to represent the world’s largest democracy.

But for many civil society activists, who have championed an anti-corruption campaign for months in the wake of government scandals, the Congress party’s ruling coalition is doing its best to water down a potentially game-changing anti-corruption bill which is slated to be brought to parliament during the ongoing monsoon session.

The Jan Lokpal Bill (citizens’ ombudsman bill), propagated by septuagenarian Gandhian social activist Anna Hazare, aims to form an independent, powerful institution to prevent corruption by prosecuting top officials.

However, the draft of the bill which the cabinet approved last week has, in line with the government’s wishes, omitted the prime minister, the judiciary and bureaucrats from prosecution while they are serving in office.

This is especially galling for anti-graft campaigners, given that the prime minister and several sitting ministers are under scrutiny in a string of corruption scandals worth billions of dollars (all have denied wrongdoing). Even the former Chief Justice of India, K.G. Balakrishnan, has been accused in a few graft cases of his own.

“This bill (Jan Lokpal bill) which included protection for whistleblowers, grievance redressing, judicial corruption and vigilance — they have broken it all up and have said that they will make separate bills for all these matters. They’ve taken four years to bring about this bill, now they will take 400 years to make these other bills,” said Kiran Bedi, a social activist.

India’s grand old party in need of young blood

Reuters Staff

Jun 27, 2011 05:52 EDT

By Annie Banerji

With a cabinet reshuffle seemingly around the corner and the Congress party general secretary saying that Rahul Gandhi, the 41-year-old son of party chief Sonia Gandhi, had the potential to be a good prime minister, India’s home minister has now entered the fray to call for fresher faces at the highest level of politics.

In a recent interview with an Indian news channel, P. Chidambaram said that he does not consider the sixties to be the age of political prime in Indian politics; rather he feels sexagenarians in politics should step back from their positions, and leave cabinet posts for the young.

“I think we should have younger politicians. I firmly believe that we should have younger leaders. I think we should have ministers, including cabinet ministers, in their late forties and early fifties. I think those over 60, including myself, should step back,” he was quoted as saying.

If the home minister’s stance be taken into consideration with the impending ministerial reshuffle at the Centre, one could possibly witness the demission of 27 of the 34 cabinet ministers from their respective positions as most exceed the 60-plus age limit.

Leaving a handful of ministers behind, one of whom is expected to be dropped in the July cabinet restructure, the cabinet would then have a strength of seven members.

Dayanidhi Maran, India’s 44-year-old textile minister, is under investigation for alleged misdeeds in the purview of the 2G spectrum allocation scam and may be shown the door this time around.

The dog days of India’s bizarre summer of politics

Perhaps the government’s decision to push back the opening of the upcoming monsoon session of parliament was not the best idea. For as the dog days of the sub-continent’s sweltering summer drag on, the parliament-less politicians sweat from the sublime to the ridiculous in the baking heat.

From the haphazard ensemble of senior ministers that flocked to New Delhi’s airport to greet yoga guru turned social activist Swami Ramdev with more fanfare than is reserved for visiting heads of state, to the current conspiracy swirling New Delhi surrounding espionage chewing gum found in the finance minister’s private chambers, it has been a bizarre summer for politics fuelled by the hungry media in the world’s largest democracy.

Kapil Sibal, as Human Resource and Development minister, could have spent his summer break drawing up plans to overhaul an education sector that looks dangerously inadequate to deal with the demographic dividend of millions of young Indians that New Delhi likes to trumpet. Instead, he spent his days holed up in five-star hotels begging Ramdev not to stop eating, and playing it coy in press conferences after quietly ignoring veteran activist Anna Hazare’s demands for a stronger anti-graft bill.

Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee, who has seen a series of economic data releases over the past month pour cold water on optimistic growth prospects, spent the majority of his summer trying to chair what appeared to be most unruly meetings on the anti-graft legislation, but has stolen the headlines recently with a mind-boggling story involving government secrets, ministerial rivalries and old-school espionage — all bonded together with chewing gum.

With TV channels and opposition politicians dubbing it “India’s Watergate”, and political figures from across the spectrum weighing in on the sticky mess, there appears little evidence to go on than a few errant pieces of gum stuck under various desks in Mukherjee’s chambers. With the minister himself telling the media to take their conspiracy theories elsewhere, it appears more a case of unhygienic office visitors than dastardly undercover spies.

Outside of the cabinet, the summer bug spread as the mercury rose.

DMK, Congress to untie the knot?

Reuters Staff

Jun 9, 2011 06:33 EDT

By Annie Banerji

Cast as the villain in high profile graft cases and reeling from its huge loss in the Tamil Nadu state elections in May, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) appears to be in freefall.

The party has declared an emergency meeting in the state capital to discuss potential strategies regarding the recently incarcerated daughter of the DMK chief, Kanimozhi and the party’s strained ties with the ruling Congress party, itself struggling to shake off its scam-ridden identity  and public resentment for its lack of initiative and inability to tackle corruption.

Controversy has been hovering over the DMK since last year when A. Raja, a key member of the party and then Telecoms Minister, was accused of spectrum allocation at discounted prices causing a loss of $39 billion to the national exchequer.

A. Raja’s case has caused a domino effect within the Karunanidhi family, with the former Tamil Nadu chief minister’s grandnephew, Dayanidhi Maran, also under investigation for alleged misdeeds in the purview of the 2G spectrum allocation scam, regarded as the largest graft case in India.

In May, the special Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) court ordered the arrest of Kanimozhi for handling a 2 billion rupee bribe.

Maran, who served as the telecom minister from 2004-2007, is now under the scanner for his alleged role in the two-year delay in issuing Aircel company’s applications for a mobile permit. “I vouch that during my tenure as minister of communications and IT (information technology), I was totally impartial in taking decisions,” he said, but the national auditor seems to be indicating the contrary, claiming that the minister revised the terms of reference minus the pricing.

M.F. Husain, Swami Ramdev and the world’s largest democracy

M.F. Husain, India’s most famous modern artist, died at the age of 95 this morning, not in Maharashtra, his home state, nor New Delhi, where many of his ground-breaking works were exhibited, but in London, where he lived in exile with Qatari citizenship. The ‘Picasso of India’ has for five years felt unable to live and work in his country of birth.

Husain fled India in 2006, leaving behind court cases and death threats against him, and continued vandalism of his works from right-wing Hindu groups that accused him of insulting their religion by painting deities in the nude.

Husain, a Muslim, felt unsafe and unable to practice his particular art form in the world’s largest democracy. And he’s not the only one. Salman Rushdie, who was born in Mumbai but lives in the UK, saw New Delhi ban his Satanic Verses for its perceived depiction of the Islamic prophet Muhammad.

And Husain’s death presents a timely reminder to India of the multi-faceted obligations of an open, secular democracy, as anti-graft movements swell against the government.

On Thursday morning, India’s news channels cut to the breaking news of Husain’s death from pictures of Swami Ramdev, the yoga guru turned social activist being treated by doctors monitoring his health during a hunger fast that entered its sixth day on Thursday.

The country’s Home Minister P. Chidambaram, in an effort to undermine Ramdev’s stand against corruption, sought on Wednesday to paint the guru as an agent of the Hindu-nationalist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) organisation, and raise his worries of an upsurge in far-right extremism against the government – currently headed by his secular Congress party – to discredit the wider anti-graft movement.

Disruptive opposition blames government for parliament woes

A lack of accountability from Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, a failure of consultation by his ruling Congress-led coalition and too few days of legislative business, rather than opposition protests that smothered months of legislative debate, are to blame for the paralysis of India’s parliamentary democracy, the leader of India’s opposition party wrote on Monday.

Making no reference to the weeks of protest by his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) that saw opposition members shouting, chanting and waving placards in the well of both houses to force the cancellation of an entire legislative session and threaten the passage of the 2011-12 budget, Arun Jaitley called for more “proper conduct” from Indian MPs in an opinion piece in The Indian Express that appeared to lay the blame of parliamentary disruption at the government’s door.

“In the last few decades the participation of prime ministers in parliamentary debates has declined. Their effective intervention is confined to reading written texts prepared by their offices. This is unacceptable… The PM has to be the most accountable in a democracy. His depleting presence in Parliament compels one to suggest (the British system of Prime Minister’s Questions) be successfully replicated in India,” Jaitley wrote.

Reticent Singh is typically media-shy, but a slew of corruption charges against his party compelled him to hold a rare press conference live on national television in February, where he vowed he would not step down despite increasing pressure from Jaitley’s party.

“To meet for less than 70 days in a year is inadequate. Short durations lead to paucity of time available for debates, issues of public importance and legislation. When members, particularly from the opposition, want to raise several issues, the privilege is denied for paucity of time. The gagging of debate leads to obstructionism. Parliamentary obstructionism then becomes an acceptable mode to highlight an issue of public importance,” Jaitley wrote, without making reference to the BJP protest of parliament.

“The government and the opposition both have a key role to play in Parliament. Conflicting opinions and at times even tensions between the two bring out the best in Indian democracy. However, there must be healthy communication between the political leadership in government and the opposition,” Jaitley continued.