‘You’re an Untouchable’: The Apathy of Dalits in Gujarat

Dalit Scholar Kumud Pawade in her autobiography quoted a phrase ‘What comes with birth and can’t be cast off by dying- is that caste?’ Even 65 years after independence, this socio-political rhetoric seems so prudent when we look into the current pathetic condition of Dalits especially in the state of Gujarat. It is true that even after so much of efforts, pan-India we’ve not been able to remove caste inequalities from our society. But in majority parts of the country atleast there is an effort, which clearly and very evidently missing when it comes to Gujarat. For Gujarat Chief Minister and BJP’s Prime Ministerial candidate national issues are of prime concern but in that bid for over so many years now, he even failed to acknowledge the apathy of dalits in his own state. For him the society is a homogenous entity, but that society filled with homogeneity seems to have no place for poor dalits in Gujarat.

All this amidst Modi and his party’s tall claim of development and projecting him as an OBC leader as he proudly announced himself in UP rallies. But while this OBC wears designer clothes, dalits in his own state are so prone to discrimination that even to get a haircut, they need to travel miles. While they BJP have identified Muslim votes as his biggest hurdle, they seem to have forgotten that they still aren’t assured of the support of people placed low in the caste hierarchy of India. Consequently, as Modi has taken a headlong plunge into politics of inclusiveness, the Dalits in his own state seem to have taken it upon themselves to battle caste discrimination, with their CM failing to intervene.

In a report by DNA, the dalits' entry into the village temple of Goddess Meldi Ma was met with severity by the 'upper' caste villagers who restricted entry of over 13 dalit families from paying obeisance to the deity. The dalits' entry into the village temple of Goddess Meldi Ma was met with severity by the 'upper' caste villagers who restricted entry of over 13 dalit families from paying obeisance to the deity. The incident was reported with the police with the help of Navsarjan trust, an NGO working for the marginalised people. Matters turned sour when some dalit families wanted to enter the village temple. Not surprisingly, though Khoda Koli, the husband of sarpanch Jasuben Koli and the deputy sarpanch Samant Koli were arrested, they were later released on bail.

On September 2^nd of this year, minor Dalit girl was gang raped by at least five villagers in Khandiya village in Chuda Taluka of Surendranagar district. As per Police investigation report, accused Ravirajsinh Zala, Dasrathsinh Zala, Rajbha Vakhatsinh, Natubha Vakhatsinh and Vinodbhai Solanki allegedly raped daughter of Budhabhai Valmiki  on outskirts of Khandiya village. She was again raped in Village primary school. She was later taken in Dhandhuka and again raped. Later two accused left her at relatives home. While she informed her parent about incident, she was taken to nearest Government hospital and later shifted to Surendranagar Civil hospital. Girl’s parent has filed a case against accused.  The police are conducting further investigation and hunting for ran away accused.

Another Indian Express report refers to the mass conversion of Dalits in Saurashtra to Buddhism to escape the stigma of belonging to a lower caste, once considered untouchables in India. Explaining why 60 families in Vishal Hadmatiya village converted to Buddhism, 65-year-old Dahya Vaghela tells The Indian Express: “Local barbers refuse to give me a haircut or shave, saying that he will not get any upper caste customers. So I have to travel all the way to Junagadh. We also have a separate temple,” he says. The story goes on to explain how Dalit children are not allowed to sit together with upper-caste children while eating and upper caste villagers not visiting tea stalls run by Dalits. Dalits contributes a meagre 7 percent of votes in Gujarat and hence is not a political force to reckon with. “Dalits don’t have the numbers to directly influence an Assembly poll, so they generally tend to go with the majority community. The religious conversion, if any, will not affect their political affiliation,” Jetha Solanki shamelessly, Dalit leader and BJP MLA from Kodinar, told Indian Express.  However, discrimination against the Dalits has been a reality buried in Gujarat’s development clamour for a while now.

In a survey conducted in 2011, where 200 Dalit children and 65 Non-Dalit children were interviewed in 12 villages in Gujarat and Rajasthan, it was revealed that more than 90 percent of Dalit children have faced discrimination while procuring medication at government hospitals clinics. More than 80 percent of Dalit children have faced discrimination while trying to avail something as basic as pathological tests. Another report about Saurashtra from April this year points out how in Saurashtra itself Dalits faced an acute water crisis as they are not allowed to draw water from the Narmada. The reservoir that supplies water to some of these villages was also never connected with the Narmada water pipeline. Fearing backlash from the upper castes the Dalits mostly kept mum till the water shortage became unbearable and they had to complain to the deputy collector of the district.

Dalit leader and writer Kancha Ilaiah, in an article questioning the how fit the Gujarat model of development is, says that a state like Andhra Pradesh has far more beneficial policies for SC/STs and OBCs and the government spends decidedly more on the development of backward tribes than Gujarat. He points how that the caste hierarchy in Gujarat continues to be so strong that no strong political enterprise was ever encourage or given leeway in the state, even under the chief ministership of Narendra Modi, himself an OBC member. Ilaiah says: “The Gujarat government’s apathy towards tribals, leave alone minorities, speaks volumes. In fact, there is no evidence that Modi allowed capable leadership to grow which would allow them to assert themselves. For example, the tribal and dalit intelligentsia in Andhra Pradesh emerged from quality residential schools and colleges that the state government initiated way back in the 1980s and ’90s. Modi’s government did not initiate such educational projects for the Scheduled Castes/Scheduled Tribes.”

Just yelling at rallies about change and projecting himself as an OBC candidate just for the sake garnering votes, then I’m sorry Mr. Modi, you can’t fool the people of this country. If the Dalits in Modi’s Gujarat continue to face the heat of caste supremacy, it is not long that they have to face a strong rebellion against the establishment. So if he boasts so much about his so-called model of development which as I earlier too have said is not at all inclusive, this is another group of minority which made no place in the development of the state. Also, if the country indeed is looking for a ‘change’, the clean-up should start from the grassroots – a sizable part of which seems to have fallen in the wayside of the country’s contemporary political narrative. So the larger question that looms large in the horizon is if growth is not inclkusive and not for all, then at the end of the day, whose Gujarat is it?

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Divided We Stand, Together We Fall

There is a popular saying in politics that while Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely and that is precisely what is the case with the BJP in the national capital. The Bharatiya Janata Party has been making tall claims since their poster boy Narendra Modi held a massive rally in Delhi. How much charisma Modi holds outside Gujarat is yet to be tested as wherever he has campaigned till now outside Gujarat, BJP has never won a single seat. However regional politics cannot be dictated by national leaders and it’s a well-known fact that in Delhi, BJP’s poster boy is not Narendra Modi. Then the question arises, who is it?

It is an interesting paradox that the otherwise articulating BJP has gone quiet with their CM candidate in Delhi while speculations tend to creep in. The reason behind it is nothing but a leadership vacumm which is now haunting the BJP in the national capital. Sheila Dixit was already a tall leader to reckon with and the dramatic entry of Arvind Kejriwal and his AAP wouldn’t have been in any better time. Crushed between the two juggernauts, the BJP is clueless and hapless as to how to go about it. Delhi is like an armed fortress, winning which gives you an extra edge in national politics and with the current political dynamics, it seems like Sheila Dixit is going to continue as the sole queen.

However on the other side, grappling with infighting and factionalism, the BJP is desperately search for an escape route. This became evident with senior BJP leader Harsh Vardhan’s name doing the rounds again as the party’s Chief Ministerial candidate in Delhi assembly elections even as a number of senior state leaders have conveyed to the central leadership their unhappiness over the style of functioning of Vijay Goel. Sources in Delhi BJP said a sizable number of party leaders are of the opinion that BJP must have a chief ministerial face to take on charismatic Congress’s Sheila Dixit. Expressing their opposition to Delhi BJP chief Goel, several leaders of the party’s Delhi unit have conveyed to the party’s central leadrship that they will not resist any move to declare Vardhan as the Chief Ministerial candidate.
Interestingly, unfazed by reports of a possible projection of Mr. Vardhan as a front runner for the CM’s post, Delhi BJP President Vijay Goel pitted himself as a widely acceptable face for the Chief Minister’s chair and reiterated that his popularity has been refelected in many opinion polls. He claimed that he has strengthened the party to a great extent and said that a decision based on the issue will be taken by the Parliamentary Board on the basis of opinions of the pary workers as well as that of the public. If sources are to be believed, all of the 14 district presidents today met Nitin Gadkari and expressed their support for the candidacy of Mr. Goel for the top post. 

According to a tweet by Executive Editor of Headlines Today and Aaj Tak, he tweeted ‘Vijay Goel holding 'Shakti Pradarshan' of 200 mandal & block workers at 11AM tomorrow to ward off any attempt to sideline him.’ If true then the BJP would be falling into a big embarrassing situation ahead of the assembly polls next month. Meanwhile the BJP top brass has been jolted by a threat of open rebellion by Mr. Goel, who is learnt to have told senior leaders that he will not work for the party if Dr Harshvardhan is projected as the BJP's chief ministerial candidate for the upcoming polls. He went into active damage control mode moments after reports emerged that the BJP is deciding to project Dr Harshvardhan as the party's face for the Delhi Assembly Elections.

The first round of ticket allocation for the Delhi elections is scheduled for 20 October and the party is likely to take a decision on whether to project a chief ministerial candidate before that. Senior party leader Arun Jaitley is abroad at present and a decision is expected to be taken after his return. The Delhi Assembly Elections are also a matter of prestige for Narendra Modi who has recently been appointed the party's prime ministerial candidate for the next general elections. A setback in Delhi will be seen as a personal loss of face for Modi and the Gujarat Chief Minister is keen that the party put its best foot forward in the Delhi elections. The RSS, which is another important stakeholder in the BJP's decision making process, is of the view that the party should have a leader with a clean image as its chief ministerial candidate but the Sangh does not want infighting to mar the party's chances. Frentic efforts are now on to find a way of breaking the deadlock. The BJP is otherwise known for commenting a lot on other party’s leadership vacumm is today itself facing a storm in their own house and they seems to be no solution to it. With the assembly elections less than a month, it would be interesting to observe which way the wind blows in the national capital.

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MP Stampede: No lessons learnt?

On the auspicious occasion of Dussherra last Sunday, as the entire world celebrated the triumph of victory of the good over the evil, the demons seemed to have conspired against the pilgrims in the central state of Madhya Pradesh. About over 125 devout pilgrims died in yet another stampede at a religious gathering, some in the crush of an estimated five lakh people and others jumping into a river, numbed senseless by panic following rumours that the bridge was about to give way.But the irony is that a few thousand kilometres away from that very place, the combined and dedicated efforts of both the state as well as the central government was able to undertake the biggest evacuation in the history and being successful in saving millions of lives about to be crushed by nature’s fury called Phailin.

While conviction and dedication showed to the rest of the world that we’re no less than anybody else in handling crisis, utter ignorance and lack of seriousness by the Madhya Pradesh government left behind a big blot on the face of our country not only internally but globally too. There are several things that the Shivraj Singh Chouhan government could have learnt from the steady stream of stampede casualties at religious places, but then it’s obvious now that state governments and temple authorities responsible for managing such large gatherings and especially on special occasions give little thought to crowd management. And that’s precisely why being a pilgrim in India becomes such a big curse. 

Almost seven years back the very same site had witnessed a disaster, when 57 people died on the ninth day of the same festival. The bridge did not exist then and pilgrims had to use boats to reach the temple. The river was flooded when a large quantity of water was released from reservoir upstream without prior warning. No action was taken against the persons responsible for that act and seven years later no lessons seemed to have learnt by the Shivraj Singh Chouhan led government in Madhya Pradesh.

As per official sources, the death toll in Sunday’s stampede at the Ratangarh temple in Madhya Pradesh could cross 125, as divers were still busy fishing out bodies from the Sindh River. Eyewitnesses said pilgrims panicked when a tractor dashed against the railing of the bridge and it felled. Rumours that the bridge was going to collapse triggered the stampede. Some devotees were crushed to death under the feet of fellow worshippers, while others drowned after jumping into the river. The police had allowed many tractors and trolleys on the 750 metre bridge which led to a long traffic jam. It was the tractors running on the narrow bridge that caused the disaster. The Ratangarh temple is located in a remote forest area in Datia district. It took quite some valuable time for the news of the stampede to get out. Datia, which is the smallest district in the state, does not have enough police personnel to deal with the tens of thousands of people who gather for such occasions. This time around the District collector was on leave and even the divisional commissioner was on an overseas visit.

However what has blown everyone away is the recent revelations post the stampede at the Ratangarh temple, that villagers and survivors have claimed that they were witness to policemen dumping bodies of pilgrims into the river to water down the death toll of the tragedy. According to the report which appeared in today’s Times of India, eyewitnesses even accused the police had stealing money and valuables from the bodies before tossing them off the bridge. “I was there at the bridge during the stampede and I have seen policemen dumping over two dozen pilgrims, some of them alive, into the river,” said Geeta Mishra, 55, a resident of Bhind, in the Times of India report. This is indeed a very serious allegation put forward by the survivors and cannot be ignored. And if indeed such a shameless and cowardly act has taken place, then each and every policemen involved must be punished.


Though on pen and paper, last year the state government constituted a statutory authority for fairs and pilgrimages, which is expected to ensure adequate arrangements for the organisation of such fairs. However the very same authority entrusted with the safety of pilgrims has ended up as a centre for political rehabilitation and promotion of the BJP’s political agenda in organising pilgrimages under the Chief Minister’s aegis during this election year to reap political brownie points. The saddest part and arguably the biggest fault of the state government is the non-deployment of enough police personnel for such a large convergence of pilgrims which is an annual affair. For a recent jamboree of the workers the ruling party ensured deployment of at least 5,000 policemen including 12 IPS and 60 State Police service officers. While for Ratangarh a force of 60 was considered enough to handle the traffic of over 150,000 visitors.

What is really tragic about the incident is the grim realization that we have learnt nothing from similar tragedies earlier but no lessons seemed to have been learnt. So what works?  Preparedness does. That is the biggest message from Odisha and Andhra Pradesh. The 1999 super cyclone caught everyone off guard, exposing the weakness of governments to respond quickly to a natural calamity of high magnitude. Alert to their own inadequacies, both the states and the centre have been preparing themselves well. The National Disaster Management Authority, which has grown with experience from different calamities across the country, was fortunately not a disaster this time. It has been busy training officials at ground levels on ways to handle the situations arising out of a calamity, and it helped. It helped that the much-maligned Indian Meteorological Department was accurate in its forecast of the cyclone, its course and extent. It allowed time for the administrations in both the states to react. And the both the UPA government at the centre as well as the state governments of Odhisha and Andhra Pradesh deserve a pat at the back. Mr. Shivraj Singh Chouhan, are you taking a note atleast this time around?

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Why choosing Narendra Modi and BJP is dangerous?

Before I start, let me quote the Preamble of our Constitution for the better understanding of the entire issue. The Preamble of our great Constitution states, ‘WE THE PEOPLE OF INDIA having solemnly resolved to constitute India into a SOVEREIGN SOCIALIST SECULAR DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC and to secure to all its citizens JUSTICE LIBERTY EQUALITY and FRATERNITY….’ And it goes on. The reason why I started with the core of the Indian Constitution is because the citizens of this country needs to be awaken about the true spirits of our constitution that our forefathers left behind for us.  Today there is a lot of hullaballoo about the return of BJP and their poster boy Narendra Modi pitching for the PM’s post and many people angry with the current government because of anti-incumbency, inflation and a lot of  other reasons. But have you ever thought how dangerous the alternative that some people are proposing could be to the cultural fabric of the country?

Today if we are considering the BJP and its PM candidate Narendra Modi to be a messiah who’ll move his magic wand and all the problems would be solved instantly, then I’m really sorry that’s not happening. Whereas the truth is that he himself is not being able to handle a lot of crisis in Gujarat which he is elected for in run up for the top most and had instead created a mirage of development. But we’ll touch upon on that part later. In regard to the core principles of our Constitution, choosing Narendra Modi or the BJP would be dangerous precedent. How is it linked to the core principles of our constitution? Let me decode it to you for your convenience.

BJP politics of saffronization and the bizarre logic of Hindu dominance backed by the Sangh Parivar are not unknown to us and Narendra Modi being an erstwhile Pracharak of the RSS is no exception for it. When we talk about the core principles of our Constitution, the BJP and especially Narendra Modi fails in all grounds. Under them, India won’t be a SECULAR country in its true spirit and I don’t think I need to tell you the reason for that. The Ayodhya Massacre and Gujarat Riots are still fresh in all our minds. Nor it would be SOCIALIST as the BJP and Narendra Modi have always backed big corporates often at the cost of poor farmers. The issue of giving away lands in throwaway prices to the Tatas and the Adani Group is most prominent in today’s time. Given Modi’s style of running a state as an Autocratic ruler, it’s a big question how DEMOCRATIC the functioning of our democracy would be. And when these three grounds are at fault, obviously India wouldn’t be a SOVEREIGN REPUBLIC in its true essence.

Never quite thought of all these right? But this is not the end. In Modi’s Gujarat, not all citizens have the Right to JUSTICE LIBERTY EQUALITY and FRATERNITY. The victims of the 2002 riots haven’t stilt gotten justice yet in Modi’s Gujarat nor is there any sort of equality between the majority and the minority. And when the state government has a draconian law in which you need to take permission before converting your religion, what kind of liberty do you expect? Fraternity which in other words stands for brotherhood is nowhere close to Modi’s divide and rule policy. So when we talk about the core principles of our Constitution, Modi fails in all grounds. How can you elect a person who tends to be a threat to what our Constitution propagates?

Many people tend to compare the BJP and the Congress on the same page. But how fair the comparison is? If you ask me, it’s in no way a fair comparison. Let me tell you why. Three thousand Indians died in the violence that Advani’s. Ayodhya gambit produced. In his autobiography Advani absolves himself by saying little violence happened in the areas his Rath Yatra had visited, but he is aware of the fires he lit. He led a fired-up mob to the mosque and then expressed suprise when they razed it and he was unable to stop them. Modi’s aide and his deputy home minister, Amit Shah, said in a recent interview to rediff.com’s Sheela Bhatt that the violence in Gujarat was inevitable given the massacre at Godhra. In his words: “The BJP has nothing to do with the riots of 2002! The riots were the reaction of the people to the Godhra incident. The reaction was so huge that the established machinery could not meet the challenge of these spontaneous reactions.” What he doesn’t say is that it is that the BJP over the decades had so polarised the state that a single incident led to a state-wide orgy of revenge. The reason that so much anger and bitterness and hatred exists in Gujarat is because of the divisive language and policies of the BJP. These remain unchanged in the era of Modi but have been papered over by the second aspect to his image.

Congress is often accused guilty for the massacre of Sikhs, but it must be acknowledged that the party has tried to make up for all the allegations made to them. Under Sonia Gandhi, we have had a magnificent gesture to Sikhs in the face of Manmohan Singh. His two terms as Prime Minister have done much to heal feelings of Sikhs and non-Sikhs offended by the way the community was treated in Delhi. The other way to judge how effective Congress’s outreach to Sikhs has been is to observe the politics in Punjab. The fact is that the Congress has made its peace with Sikhs there. To see this we need to only go through the names of Punjab’s legislators. Of the 46 Congress MLAs, 33 are Sikh (on the other hand 10 of the BJP’s 12 MLAs are Hindu). It is the Sikhs who elected Congress to government twice in Punjab after 1984. How different this is from the BJP in Gujarat, where no Muslim has been given a BJP ticket to contest in three Assembly and two Lok Sabha elections under Modi. The record shows that it is not wise to see the BJP and the Congress as being alike, even if Modi’s popularity has convinced many to see it this way.

Modi recently said that shauchalay (toilet) should precede devalay (temple). What he tend to forget is that a couple of years ago, Jairam Ramesh, the then Union Minister of Rural Development, said that toilets are more important than temples. When Ramesh had made his statement, Sangh activists – Modi associates – urinated and kept urine bottles in front of Ramesh’s house. BJP spokespersons accused Ramesh of destroying the fine fabric of faith and religion in the country. Now that Modi made the same statement, those spokespersons are silent, although Praveen Togadia criticised him. Other Sangh members have kept mum on the issue. Many commentators have come forward to uphold Modi’s statement saying that it represented the soft side of Hindutva and would help the BJP increase its electoral strength and that’s what we called double standards.

Before we conclude, let’s look at the tall claims and criticism that he made during his recent rally in Delhi. In his speech Modi merely made false assurances of bringing in a stronger Lokayukta as the party itself has failed to do so in Gujarat, where Modi is the Chief Minister. The Delhi BJP is making tall claims of bringing in a stronger Lokayukta if they come to power, while its national leadership is not even willing to introduce a Delhi-like Lokayukta system in Gujarat. A number of Gujarat ministers, MLAs and councillors have been indicted by the Lokayukta but even after the court’s intervention, nothing has been done. Recently Delhi Power minister Haroon Yusuf alleged that Modi had been stating that power rates in Gujarat were Rs.1.50 but he did not mention that the rate was applicable only for 30 units. Once you cross that, the bill goes up substantially. “Modi is just trying to fool the people. In Delhi, if you consume power till 200 units, you pay only Rs. 2.70 per unit and at least 61% of the population here falls in this category,” he added. In Gujarat as per social indices, it has the highest school dropout rate, high malnutrition deaths compared to other states and low availability of safe drinking water. So now the decision lies in the sane wisdom of the people of this country in the upcoming 2014 general elections.

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The Report Card of NDA

The Bharatiya Janata Party's poster boy and Gujarat CM Narendra Modi recently claimed that growth during the NDA rule was greater than the UPA, claiming it to be 8.2 %. Though the BJP and its leaders have a habit of saying a lot of things without doing their homework well, after all its Deputy Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha, Ravi Shankar Prasad doesn't even know how many total constituencies are there in his home state of Bihar, such a big blunder can prove to be too silly. To analyse and look into the matter, I thought just like I wrote the Report Card of its PM candidate Narendra Modi, why not make a Report Card of the NDA rule from 1998-2003 too. After all they call it the golden era in the political history of modern India. Let's have a fact checking to see if all that glitters is gold or not.

In order to assess the performance of the NDA Government in terms of various economic growth indicators, we look at two periods: the six-year period preceding April 1, 1998, and the six-year period after April 1, 1998. For convenience, we will refer to these as Period 1 and Period 2. This allows us to assess the performance of the NDA Government (Period 2) compared to its immediate predecessors in the form of the United Front and Congress-led governments (Period 1).

It is obvious that by both measures, growth of national income decelerated quite substantially in Period 2, that is, under the NDA Government. In fact, the period from April 1998 until March 2003 appears to have experienced a deceleration of growth compared to the earlier 15-year period as well. Growth of agricultural production was actually negative during this period, mainly because of the drought-induced collapse in production in 2003. Indeed, the apparently fabulous recovery during 2004, which has been cited so much in government and ruling party handouts, is essentially nothing more than the reflection of the recovery of agriculture consequent upon a very good monsoon. That brought home the unfortunate reality that the Indian economy was still heavily dependent upon the monsoon, which could create major changes not only in agricultural output but also in aggregate economic activity.

This was despite the much increased external openness of the economy, which has now been exposed to international trade and capital flows more than ever before. It also undoes some of the claims made by the votaries of such policies, that economic liberalisation had unleashed such animal spirits in the economy that agriculture was no longer of macroeconomic significance and that the growth impetus of the economy is no longer affected by it.

Even in industrial production, the slowdown of the second period is very marked. It indicated a sharp deceleration of the index of industrial production, by both trend and compound rates of growth. This cannot be blamed on the year of 2003 alone; the entire six-year period indicated sluggish expansion of industrial output. Why has this happened? Some clues can be gleaned from the pattern of aggregate investment, in terms of the rates of growth of real gross domestic capital formation. Such investment increased at a reasonable rate in the earlier period, above 9 per cent per annum in real terms. However, in the second period (the tenure of the NDA regime) the increase in investment had slumped to only around 5 per cent per annum.

Even this low rate of increase is of dubious significance, since both public and private corporate investment stagnated or even declined over this latter period. Indeed, such increase in capital formation as did occur after 1998 came about mainly because of household sector capital formation. This is determined in the national accounts as a residual, and essentially reflects increases in domestic construction activity.

Investment declined because public investment has stagnated or declined under the NDA regime. Despite the recent promises of national highway expansion and other such indicators of material prosperity, the NDA Government has spent less (in real per capita terms) on productive investment for infrastructure and economic growth, than any government in independent India. It is well known that in India, as in almost all other developing countries, there are strong positive linkages between public and private investment. Typically, high rates of public investment call forth and enable more private investment activity.

However, the policymakers of the NDA appeared to believe that they could further reduce the amount of productive public expenditure and expect private entrepreneurs to take up the slack and increase aggregate investment. Obviously, this was not likely to happen in the absence of any other major positive stimulus. So it is not surprising that the NDA's tenure has been associated with lower rates of growth of industrial production and economic activity generally, than the preceding period. Indeed, the bulk of economic activity over this period did not show much acceleration, certainly when compared to the earlier period. This is in conformity with other indicators such as employment generation, especially in the organised sectors, which also indicate stagnation or insufficient expansion. So the official figures suggest that, whatever else the BJP might claim to be the NDA's strengths, successful macroeconomic management is not among them.

This is evident in the slack that remains in the economy in the form of high unemployment and underemployment, wasteful build-up of reserves through allowing unnecessary capital inflows that are not being productively used, and of course through the appalling waste of public food stocks that were exported away at below BPL prices when hundreds of millions within the country remained hungry. But it is even apparent in the aggregate growth performance, which unfortunately has not been anywhere near as impressive as the current BJP PM candidate's propaganda would have us believe. However thrashing their claims, official data of the World Bank shows that the average GDP growth during the ten years of UPA rule is 8.2 % while that of the NDA is merely 5.4%.

That was about the economy and condition of the country during the NDA rule. Who can forget the disastrous India Shining campaign led by the BJP during the 2004 general elections which projected India touching the zenith of growth and development while millions were starving and the country's youth furious because of high levels of unemployment. The NDA also claims to have built more roads or highways than the UPA. Yet again, official data suggests, that the NHAI under the NDA built 2455 kms of roads where as under the UPA rule, it is 17195 kms and counting. Under the NDA rule, poor were heavily neglected and there were hardly any social welfare schemes that I can think of that initiated by the NDA. While during the UPA rule, the country got NREGA, MNREGA, Farmers Loan Waivers, Right to Education, Food Security and the most recent Land Acquisition Act which will be of immense help to the farmers.

Another big blot of the BJP led NDA government is the communalization of education in India.  In 2002, under the NDA government spearheaded by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) the government made an attempt at changing the NCERT school textbooks through a new National Curriculum Framework. Marxist historians raised objections to the new curriculum, claiming "saffronization" of education by allegedly raising the profile of Hindu cultural norms, views and historical personalities in school textbooks. The BJP opined that their only goal was to promote sectarianism, but present a more accurate picture of Indian history and Indian culture (such as Vedic science), which was being downplayed by the left wing ideologues. The NDA was defeated in the elections of 2004 and the new UPA government pledged to "de-saffronize" textbooks and curricula nationwide and restore the secular character of education. In March, the UPA Government released new NCERT textbooks, based on the texts used before the controversial 2002 updates. The Ministry of Human Resource Development, which oversaw this project, stated that it had made only minor modifications to the books that predated the "saffronized" era. In Delhi, the Directorate of Education, in collaboration with the State Council of Educational Research and Training, prepared 47 new textbooks, and other state governments were expected to do likewise.

And last but not the least, if you think that the NDA rule was free from scams, then you're very wrong. Let us have a look at the scams which happened under the NDA rule.

Tehelka.com, a website run by investigative journalism enthusiast showed BJP’s then president Bangaru Laxman taking bundles of cash as bribe. UTI – United Trust of India, now doing business as Axis Bank, lost its money putting investors to the verge of loosing their money.  Though the funds was managed well in UTI64, scam  hit during NDA regime which created the loss. Few thousand crore money involved.  The US-64 scheme had 2 crore investors, the bulk of whom were small savers, retired people, widows and pensioners. In 1998, the UTI crashed, and the BJP-led NDA government scrambled to organise Rs. 3,500 crore bail-outs to UTI.  The capital of UTI fell by 33% from 75,000 crores to 50,000 crores, making this a 25,000 crores scam. Additionally public faith in financial institutions was completely eroded. In a global recession such a mistake proved be catastrophic, retarded and hamper the country’s chances of recovery turning it into a full blown crisis.

BJP leader Sushma Swaraj and her close friendship with Reddy brothers, who are considered to be mining mafia in Andhra – Karnataka states is a known fact.  She was considered as Godmother for Reddy brothers.
Soon after assuming office in 1999, the NDA government embarked on a full-scale privatisation programme, offering controlling stake in government-owned companies to “strategic partners”. Starting in January 2000, in less than two and a half years, the government sold controlling stake in nine companies, apart from 19 hotels at various locations belonging to the India Tourism Development Corporation (ITDC). The government earned Rs.5,544 crores from the strategic sale of the nine enterprises. Every single instance was controversial and initiated protests from the unions. The unions not only feared for workers’ jobs but alleged that the units were being sold for a song.

Another one is the BALCO SCAM: – Complete erosion of public money in the name of ‘disinvestment’. – The aluminium giant where missiles such as ‘Agni’ and ‘Prithvi’ were shaped, was sold to Sterlite company for a paltry sum of Rs.551 crore at a time when the assets alone were worth Rs.5,000-6,000 crore. Giving tough compitition to it in terms of its magnitude could be the Gujarat Cooperative Bank Scam 2003: – In Gujarat, the Narendra Modi Government had to pay out Rs. 870 Crore to small investors after the Gujarat Bank Scam of 2003 which led to the closure of 9 cooperative banks and 17 other being declared sick.  – The administrator of the crisis-ridden Panchamahal District Co-operative Bank even registered a complaint against Gujarat Minister of State Prabhatsinh Chauhan and 28 others, alleging their involvement in the embezzlement of Rs 124 crore (Rs 1.24 billion) from the bank.

These were just a few instances of mismanagement and misgovernance during the NDA rule which proves that under their reign both the Indian economy as well as the cultural fabric of the country were in the doldrums. There are plentiful more issues to further reiterate this point which due to the length constraint couldn't be mentioned here. After all, one the worst riots of modern India happened in 2002 in Gujarat during the NDA rule and that too under a BJP led government in the state and yet they didn't do anything to curb the brutal killing of thousands of innocents. Today after so many years when the BJP claims to give the only stable alternative to the current ruling government, the bigger question is whether they're capable of doing it or not. Just showing a show of unity at a Bhopal rally among their own party doesnot qualify them to stake a claim at the Centre but an effort to take the country forward together will. Unfortunately, their politics is not inclusive but divisive. They talk about war and not peace. And above all, history bears testimony that they've always been pro-mill owners and never pro-poor. So the choice is now yours.

For all sorts of bouquets and brickbats feel free to leave a comment below or mail me at author.vish94@gmail.com

Why NaMo cannot become India’s Next PM

It is no surprise that by the time this article gets uploaded and spread over the social media, my twitter timeline would be flooded with abuses. This is not a new phenomenon given the fact that the so-called NaMo Brigade is forever ready to attack intellectuals but could hardly counter them with facts. The moment you point out flaws in him, you become a paid Congress agent. Such is the irony of our country where though the Constitution does provide the Right of Freedom of Expression, but it is often gauged by those who find it fancy to call themselves the voice of the nation. In my last article ‘The Report Card of NaMo’ which invited plentiful of abuses after it went viral, I talked about the mirage of development created by the BJP to project Narendra Modi as a ‘Vikas Purush’. Today I would be discussing about some basic points which clearly indicates a tough time ahead for the Gujarat CM in the upcoming general elections.

It would be fairly unfair to say that there is huge unrest in the country after the anointment of Narendra Modi as BJP’s official PM candidate, but yes, within the BJP and the hardcore supporters of Modi, it has gained momentum. Slogans of ‘Modi for PM’ are doing rounds since a very long time now in the social media. But one needs to understand that elections cannot solely be won of the basis of slogan chanting. After all, not everybody possess the charisma of Indira Gandhi, who would stand on a dias, clad in a khadi saree, and cheer the slogan of ‘Garibi Hatao’, and people would realise that their messiah has come. Sorry boss, not happening. Then what are the bigger questions that the BJP and their crowned prince, Narendra Modi needs to look into? Let’s have a look.

The first and the foremost agenda which would be there in any party’s mind is the magic number of 272. It is not just a mere number, but will decide the fate of the largest democracy in the world in the next coming months. It is the number the BJP could not achieve even when there was the noise of 'Abki bari Atal Bihari' in 1998 and 1999. These were the two years when there was a BJP-led NDA government at the Centre. In 1998, the BJP fought from 388 seats and won 182 seats. A year later, riding the wave of the Kargil victory and the sympathy of losing the confidence motion in the Lok Sabha by one vote, the BJP assigned more seats to allies. The BJP contested 339 seats and again won 182 seats. Now let's talk about the last elections -- that is 2009. In it, after contesting on 433 seats, the BJP only managed 116 seats. So the question is, not only will Modi have to maintain this performance in the next election but also increase the numbers by one-and-a-half times, which is to be honest next to impossible.

Today’s politics is dominated by the coalition compulsions and no party can make it to Delhi without the support of a bunch of regional players. This is another hurdle in Modi becoming the PM is his image and politics. Vajpayee became the prime minister only after he found new allies in several states and made the NDA family big, very big. But in the final year of his regime, most partnerships broke down. Only Akali Dal and the Shiv Sena have been left behind. The trouble ahead for the NDA is to again bring closer old friends. It is said that Modi has a good political relationship with Jayalalithaa. But Amma hasn't yet made her stand clear. Naveen Patnaik is also firm on his stand of Ekla Chalo (walk alone) these days. Nitish's hatred is known to all and his latest exit from the NDA is a testimony to it. Mamata is worried about Muslim voters in West Bengal. If we talk about some new allies, the NCP is mired in allegations of corruption. The National Conference cannot get out of the Congress lap since its region has its own politics. So when they will not be able to make partnerships, will comments, shares and likes on Facebook make Modi the PM?

Even if for a time being if we forget about the coalition politics which depends a lot on calculations and self-interests after the elections, what about its own house which is not in order since a long time now. No one might be openly stepping out against Modi for the time-being but Advani, Shivraj and the Sangh Parivar have signalled on and off that the one-man show won't work. Leaders like Sushma Swaraj may feel that though she has been in central politics for two decades and has mass appeal, a state leader is staking claim when it is time for the top post. The point to be noted is that Sushma has never called Modi the party's most popular leader. Arun Jaitley, who once used to be Modi's Chanakya, is busy uprooting him, albeit with the calm of a lawyer. Rajnath is singing the Modi song but his existence and rise in the party has only been due to this. And the heaviest among them all, the eldest in the house, Advani, who has fallen silent for the time-being, has not missed the race yet. To encourage him stands a long battalion of dissatisfied party soldiers such as Gadkari and Sanjay Joshi. So till the time Modi becomes a non-controversial leader like Vajpayee in the party, how can he become the leader of the nation?

It is a well-known fact that the BJP doesn’t have reach in majority of the Indian states and is non-existent in many. BJP loves the word 'south'. In ideological debates, it is called a south-leaning party or a right-wing party. But nothing is right for the BJP in the country's south. We saw the debacle in Karnataka. In Andhra Pradesh, a grassroots leader like Bandaru Dattatreya was sidelined to make way for Venkaiah Naidu, a leader with the Delhi stamp. It lost an ally like the Telugu Desam. Whenever it found some ground in Tamil Nadu, it was on partnerships. For now, the party is empty-handed in the state. Due to the blank slate in the south, the party will not be able to have a pan-India presence allowing it to knock on the doors of 7 Race Course Road even if it does well in the north. 

In terms of reach and seats in the politically most significant state of Uttar Pradesh, the Bharatiya Janata Party seems to have no answer. The BJP began sinking in Uttar Pradesh after 1998. As a result, the party's 57 MPs were reduced to 29. Kalyan Singh was expelled from the party and after Ramprakash Gupta, Rajnath became CM. He made a lot of announcements, a lot of promises but the party's Assembly seats in UP were reduced to 88. Rajnath came to the centre as minister and in 2004, BJP's condition deteriorated further. The situation now is such that the party is desperate to cross 10 seats in UP. But the BJP is still in a bad shape in UP. Here, it is filled with spent leaders for whom it will be enough if they retain their seats. All of them are busy manoeuvring with each other. And by just sending Modi protégé Amit Shah to invoke the Ram Mandir issue to polarise votes won’t help anymore. The voter of today is too smart to understand such narrow political tactics. In this scenario, if there is no answer in the BJP to politics in Uttar Pradesh, then the Delhi Durbar will just remain a dream.

So far, we had been only talking about external things. Now let us look at Modi's experience in the Parliament. Vajpayee got to the Parliament in the 1950s from UP's Balrampur. Other than a few breaks, he was in Parliament till 2004. Advani too has decades of parliamentary experience. The same thing can be said about Sushma, Jaitley and other central leaders. But Narendra Modi has seen Parliament only from the visitor's gallery. Manoeuvring, floor management and turning the direction of debates in Parliament is not as easy as addressing rallies. Modi has no experience of parliamentary politics whatsoever. This fact goes well against him. Those who have long experience in Parliament can fill even Modi with fear.

Modi fans by now must be boiling in fury and would say that his mass appeal and popularity would outdo all the points made here. Done, point well taken. But the bigger question is, has he won anything outside Gujarat? Narendra Modi is the lion of Gujarat. Not only his supporters, but we too believe this. After all, winning three Assembly elections on the trot is not a joke. But what about outside the state? Has the BJP been able to come to power in any other state using the Modi name? Will it be able to do so in the future? There is no answer to this. If we talk about the upcoming elections, in Rajasthan, the BJP is not dependent on Modi but Vasundhara. The party high command has given her a free hand and she would not like any interference. Shivraj too does not think of himself any less than Modi. Raman Singh too has been the CM since the time Modi became one. Delhi is the only state where Modi can openly play his cards. But the Aam Admi Party is here to spoil the game. This was the story of Assembly elections. In Lok Sabha elections, Modi will have a tougher task. Those projecting Modi for PM should answer if the Gujarat CM has come up with any strategy for Lok Sabha polls and what did it result in. After all the disaster in Karnataka, where Modi rallied quite extensively in his own capacity is still afresh in all our minds.

Last but not the least, one issue which would haunt Modi throughout his life and in my view would prove to be a huge deterrent in the upcoming general elections is the 2002 riots. Just like two rights don’t justify a wrong, similarly just talking about development cannot help in washing the bloods of thousands of innocents from his hands. Still nostalgic of what their very own PM, Atal Vihari Vajpayee said during the 2002 riots that, ‘My only message to the Chief Minister of Gujarat is that he should follow Raj Dharma and not discriminate on the basis of caste, creed and religion’. Modi moved ahead of Gujarat riots but the country remembers that he has never, till date, openly said that what happened in Gujarat should not have happened. He in his sheer arrogance has even refused to apologise for a gruesome mass killing which happened under his watch. The state government should have crushed the rioters with maximum force. Instead, those who were opposed to the riots were slowly side-lined and the rioters were given a free hand.

For all sorts of bouquets and brickbats feel free to leave a comment below or mail me at author.vish94@gmail.com

Is the Broom an effective Sweeper too?

With the elections knocking at the door in all four polls bound states of Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chattisgarh and Delhi, both the BJP and the Congress is leaving no stone unturned to either retain power or make an impressive comeback. Unlike Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chattisgarh where the fight will mostly be bipolar between the Congress and the BJP, in Delhi, the political scenario seems to be changing where the fight might well turn out to be triangular. If the recent opinion polls are to be believed, the Aam Aadmi Party is all set to make an impressive debut in electoral politics. However to know what actually happens, we have to wait till November end and if the polls are correct, then certainly Arvind Kejriwal and his team deserves an applause. But the bigger question remains, after that, what?

If we closely analysis the turn of events, ever since the AAP came into existence a year ago, Arvind Kejriwal has been promising that the party will usher in a new kind of politics. That has also been the running theme in all interactions that party leaders have had with the public. They have been fanning across the city since August, meeting small groups of people in public spaces.  In all of them, brandishing the broom – the party’s symbol which they say they asked for – the leaders vow to sweep out all that is bad in Indian politics and bring in what they insist will be an entirely new kind of politics, no matter how long it takes and regardless of how the party fares in elections. Unfortunately, that is exactly where the AAP promise flounders.

What they need to understand is that a new political culture cannot just be about the way a party is organised or functions. Nor can it be limited to symbolic gestures like shunning red beacons. It also has to be about the way a party engages with the voters. As of now, there is little evidence till now that the `new’ political style and culture that AAP promises is anything more than the way the party is managed and the behaviour of its elected representatives. So, the party has a transparent and democratic organisational structure; only candidates with a clean reputation are chosen in a very transparent manner; elected representatives will not use red beacons on their vehicles or live in sprawling government bungalows and be surrounded by a phalanx of security personnel.  The kerfuffle over a key member, sociologist Yogendra Yadav, being sacked from the University Grants Commission (UGC) is at variance with these lofty ideals, but more on that later.

To be honest, the AAP is not the only non-traditional party to have a strong ethics code in place. Several new do-gooder parties that emerged on the political landscape after 2007 are doing the same – fielding squeaky clean candidates, taking donations only by cheque, putting up lists of donors on their websites. It’s just that the AAP has managed to grab national attention, thanks to the India Against Corruption Movement, in a way that the others did not. It is only the legacy of the Anna Hazare led movement which is helping it make rounds in the mainstream media which is since then moniotoring each and every move of the members of the movement especially those with the most know face.

 

In our Indian political understanding, when one talks about old-style politics, the association is always with caste-religion-community based politics and economically ruinous populism. A new kind of political culture should entail a movement away from such divisive and fiscally imprudent politics. Instead, the AAP has only continued down the same path, down to some well-known Muslim figures joining the party at a public function. At that do, Kejriwal admitted that there were already a large number of Muslims working for the party. He then gave a somewhat unconvincing explanation that this special function was organised to highlight the politics of hate that was taking centre stage. 

Couldn’t this be done in any other way than putting an AAP cap on top of a skull cap that one of those who joined wore? How is this kind of tokenism any different from what mainstream parties do?

Similarly if we take a look at the pamphlets that the AAP candidate have been distributing in their areas. The promises they make include waiving of water bills and providing 700 litres of water a day to every family free of charge, halving of electricity bills and regularisation of unauthorised colonies. Where is the new paradigm in this? A couple of months back, the Congress government in Delhi regularised a host of unauthorised colonies. The BJP, which has been out of power for 15 years, has also been promising cheaper power bills. Nor is the AAP lagging in making tall promises. One of the ads it has placed on the back of autorickshaws laments the lack of security for women in the capital and promises – hold your breath – an exclusive commando force for women!

As far as the issue of Prof Yogendra Yadav’s expulsion from the UGC is concerned, though many might argue that it was not justifiable and was thus a very idiotic move by the Ministry of HRD. But the idiocy and meanness of the human resource development ministry does not diminish the fact that Yadav is also not entirely in the clear. He had been appointed to the UGC as an academician, which is what all commission members are. When he joined the AAP, he should have quit the UGC. Yadav says he had offered to resign last year and that the UGC told him to stay on and that his removal has been done not by the UGC but the ministry. But this is a kind of hair-splitting that does not speak well of the leading light of a party taking the moral high ground all the time. If he had insisted on stepping down from the UGC when he formally joined the AAP that would have been something completely different from the way normal politicians behave.

In India, I said this before and would like to reiterate it again, as far as the elections are concerned, corruption is not as big an issue as it is being made out to be. It is an issue only if people see that the politicians are concentrating only on filling their personal coffers without addressing their problems. There are innumerable such instances which could be cited where despite having a corrupt track record, people have repetitively voted the same representatives saying that they might be corrupt but they have fulfilled their promises and that they say matters at the end of the day. Let’s face it: honest people don’t get elected; `effective’ people do. If they are also honest, that’s an added bonus.

Right now, the popular disenchantment with the mainstream parties is so overwhelming that the AAP is getting away with mere marketing gimmicks, passing off the same old model as a radically different product. There is, of course, the matter of whether the public really wants a different political discourse. There’s no getting away from the fact that people are not really concerned with their elected representatives framing and legislating sensible policies. All they want is for them to do favours – recommend a child to a school here, stop the demolition of an illegal construction there, swing something somewhere else. The AAP too has probably realised this and that is why it is not departing from old-style paternalistic, sops-driven politics. Right now, it’s only USP is the `added bonus’ – people with clean reputations. But if these people don’t deliver on the things the public wants, disillusionment will soon set in. And then the AAP will be just another party. So the larger question that persists is whether Arvind Kejriwal and his team are prepared for that?

For all sorts of bouquets and brickbats feel free to leave a comment below or mail me at author.vish94@gmail.com