Collapse of an institution

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

The Congress, which was pushed down to the second position by Narendra Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party in the 2014 parliamentary poll and is now facing a fresh electoral test in four states, suffered a major setback during weekend even before the first vote was cast.

In Kerala, one of the states going to the polls, the party’s central leadership collapsed in the face of the obduracy of Chief Minister Oommen Chandy, a well-established faction leader.

Factionalism has been a bane of the Congress since before Independence and remains a serious problem as the party struggles for survival. In most states, there are rival leaders who are constantly involved in group warfare but are held together by their common allegiance to the Gandhi family.

Election time usually witnesses an aggravation of party feuds. The issues are settled by the central leadership, widely referred to as the High Command. Since Indira Gandhi crushed the powerful state party chiefs who had combined and posed a threat to her, the term has come to signify the dynastic leadership.

Of the four states going to the polls, it is in Assam alone that the BJP has high hopes. There the Congress is relying upon the personal popularity of Tarun Gogoi, who has been Chief Minister for 15 years. The High Command began efforts to contain factionalism months ago.

Among the factors the BJP is banking on are the anti-incumbency factor and the issue of illegal migration from Bangladesh, which it has been playing up for long at the national level.

In West Bengal and Tamil Nadu, where regional parties are in power and the Congress has but a small presence, the High Command intervened directly to forge alliances with the more powerful opposition forces.

The main fight in Tamil Nadu is between Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa’s Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam and former Chief Minister M Karunanidhi’s Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam. As the High Command’s emissary, Ghulam Nabi Azad, Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha, flew to Chennai and made a deal with Karunanidhi.

The Congress and the Communist Party of India-Marxist reached an informal understanding in West Bengal to join hands against Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress.

A former Congress leader, Mamata Banerjee broke away from the party and floated the Trinamool Congress in 1997. It soon replaced the parent body as the CPI-M’s main rival in the state. In the 2011 Assembly elections, she led her party to victory, bringing to an end more than three decades of unbroken rule by the CPI-M-led Left Front.

The Congress, a minor ally of the Trinamool Congress in 2011, is now the Left Front’s junior partner. The CPI-M’s central leadership gave the nod for the understanding with the Congress in the state, overruling the opposition of its Kerala unit, which was worried about its likely impact in Kerala.

The Congress-led United Democratic Front and the CPI-led Left Democratic Front have been alternating in power in Kerala for more than three decades. Even as the LDF is hoping to return to power benefiting by the scandals that has rocked the current UDF government, Oommen Chandy is making a daring bid for an unprecedented second successive term.

For decades, Congress politics in Kerala revolved around K Karunakaran and AK Antony, who pulled each other down when the UDF was in power. When Antony moved to the national arena Oommen Chandy inherited his “A” group. After Karunakaran’s death, Ramesh Chennithala, one of his former followers, revived his “I” group, named after Indira Gandhi.

Oommen Chandy as Chief Minister and Ramesh Chennithala, first as state Congress chief and then as Home Minister, established a diarchy in the party. When Ramesh Chennithala joined the Cabinet, Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi picked VM Sudheeran, who had withdrawn from group politics, for the party post. The two faction leaders joined hands to preserve their domains.

Rahul Gandhi backed Sudheeran’s move to deny the party ticket to a few tainted leaders, including ministers, but Oommen Chandy threatened to pull out of the elections if anyone of them was axed. Fearing a split in the party, the High Command stepped back, causing immense damage to its own stature. It continued efforts to force some minor changes but it is too late to undo the damage. -- Gulf Today, April 5, 2016.

Battle over liquor

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

India’s Constitution-makers had directed the state to work towards prohibition of consumption of alcohol. They did so not on moral or religious grounds, but on the mundane considerations of improving living standards and public health.

Accordingly, many state governments decided to introduce prohibition in stages. By 1964, one-fourth of the country’s population was in areas where liquor was banned. At that stage, most of them started rolling back prohibition rejecting the Central government’s offer of grants to cover half of the loss of revenue resulting from the ban on liquor.

Only Gujarat in the west, Manipur and Nagaland in the tribal northeast and Lakshadweep, a group of Arabian Sea islands, continued with prohibition. Last month Kerala, which boasts of social indices comparable to those of the West, decided to change course and resume the journey towards total prohibition. 

Tipplers in India had relied entirely on locally tapped or brewed drinks until the British introduced foreign liquor in 1837. The high cost of imported liquor limited its use to the affluent. Bengali nationalist leader Keshub Chandra Sen opposed liquor imports but the British were unwilling to give up the fast growing Indian market.

Later on, Gandhi campaigned against all kinds of liquor. The constitutional directive on prohibition was a result of his work.

When Gandhi came on the scene, prohibition was an idea which had wide appeal across the world. It was in force in the USA, Canada, the Soviet Union (where it was introduced in the Czar’s time) and a few European countries like Norway and Iceland. All of them soon abandoned it, declaring it was unworkable.

Today prohibition prevails only in a dozen Muslim states, including Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Bangladesh.  In Pakistan, non-Muslims can obtain permits to buy liquor.

Half of Kerala was dry when a coalition government headed by Communist Party of India-Marxist leader EMS Namboodiripad wound up prohibition to augment the state’s finances. Three types of liquor were available in the state: toddy tapped from coconut palms, locally distilled arrack and what is officially labelled Indian made foreign liquor (IMFL).

Kerala was a poor state at that time, with its per capita income below the national average. Today, it is the country’s richest state, thanks mainly to remittances from the large expatriate population in the Gulf States. Consumption of liquor grew steadily as the state prospered. It now accounts for the heaviest consumption of alcohol, estimated at 8.3 litres per head per year, as against the national average of about 4 litres. 

The state’s stake in the liquor trade rose when it set up the Beverages Corporation in 1984 and granted it monopoly over sale of IMFL. The 1997 ban on sale of arrack boosted IMFL sales. The corporation now contributes more than Rs72 billion a year to the exchequer, which is about a quarter of the state’s total revenue.

The government took the decision to push ahead with prohibition in circumstances that raise doubts about its sincerity.  A court had ordered closure of more than 300 hotel bars working in insanitary conditions. Chief Minister Oommen Chandy was inclined to find a way to reopen them but state Congress president VM Sudheeran opposed the move. As Sudheeran’s stand proved popular, the government upstaged him by announcing the new policy.

In terms of the government decision, all bars except those in five-star hotels were to close down last week. But the Supreme Court, acting on a bunch of petitions filed by bar owners, asked the government not to enforce the decision until the end of this month, by which time the High Court will rule on the issues raised by the petitioners.

The bar owners have claimed that their licences allow them to function until the current financial year ends on March 31, 2015. This is true but, then, they were given the licences on the specific understanding that the government has the right to cancel them at any time.

The High Court verdict may not be the last word on the subject since the losing side is certain to go in appeal to the Supreme Court, leading to further delay.

Contrary to the popular impression, the new policy will not result in total prohibition. Wine and beer parlours will continue to exit, and their numbers may well increase.

Many believe that the legal ban on liquor will fail, as happened in the US. However, in the conditions prevailing in Kerala  there is a need to limit availability of liquor, if only to prevent children from taking to drinking. The law stipulates that one must be at least 21 years old to drink but studies have indicated that many start drinking in their early teens.

If Kerala wins the battle against liquor, other states may come under pressure to rethink on prohibition. In neighbouring Tamil Nadu, a political party, the Pattali Makkal Katchi, has already demanded that the state follow the Kerala example. -- Gulf Today, Sharjah, September 16, 2014.