Mass killing on rail track
The railway accident that took place at Gaisal in the northern part of West Bengal yesterday is one of the worst tragedies of its kind in recent years.

It’s cell phone election
Kargil has faded from the front pages of newspapers and prime time television news programmes. Telecom has stormed to take its place. Thus what promised to be a one-issue election is now more open.

Unkind cuts
Film-maker Shekhar Kapoor has done well to stand up to the censor board and refuse to release his multiple award winning "Elizabeth" in India if it insists on cutting three scenes from the film.

THE KARGIL INTRUSION
Debate over intelligence failure
by Harwant Singh
There is a saying in French that the more things change, the more they are the same. In India it is the intelligence agencies which appear to have taken it upon themselves to establish its validity.

Kashmir: a saga of dithering
by Pritam Bhullar
TWICE before we were surprised by Pakistan in Jammu and Kashmir, yet we refused to learn any lesson. Kargil is the third naked reality of Pakistan having inflicted surprise on us. Why do we get caught in a cleft-stick every time?

by P. Raman

Major parties' frantic search for poll ‘mantras’
POLLING for the first stage of elections is just a month away. Yet all major political players are still groping in the dark for viable electoral alliances and workable campaign strategies. Unexpected troubles crop up so suddenly that everything seems to be in a flux. Yes, the ruling party is flush with funds. But even the Congress is not starved of resources. Seat sharing has never been a smooth affair for intending partners, and had often scuttled alliances at the ground level.

Are you staple-happy?
by Mohinder Singh
The staple is a revolutionary advance over the pin; something comparable to the shaving cartridge (with twin edges stuck in plastic) over the standard blade. Both save upon steel. And so also space. 1,000 “chisel-pointed” staples come contained in a box smaller than a matchbox. And you don’t have to encumber yourself with an everdegenerating pin-cushion.

75 Years Ago

Proposals for fasting
Yesterday all the four prohibited roads in Lahore were barricaded just where the prohibition boards were put up. Instead of the usual three, six volunteers were sent, the Committee having decided to defer sending twenty volunteers pending Mr M.K. Gandhi’s instructions.

Mass killing on rail track

The railway accident that took place at Gaisal in the northern part of West Bengal yesterday is one of the worst tragedies of its kind in recent years. The casualty figures will continue to be juggled with or stated vaguely for quite a few days. But the death of a very large number of persons and the disability and injuries caused to hundreds of passengers will predictably cause much grief and horror in the public mind. Think of the circumstances. The Delhi-bound Brahmaputra Mail collides head-on with the Guwahati-bound Awadh-Assam Express at 1.55 a.m. Among many of those found dead immediately happen to be the four drivers of the two trains. As a message about the disaster reaches the possible rescue centres through the usually sluggish communication lines, activity begins. Within hours, more than 200 bodies are brought up by BSF men stationed at Panjipara. More rescuers come and the tragedy unfolds itself with heart-rending grimness. Wild stories are floated: there was a bomb blast before the collision of the two engines; there was a breakdown of the signal system; there was total lack of alertness on the part of the custodians of hundreds of lives on the two trains. But nothing is precisely known. A haphazard headcount begins. One finds that most of the victims in the Brahmaputra Mail are Army, BSF and CRPF personnel. Their destination was Delhi from where they might have gone to places like Kargil, Leh, and flood-affected areas in the plains. Guesswork follows guesswork. Most of the injured are shifted to hospitals in Kishanganj, Islampur, Raiganj and the accident-prone point called Siliguri! The bomb blast theory does not seem to be a product of a hypothesis in view of the massive number of security personnel among the passengers. However, human failure and mechanical errors cannot be ruled out as causative factors.

Every time a major railway accident takes places, statistics are dug out of old files to show that nothing unusual or abnormal has happened. The worst point repeatedly made is that the number of accidents per million train kilometres is steadily declining. Nobody in the establishment is prepared to face the fact that the Railways do not spend enough money to enhance safety prospects and to minimise accidents. It is widely known that the scope for human error has not been reduced by upgrading and maintaining the tracks and the rolling stock consistently. Modern technology has not been utilised imaginatively. Signalling has remained a faulty factor. Communication between drivers and railway stations has been full of snags. The Railways continue to say that resource constraints have impeded their schemes. But what about the overstaffing of the system? Are the sanctioned funds being properly utilised? Is there no scope for banning the expenditure on wrong heads? Money starts flowing for compensation after tragedies like those witnessed at Khanna last year and at Gaisal yesterday. Inquires are ordered. But the findings are seldom taken seriously. Mr Nitish Kumar will return to Delhi on his onward journey to Patna to play his old political games. The dead will be forgotten by the government. Their number will go into the dusty statistical files. We will wait yet again for another Khanna or another Gaisal. The country will go to the polls within a few months. Will any political party make railway safety an important point of its manifesto? It is time we thought of the loss of human lives in railway mishaps. It is often stated by the Railways that 500 deaths out of a million passengers ferried in a year constitute an "accepted average". If this kind of attitude continues, the Railway Ministry should be called the "Reckless Ministry". Bomb explosions have taken place repeatedly on railway tracks. Can better patrolling help? If Mr Nitish Kumar has a sense of shame, he should resign here and now. He will not lose much. Nobody knows what the next election has in store for him.

It’s cell phone election

Kargil has faded from the front pages of newspapers and prime time television news programmes. Telecom has stormed to take its place. Thus what promised to be a one-issue election is now more open. There are at least three powerful but disparate forces turning the new policy on cellular and basic telephone operation into a major controversy and their aims are also different. Opposition parties are keen to rub off a part of the personal sheen of the Prime Minister, realising that he is the main vote-catcher for the ruling alliance. That he is holding the charge of telecommunications has come handy and the inept handling of the issue by some bigwigs in the PMO has been of great help. There is clearly an element of desperation in the opposition camp and that is evident in their attempt to target the Prime Minister himself for being responsible for the “scam of the millennium”, as the CPM describes it. Then there are powerful cellular operators who are keen to sabotage the changes either because the old system spells more profit to them or because they want to destroy competition. They are extremely busy, ferreting out old and new documents and planting them on friendly or rookie reporters. An internal memorandum written by former Communications Minister Jagmohan has found its way to the press as has a note Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha wrote for the Cabinet. Within hours of the government’s claim that without the bailout package public sector financial institutions would lose over Rs 10,000 crore, there was a well-argued rejoinder. The loss, if any, would be a mere Rs 2500 crore and even this amount was covered by collaterals.

Now comes the most damaging bit of official evidence to punch several gaping holes in the government case. It appears that the Bureau of Industrial Costs and Prices (BICP), the high-powered body to examine the whole pricing process, has voiced its opposition as early as last November to the new changes and has felt that with the increase in the number of subscribers which is inevitable with the steady reduction in the cost of the instrument, most operators will make profit. Anyway part of the problem the licence-holders face is caused by delay in clearing projects by the Department of Telecommunications itself. The PMO has not so far realised the huge mischief potential of some private operators who have become the principal source of information to the newspapers, which are taking unusually partisan stands. One day the PMO tried to neutralise them by itself leaking the news that the Prime Minister had sent a detailed point-to-point rejoinder to the objections raised by President Narayanan. But it boomeranged when Rashtrapati Bhavan took umbrage at this improper public relations job. Since then the government (read the PMO) is relying on party workers like Mr Rangarajan Kumaramangalam and Mrs Sushma Swaraj to counter the sustained opposition charge without much success.If the issue retains its momentum, it is sure to become a major election issue and given the public mood, voters are likely to believe in the worst, whether or not the charge has any merit. This is the real danger and so far the BJP election managers have not given any attention to this.

Unkind cuts

Film-maker Shekhar Kapoor has done well to stand up to the censor board and refuse to release his multiple award winning "Elizabeth" in India if it insists on cutting three scenes from the film. This kind of scissors-happy attitude is totally out of sync with today's reality and a strange attempt to dictate terms of morality. Obviously, the board does not believe in seeing any film in totality and wants to excise everything that can be even mildly controversial. In "Elizabeth", it finds a severed head as too horrific. It also cannot stomach an archaic slang word. That is nothing unusual, considering that the board had tried to mutilate even Steven Spielberg's “Saving Private Ryan”. It had ordered as many as 14 cuts in Shekhar Kapoor's "Bandit Queen". In its attempt to live up to the image of being politically correct, the board is ever willing to reduce everything to the lowest common denominator. And while doing so, it does not distinguish between race-horses and asses. Trying to censor Oscar-winning films is in bad taste, to say the least, particularly when these are not exploitative or horrific at all. Ironically, while it is severe on quality films, the board lets ordinary films go scot-free. Gore, sex and violence that are a staple part of the average Indian film make one hang one's head in shame. But since these are portrayed in a roundabout way, they pass muster. Shekhar Kapoor has raised a valid point: if the man on the street is considered mature enough to have the power to vote his own government, he has to be also given the freedom to decide what he wants to see and what not to.

But then, in India, it is the government which has arrogated to itself the power to decide what is good for the common man. This power is exercised in a subjective and authoritative manner. So, an attempt is made to gag every creative expression. Readers will recall how a ruckus was created about the TV serial “Tamas”. When it is not the government, it is the private armies of regional leaders that are out to enforce their writ. Not too long ago, it was the Shiv Sainiks targeted theatres showing “Fire”. This tendency has to be discouraged forcefully. Gagging is not for the artistes alone. It is an attempt to deny the common man the right to choose for himself. It is high time the Censor Board and other such custodians of morality stepped out of the Victorian era.

THE KARGIL INTRUSION
Debate over intelligence failure
by Harwant Singh

There is a saying in French that the more things change, the more they are the same. In India it is the intelligence agencies which appear to have taken it upon themselves to establish its validity. In 1965, it was the shepherds who first informed the army of the presence of a large number of intruders along the Gulmarg heights and once more now in 1999, it was again a shepherd who first disclosed the presence of intruders in the Batalik sector. The Indian intelligence during this period of 34 years has seen much expansion and change, yet it is the same.

In a TV programme the Indian Defence Minister asserted that there was no intelligence failure in the Kargil aggression. This assertion was based on, what to him appears to be a reasonable premise and a plausible excuse, that the Indian intelligence did not have access to the operations room of the Pakistan army. Is it the Defence Minister’s case that intelligence agencies have no source other than access to enemy’s operations room which in the instant case was unfairly denied to them. The PM too has conveyed the impression that at the face of it, there has been no intelligence failure. How much this pre-judgement will influence the inquiry committee now ordered to go into the issue of intelligence and or other failures, only time will tell. On the other hand if it is not an intelligence failure then is it a failure at the national level and if so how will a member and a secretary of National Security Council (NSC) acting as chairman and secretary of the inquiry committee dig into the failings of the NSC! We hope the report of this inquiry committee, unlike the one conducted by Gen Henderson Brooks into the 1962 debacle, will be made public. At this point of time, a broad overview could be fruitful and help in dispelling the smog gathering around the issue.

The stretch of the LoC from Turtuk to Mushkoh valley (160 km) is well delineated and is along the more difficult and forbidding terrain in J and K. Since 1972 the area has been generally peaceful; free from infiltration, insurgency and border clashes except for last year’s artillery duels. The locals are of the Shia sect and Buddhist faith with no involvement or sympathy for the insurgents and other terrorist organisations working from across the border. Therefore, the responsibility for the defence of this vast area continued to be restricted to one infantry brigade which maintained a degree of surveillance over this tract of high mountain ranges within the constraints of its limited resources. Sustained resource crunch further crippled its capacity for surveillance. Electronic surveillance equipment evaluated in the early eighties could not be made available to the army for reasons best known to the MoD. With the ever-increasing demand for troops in the valley, this sector saw further depletion of its resources.

There are no resources with the army for trans-border intelligence gathering. Such tasks are not within its charter. Resources, and consequently responsibilities, are with RAW and some other intelligence agencies. In peace time military intelligence really comes into play when visual contact with the insurgents is established and at times when suitable local sources are available. It is only when information of movement of insurgents or infiltrators attempting to cross the border is received from intelligence sources that increased physical ground surveillance and/or re-deployment of troops to meet such a contingency is taken in hand. There are never enough resources to cater to all such situations at all times.

At a brigade level and in an LoC setting, standing orders lay down the posts to be held and their strength, those to be held only in summer months with the dates specified in this area there is no such thing as early summer or late winter. From around middle of October to end April weather can deteriorate suddenly and result in heavy snowfall of 5 to 6 feet in a matter of a few hours. Some time ago a complete patrol of 17 men disappeared under a snow avalanche. There is very little flexibility possible at the brigade level.

All these details are marked on the divisional and corps maps. No deviation from these instructions is acceptable. In case the army’s own internal investigations reveal any infringement of orders or laxity, be certain that those responsible will be severely dealt with; not withstanding the findings of the inquiry committee. That is the ethos in the services, which is the reason for their continued efficiency and high standards unlike some other organisations where accountability is absent and consequently performance has become dismal.

The scale and extent of the Kargil intrusion involved elaborate planning and preparations. New roads and tracks had to be made. Enrolling, training and equipping of a large number of insurgents from a motley crowd of terrorist organisations was undertaken. A large number of local porters and ponies for stocking of ammunition and stores were mustered. Number of new helipads in the area were prepared. Unusually large quantities of snow clothing and other winter warfare equipment from the world markets were procured. The RAW resources should have picked up information concerning these developments.

The Urdu Press in Pakistan, during the month of March, 99, had much to say about the developments opposite Kargil. Nawaz Sharif, during his visit to Skardu in February, 99, in the course of a fiery speech, had talked of Kargil being part of Pakistan (PoK.) These were perhaps the leads which should have set the bells ringing in the RAW and the JIC. The ARC wing of the RAW, which is equipped with the most sophisticated and state of the art electronic surveillance equipment and carries out periodic flights along the border, too, appears to have slept through this period of preparations and intrusion.

In December, 98, information obtained from an insurgent, Azhar Shafir Mir, during his interrogation by the BSF, pertaining to training of a large number of insurgents to cut off the Srinagar-Leh road, was reported to have been passed on to Delhi (why not the army in J and K?) There were some other bits and pieces of information concerning the developments opposite Kargil allegedly sent to Delhi by other intelligence agencies. This information from various intelligence agencies passed on to the Home Ministry and the JIC should have been collated, more information sought and the jigsaw puzzle assembled to form a meaningful picture. Since such information is routinely floated by our intelligence agencies to keep their backs constantly covered, those in Delhi appear to have ignored it or it was simply lost in the bureaucratic bumph.

This large-scale ingress into our territory over a wide area has been the result of a colossal intelligence failure at the national level, notwithstanding what the PM and the Defence Minister have to say on the subject. Equally a failure of the National Security Council and the JIC to anticipate and appreciate such a possibility, more so after the manifestation of the nuclear dimension in the Indo-Pak setting, India’s exaggerated fears in this regard aired by the self appointed spokespersons in India and the ever debilitating operational status of our conventional military capability.

A large number of intelligence agencies let loose in J and K have different and independent chain of command and control and consequently, different reporting channels. They work in a spirit of “one-up-manship” with very little cooperation and coordination amongst themselves and without any centralised control. At the lowest level where real time information is most essential, there is no lateral flow of time sensitive intelligence and these agencies often work off a common source and frequently at cross purposes. This sordid state of intelligence set-up in J and K has been repeatedly pointed out in these columns. In the present case it is the RAW which has much to explain.

There is the need to “take in” the larger picture of our national security policy for J and K. The policy enjoined on maintaining a distinct edge over Pakistan in conventional military capability and that any aggression in J and K would be taken as an attack on India and the Indian response will be tailored accordingly and about which we left Pakistan in no doubt in 1965. It is this policy which has ensured the sanctity of the LoC rather than the Simla Agreement. Our deployments in J and K have been based within the frame of reference of this basic policy. The question we need to address ourselves is that how come Pakistan came to perceive that this policy could have undergone a change. Was it the ever depleting stocks of ammunition and other warlike stores and equipment due to the prolonged absence of adequate fiscal support (of which we gave ample proof by rushing around the world markets looking for ammunitions for our guns and small arms after a somewhat minor operation involving a few units in the Kargil sector and are now looking for surveillance and other essential equipment) poor state of our tank fleet etc resulting in the degradation of that edge? Was it the composition of the NSC, packed as it is with retired and tired old bureaucrats from the Delhi cocktail circuit or our over preoccupation with the nuclear dimension and the airing of ill founded fears and the weak signals being emitted from Delhi over the last few years! Or perhaps all!

Finally, while the enquiry into the Kargil fiasco has been ordered, the move of the RAW chief as Governor of Arunachal Pradesh has for all practical purposes, exonerated that organisation, albeit before the trial. There are reports that he carried a dossier on the Kargil developments and perhaps it was convenient to get him out of the way. Be that as it may, there is a crying need to overhaul and reorganise the intelligence set-up in the country, particularly in J and K where all the intelligence agencies need to be brought under one authority and made fully accountable to it. At the Centre the JIC needs to be headed by a senior army General. Greater accountability of intelligence agencies is necessary to avoid another disaster which may perhaps have graver implications.

The writer, a retired Lieut-General, is a former Deputy Chief of the Army Staff.

Kashmir: a saga of dithering
by Pritam Bhullar

TWICE before we were surprised by Pakistan in Jammu and Kashmir, yet we refused to learn any lesson. Kargil is the third naked reality of Pakistan having inflicted surprise on us. Why do we get caught in a cleft-stick every time? Before answering this question, we have to briefly dwell on the ugly events which overlook us each time.

On September 1, 1965, Pakistan launched “Operation Grand Slam” (armoured thrust into the Chhamb sector to isolate a part of J and K by capturing Akhnoor). Though we lost Chhamb, Akhnoor was saved because Pakistan failed to maintain the momentum of its offensive, thanks to our hurriedly launching operations in the Lahore and Sialkot sectors to draw Pakistani forces away from Chhamb.

In the 1971 war, we again lost Chhamb to the enemy after suffering heavy casualties and proved the Greek proverb right that “it is disgraceful to stumble twice over the same stone”. This time the situation turned so bad that our divisional commander in the Chhamb sector started making plans to withdraw to Akhnoor. Disapproving his plans, the then Corps Commander, the late Lt-Gen Sartaj Singh, flew into the sector, took charge of the operations and ordered a counter-attack by reorganising the forces. Thus was saved the precarious situation.

Ironically, what stood out like a sore thumb was that our intelligence agencies ditched us both the times so much so that in 1971, it was estimated that only one Pakistani brigade was earmarked for this sector. But during the operations, we discovered that five brigades under the Pak 23 Infantry Division operated against us in this sector.

Incidentally, General Sartaj Singh, who retired as GOC-in-C, Southern Command, in 1974, was known to be one of the most determined field commanders of his time. He as a Corps Commander was the overall in charge of the entire J and K theatre during the 1971 war. It was only in July, 1972, that the Northern Command came into being with two corps under its command.

General Sartaj Singh’s style of functioning needs to be recalled (since it is often said that troops are always good but it is the commander who matters). Though his 15 Corps Headquarters was located at Udhampur, during the summer months he always moved his tactical headquarters to Srinagar to keep in a close touch with the valley and the Uri-Kargil-Leh sectors. Not only that, at least twice a week he used to fly to the forward areas to gauge the operational situation himself. And he knew each sub-sector like the back of his hand.

Granted that mountains eat up troops and you can, therefore, hold only tactical features. But this does not mean that full surveillance should not be kept over the unheld features and ingress routes. The General always kept his commanders on their toes. A great emphasis was laid by him on patrolling the areas which were not held by our troops. The information given by the patrols was checked back with the air surveillance reports as the first thing every morning. This left little chance with the enemy to do a Kargil on us as he has done now.

A question that stares us in the face is: How come we have been caught napping in Kargil this time? Who is answerable for this?

Undoubtedly, the Indian soldier is still one of the best, if not the best, in the world. This can also be said about our middle ranking officers who have proved it once again by suffering a disproportionate number of casualties to save the honour of the country. But the same cannot be said about our higher command.

Starting from the 1947 war, it is Pakistan that has acted every time in J and K and it is India that has reacted. Sadly, our rate of casualties is painfully high to be accepted. This is because we are fighting a war (what we call a war-like situation) of Pakistan’s choosing.

Those who rejoiced over the creation of Bangladesh in 1972 would do well to know that Pakistan is better off now than what it was in 1971 because it is more compact and consolidated today. Besides, its Army has carved out a niche for itself in the decision-making forum and calls the shots as far as the defence policy is concerned.

Now we can answer the question raised in the beginning of this article: “Why do we get caught in a cleft-stick every time? It is because the Indian politician does not act when he should act and acts when he should not act. This trait is inherent in his nature. To quote only one example, there was no reason why we should have meddled in Sri Lanka with our forces which made us cut a sorry figure eventually. Yet again, there was no reason why the politician should have disregarded the advice of the military commanders in 1948. Had he not done so, there would not have been any Kashmir problem today.

Another mystifying reality is that the Indian Army, unlike the Pakistan Army, does not have any say in decision-making or even in the defence policy of the country. And all decisions about the armed forces in India are taken by the bureaucrats who have always ridden roughshod over the recommendations of the Army. No wonder then, the defence forces do not get even the essential operational equipment like the Main Battle Tank (MBT), Advanced Jet Trainer (AJT), Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) and Aircraft Carrier, etc, even after the successive Service Chiefs have clamoured for these for years together. These are only a few of the hundreds of such examples, not to speak of the justified increase in pay and allowances and other benefits which continue to be denied to the armed forces.

Are you staple-happy?
by Mohinder Singh

The staple is a revolutionary advance over the pin; something comparable to the shaving cartridge (with twin edges stuck in plastic) over the standard blade. Both save upon steel. And so also space. 1,000 “chisel-pointed” staples come contained in a box smaller than a matchbox. And you don’t have to encumber yourself with an everdegenerating pin-cushion.

Pinning papers has hazards, too. A badly manufactured pin — with poor pinhead or blunt point — can hurt when pressed into papers. You can even nick a finger occasionally while handling pinned papers.

No wonder, the hand-operated stapler is now an obligatory equipment at office desks, shop counters, and packing places. The worthies working there staple anything in sight till a press on the machine produces a blank. Time to take a breather and reload the machine. Staples are not only replacing pins but things like tags and strings, tape and glue.

Papers already standing stapled inside envelopes are often stapled again from outside for “safer” transit. It’s another matter these often emerge mutilated if the receiver isn’t smart enough in the extrication exercise.

Of late even laundries have started stapling their markings to clients’ clothing. Earlier a pair of scissors took care of the stuff sewed on the garment. Now you need nimble nails to prise open the staple fangs. Shop wrappings, stapled at every conceivable place, can well be wrenched apart with a vigorous pull. But staples on a silk sari have to be handled with care.

Paper-clips are different; they join without puncturing. Their fastening may be less secure but unfastening is easier. Understandably newspapers and magazines caution their contributors: “No staples”.

Possibly the worst excesses of stapling can be seen on currency bundles. The staples used there appear to be of a specially vicious variety, and it’s not uncommon to have as many as four to five forbidding ones punched into a bundle of hundred.

“Experts” in shops and offices are seen methodically parting a bundle in the middle and twisting it open by sheer force (I’ve yet to see a female employee attempting the same). But to a novice the process of releasing precious notes through extracting those staples one by one can be quite tortuous. He’s lucky if he doesn’t end up inflicting further damage on those notes, many of them already suffering gaping holes.

Why on earth do our “scheduled” banks dish out heavily stapled bundles of badly damaged notes to their customers? But then banks often get stapled bundles from clients such as roadways, petrol pumps, big retail businesses. They simply punch another staple and affix their slip on it.

I don’t know how exactly other countries manage their currency circulation but I haven’t seen any foreign currency with such holes as ours — courtesy of the staple. And we have taken to another peculiar practice; people handling notes in businesses and offices doing jottings on the blank space of currency notes, as if the blank space was designed specifically for this purpose.

The staple has been a great invention. And it’s being increasingly put to manifold purposes. On top, it gives many of its wielders a “ring of modernity” — the feel of handling a machine. But then some thought should also be given to staple overuse, at times downright abuse.

by P. Raman
Major parties' frantic search for poll ‘mantras’

POLLING for the first stage of elections is just a month away. Yet all major political players are still groping in the dark for viable electoral alliances and workable campaign strategies. Unexpected troubles crop up so suddenly that everything seems to be in a flux. Yes, the ruling party is flush with funds. But even the Congress is not starved of resources. Seat sharing has never been a smooth affair for intending partners, and had often scuttled alliances at the ground level.

But what really perplexes one is the utter confusion among the entire crowd of campaign planners, slogan crafters and theme visualisers about the possible voter responses. No one is really sure which theme will click with the large sections of voters spread over varying geopolitical regions and trapped in conflicting local loyalties. Few give credence to frequent private surveys chartered by political parties. Campaign concepts which were adjudged best suddenly turn out to be politically highly untenable. Cauvery, Kargil, foreign origin, sympathy at one-vote defeat, the bomb, security ‘success’, dynasty, stability, ability, charisma — none of these is going to have a free run.

If one of these is found to catch the imagination of the public, the next moment it suddenly gets punched. So fluid and uncertain are election-eve politics. No one is sure how the people’s mood will change. In the normal course, the whizz-kids and backroom boys could have easily picked up a suitable campaign plank like political corruption, authoritarianism or the offer of viable alternatives and pressed ahead with such mantras with telling effect. Now every such plant is coming under effective challenge whether it is the Kargil war triumph, “Vajpayee, the pride of India”, or the “one-party mantra of the Congress. Hence the mantras are changing so fast.

On the Congress side, its original proposal to launch its election campaign on the plank of establishing a stable government under a one-party rule has already come under strain. Earlier, it was thought to be a very powerful election mantra at a time when coalitions, one after another, had been collapsing under the weight of their own contradictions. The Congress has a point when it says that its governments alone can complete the full term. All others had to bow out midstream. As of now, the BJP alliance may have about 20 parties. On the face of it, this can be an impressive election plank.

But, ironically, if the ongoing negotiations succeed, the Congress itself will have alliances with nearly a dozen parties. These include the AIADMK, RJD, two factions of the Republican Party in Maharashtra, MGP in Goa and its old Kerala allies. At the CWC meeting, it was pointed out that the party could have strengthened its position further had it assured its prospective allies of honourable representation in a future government. Apparently, there is a contradiction between the Congress’ one-party mantra and its frantic search for alliances with state-level parties. The party’s negligible presence in large states like UP, Bihar, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal and Maharashtra makes its election plank of single-party-rule highly untenable.

The BJP, which has been diligently building up its election plank from the day it took charge at the Centre, finds itself in an extremely unenviable plight. Most of its old mantras have become ineffective. The most adventurous of them — the nuclear blast — did not bring it any divident even in Rajasthan during the assembly elections last November. The party had expected the blast would fire latent patriotism and make itself a “hero”. Not only did the corresponding Pakistani explosion neutralised its effect but the Kargil war, too, proved the futility of such a dangerous weapon to either subjugate the enemy or win a war.

Sonia Gandhi’s foreign birth and her dynastic background have been other deadly weapons the ruling party had in its election arsenal. Now there is a sharp division even among the BJP strategists about its electoral impact. Some in the BJP even warm that such an adverse personal campaign would unnecessarily give her a heroine’s mantle. Raising the spectre of dynastic rule is certain to rebound on the BJP. In the name of fighting dynastic rule, the BJP has encouraged the worst kind of political dynasties. In Tamil Nadu, it is forced to justify the family rule of M. Karunanidhi, his son an nephew. The MDMK itself was born out of V. Gopalaswami’s revolt against the rule of Karunanidhi’s son, M.K. Stalin.

Palace intrigues within Shiv Sena supremo Bal Thackeray family, with which the BJP has been sharing power all these years, have taken a turn for the worse with the former’s son and nephew running street wars against each other. This week, the old man himself had to force a ceasefire on Raj Thackeray and Udhav. The BJP’s latest dynastic ally is Om Parkash Chautala, son of Devi Lal. The twosome run Haryana’s present ruling party. The lineage is longer — from grandfather to grandson — in the case of the other ally, National Conference. The very name of the BJD denotes its dynastic inheritance though Biju Patnaik himself had never encouraged it. Even Sukh Ram and son share power with the fighters of dynasty at the Centre.

Similarly, the party had made too much virtue out of its frantic search for political allies throughout 1998. It had accommodated every willing partner without the least regard for their ideological or political compatibility. It had rationalised all this by claiming that the BJP, unlike others, did not practice ‘political untouchability’. However now it suddenly finds Paswans, Yadavs and Patels utterly “untouchable”. It would not allow them to pollute its National Democratic Alliance. The ‘untouchability war was still raging in BJP at the time of writing with Vajpayee and others within the BJP taking diametrically opposite positions.

The BJP had rightly included the Cauvery agreement as an important achievement. Since the Karnataka and Tamil Nadu governments have endorsed it, the Opposition’s reservations over the accord have gone almost unnoticed. But now the ground reality is far from initial wishes. Resentment is building up among Tamil Nadu farmers over the non-availability of water when they need it badly. Larger sections in Tamil Nadu have begun questioning the agreement itself. Thus, the BJP and allies find it difficult to make the Cauvery accord as an election issue in Tamil Nadu.

A few days back, the BJP’s election managers had decided to make the Kargil Vijay an impressive nationalism-driven election issue. Along with this, they also wanted to highlight the perceived elimination of terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir. With this in view, the government used the media to the tilt to create the right patriotic fervour in the country. It was hoped that the government’s able conduct of the war will endear it to the voters and it could sweep the polls as Indira Gandhi had done after the 1971 war.

It now transpires that the whole strategy has run into trouble after the Opposition launched a counter campaign citing the government’s inability to prevent Pakistani infiltration in the first place. The Congress has asked a pertinent question: “When did the Prime Minister first knew about the infiltration?” Vajpayee’s long silence seems to have already made the Kargil plank extremely weak. The Congress whizz-kids are seeking to turn the tide against the BJP by charging it being responsible for the death of so many jawans.

The BJP’s main plank of making the Vajpayee image the bulwark of the campaign is also coming under increasing opposition fire. To an extent, this has been a combined response to the build up of an authoritarianism-based personality cult and the BJP camp’s personal attacks on Sonia Gandhi. It is a vicious circle. To build up charisma, you need mindless glorification and vesting of unlimited powers in an individual. This, in turn, leads to concentration of absolute authority and emergence of an ubiquitous coterie. And absolute power is a breeding ground for scandals. Sadly, this is what seems to be happening with Vajpayee.

Watch the kind of charges being thrown at him by the Opposition. Even the BJP spokesperson Sushma Swaraj’s husband now puts it on record that “it is not advisable to represent this Prime Minister” and Vajpayee “has no respect for his words.” The telecom scam, whether Rs 50,000 crore or Rs 1,500 crore, is going to be first-rate scandal with constitutional offices asking for clarifications. The capital is full of rumours about a close aide helping out a hotel group gobbling up prized ITDC estates in the name of denationalisation.

Rightly or wrongly, motives are being attributed to most of the decisions hastily pushed through by the caretaker government. Instead of removing allegations, the appointment of the Kargil panel has only heightened the controversy. Tragically, the fabricators of the Vajpayee cult are rendering disservice to him by putting every misdeed of the others at his doorstep.

Much of the poll-eve confusion about the election mantra due to the all-pervading ideological bankruptcy and the new generation politicians’ abiding faith in last-minute public opinion engineering. Policies and programmes are no more evolved on the basis of the respective party’s distinctive ideology and commitment but crafted and packaged to win over voters. During the debate on the confidence motion against the Vajpayee Government, a member of dissolved House had agitatedly told the listening fellows MPs and the newsmen in the Central half of Parliament: “Do you think it is an easy job to fool four lakh voters and come here?” Now this “fooling game” has become the main obsession with most political parties. Hence the frantic search for new mantras.

75 YEARS AGO
Proposals for fasting

Yesterday all the four prohibited roads in Lahore were barricaded just where the prohibition boards were put up. Instead of the usual three, six volunteers were sent, the Committee having decided to defer sending twenty volunteers pending Mr M.K. Gandhi’s instructions.

In a letter to Mr Gandhi, the leader of the satyagraha asked Mr Gandhi for the approval of the following suggestion:

The strength of each batch be increased to a number sufficient enough to block the path altogether. Obstruction may either be general, applying to all passers by, or particularly applying to Government servants in their public capacity and to scale the fence as opportunity occurs, if the police do not remain on the other side to block the path of the volunteers.

He also suggested the resumption of regular fasting in the following ways:—

Absolute fasting unto death; refusing any and every kind of food except mere cold water; volunteers disabled either as the result of swooning or other illness to take prescribed food and medicine only to such an extent as would enable them to resume fasting again; and partial fasting — i.e. eating just so much as would enable them to be fit to continue the fight, provided, however, the police supply the food.

These steps, the letter says, were proposed at an emergency meeting of the Committee, which found that fasting produces a salutary effect upon the public, and it is also the desire on the part of many volunteers and sympathisers of the movement to continue fasting.