A limited move
THE lifting of sanctions on 51 entities by the US Commerce Department last week is a feebly positive gesture. It is not an unambiguous recognition of India as a sovereign nuclear weapons state.

Revamping PDS
IF Minister Shanta Kumar has his way, the public distribution system (PDS) is set to shed much of its fat. But it is a big if.

Women's empowerment
THE pessimists may not entirely agree with UNICEF's assessment of the progress made by India in granting women the right to participate in the democratic process at the grassroots level.

LOOKING AT THIRD MILLENNIUM
Prescriptions for India
by T. V. Rajeswar
THE first millennium and the present (second) one are counted in terms of the Christian era, and we are entering the third millennium. Civilisation was known to exist almost 3000 years before the birth of Jesus Christ.

Pirzada: Pak man always in demand
by Satyindra Singh
IF you care to look back at the history of military coups in Pakistan you will come across a name — a civilian to boot — that figures in each of these.

Congress: right clue, wrong cure
by P. Raman
EVERY time the Congress suffers a rout, we get two disgustingly repetitive responses — one from the Congress in the form of a post-mortem and the other from the gratuitous media as its own post-script on the report. What makes the whole exercise meaningless is the worn-out cliches based on a set of outdated concepts. This time both the introspecters and their critics have totally ignored the rapidly changing rules of the power game and the overbearing role for the new concepts of political management.

Maintaining links
by M. L. Kotru
THE partition of India in 1947 caused one of the great human convulsions of history. The statistics are staggering. Twelve million people were displaced; a million died; seventyfive thousand women were said to have been abducted and raped.

75 Years Ago

Viceroy at Bombay
HIS Excellency the Viceroy, accompanied by Sir Leslie Wilson, motored to Bombay Gymkhana, where he was introduced to the European and the Hindu teams, who are taking part in the quadrangular cricket tournament.

A limited move

THE lifting of sanctions on 51 entities by the US Commerce Department last week is a feebly positive gesture. It is not an unambiguous recognition of India as a sovereign nuclear weapons state. As many as 200 items were put on the punitive list in 1998 after the Pokhran nuclear tests. The stated American intention has a narrow angle and not quite a respectable focus. The items out of the Entities List are, according the US administration itself, mainly non-sensitive products that ordinarily do not require an export licence for India. The policy of denial for dual-use items, controlled for nuclear and missile technology reasons to all entities, remains unchanged. A limited step deserves limited appreciation and no self-negating applause. When Congressman Gary L. Ackerman, a New York Democrat and Co-chairman of the Congressional India Caucus, told President Clinton to "press ahead" with the review of the Entities List from which 150 items deserved to be dropped soon in the interest of fair trade relations, he was only being pragmatic. This leading member of the International Relations Committee had met Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, business and political leaders of much consequence and "people from all walks of life" in India some time ago. After stating that India, in recent months, had made important overtures to the USA, Mr Ackerman added: "We have seen significant progress towards economic liberalisation in several key sectors, creating new and important export opportunities for US companies". He gave facts and reasons: "India today has one of the highest rates of growth and the lowest rates of inflation in the world. The Bombay Stock Exchange is at an all-time high, and investors around the world are taking a closer look at India".

Add to the Ackerman assessment the outspokenness of the New Jersey Democrat, Mr Frank Pallone, Jr: "About 150 items remain on the sanctions list. There were some truly absurd examples, some of which have been taken off the list such as medical research facilities and academic institutions. This punitive list, in effect, is a broad trade embargo against companies and agencies with little or no direct connection to nuclear weapons programmes. Besides undeservedly punishing the Indian entities, the list ends up in hurting US firms and research organisations that have ties with them". Unprejudiced people on Capitol Hill realise that sanctions have not been removed from any commercial entity. Defence production establishments and a few think tanks or centres of research may benefit from the waiver. What is the "wide importance" of the reduction of sanctions then? The step has been taken to influence India to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. The timing of the announcement shows that the USA is keeping in view the planned visit of Mr Clinton to India. Is there any reason for this country to hustle itself into an act which makes it lose, among other things, the advantages of the Pokhran tests (both I and II)? The CTBT means an unequal agreement. The nation, which has always advocated genuine global disarmament, does not want to prolong needless negotiations and submit itself to the use of pressure tactics by the major nuclear haves. The USA itself is sitting pretty on piles of weapons of mass destruction. Even after initialling, completing the process of ratification and depositing the treaty instruments, the big powers will continue their laboratory tests and enhance their killing capacity. True, India now has enough expertise to produce nuclear weapons and missiles. It can maintain its effective deterrence and sign any international treaty. But what it signs must be fair, non-discriminatory and universal. It has lived honourably with haughty sanctions. Search for a national consensus on the CTBT is a right thing to do. A national debate will be another correct step after which Parliament can, by a unanimous resolution, empower the Government to take the appropriate decision. We don't have a nuclear hit list and we want to stick to our "no-first-strike" commitment. But does the nuclear world recognise our status in respect of the international nuclear and missile control regimes like the Nuclear Suppliers Group? Our self-respect as a nuclear power is not subject to superpower intimidation.

Revamping PDS

IF Minister Shanta Kumar has his way, the public distribution system (PDS) is set to shed much of its fat. But it is a big if. The lethargic and chronically loss-making (sorry, subsidy-consuming) leviathan has many friends and patrons who have carved out a mini empire for themselves and are loath to renounce their power. Still it is good to hear the Minister, who is in charge of Public Distribution and Consumer Affairs, offering a frank appraisal of the many ills of the system. The FCI (Food Corporation of India) spends Rs 2.70 on a kilo of wheat as handling charges. This works out to 50 per cent of the procurement price and shows sheer inefficiency. Two, there is large-scale diversion of grains to the open market to be sold at a higher price. The volume of cereals is huge and it means that as much as Rs 3500 crore spent as subsidy on this does not benefit anyone. If this malpractice, prevalent in all for zones, ends, the total food subsidy will come down by that amount from the present level of about Rs 10,000 crore! Three, the FCI storage system leaves much to be desired. Often the quality of grain deteriorates and again, often there is pilferage, described within the organisation as damage caused by rats and rain. All this makes the PDS an Augean stable, demanding much imagination and hardwork to clean it.

As he has hinted in an interview to a business newspaper, years of government interference and indifference have made the FCI, the key component of the whole structure, forget what it is to be dynamic or take initiative. At present the FCI listlessly enters the mandi during the harvest time of wheat and paddy, buys the surplus offered by the kisan at the floor price, stores the grain in an unscientific manner and spends thousands of crores of rupees in transporting it to the consumption centres. To be fair, procuring about 15 or 20 million tonnes within a few weeks is admittedly a herculean task, but the point is that all this is done in a routine way, leading to the painful situation accurately presented by the Minister. He also wants to review the present policy on sugar and edible oil import. It is well to remember the whiff of a scandal in sugar import from Pakistan and the chorus from sugar mills for a steep increase in customs duty. The government has failed on two counts. One, it has not announced the price of levy sugar for the crushing season which ended on September 30, but has put up the PDS rate by Rs 60 a quintal. This means that government owes the mills about Rs 300 crore as they have supplied five lakh quintals at the previous year’s price. Two, it has not so far announced the minimum support price for sugarcane, though some states have. This year a similar situation is developing in the matter of edible oil. Everyone in this sector is mounting pressure to make the import costly by hiking the duty from 25 per cent to as high as 60 per cent. Of course this is a collection of sectional interests fobbed as the country’s, read consumer’s, interest. It would be better if the Minister appoints two separate committees to shape the policy for these two commodities to strike a fine balance between production and pricing, between pricing and import. The millennium is the right time to streamline all anachronic policies and procedures.

Women's empowerment

THE pessimists may not entirely agree with UNICEF's assessment of the progress made by India in granting women the right to participate in the democratic process at the grassroots level. They may also have reservations about accepting the findings of the international agency on the status of child health care in the country. Of course, the policy-makers would be happy with the words of praise the annual report has for the decision to encourage, not merely allow, women to take part in panchayat elections and the child immunisation programme. However, a holistic appraisal would show that gender bias is still rampant even in the so-called educated and upwardly mobile sections of society. Rural India, of course, has a lot of catching up to do for making incurable pessimists nod their heads in agreement with what has been said in the report "The State of the World's Children 2000". In fact, what the report describes as bias are thinly disguised acts of "gender hostility" by men against women which are primarily responsible for slowing down the process of gender reforms and have a negative impact on the child health care programme. Yet, in spite of countless social and historical impediments some progress has been made, in evolving a more gender-friendly society, which seems to have impressed UNICEF. Nevertheless, the bitter truth is that a lot of ground remains to be covered for making the next millennium grant Indian women the right to be equal partners in the decision-making process. The policy of reservation of seats for women in the grassroots forums of governance would earn even a higher rating than the one given by UNICEF the day women-members would stop taking "secret orders" from their male relatives for framing gender-sensitive village development programmes.

Without taking into account the fact that the rate of female foeticide, both among rural and urban women, is still alarmingly high, that girls are usually more under-nourished than their male siblings and that the rate of female illiteracy too is high, achieving gender dignity even in the next millennium may remain an unachievable goal. That India is among the countries where the rate of under-five mortality is abnormally high too can be traced to the lack of awareness among women about how simple life-saving procedures and precautions can bring down the infant mortality rate to acceptable limits. Recently, Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee showed rare political courage by stating that the draft of a new more comprehensive population control policy would soon be released for public debate before obtaining political consensus on the sensitive issue. It is a welcome initiative. If the Prime Minister means business, the next bold step he should take is to persuade Parliament to fulfil the promise, without resorting to stalling tactics, of reserving 33 per cent seats in the country's legislatures for women. Once this hurdle in the path of women's empowerment is removed UNICEF would have a more valid reason for praising India's progress in diverse fields.

LOOKING AT THIRD MILLENNIUM
Prescriptions for India
by T. V. Rajeswar

THE first millennium and the present (second) one are counted in terms of the Christian era, and we are entering the third millennium. Civilisation was known to exist almost 3000 years before the birth of Jesus Christ. The pyramids, the Indus Valley, the dominance of the Romans and the Greeks in the Mediterranean region, the invasion of Alexander, India’s Mauryan empire in Central India and Ashoka’s rule were all in the centuries prior to the Christian era. Buddha in India and Confucius in China were of the 6th century B.C. and Buddhism travelled across the frontiers of India to the entire Far East in this age.

During the first millennium India witnessed several foreign invasions from the West. The Huns came in the 7th century, the Arabs in the 8th century and Mahmood Ghaznavi’s invasions began in 1000 A.D. The Gupt empire flourished in the North while the Cholas held sway in the South. Prophet Mohammed and Islam in the 6th century A.D. led to major historic developments in West Asia, Europe and the East. The Arab forces overran Persia, Egypt and Spain within 100 years after the passing of Prophet Mohammed.

The second millennium witnessed the establishment of Muslim rule in India. The first 500 years of the millennium were a chaotic. This period witnessed Timur’s raid and destruction of Delhi in 1399 and the defeat and destruction of the last Hindu empire of Vijayanagar in the South in 1564. Then came the Mughals and the second half of the millennium was marked by Mughal rule beginning in 1556 with the great Mughal Akbar. And by early 18th century the Mughal rule was in decline, but the second half of the second millennium was dectated by the Western conquerors beginning with the arrival of the Portuguese adventurer, Vasco da Gama, in 1498 in Malabar. This was followed by the Dutch, the French and the British, and it was the British, who prevailed over other Western competitors. After the battle of Plassey in Bengal in 1757, the British power crept all over India during the next 100 years. In contrast to the chaotic socio-political conditions prevailing in India, there was an effervescence of the Bhakti cult represented by Guru Nanak, Kabir, Chaitanya and the Bhakti poets of the South. At the very least these seers and poets strengthened the social consciousness of the people. In spite of the political turmoil India remained largely Hindu even though the attacks against the Hindu society were severe at times.

In the East, the Mongols were on the rampage in the 13th century, followed by the rule of Ming and Manchu dynasties in China. It was during this period that the Hindu and Buddhist kingdoms of Sri Vijaya in the present Indonesian islands, the Champa Kingdom in Vietnam and the Sailendra Kingdom with its celebrated capital at Angkor War in Cambodia flourished. The Hindu and Buddhist cultural influence had spread throughout East Asia consisting of the present day Myanmar, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. The Chinese power had also increased its sway in this region in later years. As chronicled by the editors of Life magazine in 1964, “However, much Europe was to change the region and whatever the extent of China’s chronic threat to the area, more than a thousand years of Indian influence had immeasurable effect. It endowed all of South-East Asia with religion, doctrine and ethics, and with art, literature, institutions and ideas and wisdom — in short, civilisation.”

In the West, Columbus landed on the shores of the present day America in 1492 and from the early 17th century the great migration of European settlers to the new world began. The United States of America was born in 1776. The 20th century of the second millennium witnessed several major historic developments as well as scientific and technological revolutions. There were two World Wars and the Cold War which began in 1945. The communist ideology became a powerful social and political instrument by the mid-century and it also met with an abrupt end before the century is over. Technologically, there has been a revolution in transportation, communications, conquest of diseases, flourishing of art and literature and economic progress. The jet airlines, the automobiles, the telephones, the computers, the decoding of DNA, the revolution in genetics and space technology and the nuclear weapons are some of the dominant examples of the second half of the 20th century. As the second millennium passes, we witness prosperity in the USA and the erstwhile colonial powers, of Europe, the decline of Russian power and its struggle to hold the outlying areas, most of Africa in penury and China as the rising industrial and military power in the East. Japan remains strong economically as well as a potential military power, and the East Asian countries are recovering from the economic setback of 1997.

Historically, India had its decades of glory in the first millennium while the second millennium witnessed conquerors from West Asia and Europe represented by Mughal rulers and the British later. Mahatma Gandhi leading India to independence, the Partition and Pakistan’s hostility almost from the beginning are the main events of the second half of the century which is passing.

Where does India stand at the end of the second millennium? Would it be wrong to say that instability, security threats from the East and the West, internal unrest promoted by hostile foreign interests, about 35 per cent of the people still below the poverty line, unchecked growth of population, nearly 40 per cent of the people and more than 65 per cent women remain illiterate, religious superstition and caste prejudices having a powerful hold over large sections of society, and casteism more than communalism emerging as the dominant social force in the whole of India are some of the prominent features at the socio-political level? That casteism determines politics was amply proved during the parliamentary and assembly polls held in the past 10 years. The Mandal genie let out by Mr V.P. Singh, in a calculated attempt to thwart the Hindutva forces on the rampage, has overtaken every aspect of India’s socio-political life and it is threatening to stay as a permanent feature.

India is self-sufficient in food production thanks to the Green Revolution of the 1960s but luck is running out, India’s hundred crores of people are multiplying with no concern of the future while the Government of India is unable to adopt a compact long-term policy. The policy plan put forth by Prof M.S. Swaminathan in 1994 is still pending. India is the only country in the world where more than two crore cases are pending in the courts and 32 lakhs of them in the High Courts. As Mr Palkhiwala pointed out, the people who should be put in jails are roaming free. Nowhere else in the world are laws enforced less than in India. Just one example is enough: Phoolan Devi. The political system is unable to tackle the nexus between criminals and politicians, particularly since several persons with a criminal background have entered Parliament and state assemblies.

From the security point of view, India’s emergence as a nuclear state marked a historic step but it has also brought in its wake a host of problems. The nuclear doctrine poses an enormous economic burden on the country for the next 15-20 years. The Kargil war has also imposed an additional burden since India has to strengthen the three wings of the armed forces. India has the misfortune of having two potential nuclear enemies, both on the West and the East, represented by Pakistan and China who are also close allies. And the Kashmir problem is spilling over to the next century, with no signs of violence abating.

What are the prescriptions for India to emerge as a strong well-knit nation in the third millennium? There are several, but at the very minimum, political stability, putting down corruption, including the nexus between politicians and criminals, abolition of illiteracy, control of population growth and conscious all-round efforts to push back the spreading menace of casteism and communalism, completion of economic reforms and the determination to move ahead and keep our head high in the comity of nations are indispensable. Do we have the will to do all this?

Pirzada: Pak man always in demand
by Satyindra Singh

IF you care to look back at the history of military coups in Pakistan you will come across a name — a civilian to boot — that figures in each of these. The man is an eminent lawyer, with a roaring practice, and more than that, he has been the Mr Fix-it of each such administration. Not just that. Whenever a politician, say someone like Mr Nawaz Sharif, is in trouble he usually turns to the man, Sharifuddin Pirzada, who is the top ranking civilian member of Gen Pervez Musharraf’s junta. He was the man Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif turned to when he was engaged in that mortal combat with the then Chief Justice of Pakistan, Mr Sajjad Ali Shah. It was Pirzada’s genius that saw the Quetta Bench of the Supreme Court passing a verdict that finally unseated Chief Justice Shah so desperately desired by Mr Sharif.

Going back in time, it was Pirzada who replaced Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, a creation of Gen Ayub Khan, from the latter’s Cabinet after a major row over Ayub’s decision to let the Chinese build the Karakoram Highway cutting across parts of the former State of Jammu and Kashmir. Ayub found Pirzada “a useful man, who could always devise some formula to get over a legal difficulty”.

“Pirzada excelled in the art of obfuscation and Ayub (in later days) was quite irritated by the way he would go on trimming and hedging every word...” notes Altaf Gauhar, Ayub’s biographer. Pirzada was very much around during subsequent developments, including the rise and fall of Bhutto. He was again in the thick of it when Gen Zia-ul-Haq ousted Bhutto, providing all the legal back-up that Zia needed not only to legitimise his authority but also to think in terms of new constitutional devices to undo the 1973 constitution.

Pirzada was available to Mr Nawaz Sharif as well when he took on the judiciary. And it is no surprise that he should figure high in the list of advisers of General Musharraf. The more uncharitable of Pirzada’s critics describe him as an evil genius. These critics are, however, not sure of what his role has been in framing charges against Mr Nawaz Sharif considering that he was once very close to the former Prime Minister. It is also suggested that it may have been his idea to have the Sharif trial moved up a notch by shifting it from the Special (Sessions) Judge’s court to one presided over by a High Court judge.

If he has had any say in the conduct of the cases against the former Prime Minister, Pirzada obviously must be past his legal prime. How else does one explain the five adjournments already granted by the court, initially because the prosecution was not ready with the charge-sheet and the last one because it would not hand over the tapes of the conversations recovered from the black-box of the aircraft in which General Musharraf was supposed to have been “hijacked” by Mr Nawaz Sharif on October 12. The dilly-dallying by the prosecution raises many doubts about the strength of the case against Mr Sharif as does the additional charge clamped as an afterthought, as it were, on him of waging war against Pakistan. One is not judging the merit of the accusations but implied in hijacking is the physical presence of the hijacker, armed or not, and besides, how does a duly elected Prime Minister wage war against his own country? Perhaps Pirzada will come up with an answer which the prosecution will present when the trial finally commences.

Pirzada is meanwhile keeping himself occupied on other fronts. Like he has suggested the launching of a case against Ms Benazir Bhutto for her alleged involvement in the killing of two Jamat-e-Islami workers the last time when she was Prime Minister. Pirzada was Zia’s righthand man when Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto was tried and hanged on a similar charge. Pirzada has made two other suggestions. He wants President Rafiq Tarar, a Sharif crony, to be replaced. And his choice as replacement is Yaqub Ali Khan, a former Corps Commander, who served as a diplomat and later on as Zia’s Foreign Minister. The problem with Yaqub is that he is a Shia and, like General Musharraf, a Mohajir. But trust Pirzada to find an answer to this problem too. The problem, though, remains the Punjabis who account for 60 per cent of the country’s population. Even after allowing for General Musharraf’s so-called good intentions the brazen manner in which he has kept the army and the judiciary out of the accountability net begs the question: Why should politicians alone be accountable when many in the army are known to be corrupt and have amassed huge fortunes?

Be that as it may, the self-proclaimed reformist government of General Musharraf seems to be losing some of its sheen as it continue to hop, skip and jump from one problem to another without finding a solution to any. The groundswell of popular support is fast dissipating. General Musharraf’s extensive visits to several Muslim capitals during the past two months may have earned him sympathy for his “cause”, but at the ground level, within his country, people are known to be getting apprehensive about the military ruler’s intentions. The 10 per cent increase in the petrol and diesel prices is seen as an unbearable burden, made even less so by the knowledge that the increase has been effected to pacify international financial institutions, particularly the IMF.

General Musharraf’s Finance Minister, Mr Shaukat Aziz, is being accused of having gone back on his promise that the price spiral would be brought under control. Among the sharpest critics of the petroleum price hike has been the former ISI Chief, Gen Hameed Gul, who sees it as continuing capitulation to American pressure. He is not impressed by the softening of the US attitude towards the new military set-up, suggesting that the USA’s prime priority is to force Pakistan to sign the CTBT and to resolve its problems with India.

Taking off from here and putting it against the backdrop of the beginning of popular disenchantment with the new regime, there looms the danger of General Musharraf taking the recourse to the customary ploy used by all Pakistani regimes, civilians or military, to divert attention from internal problems: turn to Indian-baiting, more precisely to Kashmir. Not that General Musharraf has not done his bit already in this regard. A new strategy has been evolved and the essential elements of which involve large-scale sabotage and direct attacks on the military and paramilitary targets. If civilians suffer as a consequence, so be it.

The strategy also envisages strengthening the terrorist bases in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir and the involvement of as many militant organisations as possible in a revived and reinforced Jehad in Kashmir. Simultaneously, opinion is to be drummed up the world over, including, of course, in the Muslim countries, in support of an armed Kashmir liberation struggle. Part of the new scheme is not to have any dialogue with India unless the latter agrees in advance to top priority resolution of the Kashmir issue to the satisfaction of Pakistan and the people of Kashmir, which is another way of saying, as long as India does not agree, to part with Kashmir.

General Musharraf is under pressure from within the GHQ not to succumb to American pressure on Kashmir. Should he try to resist this pressure he may find himself making room for someone like General Aziz who, incidentally, hails from the Mirpur region of the former princely State of Jammu and Kashmir. — ADNI

Maintaining links
by M. L. Kotru

THE partition of India in 1947 caused one of the great human convulsions of history. The statistics are staggering. Twelve million people were displaced; a million died; seventyfive thousand women were said to have been abducted and raped. There were many other depressing, disturbing and most chilling manifestations.

As a refugee from Lahore, even though I was this side of the border earlier, my parents came away with nothing, and they were even deprived of their tiffin-carriers at the Ferozepur border. My parents had locked up our house in Model Town, Lahore hoping to return there soon. But we never could and sadly would never be able to either. For myself, I was able to ‘go to Lahore by proxy’ when in 1952 I did a course at the Royal Naval College, Greenwich, with another fellow Indian student officer. With us were two Pakistani officers from Lahore and I have to admit even today that I felt “closer” to the two Pak officers than my Indian colleague who was from Tinniveli. With the two Pak officers I could laugh more and we could also have the “luxury” of indulging in colourful banter in Punjabi!

But, this is one of the gripping stories mentioned by Suketu Mehta in a 250-page volume recently published titled “Guns and Yellow Roses — Essays on the Kargil war”. Mehta’s 15-page essay was first delivered as a talk for Study of Developing Societies in Delhi, heard by many of us.

Referring to the three-and-a-half wars India and Pakistan have fought, Mehta says: “We are nearing the last act, the logical and mythic end. The people of the sub-continent respect illicit love for the most powerful love is the hidden love, the secret longing of the individual soul for an absent God.”

Mehta had a Sindhi friend in Bombay whose father, a doctor, left Karachi only in 1965. Till then, he kept his practice in Karachi. Among his clients were the women of a brothel. His wife always knew when he had treated one of them, because the notes he brought home that day would be scented. For some reason, the prostitutes preferred Hindu doctors — they thought the Hindus would not take liberties with them. They were also quite shy around the doctor; when he would go to examine them, they would unveil only the affected part; so he saw their bodies only in segments, never whole! One day one of the prostitutes, whom he had now known for a long time, asked him if he would come to her room. He wasn’t sure what she wanted, and was hesitant, but she insisted. “Come to my room, Doctor,” she said, and she led him inside when no one was looking and locked the door. Then she opened the almirah in the back of the room and showed him her secret inside. He came closer and saw what she was pointing at: It was a small shrine, with a statue of Lord Krishna. Lifting her veil the prostitute told him that she prayed to Krishna every day. She was a Hindu woman who had been kidnapped during partition, forced to convert, and then sold to this brothel. But she maintained, in the silences of her room, this illicit lover, Krishna, through all these long years.

That was all the prostitute was asking of the doctor; to bear witness to her love, to the truth of her love.

Suketu Mehta has to his credit short stories and articles and is currently working on a novel. He would obviously raise many thoughts and views for the readers of his essay when he ends this story by stating that “Love can still be mythic in South Asia. There is a reason the South Asian writers are suddenly in vogue in the West. It is because we are a storehouse, a seed bank, of myth. Our leading exports are software, jewels and myths. Is there any such thing as forbidden love in Paris, in New York? There the greatest tragedy possible with love is that it can end in marriage and divorce; here it would end in death”.

The mystery that is Eas And will the twain evet?

Congress: right clue, wrong cure

by P. Raman

EVERY time the Congress suffers a rout, we get two disgustingly repetitive responses — one from the Congress in the form of a post-mortem and the other from the gratuitous media as its own post-script on the report. What makes the whole exercise meaningless is the worn-out cliches based on a set of outdated concepts. This time both the introspecters and their critics have totally ignored the rapidly changing rules of the power game and the overbearing role for the new concepts of political management.

The remedies recommended are proposed to be implemented at three levels — policy, strategy and organisational-functional. Taking the last first, much has been said about the need for ‘decentralisation’ of decision making and allowing more ‘internal democracy’. It is argued that this kind of democratisation alone will make a heterogeneous mass organisation like the Congress really vibrant. Apparently, this excessive emphasis on the organisational liberalisation has been an over-reaction to the virtual decimation of the Congress in the 1977 elections. Tightly centralised functioning under the diktats of the ‘coterie’, ‘caucus’ and the extra-constitutional centre of power’ did damage the Congress. Such institutions do isolate the leadership from the ranks.

But it is not so in the year 2000. Centralised decision making is no more a dirty word in Indian politics. There is a clear credibility gap between crowing about democratisation for romanticism sake and actually following it. The most unpleasant truth about the contemporary Indian political establishment is that the lofty ideal of internal democracy has become anathema to the successful performance of a political party. Perhaps the only exception has been the Left parties and pre-1996 BJP. The two had managed to maintain their own system of arriving at a consensus through internal discussions.

All those who had championed the massive movement against the authoritarianism in 1970s have now picked up chapter and verses from Indira Gandhi’s much maligned script. Each one of them has borrowed her bureaucratic party structure. In her Congress, she decided who should be the chief minister and who should be punished. This is precisely what Atal Behari Vajpayee is now doing. It may look paradoxical. But Vajpayee’s BJP, and not Sonia’s Congress, is the real inheritor of Indira Gandhi’s inverted pyramid structure of dictatorial party management with all its essential ingredients like an all-powerful PMO, coterie and backroom boys. This is what Kalyan Singh describes as ‘highest command’.

Deprive any of those national or regional parties of their super boss. You will find it collapse just within a quarter. Name any party, ruling or in the opposition. “Like the DMK or AIADMK, Telugu Desham, Lok Shakti, Shiv Sena, Nationalist Congress Party, Rashtriya Janata Dal, Samajwadi Party, Samata Party, Tamil Maanila Congress, Trinamul Congress, Chautala party or Bansi Lal party, National Congress and the AGP in the east. Indira Gandhi lives in each one of these outfits. They imbibe the same spirit. No one could continue in these parties without pledging unqualified support to the respective boss.

Thus Indira Gandhi’s centralised structure — not the lofty ideals like internal democracy — has gone into our political psyche. Some look to Delhi and others to the respective state capitals for perks and patronage in exchange of their loyalty. This patron-client relationship has become the secret of a successful party. Experience shows that the system works better at the state level as it is easier for a regional supremo to understand their district satraps bring them round. It becomes too unwieldy at the national level. Hence birth of an occasional Kalyan Singh, Sharad Pawar and Shankersinh Vaghela.

Against this background, it is meaningless to expect the Congress alone to revert to the system of genuine party democracy. We had the sad experience of the Janata parivar which had experimented with internal democracy and respect for individual opinion. The collapse of the Janata marked the real tragedy of the internal democracy and established the inevitability of the one-boss system. Possibly, it has been a hangover of the old feudal culture where the people were conditioned to look to a raja. Since it has established itself as a fairly successful political institution, if the Congress now takes a fancy for it, it will land itself in fresh troubles.

In this category falls the Antony panel’s suggestion for holding secret ballots for party elections at all levels. In principle, it is a noble ideal under which real democracy would flourish and the will of the party members will prevail. How difficult is it in practice could be gauged from the fact that even a relatively more disciplined BJP had faced too much of violence during the organisational elections. Like the Congress, the BJP could not complete the elections in many states. The BJP is also learning to adopt the system of informally drawing up agreed lists to avoid the bad blood and heightened factionism.

If the Congress really enforces the secret ballot system to chose the CLP leaders, you will find one chief minister for every half year. In early 80s Indira Gandhi too had tried the slip system by which each MLA or MLC would hand over a piece of paper stating his or her preference for the chief ministership, to the AICC observers. This has been a modified version of consensus taking. Even this had encouraged more factionism and more frequent demands for change of leadership despite the prior understanding that the elected leader should not be disturbed for at least three years. Even forces outside the Congress may use it to induce instability.

Similar is the case with the CWC’s decision to fix the candidates three months and one month prior to the Lok Sabha and assembly elections respectively. Elaborate schedules were set to send AICC observers to the constituencies and districts sufficiently in advance to identify the candidates, study the area specific campaign issues and to keep the rebels in good humour with alternative offers of posts. This was once tried in Madhya Pradesh with some salutary results. However, the whole process had got stuck up at the stage of the candidates’ selection.

Apart from the delay in Delhi, it was found that early selection gave more time for the rebel candidates to consolidate themselves. Often it even helped such aspirants seek nomination from other parties. Another problem was that the main rival party could make its own choice on the basis of the specific case and communal calculations to cut into the Congress nominee’s votes. The Congress itself had resorted to these tactics by putting up formidable candidates like T.N. Seshan, Karan Singh, etc against the BJP stalwarts.

CWC’s decision for cadre training also falls into the category of misplaced notions. Cadres could never be raised in training camps. If it were effective, the Congress might have been blessed with an army of highly trained leaders at all levels right from the primary unit.

Rajiv Gandhi had launched such an elaborate scheme to raise a cadre of block and district ‘coordinators’. This was 15 years back. Where are they now? In any case, routine syllabus like the Congress history and essays on panchayati Raj would be of no use. Possibly, the Congress could take a cue from the BJP by using the camps to provide political management training to the leaders at different levels. The BJP concentrates on aspects as to how, when, what to speak, how to be media savvy, simple ways of winning over different sections of voters and ways to mop up maximum votes.

At the policy level, the discussions within the Congress once again underscores its acute identity crisis. True, Sonia Gandhi has succeeded in removing the soft-Hindutva stigma and has managed, to a limited extent, to mend fences with the alienated upper castes of the north. However, on economic issues the party is torn between two rival pulls. On the one hand, it wants to be seen on the right side of the corporate sector and foreign interests. By steadily pushing India into the US camp, the BJP has made the Congress option more difficult. On the other, the introspection panel was repeatedly told across country about the need to win back the traditional Congress constituency of the poor and weaker sections.

An influential section in the Congress argues that this is the only segment that the party could still rely on if it refurbished its pro-poor image. It is an area which still remains inaccessible to the BJP which already endeared it self to the small but influential section of beneficiaries of liberalisation and globalisation. They include the upcoming executive class, MNC job aspirants and the information technology brigade. These sections no more express their gratitude to Manmohan Singh for initiating the reform process. Sadly, the Congress has left with nothing specially to offer to any class, including the poor. The Antony report itself laments over the party’s inability to attract the middle classes. The BJP has grabbed all its fertile fields and it has become a responding party. Many in the Congress believe that a bold Congress initiative to take a reasonably critical approach to the standard reform drills with an eye on the vast deprived segments alone will provide it an identity.

At the strategy level, the operators in the PMO have far outmanoeuvred the Congress. They are superior in handling the allies and ‘managing’ the media which help minimise adverse projection. Unlike under other government, editors shy away from asking the reporters to follow up negative stories. There are so many M.L. Fotedars and R.K. Dhavans to undertake such delicate tasks. The introspection report laments over the adverse impact of toppling the Vajpayee government and Kargil campaign. In reality, both were legitimate parliamentary activity. The fault was that the party could not effectively assert its position. Instead of launching campaigns to expose the government’s wrong steps, it solely relied on the Sonia rallies.

75 YEARS AGO

December 21, 1924
Viceroy at Bombay

HIS Excellency the Viceroy, accompanied by Sir Leslie Wilson, motored to Bombay Gymkhana, where he was introduced to the European and the Hindu teams, who are taking part in the quadrangular cricket tournament.

Their Excellencies lunched with the players and representatives of other three Gymkhanas including Sir Ibrahim Rahimaullah.

At half past four in the afternoon, the Viceroy, with Sir Leslie Wilson, left Government House to inspect the Bombay Development Schemes. The party returned to Government House at 6 p.m.

Her Excellency the Countess of Reading left Government House at quarter to five accompanied by Lady Wilson to inspect Bombay Girl Guides at Cooperage.

After inspecting the Guard of Honour, the Countess of Reading performed the ceremony of the breaking of colours.