Priyanka tilts the balance

BRP Bhaskar

Gulf Today

Congress President Rahul Gandhi has demonstrated his readiness to take bold steps to retrieve lost ground by inducting his sister, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, as a party general secretary and putting her in charge of half of Uttar Pradesh, the country’s largest state.

The initial response of the party’s rank and file and its supporters to her formal entry into politics has been euphoric. With her looks bringing back memories of her charismatic grandmother, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, she has long been a favourite of the party faithful.

For the first time, two All India Congress Committee general secretaries will now be in charge of UP. Priyanka will look after the eastern part and Madhya Pradesh leader Jyotiraditya Scindia the western part.

If UP were a separate country, with a population of 229 million it would be the world’s fifth largest, after China, India, the USA and Indonesia, although in terms of land area it would be in the 80th position. 

UP has 80 seats in the 543-member Lok Sabha, the lower house of Parliament. The next most populous state, Maharashtra is a distant second with only 48 seats.

The Congress dominated the political scene in UP, a major battleground of the freedom struggle, from the time of Motilal Nehru, father of the first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru. He belonged to a Kashmiri family which had settled there a couple of centuries earlier. 

The Nehru-Gandhi family’s hold on the state was rudely shaken when the people, rising like one man against the Emergency excesses, threw the party out lock, stock and barrel in the 1977 elections. They rejected even Indira Gandhi and her son and heir apparent Sanjay in that election and gave all the state’s Lok Sabha seats to the Janata Party, formed by the coming together of several opposition parties on the eve of the elections.

The Janata Party government, led by Morarji Desai, collapsed in just two years. In the election that followed, Indira Gandhi took back a majority of UP’s seats. On her assassination, her son Rajiv Gandhi, riding a sympathy wave, won all but two of the state’s seats.

Thereafter the Congress began to decline. It slid to the third place and then the fourth, as the Bharatiya Janata Party, the Bahujan Samaj Party and the Samajwadi Party took turns at the top. In the last Lok Sabha elections, the party fielded 66 candidates in the state but only two, Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi, won.

Priyanka has stepped into the political arena even as official agencies are investigating some land deals of her husband, Robert Vadra, who is a businessman.

She is not a novice in politics. Since 2004 she has been supervising the party’s campaign in the constituencies of her mother Sonia and Rahul. She is also known to have been involved in political decision-making in the family.

Priyanka and Scindia face an uphill task in UP. For 30 years, the Congress has been just a small player in the state and the party machinery is moribund.

Rahul Gandhi’s decision to devote special attention to UP has come in the wake of the exclusion of the Congress from the alliance the SP and the BSP have formed to take on the BJP in UP. They have decided to leave out Sonia’s Rae Bareli and Rahul’s Amethi constituencies and share the remaining 78 equally.

The SP and the BSP were obviously playing tit-for-tat. These parties, which are small players in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, had explored the possibility of a tie-up with the Congress, the main challenger of the BJP in these states, in the recent Assembly elections. Hopeful of winning on its own, the Congress did not accommodate them.

As it happened, the Congress failed to get a simple majority in Rajasthan and MP and had to take the support of the BSP and the SP to form the government.

The BJP had won 71 Lok Sabha seats from UP last tie. This was a quarter of its national tally of 282. The SP and the BSP together polled more votes than the BJP in that election and the combine is in a good position to prevent a repetition of the BJP’s 2014 runaway victory.

Rahul Gandhi’s plan is a game-spoiler. He presumably expects his move to force the SP’s Akhilesh Yadav and the BSP’s Mayawati to rethink on the exclusion of the Congress from the anti-BJP alliance. If they don’t, the BJP will be the gainer. Every additional vote Priyanka draws towards the Congress may make it so much easier for the BJP to prevail over the SP-BSP alliance. -- Gulf Today, Sharjah, January 29, 2019.

Bid to placate a caste group
BRP Bhaskar Gulf Today Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s decision to provide reservation on economic grounds to poor persons belonging to the so-called upper castes is aimed at boosting his Bharatiya Janata Party’s prospects in the approaching general election. The bill to amend the Constitution for the purpose had a smooth passage because few parties were willing to invite the hostility of a powerful social group which constitutes about 15 per cent of the population. Reservation is the Indian form of affirmative action. It was introduced in the colonial period by the British in the Madras Presidency and by a few princes in their States in the wake of agitations by socially disadvantaged groups. The Constitution, promulgated in 1950, provided for reservation only for Dalits and Adivasis, the most disadvantaged groups officially classified as Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes respectively. When a member of a forward community challenged the reservation enjoyed by other backward communities in Madras on the ground that it violated the Constitutional guarantee of equality, the court struck them down. To protect the pre-existing reservations the government amended the Constitution to permit the making of special provisions for socially and educationally backward classes. The amendment opened the door to extend the benefit of reservation to socially and educationally backward groups across the country. However, neither the Centre nor any of the States did any such thing. In 1979 the Janata Party government set up a commission headed by BP Mandal to identify socially and educationally backward classes and go into the question of introducing reservation for them to mitigate the effects of caste determination. Since there was no data on the representation of backward classes other than SCs and STs in the services, the Commission gathered information from a few Central government offices. It found that they were poorly represented. The Commission recognised a caste or class as backward if the average value of assets of its families was 25 per cent below the State average and the number of families living in hutments and the number of households with consumption loans were 25 per cent above the State average. It recommended that 27 per cent of the jobs in the Central services and public undertakings be reserved for them. By the time the Commission concluded its labours the Janata government had fallen and Indira Gandhi was back at the helm. She and her son and successor Rajiv Gandhi did not act on its report. The National Front government headed by VP Singh, which was supported from outside by the BJP and the Communist Party of India (Marxist), decided to implement its recommendations. The BJP, which was against extension of reservation to more sections, immediately withdrew its support to the government. Its student wing launched a violent agitation which paralysed educational institutions in Delhi and the Hindi States. But implementation of the report, which survived judicial scrutiny, could not be stopped. The idea of reservation for the poor belonging to the forward castes was first mooted by CPI(M) ideologue EMS Namboodiripad. Many saw it as an attempt to undermine the concept of reservation as a social justice measure. Modi’s motive in pushing through economic reservation is to placate the BJP’s ‘upper’ caste constituency which has been adversely affected by his government’s failure to create jobs in adequate numbers. The criteria the government has laid down to identify the ‘upper’ caste poor are a clear giveaway. While the per capita annual income is Rs 113,000, it has decided to treat those with annual incomes of up to Rs 800,000 and landholdings of up to five acres as poor. The intention clearly is to extend the benefit of reservation to Modi’s ‘upper’ caste urban middle class supporters. Under a Supreme Court ruling, a backward class person with an annual income of Rs 250,000 belongs to the creamy layer and a second generation member of his family is not entitled to reservation. As against a job quota of 27 per cent for the backward classes who constitute 52 per cent of the population, the government has proposed a 10 per cent quota for the ‘upper’ castes, who constitute 15 per cent of the population. Another Supreme Court verdict has put a 50 per cent cap on reservations. The new 10 per cent quota will take reservations above that ceiling. Those who view reservation in terms of social justice are turning to the court to squash reservation based on economic considerations. The court may disappoint them. -- Gulf Today, Sharjah, January 15, 2019.

Science on the decline

BRP Bhaskar

Gulf Today

In the colonial period undivided India had made a mark at the global level through the pioneering work of scientists like Jagdish Chandra Bose, who was elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 1920, CV Raman, who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1930 and Satyendra Nath Bose whose name is clubbed with that of the century’s greatest scientist in Bose-Einstein statistics.

Jawaharlal Nehru attached great importance to science. A decade before Independence, addressing the Indian Science Congress, he had said, “The future belongs to science and those who make friends with science.”

Promotion of the scientific temper is one of the directive principles of the Constitution framed under his leadership. As the first Prime Minister, he initiated the nuclear programme with the proclaimed intention of using atomic energy for peaceful purposes. He set up the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research and national-level research bodies in physics, chemistry, medicine, agriculture etc.

He also established Indian Institutes of Technology with the help of advanced nations. Several of their graduates migrated to the West, giving rise to concerns about brain drain. But many stayed behind and contributed to India’s development.

All through his 17 years at the helm, the Indian Science Congress invited Nehru to inaugurate its annual session. It is still the Prime Minister’s prerogative to open its session although few of Nehru’s successors have shown his understanding of the importance of science.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi created a sensation in 2014 by mouthing the pseudo-scientific claims of his Hindutva school. Addressing a gathering of doctors, he referred to the elephant-headed god Ganesh and said, “There must have been some plastic surgeon at that time who put an elephant’s head on the body of a human being.”

He turned to the epic Mahabharata, which says Karna was not conceived in his mother’s womb, and added, “This means that genetic science was present at that time.”

His first address to the Science Congress also contained such wayward ideas, but in later speeches he avoided them. This year he gave the Science Congress a new slogan: Jai Vignan, Jai Anusandhan ((Victory to Knowledge, Victory to Research). It has probably come too late. 

At least two papers presented at this year’s session were straight out of Hindutva’s book in which scientific terminology and mythology are hopelessly mixed up. One of them proclaimed Newton and Einstein were wrong without adducing any evidence and proposed that gravitational force be named after Modi.

India’s recent achievements in science are a repetition of what others have done already. There has been little original contribution since the days of the two Boses and Raman.

In the list of more than 4,000 world-class researchers of 2018, drawn up by the firm Clarivate Analytics on the basis of production of multiple highly cited papers, there are only 10 names from India. The United States with 2,639 names, the UK with 546 and China with 482 top the list.

CNR Rao, Director of the Indian Institute of Sciences, Bangalore, one of the Indians on the list, told a newspaper that 15 years ago India and China were at the same level, but now China’s contribution to global science is 15 to 16 per cent and India’s only three to four per cent.

Although India is lagging behind in research, Indians are not. They are doing well in other countries. The Clarivate list contains far more Indian names under the US than under India. Names of Indians figure also under other countries like Canada, China, Singapore, Denmark, Finland and Saudi Arabia.

In the 1960s, British scientist JBS Haldane, who had moved to India protesting US military presence in his country, said science was growing slowly in this country not because people were stupid or lazy but because professionalism was weak and there was an obsession with degrees.

More recently, Yamuna Krishnan, Professor of Chemistry at the University of Chicago, who had spent 15 years at the National Centre for Biological Sciences, Bangalore before migrating to the US, identified a herd mentality and paucity of early mentorship as factors that inhibit growth of science in India.

Writing in Nature, the international journal of science, she said, “To catapult India into the top five scientific nations, the country needs enabling policies that money can’t buy.”

Those who believe that all worthwhile knowledge had been gleaned by their ancestors in the misty past cannot be expected to give scientific research the push it needs to blossom. - - Gulf Today, January 8, 2019.

Big brother is watching you

BRP Bhaskar

Gulf Today

Sixteen months after the Supreme Court declared privacy a fundamental right and the Constitutional core of human rights, the Indian government has virtually nullified it through an executive order authorising 10 agencies under its control to intercept, monitor and decrypt any information generated, transmitted, received or stored in any computer.

The agencies authorised to tap electronic communications are those concerned with domestic and external intelligence gathering and investigation of crimes, tax evasion, smuggling, narcotics trade, foreign currency transactions etc.

The order exposes more than 500 million Indians who use computers and smart phones to snooping by officials.

The Opposition parties came down on the government, accusing it of imposing an undeclared Emergency. Congress President Rahul Gandhi, in a tweet told Prime Minister Narendra Modi: “Converting India into a police state isn’t going to solve your problems, Modi Ji. It is only going to prove to over 1 billion Indians what an insecure dictator you really are.”

Bharatiya Janata Party President Amit Shah responded with a reminder about the 1975-77 Emergency regime of his grandmother Indira Gandhi.

In an attempt to deflect criticism, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley pointed out that the government had issued the order under rules framed by the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government. 

In fact the order has been issued under the power conferred on the Centre by the Information Technology Act of 2000, read with the IT Rules of 2009. The Act was brought in by the first BJP-led National Democratic Alliance government, headed by Atal Behari Vajpayee.

The rules under the Act were framed by the second UPA government, headed by Manmohan Singh, to lay down “procedure and safeguards for interception, monitoring and decryption”. A law which confers on the government the power to intercept telegraphic and telephonic communications has been in force in the country since the colonial days.

Central and State governments have been using this law to eavesdrop on telephone conversations of political opponents. From time to time, others including media persons have been under the radar.

Two websites specialising in investigative journalism reported in 2013 that three Gujarat police agencies had tapped the telephone of a Bangalore woman four years earlier reportedly under instructions from Amit Shah, who was then Home Minister of the State.

The woman’s father, who was living in Gujarat, in a statement explained that he had requested Modi, who was then Chief Minister, to“look after” her.

When the electronic age dawned, the Central government devoted attention to devising ways of regulating communication using the new technology. The result was the IT Act which conferred wide powers on the police. 

In 2015 the Supreme Court struck down Section 66A of the Act which placed restrictions on online speech on the ground that it violated the Constitutional provision guaranteeing freedom of speech. However, there have been reports that the police continues to slap cases against social media users under that section.

In a reply to queries under the Right to Information Act, the UPA 2 regime revealed in August 2013 that “on an average between 7,500 t0 9,000 orders for interception of telephones and 300 to 500 orders for interception of emails are issued by the Central government per month”.

Nine of the 10 agencies the Modi administration has authorised to snoop enjoyed the power under the UPA government too. The new entrant is the Commissioner of Police, Delhi. Although Delhi has a State government, the Delhi police is not under it. The Centre controls it through the Lieutenant Governor of Delhi.

The 2008 Mumbai terror attack impressed upon the Indian government the need to secure Internet space and keep track of information flowing through it. Accordingly, it asked the Centre for Development of Telematics (C-DoT) to develop a suitable mechanism for the purpose.

C-DoT proposed the setting up of a centralised monitoring system, based on the US National Investigation Agency’s surveillance programme code-named PRISM. A provision incorporated in the licensing agreements of telecom operators made it obligatory for them to provide to law enforcement agencies any data they sought. 

A pilot project was launched in Delhi. It was subsequently enlarged and extended countrywide

Today, there are two Central monitoring stations, one in Delhi and the other in Bangalore and a score of regional monitoring centres scattered across the country which can seek data from the service providers. --Gulf Today, Sharjah, December 25, 2018.

Rahul has a long way to go

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

The Congress party, which was down in the dumps after the thrashing in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections in which Narendra Modi led the Bharatiya Janata Party to power, is on the recovery path.

In the Assembly elections in the Hindi states of Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan, it ousted the BJP from power. While the Congress and the BJP have been alternating in power in Rajasthan for a long time, MP and Chhattisgarh were under BJP rule continuously for 15 years.

The electoral verdict bodes ill for the BJP. It was a spectacular showing in nine Hindi states, where it won 185 seats, that enabled the BJP to secure a majority in the 573-member Lok Sabha with a tally of 282.

MP, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh had given the BJP 62 of their 65 seats. If the verdict in these states reflects the current mood in the entire Hindi region the BJP will have a hard time approximating its 2014 performance in the Lok Sabha elections due in four months.

The Congress was a few seats short of a majority in the new assemblies of MP and Rajasthan. The quick offer of support by two parties, Bahujan Samaj Party and Samajwadi Party, which have a small presence in these States, helped it to make up the shortfall

Success in ousting the BJP from power in three States has boosted the morale of Congressmen and is widely interpreted as popular endorsement of Rahul Gandhi’s leadership. He had taken over the post of party president from his mother, Sonia Gandhi, a year ago after serving as General Secretary and Vice-President for a decade.

He had started with some handicaps. He appeared to be a reluctant prince. The BJP’s social media brigade ran a vicious campaign portraying him as a dimwit who owes his position as heir apparent of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty. He fought back vigorously and established himself as a leader sensitive to the problems of the poor.

Credit is due to Rahul Gandhi for the Congress party’s recovery in the Hindi belt, reflected in the Assembly election results. However, he and the party still have a long way to go to recapture Congress’s lost glory.

There is room to doubt if he is on the right track. After working for a while with a team of his own, he now relies mostly on the old Congress hands on whom his mother had relied when she stepped into politics a few years after the assassination of her husband, Rajiv Gandhi.

This restricts his ability to chart out a new strategy taking into account the vast change in the political scenario since the days of Rajiv Gandhi and Indira Gandhi, when the Congress was the only party with a national reach.

The most that can be read from the latest electoral verdict is that the Congress retains the capacity to bounce back in the States where the BJP is its main opponent. 

In the largest Hindi states, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, which together have 130 seats in the Lok Sabha, the Congress is today a small player. In UP, the BSP and the SP are the main opposition parties. Their traditional rivalry had helped the BJP to grab a lion’s share of its Lok Sabha seats in 2014 and seize power in the state in 2017. They are now in negotiations to take on the BJP jointly in the coming Lok Sabha elections.

Beyond the Hindi belt there are States where regional parties are the main players. In the southern state of Telangana and northeastern state of Mizoram, where Assembly elections were held recently, regional parties trounced both the Congress and the BJP.

It is in the Congress party’s interest to forge good relations with small national parties as well as regional parties as they may have a role in the formation of the next Central government. 

Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister and Telugu Desam leader N Chandrababu Naidu’s recent overtures to Gandhi and Tamil Nadu’s Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam leader MK Stalin’s endorsement of him as prime ministerial timbre are indicative of goodwill towards him. 

If he had adopted a liberal attitude towards the BSP and the SP and carried them with his party in MP, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh in the Assembly elections, it would have fared better than it did. It would also have put him in a favourable position to strike a good bargain with them in UP.

Rahul Gandhi’s choice of old hands to lead the new governments in MP and Rajasthan, when promising young leaders were available, suggests that his enthusiasm for toning up the party and infusing new vigour has waned. That is not a good sign. -- Gulf Today, Sharjah, December 19, 2018.

Missed chance in Kashmir
B RP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

Prime Minister Narendra Modi can take credit for bringing his Bharatiya Janata Party to power in Muslim-majority Jammu and Kashmir for the first time, albeit as the junior partner of a coalition, but his term appears set to close as one of missed opportunities.

The Peoples Democratic Party’s alliance with the BJP after the Assembly elections of 2014 was dictated by the composition of the 87-member house.

Despite calls by hardline members of the All-Party Hurriyat Leaders Conference to boycott the elections, there was a record turnout of 65 per cent voters when polling was held in the harsh winter months.

The PDP emerged as the largest party in the Assembly with 28 seats. The BJP bagged 25 seats, the National Conference 15 and the Congress 12. Three small parties picked up four seats and Independents three.

The BJP’s best ever performance was the result of a big sweep in the Jammu province, aided by the party’s sensational victory in the parliamentary elections a few months earlier under Modi’s leadership.  Jammu has a 62.5% Hindu population.

Mutual animosities prevented the PDP, the NC and the Congress from coming together to form the government. After two months of talks with the PDP on government formation, BJP President Amit Shah announced that the ideological differences had been ironed out.

The alliance between the two parties was actually a marriage of convenience. It was made possible by putting in cold storage two contentious issues: the BJP’s lifelong opposition to Article 370 of the Constitution which gives Jammu and Kashmir a special status and the PDP’s demand for withdrawal of  the Armed Forces Special Powers Act which provides impunity to security personnel deployed in disturbed areas.

On PDP founder and Chief Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed’s death in 2016, doubts arose about the coalition’s future and the state came under Governor’s rule. However, within three months, a new government with his daughter and PDP President Mehbooba Mufti as the Chief Minister took office.

Political stability in the state is inevitably mixed up with India-Pakistan relations. Modi’s tête-à-tête with Pakistan Prime Minister Nawas Sharif had raised hopes of an improvement in relations between the two countries but they faded fast in the absence of any follow-up measures. There has been no initiative from either side to resume the dialogue process since Prime Minister Imran Khan came to office.

Differing perceptions on the handling of security issues cast a shadow on the PDP-BJP coalition after militant leader Burhan Wani was killed in an operation and security personnel faced rain of stones in the valley.

At Mehbooba Mufti’s instance the Centre agreed to a temporary halt in security operations for Ramadan but it did not evoke a response from the other side.

When two BJP members of her Cabinet openly joined their party’s efforts to save the persons accused in the kidnap, gang-rape and murder of a young girl in Jammu’s Kathua district, Mehbooba Mufti was able to get the party to replace them. Soon, however, the BJP pulled out of the government, bringing it down, and the state came under Governor’s rule again.

The Assembly was in suspended animation, and there were reports that the BJP was trying to float an alternative government with Peoples Conference leader Sajad Lone as the Chief Minister. Since Lone’s party had only two members, the BJP needed to poach a large number of MLAs from the PDP and other parties to cobble up a majority in the house.

Mehbooba Mufti, NC  leader Omar Abdullah and the Congress leaders did not feel quite confident about their party men’s ability to resist inducements. That prompted them to forget animosities and come together to form a new government.

Governor Sat Pal Malik foiled their plan by dissolving the Assembly as soon as he received a letter faxed by Mehbooba Mufti advancing a claim to form the government with the support of 56 members.

Malik and BJP General Secretary Ram Madhav offered specious arguments to justify dissolution of the house without giving Mehbooba Mufti an opportunity to prove her claim of majority support on the floor of the house.

Conveniently forgetting the PDP-BJP partnership which lasted three and a half years, Malik cited ideological differences among the coalition partners as the reason for his action.

Madhav said in a tweet that the three parties probably had “instructions from across the border”. When Omar Abdullah challenged him to prove the charge, he beat a hasty retreat.

There is a bright side to the current situation. Dissolution of the Assembly makes fresh elections inevitable. That will give the people an opportunity to express their will. There is, however, no knowing when elections will take place and whether the verdict will be any different this time. --Gulf Today, November 27, 2018

Countering divisive politics

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

Delhi Chief Minister, Arwind Kejriwal, took the Hindutva establishment head on last weekend when he arranged a concert by well-known exponent of Carnatic music TM Krishna at the national capital after a Central government outfit,  yielding to social media pressure, cancelled an event in which he was to participate.

Krishna has raised his voice against caste prejudices in the world of art and culture and endeavoured to broaden the base of classical music by introducing non-Hindu themes.  He received the prestigious Magsayay Award in 2016 for his “forceful commitment as artist and advocate of art’s power to heal India’s deep social divisions”.

The Hindutva school was enraged by Krishna’s criticism of its intolerant ways.  When the Airports Authority of India announced a programme, which included a concert by him, trolls dubbed him an anti-national and mounted a campaign against him. The AAI then dropped the programme.

Kejriwal, whose Aam Admi Party seized power in the National Capital Territory of Delhi after pulverising both the BJP and the Congress party in the 2016 elections, immediately offered him an alternative venue.

Krishna made the event a celebration of India’s diversity. From his vast repertoire, he chose for the occasion a Malayalam song on Jesus, a Tamil song on Allah, some Kannada verses of reformer Basava and Hindi bhajans, besides popular classical items.

It was a more powerful statement against hate politics than what one hears at party rallies.

Even as Kejriwal set the stage for a cultural drive against hate politics, the BJP was building up a campaign, in the southern State of Kerala, against a recent Supreme Court ruling that the ancient Sabarimala temple’s practice of barring women of menstruating age violates the Constitutional principle of gender equality.

Both the BJP and its ideological parent, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, had welcomed the court ruling but quickly changed their stance, sensing an opportunity to strengthen their foothold in Kerala.  

The BJP has not been able to win a single parliamentary seat from Kerala so far. It hopes to make a breakthrough by alleging interference in Hindu religious practices.

The State’s government, led by the Communist Party of India (Marxist), has said it has a Constitutional obligation to enforce the court verdict. However, as of now, it remains unimplemented as the police is either unable or unwilling to provide safe passage to women devotees along the hill path lined by Hindutva protesters. 

Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan has been striving to counter the Hindutva challenge with calls to recapture the mood of the Kerala renaissance which had helped create a secular atmosphere and enabled the State to achieve social progress, which, the United Nations noted five decades back, was comparable to that of the industrialised West.

Both Kejrival and Vijayan are seeking, in disparate ways, to counter the Hindutva agenda of polarising the country to make electoral gains. 

Since the BJP came to power at the Centre four and a half years ago, there has been a two-pronged drive to promote the Hindutva ideology.

At the highest level, there has been a campaign, led by Narendra Modi himself, to denigrate the first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, who had held Hindutva forces at bay during the Partition riots and laid the foundations of a secular state. Modi views the Nehru legacy as a stumbling block in the way of realising the BJP’s goal of a Hindu nation in which non-Hindus will be relegated to second position.

In several States, Hindutva vigilante groups have indulged in violence against Muslims and Dalits in the name of cow protection. Police were slow to respond, and when they did they generally sought to pin the blame on the victims and save the culprits.

The demand for a Ram temple at Ayodhya, which has been on the BJP’s election manifesto since 1989, and the destruction of the Babri Masjid by RSS volunteers in 2002 to clear the ground for its construction were milestones in Hindutva’s march to power. Modi’s slogan of development did not lead to a change in the political agenda.

Tendayi Achiume, UN Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, has in a recent report noted that BJP leaders have been making inflammatory remarks against minorities and contributing to vigilantism targeted against Muslims and Dalits.  

With parliamentary elections only six months away and the economic outlook not as rosy as the government makes out, the BJP is becoming increasingly reliant on divisive politics. --Gulf Today, November 20, 2018.

Pressure on RBI to part with funds

BRP Bhaskar

Gulf Today

The Reserve Bank of India, which is banker to the Central and State governments and regulator and supervisor of the country’s monetary system, is under pressure from the Modi administration to pass on to it a big chunk of its reserves.

According to media reports, the Finance Ministry wants the RBI to transfer to the Centre Rs 3,600 billion out of its reserves of Rs 9,590 billion, and it says no.

More ominously, the Ministry wants joint management of the reserves by the Centre and the RBI. This will not only destroy the RBI’s autonomy and inhibit its ability to perform its functions well but also allow the government easy access to the central bank’s reserves which play a critical role in ensuring the nation’s financial security.

Initially, the government did not deny reports about its differences with the RBI. On the contrary, it virtually confirmed them and offered palpable justifications for threatening the RBI’s autonomy.

It argued that the RBI had overestimated its requirements of reserves, and could do with much less than what it holds now.

It also claimed the RBI’s existing economic capital framework was determined by its board of directors at a meeting at which two government nominees were not present.

As the Opposition parties and financial experts criticised the government for attempting to erode the RBI’s autonomy and reports circulated that RBI Governor Urjit Patel was preparing to quit, the government began a damage control exercise.

Subhash Chandra Garg, a Secretary in the Finance Ministry, in a tweet, described the reports as “misinformed speculation” and said there was no proposal to ask the RBI to transfer Rs 3,600 billion or even Rs 1,000 billion.

However, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said nothing that could reassure critics.

One of the two directors nominated to the RBI board by the government recently is S. Gurumurthy, a chartered accountant better known as an ideologue of the Rashtriya Swayamseval Sangh, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party’s mentor.

Reacting to the media reports, the RSS said the Governor should cooperate with the government or quit.

Set up by the colonial administration in 1935, the Reserve Bank of India’s functions include formulation, implementation and monitoring of monetary policy and laying down the broad parameters within which commercial banks must operate.

Successive Central governments have respected its autonomy, recognising the need for it to be free from political control to discharge its onerous responsibilities.

The RBI has an equity capital of only Rs 50 million but pays the Centre a handsome dividend each year. The dividend for the current fiscal is Rs 500 billion.

The RBI is one of the few central banks of the world which regularly updates its history. It has so far published four volumes which cover its working from 1935 to 1997.

Chicago University professor Raghuram Rajan, who, while serving as Chief Economist at the International Monetary Fund in 2005, had forecast the 2008 crisis in the US financial system, was the RBI’s Governor when Modi became the Prime Minister in 2014. His monetary policy helped check inflation and raise foreign exchange reserves.

When Modi consulted the RBI on his demonetisation plan of 2016, Rajan advised against it and warned of potential negative effects. Although he was ready to serve another term, Modi decided to look for someone amenable. Rajan returned to his Chicago University job.

Last week, on the second anniversary of demonetisation, Rajan said the world economy had picked up last year but India could not do as well as it should have done because of the disruption caused by the note ban and the hastily introduced Goods and Services Tax.

While the government’s publicly advanced argument for seeking RBI funds is that the central bank has more reserves than it needs, the real reason maybe something else. Either it is experiencing a cash crunch, which it is unwilling to acknowledge publicly, or it is looking for funds to launch populist schemes ahead of next year’s parliamentary elections.

Another indication of its urgent need to raise money is the reported decision to sell company shares which were declared “enemy property” after the shareholders left for Pakistan or China following the wars with these countries. Their current worth is estimated at more than $400 million.

Whether the government will press ahead with the plan to squeeze money out of the RBI or pull back will be known when the bank’s board of directors meets next Monday. --Gulf Today, Sharjah, November 13, 2018

Overcoming US pressure

BRP Bhaskar

Gulf Today

The emerging strategic partnership with the United States and Washington’s threat to impose sanctions did not deter India from signing an agreement with Russia to buy a $5.43 billion missile system during President Vladimir Putin’s visit last week.

After the signing ceremony, Putin and Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke in glowing terms of Indo-Russian relationship. Putin described it as unparallelled and Modi termed it unique.

The Trump administration had wanted India to scrap the proposal to buy the Russian missile system and to stop purchase of crude from Iran from November. 

Alluding to the waiver given to India when the last US administration imposed sanctions against Iran, Trump’s National Security Adviser John Bolton had told media persons some time ago, “This is not the Obama administration”.

Ahead of the Putin visit, India lobbied for waivers and sought to reassure Washington that the Russian contacts will not compromise operational secrecy of US military equipment.

While the US has not announced any waiver so far, India is going ahead also with purchase of crude from Iran, which has been one of its major sources of oil since long.

Quoting industry sources, the Russian news agency Sputnik said the state-owned Indian Oil Corporation, which had planned to buy about 0.75 million metric tons of Iranian oil every month during the year ending March 2019 was importing the usual quantity.

It also said Indian refiners had placed a contract for 1.25 million metric tons of crude, to be delivered next month. As Iran gives India a short credit, payment will be due only two months later. Since a second set of US sanctions will come into force before that India has arranged with Iran to receive payment in rupee instead of US dollar.

The US had offered to make good India’s oil shortage resulting from stoppage of purchases from Iran. But, citing traders and the French shipping intelligence company Kpler, Sputnik said India bought from the US only 64,000 barrels per day last month as against 347,000 bpd in June.

The US imposed sanctions against Russia and Iran under the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act passed by Congress last year. The law targets North Korea too.

While signing the bill into law, Trump had said it was “significantly flawed” as it restricted the executive branch’s authority by limiting its flexibility in foreign policy matters.

The Putin-Modi meeting was the 19th annual Indo-Russian summit. This has served as a major forum for sustaining the warm relationship forged before the collapse of the Soviet Union, which was India’s major source of military hardware.

India-Russia defence cooperation continued in the post-Soviet period and has led to acquisition and joint development of weapons and equipment. The modified Kiev-class aircraft carrier INS Vikramaditya, which the Indian Navy acquired in 2013, start of work on first India-built aircraft carrier INS Arihant and development of BrahMos supersonic missile are among its major achievements.

It was at the 17th summit held in 2016 that India agreed to buy the S-400 Triumf air defence system. This decision has now been firmed up through a formal agreement. 

At that meeting the two countries had agreed also on a project to construct four frigates, one to be built in Russia and the other three in India. It was also decided to set up a tripartite joint venture of a Russian export firm, Russian Helicopters and the Indian public sector undertaking Hindustan Aeronautics Limited to manufacture 200 light utility helicopters for the Indian army. There is no word on the fate of these projects. 

After defence, the most importnt area of Indo-Russian cooperation is that of nuclear power production. Two units of the Koodamkulam plant in Tamil Nadu, built with Russian help, have been completed, despite strong objections from the local population on grounds of safety and environmental protection. But a three-year-old proposal for Russia and India to collaborate in building a nuclear plant in Bangladesh appears to be in cold storage.

One of the agreements signed at the latest summit envisages Indo-Russian cooperation in space exploration. 

All these point to continued Indian cooperation with Russia in sensitive areas, notwithstanding the Modi government’s pursuit of strategic defence partnership with the US.

Army chief Gen. Bipin Rawat outlined India’s approach in a speech on Sunday: “While we may be associating with America in getting some technologies from them, we follow an independent policy.” 

Russia is keen to boost economic cooperation with India as well. Last year India participated in the St Petersburg International Economic Forum as a guest member. Putin has invited Modi to be the chief guest at an investment conclave planned at Vladivostok to boost economic development of Russia’s far eastern region. --Gulf Today Sharjah, October 9, 2018.

Decoding the Rafale deal

BRP Bhaskar

Gulf Today

 

A slanging match is on between the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party and the opposition Congress on the deal which Prime Minister Narendra Modi struck with France to acquire 36 Rafale warplanes.

According to Congress President Rahul Gandhi, Modi tweaked the agreement the previous United Progressive Alliance government had negotiated with a view to favouring a crony businessman.

The search for a new multi-role combat aircraft to replace the ageing fleet of Soviet MiGs began when the first BJP-led government was in power and continued under the two UPA governments.

After field trials in which six manufacturers participated, Dassault’s Rafale was adjudged the best, and in 2012 negotiations began for acquisition of 126 aircraft. 

UPA negotiated a deal to acquire18 aircraft in fly-away condition and manufacture108 in India in collaboration with the state-owned Hindustan Aeronautics Limited. Dassaault’s talks with HAL were inconclusive when the change of government took place in 2014.

On an official visit to France in 2016, Modi signed an agreement with President Francois Hollande to buy 36 Rafale aircraft in fly-away condition.

It dumped the 78-year-old HAL, which has produced some small planes and helicopters on its own, and manufactured, under licence, aircraft of foreign design like the British Vampire, Gnat and Jaguar and the Soviet Mig 21, Mig 27 and Sukhoi. Anil Ambani’s Reliance Defence, which was incorporated just weeks before the Modi-Hollande agreement, came in as Dassault’s Indian partner.

The Ambani firm cut into the deal under an offset clause in the agreement which requires France to invest half the contract cost in India. According to media reports, France will invest 30 per cent of the cost in India’s military aeronautics-related research programmes and 20 per cent in local production of Rafale components. 

The Congress says under the UPA deal an aircraft would have cost India only Rs 5.26 billion. Under the Modi deal the price goes up to Rs 16.70 billion.

The government refuses to give details of the price agreed upon, saying there is a clause in the agreement which binds it to maintain secrecy.

Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman claims the price fixed by UPA was for the bare aircraft while what India is now getting is aircraft fitted with sophisticated weapons. Experts aver the price difference is too high to be attributed to the difference in equipment ordered.

Ms Sitharaman is one of the most articulate BJP leaders. But the more she talks on this issue the more she wades into deep waters. 

She seeks to explain away HAL’s exclusion saying UPA did not pump money into it to enable it to take up manufacture of Rafale. She does not say why her government, instead of pumping money into HAL, brought in a private company with no experience of manufacturing even aircraft parts, let alone a whole aircraft.

She insists the government had no role in the selection of Reliance Defence as Dassault’s partner. Under the 2016 government guidelines, all defence offset proposals require the Defence Minister’s approval.

She is silent on how India will get 90 more aircrafts to meet the assessed requirement of 126.

Anil Ambani is the younger brother of Mukesh Ambani, who owns the larger of the two Reliance conglomerates. Both brothers have been close to Modi since his days as Chief Minister of Gujarat and are among the BJP’s financiers.

In July, Modi had invited flak by giving Mukesh Ambani’s Jio Institute, which has not even started working, “Institute of Eminence” status, making it eligible for a government grant of Rs 10 billion.

It is reasonable to assume that Dassault pushed up the price of the aircraft to cover the offset costs. The government has rejected suggestions for a probe into the Rafale deal by a joint parliamentary committee. Since the BJP will have a majority in the JPC there is no need to fear an adverse decision. But, then, the JPC will be able to call for information which the government is hiding.

As the Congress mounted an attack on the Rafale deal, Anil Ambani shot off two letters to Gandhi to say the party was misinformed, misdirected and misled by malicious vested interests and his corporate rivals. 

Taking a leaf from the book of BJP President Amit Shah’s son, Jay, who obtained a restraint order against the Wire.in, he also sent legal notices to the Congress’s official spokespersons and the Gandhi family–owned newspaper National Herald in a bid to stop them from pursuing the subject on pain of heavy damages claim.

When the Ambani family assets were divided in 2007, according to Forbes, Mukesh’s net worth was $49 billion and Anil’s $45 billion. The 2017 Forbes list puts Mukesh’s assets at $38 billion and Anil’s at 3.15 billion. Fall in the value of the Rupee may account for the decline in Mukesh’s assets. The steep fall in Anil’s assets points to business failures. The Rafale deal offers him a bailout.--Gulf Today, Sharjah, September 18, 2018

A strange political struggle

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

A colonial building in Delhi has been for more than a week the scene of an unusual power struggle between two constitutional authorities, the government of India and the government of Delhi, which in popular parlance is a state but is actually a union territory. 

It was in this building that the highest colonial officer of Delhi lived before the British Indian government moved  from Kolkata to  New Delhi, built by Edwin Lutyens. It is now Raj Niwas, official residence of Delhi’s Lieutenant-Governor, Anil Baijal.

On June 11, Delhi Chief Minister, Arvind Kejriwal, went to Raj Niwas with Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia and Ministers Satyendra Jain and Gopal Rai. Since then they have been camping in a waiting room there in what is described as a sit-in to press for the rights of the people of Delhi. Sisodia and Jain are also on fast. 

Baijal met Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh, who has direct responsibility for Delhi affairs, but neither of them has made any move so far to put an end to the sit-in. If the condition of the fasting ministers deteriorates, urgent intervention may become necessary.

The Raj Niwas developments perhaps have no parallel in the annals of democratic societies. But extra-constitutional activities are not new to India.

What is on is a political battle. Kejriwal is agitating against the Central government’s attitude which hinders his administration from giving effect to some policy decisions it has taken in the interest of the people.  

Delhi is one of seven Union Territories, whose administrations are amenable to Central control through the Lt-Governor, even if they have elected Assemblies. A constitutional amendment of 1991 made certain special provisions for the National Capital Territory (NCT) of Delhi, but did not change its status.

In the 2014 Lok Sabha elections Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party made a clean sweep of all seven seats of NCT. However, in the following year’s Assembly elections, Kejriwal’s Aam Admi Party took 67 of the 70 seats, leaving BJP with a paltry three.

Modi has still not forgotten that humiliating experience. Kejriwal had a running battle with Lt-Governor Najeeb Jung, who, he believed, was putting obstacles in his way at the Centre’s instance.

When Najeeb Jung, a former civil servant, hung up his boots Modi picked for the post Baijal, another former bureaucrat who had been associated with the pro-BJP think tank Vivekananda International Foundation since retirement. And the battle between the two constitutional functionaries continued.   

Kejriwal is a civil servant who quit the job to do public service through a non-government organisation. After taking an active part in the anti-corruption movement, he broke away to launch the AAP. Its stunning victory in Delhi raised hopes of its becoming a major national player but they did not materialise.

The AAP government’s work has produced good results in the fields of education and health and won praise nationally and internationally. After a fight with big producers, it drastically reduced electricity tariff. It also extended water supply to several hundred localities where the poor live.

Speaking at the government’s third anniversary in February Kejriwal said the Central Vigilance Commission had reported an 81 per cent reduction in corruption in the NCT in three years. He accused the Centre of using the Lt-Governor to stall his government’s legislative initiatives.

Recently Central investigators raided Kejriwal’s office and questioned him as part of a probe into an alleged assault on Chief Secretary Anshu Prakash while attending a meeting there. The immediate provocation for Kejriwal’s sit-in was  a tiff with Indian Administrative Service officials following that incident. In a letter to Modi, he sought his help to end the ‘strike’ by the officials.

The IAS Officers’ Association denied its members are on strike and released photographs showing them at work in their offices. The Kejriwal protest has become a new issue on which opposition parties can combine against Modi. Almost all opposition parties except the Congress is backing him.

Four Chief Ministers, West Bengal’s Mamata Banerjee (Trinamool Congress), Andhra Pradesh’s Nara Chandrababu Naidu (Telugu Desam), Karnataka’s HD Kumaraswamy (Janata Dal-Secular) and Kerala’s Pinarayi Vijayan (Communist Party of India-Marxist), who were in New Delhi  for a meeting called by the Centre planned a solidarity visit to Kejriwal.  Baijal denied them permission to visit Raj Niwas,  Later they conveyed their views  to Modi. He did not respond. 

Modi cannot pretend that the matter does not concern him. .He has to intervene and resolve the issue in the interests of smooth working of the democratic system. --Gulf Tiday, Sharjah, June 19, 2018.

Spy talk makes sense

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

Talking out of the box, AS Dulat, a former chief of Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), India’s foreign intelligence agency, suggested last week that the government should invite Pakistan Army chief Qamar Jawad Bajwa for talks.

Dulat’s suggestion may not fit into the protocol regime but it makes sense as the army has a decisive role in shaping Pakistan’s relations with India even when there is a civilian government.

Dulat headed RAW during 1999-2000 when Bharatiya Janata Party leader AB Vajapayee was the Prime Minister. When he retired, Vajpayee appointed him as his Advisor on Kashmir. He participated in Track II talks with Pakistan while in service as also later.

Vajpayee had made a bold bid to find a solution to outstanding problems with Pakistan, including Kashmir, through talks with President Pervez Mushaarraf and leaders of the Hurriyat movement. After his exit, Manmohan Singh tried to carry forward the process he had initiated. At a meeting on the sidelines of the Non-Aligned Summit at Havana, he and Musharraf decided to set up a joint anti-terrorism institutional mechanism. It never took off because ground conditions were not favourable.

Three years ago, in a book titled “Kashmir: The Vajpayee Years”, co-authored with Aditya Sinha, a journalist, Dulat talked of missed peace opportunities. 

In an India-Pakistan Track II meeting in Berlin in 2011, he and former ISI chief Lt-Gen Asad Durrani jointly presented a paper on the need for intelligence cooperation between the two countries. In it they said, “When countries are faced with common external or internal threats, exchange of mutually beneficial information might not only be thinkable but also desirable, even prudent.” 

They also mentioned a few occasions when the two sides had exchanged information to avoid any moves by the other side based on misreading of events.

Dulat made his suggestion for talks with Pakistan’s Army chief in the presence of a distinguished New Delhi gathering which included Manmohan Singh, former Vice-President Hamid Ansari and former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah. No one associated with the Narendra Modi government was present.

The occasion was the release of a book, “Spy Chronicles: RAW, ISI and the Illusion of Peace”, based on a series of recorded conversations between Dulat and Durrani in the presence of Aditya Sinha. The three had met at different locations outside India and Pakistan. 

According to the publishers, another volume with more extracts from the conversations will follow.

Durrani could not attend the book release as India did not give him a visa. After media circulated reports based on its contents, the Pakistan Army summoned him to its headquarters “to explain his position on views attributed to him in the book”.

In a panel discussion that followed the book release several speakers criticised the Modi government’s Pakistan policy.

Farooq Abdullah said India and Pakistan were still carrying the baggage of partition. Former National Security Adviser Shivshankar Menon saw double-standards in India holding talks with China after its border transgressions and not having talks with Pakistan after the Pathankot and Uri terror attacks.

Former Union Minister Yashwant Sinha, who recently quit the BJP after criticising Modi on a range of issues, said, “Muscular policies are brainless policies because muscles don’t have brains.”

Apart from making some gestures, like inviting Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to his swearing-in and making a visit to Lahore to greet him on his birthday, Modi has not taken any meaningful step to improve bilateral relations. His muscular responses have led to escalation of violence.

According to an official press release, Pakistani cease-fire violations along the Line of Control in Kashmir rose from 152 in 2015 to 228 in 2016 and 860 in 2017. In these incidents 83 persons were killed, 41 of them civilians. This year, in January alone, there were 192 cease-fire violations, resulting in the death of 16 persons, including eight civilians. 

Each side routinely attributes all truce violations to the other and describes its own actions as fitting responses. The cycle of violations and reprisals continue partly because it suits the interests of certain sections on both sides.

Apparently spies are able to talk sense because, unlike politicians, they don’t have to fight elections. 

There is a precedent of 1955 which can help overcome the protocol issue involved in inviting Gen Bajwa for political talks. In that year India had invited Communist Party chief Nikita Khrushchev to visit the country along with Prime Minister Nicholai Bulganin in recognition of his place in the Soviet hierarchy. --Gulf Today, Sharjah, May 29, 2018

South halts Hindutva march

BRP Bhaskar

Gulf Today

A determined bid by the Bharatiya Janata Party to seize power in Karnataka was blocked by the opposition last week, aided by judicial intervention, putting paid to Hindutva’s plan to extend its foothold to the South, at least for the time being.

Although the BJP has outgrown its northern base and spread across the country, the South remains inhospitable to it. The party views Karnataka, where it came to power once before, as its gateway to the South.

The Congress was in power in the state during the last five years, and since every election in the state in the recent past has led to change of government, the BJP believed it could take the state.

BJP President Amit Shah, who is reputedly a master strategist, began working on plans to storm Karnataka six months ago. Prime Minister Narendra Modi led the party’s campaign. It drafted also the services of a host of Central ministers and state chief ministers. Its ideological mentor, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, deployed its cadres for booth-level activity.

With an eye on the powerful Lingayat community, the BJP projected BS Yeddyurappa as its chief ministerial candidate even though he had attracted corruption charges when he held the post last time. 

The Congress party’s campaign was led by its president, Rahul Gandhi, who, as is his wont, incorporated temple visits in his tour. Hoping to wean away a section of the Lingayats from the BJP, the outgoing Congress government endorsed the demand for recognition of the community as a separate religious group. The tactic did not hurt Yeddyurappa, who had personally backed that demand at one time.

Chief Minister Siddaramaiah’s strategy probably harmed the Congress further by precipitating consolidation of the Vokkaliga community, the Lingayats’ traditional rivals in caste politics, behind the Janata Dal (Secular), led by former Prime Minister HD Deve Gowda and his son and former Chief Minister HD Kumaraswamy. 

When counting of votes began last Tuesday, the BJP established an early lead and appeared well set to win a majority in the new Assembly. But it ended up with only 103 seats, nine short of an absolute majority.

However, the BJP was the only party to increase its strength. It now had 63 seats more than in the last Assembly. The Congress won 78 seats, 44 less than last time, and the JD(S) 37, three less than last time.

When it became clear that the BJP will fall short of a majority, the Congress offered unconditional support to a government headed by Kumaraswamy of the JD(S). The two parties conveyed to Governor Vaijubhai Vala their decision to work together. The BJP, as the largest single party, also staked a claim to form the government.

With a combined strength of 115, the JD(S)-Congress alliance had a clear majority. Yet Vala, an old RSS hand who was Modi’s Cabinet colleague in Gujarat, rejected their claim and appointed Yeddyurappa as the Chief Minister. He gave him a fortnight to prove majority in the house.

Since there were not enough small parties and independents with whose support the BJP could cobble up a majority, Vala’s action amounted to giving the party an opportunity to poach members from the Congress and the JD(S). 

The two parties jointly approached the Supreme Court against Vala’s partisan decision. At an urgent hearing, the court sidestepped the legal and constitutional issues raised by the petitioners and ordered that the majority be tested on the floor of the house the very next day.

The Governor’s choice of a former BJP Speaker with an unsavoury record to conduct the assembly proceedings raised fears of possible mischief. However, the court’s directives to hold a secret ballot and telecast the proceedings live limited the scope for motivated manoeuvres. 

Even as the MLAs gathered for the session, the Congress released five tapes of conversations in which BJP leaders offered inducements to its members.

Realising that the game was up, Yeddyurappa resigned without facing the floor test. The Governor later invited Kumaraswamy to form the government.

Making sense of a fractured electoral verdict is not easy. There is merit in the BJP’s argument that the electoral verdict was against the Congress. But its own claim of a mandate is questionable. The Election Commission’s figures show that the Congress (38.0%) got more votes than the BJP (36.2%).

With a combined vote share of 56.4% the Congress-JD(S) alliance can legitimately claim popular support. But these parties have a history of rivalry and it remains to be seen if they can pull together for long. 

The most important lesson of the Karnataka experience is that secular parties can halt Hindutva advance if they combine forces. -- Gulf Today, Sharjah, May 22, 2018