Indian Politics Archives - Lokmarg

Paltu Kumar: The Flip-Flop Man of Indian Politics Strikes Again

By Sanjoy Narayan 28th January 2024

When things turn darkly cynical, seek solace in humour. In Indian politics that’s a truism. When early rumours swirled last week that Nitish Kumar, the veteran Bihar politician, chief minister of that state, and the main mover behind the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (I.N.D.I.A.), last summer’s alliance of more than two dozen Indian opposition parties, was likely to jump ship and ally instead with the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) once again, a colleague reminded me that many have named him “Paltu” Kumar, which roughly translated could mean “Flip-flop” Kumar, a reference to the series of switches in allegiance that have marked the 72-year-old political career.

Last Saturday, Kumar, who has been the longest serving chief minister, resigned from the post (he will stay on as caretaker chief minister till a new government is formed) and announced that he was joining the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), the BJP-led alliance, headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi that is in power at the Centre.

The “Flip-flop” nickname fits Kumar well. In his political career, which he began in the 1970s as a student socialist leader, has changed his political alliances so many times that it can be easy to lose count of those changes. Here’s a recap of his political moves through the years (make of them what you will):

In 1996, Kumar left the Janata Dal and formed the Samata Party with the late George Fernandes, and allied with the BJP-led NDA. In 2003, he merged the Samata Party with the Janata Dal (United), or JD(U), and continued to be part of the NDA.

Then, in 2013, he broke away from the NDA over the BJP’s decision to project Narendra Modi as its prime ministerial candidate, and joined the United Progressive Alliance (UPA), led by the Congress. But barely four years later, in 2017, he again switched sides and rejoined the NDA, after breaking the Grand Alliance that his party had forged with the Bihar regional party, Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) and the Congress, over corruption charges against his then deputy, Tejashwi Yadav.

Then, in 2022, Kumar resigned as chief minister and removed his party from the NDA, announcing that his party had rejoined the Grand Alliance, and would form a governing coalition with the RJD and the Congress. And two years later, last weekend, he resigned and joined the NDA once again. Yes, phew!

During all these hop-on, hop-off activities, one thing has remained constant: with the exception of a year, Kumar has remained chief minister of his state for the past nearly 20 years. Kumar has always defended his moves as being motivated by what is good for the people of Bihar and the good of the state. And as well as being known for his frequent changes of political loyalties he is also known for his development-oriented policies and governance in Bihar, which remains among the poorest and most economically backward states of India. And the fact that voters have in election after election, chosen to repose their faith in Kumar is indication of both his popularity and approval as the state’s chief minister.

There is, however, another consequence of Kumar’s latest move to hop aboard the alliance headed by Modi, an erstwhile arch political rival of his. After all, in 2013, when the BJP projected Modi as the NDA’s prime ministerial candidate, it was the reason why Kumar decided to exit the alliance. And, last summer, Kumar was the main political leader behind the formation of I.N.D.I.A., whose raison d’etre or reason for being was to ensure that Modi and the BJP do not win the 2024 parliamentary elections, which will be held in a few months.

That possibility, already quite unlikely, will now be dealt another blow as one of I.N.D.I.A.’s most prominent members doesn’t just quit the alliance but joins its main foe. In June 2023, it was Kumar who convened a meeting of 16 opposition parties in Patna, the capital of Bihar, to propose a new political front to challenge the ruling NDA government led by the BJP in the 2024 general elections. The alliance was formally created in July 2023 in Bengaluru, where 10 more parties joined the group and adopted the name I.N.D.I.A. The alliance currently has 26 parties, including two national and 24 regional parties, and accounts for 142 seats in the Lok Sabha and 98 seats in the Rajya Sabha.

I.N.D.I.A. is led by the Congress party, with that party’s president, Mallikarjun Kharge, as the chairperson but besides the departure of Kumar, the alliance faces other problems. Many of the alliance’s constituents disagree over several issues. Originally, I.N.D.I.A. had hoped to reach a consensus and put up one candidate to fight the BJP or its allies’ nominees in each of India’s parliamentary constituencies. It had also been expected to reach a consensus on fielding a prime ministerial candidate to take on Modi. None of these appears to have happened.

Seat-sharing has been an especially sore point. The Trinamool Congress leader and West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee recently said that her party would fight the elections independently and not back a consensus candidate; and even before he quit the alliance, Kumar’s supporters have been demanding that he be projected as the prime ministerial candidate. Then there have been schisms and rifts elsewhere: the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and the Congress have been sparring over seat sharing in states such as Punjab, Delhi and Haryana. And in Kerala, the Congress and the CPI(M), traditional adversaries in the state, are unlikely to agree on a common candidates’ list.

On the other side, Kumar’s crossover to the NDA will strengthen the alliance’s prospects, particularly in Bihar where there are 40 parliamentary seats. As of now, after the 2019 elections, the BJP has 17 of those seats, while Kumar’s JD (U) has 16, the Lok Janshakti Party has 6, the Grand Alliance 1 and the Congress 1. With Kumar aligning with the BJP, the NDA’s increased heft in the state is obvious.

Whatever motivates Mr Flip-Flop to keep switching sides, his latest manoeuvre further bolsters the near certainty of a third term for Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

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Politics of Personal Attacks

By Mahendra Ved 28th November 2023

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi approvingly responded to the word ‘panauti’, meaning a bad omen, to describe Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s presence at last week’s much-hyped cricket World Cup final that India lost to Australia. It followed Modi’s remark, disapproving of his principal adversary’s criticism of the China policy, calling him ‘murkho ka sardar’ (king of clowns).

This kind of discourse has become normal, adding spurious spice to the public discourse, regaling participants on social media, and getting carried into conference rooms and even family gatherings.

All are culpable. To explore when and how it began would be like the never-ending chicken-or-the-egg argument. But the worst can be feared. The current round of Assembly elections to five states have already set the tone for next summer’s parliamentary polls when the game of decibels – louder the better – will score new heights.

Not the first one though, Modi two decades ago attacked ‘Mian Musharraf’, demonizing a whole community. A decade later, as he sought to burst on the national scene, Congressman Mani Shankar Aiyar belittled him as a mere ‘chaiwala’. It hugely fed Modi’s successful campaign as an underdog seeking to lead the country.

Questions arise about whether smear helps politics and since it touches new depths each time there are elections, win votes. But the answers are bound to degenerate into yet another unseemly debate. Scanning reports of the last ten years and more, it is clear that personal attacks and shrill rhetoric have characterized India’s election speeches during each poll season. Worse, it has entered public life 24×7.

“We don’t mean it,” a politico who shall remain nameless because he is not around to confirm or contradict this defence of public abuse. However, he had no defence of why it was being inflicted on the public. This is no excuse, but it may be an emulation of what is happening in other democracies where, too, racial and sexist slurs are part of the polls campaign. The media and social media spread this venom to promote their readers/viewers’ approval. It’s also a multi-billion business.

Coming from whichever direction, each allegation and response to it is found to be full of half-truths and lies. No slip of the tongue, it is planned and calculated. Even regrets, when pushed hard, are worded as semi-defence, leaving victims to let go in disgust. Matters have gone to already over-burdened courts.

While this helps the ruling party of the day deflect public attention from the bread-jobs-house issues, the opposition, struggling to highlight those issues falls for the same temptations. And whether or not the ruling side is responsible for toxicity in the discourse, the opposition, collectively and individually, fails to match even in this negativity.

ALSO READ: Modi Kicks Off His Campaign For 2024

Despite repeated failures, Rahul Gandhi continues to employ the same old strategy of making everything about Narendra Modi personal. He has himself been the biggest target of personal attacks and abuse. But he seems to think being personal and upfront helps his party. Doubts about it expressed outside the party are ignored and those stating within the party have been silenced.

Gandhi has ended up playing Modi’s game at Modi and has lost badly. His slogans such as ‘Chowkidar Chor Hai’ used with disastrous effect in the 2019 elections have ebbed. But the daily naming of Adani-Ambani only puts off the corporate class. The fact is that both prospered during the times Gandhi’s party was in power. In any case, the corporate class wants and needs Modi and fears his government. Personal attack is bad politics and since no party, especially in the opposition, can do without money, also bad economics.

By contrast, AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal has shed personal attacks, despite being fully besieged, what with many of his aides in jail, many more being pursued and an arrest threat looming over his head. He and his party may be accused of many things, but by and large, not of polluting the discourse.

The ill effect of personal attack and abuse, not just to the opposition but to society as a whole is real. Sharad Pawar has said that Modi is the first prime minister to go to opposition-ruled states for election campaign and launch personal attacks on the chief ministers. Home Minister Amit Shah also doubles down with allegations even as the central investigation agencies are working on them. Pawar calls it a sign of desperation and fear of a loss by the duo, but that may be more of poll rhetoric. The counter to and course correction forced on the government has come from the judiciary, not from the political class.

Modi’s aggressive attacks on his critics, in and out of parliament and with or without elections, have attracted counter-attacks that have tended to be personal. This tit-for-tat has vitiated public discourse. Unsurprisingly, the BJP has accused the opposition of launching “personal attacks” on Modi. The party’s political resolution in January this year accused the Opposition of running “a negative campaign” over several issues against the government and launching “personal attacks” on Modi. The two have been mixed. In a democracy, this is unacceptable.

The BJP and its government would like to term any criticism of the government, even on policy issues, as “personal attacks”. If it is on a foreign policy issue, the party officials have dubbed the critics “anti-national.” This precludes any criticism, however valid and factual.

When it comes to personal attacks, the attacker(s) and the target(s) can vary with time and with the situation. C P Joshi, then a Congressman, had in 2019 said that Modi, belonging to a “low caste and not a Brahmin”, was not qualified to talk of Hinduism. He now heads the BJP in Rajasthan.

Crass political speeches are self-inflicted wounds on the society and the republic that under the Constitution, promises freedom, justice and other noble virtues of public order. The truth is that people as a whole, are not vindictive, communal or sexist. They respond to what is fed to them.

Who will set the standards of a decent public discourse in these polarised times?

The writer can be contacted at mahendraved07@gmil.com

For more details visit us: https://lokmarg.com/

The Prime Minister Whose Work Speaks Louder…

By Mahendra Ved 14th November 2022

As many ask if India, under its current dispensation’s ‘majoritarian’ agenda, can have a ‘minority’ prime minister like British premier Rishi Sunak, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) rightly, but rather conveniently, has named its long-time target, Dr Manmohan Singh, a Sikh.

He is the only top Congressman not attacked these days. At 90, now that he holds no office, he is being praised, grudgingly or genuinely, by BJP ministers. And they are neither mavericks nor dissidents in the Modi team.

Singh’s ‘qualifications’ that suit their political peeves must include not being a Nehru-Gandhi scion. He is their convenient mascot as they demonize everything Nehruvian.

Union Minister and former BJP president Nitin Gadkari recently said that the country is ‘indebted’ to Singh for ‘liberal’ and “pro-people” economic reforms. Citing his own experience of the 1990s, he said he was able to raise millions from the public and from the institutions to lay roads and bridges in Maharashtra. With them, he had gained national limelight.

Singh’s contribution is big enough to attract sugar-coated negative jibes. Another minister Mansukh Mandeviya has alleged that Congress had blocked Singh’s plans to introduce the goods and service tax (GST) for ten years. The minister needs to remind that Modi as Gujarat’s Chief Minister had refused to cooperate. The BJP had opposed the GST at the ministerial council, although that body was headed by one of their own men. Indeed, GST had become a political football for long years.

Singh criticised Modi’s dramatically introduced demonetisation, precisely six years ago. He was called “anti-national” in the House for predicting a fall in the GDP. He proved right, but none showed the grace to acknowledge it. Recalled last week was Modi’s seeking 50 days’ time for demonetisation to succeed, failing which, he had said: “Zinda jala dena” (burn me at the stakes).

Singh’s low-pitched voice of sane economics that the likes of George Bush Jr. and Obama respected is being missed at home amidst a plethora of claims of achievements.

Occasionally, he speaks his mind. Conferred an award last week, he asserted that India “will continue to rise and show to the world the way forward by blending tradition with modernity.”

But there are caveats. Economic growth, social change and political empowerment have brought in their wake “new aspirations of an entirely new generation of Indians.” They must be fulfilled.

He had tackled two such generations at the turn of the century. As the prime minister in 2004, a surprise choice of Congress chief Sonia Gandhi who chose not to take the post herself, Manmohan Singh recalled, “I took on that responsibility with diligence as my tool, truth as my beacon, and a prayer that I might always do the right thing. As I have said on many occasions, my life and tenure in public office are an open book. Serving this nation has been my privilege. There is nothing more that I could ask for.”

Today, people forget that the automobile and aviation revolution was really unveiled under Singh. Cars and plane tickets became affordable for the Indian middle class and two-wheelers for the larger masses.

Asked to assess his own performance as the premier, Singh had once modestly rated himself 6/10. Perhaps, he had left room for future criticism, allowing for re-assessment to fluctuate with time — and political changes.

Unsurprisingly, some of the criticism has come from latter-day critics who once praised his reforms. Among them is NR Narayan Murthy, the Infosys czar, who recently called Singh ‘extraordinary’ as the prime minister, but maintained that he had ‘blocked’ reforms.

Murthy is not alone. Switching sides after the surprise defeat of the Vajpayee Government in 2004, much of India’s corporate sector supported Singh as the prime minister. But they had tempered their praise with caution against spending too much on poverty alleviation schemes. Singh did not play the ball on that score.

In the 1990s, Corporate India gingerly recognised Narasimha Rao’s political backing that had enabled Singh’s reforms. Rao had wanted that they must have “a human face.” But they did not appreciate Singh’s political compulsions as the prime minister of allocating billions, even if he had reservations, for the anti-poverty programmes that formed the Congress’ political plank.

They dealt with Singh like they had done with Narasimha Rao earlier. Impatient during the political turmoil in the latter half of Singh’s second term, they accused his government of “policy paralysis.” They switched their support to Modi’s promise of graft-free reforms that placed earning with dignity over doles.

But while the wisdom of welfare-ism has been questioned, none has recognised the fact that Modi has continued with many of those schemes, ‘sinking’ more billions, albeit under different titles.

Times have definitely changed, and so has media-driven public perception. Those who criticised Rao and Singh’s ‘silence’, called “mauni-baba” in their times, have no problem with Modi’s one-sided discourse, full of rhetoric, on economic management, or, his silence on myriad contentious issues. His claims of achievements go unchallenged, even as he blames the past governments, from Nehru to Singh (Vajpayee’s period included).

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Singh is a misfit in the present times. Even when he was in the government, he was a misfit on many counts. Rao had thrown the economist/bureaucrat-turned-reluctant minister, to the wolves, they being full-time, hard-core politicians, unlike Singh. He had let him prioritize the reforms, but also let him face the music.

Singh’s reforms, when introduced, were difficult to digest. At least two of his cabinet colleagues, now dead, had told me privately, “Bhai, yeh toh hamein dubayega” – he will sink the government and the party. Eventually, Rao lost the 1996 elections, only partly due to the scams – sugar, share market, and telecom — but mainly due to his political miscalculations, ranging from Babri demolition to wrong electoral alliances.

A political non-entity who became the prime minister, Singh was without Rao-like political backing. With iffy support from Sonia Gandhi, he had to bear pressures from his party men, some of whom flaunted greater proximity/loyalty to the party chief. Some alliance partners not just chose their nominees in the council of ministers, but also demanded specific portfolios.

Yet, he had kept the economy going during the global depression and ended his decade at a higher growth rate than the present-day figure. His jugular for the civil nuclear treaty with the US surprised his supporters and frustrated his critics.

The Left-influenced schemes such as MNREGA won the Congress a second term despite vicious propaganda that the nuclear deal with the US had made India a ‘satellite’ of the US-led western bloc.

He may have succeeded in making the India-Pakistan border irrelevant and reducing tensions if India’s ‘nationalists’ had displayed vision and Musharraf had survived his own follies. And a Sikh premier had apologized to his community for the 1984 violence.

Thirty-one years back, he had said that the emergence of India as an economic powerhouse was “an idea whose time has come”. His contribution to that tryst during half of that period needs a calmer assessment.

Manmohan Singh had once expressed the hope that pilloried by the present, history may judge him “more kindly”. For now, that will have to wait.