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

Lessons of a Himalayan tragedy

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

Two weeks after floods sowed death and destruction in the Himalayan state of Uttarakhand, studded with Hindu pilgrim centres, independent assessments suggest that official agencies are more adept at making disasters than at managing them.

The National Disaster Management Authority, established in December 2005 in the wake of the experience of the previous year’s Asian tsunami, is the official agency charged with the task of organising rescue and relief in times of calamity.

A high-powered body, of which the prime minister is the chairman, it has under it a National Disaster Response Force, which functions under the command and supervision of a director-general and superintendence, direction and control of the NDMA. Its vice-chairman, M Sashidhar Reddy, who supervises day-to-day management, is a political appointee. He is a Congress politician of Andhra Pradesh.

The NDMA’s unpreparedness to handle the tragedy resulted in the primary responsibility for rescue and relief operations falling on the armed forces, which have traditionally performed such tasks in times of adversity.

The NDMA has its excuses. It says it asked the Central government for Rs31.75 billion for the NDRF in the 12th five-year plan to train state government personnel and undertake research but was given only Rs12.50 billion. Also, as early as 2009 it recommended to Uttarakhand and other hilly states, located in seismic regions, certain preparatory steps but they failed to implement them.

However, lack of responsibility of the NDMA’s leadership appears to be a graver problem than scarcity of resources. It was only three years after the NDMA’s formation that its national executive committee was constituted. That committee has not met even once so far.

Bihar, Gujarat, Jammu and Kashmir and Orissa have experienced floods and earthquakes in the past eight years. The NDMA’s weakness did not attract much public attention at the time as the fairly good administrative machinery of the state concerned filled the breach.

Carved out of sprawling Uttar Pradesh in 2000, Uttarakhand is a small state with a low population density of 159 per square kilometre as against the national average of 324. As much as 93 per cent of its territory is mountainous and 65 per cent under forest cover. The terrain rendered the rescue efforts difficult but the defence services rose to the occasion.

The air force deployed about 85 helicopters to distribute food and to fly out the stranded to safety. Army personnel quickly repaired damaged roads and erected makeshift bridges to facilitate rescue through land routes. Naval experts flew in to save those trapped in water.

Defence officials took over effective control of rescue and relief operations, making up for the NDMA’s failure. They worked according to a plan which accorded high priority to the sick and the aged in the rescue effort. However, they came under pressure to give special consideration to VIP pilgrims with access to the powers that be.

The Central machinery gave priority to rescue of pilgrims from other states trapped in the disaster area. Several states sent their own officers to Dehra Dun, capital of Uttarakhand, and they undertook separate operations, often using private helicopters, to take their own people home. In the process, the largely poor inhabitants of Uttarakhand, whose lives were wrecked, did not receive due attention for days together. 

Clearly there are many lessons to be learnt from this tragedy, the exact toll of which is still not known. Officials are now squabbling over why there was failure to act on the June 14 forecast of heavy downpour.

The most important lesson to be learnt relates not to management of disaster but to making of disaster. The floods were caused by cloudbursts, which usually occur when rain-bearing clouds rolling up barren hills suddenly collapse. Large-scale denudation of forests has rendered them a regular feature in all mountainous areas of the country. Extensive construction activity has disturbed the stability of fragile areas.

The Ganga and the Jamuna, the two major rivers that have sustained life in the vast plains of India, originate in Uttarakhand. Already there are 170 dams in the small portions of these rivers and in their tributaries that run through the state, and 680 more are said to be in various stages of planning or implementation. Official data indicates the state has lost 5,000 hectares of prime forest in the last 10 years.

Days before the tragedy struck, Uttarakhand chief minister Vijay Bahuguna had vehemently opposed the application of green norms to the state. There is, as yet, nothing to indicate that he and his patrons in Delhi, committed to development-at-any-cost, have learnt the right lesson. Unless they realise the virtue of development as a sustainable activity, such calamities may continue to exact a heavy price. --Gulf Today, Sharjah, July 2, 2013.

Arrest of journalist in Uttarakhand: daughter's revelation

The Uttarakhand government is using Maoist threat as a ploy to demand crores of rupees from the Centre, says Shikha Rahi, daughter of Prashant Rahi, arrested journalist and social activist.

Police claim that Prashant Rahi is zonal commander of the CPI (Maoist).

In an article, written for Combat Law, Shikha Rahi narrates the story of her father’s arrest, apparently to boost the claim of extremist threat.

See “A daughter’s plea” by Shikha Rahi, distributed by countercurrents.org