Author: Mahendra Ved

CEC Sunil Arora

Credibility Of Election Commission Under Scanner

By Mahendra Ved
Governing general elections in as vast and diverse a nation as India is never easy; it becomes more difficult when integrity and impartiality of the poll administrator are doubted

India’s polity, despite its robustness and seven decades’ working, is in turmoil as never before and appears divided. Causing and deepening the crisis, ironically, is an election that is being fought no-holds-barred.

Governing this vast and diverse nation is never easy. It is more difficult when integrity and impartiality of its institutions are doubted. And even more so when the political leadership in and outside the legislature that facilitates these institutions and works in tandem with them is in throes of an election.

In India, buck stops at the door of the Supreme Court on every other contentious issue. But the highest court is itself mired in a controversy involving none less than the Chief Justice of India (CJI). While handling it, it has seemingly divided members of the top judiciary on how to ensure justice and fairness, both real and perceived.

In the most piquant situation, a former woman employee last month wrote to all serving judges complaining of being sexually harassed and then victimized, by the CJI, Mr Justice Ranjan Gogoi. The CJI strongly denied the allegations. He said: “There are forces that are trying to destabilise the judiciary. There are bigger forces behind these allegations hurled at me.”

He did not indicate who the ‘forces’ could be. But he vowed that he would function normally during the six months left of his tenure.

The lady in question remains unnamed because Indian law mandates that victims of sexual assault and harassment not be named in the media. After appearing before a Gogoi-appointed panel of three serving judges for two days, she cried out alleging that the committee declined her plea for engaging a lawyer and that she would not get justice.  

The in-house panel of judges dismissed her plea stating there was “no substance” in her allegations and thus, gave a clean chit to the CJI. Prior to the committee’s verdict, two serving judges had reportedly asked that the lady be permitted to engage a lawyer or an amicus curiae be associated to ensure the probe’s fairness. However, the probe is completed ex parte, without her and its report will not be made public. Countering the ‘forces’ seeking to destabilize the top judiciary seems to have driven the judges committee’s unanimous decision.      

However, the woman is demanding a copy of the report. Sections of legal fraternity and women’s rights groups stated a protest outside the court demanding natural justice for the complainant.

As it seeks to get over its embarrassment, the apex court is being asked by many political parties to adjudicate on fairness of the conducting of the polls by the Election Commission, another august institution on whom India has been taking a bow from other democracies.

There is no last word on any issue. After five of the seven phases of this 39-day process were completed, the Supreme Court rejected a review plea filed by 21 Opposition leaders seeking further increase in random matching of the Voter verifiable paper audit trail (VVPAT) slips with electronic voting machine (EVMs).

Being directed by the Supreme Court on issues that actually belong to its turf, the EC is facing challenges more daunting than what preceding generations faced. Advances in communications technology have made regulation of campaigning, to ensure that it is consistent with the Model Code of Conduct (MCC), almost impossible. Clearly the existing legal framework is inadequate, unable to keep pace with rich and tech-savvy campaign cells of political parties.

Reminded by the Supreme Court that it had ‘teeth’ and must use them, the EC has done so partially, but is itself divided. One of its three members has dissented on whether campaign speeches, especially those by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Bharatiya Janata Party chief Amit Shah, have violated the MCC.

The EC’s efforts at curbing spouting of venom in the polls discourse are also being questioned. It is accused on both counts of favouring the ruling dispensation. “While complaints against other leaders were promptly dealt with, there was an obvious delay in taking up those against Mr. Modi. Few would have failed to notice that he has been running an abrasive campaign. He has stoked fears over India’s security, claimed credit for the performance of the armed forces and implicitly underscored that his party stands for the religious majority,” The Hindu newspaper said.

Five of the six orders have been dissented and the dissenting Election Commissioner has asked why his dissent is pot part of the final order.    

The Supreme Court this week permitted the opposition Congress Party to place on record all the EC verdicts. The party argued that the EC’s silence and delay “are akin to tacit endorsement”.

The Modi/Shah duo is accused of attacking Muslims, directly or subtly, invoking armed forces and of Pakistan-bashing — all three falling within the MCC ambit — to raise ‘nationalistic’ fervor, while calling all dissenters ‘traitors’.

Just how many instances of violence can the EC’s state-level offices record, report, issue notices and upon receiving replies, deliver verdicts? It imposes token no-campaign punishment on candidates for two or three days. Even these are being violated.

Too many disputes against the EC or its Returning Officers have been taken to the apex court. Tej Bahadur Yadav had emerged as the main opposition candidate against Modi in the Varanasi constituency. A former policeman sacked for seeking better food while on duty, his papers were rejected on the ground that he had failed to take EC’s permission to contest, which is needed for a government official removed or suspended. That certificate, Yadav complained, was sought at the eleventh hour and he could not comply. He told the court that he was debarred to allow Modi a walk-over.

The EC must also play the policeman. After three of the seven phases were completed, it confiscated cash, gold and silver, liquor, drugs and other items worth ₹3,205 crore, according to its data published on April 27.   

At this rate, wonders N. Bhaskara Rao, Chairman, Centre for Media Srudies, a New Delhi think tank, “we can expect more than twice this amount to be confiscated by the time the election ends. What is confiscated is likely to be less than five percent of what is being spent by all the candidates and parties. The total expenditure of this election is estimated to be about ₹50,000 crore, which is the highest amount for any election in the world.”

As things stand with two weeks to go to the May 23 outcome of these elections, the over-worked Umpire, its credibility questioned, is under stress as never before.

Having written on a dozen elections, one is clutching at the comforting but unsure thought that things would become ‘normal’ once this no-holds-barred “dance of democracy” is over.

But the thought on low depths that can be touched by people with fellow-citizens as they contest an election and on the performance of institutions with enduring records, formed and functioning under the Constitution, is deeply disconcerting.

mahendraved07@gmail.com

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Media And Modi

The Press And The Prime Minister, Over The Years

By Mahendra Ved
Even before Narendra Modi’s advent on the national scene, the media had lost relevance to public life with its conversion from the Fourth Estate to a private mint

There’s a bee in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s bonnet. His critics pillory him for not addressing a single press conference since he took office in May 2014.  

The buzz is getting louder as the Elections-2019 campaign enters its second-half. His principal rival, Congress President Rahul Gandhi, recently dared him to hold a PC.

ALSO READ: Reason Why Indian Media Is Pliable

Modi has responded with alacrity and vehemence to Rahul’s many insinuations. But his silence on this remains inexplicable. Critics call him, half-in-zest, the first premier who could enter the Guinness Book of Records for failing to hold a PC.    

His ‘non-political’ televised talk with Bollywood actor Akshay Kumar was not his “first press conference” as initially announced on April 26. Nor was it an interview despite the use of that format. Now, it has re-charged an issue on which the media and Modi observers had all but reconciled. 

India’s 16th premier in 73 years shuns the traditional media. He has done away with office of the Information Advisor. No impromptu media interactions and nothing that is not pre-scheduled.

ALSO READ: Why Media Treats Modi With Kid Gloves

That he speaks only to those who fully agree and don’t ask uncomfortable questions is a given. He shows silent contempt for the rest – mainly the liberal lot who take their adversarial role too seriously. He has steadfastly stuck to “if you are not with me, completely, you are against me” stance. This is another given.

Yet, Modi remains hugely connected to his chosen audiences. He is world No. 3 on Twitter and No.1 on Facebook and Instagram. With his official page ‘liked’ by over 43.2 million people, Modi tops the list of 50 most-followed world leaders on Facebook.  It’s puzzling how and when he finds time and energy to be on the social media.  

ALSO READ: Modi Govt Wants To Target Online Media

He connects with people through “mann ki baat” on All India Radio each month for the last four years. His Hindi oratory, the turn of phrase and coining of new slogans help him communicate like no other premier before. His penchant of talking about himself helps.

His media appearances have largely been limited to his archetypal rallies, conferences and joint appearances with world leaders whom he hugs. But a hug at home is a no-no.

Despite social media posts, broadcasts and scripted TV interviews with selected TV channels, his communication remains limited. There is a wide difference between mass media and media of masses.  

He chooses the media; the media have no choice. Bulk of them has fallen in line. Reporters and editors do not matter. An ownership overhaul, direct or remote, has ensured his overwhelming presence. A friendly TV anchor calls his not giving press conferences a “new paradigm of communication.”  Critics are mostly marginalized to web sites.  

He honed his media skills long ago. An ever-smiling official at the New Delhi headquarters of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Modi nurtured rapport with the BJP ‘beat’ media. Things changed when he became the Gujarat chief minister in end-2001. He courted controversy within weeks with sectarian violence under his watch. A thousand, mostly Muslims, were killed. The Supreme Court’s strictures on his government’s handling embarrassed the Vajpayee Government. Party hardliners saved him from being sacked.    

That was India’s first televised violence. Local media was divided, but the one from the national capital (hence labeled “national media”) was intensely critical from where the global media took the cue.

As chief minister, Modi was keen to shed the ‘communal’ baggage and mount the ‘development’ platform. He did so with fair success, projecting the “Gujarat model”, despite criticism that made him a pariah in the West.  

Once a Supreme Court-appointed probe cleared him, he doggedly shunned any questions and twice walked out of interviews when questioned about those riots. He never regretted his role and once compared riot victims as “puppies coming under a speeding vehicle.”

His silent war with the media continues. Yet, obvious, even if ironical, has happened since became the PM. The very media he shuns spend millions to report him. Media junkets, particularly the foreign ones that had become the norm since the 1970s, are passé. 

Why recall these details that are unsavory to all? The government-media relationship seems unlikely to change, no matter who wins the elections. The era of ‘Comment is Free, but facts are sacred’, as celebrated British journalist C P Scott once wrote, ended long ago.   

The media lost relevance to public life with its conversion from the Fourth Estate to private mint to print money for owners. This was long before Modi’s advent on the national scene. As one who can cause fear and distribute largess, he is certainly a big beneficiary.

Now, journalists who do not speak or write agreeably are called ‘presstitutes’. At least two of Modi’s ministers have publicly used that term. Social media troll has become everyday affair.

The media’s role and the respect journalists enjoyed in the past are arguable, but not denied. One of the largest in the democratic world, it has changed, for better or for worse.

Back to the press conference issue, since one can’t return, one can at least recall better times. Jawaharlal Nehru held press conferences annually and they were copiously published. Old timers recall the mix of humour and argument. Relationship was adversarial, but due to Nehru’s stature, also reverential.

Lal Bahadur Shastri galvanized the nation during difficult war-times during his brief tenure. The media role was highly supportive.

Indira Gandhi’s Vigyan Bhavan PCs, were long-drawn, moderated by H Y Sharda Prasad, her Information Advisor. Haughty when she chose to be, she rarely shunned the media.

Along with the Opposition, media critics were imprisoned during the Emergency, when “watchdogs became lapdogs”, as veteran L K Advani put it. Some Indira favourites wrote books lambasting her when she lost office. But after she returned to power in 1980, they survived to tell their stories.   

“Why should I tell you? Then, my task will fail,” was Morarji Desai’s ascerbic style. Media’s allergy to his advocacy against alcohol was known. Typical of politicians of his era, he once dismissed an inconvenient question by one Mr Thomas saying, “you are Doubting Thomas” and one Mr Chakravarty was told, “you are from Bengal, then you must be a communist.” His laughter, and laughter all around diluted severity of the snub.

Chaudhary Charan Singh expected traditional obeisance from the media. He was once upset when told that journalists rise only for the President. “At least, respect my age,” he chided. Newsmen obliged.  

Rajiv Gandhi spoke well when well briefed. His inexperience showed when he dismissed his Foreign Secretary at his Vigyan Bhavan PC. V P Singh was a media favourite, but his only PC as prime minister was a disaster when he came late, did not apologise and then ran into very hostile questions. Another media favourite, Chandra Shekhar’s tenure was just four months, but he remained among the most accessible politicians.                           

P V Narasimha Rao’s silence was mysterious. He would choose not to speak, but when he spoke little, softly and with determination, it was effective.

H D Deve Gowda’s only PC had a Western journalist asking a loaded question. “You have never seen a prime minister in dhoti?” he quipped with a mix of anger and amusement. The only ex-premier around, he shed tears at a PC recently.

His successor I K Gujral, known for his measured diplomatic pronouncements, was ready Punjabi jhappi.

Manmohan Singh, a good communicator as Economics teacher was heard with respect at conferences. His PCs, one in Egypt and another back home, however, had officials scrambling for damage control. Derided as “Maun Mohan Singh” by Modi, he took sweet revenge recently on the latter’s silence on economic failures.

Assuming Modi wins a fresh mandate, an avalanche of questions awaits him to deserve a PC. Will he? Won’t he?

The writer can be reached at mahendraved07@gmail.com

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Religion In Indian Politics

When Secular Is Mocked As ‘Sick-ular’

By Mahendra Ved
BJP has launched an aggressive election campaign on Hindu ‘victimhood’ that requires to be repaired (sic) with attempts to enforce its supremacy over others

Cradle of at least three and home of many more, India is what it is because of the multiplicity of faiths. Religion and religiosity are integral to its culture that has had a continuity few others have.

Call it mutual ‘tolerance’ or ‘acceptance’, Indians professing different faiths live together despite past foreign military invasions followed by conversions, whether they were forced by the sword, coerced through temptations or voluntary. There is assimilation even as people are sought to be divided on religious lines.

What is ‘secular’ in modern-day parlance has evolved with Indian connotations and convenience, just as what is ‘communal’ has to explain what is not ‘secular’. And ‘secular’ itself has undergone transformation from being anti-faith and irreligious to treating all faiths with equal respect. 

For two millennia-plus, India has remained pluralist and yet, in terms of numbers, overwhelmingly (79.8 percent) Hindu. 

And yet, the current election is witnessing an aggressive discourse on Hindu ‘victimhood’ that requires to be repaired with attempts to enforce its supremacy over others. Hindutva, the ploy used to give political turn to the majority faith, gives new twists to the very understanding of the terms ‘tolerance’ and ‘acceptance’. Secular is spelt ‘sick-ular’.  

Three top members of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) including an estranged member of the Gandhi ‘dynasty’ courted controversy last week for appearing to threaten people to vote for them.

A video showed women and child welfare minister Maneka Gandhi warning a Muslims’ gathering to vote for her or be shunned if she returns to power. “I am winning with the help of the people. But if my victory comes without the support of Muslims, then I will not feel good… “It will leave a bitter taste. And then when a Muslim comes for any work, then I will think let it be.”

The other new incident involved Sakshi Maharaj, a Hindu monk, who told a gathering in Kanpur that he would “curse” those who do not vote for him. “When a saint comes to beg and isn’t given what he asks for, he takes away all the happiness of the family and in turn gives curse to the family,” Maharaj said, adding he was quoting from sacred Hindu scriptures. He is facing 34 criminal charges, including alleged murder, robbery and cheating.

These offenders are from the ruling alliance. But in a growing list, politicians from other parties and alliances, like Navjot Singh Sidhu, Mayawati and Azam Khan, have also used religious ploys, sexist remarks, hate and intimidation to win support of the electorate even though soliciting votes on religious lines or threatening voters is prohibited.

The Election Commission, while struggling to maintain its authority and a semblance of fairness, has admitted before the country’s highest court that it is ‘toothless’ and ‘helpless’ before the offenders.

For the first time, the statutory body conducting the world’s largest democratic exercise has slapped token punishments of exclusion from public speaking, using its limited powers, to some of these offenders for violating the EC-set norms by appealing to religion or employing religion-related issues. But the punishment has been ridiculed by some who play to the public gallery and some others have repeated their offences.

Besides Sakshi Maharaj, ‘curse’ has become the new cussword. It is astounding that what one read in fairy tales and mythology is used today to damn opponents.

The most controversial curse has come from Pragya Singh Thakur, a lady monk connected with a Hindu extremist body, nominated by the BJP to contest. Unique and complicated, her case needs elaboration. She is on trial for offences ranging from conspiracy to murder and transporting explosives. For want of evidence, a special court recently exonerated her for the 2007 blast on Samjhauta Express, the train that links India and Pakistan. Seventy Pakistanis returning home and Indians visiting their relations in Pakistan died.

The court passed severe strictures against the investigators who first probed a Muslim group and then switched to “Hindu terror”, allegedly on political orders. In effect, none has been convicted and punished, even as India demands of Pakistan to try and punish those involved in the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks.

Thakur said she had ‘cursed’ the Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) chief, Hemant Karkare who she alleges tortured her. The police officer died fighting the Pakistani militants in Mumbai. Honoured posthumously, Karkare had also led the investigations against Thakur in other cases including one pertaining to blasts at a mosque. Thakur now declares that he died “within five weeks” of her ‘curse’. She later regretted her remark, but wants everyone who implicated her in terror attacks to apologise. 

Modi has defended her nomination, declaring that there is “nothing called Hindu terrorism.” Legalities apart, her nomination, while she is out on bail on health grounds, allows her to convert herself from a terror suspect and a victim of her investigators and the judiciary who were ostensibly doing their job, to a heroine upholding her faith.

Admittedly, Thakur is not convicted. She is among the many contesting this election, like others with criminal cases. But in nominating her, Modi and BJP that routinely hand out certificates of nationalism and tag anyone who disagrees with their dominant narrative as a traitor, are rooting for an accused in a terrorism case.

Individuals apart, how faith determines the fate of friends and adversaries is clear from BJP’s official Twitter account. It quotes party chief Amit Shah’s speech that explicitly declared that if re-elected, it would implement the Citizenship bill for the entire country and would act against all infiltrators who were not Hindu, Sikh or Buddhist.

The party’s stand on different communities is no secret. The important thing is the fear that this position elicits among potential voters.

Those obviously excluded are Muslims — invaders who stayed on to rule — and Christians, although those who came as traders and turned colonizers hardly exist in present-day India. The targets could be members of the 24 million community that accounts for 2.3 percent of the totally population.  But they are ‘outsiders’.

The most telling exclusion – one hopes it’s inadvertent — is that of Parsis, the Zoroastrian migrants from Iran who made India their home 14 centuries ago — in Gujarat, the home-state of Modi and Shah. 

The opposition has no answer to this campaign. By not countering the BJP on lynching and numerous other issues that pertain to the minorities and depressed sections of the society, the opposition parties by and large, but the Congress especially, have conceded to the BJP’s ideological narrative.

Sadly, Shah’s viewing the electorate as Ali-versus-Bajrangbali is finding tacit acceptance from rising urban middle classes. Unlikely to end with these elections, it is now a reality of our times, unlikely to go away.

One is sticking the neck out mid-way through the voting process, with its outcome barely three weeks away. Forget arguing over Modi’s development plank and his many achievements and failures, he could get a fresh mandate by dividing people on religious lines, instilling fear in them. But if he fails, it will be because a resilient society that has lived in plurality for long has its own silent, even if opaque, way of dealing with such attempts.

The writer can be reached at mahendraved07@gmail.com


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Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi, Rajiv And Sanjay

Why BJP Seeks To Discredit Nehru, And Family

By Mahendra Ved

Nehru is BJP’s principal target because he not only ‘discovered’ India but also piloted what free India became for 16 long years

A cartoon doing media rounds amidst the Election 2019 campaign shows India’s first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru, a mischievous smile on his face, decamping with all ‘achievements’ of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. 

Arguably, this responds to Nehru’s sustained denigration by the Modi Government, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its affiliates. Subtle and defensive, it is unable to match the aggressive campaign to render India “Congress-free.”

Congress chief Rahul Gandhi, called ‘pappu’ (simpleton) and worse for long claims he nurses no grudge against Modi. He even hugged him in parliament. But his gesture that critics panned but some thought could be a game-changer, has drowned in hate-filled cacophony.

ALSO READ: Modi Is Delivering On One Promise

On the Rafale aircraft deal wherein the government has allegedly favoured a business house, Rahul says that Modi, who calls himself ‘chowkidar’ (watchdog), is actually a ‘thief’ — “chowkidar chor hai”.  His using this jibe, unwisely attributing it to the Supreme Court has, however, landed him in trouble. Like ‘chai’ (tea) in 2014, ‘Chor’ has become this election’s buzzword.

The opposition parties have found no reply to the Modi-led campaign that focuses heavily, but selectively, on national security issues. The focus is solely on Pakistan (Muslims at home, beware!). With helpful sections of media, China (military standoff in Sikkim, alleged dumping of consumer goods and shielding of Pakistani militant Masood Azahar) is tactfully kept out.

The campaign of calumny is extended to all critics of the government. They are being dubbed “anti-national,” prompting even marginalized BJP patriarch L K Advani to protest.

Take note — beneath this mutual name-calling, some of it personal and derogatory, some targeting religious minorities and Dalits and unsparing of women, is a thinly concealed ideological war. Howsoever diluted and putrid, it makes this Lok Sabha election, although 17th over seven decades, a watershed.

Socialist leader Ram Manohar Lohia, among last of India’s thinking politicians, classified the country’s political cultures into Congress, communist/socialist and “Hindu nationalist” Jana Sangh (BJP’s earlier avatar). 

Of the three, the communists, having scored several self-goals are marginalized in the essentially right-of-centre discourse. Contradictions-prone socialists, both anti-Congress and anti-communist, are divided into caste-oriented regional parties, further divided on support and opposition to Modi/BJP. They are among the numerous regional parties scattered across the country hoping to be king-makers, should a clear parliamentary majority elude Modi.  

The fight for the national space, thus, is essentially between a weak but vying-to-surge Congress and BJP, now the country’s dominant political force ruling at the Centre and in 20 states. This sharpens the conflict as never before with baiting Nehru and his family is an important ingredient.

Campaign against Nehru is not new; nor against his daughter Indira and grandson Rajiv who later became the premiers; nor against Italian-born Sonia who snatched power from BJP in 2004.

It gained currency each time the Congress lost power. US-based writer Ved Mehta did a scathing study, and so did many others, including Nehru’s own one-time private secretary, M O Mathai. While Mehta is forgotten, Mathai’s scurrilous writings keep re-surfacing.  

Atal Bihari Vajpayee (1998-2004), a BJP premier, but a liberal and a known Nehru admirer, had discouraged this. There was some grace in public discourse. Attacking Mahatma Gandhi and demonizing the Nehru-Gandhi family were confined to those believing in undoing India’s 1947 Partition. They gained little political currency.

It’s no holds barred now since the Congress performed abysmally in 2014 and the BJP consolidated it hold. The Mahatma’s assassin, too, has a temple.

ALSO READ: Statues Come And Go, Ideas Survive

Now, we gather through books and social media, that the Nehrus were “Muslims-converted to Hinduism”; that Indira married Firoze Gandhi, a Muslim, not a Zoroastrian and that after Sonia married Rajiv and their daughter Priyanka married Robert Vadra, the family has become ‘Christian’.

Significantly, this has gained currency, especially among the urban educated who, otherwise call themselves ‘modern’, but don’t pause to think why and how should religions matter.

Sadly, those who have failed to create history are now attempting to rewrite history wherein Nehru has a place that cannot be deleted. This has accompanied attempts to appropriate past leaders like Sardar Patel (with world’s tallest statue) and Madan Mohan Malaviya (conferred Bharat Ratna, highest civilian award).

Nehru is their principal target because he not only ‘discovered’ India through his iconic book, but also piloted what free India became, good or otherwise, for 16 long years. Countering the fact that Chandigarh city and Bhakra-Nangal dams were built under Nehru’s watch and his role in establishing institutions of science and higher education is integral to the BJP’s search for a raison d’etre.

Congress’ own performance over the past six decades has greatly contributed to this process. It has shed much of the Mahatma-Nehru ethos. For the many good she did, Indira stands identified with the draconian Emergency. Rajiv’s ill-advised play of the Hindu-Muslim/mandir-masjid game to counter BJP in the 1980s only helped the latter’s consolidation.

Today, his son Rahul eschews any secular pretense, politically, and is declared a sacred thread-wearing Shaivite. Nehru’s agnostic approach and Indira Gandhi’s secularism are passé.   

Like secularism, socialism — the ‘allies’ the Congress is fighting include the communists. The historic collaborate-despite-conflict relationship is over when, ironically, Congress election manifesto, a document of substance, qualifies it to be slotted as a progressive, left-of-centre force. In a double-irony, it also distinguishes it from the BJP, whose B team it is perceived to be playing.

Worse, the party’s democratic DNA has changed. It has become a family fiefdom. Its members at all levels can’t even conceive of a leader other than a Nehru-Gandhi at the top. This has been on for half a century now, since Indira split the party in 1969 and again in 1978, when party heads and state chief ministers began being appointed from New Delhi.

This ‘dynasty’ bit has refurbished with the entry of Priyanka. Congress’ most potent weapon, she could confront Modi in Varanasi. She has a striking public presence and reports are that she charms with her conversational style. Whether her resemblance to grandma Indira, who was assassinated 34 years ago, would appeal to people, particularly 85 million young, remains to be seen.

ALSO READ: Priyanka’s Entry Makes Elections Exciting

Modi uses ‘dynasty’ as a dirty word at will, only against the Congress, despite the fact that the BJP has 18 such families of its own. BJP’s own decision-making is over-centralized in just two – Modi himself and party chief Amit Shah.

He prides himself in being unattached and thus, incorruptible. It’s not that one thing proves the other. But he is targeting, rightly or otherwise, other singles on graft charges. Mayawati, Mamata Banerjee, Navin Patnaik are single Supremos, like late Jayalalithaa was. And he is selective about family-run parties of M K Stalin, Chandrababu Naidu and his rival Jaganmohan Reddy, Sharad Pawar, Lalu Prasad, Mulayam Singh/Akhilesh Yadav, the Abdullahs, besides Telengana’s Chandrashekhar Rao and Karnataka’s Kumaraswamy.     

To return to the Congress, its prospects remain iffy despite its electoral victories in three states last December. Ironically, they have made it difficult for the party to negotiate alliances. Its young president who bears the brunt for “sixty years of Congress rule” is himself an untried man never having held office in a government. He cannot rally the opposition behind him because the seniors out there are afraid that the party could re-emerge at their cost.  Seen as weak or indecisive, his state satraps have also scuttled pre-poll alliance(s) that could have effectively challenged the BJP. The opposition has a plethora of prime ministerial candidates. This is advantage BJP.

Besides what happens of Modi/BJP, the other key takeaway of the current elections will be the future of the Congress Party, India’s oldest. Of course, India is not, and cannot be a two-party state for a long time. These elecions will determine the role they could play in shaping the course of the nation’s destiny. It will decide which way, and how. India’s polity and society will go in the near future.

The writer can be reached at mahendraved07@gmail.com

Jallianwala Bagh Massacre

Jallianwala Bagh: Will An Apology 100 Yrs Late Help?

By Mahendra Ved
An apology that comes a hundred years after the bloodbath in Amritsar is mere tokenism. Britain has failed even in this belated act.

Of numerous incidents of violence perpetrated on the unarmed by the British while colonizing much of the world, the carnage at Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar on April 13, 1919, is and shall remain unique.

Many say that firing 1,650 bullets on the unarmed civilians that day, Britain shot itself in the foot, eventually losing India, its “Jewel in the Crown”. And that, in turn, unleashed the global process of de-colonization.  

As that event marks completion of a century this Saturday, much water has flow down the Thames and many rivers across the world that went red with blood of the ‘natives’. But the present-day British are in no mood to apologize. British Prime Minister Theresa May did term the incident a “shameful scar” but stopped short of an apology.

The House of Lords that had exonerated Brigadier General Reginald Dyer, the “Butcher of Amritsar”, debated the tragedy this February; the House of Commons debated it on Tuesday (April 8). But worried about “potential financial implications”, Minister Mark Field, chose to be ‘conservative’ and expectedly, declined appeals by Members for an apology. 

Perhaps, an apology would have set a ‘bad’ precedence. Members of the “Mother Parliament” and governments of the day would be left with little else to do if they began apologizing to people around the world for much that happened during two centuries of colonization.

Allowing a related topic to creep in, the British, like other European ex-colonizers, will not return the artefacts they stole from Asia, Africa and Latin America. This is unlike what the United States, itself a colony once, is in the process of doing. So a million precious things that belong to other peoples’ heritage, shall remain where they are, or to be auctioned at Sotheby’s.

It’s a tad unfair, one might say, to expect only the Britons to atone for their sins when there were other, equally rapacious, colonizers.

It’s also unfair that the present generation be expected to atone for their ancestors’ sins. Besides expression of regrets by the Queen in 1997 and another by then Prime Minister David Cameroon in 2013, an FCO spokesman recalled Winston Churchill. As the Secretary of State for War when Jallianwala occurred, he had called it “a monstrous event.”

But records show Churchill’s attitude towards India and Indians only hardened thereafter. As Britain’s war-time prime minister during the World War II, he diverted food produced in India to the Allied forces, causing deaths of millions during the Great Bengal Famine.      

In the latest book on Jallianwala carnage, Kishwar Desai – (her husband Lord Meghnad Desai and Lord  Raj Loomba had moved the resolution in the House of Lords), reveals that Brigadier General Dyer alone was not responsible for the massacre and other atrocities. The blame must also fall on Lieutenant Governor Michael O’Dwyer, who blindly endorsed Dyer’s actions.

She writes of “a feigned state of war” declared by Miles Irving, Deputy Commissioner of Amritsar, which set the ground for General Dyer to take command of Amritsar on April 11, 1919, without a formal notification.

A study on Live History on Lifting The Veil says there was alarm at the show of Hindu-Muslim unity at the Ram Navami celebrations, four days earlier. The book reveals that “the army and the police came closer than ever with a dual purpose: to break the so-called rebellion and to smash Hindu-Muslim unity forever.”

This is yet another aspect of the British rule in India consequences of which are being felt even today.    

Desai says Dyer deliberately took only Indian soldiers, who “continued to fire on the defenceless gathering without any warning till they exhausted 1,650 rounds, killing and wounding nearly 2,000 people who had allegedly “defied Dyer’s authority” by assembling there. While many areas in Punjab had been placed under restriction, Jallianwala Bagh was not among them.

Salman Rushdie has dramatized the event in his Booker- winning 1981 novel, Midnight’s Children. In it, Dyer says after the massacre: “Good shooting. We have done jolly good work.”

Thanks to a lid on information, the Indian leaders’ reaction took a while to come and was muted. Rabindranath Tagore returned his British knighthood. Mahatma Gandhi condemned the system rather than any individual.

But Viceroy Chelmsford endorsed the action of the Punjab government without inquiry and said that it was “an error in judgement” on Dyer’s part, whose initial report of April 14 revealed “only 200-300 casualties.”

It was only four months after the massacre, on August 25, that Dyer wrote a detailed report of the events of April 13 and confirmed that he had fired without warning. This was the first time that the Government of India learnt about the actual circumstances. Subsequently, many of the official documents were suppressed, and official hearings were held in camera. Relevant documents were carted away to London when the British quit India.

Undoubtedly, Jallianwala Bagh was the turning point for India’s freedom movement. The world was to watch how Gandhi met British violence with non-violence. He had already launched Satyagraha at Champaran (1917) and Kheda (Kaira -1918). The one against the Rowlatt Act took place in Bombay (now Mumbai) on April 6, 1919, occurred just a week before Jalliawala Bagh happened.  

The carnage convinced Gandhi that the British needed to be countered with something they were unprepared for and, in the long run, could not endure.

But not everyone had Gandhi’s patience and vision. Udham Singh avenged Jallianwala by killing O’Dwyer on March 13, 1940, a good 21 years later. By that time, the Hindu-Muslim divide had been deep. Udham Singh is said to have given his name as Mohammed Singh Azad, which the London Police initially registered. Symbolically, it combined three different faiths.

There is no final count of how many people actually perished. Desai records that the authorities were totally insensitive to the sufferings of the hapless victims. Lt. Col. Smith, the government doctor, turned away the wounded, calling them “rabid dogs”, causing more deaths over the following days.

Jallianwala massacre has rankled people on both sides of the India-Pakistan border, despite the bitterness caused by India’s Partition and that of Punjab, and the perpetual state of mistrust between the two South Asian neighbours. This week, Pakistan’s Information Minister Fawad Chaudhry endorsed the demand that the British government apologise for the empire’s role in the Jallianwala Bagh massacre and the famine of Bengal in the run-up to the 100th anniversary of the massacre.

Having defended Dyer initially, the British have sought to demonize him. Most literature published in the UK around the massacre focuses on him, as if the British Indian Government or that ruling from Westminster had no role to play. Certainly, there is not an iota of guilt.

Sadly, this attitude appeared to influence ‘Gandhi’, the 1981 cinematic opus by Sir Richard Attenborough that, nevertheless, is the best tribute that could be paid to the Mahatma. It won a record eight Oscars at the 55th annual Academy Awards and reminded the world of Gandhi and his teachings.

Here, this writer may be allowed, for the sake of better expression, first-person reference to the press preview of the film held in New Delhi. Sir Richard, fair to history, events and to characters, by and large, did seem to guard Britain’s ‘sovereign’ interests.

In the film, Dyer wears no insignia depicting the British Crown on his cap. However, black-and-white photographs of Edward Fox, the actor who played Dyer, distributed at the media preview showed the Crown. When I pointed this out to Sir Richard, he initially denied it. But after Major Atul Dev, a retired Indian soldier-turned journalist, also insisted that it was so, the legendary had the grace to apologize. I have retained that photograph.

Does it really matter if Britain, a declining power today, apologizes? India, its economy galloping at a faster rate than the British, has found better ways — like buying over Tetley and Jaguar and in a manner of speaking, pouring cold ‘Cobra’ into the Thames.

Some fair-minded Britons have said that the Jallianwala Bagh massacre apology should have come in 1919 itself, when the issue was discussed in the British Parliament. Was that not an “error of judgement”, a la Dyer, but a collective one?  

An apology that comes a hundred years hence is mere tokenism. Britain has failed even in this belated act.  

The writer can be reached at mahendraved07@gmail.com

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Generation Shift In Indian Politics

Election 2019 Will Witness Generational Change

By Mahendra Ved
This Lok Sabha elections, 500 million young people will vote in the country, 15 million of them for the first time

This had to happen, sooner than later. India is used to politicians furthering their social and economic clout while professing to be “in service of the people.” Now, several private institutions are producing professionally trained politicians. “Serving public” may soon be like “customer care.”

Khadi, the homespun cotton that Indian politicians generally don is optional for the young wannabe with varying political beliefs prescribed kurta –pajama-jacket uniforms. They are attending training courses that will fetch them degrees, diplomas and certificates at convocation ceremonies.

The Parliament’s Bureau of Parliamentary Research and Studies runs an internship course for the young. But now a plethora of private institutions has come up to train the young to ‘connect’ and ‘engage’ with the people. Concept of “public service” may not be prominent in the syllabi, but thankfully, the Indian Constitution is.

They charge between Rs 300,000 to Rs 1.6 million per course, promising to make “better leaders.” The corporate touch is inescapable and so is the nudge from some of the political parties who want to “catch them young.”

It is not difficult to see that besides electoral politics, the graduate can become a lobbyist, a counselor, a PR man or an analyst. These are among the areas of interest for business houses, investors, visiting suppliers and deal-makers and foreign embassies. Or, join a NGO.

Whether this kind of education and training could produce a politician willing to get hands dirty, dine with the poor in their homes and join the rough and tumble of party affairs would seem seriously doubtful to an old-timer. But if there are cyber warriors, why not have cyber politicians? Haven’t harnessing knowledge, skill and technology, and using sociology and psephology, produced strategy room analyses, surveys and Exit polls for nearly four decades now?

This has not ended, but has slashed the role of the hands-on reporter who hits the election trail, talking to the tea vendor or interviewing a bus and rail rider to fathom the ‘ground’.  As this reporter gets tech-savvy the interviewees, too, are getting smart, saying what the TV cameras want. The current campaign is hugely being driven by the social media.  

This is inevitable as India urbanizes, educates and acquires economic heft. Political activity has evolved although it requires moving out in the blazing sun to a rough rural terrain. The cyber-boys and girls would need that at least during elections and when mass movements are launched.

Going by past experience, with each Lok Sabha election, roughly a third of the 543 lawmakers are replaced or are defeated and new ones ring in. Besides growing use of technology, the current run-up to the elections is a hugely transformational exercise. To assess it, one has to jostle with personal views, political preferences and professional objectivity required of a scribe.  

Out, at least from the LoK Sabha elections are  Lal Krishna Advani and  Murli Manohar Joshi two of the founders of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Appointed ‘margadarshaks’ (advisors) five years ago, they are now, as a television debater tellingly put it, ‘darshaks’, just onlookers.

Three other Ram temple movement leaders who witnessed demolition of the historic Babri Mosque in Ayodhya city in 1992 – Uma Bharati, Kalyan Singh (now Rajasthan Governor) and Vinay Katiar — are not among the contestants. The tumultuous event they led and much that happened in its aftermath have seriously challenged the idea of an inclusive India. How these five will face prolonged court trial for their role is best left to the future.

Three scores of BJP lawmakers have been changed. The process began in 2014 with an age bar of 75. Modi denied ministerial berths to Advani and Joshi. Now the generational shift in the party has reached the next level.

Sentiments apart and even discounting speculation over lack of personal equations among other reasons for their exclusion, the BJP needs to fight incumbency. All this is inevitable in India that is seen with justification as a gerontocracy.

This is also true of other parties. Elders have been forced to be flexible as they tackle pressures from young aspirants, many of them family members – even grandchildren. Former premier H D Deve Gowda and Sharad Pawar have had to change their Lok Sabha constituencies to accommodate young wards. Her retirement plans well-known, former Congress chief Sonia Gandhi has returned to the election arena.

Mulayam Singh Yadav, having lost control of Samajwadi Party to son Akhilesh, has accepted the same party nomination. This is after the perennial prime minister-in-waiting bid farewell to parliament and surprised everyone by wishing a victorious return to Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Times are changing.

Part of this change is the idea of crowd-funding of election, not exactly new, is attracting the young. Kanhaiya Kumar, former leader of the Jawaharlal Nehru University, has adopted it. Parties and their nominees unlikely to be funded by moneybags may follow him now and in future. This ensures public participation.   

Young leaders are emerging even as ‘win-ability’ compulsions force them to field the old. While Akhilesh has won the family turf war, acrimony has surfaced in the other Yadav clan in Bihar between two sons of jailed Lalu Prasad. The two northern states are crucial for the Opposition alliances to challenge Modi/BJP.

Rahul has found state satraps scuttling Congress’ alliances with other parties in Delhi, West Bengal and Andhra Pradesh. His gambit of contesting a second seat in Kerala, while boosting his party in the South where he hopes to do better than the BJP, has antagonized the communists, already angry with him for failure to align in West Bengal.

It is difficult to blame any single party. But many have seriously wondered if the Congress as the biggest opposition entity has frittered away the opportunity to show accommodation to others, thus conceding space to the ruling alliance.

The once-reticent Rahul’s in-your-face attacks on Modi have won him admirers and expectedly, counter-attacks from BJP and its social media acolytes.  In contrast, sister Priyanka’s striking presence and a conversational style appeal to listeners.

Some issues are out from the BJP’s armour. At his rallies, Modi doesn’t promise to build Ram temple anymore; nor does he defend government’s policies. It’s all hyperbole.

And some issues are passé for both sides. None talks of corruption, Rupee’s demonetization, triple talaq for Muslim women and lynching of Muslims by cow-protecting vigilantes. The opposition is silent on the Rafale aircraft deal. Call it prioritizing – or opportunism.

Overall, the opposition has fallen short in forging credible state level alliances, leave alone a national one. It is a difficult task given conflicting ambitions and support bases when transfer of votes from one party to another is not easy. The opposition does not have a tall leader who can parley across the parties.  It is advantage BJP.

With opposition alliances in many states gone awry, analysts say there is lack of clarity in opposition strategy and eventually, too much will depend on post-polls give-and-take. In 2004, that had helped the Congress race past a shocked BJP. But now, BJP is the predominant force led by the most formidable team of Modi and party chief Amit Shah, geared 24×7 into poll-mode, with full intent to retain power at any cost.

But with incumbency factor looming large, the numbers may elude Modi as of now. To get the numbers, Modi is trying hard to build sentiment, hoping to trigger a wave.

This explains his below-the-belt rhetoric. When critics are called “anti-national” and asked to “go to Pakistan” and the neighbour itself, accorded undue, exaggerated place in domestic discourse and is predicted to “die its own death,” one wonders what message electioneering in the world’s largest democracy is giving to others.

(The writer can be reached at mahendraved07@gmail.com )

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Vote For Calf And Cow

Catchy Slogans Reflect India’s Electoral Journey

By Mahendra Ved

Slogans are the essence of an election campaign as they project personalities and issues. In throes of its 17th Lok Sabha elections, India votes for those that carry a balance of wit and sarcasm.

Simple, black-and-white posters with the slogan “YOU can defeat S K Patil,” appeared in the summer of 1966, inviting voters of South Bombay, India’s principal hub of businesses and corporate headquarters. Trade unionist George Fernandes was challenging a powerful man of the rich. He won the “David vs. Goliath” contest and became “George, the Giant Killer”.

Slogans are the essence of an election campaign as they pithily project personalities and issues. Now in throes of its 17th polls, India votes for those that carry a balance of wit and sarcasm.

Meant to capture imagination of the masses, the slogans aim to be everything to everybody. It is difficult to impact a billion-plus people of varying age and income groups, of different faiths and castes.

No wonder, for the best of ideas to emerge, millions are spent in conceptualizing, then pushing them. It’s serious business for the parties as well as the advertising and PR firms. Who is engaging whom and the campaign content and strategy are kept secret.

The first general election in 1952 had “self-reliance” as its slogan, reflecting aspirations of a newly-independent nation, bearing Jawaharlal Nehru’s signature. For the next (1957), it was industry, the “temples of modern India.” The focus in 1962 was on India’s place in the comity of nations. All along his Congress party’s symbol was a pair of bullocks, symbolizing the farming India.

Change came post-Nehru, in 1967. Considered weak, Indira Gandhi found competition from the political right and the left. Bharatiya Jana Sangh, earlier avatar of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) sought to take its thunder away with the slogan “Har haath mein kaam, har khet mein paani” (job for every hand, water for every farm), both lighted by ‘diya’ (lamp). Its party symbol underscored this reality even as the country was getting electrified, urbanized and industrialized.

Congress projected itself as the face of development with Progress through Congress campaign in the 1960s. But he Left, of varying hues, challenged it. Socialist Fernandes and Communist party of India (CPI) chief S A Dange were among then Bombay’s opposition candidates. A telling wall painting asked the people, reversing the Congress slogan, to choose between “Congress Or Progress.”

With that election, the Congress’ preeminence ended and that also ended the era of innocence, if there was one.  “Vote for calf and cow, forget all others now” became the Congress symbol after it split and lost the pair-of-bullocks symbol. Critics mocked at its quasi-religious touch and likened the new pair to Indira and younger son Sanjay.

In those times of frequent shortages and price rise, Jan Sangh coined a funny but telling slogan about sugar and edible oil: “Yeh dekho Indira ka khel, kha gayi shakkar, pee gayi tel”.

But there was no stopping Indira, who sprang a surprise election. She fought the opposition’s “Grand Alliance” in 1971 with “Garibi hatao, Indira lao, Desh bachao.”  Shiv Sena’s Balasaheb Thackeray, known for biting political cartoons, caricatured Indira ceremonially riding an elephant, promising end to poverty.

The opposition said she actually wanted “Garib Hatao” — banish the poor. But “Garibi Hatao” worked, and to date remains the most effective slogan ever coined in India.

But when she announced snap elections again in 1977, after 19 months of internal emergency with media gagged and the opposition leaders jailed, Jaiprakash Narayan coined the slogan “Indira Hatao, Desh Bachao.” People heeded him.

The most emotive slogan came after her assassination in 1984. Jab tak sooraj chand rahega, Indira tera naam rahega (your name will endure like sun and moon). The sympathy it generated caused a landslide victory of the Congress.  

By the end of the 1980s, India was in throes of a movement to build a Ram temple in Ayodhya city where 16th century Babri Mosque once stood. The BJP and its affiliates’ slogan for the 1991 polls was “Bachcha bachcha Ram ka, Janmabhoomi ke kaam ka”. But in a repeat of 1984, the Congress gained sympathy after Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated.

Post-Babri demolition in 1992, the 1993 election in Uttar Pradesh witnessed the BJP’s surprise debacle. Mulayam Singh’s Samajwadi Party and Kanshiram’s Bahujan Samaj Party had forged a winning alliance. The slogan was Miley Mulayam-Kanshiram, hawa ho gaye Jai Shree Ram. The alliance had snuffed out the temple issue.

It is significant to recall it because the two otherwise competing parties have again forged what seems the most potent alliance to defeat BJP.

Confronted by caste and communal combinations in 1996, the Congress sought to adopt a secular high-ground with Jaat par na paat par, mohar lagegi haath par, seeking vote for hand, its symbol. But it lost to the BJP slogan, Bari bari sab ki bari, ab ki bari Atal Bihari.

Vajpayee did get his turn and ruled for six years. But in 2004, he lost in an election advanced by over-confidence amidst “India Shining” slogan. In many ways, Congress President Sonia Gandhi was its architect. The slogan in 2009 was “Sonia nahi yeh aandhi hai, doosri Indira Gandhi hai”.   It worked. Five years later, a listless party, without a worthwhile slogan, touched its nadir in 2014. Now, the mantle has fallen on daughter Priyanka,who resembles her granny.    

In 2004, seeking a comeback, the Congress party targeted “aam aadmi”, India’s growing middle-class population. Ironically, it has since been hijacked by one of the key drivers – and beneficiaries — of the anti-graft movement that targeted the Congress. Aam Aadmi Party chief Arvind Kejriwal rules Delhi.  

Sadly, this year there is more of name-calling than slogans to galvanize the conducting of an election campaign on issues. The current toxic discourse many jibes hit below the belt. A mix of personal and political malice, they don’t even qualify as slogans.

The Election Commission of India and its state-level offices ignore the good and the bad ones, and curb the ugly ones. Often, by the time they act, the damage is done.

India has been witnessing a sustained campaign in recent years, with or without elections taking place, transcending political and ideological differences, to malign and belittle opponents.

Amidst demonization of the Nehru-Gandhi ‘dynasty’, Sonia Gandhi can never leave behind her Italian birth and her son Rahul remains ‘pappu’, a simpleton. The latest is ‘pappi’, for sister Priyanka.

The Congress responds by launching personal attacks on Prime Minister Narendra Modi. It is necessary to condemn all those muddying polls discourse. But one comes across justification in the way other leaders across the world behave, especially US President Donald Trump who trashes critics, especially women. Who will work for this “climate change” and cleanse the world?  

Un-related to elections, Rahul’s “Suit Boot ki Sarkar” attacking Modi’s sartorial taste had hit the bull’s eye. But the polls campaign so far has not thrown up a positive Congress slogan. That task seems to have been conceded to Modi and the opposition slogans are almost entirely reactive.

Projecting India’s security as supreme, Modi has called himself the ‘chowkidar’ guarding the nation — on the border with Pakistan (China does not figure, though), and within the country from the corrupt and the “anti-nationals” (read all critics). This has been met with sharp rebuttal by the opposition that accuses Modi and his government of corruption, mainly in the Rafale aircraft deal, favouring select business houses, saying “chowkidar chor hai” (the guard is a thief). This is tit-for-tat, perhaps born out of years of Rahul’s belittling.   

Modi has sought to turn this charge to advantage by reinforcing it with “main bhi chowkidar hoon.” Now, his ministers and party leaders are using this as a prefix, a badge of honour. Many acolytes on the social media have followed suite. This has no known precedence.

Among others, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s campaign, also personalized, calls him “Aaccha hai, Sachha hai, Chalo Nitish Ke Saath Chalein.” Its rival Rashtriya Janata Dal is shying away, since its supremo Lalu Prasad is in jail. It has opted for “berozgari hatao, arakshan badhao”, focusing on jobs and reservation.

In 2014, BJP appealed in Modi’s name: Ab ki Baar Modi Sarkar. This time over, it is again in his name:“Modi Hai toh Mumqin hai” (With Modi, it is possible to achieve). ‘Chaiwala’, the humble tea-vendor has yielded place to “chowkidar.”  

“Your Chowkidar is standing firm and serving the nation. But, I am not alone. Today, every Indian is saying-#MainBhiChowkidar.”  The target is 400 seats out of 543: “Abki baar 400 ke paar”.

Two months from now we will know if the gatekeeper gets fresh mandate or some other(s) gate-crash.

The writer can be contacted mahendraved07@gmail.com

Will Lok Sabha Polls 2019 Be A Referendum On Modi?

By Mahendra Ved

The world’s largest democracy, a major economy but by no means prosperous, India is also the most expensive when holding its elections.

Its 2014 democratic exercise cost as much as the United States’ 2012 presidential elections, when Barack Obama was re-elected. The one beginning next month, estimated by New Delhi-based Centre for Media Studies, may cost $ seven billion, or INR 50,000 crores.

Another calculation by political scientist Milan Vaishnav is of a whopping $10 billion, based on growth in expenditure incurred for two polls conducted in 2009 and 2014.  The US spent much less, $6.5 billion while electing Donald Trump in 2016.

These huge sums do not come only from the state that funds conducting of the polls. Contestants receive contributions, overt and covert, from businesses, corporate sector and the untaxed and largely invisible farm income. Experience shows that they are made with the understanding that the next government will tweak laws to help recover that money. This breeds corruption.

Should such an expensive exercise be a cacophony that it now seems?

With three weeks to go, the air is thick with hyper-nationalistic fervor triggered by last month’s terror attack in Kashmir followed by India-Pakistan aerial stand-off.

Tensions have subsided but not really ended. Speculation persists over its resumption, should there be another incident on the border or in India-controlled Kashmir. Such eventuality, assuming the world community (mainly the United States) is surprised again, is certain to sweep all other issues out of the polls.

Leaving aside madcaps (there are some on both sides of the Indo-Pak border) who think that India engineered the Pulwama attack, it seems god-sent for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government and the ruling alliance.

To his credit, Modi did act tough, defying the nuclear threshold that has prevented a larger conflict, but not stopped Pakistan from using its so-called “non-state actors” for staging terror attacks. This was something his predecessors Manmohan Singh (in 2008 Mumbai terror attacks) and Atal Bihari Vajpayee (Kargil-1999, and attack on Indian Parliament-2001)  had not. Modi then swept the nation mounting an “I will not let the country down” campaign, converting the polls campaign into one referendum on national security.

His party, its ideological affiliates and a huge army of cyber warriors troll anyone critical of security lapses and/or seeking details of what precisely happened on the border.

The elections are now divided pre and post-Pulwama. The opposition is on the back-foot. As loyalty to the nation of those who ask questions, howsoever legitimate, is questioned, undoubtedly, this means political/electoral gains and losses.

People across the spectrum — media, academics and security experts among retired soldiers and diplomats – even individual families – are divided. Some ruling alliance stalwarts have gleefully given themselves more seats than they hoped to win earlier in parliament and state legislatures thanks to the border incidents. With Modi being projected as the superhero pandering to popular yearning of a strong leader, the pitch is queered against the opposition.  

However, past electoral outcomes have been mixed and indicate that there are limits to all this. For one, Kashmir and war with Pakistan do not resonate in India’s south as they do in the north and the west. Polls were won after conflicts, but not swept, be it in 1971 when Congress’ Indira Gandhi helped breaking-up of Pakistan and emergence of Bangladesh. BJP’s Vajpayee got the same numbers after the Kargil conflict in 1999. 

Electoral verdicts do not always match popular sentiments. The BJP lost in Uttar Pradesh 11 months after its cadres demolished the 16th century Babri Masjid in 1992.  And although it dubbed Manmohan Singh India’s “weakest prime minister” and BJP veteran L K Advani used the pejorative ‘nikamma’ (hopeless) after the terror attacks in Mumbai in 2008, the Congress improved its parliamentary majority and Singh got a second term.

But popular sentiments yielded results post-“surgical strikes” in Kashmir in 2016 by Modi Government. The BJP swept the polls in Uttar Pradesh despite the miseries caused by demonetization of the currency. Political engineering helped consolidation of the majority community’s vote at the expense the minority Muslims.

Most populous UP is the principal battleground now where the BJP is being seriously challenged by Samajwadi Party and Bahujan Samaj Party. Credible reports indicate that the Modi campaign is working. That 11 of the 44 soldiers who died in Pulwama were from the state matters. But, this is as-of-now, since the difficult-to-fathom public mood can change. And none can fathom how the rural mind, in UP and elsewhere, perceives these polls.

Arguably, the public at large is more worried about dal-roti. If it is looking for options other than Modi, it doesn’t find credible faces among the opposition. What began as Modi-versus-the-rest effort has stuttered. Some contenders have emerged following state-level alliances, but a credible national alternative is absent.   

The communists who forged alternative fronts in the past, providing political edge by helping formulate socio-economic common minimum programme have become irrelevant.

Next, the Congress has failed to accept allies and also being acceptable as a key opposition driver. Its alliance-making is non-starter. Its past gives it a misplaced sense of entitlement. Rahul Gandhi, despite his belated surge at the national level in the last one year and winning in three key states, cannot match up against the prime ministerial ambitions of numerous state satraps. 

The impact of its ‘brahmastra’, the most potent weapon Priyanka Gandhi, will be known only when results are out. Rahul’s Ailing mother and former party chief Sonia is contesting to save her turf. Those who yearn for Congress’ return, if only as a lesser evil, may be in for a disappointment.

The Pulwama plank seems to have stonewalled the Rafael deal debate. It also excludes any discourse on day-to-day issues, especially on the troubled economy. The government version dominates through its massive propaganda machinery. Bulk of the media, both mainstream and social, the key urban drivers, are divided on pro and anti- government lines.

Politicians are generally not economists. And even if they are, they remain politicians first. Modi too is a politician, and a good one at that. All his major moves are politically motivated. His deft political engineering, now topped with “Pulwama patriotism”, has muted discussion on unemployment with job growth at its lowest in 40 years after statistics officially put out but discredited by the government itself.

His government continues to project demonetization of 86 percent of the currency notes three years ago in terms of curbing black money and denial of funds to militant bodies, when subsequent indicators have shown otherwise.   

Falling exports have yet to catch up the 2013-14 level. Industrial growth in January slowed down to 1.7 percent compared to the 2.6 percent in factory output in December last year. The GDP remains under-7 percent.

Equally serious is the farm distress. Thousands unable to repay debts have committed suicide. Minimum support price for farm produce and waiving of farm loans have come too late in the day.  Low inflation has been driven by falling food prices, cutting farmers’ incomes and pushing up debt levels. About 800 million depend on farming for their livelihood.

With Saudi Arabia, the largest source, committed to production cuts to keep crude oil prices low, it seems unlikely that India’s fuel and energy costs, a key factor for the economy, will stay soft for long. And with political parties opening the spending spigot in a bid to woo voters, inflationary impulses will quicken.

Modi remains way ahead of his rivals. But there is a risk to democrcy. Political analyst Vijay Sanghvi says Modi has isolated himself thanks to his governance style. “He has reduced the status and stature of every minister and party leader. No one informs him of rampant growth of corruption at lower levels.  Unemployment is more hurting as low grade jobs are lost.”

The newest campaign slogan “Modi Hai toh Mumqin Hai” (It’s possible with Modi) reinforces this and places him as the centerpiece of a nationwide campaign. 

This election is for the soul of India and its pluralism. But it would also be a referendum on Modi.

The writer can be reached at mahendraved07@gmail.com

India Celebrates Big B’s Golden Jubilee

By Mahendra Ved

If India is to be identified with a voice, arguably though when views can violently differ, it would have to be that of Amitabh Bachchan.

Arguable it was even half-a century back when first heard in a background commentary in Mrinal Sen’s Bhuvan Shome (1970). Sen used only his first name and paid Rs 300. Before that, All India Radio (AIR), the only spoken mass medium then, had rejected it.

Today, the baritone, both God-given and cultivated, resonates with an impressive filmography and an equally respectable persona of a bespectacled gone totally grey, his tall, lanky frame filled-out with age.

Amitabh continues to sign more films than actors two decades younger. He endorses products that earn him more money and visibility than films. The toast of any gathering he selectively attends, he also promotes many a noble cause while maintaining, gingerly, his proximity with politics and politicians who matter.

His golden jubilee in cinema this year is not unusual, nor the number of his films, 234 (including three in making). Malayalam cinema’s superstar Prem Nazir (1926-1989) did 720 films. Ashok Kumar had done 326 in a career spanning 61 years. Ailing occasionally but still on the roll at 76, having begun late at 27, Amitabh is unlikely to match them in screen-longevity and film numbers. In terms of earnings, too, he stands way below Salman Khan and Deepika Padukone, seventh among the richest Indian celebrities assessed by Forbes Magazine last December.     

 He has made the term Bollywood that remains his principal platform seem respectable when vigorously disputed by the marquees of India’s regional cinema. While deprecating Bollywood’s craze for Hollywood, he did a solitary Hollywood film. Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby (2013) has him playing a non-Indian Jewish character, Meyer Wolfsheim.

Many would agree that Amitabh could have ventured into Los Angeles any time with his cultured voice, acting talent and market pull among the vast Indian diaspora. Not chasing Hollywood and staying rooted in Mumbai is a clever move typical of him. Not for him bit roles playing brown man in a black-and-white milieu. And, he needs to proudly defend his stardom. 

Stardom took a while coming although was an “officially sponsored” actor, perhaps, India’s only one. On the threshold of half-a-century, he may not like this recall.

Renowned Hindi poet-scholar Harivansh Rai and Teji Bachchan were close to then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. She was said to have addressed letters to friends K A Abbas and Nargis. Amitqbh signed his first film, Reshma Aur Shera after Nargis passed on the letter to actor-filmmaker husband Sunil Dutt. Abbas asked Amitabh to get his father to telephone him before he could consider him for Saat Hindustani. Dutt’s film was delayed for want of funds and logistics difficulties in Rajasthan’s desert. Ironically, he plays a dumb, minus his baritone. Abbas’ film came first and he was noticed.

Film historian Gautam Kaul recalls that he accompanied Abbas on a talent-scouting visit to the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII). That attracted Jaya Bhaduri, a student who had been introduced by Satyajit Ray in Mahanagar (1965). That makes her his senior in cinema. They paired in Zanjeer, Amitabh’s first big hit. Married then, they remain Bollywood’s first couple.

His honing was privileged, but far from cinema. At Sherwood, a public school, he dabbled in English theater. At Delhi’s Kirori Mal College, he was one of the ‘players’. A corporate job took him to Calcutta (now Kolkata) and then Bollywood happened, not without struggle.    

At a time when India was experiencing its ‘parallel’ cinema where one risked being labeled “non-filmy” as per prevalent Bollywood parlance, Amitabh was lucky to get noticed by some of the top directors of the day. He achieved stardom before Naseeruddin Shah, Shabana Azmi and Om Puri and others from that flock. He paired with potential rival Vinod Khanna and with Rajesh Khanna, already a super-star.

He was noticed after being paired with Rajesh in ‘Anand’ and “Namak Haram”. Although a mannerism-driven Rajesh had the best dialogues and audience sympathy on dying in the climax, Amitabh overshadowed him in terms of presence and performance. Indeed, Amitabh’s rise came after Rajesh’s dizzying but meteoric rise and fall, along with that of Navin Nischol. He paired with Vinod Khanna but the latter’s forays out of cinema and into spiritualism put him out of the race. Amitabh was lucky, again.

In socialism-driven cinema of the 1970s, Amitabh emerged as the “angry young man” with ‘Zanjeer’ and ‘Deewar’. But he also sustained Bollywood’s raucous romance (Amar Akbar Anthony). The dhoti-clad poet also donned suite-boot in “Kabhi Kabhi” rendering an urban touch to Sahir Ludhianvi’s exquisite Urdu poetry. Writer-duo Salim-Javed wrote their best lines for ‘Sholay’.

His partnering contributed to the success of directors Prakash Mehra and Yash Chopra and in later years, Karan Johar, R. Balki and many a fresh talent. He is associated with some landmark films like ‘Black’(2005) ‘Pink’(2016) and ‘Pa.’(2009)

Amitabh’s political career was brief. As one who grew along with Rajiv Gandhi, he agreed (some say reluctantly) to contest parliamentary elections in 1984. He defeated H N Bahuguna, a major opposition leader.

His first day in parliament was a spectacle. Ministers and lawmakers alike thronged to get his autographs (“oh, for my grandson,” one said sheepishly). But he made no speech and would impassively watch the House proceedings, touching his face involuntarily as if missing the greasepaint.

In my only encounter with him in Parliament’s corridors, I sought his reaction to the Annual Budget. “I have no reaction.” I scolded him, almost: “A major concession is made for the film industry and you have nothing to say?” “I welcome it,” he said and rushed off.

He resigned when the Bofors gun deal scandal scalded friend Rajiv and then lamented in a Times of India interview that “politics is a cesspool.” Truth may never be known. He was among those who had let down Rajiv, critics say. The Gandhi-Bachchan breach, it is believed, remains to this day.

A serious career decline between 1988 and 1992 saw a series of flops. He looked jaded. His film production venture skidding, he went virtually bankrupt. But he climbed his way back into reckoning as actor, despite the advent of three young Khans – Aamir, Salman and Shah Rukh.

Succeeding the three post-Independence greats – Dilip Kumar, Dev Anand and Raj Kapoor and straddling the Khan era, Amitabh has played a range of characters, from Sufi, Shakespearean, suave romantic, a conman, a policeman, a soldier, a stricken child, a ghost, a drunkard — all that Bollywood offers.  Choosing favourites from among them is well-nigh impossible. He has starred opposite son Abhishek and daughter-in-law Aishwarya and outsmarted both – of course, the director and the script demand that.

A detailed narration of his career would take more space than permitted here. Roles are written for him. Whatever be the performance of others in the ventures, he does not let you down. And that is remarkable in 50th year.

His anchoring “Kaun Banega Karorpati,” the Indian version of “Who Wants To Be Millionaire”, remains a landmark in Indian television. Beginning 2000, it has had nine seasons and demand for it seems unending among advertisers and family audiences. In a way it also marks the evolution and ageing of Amitabh.

To be seen with him by the millions, is a lifetime’s achievement for the young and old, grannies and housewives. They acknowledge this gratefully, some tearfully. They narrate to him their hopes. He inculcates in them aspirations and family values.   Money-earning, although a huge motivation, becomes incidental when they are before him.  

If his success is to be measured in terms of awards and accolades, he has numerous, including four National Film Awards as Best Actor, many at international film festivals. He has won fifteen Filmfare Awards and with 41 nominations overall, is their most-nominated performer.

In 1991, he became the first to receive the Filmfare Lifetime Achievement Award established in the name of Raj Kapoor. The magazine crowned him as Superstar of the Millennium in 2000.

In 1999, he was voted the “greatest star of stage or screen” in a BBC Your Millennium online poll. The organisation noted that “Many people in the western world will not have heard of [him] … [but it] is a reflection of the huge popularity of Indian films.”

He has been conferred two honorary doctorates by the universities of Madras and Manchester. He can use Dr. as prefix, but does not.

Conferred Padma Shri (1984), Padma Bhushan (2001) and Padma Vibhushan (2015), now, Bharat Ratna, India’s highest civilian national award, awaits him.

The writer can be reached at mahendraved07@gmail.com