CAST OFF COMFORT OF CASTE

The Great Caste Census Debate is on. Many of those who have an opinion on it have been almost untouched by the realities of caste in their own lives. So, before I start expressing mine, here is an admission: I have been personally touched by it, but only a little. I have not faced discrimination, but have seen others who have. I must also reveal right here that I vehemently oppose the move to carry out a caste based census. If you have have a closed mind in favour of the what I believe will be a long term disaster, read no further.

Till VP Singh unleashed Mandal in 1990, all I knew was that I was a Brahmin. I knew little about other castes except the shudras whom I had seen as a child carrying human excreta on their heads. I had also then heard that they were not be touched physically, were not allowed inside homes and that no social interaction whatsoever was permissible with them. But, I also heard that sex with shudra women was not only not prohibited but was to indulged in as it protected one against leprosy; they were untouchable too but not when needed for sex. Unlike some of us who have witnessed or heard about these and similar stories of caste discrimination from family or friends, I am strongly against any division or discrimination on the basis of one's birth. To me people of all castes are equal. I abhor any caste discrimination and believe that this has been the one single feature of Hinduism in practice that has sapped the religion of its vitality and one that clashes with the very basis of Sanatan Dharm: Vasudev Kutumbakam - the whole world is one family.

The sudden decision of the government to agree to a limited caste based census that will count the number of OBCs, in addition to SCs and STs, manifestly as a result of a petty and immediate political trade-off with the two powerful Yadavs, Lalu and Mulayam, has, not surprisingly, raised a storm, but only a small one considering that a fundamental, irreversible change is going to be unleashed on the people of India. Defenders and opponents of the move are, as happens most of the time, playing with words, history, political expediency, even caste affiliation, to support their arguments, some of which are absurd, even illogical.

Among the many who have written on the subject, I have picked the views of five, three of whom support caste census. It is an arbitrary selection but I think it broadly covers the main points that have been made in the media and elsewhere. Of course, as you would have guessed by now, I am going to use their arguments to support my own view. That may look like a devious and indolent way of going about this task. But, is there a better way for the millions of us who are not well versed with subject but want to know whether this move is in India's interest? So, here goes.

"The decision to, in principle, enumerate caste in the Census is a monumental travesty," says Pratap Bhanu Mehta."The premise of enumeration is that we can never escape caste. The state has legitimised the principle that we will always be our caste." This is the fundamental point which is being lost sight of by those who say casually that since caste is a reality, the census only recognises it. The harsh truth is that caste based enumeration is only going to play into the hands of those for whom "social justice is endless stratagem to assert the power of compulsory group identity, rather than finding the means to escape it." "In the name of breaking open prisons, they imprison us even more... caste census is the basis for a self-destructive politics...mobilisation will take place only along caste lines."

Barkha Dutt believes that caste based politics has become "a short-cut for quota propaganda...‘equality’ has become a political euphemism for perpetuating reservations," and adds with good effect the unpleasant fact that "reservations, as we all know by now, are the perfect way for a State to abdicate its responsibility to its poorer citizens — substituting real deliverables with ineffective largesse"

The tall architects of our constitution recognised that the India of the future had to free itself of the caste chains that had had tied it for long. As Dutt notes in her piece, even Dr BR Ambedkar had asked “How can a people divided into several thousands of castes be a nation?” However, they also recognised the social burden that had been borne primarily by dalits and tribals for thousands of years. Therefore, with a view to eradicate it, they incorporated reservations for dalits and tribals as a temporary measure only, to speed up their empowerment. They were fully alive to to the fact that permanent reservations on the basis of caste would only perpetuate age old divisions and prejudices in society.

Unfortunately for India, the arithmetic of elections combined with the absence of tall leaders with a similar vision for India has ensured that not only have reservations for dalits become all but permanent, we now have reservations for OBCs - implemented out of the blue for petty political gain by VP Singh without any demand from anyone and without consulting anyone either. That move not only almost manufactured a demand but has also given rise to more demands on similar grounds.

Yogendra Yadav's defence of caste census starts where the objections of Mehta end. Yadav cleverly skirts them. "What about objections on grounds of principles? There is an understandable unease about giving caste primacy in public life. But it is unclear how counting of the OBCs is in this respect qualitatively different from counting the SCs and the STs. We have done this for more than half a century." So, the OBC in Yadav tells the nation that just because we have deviated from the original vision of ushering in a modern, 'casteless' society, it is perfectly fine if we screw up this foundational principle even more by counting OBCs too. He agrees that this will have the effect of making caste boundaries even more rigid but, unlike Mehta and like the two powerful Yadav politicians who have forced the issue, he is more concerned about short-term gain for some rather than the long term damage to India: "It is true that official enumeration of any category tends to solidify its boundaries a little more than would be the case otherwise. But this subtle and long-term cost has to be weighed against the most evident and short and long term cost of official non-recognition of categories that everyone operates with."

Yadav also dexterously side-steps the next logical question about a full caste census by saying that although there are good arguments in its favour, "we may not be ready for it at this stage of the current census operations and national deliberations". In a subsequent rejoinder to Mehta's article, Yadav changes even this view and opposes a count of all castes on the "question of principles" which he fails to elaborate. Mr Yadav, if "politicians have always had access to caste-community composition of their constituencies" then where is the need for a formal census for OBCs at all and what can be the objection to counting the remaining castes too? Also, were there any "national deliberations" before Lalu and Mulayam blackmailed the government almost overnight to agree to an OBC count? Should such a count not have been done before VP Singh sprang the forgotten Mandal report on an unsuspecting nation?

Yadav would also like us to believe that once caste "is allowed normal play, it achieves partial success, is made to run against other divisions and ends up either redefining itself or building alliances or simply exhausting itself. The spectre of caste disappears when it is treated as a routine fact of politics." Has he already forgotten how the spectre of caste has only grown since the OBCs were given reservation and is now in danger of going almost viral across religions? He also knows well that no matter how prosperous and empowered a caste becomes, it will keep enjoying the benefits of reservations; an entitlement once given has not been and cannot be withdrawn. Some people can really travel in search of justifications for a view point. Also, built into in Yadav's stance is his acceptance of the danger that reservations will become irreversible, that India will remain divided by caste forever. That is, if anything, a scary thought.

Cleverly, Yadav also tries to present opposition to this increasing division of India socially and politically along caste identification as an unfounded fear harboured by liberals who are far removed from caste. Why should he even mention that what is being done is also exactly the opposite of what our founding fathers had visualised? Why should he remind us that for hundreds of years social reformers and spiritual leaders have been trying to remove the sting and stigma of caste from society because they realised that it is a social phenomenon that has hung for long over society like a curse? He surely knows that even they have succeeded only partially. Yet he wants us to accept his argument that caste might actually disappear if it is allowed to have its normal play! Will anyone in his senses believe that Laloo Yadav and Mulayam Yadav were motivated by such lofty considerations when they ambushed the UPA and held it and India to ransom in full public view in broad daylight? They have not pushed for a caste census to cast off the comfort of caste that they are enjoying.

Sagarika Ghose mirrors the dilemma in the minds of most untouched-by-caste educated Indians about the need for having a casteless society and a caste census at the same time. "Should caste matter to a modern Indian? Of course it shouldn’t. Yet, whether we like it or not, caste is still a defining category. Unless we all understand and study caste, we will never be able to fight it or develop a genuinely anti-caste mindset." Ghose wants to study caste to fight and eradicate it. Her vision of India is in the right place. But she has allowed herself to be trapped into believing that a caste census is only going to help us "know the enemy". Counting numbers and studying are not synonymous. There is a touch of naiveté in her reasoning that "a caste census should not be seen as simply a political instrument designed to secure quotas." What else is it being seen as by those who are asking for it? In fact it is going to be seen as much more and put to much worse uses by our politicians who are already milking caste and other identities increasingly to divide and marshal Indians, but not as Indians, to acquire disproportionate political clout that our flawed model of democracy enables them to. But, like many others who have been taken completely by surprise by the sudden move to have a caste census, she too has been seduced by the specious argument that not having such a census equals denial of the existence of caste. "If we continue to act as if caste does not exist, or deny its existence, we would be failing to do battle with one of the most urgent social inequalities of our time."

The most perplexing and, to my uneducated mind, bizarre argument in favour of the census has been put forth by Shiv Vishvanathan. And that hits you only after you read the last paragraph. Concludes Vishvanathan: "Let us face it, the great reform movements of India were not the modernist, communist, socialist or liberal democrats. The great reform movement was the Bhakti tradition. Nanak, Kabir, Mirabai did more to dent caste than the 'Communist Manifesto'. Once one realizes the wisdom and potential of this, the ironies of caste become more obvious." I can’t think of a better argument against any political move that solidifies caste boundaries once again, much less from a sociologist who knows that "caste can be a procrustean entity" and that "it is the protean nature of caste, its adaptability and inventiveness that we have to grasp." But he does precisely the opposite and casts his vote in favour of a caste count, knowing fully well how our politicians are going to utilise whatever data is thrown up. "One has to move caste from its locus in a moral economy to location in a political economy," he says. I can't figure the logic.

More than 500 years ago, when caste boundaries were extremely rigid and defined and limited almost all aspects of life, Guru Nanak, Kabir and others spoke up against the caste system and asked their followers to shun it completely. The Golden Temple in Amritsar was built with entrances on four sides to signify, among other things, that God's abode was open to all the four varnas without any discrimination, that they were all equal in His eyes. These Gurus and saints did not know that centuries later in an independent India, so-called modern and educated Indians would reconstruct the very walls they had tried to demolish and push people back into their rigid caste identities, giving fallacious, even dangerous justifications. For some of the 'justifiers', honesty is a useless, ornamental appendage that they remove whenever political expediency demands that of them. That is one reason why India has got into a vortex driven by conscience-free considerations of the moment without a care for the price that will have to paid by the nation.

What "realities" of caste are we talking of glibly now only to enable dishonest and devious politicians count their sheep so that they can shepherd and exploit them for their narrow, immediate gains? Why are we forgetting the teachings of our gurus and saints who saw the evils of the caste system? Why are we shutting our eyes to the wisdom and vision of the founding fathers of this nation who dreamt of an India liberated at last from the clutches Of caste? Why are we allowing dishonest political midgets, including and particularly ones with high IQ and higher education, to ruin the future, the idea of this nation just so that they can hang on to power, so that some of them can plunder India for a little longer?

Castes are not going to disappear if they are not counted. But if the count is done, as now is almost certain, they are going to re-appear in the socio-political fabric of India in a disruptive, divisive, destructive manner that will strike at the very idea of India as a modern, progressive and, above all, united nation ready to take its place among the great nations of the world in the 21st century. The price of moving back in time just for the benefit of those who see not India but their own little clans, castes and religions is going to be heavy and its effects long lasting. India cannot afford such an enormous mistake. It is time to for us to look forward and build a new India that is ready for tomorrow, and not recreate one that needs to be consigned decisively to the pages of history.
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KHAOISTS: PLUNDERING INDIA'S FUTURE

An admission: this is a rather torpid post, the spiritlessness, the tiredness induced not by any physical ailment but by a sapping despondency and a sense of hopelessness about the speed at which India seems to be hurtling towards some sort of disaster, social upheaval, coup, even revolution, whose outcome one cannot even begin to visualise at this moment in time.

I have written many posts on the cancer of corruption that is eating into the vitals of this country. But to an outsider like me, as more and more layers of the rotten onion become visible, the bottom of the pit seems to get that much farther. What I had once thought was the Nadir, appears now to be just the shallow end of the stinking pool in which members of almost every single organ of the state - politicians, babus, judiciary, police - are splashing merrily along with that so-called watchdog, the media, that now appears to be in the vanguard of The Great Indian Robbery.

I simply do not have the heart, the enthusiasm, to pen another article with the passion and detail that I have earlier. Those who have the time and inclination may go through some of the older ones, links provided at the end of this post. But the matter is so grave that I cannot shut what I am seeing out of my mind altogether and remain no more than a passive, mute spectator and, thereby, a party to this plunder of India.

As we sit in the comforts of homes and theoretically debate, unaffected and from a safe distance, whether India faces a grave threat from Maoists whose writ already runs in varying degrees in 160 districts across eight states, we forget to notice that the real darkness, the real danger is right where each one of us is, in every corner of the country, and that most of us are actually responsible for it, one way or another. Just saying that lifts a burden off my soul and makes me feel good about myself. But, it does nothing to lessen the increasing and already unbearable load that we have placed on the soul of India.

We are the Khaoists, the incorrigibly corrupt, the shameless plunderers, the reckless looters who are hollowing this country from within. With gay abandon, as though it is our birthright. Many of us will, naturally, not admit publicly to being Khaoists, but as even a fool knows, only eunuchs and men of extraordinary virtue and character can stay away from the pleasures of a harem if they live there. Both are hard to spot these days. Many of the rest of us are India's shame. We are pushing India into an abyss at a furious pace because we are in a tearing hurry to catapult to riches with the nation's wealth, the money that should have fed, clothed, educated and empowered more than half of India's population that is still mired in the grime of inhuman poverty because of our unbridled, unprincipled ambition and greed that does not think before snatching a morsel from a hungry mouth, that conveniently shuts its eyes when it sees another doing so out of fear that it may spoil our party, disrupt our good life. Not one of us is blameless here.

I am feeling enervated. So I will leave you to go through some words of a few of those who live in and/or are fully cognizant of what goes on in the Khaoist's core. Make sense of what they are trying to say - and hide - and then decide for yourself whether there is hope yet, whether anyone can pull India out of this vortex at all before it is too late.

• Barkha Dutt. As a political journalist, I have to confess, that I am almost shock-proof when it comes to the entrenched corruption of many of our netas and the deals they strike to keep the wheels churning.
• Rajdeep Sardesai. We live in the age of institutionalised corruption. From politicians to judges, from senior bureaucrats to policemen, from corporate tycoons to petty officials, everyone it seems has a price... ‘paid news’ is not an overnight phenomenon that began with election ‘packages’... A political candidate who pays for favourable media coverage is not guaranteed victory, a corporate house through a ‘private treaty’ is almost guaranteed lasting immunity against journalistic ‘objectivity’...has led to a near-total breakdown of rules and standards.
• Tavleen Singh. At some point around the end of the eighties...everyone seemed to suddenly want to be in politics...the lure was filthy lucre. Indian politics had become the quickest way to make a fast buck...jewels from Cartier and Bvlgari, watches from Piaget and Patek Phillipe and handbags and shoes that cost more than an MP earns in a year.. grand mansions and hugely expensive vehicles... some travel only in private aircraft. The real money disappears into various corporate efforts that on the surface can look very legitimate. In almost every political household these days, there is at least one ‘corporate prodigy’... who thrives in the cloistered boundaries of crony capitalism...The sums we are talking of are so huge that they are beyond calculation.
• Shekhar Gupta. Like conquerors of the past, India’s politicians love to rule, and plunder cities... In older times, cities attracted conquering hordes who wanted to sack them for their riches. Now, in democracies, the political class knows that while their votes lie in the countryside, the real money sits in the cities and their real estate...If the new Andhra can get over the loss of Hyderabad, use what it gets in compensation and its own enterprise to build a new capital city...its politicians will figure soon enough that the money-making opportunity a new city offers is much greater than an old metro nearing saturation, howsoever energetic.
• Sagarika Ghose. (on Twitter) sad truth is media is too tied to advertising. That's why when it cos to corporates our lips are mostly sealed. not a good business model. profession has become terribly degraded. am very disillusioned! i joined in early 90s when press still meaningful.
  

Are Barkha Dutt and others really "shock-proof" to corruption? Their silence and thereby complicity applies only to corruption at the highest levels where the sums involved "are beyond calculation." Where petty officials and petty amounts are involved, where a cop taking a Rs 100 bribe is concerned, these guys aggressively carry out sting operations and confidently con the nation into believing that they are sparing no efforts to expose corruption and clean up the rot. Why this Janus-faced approach? Can they even begin to claim that they have remained "temptation-proof", not just for big bucks but entry into the inner circle of India's most powerful - and corrupt - politicians, whose reflected power enables them to almost 'terrorise' those on the lower rungs of political ladder with an arrogance that you will not see anywhere else in the civilised world?

Is it surprising that Shashi Tharoor can stand in the Lok Sabha and say with a straight face that it is ideals that brought him back to India after over three decades abroad and a failed attempt to become UN Secretary General, and despite the stench of corruption and nepotism emanating from him in the IPL scandal? Is it surprising that politicians are saying that the media, babus and judges rank much higher than them when it comes to graft? As the hastily buried and till now not denied allegation about the manner in which Barkha Dutt and Vir Sanghvi negotiated to get the current Raja of corruption the telecom portfolio indicates, and as is also evident from what you have read above, at the very top, corrupt politicians and journalists are like Siamese twins. Had it been otherwise, corruption would not have become the uncontrollable bush fire that it has.

I can say no more. I know this is a poor, illogical, abrupt way to end an article. Perhaps I should take a break and come back to finish it with a flourish. But why? Why should I pretend to be "shock-proof" to this pervasive rot and close this piece too with detached objectivity, when my mind is filled with a numbing mixture of revulsion, anger and helplessness at what Khaoists have done and are doing to my country, the way they are plundering its future to make their own? I think it will be best if your comments complete this unfinished story, if possible with hope.
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Previous related posts:
1. Shashi Tharoor: making a 'difference'
2. Politics and media: a new nadir
3. ND Tiwari: much more than a sex scandal
4. Covering up the mother of all corruption scandals
5. Conspicuous consumption and conspicuous poverty
6. Sink sting operations that stink
7. Capital punishment, not gain, for the corrupt
8. Corrupt, colonial India faces volcano
9. As long as there is aloo corrupt will be Laloo
10. Modi and Reddy: the choice is clear
11. Maytas: truth inverted, greed is king
12. 1000 times President's salary for India's babus
13. Tarun Tejpal: extra God and the Devil
14. Wake up (poem)
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TWITTER WARS: OLD MEDIA VS NEW

There is a new watch dog in town. Its bark may be small but its bite is big. 140 characters can and do pack a real punch, particularly when both sides are at each other at the same time, in near real-time.

India's old media, the traditional watch dog that many believe has become the pet dog of at least some of those it is meant to watch, is under scrutiny like it has never been. Journalists, long used to writing columns in isolation or imperiously holding centre stage in studios, with those invited taking great care to not annoy them by holding a mirror, have been hit by the unforgiving Twitter gale that has rattled some of them so much that they, the loudest proponents of freedom of speech, the staunchest opponents of any code of conduct for themselves, have begun to cry that the unfettered freedom that the net provides to everyone should be restrained.

There is no doubt that, as is to be naturally expected in any genuinely free environment, there are some individuals on Twitter and the net who tend to get more than abusive or create mischief. That is a hazard that has to be accepted by those who volunteer to be on Twitter to enrich themselves by engaging in a two-way interaction with thousands of others from a wide spectrum of the society. Here they cannot herd in a carefully chosen audience or abruptly shut out or ignore those who change the terms of debate and uproot them from their comfort zones. This is not proving to be easy for some of India's leading journalists who have been rattled by strident criticism, day in and out, 24/7.

For the first time ever, not only have they become subjects of microscopic public scrutiny, but are also not in a position to hide from the whole world the unrestrained views of those who find them wanting, even dishonest. This new experience, dramatically different from the ones they face in real life, where no one wants to put his hand into their beehives, is making them mad.

The first journalist who vented his frustration was the pompous Vir Sanghvi who, in his characteristic abusive style, branded many bloggers and tweeters as "sad losers who escape their pathetic little lives by abusing other people on the net." Soon, rattled perhaps by criticism of what many believe are demeaning, obsequious pro-Family views that he tries to sell as objective analysis, he accused them of being pro-BJP while lamenting the fact that there were few pro-Congress bloggers to respond to them with equal ferocity. Sagarika Ghose, to everyone's surprise, then set Twitter on fire, not with her much practiced smile, but by vitriol of the worst kind that exposed the ugly canines behind the charming façade, the class condescension beneath the egalitarian pretence. Twitter-world had got its Queen of Hate, the queen bee who attracted swarms of bees to deliver not honey but venom of the kind she thought she alone had the right to spew from her perch as the wife of perhaps India's wealthiest and most ambitious corporate journalist.

Corporatisation of the media has created a new breed of journalists who have become immensely rich in double-quick time. The jhola wallas have become 'suitcase' wallas. Rajdeep Sardesai, for example, has already made himself worth a few hundred crore rupees legally (See pages 51/370 and 112/370). One can imagine how some others might be doing. Let us not even get into the vast ocean of paid news that had probably once prompted Kapil Sibal, if I remember correctly, to tell a journalist on TV that some of his tribe too had stashed money in Swiss banks. That is why, while they all shout that judges and politicians should declare their legally declared 'white' assets, none of them wants the same disclosure norms applied to them. Perhaps they know what that will do to their hollow claims of objectivity, impartiality and honesty, and middle class pretensions.

The new Sultans and Spouses of the media - arrogant, intolerant, patronising - are fuming because they are being questioned, interrogated, probed, exposed, by ordinary guys who they want to summarily dismiss just because they are much below their material station, but cannot. So, they are hitting back in the only manner they have been employing successfully in sanitised studios and out-of-reach news offices: put their attackers on the defensive by accusing and abusing them viciously, and showering praise on members of their own fraternity who are groveling for crumbs.

The liberal mask has been violently thrown away along with the much quoted Voltaire; they were meant to be used only to justify their own right to offend and insult. Now that they are on the receiving end, they are discovering that the bite is actually unbearable. Now had this pain led to some sort of a realisation that they need to first exercise restraint and treat people with dignity, the ongoing Twitter war would have ended. But, the arrogance of money, power and reach has seeped into their very souls. They are not going to back off just because a few unseen guys on Twitter are forcing them to look within; there are far too many known and powerful faces in the real world who are going to keep them from falling off their fake pedestals.

That is why this call for some sort of code of conduct to be imposed - they won't use the word - on those who follow them on Twitter and say what they feel and not what they get paid to vomit. I hope that does not happen. Just as readers of news papers and viewers of TV do not have to read and watch what they don't want, those on the net, including Twitter, have the same freedom. If some journalists of the old media can't take the heat, too bad; they should get off Twitter, stop browsing the net and get back into their bubbles, professional and social. The new media, growing bigger and more powerful with every passing day, will not miss them at all.

For those interested in checking out Twitter Wars themselves, a look at the tweets on the pages of the following individuals (in alphabetical order) will make for a good start:

• Barkha Dutt
  
• Kanchan Gupta
• Rajdeep Sardesai
• Sagarika Ghose (w/o Rajdeep, for those who don't know)
• Swapan Dasgupta
• Vinod Sharma (that's me)

Related reading: New media: is the Congress really a 'loser' already?

NEW MEDIA: IS CONGRESS REALLY A 'LOSER' ALREADY?

Vir Sanghvi has written an interesting column in the Hindustan Times on some of his findings about netizens, based on his experience on Twitter and his own website. "At present, bloggers, visitors to websites and tweeters remain a curiosity for traditional media" he says, adding that the media is making a huge mistake by remaining blinkered and not according them the respect they get in the West.

Sanghvi then goes on to make two more extremely important observations, but fails to make the right deductions from them, for obvious reasons. "There is a growing revulsion over Islamic extremism and fundamentalism" which, he believes rightly, is less because it is anti-Muslim and more because the development is seen as regressive and anti-modern. He also thinks that there is "a hardcore of pro-BJP bloggers and tweeters" who vigorously defend the Sangh parivar, but almost no pro-Congress types who respond to them with equal ferocity.

Why are there no pro-Congress bloggers on the internet? Vir knows the answer but, as almost always, is not vir enough to admit it: There is no space left for them. Everything that they can think of and more is taken care of by mainstream journalists, some of whom whom often sound like official party spokesmen of the Congress party and, as some bloggers like to say, "family retainers" of the Gandhi family. With almost the entire media singing the Congress tune along myriad dimensions and swamping the nation with their enormous reach, there is almost nothing more pro-Congress left for bloggers to add; no one is going to read what he has already read or heard. They have, therefore, simply been put out of business by the likes of Vir Sanghvi, Barkha Dutt, Prannoy Roy, Rajdeep Sardesai, Sagarika Ghose, Vinod Sharma (of HT, not me), Pankaj Vohra, N Ram, Shekhar Gupta; the list is almost endless.

These guys belong to the 'paid blogger' brigade of the old media that still has an unmatched reach in a nation where internet penetration is very low.

Thanks to long years of Congress rule during which Congress-friendly individuals infiltrated into, and took control of, most opinion-influencing organs and institutions that define and shape the Indian state, generations have grown up reading and hearing that the Congress way is the right way for India. Thanks to the media, that line is reinforced on a daily basis. There are strong shades of Gobbelesque propaganda in this, but this fact remains largely concealed thanks to the ability of its numerous protagonists to intelligently gather it cleverly under the 'liberal' umbrella. Their task is made even easier by the fact that people of this generation have a very short attention span. They do not have the time or inclination to look beyond the obvious, or farther than what they have grown up reading and watching at home and school.

That is one major reason why the BJP has failed to attract the millions of Indians who find Islamic extremism repugnant. It axiomatic that that these guys should also detest a political party that appears to be pandering to everything related to it solely to get to or retain power. But, thanks to the 24/7 pro-Congress and anti-BJP bombardment of the media, bolstered by media-magnified sporadic acts of some fringe elements of the Sangh Parivar who mindlessly relish competitive extremism that has few takers, their disgust with the Congress does not translate into trust of the BJP. That is primarily why the BJP's alternate view - political, historical and ideological - sets off the alarms in their minds, making rational analysis impossible.

The BJP is never going to be able to infiltrate the media, Congress-style, because, even if it comes to power, it is not going to have an uninterrupted run there with the kind of brute majority that the Congress enjoyed for decades. Given this scenario, barring one or two journalists of dubious loyalties, no honest pro-BJP and anti-Congress opinion is ever going to get prime media time and space. Even if someone's conscience nudges him/her that an alternate view should be given fair and prominent billing, the demands of business and personal advancement hurriedly bury the thought.

That, to a large extent, explains the rumour that Sanghvi mentions about the BJP employing "a small group of people to scour the net every day and to heckle all anti-BJP bloggers." Sagarika Ghose, who also regularly gets a dose from a number of such individuals on Twitter, has coined a new term, "Internet Hindus", for them and says they "are like swarms of bees. They come after you at any mention of Modi Muslims or Pakistan." To my simple mind, heckling in such manner is hardly a sound political strategy because, as we have seen earlier too, it has the effect of putting off many reasonable individuals. So, if these hecklers are actually in the employ of the BJP, then its strategists are either idiots or in the secret employ of the Congress.

Most likely the hecklers are ordinary BJP supporters who, having found a platform at last where their voices can also be heard by all, overreact immaturely to what they perceive is a biased and one-sided criticism of everything Hindu by media personalities. What those in the media forget is that the onslaught of these guys is nothing compared to what they will be greeted with if they use the exact same words when other faiths are involved. Or may be they do remember what happened to Rushdie, Taslima, Baba Ram Rahim Singh and many others; that is why they choose their words very carefully when they know they will get real vipers coming at them, and not tiny internet bees that cannot sting.

Is, then, the Congress really 'a clear loser on the net', as Vir Sanghvi wants you to unsuspectingly believe, with a twinge of sympathy for the GOP?

Who are the guys who have the largest number of followers on Twitter? Whose posts get thousands of hits? Apart from Shashi Tharoor and Bollywood stars, it is journalists like Sanghvi who have virtually taken over the net too. Should I, therefore, not deduce, a la Sanghvi, that the Congress party has employed them to pre-empt a sleeping, doping, clueless BJP from exploiting this truly free and democratic medium, the only one that it realistically can?

The truth is that 'Congress' bloggers of the old media have become internet bloggers too. They are the ones who have swamped the net, burying any early advantage that the BJP may have gained inadvertently with the help of individual early net birds. The Congress is the clear winner here too. It sure has a great team of tech-savvy analysts.

Sanghvi is moaning because on the net, particularly on Twitter, you can’t hide the rotten eggs that are thrown at you. There is no editor to put them away before anyone sees them. It is not easy for those used to pompously making their point in a paper or in a TV studio to take direct hits from ordinary mortals, often in real-time.

While it is natural for Sanghvi to gloat over the fact that, thanks to the heavy dose of previous exposure and Twitter, journos have quickly gained a huge footprint on the net too, what he has perhaps not yet adequately realised, like the rest of the 'blinkered' media, is that there is a danger here, a real one: an increasing number of Indians are going to get an unprecedented exposure to many more counter views too. Over time, this alone has the potential of unshackling more and more Indians from the carefully crafted and propagated pro-Congress agenda that has largely remained unchallenged till now. But hecklers - some of them, like Sanghvi, are actually hilarious at times - are not going to achieve much beyond forcing semantic modifications.

If the power of the net is to be successfully used to truly democratise, even liberate, India, the counterpoints - pun intended - must intellectually expose and defeat the dishonesty that has got into the very DNA of a large section of India's mainstream media, and cogently communicate alternate views honestly. Constructive criticism is also a very useful tool that can not only help widen knowledge and understanding, but can also, in some cases, lead to genuine introspection. Without taking any names, I must acknowledge that a heartening subtle change is already visible and can easily be seen by those who are willing to. But this is as yet too little and in too few individuals.

Together, these developments, if nurtured properly, can dissolve the growing apathy, even resignation, that is afflicting an increasing number of Indians, and harness it into the hope and involvement that is needed to build a new and truly modern but rooted India that is proud of itself. Now that you and I can make a difference, thanks to the new media, we must utilise this exciting opportunity to do our bit, no matter how little.

Picture: Indian Bloggers Nest
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THE RSS SURGERY: WILL IT HELP REVIVE BJP?

A few months back, senior BJP leader Arun Shourie had asked the Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh (RSS) to bombard the headquarters and take over the BJP. Being an insider who was privy to the steep decline in values and principles which once differentiated the party from the Congress, he could see better than most that there was no other way of saving it from the clutches of unprincipled and greedy individuals who had seized control and were not letting go, despite the general election disaster .

The RSS has evidently listened to him, if reports are correct that Rajnath Singh, that unmitigated disaster of a party president, is being booted out and replaced by Nitin Gadkari.

RSS Supremo Mohan Bhagwat had also said sometime back that the BJP needed chemotherapy. At that time, however, he believed that it was for the party, and not the RSS, to decide what medication it should take. But after the recent by polls in UP, where BJP candidates lost their security deposits in nine out of 11 seats, it was clear to everyone that the coterie that was ruining the party would have to be surgically removed, without further delay, so that the party could begin the process of resurrecting itself.

Nitin Gadkari is Bhagwat's choice. Arun Jaitley, Ananth Kumar, Venkaiah Naidu and Sushma Swaraj, the famous Dilli4 stars about whom much has been said and written in the last few months, have been summarily brushed aside. Swapan Dasgupta, not surprisingly at all, is livid at this turn. In a lively discussion on CNN-IBN's Face The Nation program, he openly called this development a "military takeover" by the RSS. My namesake from Hindustan Times who belongs to that core group of politically committed journalists whose affiliations are clearly visible behind clever smokescreens, was also upset at the development and 'advised' Dilli4 to not take it lying down.

There may well be a Mahabharat in the BJP in the coming months, even years, before a 'new and improved' party emerges, if at all. Whatever happens, one thing is certain: the old leaders and master strategists who contributed directly to the party's poor image and performance in the last Lok Sabha elections will have to either accept the new realities or quit the party. Perhaps the latter will be better. Remember how in the middle of the election campaign, Rajnath Singh and Arun Jaitley had a disgraceful public row, with the latter openly showing his arrogance by keeping away for two weeks? That spat exemplified the rot of lack of discipline and commitment to the party that has overtaken the BJP at the highest level. No party that wants the people to believe that it is capable of governing the country can afford to let such immature petulance and defiance go unpunished.

Is a relatively unknown leader like Gadkari the right choice as party President? Wouldn't a big leader like Narendra Modi, for example, been better? Is the control of the RSS going to help the party get more votes or is it going to marginalise it even further?

This perhaps is not the right time for a big leader to take control of the party Gadkari may be a relatively - not physically - light-weight leader but he carries no baggage. And that is saying a lot for a man who has been Maharashtra's PWD minister, a 'wet' portfolio that most lust for. What the BJP certainly does not need are leaders who appear much taller than they are because of what they say in TV studios, to which they are always dying to rush at the slightest opportunity with multiple objectives, many not becoming. Nor does it need media sympathisers who actually harm it since they look and behave like poor cousins of the many media friends of the Congress and, as a result, almost invariably wind up inadequately 'defending' the BJP against the aggressive terms of discussion laid down by their opponents.

If the BJP wants to emerge successfully from the intense, painful but inescapable churning that is now beginning to gather speed, it will need to do much more than appoint a new party president. There are many issues that it will have to fully address well before the next general elections in 2014. Some of these, in my view, are:

• The RSS must limit its intervention to life-saving surgery and amputation only. It should not thereafter succumb to the temptation of running the party full-time.
• Leaders of proven integrity alone should form, to begin with, at least the core of the party's leadership.
• Lumpen elements of the Sangh Parivar must not, under any circumstance, be patronised or encouraged in any manner.
• Criminals must not be given party tickets, no matter what the immediate cost. Definition of 'criminal' must not be dishonestly legalistic; it must be based on the perception of voters - it is their trust that needs to be won, not just in one constituency but across the country.
  
• Dynastic practices should be firmly banished. Not more than one member of a family should be allowed to contest elections at any level.
  
• The party must find, as Sagarika Ghose puts it pithily, "a modern leader rooted in the traditional idiom".

Will the BJP be able to do what is needed to pull itself out of the swamp it has got itself into? Will it re-emerge as a party that does not see power and values as being mutually exclusive? Will it be able to convince millions of Indians who once voted for it because it promised to be "a party with a difference" that it will not break their trust again?

At this point of time, skepticism is fully in order.

CONSPICUOUS CONSUMPTION AND CONSPICUOUS POVERTY

"Mr. Sharma, can you comment on this damning article appeared in Times London . Our politicians, bureaucrats have already crossed lines into Criminality with their corruption and inefficiency, now our High flying media has joined them with gross delinquency of "basic duty" by not reporting on this. We the people of India are equally responsible..."

How does one respond to such a question asked by an Indian who is deeply upset by the stark reality of the conspicuous poverty that afflicts over 880 million Indians, in the light of the vulgar and conspicuous consumption flaunted by their affluent chosen representatives? Does one agree with him that the leaders elected by these poor - the rich don't give a damn about voting - are no less than criminals because of their corrupt ways? Or does one take the line of the urban rich, exemplified by media tycoon Prannoy Roy, who ask as to what is wrong if political leaders stay in five star hotels and otherwise splurge, as long as they are spending their own money?

Is it in order to view businessmen, CEOs, dons and politicians through the lens of the same money? That is indeed what many are doing, to justify the extravagance of politicians. Should politicians not be accountable to their "employees and customers" like CEOs are? If in a "company" of 1.3 billion people, more than 67% have a sub-human existence at less than $ 2 a day, should a little over a thousand of its top executives living in Delhi happily splurge tens of thousands of that amount, whether out of tax payers' money or their own earnings? Should not their pay and perks and lifestyles be linked to their pathetic performance due to which the income of so many 'employees' remains so low, 62 years on?

That brings us to another question. Where have much of the earnings of most of these politicians come from anyway? How have politicians who have no occupation other than politics become multi-millionaires? The rich Sachin Pilot, for example, is the son of a middle class Air Force pilot who joined politics. The late Pramod Mahajan, who was shot by his brother over money, manifestly 'made' thousand of crores as a politician, not an industrialist, if rumours are true; he had no other source of income, one hears. Jagan Reddy, the overnight-rich-businessman-turned-politician son of YSR Reddy, could certainly not have become anywhere close to a multi-billionaire had he been just another businessman operating in an honest environment. The examples are endless and well known. Everyone knows that barring say a Shashi Tharoor or Vijay Mallya, who earned good money before they got into politics, there will hardly be an Indian politician who has become wealthy as a politician by honest means.

Worse than the conspicuous consumption of these leaders is the "austerity drive" that has recently been launched by the government, for only a year, because of the drought. Ironically, had the government kept quiet, much information about the colossal waste of tax payers' money by politicians would have never come to light, along with the fact that this drive is just a farce to con India's people.

Sections of the media have been and are sleeping with politicians and political parties, no doubt. Let us not forget that the media is another business that has to survive and grow in the thoroughly corrupt environment that many, including the UN, have spoken about repeatedly. Every one knows that in India things don't move unless the system is "oiled" well. What better way to do it than keep the really powerful politicians in power really close?

Notwithstanding the above constraint, we must accept that there still are some in the media who can speak, and have done so, even if guardedly. They are the ones who have told India that this whole drive is a farce. Let us start from the very top. Sonia Gandhi travelled Economy Class once to Mumbai with heavy security. Sagarika Ghose told us that she saved Rs 7,500. Rahul Gandhi travelled similarly protected by train and, as per some channels, 'saved' Rs 445. Karan Thapar asked the question that if Rahul Gandhi really feels that politicians have a duty to be austere, then "why is he, a bachelor, living in...one of the largest government owned bungalows...he is not even entitled to it". MJ Akbar has, in similar vein, called this austerity an eyewash and asked as to why Tharoor, Krishna and Nilekani should not be made to contribute the money that they were spending from their pockets for their hotel bills to the Prime Minister's Relief Fund!

It may be recalled that Rajiv and Sanjay used to stay with their mother, Indira Gandhi. Today, Sonia, Rahul and Priyanka occupy three sprawling bungalows that must cost the government a huge packet to maintain and secure. If the Gandhis genuinely identify with the 880 million poor they represent and are sincere about cutting out wasteful expenditure, then the family should stay together in one bungalow. Robert Vadra, who faces no security threat, should also be taken off the SPG protectee list. Many crore rupees, not a few hundred, will be saved. But no, Rahul Gandhi will talk of only the khadi kurta pajama that he wears to define 'austerity'.

It is not that all in the media have done their bit. As far as I know, there has been no meaningful linking of the conspicuous consumption of the politicians and this austerity drive with the extreme poverty that has now been reported by Times London and earlier by others. And as always, there are the usual suspects in the media who are fuming at the security being provided to politicians, except the Gandhis, of course. Then there those who actually are grateful to Sonia Gandhi's for the austerity drive, and who resent politicians not for their filthy spending or for travelling first class, but for the special treatment that they get at airports. That is the only place where media maharajahs and maharanis lose out to them!

For many in India's media, India is no more than an exclusive bubble that contains them and politicians alone. Of late, film stars too have made an entry - with great TRPs, they bring in the moolah for the media, don't they? 880 million Indians live on another planet.

"Also look at the pic on the article.... Is this the symbolism of British media.... was there a need to put such a striking and appalling picture on the web page...", asks the same agitated Indian. In my view, the photograph that graphically depicts "India's damned generation" is apt for it. It has hurt him because it has forced him to confront an ugly reality that he and I and many others want to wish away, and don't want the West at least to tell us about. We desperately want to believe only that India is firmly on its way to becoming an economic giant. We want to see the gleaming Delhi Metro but not the poor shitting by the sides of the railway tracks; we want to talk of Mumbai as India's commercial capital but not as a city where 54.1% people live in slums. To top it, very few of us know or even care about the grind that life is for the poor in rural India.

How far our politicians have gone from the people and how arrogant they have become about their extravagant lifestyles is best exemplified by Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel who says mockingly about the austerity drive: "at least we have to appear to be austere, if nothing else". How things have changed in the last sixty years. Democratically elected leaders have become rulers, royalty, above and separate from the people whose voice they were meant to be. No wonder a media personality says: "Hypocrisy is essential for public life". Hypocrites and worse in politics have little to fear. Powerful sections of the media understand their predicament and are one with them too.

But, it is no use blaming the media and the politicians alone. Conspicuous consumption is existing gleefully with conspicuous poverty only because all of us have let it take root. We have allowed politicians to deflect our attention from their criminal ways to issues of caste, region and religion, knowing full well that they are not going to add even a rupee to the recurring income of the really needy even as the coffers of the greedy are rapidly filled. Also, as some of us have moved up the ladder of prosperity, we have conveniently forgotten that many, many more remain at the very bottom, filling their stomachs on empty slogans like "garibi hatao" and gullibly believing in fake austerity drives undertaken by their so-called leaders.

So, if we really don't want to see disturbing pictures of stark poverty staring at us, we all have to do our bit to either make our leaders change themselves, or change our leaders. Till that happens, for 880 million Indians, things are going to change very slowly indeed.

Picture: Timesonline
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Readers may also read: Austerity and aam aadmi: games politicians play!

HOMOSEXUALITY: DECRIMINALISATION VS PROMOTION

On July 02, 2009, the Delhi High Court ruled that private homosexual sex between consenting adults could not be treated as a criminal act under Section 377 of the IPC. Ever since then, there has been a lot of debate in the media about whether gays should be treated just as heterosexuals are and whether India is ready to accept same sex couples.

Predictably, Muslim and Christian leaders have taken the view that being gay is unnatural and does not have the approval of God. Sikh clerics have also spoken out against it. Hindus do not have any central authority that can give a clear ruling applicable to all sects and sub-sects, but Baba Ram Dev has said that homosexuals are ill and should do pranayam to rid themselves of this "abnormality". (Update July 08: He is filing a petition in the Supreme Court challenging the judgment of the High Court today). There are others who say that homosexuality is not frowned upon by Hinduism. The dominant view, however, is that while sexual relations between females were there even during the times of the Epics, male homosexuality was unknown in India till the arrival of Muslim invaders.

Little wonder then that this exclusively human sexual orientation that has always been almost universally condemned by religions as unnatural and frowned upon by society as abnormal, was legally classified as a criminal activity in India by the British 149 years back. Societies across the world, particularly in the West, have dramatically changed in the last century and a half. The hold of the Church has also eroded dramatically during this period, thanks to an almost rebellious attitude that makes people want do everything that is prohibited, the impulse being that it must be damn good and, therefore, must be indulged in.

The decriminalisation of homosexuality in India has come as a huge relief to ordinary gays, particularly male, who have been living for long not only with social disapproval but also fear of law.

In a very interesting and illuminating discussion on CNN-IBN on July 5, 2009, it was refreshing to see Sagarika Ghose getting Muslim Personal Law Board Member Kamal Farooqi and Dominic Emmanuel, spokesperson of the Delhi Catholic Archdiocese, around to toning down their opposition to the High Court judgment by accepting that although their religions did not allow homosexuality, gays should not be treated as criminals for what they do in the privacy of their homes. Madhu Kishwar, in fact, went to the extent of saying that the judges had done our judiciary proud "because they have shown that Indian constitution allows endless expansion of notion of freedom".

The other important aspects that Ghose got the panel involved in discussing included the elitist nature of homosexuality in India, the fear that this is "a slippery slope down to moral chaos" and the fact that public display of gay pride is offensive to conventional moral values of Indian families. The consensus was that homosexuality should be in tune with India's morals and should not flaunt itself or be exhibitionist.

The same issue was addressed in NDTV's "We the People" program on July 5, 2009. At the end of it, Dominic Emmanuel could not stop himself from saying that straight Indians watching the program would start thinking that they were the ones who were queer! In that one sentence, he laid bare the concealed truth that the program was not about objectively discussing homosexuality but about aggressively promoting it as a hip and superior Western lifestyle statement that modern young Indians should embrace.

This was in stark contrast to the balanced manner in which the issue was discussed in the program on CNN-IBN. What got Emmanuel energised to say what he did was perhaps the statement of a carefully chosen lady participant who very proudly informed India that she was a mother who had had a number of same sex relationships and that her daughter too was doing the same. That was not only flaunting homosexuality, it was striking at the very roots of widely accepted family values: it was irresponsibly pushing a deviant style statement into the bedrooms of conventionally married couples.

That is why perhaps there is much apprehensions in many quarters that their children who are otherwise straight will be almost compelled to experiment with homosexuality due to the subtle pressure that is already beginning to be put on them. It is generally accepted that homosexuality is the result of hormonal imbalance. Over that physical condition people have little choice, and such people need to be respected and accepted for what they are.

But, when some individuals start pushing, directly or indirectly, their imbalances into people who are balanced, as a smart thing that should be done by them too, then it is equally an intrusion into the personal lives of the vast majority of Indians who are not hormonally inclined to be gay.

This is the one unwelcome fallout of the judgment that we will be forced to deal and live with as a society. Perhaps a law to prevent promotion of homosexuality is also needed to balance the much needed relief given by Delhi High Court by decriminalising it.

IT'S A TWO-HORSE RACE TO RACE COURSE ROAD

Forget about all pre-poll surveys that have recently been carried out and the projections made by them about the outcome of the forthcoming general elections. They are already out of date. The whole electoral scenario has changed dramatically, but no one has either seen it yet or everyone wants to pretend that he hasn't. The change not ordinary, nor is it temporary. It has quietly been in the making for some years now and would have taken some more time to be visible to all. But, one event has radically altered that time-frame.

Tomorrow is already here today.

CPM general secretary Prakash Karat has been unusually enthused by Patnaik's most unexpected decision which has breathed life into the till now non-existent Third Front. Suddenly this motley group of marginal and small parties that are presently not aligned to either the BJP-led NDA or the Congress-led UPA finds that it may well be in a position to form the government with the help of elements of the NDA or the UPA, rather than vanishing into the group that emerges stronger. There is new energy in the parties that have cobbled together this alternative to the BJP and the Congress.

Prakash Karat did not know how prophetic his words were going to be when he said that Patnaik's decision to part company with the BJP was going to be the "game-changer" in these elections. It is going to change the game certainly, but not in the manner in which Karat thinks it is going to.

Perhaps even the BJP has not realised that Naveen Patnaik's sudden turn is the blessing it was looking for and is the one miracle that will get the NDA within striking distance of the magic figure of 272 MPs needed to form the government. Naveen Patnaik himself would not have dreamt that by parting company with its ally of 11 years he would become the catalyst that is going to so dramatically pre-pone the manifestation of the fundamental change already under way in the Indian political landscape.

This general election has now become a contest between Mayawati and Advani. No, I have not gone out of my mind, as you will presently discover much to your surprise. This election was not meant be seeing this contest; the fight between the BJP and the BSP was scheduled for 2014 at the earliest. But, Naveen Patnaik has changed all that.

In the 2007 assembly elections in UP, no one, except perhaps Sagarika Ghose, had given Mayawati any chance of winning and that too on her own steam alone. But when the election results came in, her BSP had an absolute majority and the Congress, despite the high-profile induction of Rahul Gandhi as its star campaigner, emerged even weaker, with just around 8% of the vote share. Mayawati had done the impossible. This is what I had written then itself:

The UP election signals a tectonic, historical shift in the societal power matrix of Hindu society. And who has Mayawati to thank, among others for seeing and grabbing the opportunity? Mr Mandal, of course, milked to death by completely opportunistic and dishonest politicians thinking they can fool the masses, simply to grab power in the next election....And, it has taken a Hindi speaking "uncultured" Dalit lady to understand the hidden, but obvious now, ramifications of Mandal...So when Mayawati, a Dalit, untouchables still in parts of India, asks Brahmins to vote for her and tells them with conviction that they do not have to go begging to anyone to get their due, it touches their raw nerve, and they willingly turn thousands of years of rigid social hierarchy upside down to seek empowerment and justice from a dalit. Mayawati has envisioned and achieved something which no politician thought she could.

After the stunning success in UP, Mayawati started earnestly to expand her base in other parts of India and put up candidates in the assembly elections that followed. Although the BSP had virtually no organisational base in most other states and no real local leaders too, Mayawati succeeded in pulling in a sufficient number of dalit voters from the Congress due to which the Congress lost in a number of constituencies across the country. The BSP did not win too because of its small base then but its presence damaged the Congress almost exclusively. That led to the Congress dubbing her a "spoiler", not realising that she was not in the political arena to make or mar the fortunes of other parties but to get to power at the Centre on her own.

Mayawati has not been putting up candidates in states other than UP to ‘spoil’ the chances of the Congress. That has been happening as a by-product of her strategy to build an all India base, like she did in UP, to eventually get enough MPs to become the Prime Minister almost entirely on her own steam. There is little doubt that Mayawati will get to South Block as the head of a truly national party that she is in the process of transforming the BSP into, in due course of time, perhaps by the next elections or the one after that. But she is in a hurry and is not willing to give up just because she does not have the numbers now.

Those who have any doubts about her openly stated ambition may recall that during the Trust Vote on the Indo-US Nuclear Deal in July 2008, there was a moment when it appeared that the government would be defeated. From nowhere, Mayawati, with just 17 MPs emerged as the almost undisputed leader of the entire non-BJP opposition, ready to take over from Dr Manmohan Singh had he lost the vote. With the entire opposition behind her, she was sure that she would be able to prevail upon the BJP to support the government of the "daughter of a dalit".

Naveen Patnaik has, unwittingly, provided Mayawati with an even better a more visible opportunity on which she has time to work on. She has apparently caught on to it in a flash while others are still stuck in the linear equation that sees the BJP's chances of winning almost completely jeopardised. That is why everyone has missed the significance of Mayawati's statement on March 15, 2009, that the BSP will fight the elections all alone and will not enter into any pre-poll alliance with anybody. This statement made just before she hosted a dinner for the leaders of the National Front is going to fundamentally impact the outcome of the election.

There should be little doubt in anyone's mind that unless Mayawati suffers serious reverses, there is no one else who she will allow to head a National Front government. Others can make all the noise they want to but that is the only way she will play the game and without her 35 to 50 MPs no National Front Government is possible. Mayawati is not one to let an opportunity go. On the contrary, she creates one where no one else can spot it. Therefore, with that issue summarily out of the way, she is now going to play a devastating "spoiler" for the Congress all over India.

By now, she has spread her wings even into the South where she held a number of successful rallies recently. Her candidates are not going to win many seats outside of UP even in these elections. But by choosing to fight alone, she has made her long term intention of emerging as a true national party absolutely clear. And there is little that anyone can do to stop her.

But what is of immediate significance is that dalits will be now more charged than ever before because they can see that there is a real chance of seeing a dalit Prime Minister emerge after this election itself. So, there are going to be many more desertions of dalit voters from the Congress to the BSP than anyone would even like to imagine now. That will hit the Congress very hard and cost it many seats, the exact number depending on local factors and the smartness of its opponents.

The scenario fits in perfectly with Mayawati's immediate as well as long term strategy. If the Congress and its allies fall well short of striking distance of the half-way mark which they cannot cover without the support of Mayawati, then the Congress will have no choice but to support a Mayawati-led government. So a poor performance by the Congress is what Mayawati wants and that is what she is going to try and ensure in all constituencies where the dalit vote can make that crucial difference between victory and defeat for the Congress.

Ironically, in many such constituencies the Congress will wind up losing to the BJP. So, the BJP will end up emerging stronger and will most likely put up a performance better than it did last time. BJP strategists need to get their data sheets out in a hurry so that they can identify and focus on such constituencies to ensure that the Congress does lose. That is where there is a dilemma for Mayawati. If the BJP-led NDA gets too close to the magic figure then she will miss the bus. Therefore, the best case scenario for her is a weakened Congress that is left with no choice but to support her as PM and a BJP that does not become strong enough to beat her to that mark.

Naveen Patnaik has turned the election on its head and all but ensured the defeat of the Congress. This scenario was going to unfold in the coming years in any case but is already upon us. Increasingly, the Congress and the BSP are targetting the same voters. In fact it would not be incorrect to say that the BSP is the Congress party with a dalit face. The growth of the BSP, therefore, has been and will be in proportion to the decline of the Congress. And, the way things are going, more and more dalits will desert the Congress for the BSP and will hasten the former's marginalisation.

Posturing apart, this election has now become a two-horse race between Mayawati and Advani, between the BSP and the BJP. The rest are going to be little more than the supporting cast. At this point it is difficult to say which of the two will emerge the winner. So, when you go out there to cast your vote, remember that your vote is going to directly or indirectly help in deciding whether it will be Mayawati or LK Advani who will be the next occupant of 7 Race Course Road.

This post has also been published by Chicago Sun Times
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Readers may also read:
1. Will the Congress do better without Sonia and Rahul?
2. The cleansing battle for Delhi begins
3. Mayawati: spoiler or saviour?
4. Mayawati's hug of death
5. Mayawati and dalit power

MUMBAI 26/11: LOCAL SUPPORT AND VOTE BANK POLITICS

Narendra Modi, for all his well publicised faults, has a knack of bringing back into focus issues that should have never gone out of it. A couple of days back, he said that the "smallest of persons knows" that a terror attack of the scale that was launched on Mumbai on November 26, 2008, could not have been launched without some local support. The UPA government, according to him, was shying away from taking any action due to vote bank politics. Home Minister P Chidambaram responded by evading a direct answer and by asking in turn whether Mr. Modi was in contact with Pakistan.

It is perhaps worth recalling certain significant facts that had emerged immediately after the attacks but which have clearly not been followed up, or at least that is what is seems.

• Naval commandos who were among the first to engage terrorists in Taj Hotel recovered a rucksack left behind by them. The contents of this rucksack were shown by many TV channels and included, among other things, cash and seven credit cards including those of top Indian banks like the ICICI, HSBC, HDFC, Axis and CITI bank.

• Fake Indian identity cards were also found on the person of all terrorists. Ajmal Kasab, the lone terrorist captured alive, was carrying a fake ID card of Arunodaya Degree College of Hyderabad, in the name of Naresh Verma.

• The terrorists were completely familiar with the layout of the hotels and moved around the buildings with practiced ease. Their knowledge of the layout was first brought out by the Naval commandos and later confirmed by Ratan Tata himself. "There seems to be no doubt that they knew their way around the hotel," he said, "They seemed to know it in the night, or in the daytime. They seemed to have planned their moves quite well, and there seem to have been a lot of pre-planning in terms of what they did and how they managed to carry on for three days and sustain themselves during that time."

• There were early reports that the terrorists had checked in and stayed in the hotels on a previous trip to familiarise themselves thoroughly. These were, however, dismissed by Mumbai Police Commissioner Hasan Gafoor who said that terrorists "were shown detailed plans". Such thorough knowledge, based only on blueprints?

• The way they were able to sustain themselves for three days without running out of ammunition and explosives suggests that much more of the lethal stuff than they carried in their rucksacks had been smuggled into the hotel prior to the attack and placed at locations precisely marked during previous reconnaissance missions.

• The IB had initially said that it suspected that the terrorists had been provided logistic support by members of the Dawood Ibrahim gang.

Ajmal Kasab has apparently given shocking details to his investigators about the the role and activities of the Lashkar-e-Toiba, terror training camps etc in Pakistan. Based on the information given by him, MV Kuber, the boat used by the terrorists has been found and a lot of other leads have been followed up enabling India to confidently send a huge dossier to Pakistan and other countries containing evidence of the involvement of powerful elements of the state in the terror attack.

Is it not surprising that Ajmal has spoken only about the Pakistan end of the operations and has remained silent about what exactly was done in India during the planning and execution stages of the attack? Is it possible that he has not even been asked the following questions, if not more, by the investigators?

• How and when did he and other members of his gang get Indian credit and identity cards? Who helped them get these documents?

• Since they were to sink the boat they used to land in Mumbai, where were they to go to and whose assistance were they to get after completing their mission and escaping? How long were they to stay in India and where before going back to Pakistan?

• How and when did they familiarise themselves so thoroughly with the hotel layout?

• How many times did he and/or other members of his group visit Mumbai earlier to carry out reconnaissance? Where did they stay then and for how long?

• Who pre-placed ammunition and explosives in the Taj?

In a lively discussion on the Face the Nation program on CNN-IBN on February 11, 2009, IDSA Fellow Dr Sreeradha Datta was candid enough to admit in response to a question by Sagarika Ghose that "If you look at the proportions of the attack, it would not have been possible without some kind of logistical support from within India. These kind of actions cannot take place by people just walking into a particular state and doing what they did." Why is it that more than two and a half months after the attack, there is total silence on this critical and vital aspect of the worst terror attack that India has faced?

Is Narendra Modi right in accusing the government of playing vote bank politics in view of the forthcoming elections? Are the electoral prospects of the ruling alliance more important than the safety and security of the country and the lives of ordinary citizens? Yes, even the "smallest of persons" can make out that ten terrorists could not have just got into a boat in Pakistan and successfully held India to ransom for three days. Had logistic support been provided to them by the underworld or by other Pakistani nationals based in India, there is little doubt that the government would have by now arrested/exposed them and made a huge international issue of it, as further evidence of Pakistan's involvement.

The fact that no one in the establishment is now speaking of it does raise some uncomfortable questions that have to be faced squarely. If indeed some Indians are involved, then it is important that they are quickly identified and punished and their involvement not allowed to degenerate into communal stereotypes. The longer the government remains in denial, the greater will be the perceptual damage. It is also important that the government brings everything out honestly and transparently so that the ordinary citizen knows that his life is not being put in danger only because of petty political considerations.

UPDATE

News is coming in that Pakistan that has owned up by and large to the evidence given by India. It should be evident to all that the denial has turned into confession not because of the dossier that India sent but due to the evidence that the Americans have confronted Pakistan with behind closed doors.

Significantly, Pakistan has admitted that only a part of the conspiracy was hatched in Pakistan and is suggesting that part of it was done in India. There lies the sting. India has 'uncovered' everything about what happened in Pakistan but has not been able to find anything about the Indian angle. Watch this space. Plenty of dirt ahead. Perhaps some people in the Indian establishment have blood on their hands.

ELECTION COMMISSIONERS AND CAESER'S WIFE

When 94% of the people of a country believe that political loyalties are destroying institutions, the matter is far too serious to be casually dismissed. If the results of the SMS/web poll on CNN-IBN's Face the Nation (FTN) program on February 03, 2009 are accurately reflective of the nation's opinion, it is a matter of grave national concern that despite their stock being so low, our leaders are neither troubled morally nor pushed into mending their ways practically.

Why is it so? Because the rot transcends all party barriers and they all know that this leaves the voter with no real choice. He has to choose between parties and individuals whose stink is indistinguishable. Can this state of affairs continue interminably? Politicians seem to think so, unmindful of the sharp decline in the percentage of people who believe that democracy is the best option available to govern this country.

The ongoing debate on the very serious charges levelled by Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) N Gopalaswami against Election Commissioner (EC) Naveen Chawla has almost got totally hijacked on political lines, with very respected media personalities and others talking of legalities and 'ethics' based solely on their political alignments. There is hardly anyone who is focusing on the real and very serious issues of the corrosion of basic values and the betrayal of people's trust in the democratic process that this sordid saga represents.

Naveen Chawla, has been facing allegations from day one about corruption and his very close political alignment with the Congress party since the days of the infamous Emergency when he was the personal secretary to the Lieutenant Governor of Delhi. As per former bureaucrat BS Raghavan, Chawla's conduct during those dark days when he had direct access to Sanjay Gandhi was so undesirable that the LP Singh committee found him "unfit to hold any public office" and recorded that "he deserved to be summarily dismissed from service without any further inquiry or proceedings, invoking the special powers under provisos (b) and (c) of Article 311 of the Constitution".

Nobody is any doubt that Naveen Chawla was appointed election commissioner by the government based primarily on his blatantly partisan political past. If there was any hope that the gentleman would conduct himself with the dignity and neutrality that is expected of an EC, it was repeatedly belied by his often desperate attempts to favour the Congress party. At least that is what the CEC has manifestly said in his report to the President.

There may be a 'congruence' between the views of the CEC and the BJP, as the Congress is saying to dismiss the serious charges that have been made by the former. There may be constitutional and legal grey areas about the right of the CEC to do what he has done. But, is that the real issue? The fundamental question that all those who support the Congress are trying to avoid is of integrity, bipartisanship and a value system that needs to be protected rather than destroyed totally.

And this question transcends parties. Today it is the Congress which is showing to the whole nation that it wants to take no chances with getting back into power by hook or election commissioner crook. Tomorrow it may be the BJP which might do the same. It is the continuance of the practice of destruction of all institutions that should be energising analysts and commentators rather than petty partisanship. As Sagarika Ghose brought out in the FTN program, this downslide was started by Indira Gandhi and has today reached such alarming proportions that almost all citizens have lost faith in the intentions of political parties and politically committed bureaucrats to maintain the dignity and sanctity of almost all institutions that they have anything to do with.

Those blaming the CEC for leaning towards the BJP do not want to talk about the fact that under his stewardship this country has had the cleanest ever elections in its history without any political bias whatsoever. The bias, if any, has been repeatedly displayed by Naveen Chawla, the man the Congress wants to make the next CEC.

That the CEC's intentions are honourable is evident from the fact that he has recommended that the CEC and ECs be debarred from taking up gubernatorial assignments, membership of legislatures or even joining a political party for up to 10 years after demitting office. In addition he has called for an impartial selection procedure for election commissioners through the involvement of the Leader of Opposition as well as Lok Sabha Speaker and deputy chairman of Rajya Sabha. Can anyone argue with the soundness of these proposals? But the extent of the rot that the whole nation can see is so pervasive that hardly any attention is being paid to these proposals which should have been put in place long ago and are badly needed to ensure that the institution of the Election Commission is not destroyed by political partisanship.

As far as holding of elections is concerned, the government of the day is no 'superior' body that is above the Election Commission. It is an interested and affected party because it is no more than a political party or group that is seeking the mandate of the people. Therefore, legalities apart, any action taken by it to appoint Election Commissioners is likely to biased unless we have people of unimpeachable integrity making such appointments. Such people, as the whole nation believes, are shunned by all political parties who are interested solely in grabbing power, all means fair.

The the role of the Election Commission and its three Election Commissioners in ensuring the holding of free and fair elections is central to the survival of democracy. In the discharge of their duties, they have to be politically spotlessly neutral.

Like Caesar's wife, the ECs also have to be above suspicion. That is the touchstone that is being forgotten in the debate on the suitability of Naveen Chawla to become the next CEC. That the Congress party which has chosen him will want to overlook this critical aspect is understandable. But those who are finding all kinds of disingenuous arguments to support its position are equally guilty of contributing to the destruction of this institution.

Perhaps it is time for Dr Manmohan Singh to rise above the muck once again and ensure that the neutrality and impartiality of Election Commissioners is not sacrificed on the alter of political deceit. If it is, we will have an even more cynical nation that may soon lose complete faith in not just political parties but also in democracy. Would any political party want that to happen?