Bracing for a Modi challenge

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

There is no sign of a grand alliance of opposition parties against the Narendra Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party emerging before the next Lok Sabha elections. That, however, does not mean the BJP will benefit from the division in the opposition ranks as it did in 2014.

When India embarked upon parliamentary elections on the basis of adult franchise, recognised national parties collected three-fourths of the votes polled. Regional parties’ share of votes was less than 10 per cent. Independents accounted for the rest. Over the past six decades, the national parties’ share has dwindled to about 60 per cent.

The Congress, the party that led the freedom movement under leaders like Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru and dominated the political landscape for decades, is now a pale shadow of what it was. Its vote share came down from close to 50 per cent in the early elections to just 19.52 per cent last time.

The BJP is the only national party which has grown in recent years. From a paltry 3.06 per cent votes gathered by its first avatar, Jana Sangh, in 1952, it has become the country’s largest party. It secured more than 31 per cent of the votes in 2014 and is now a part of the ruling dispensation in 20 of the 29 states.

Carried away by the party’s current status, BJP President Amit Shah recently exulted that the Congress has been reduced to a regional party. The fact is that all the parties recognised by the Election Commission as national parties owe their national status to the very liberal rules set by that body.

Strictly speaking, even the BJP is not national. The South is still out of bounds for it, and its presence in the East is largely the result of help from regional allies.

Apart from the six national parties, 39 state parties and 419 registered but unrecognised parties contested the 2014 elections. While the polity is fragmented and variegated, the ground situation permits the emergence of regional combinations that can challenge the BJP effectively.

In the recent by-elections in Uttar Pradesh, Bahujan Samaj Party chief Mayawati and Samajwadi Party’s Akhilesh Yadav, who have been rivals for power in the recent past, set aside their mutual animosity and engaged the BJP in one-to-one fights, leading to its defeat. They are now in talks on seat sharing for the Lok Sabha elections.

If BSP and SP can combine forces they will be able to severely limit the BJP’s tally in UP. In 2014 the party and an ally had together taken 73 of its 80 seats. It will not be easy for the BJP to make up a major loss in UP with gains it may make elsewhere. 

Although the Congress is only a small force in UP now, BSP and SP can improve their competitive edge in this state as well as neighbouring ones by bringing it also into their deal. 

Some regional party leaders, who are running state governments, like West Bengal’s Mamata Banerjee (Trinamool Congress), Andhra Pradesh’s N Chandrababu Naidu (Telugu Desam Party) and Telangana’s K Chandrashekhar Rao (Telangana Rashtra Samithi) have been talking of a Federal Front for some time.

They are well placed in their states and are in a position to resist the BJP’s advance even without a front. A formal alliance among them may be of little help in the electoral contests in their states but it will give them additional clout in the post-poll negotiations for government formation.

Some of the regional leaders are known to harbour prime ministerial ambitions. Mutual suspicions engendered by their conflicting personal ambitions appear to be inhibiting progress on the alliance front. They can overcome the hurdle if they set aside personal considerations for the time being and concentrate their energies on putting together a common manifesto laying stress on the need to strengthen the federal character of the national polity. 

There are reports that the Congress is looking for about 150 seats in the 543-member Lok Sabha. Since it got only 44 seats in 2014, this may appear to be an ambitious target. But it is attainable with the right kind of alliances.

The Congress target makes it clear that it is thinking of a coalition government. Some Congressmen have said Rahul Gandhi is their prime ministerial candidate. But party sources have indicated that he is open to the idea of a coalition government headed by Mayawati or Mamata Banerjee or anyone else not connected with the BJP or its ideological mentor, the Rashtreeya Swayamsewak Sangh. Such open-mindedness is what the situation calls for. -- Gulf Today, Sharjah, July 31, 2018.

Pitfalls of simultaneous poll

BRP Bhaskar

Gulf Today

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s idea of holding elections to the Lok Sabha and the State Assemblies together has not found favour with most political parties. But there is nothing to indicate that he has given it up.

The Election Commission, the body charged with the task of conducting the polls, was one of the earliest to welcome the idea. But when the Law Commission sought the views of the political parties, most of them opposed it.

The strongest opposition was voiced by the Communist Party of India (Marxist). Its General Secretary, Sitaram Yechury, said the idea was “inherently anti-democratic”.

The two main arguments advanced in support of simultaneous elections are that it will reduce considerably the expenses involved in the conduct of elections and that it will cut the time governments lose as the rules bar them from taking policy decisions once an election is scheduled. 

The main argument against it is that it will destroy the cardinal principle of parliamentary democracy, namely a government responsible to an elected legislature.

Modi is apparently batting for simultaneous elections as it is likely to work to the advantage of his Bharatiya Janata Party, which is now the largest and has the widest reach across India. It is also well-endowed with funds, being the one which attracts most donations from corporate entities.

When the Congress party had the advantages which the BJP now has, it had benefited immensely from simultaneous elections.

A cursory look at the history of India’s parliamentary system is enough to realise that a fixed tenure for all elected bodies is incompatible with it.

In the first elections to the Lok Sabha and the State Assemblies, held under the new Constitution in 1951-52, voters chose their MPs and MLAs at the same time. It became necessary to hold fresh assembly elections in two states, Travancore-Cochin (since merged in Kerala) and Pepsu (short for Patiala and East Punjab States Union, since merged in Punjab), in 1954 as the governments elected in 1952 lost the confidence of the houses and could not throw up alternative regimes.

Such situations arose in several other states too subsequently. It was in these circumstances that assembly elections in many states got delinked from the Lok Sabha poll.

Under the current system, if a government loses the confidence of the assembly and the house is not able to throw up an alternative government, the assembly is dissolved and the state placed under President’s rule. Usually fresh elections are held within six months.     

If a fixed term for elected bodies is made mandatory, a state may remain under a government which has lost its representative character or under Central rule for a long period. That will mean total negation of parliamentary democracy.

The Constitution does not provide for President’s rule at the Centre. If the government loses the confidence of the Lok Sabha and the house is unable to throw up another, the defeated government has to carry on as caretaker, pending fresh elections which must be held within six months.

When Morarji Desai’s government collapsed, the President appointed Charan Singh as the Prime Minister on the strength of the Congress party’s offer of support to him. The Congress withdrew the offer even before he could get a vote of confidence from the house. He continued in office until fresh elections were held without ever having enjoyed majority support in the Lok Sabha.

Charan Singh was Prime Minister for just 170 days. If the Modi formula of a fixed term of five years for the Lok Sabha was in force, he could have remained in office for two years and eight months without parliamentary backing. 

Implicit in the Modi plan is a desire to bring in the features of a presidential system of government through the back door.

Anticipating objections to an abrupt move from the present system, Modi and his supporters have been talking of moving to simultaneous elections in two phases. Only states where the assembly’s term ends within a year or so will be required to elect new houses at the time of the next Lok Sabha poll. 

It is necessary to amend the Constitution to make simultaneous polls mandatory. At present the BJP does not appear to have enough outside support to ensure smooth passage of an amending measure.

However, the BJP is in a position to launch the first phase without any change in the Constitution. It is part of the government in 20 of the 29 states. In some of them it is only a minor partner but if the major partners offer resistance it can overcome the situation with the help of the Governors, who are all Modi appointees. 

But in such a situation there may be revolt from within the BJP and its allies. Going in for fresh elections before the end of the current term of an assembly involves the risk of the voters, who are the ultimate masters, upsetting the apple cart. -- Gulf Today, Sharjah, July 24, 2018

Contours of BJP's poll plan

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

As Prime Minister Narendra Modi makes a bid for a second successive term, the Bharatiya Janata Party has coined a slogan “A New India is Rising”. It is reminiscent of the 2004 slogan “India Shining”, which failed to earn another term for Atal Behari Vajpayee, but it will be facile to imagine history will repeat itself.

The BJP is going into the battle with several favourable factors. For one, Modi is the darling of Big Business and the idol of the rising urban middle class which believes GDP figures and stock market indices are the best measures of economic health. In the committed cadres of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh the BJP has a large force in the field at its command. The opposition parties cannot match it, singly or collectively.

Last week the World Bank announced that India has overtaken France and become the world’s sixth largest economy. If the current growth rate is maintained, it may get past the United Kingdom too and be the fifth largest before the elections.

The Bombay and National stock exchanges established new records and surging share prices enabled the richest Indian, Mukesh Ambani of the Reliance group, to dethrone Jack Ma of China’s Alibaba group and become the richest Asian.

These growth signs have to be set against certain unpleasant ground realities. India still has one-fifth of its population below the poverty line. Suicide by farmers in distress continues. Crimes against women are on the rise across the country. Studies indicate that Modi has not delivered on his promise to create 10 million jobs a year.

BJP General Secretary Ram Madhav in a recent newspaper article, outlined the party’s strategy to overcome the hurdles such issues may pose. Essentially, it envisages a twin approach: highlighting the benefits that have accrued to the aggrieved sections from various schemes of the government and setting new goals to be achieved by 2022, the 75th year of Independence. 

After citing the cases of some women achievers as proof the rise of a New India, he claimed the government had relieved 41 million rural households from the hazards of coal and wood-based cooking by supplying gas cylinders and stoves.

Madhav went on to say a new, confident, well-trained India was rising out of 20 All India Institutes of Medical Science, 22 Indian Institutes of Technology and 20 Indian Institutes of Management that produce thousands of highly skilled people. He, of course, glossed over the fact that the AIIMSes, IITs and IIMs came up under schemes launched by Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, whom Modi constantly derides saying he did nothing. 

He noted that the government had provided soft loans to over 70 million Dalits and Adivasis under the Mudra Yojana scheme. Over the next three years, it proposed to build 50 million houses for poor families and that would wipe out homelessness completely.

In an attempt to address farm distress ahead of the elections, the Central government sanctioned steep increases in the prices at which paddy, pulses, cotton and other produce are procured. This will bring some cheer to the long-suffering farmers, but economists are worried about the fiscal and inflationary costs involved. They say it will push up the food subsidy bill from Rs 1.70 trillion, mentioned in the budget, to more than Rs 2 trillion.

Madhav’s list of the Modi government’s achievements of the last four years include doubling of the highways network to 120,000 km, building of Metros in 10 cities and laying of one million kilometres of fibre optic network to digitally connect 250,000 villages by next year.

The big projects now on hand include a space mission to the moon this year and one to the sun next year and the building of 101 smart cities.

Last month the Centre quietly drafted 800 Indian Administrative Service officers to visit nearly 65,000 villages, many of them with large Dalit and Adivasi populations, before August 15 to monitor the implementation of various Central schemes by the States.

Modi has described the exercise as part of a new model for implementation of schemes. It appears to be designed to ensure that the beneficiaries are aware that the schemes were initiated by the Centre and will, hopefully, demonstrate their gratitude when they vote. 

Governments certainly are entitled to credit for the good work they do. But welfare schemes cannot cover up acts of omission and commission such as failure to prevent crimes against Dalits, Adivasis and women and extension of political protection to the criminals involved. -- Gulf Today, Sharjah, July 17, 2018

Campaign rhetoric and reality BRP Bhaskar                                                                                                                                     Gulf Today                                                                                                                                               PrimeMinister Narendra Modi is eternally in election mode. He cannot resist the temptation of attacking the domestic opposition in speeches even when he is travelling abroad.

With the Modi magic, which is given credit for the Bharatiya Janata Party’s 2014 success, waning and the next elections only 10 months away, he has raised the campaign pitch and sharpened his barbs. Addressing a meeting last weekend, Modi described the Congress, the main opposition party, as an “out-on-bail club”, an allusion to the fact that several of its leaders are on bail in various court cases. Congress President Rahul Gandhi and his mother and former party president Sonia Gandhi are on bail in a case relating to alleged irregularities in the transfer of shares of a newspaper company controlled by the family. The case was instituted by Subramanian Swamy, a BJP MP. Former Finance Minister P. Chidambaram is awaiting the court’s decision on his application for anticipatory bail in a case of alleged money laundering. His son, Karti, is already on bail after being arrested by the Central Bureau of Investigation last February. Chidambaram told the court that the Modi government was carrying on politically motivated vendetta against him and his son. Last week former Minister Shashi Tharoor obtained anticipatory bail from a Delhi court after the police charged him with abetting the suicide of his wife, Sunanda Pushkar. She had died under mysterious circumstances four and a half years ago. There is nothing in Indian parliamentary history to suggest that criminal cases and court proceedings harm a candidate’s electoral prospects. On the contrary, a study conducted by the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) and National Election Watch (NEP), two civil society groups, in 2013, indicated that candidates with a criminal past are more likely to win. At the time of the 2014 elections BJP President Amit Shah was out on bail in two alleged fake encounter cases dating back to the time when he was a minister in Modi’s Gujarat Cabinet. Modi’s own name was cleared only two years earlier by the Special Investigation Team which had gone into the anti-Muslim riots of 2002, saying “no offence has been established”. It was on a petition filed by ADR that the Supreme Court made it mandatory for every candidate to file, along with the nomination papers, a sworn affidavit giving particulars about his assets and criminal cases against him, if any. After analysing the affidavits filed by those who contested three Lok Sabha elections, ADR reported a rise in the number of MPs with criminal records from 24 per cent in 2004 to 30 per cent in 2009 and 34 per cent on 2014. The number of candidates facing serious crimes, such as murder, attempted murder, banditry and crimes against women, went up from 11 per cent in 2004 to 15 per cent in 2009 and 21 per cent in 2014. Modi was obviously relying on the notoriously short public memory when he alluded to the cases in which Congress leaders are involved. Of the 186 MPs with criminal records elected to the Lok Sabha in 2014, as many as 98 belonged to the BJP. Congress MPs facing criminal charges numbered only eight. The BJP MPs involved in criminal cases included Yogi Adityanath and Keshav Prasad Maurya from Uttar Pradesh. Both resigned later to become the state’s Chief Minister and Deputy Chief Minister respectively. An ADR analysis showed that 45 per cent of Adityanath’s Cabinet colleagues were facing criminal cases. One of the Cabinet’s first acts was to withdraw about 20,000 cases, including those against the Chief Minister, the Deputy Chief Minister and the ministers, saying they were politically motivated cases. The argument about political motivation cannot be dismissed out of hand. State governments routinely slap cases on Opposition leaders in connection with agitations. The worst sufferers of this practice, however, are not those belonging to the mainline parties but social activists spearheading popular agitations. The case of SP Udayakumar, who was Aam Admi Party’s candidate in Kanyakumari in the 2014 elections is a classic example. Leader of the largely peaceful agitation against the Koodamkulam nuclear project, he topped the list of candidates facing criminal charges with 382 cases, including 19 of attempted murder and 16 of sedition. However, the political motivation argument cannot cloud the BJP’s links with criminal elements. One of Modi’s ministerial colleagues, Giriraj Singh, visited a Bihar jail last week to commiserate with the accused in a case of communal rioting. Another, Jayant Sinha, was photographed garlanding eight men convicted in a lynching case in Jharkhand, when they visited him after getting bail from the High Court pending a decision on their appeals.

July 10, 2018

Bid to control higher education

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

The Narendra Modi government has come up with a measure which seeks to strengthen the Centre’s control over institutions of higher education in the name of regulation.

Currently regulatory functions in respect of universities are vested in the University Grants Commission, which has academic and financial powers. It lays down standards of teaching, examination and research, provides for their needs and ensures maintenance of standards.

A draft bill the government has put in the public domain provides for abolition of UGC and creation of a new body called Higher Education Commission of India in its place. The HECI’s powers will be limited to academic matters. It will have no financial powers. The stakeholders, including the academic community, have been given just 10 days to convey their views on the draft bill.

In the remote past there were institutions of higher learning in the subcontinent at Takshashila (near Rawalpindi in Pakistan) and Nalanda and Vikramshila (both in Bihar) which reputedly attracted scholars from far and near.

The first modern universities were established by the British at Calcutta (now Kolkata), Bombay (Mumbai) and Madras (Chennai) in 1858.  More universities came up later, some, like the Aligarh Muslim University and the Banaras Hindu University, due to private initiative, and some under patronage of rulers of princely states.        

The UGC was created by an Act of Parliament by Jawaharlal Nehru’s government in the 1950s on the lines of the recommendations of a commission headed by John Sergeant, who was Educational Adviser to the Government in the closing stages of colonial rule.

Nehru believed science and technology can help better the lot of the poor.  Outside the university system, his government fostered the Indian Institute of Sciences, a brain-child of industry pioneer JN Tata which was brought to fruition by the colonial government in 1909. 

It also established a number of institutions of higher learning like the Indian Institutes of Technology, the Indian Institutes of Management and the All India Institute of Medical Sciences. The IISc and a couple of older IITs are the only Indian institutions that have found their way into any global or Asian rankings. The great measure of autonomy these institutions enjoy in academic matters has enabled them to function without undue governmental interference and maintain high standards. The regular universities have seen a decline in standards under political control. 

The Bharatiya Janata Party and its ideological parent, the Rashtreeya Swayamsevak Sangh, have not been well-disposed towards the new-generation institutions of higher learning which they view as centres of liberal thought.

Reform of higher education was mentioned in the BJP’s 2014 election manifesto. Although it is only now that the Modi government has come up with a legislative measure in this regard, efforts to control institutions of higher learning have been on from the very beginning.

The RSS set the stage for the assault on these institutions with its journal, Organiser, launching an attack on the IITs and the prestigious Jawaharlal Nehru University, dubbing them centres of “anti-India, anti-Hindu” activities.

The RSS’s student wing, Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, fomented trouble in several campuses, including those of JNU in New Delhi, IIT in Chennai and Central University in Hyderabad. It specifically targeted Muslim, Dalit and left-wing student leaders.

Rohit Vemula, a Dalit scholar of the Central University, was driven to suicide.  Sedition charges were slapped on several JNU students. Two students reported missing from the JNU campus still remain untraced.

RSS-affiliated groups were fighting liberal thought at various levels even before the BJP came to power. Five years ago a leading publisher, Penguin Books, bought peace with one group by agreeing to pulp all copies of US Indologist Wendy Doniger’s “The Hindus: An Alternative History”.

More recently another group proposed to the Centre the removal of all foreign languages from the curriculum of institutions of higher education in the national interest. It also wanted stoppage of UGC funding for all research not connected with national requirements.

The move to replace the UGC with the HECI can be seen as the first step in that direction. The Centre’s decision to keep the power to allot grants in its own hands is undesirable for more than one reason.

In the first place, it will leave the HECI with no means to enforce its directives with regard to academic matters other than the extreme step of ordering closure of the institution. More importantly, as the one who pays the piper, the Centre will be in a position to call the tune even in academic matters. --Gulf Today, Sharjah, July 3, 2018,