Meaning of a poll verdict

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

The Bharatiya Janata Party’s stunning landslide victory in the Hindu heartland state of Uttar Pradesh has boosted Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s image, raising high hopes in the Hindutva camp and deep despair in its foes.

The BJP’s return to power in the state, home of one-sixth of all Indians, after a 15-year gap, confirms its status as the country’s largest party and sets it ahead of rivals in the run-up for the national elections due in 2019.

The BJP’s tally of 312 (not counting 13 seats won by its two small allies) in the new 403-member assembly marks electoral triumph of a magnitude witnessed only rarely – as when the Congress won 388 out of 430 seats in the first assembly elections of 1951-52 and when the people gave 352 out of 425 seats to the Janata Party in 1977 after the end of Indira Gandhi’s Emergency regime.

The UP verdict breaks the spell of electoral drought Modi and the BJP experienced after the sensational 2014 Lok Sabha victory. Delhi state had rebuffed them in 2015 and Bihar, the second largest heartland state, in 2016.

The hopes and fears aroused by it must be moderated with the outcome of the elections in four other states which too went to the polls. Of them, only Uttarakhand, which was part of UP until 2000, gave the BJP a resounding victory.

In Punjab, where the BJP is a junior partner of the Sikh party Akali Dal, the ruling pair lost ignominiously to the Congress, which returned to power after a decade, with 77 of the 117 assembly seats. The Akali Dal’s strength fell from 56 in the last house to 15 and the BJP’s from 12 to three.

The BJP, which was in power in Goa, suffered a setback, its strength in the 40-member assembly falling from 21 to 13. The Congress nearly doubled its strength to 17 and emerged as the largest party.

In the northeastern state of Manipur, the Congress lost power but remained the largest party in the 60-member assembly with 27 seats, against the BJP’s 22.

Acting fast, the BJP managers secured enough support from small parties and independents in both Goa and Manipur to beat the Congress in the race to power.

A conclusion that can be drawn from the electoral verdict is that the people voted against the ruling dispensation in all the states. The BJP’s big win in UP and Uttarakhand is attributable to the communal polarisation promoted by Sangh Parivar associates and Modi’s uncanny ability to derive electoral profit from it, using binaries like graveyard-cremation and Eid-Holi.

There was not even one Muslim among the 403 candidates of the BJP and its allies although the community accounts for one-fifth of UP’s population and BJP vice-president and minority poster boy Mukthar Abbas Naqvi hails from the state. The BJP nominees included Somnath Som, a hate-speech case accused, and Suchi Chaudhury, wife of a riot case accused.

The Samajwadi Party, which draws support primarily from the backward Yadav community, and the Bahujan Samaj Party, the standard bearer of the Dalits, had alternated in power in UP in the last 15 years. This time the SP fought in alliance with the Congress but a rift between party chief Mulayam Singh and his son and Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav botched its chances.

The decline of the SP and the BSP suggests that identity politics is losing its edge.

BSP chief Mayawati has alleged that the BJP engineered the UP victory by tampering with the electronic voting machines. The possibility of hacking of EVMs was first suggested by BJP veteran LK Advani in 2009 and a technician demonstrated how it could be done. A year later University of Michigan researchers claimed they were able to change the results on an Indian EVM by sending messages from a mobile phone.

Many countries have abandoned electronic voting in view of the potential for mischief. Given the Hindutva camp’s poor record as a respecter of laws, Mayawati’s allegation cannot be rejected outright. While not endorsing her charge, the Congress has urged the Election Commission to look into it and dispel misgivings.

Having improved its position in three of the five states which went to the polls, the BJP can now raise its strength in the Rajya Sabha by increasing its representation from these states in the next biennial elections to the house. It can also try to get one from the Sangh Parivar elected as India’s next President. -- Gulf Today, Sharjah, March 14, 2017

BJP bid to extend footprint

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

India has six political organisations which the Election Commission has recognised as national parties. They are, in the order of their appearance on the political scene, the Congress, the Communist Party of India, the Bharatiya Janata Party, the CPI-Marxist, the Bahujan Samaj Party and the National Congress Party.

They owe their national status to the easy terms set by the Commission. When the CPI was about to lose its national status a few years ago, the Commission lowered the norms to help it remain a national party.

The Congress party has declined since the days of the first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru. Nationally, it has been pushed to the second place by the BJP. In the big states of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Maharashtra, West Bengal and Tamil Nadu it is in the third, fourth or even still lower place.

For several decades, the influence of the two Communist parties has been limited to the three states of West Bengal, Kerala and Tripura. Five years ago the regional Trinamool Congress brought to an end three decades of Left rule in West Bengal.

The Bahujan Samaj Party of former UP Chief Minister Mayawati and the National Congress Party of former Maharashtra strongman Sharad Pawar are essentially one-state parties with just enough presence elsewhere to qualify for national status.

The BJP is the only national party which has recorded growth in the recent past. In the 2014 parliamentary elections, Narendra Modi led it to a spectacular victory, and it became the first party to secure an absolute majority in the Lok Sabha in three decades.

While it swept several states in the north and the west, it could not make much headway in the east and the south.

Two eastern states, West Bengal and Assam, and two southern states, Tamil Nadu and Kerala, are going to the polls in May to elect new Assemblies. Assam has been under Congress rule for 15 years. In Kerala, the Congress-led United Democratic Front is seeking an unprecedented second successive term. West Bengal and Tamil Nadu are ruled by regional parties.

These states, which together account for 113 Lok Sabha seats, had contributed only 10 seats to the BJP’s tally of 281 in 2014. The party is hoping to use the opportunity provided by the Assembly elections to extend its footprint in these regions.

In the Lok Sabha elections the BJP had done well in Assam, winning seven of its 14 seats with the help of regional parties aligned with it. In West Bengal it got only two out of 42 seats and in Tamil Nadu just one out of 39.

Assam is the only one of the four states where the BJP is represented in the Assembly at present. It has five members in the 126-member house. It has no members in the outgoing Assemblies of West Bengal and Tamil Nadu.

Kerala has been inhospitable to Hindutva politics all along. Neither the BJP nor its predecessor, the Jana Sangh, ever won a Lok Sabha or Assembly seat in the state. However, in last year’s local bodies elections the BJP did well in some urban centres, including the capital city of Thiruvananthapuram, where it emerged as the second largest party in the City Corporation after the CPI-M.

This has led to high hopes in the BJP camp, and the party’s national leadership and its ideological mentor, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, are directly plotting the party’s campaign in the state to take advantage of what they view as a favourable situation.

A key element of their strategy is attracting sections of the backward castes and Dalits who are disillusioned with both the CPI-M and the Congress for one reason or another. Traditionally, the bulk of these sections have voted for the Left. The BJP has succeeded in enlisting the support of a couple of organisations of backward communities but the ability of their leaders to influence electoral conduct remains to be proved.

While the Congress and the CPI-M are engaged in a bitter power struggle in Kerala, their West Bengal units have come to a tacit understanding with the blessings of their national leaderships to take on Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress.

The Trinamool Congress and a few regional parties of Tamil Nadu, including Chief Minister J Jayalithaa’s All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, were constituents of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance when Atal Behari Vajpayee was the Prime Minister. These parties have shown no interest in aligning with Modi’s BJP. The party as well as the RSS must introspect on why its ability to win friends has diminished. -- Gulf Today, Sharjah, March 15, 2016.

Unsteady coalition plods on

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

The Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government is tottering with the loss of two large coalition partners in a span of six months but plods on, confident in the feeling that it will not be overthrown as few parties want to face elections immediately.

The Trinamool Congress, the Congress party’s largest ally, walked out of the coalition last September protesting against the decisions to open the retail sector to foreign direct investment and limit the subsidy on liquefied petroleum gas. The exit of its 19 members reduced the UPA to a minority with only 254 members in the 544-strong Lok Sabha. However, there was no threat to the government as it was supported from outside by the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party which have 22 and 21 members respectively.

Last week the next biggest constituent, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, with 18 members, pulled out of the alliance protesting against the government’s failure to press for censure of Sri Lanka in the UN Human Rights Council for violation of the rights of the island’s Tamil minority.

This further reduced the coalition’s strength in parliament, but the continued support of the SP and the BSP gives it the necessary numbers to claim a majority in the house. However, it is at the mercy of the SP and the BSP, either of which can bring it down at any time.

The SP’s Mulayam Singh Yadav and the BSP’s Mayawati are both ambitious leaders capable of driving hard bargains. Arch rivals in Uttar Pradesh politics, circumstances have forced them into the same side at the Centre.

The DMK had remained in the coalition without demur during the closing stages of the civil war in Sri Lanka when atrocities against the Tamils took place. Few, therefore, believe that its decision to withdraw support to the UPA and pull out its five ministers was dictated by sympathy for Sri Lankan Tamils.

DMK chief M Karunanidhi had been sulking since his daughter Kanimozhi, MP, and party colleague and former Communication Minister A Raja were arrested by the Central Bureau of Investigation in 2011 on corruption charges. He chose to quit the coalition on the Sri Lankan human rights violations since it is an emotive issue in Tamil Nadu.

As soon as Karunanidhi announced his intention to leave the UPA, the Congress rushed three senor ministers, AK Antony, P Chidambaram and Ghulam Nabi Azad, to Chennai to mollify him. This was not easy since the government is keen to avoid doing anything which will push the Sri Lankan administration closer to China.

Yet, in a bid to placate him, the Congress leadership explored, against its own best judgement, the possibility of pushing through Parliament a resolution critical of Sri Lankan human rights violations. The move did not find favour with the Bharatiya Janata Party, the main opposition, and other parties like the SP and the Trinamool Congress. The aborted effort revealed a North-South divide in the country on the Sri Lankan issue.

The Congress, which has 203 members in the Lok Sabha, is now left with no ally with two-digit strength in the house, its largest remaining partners being Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar’s National Congress Party (nine members), Civil Aviation Minister Ajit Singh’s Rashtriya Lok Dal (five) and Jammu and Kashmir National Conference (three).

Mayawati lost control of UP, the largest state, which sends 80 members to the Lok Sabha, in last year’s Assembly elections. She will not precipitate a situation which will lead to immediate parliamentary elections as it is unlikely to improve her party’s position.

Mulayam Singh Yadav may be thinking differently. The SP won the Assembly elections in the state and he has installed his son, Akhilesh Yadav, as the chief minister. He will not hesitate to pull the rug from under the UPA’s feet if he thinks the time is ripe for a kill. He knows that if he waits too long the ground situation may change to his disadvantage.

Facing increasing isolation as the elections approach, the Congress has begun a search for new allies. One party whose name figures in the speculation in this connection is the Janata Dal (United), the BJP’s largest partner in the National Democratic Alliance. The party heads the government in Bihar, a state with 40 seats in the Lok Sabha. The price Chief Minister Nitish Kumar has set for the support to any government at the Centre is a special package for his economically backward state.

A realignment of forces ahead of the elections is a possibility. -- Gulf Today, Sharjah, March 26, 2013

A make-or-break move

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

The die is cast. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, under fire from advocates of globalisation at home and abroad for not going forward with reforms, last week announced a slew of measures which may determine the political future of his party and government.

The measures included cuts in subsidy on diesel and cooking gas, permitting foreign direct investment of up to 49 per cent in aviation, 51 per cent in multi-brand retail and 74 per cent in mobile television, direct-to-home, cable networks and teleports, and sale of shares of four public sector undertakings to raise Rs150 billion, which is half of the disinvestment target set for this year.

The broad sweep of the measures surprised friends and foes alike. The cut in diesel subsidy invited universal condemnation. The retail FDI was opposed by political parties of different shades, including the Trinamool Congress, which is the ruling United Progressive Alliance’s largest partner, and the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party, both of which support the government from outside. 

The Centre had cleared the retail FDI proposal in November last year but was forced to shelve it because of strong opposition from political parties, especially those that control the state governments, who argued it would hurt the small traders. In an attempt to mollify them, the states have now been given the freedom to keep foreign retailers out if they so wish.

The Centre has stated that foreign retailers can establish outlets only in cities with a population of more than one million. They must bring in a minimum investment of $100 million each and at least half of it must be in “back-end infrastructures,” a term which includes facilities for processing, manufacturing, distribution, design improvement, quality control, packaging, storage etc. Also, they must procure at least 30 per cent of their wares from small industries in the country.

These conditions, which the Centre claims will benefit farmers and small manufacturers, have not blunted the political parties’ opposition. West Bengal chief minister and Trinamool Congress leader Mamata Banerjee has threatened to take hard decisions unless the Centre rolled back the diesel price increase and retail FDI decision. The National Democratic Alliance, led by the Bharatiya Janata Party, and the Left parties and several other small national and regional parties, have called for nationwide work stoppage on Thursday in protest against the new measures.

The government has acted behind Parliament’s back. Since constitutional provisions or precedents do not require it to seek prior parliamentary approval for such decisions, it cannot be accused of improper conduct. However, since a UPA partner and at least two parties that support the government from outside are opposed to these measures, the question whether there is democratic sanction behind them is quite legitimate. Also, the constitutional principle of collective responsibility of the council of ministers has been compromised.

The prime minister and the Congress party have brushed aside the publicly voiced reservations of allies in the belief that they will not go so far as to pull down the government. They expect the Trinamool Congress, the SP and the BSP to stop short of withdrawing their support to the government. Reports that the TC may limit its response to pulling out its ministers and support the government from outside and that the SP and the BSP do not favour withdrawal of support to the government reinforce their optimism.

However, the prime minister and his Congress party cannot be sanguine about the government’s ability to have smooth passage in the Lok Sabha, whose term runs for another year and a half. Since the UPA has only 273 members in the 543-member Lok Sabha, they will be walking on the razor’s edge during the budget session, knowing a snap adverse vote can spell the government’s end.

The possibility of the Trinamool Congress and the Samajwadi Party, which registered convincing victories in the last Assembly elections in West Bengal and Uttar Pradesh respectively and entertain hopes of doing well in parliamentary elections, feeling tempted to ditch the Congress as its burden of incumbency grows cannot be ruled out.

Why then did Manmohan Singh take the plunge? The short answer is that he wanted to avert further downgrading of India by global rating agencies which will throw the faltering economy out of gear and end hopes of pushing up the growth rate which is now only around 5.5 per cent, the lowest in a decade. -- Gulf Today, Sharjah, September 18, 2012.

Perpetuation of inequality

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

An attempt to amend the Constitution to ensure fair representation for Dalits and Adivasis in the higher echelons of government service failed last week, revealing once again the hurdles in the path towards an equitable society.

The United Progressive Alliance government, which does not command the two-thirds majority needed for passage of a constitutional amendment, introduced the bill in the Rajya Sabha without mobilising the requisite support. The opposition National Democratic Alliance, led by the Bharatiya Janata Party, took no firm stand on the measure, confident that the government cannot go forward in the absence of a consensus.

A confrontation on the floor of the house between members of the Bahujan Samaj Party and the Samajwadi Party, both of whom support the UPA from outside, prevented discussion and adoption of the measure. Ironically, both the parties are champions of socially disadvantaged sections. The BSP, a Dalit party, wanted the bill to be passed but the SP, which draws support mainly from the other backward classes (OBCs) and Muslims, blocked it as these sections have been kept out of its purview.

Dalits and Adivasis, officially classified as the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes respectively, comprise communities which were victims of the inhuman practice of “untouchability” for centuries. They have had the benefit of reservation in government service from 1950 when the Constitution came into force. The OBCs, too, have reservation but that came about under different circumstances and the system operates differently in their case.

To begin with, SC and ST reservation was limited to the entry stage. In 1955, the government provided for reservation in promotions, too, realising that these communities are not getting adequate representation at higher levels in the service. Thirty-seven years later, the Supreme Court ruled that reservation cannot be extended to cover promotions.

The government nullified the judgement through a constitutional amendment. After a couple of skirmishes over the provision, last April the Supreme Court struck it down saying the government must first demonstrate that the groups concerned remain backward and do not have adequate representation in the service and that provision of reservation will not result in loss of efficiency.

Reservation for members of the backward sections in government service and in school and college admissions was in force in some princely states like Kolhapur, Mysore and Travancore and the British-ruled Madras province before Independence. When the Constitution came into force, the judiciary held that such reservation offended its equality provisions. At the government’s instance parliament amended the Constitution to assert the state’s power to make special provisions for the socially and educationally backward sections.

For years this provision was used only for the limited purpose of protecting pre-Independence reservations. In 1989, VP Singh’s government, invoking it, extended reservation in government service to OBCs all over the country. While upholding the provision, the judiciary has circumscribed its application by ruling that the “creamy layer” of these communities is not eligible for reservation.

The central government has identified some sections of Muslims as backward, making them eligible for reservation. While the judiciary has accepted caste as a factor that can be taken into account while identifying socially and educationally backward sections, the relevance of religion in the process is still to be decided finally. The Andhra Pradesh high court recently struck down the state government’s decision to provide four per cent reservation for Muslims within the OBC quota on the ground that the sub-quota was fixed on religious lines and had no other intelligible basis.

There is difference in the approaches of the Executive and the Judiciary to the reservation issue. The former, under elected representatives, takes note of popular sentiments, and is therefore susceptible to charges of appeasing vote banks. The latter, dominated by beneficiaries of the old order, is susceptible to charges of not being sufficiently sensitive to the issue of social iniquity.

The suggestion that there is no evidence of inadequacy of SC and ST representation is ill-founded. Figures given to Parliament recently show that they are grossly under-represented in the higher echelons. What’s more, 25,037 posts meant for SCs and 28,173 meant for STs are lying vacant. These include both direct recruitment and promotion posts.

There is a strong anti-reservation lobby in the country consisting of people who benefited from the old order and want to retain the advantage it confers on them. They have used the merit argument to conceal the inequality of opportunity they are seeking to perpetuate. The Supreme Court has routinely endorsed this argument even though it is not substantiated by any empirical study. -- Gulf Today, September 11, 2012.