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Return of Congress difficult
Much will depend on Modi's performance
Kuldip Nayar
THIS is not the first time that the Congress has been decimated, getting only 44 seats in the 543-member Lok Sabha. The party met more or less a similar fate in the 1977 elections held after the Emergency. Mrs Indira Gandhi, the architect of the Emergency, and Sanjay Gandhi, her son with extra-constitutional authority, too lost in the polls. Yet the Congress retained the three southern states-Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Kerala. Even the overall tally was around 150. It was, indeed, a defeat but not a rout as it has been the case now.People were then angry over the excesses committed during the Emergency. They felt relieved after punishing the Congress for all that it did. They brought back the party after they found the Janata Party, the successor, floundering. Theirs was anger, not alienation. This time it is a vote against non-governance and the scams which tumbled one after another from the party's cupboard. The disillusionment is deeper than ever before, it is believed the party cannot give a clean and efficient government. If Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) manage to deliver on the agenda of development and employment-they have secured 282 seats-then the return of the Congress will be difficult even in the next election in 2019. Much will depend on Modi. The speech he has delivered before the elected MPs of his party is so emphatic in tone and so promising in tenor that he looks like settling in at least for a decade. The delivery on progress and jobs may make the return of the Congress still more difficult in the foreseeable future. Modi is intelligent enough to realise that the Hindutva card is not necessary to play when the BJP-RSS combine has made inroads in the southern states as well. If the middle class had not been influenced by soft Hindutva, such a sweep would not have been possible. That is the reason why Modi is underlining development. He wants to show that the BJP is capable of pulling people out of poverty in which at least one-third in the country are hopelessly stuck. True, the outgoing Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was an open book. But there was very little written in terms of performance. The ever-increasing prices and the arrogance of power botched even the average growth rate of nearly 8 per cent. The Congress problem was never Manmohan Singh who, in any case, is a yesterday story. How the party disentangles itself from the dynasty and stands on its own is the issue it is facing today. Party president Sonia Gandhi and her son, Rahul Gandhi, ran the government and the party. Now that both have failed, who do the people turn to? Both have offered to resign but the working committee has refused to accept their resignations. After all, they are the ones who constitute the leadership. They have not allowed anyone else to grow or emerge. The Congress has nowhere to go except the dynasty which has run the party since Independence. It was said about Jawaharlal Nehru that he was like a banyan tree which did not let anything beneath to grow. The Congress was dependent on him. Consequently, none in the party emerged to be its natural choice when he died. Mrs Indira Gandhi, his daughter, whom he had groomed, was not acceptable to the party at that time. Lal Bahadur Shastri was the natural choice because he was the consensus candidate, although Morarji Desai threw his hat in the ring, knowing that he had the support of most state chief ministers. But the then Congress president, K. Kamaraj, found him too rigid and preferred Indira Gandhi. The party of today is entirely different because Kamaraj and Mrs Indira Gandhi are rolled into one person: Sonia Gandhi. The party does not have to introspect. She has to do so. Is she willing to give up control over the party, state leaders and others? Is she ready to accept the criterion of work at the grassroots rather than being sycophants to her? The suggestion that the party’s office-bearers should be elected carries weight. But something similar was tried and found to be a mere exercise because bogus voters proliferated. Maybe, the office of party president and that of the Prime Minister should be combined. Mrs Indira Gandhi did so. She, as Prime Minister, found the Congress president in the way. This may be very much a presidential form of governance. But that is how Narendra Modi is going to function. His election campaign showed that. The presidential form is, no doubt, democratic but it gives room for authoritarianism. He has already announced that he will also head the National Democratic Alliance. History is replete with such examples. The Soviet Union was run like that. After several decades, it got disintegrated because of the concentration of power in Moscow. Even now Russian President Vladimir Putin rules in the same style and this can be seen in Moscow's attitude towards Ukraine. America has escaped dictatorship even though it has the presidential system because of the checks and balances. The Congress, the US parliament, is strong. The Congress Party in India can bounce back because it is the only alternative available. In the minds of the people there are only two parties, the Congress and the BJP. When they do not find one delivering, they return the other which they had rejected previously. They are stuck with the two. The Aam Admi Party (AAP), a movement against corruption which converted itself into a political party, can be an alternative provided it expands its base. AAP has secured less than 3 per cent of the votes in the election. Moreover, the anti-corruption stand it has taken is laudable. But there has to be an ideology or vision if it wants to attract voters. It messed up a great opportunity it got in Delhi. Even if the party has admitted its mistakes, though belatedly, it will take time for that blemish to go. The party has to work in the field. It cannot depend on slogans alone. Power that has got concentrated at the top, more specifically in the hands of its leader, Arvind Kejriwal, must spread. There is no other way. This holds good for Modi as well.
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The dog street in Chandigarh
Yashanjit Singh
I
was stealthily returning home to surprise my parents, after one long year. “I have to go to Sector 22 near the gurdwara”, I told the rickshaw-puller, after getting down from Shatabdi express. I readily agreed to the exorbitant demand made by my chauffeur, as I wanted to be at home as quickly as possible.My rickshaw passed through different roads and roundabouts of the city and I fell in love with Chandigarh and its beautiful people all over again. The very ambience of the city and the sweet thoughts of my welcome at home enthralled me. “Sirji, we have reached”, said the rickshaw-wala. I looked around to realise that we were somewhere else. I again explained him the location of my home. He said “hun samajh ayi, tusi kutteyan wali gali jana hai”. His answer both amused and confused me. Upon reaching the lane where my home is, I was given a rousing reception by quite a few four-legged residents of the street. The younger ones ran beside my rickshaw. But a few big ones expressed their unhappiness by barking loudly at me and the rickshaw-wala. I rushed inside my house and as expected I was greeted by the teary eyes of my mother and tight hugs. On enquiring about our new neighbours, I found out that our lane experienced a “puppy boom” last year and my own garden was their cradle. And now they had spread to every nook and corner of the street. The municipality’s attempts to win back the street and the adjoining playground from these usurpers were unsuccessful. Early next day the dogs manifested their power by attacking a school-going child. A few morning walkers came to his rescue but the child was frightened to the core. I wanted to help too, but was hesitant, or may be was afraid. Strangers passing through and visitors to the street residents were the prime targets of this joint dog family, though the familiar residents were spared by this benevolent lot, but for how long? All of them were not bad, honestly. The small ones were indeed cute. The white one, named “Gora” by the children was playful, while “Kalu” seemed like a brat. My parents and a few neighbours did care about them; fed them whenever they moved their tail in anticipation of food. But their menace was now worrying one and all. Children had stopped playing outside, people felt intimidated, everyone’s sleep was disturbed by their constant barking and all living in the vicinity had purchased sticks to defend themselves, if attacked. These dogs were indeed not pets. People were afraid to enter this notorious “dog street”. Finally it was decided that no one living in the neighbourhood would feed them. It was believed that the paucity of food would force these dogs to leave the area. But as it happens in Indian Parliament, it was an elusive consensus. Some of our neighbours continued to feed them. Mr Sharma had astrological interests in feeding the black dog, while Mr Singh's five-year-old son refused to eat if his favourite brown puppy didn't get milk every day. As a result, the dogs continued to proliferate and prosper. Finally the day of my departure arrived. I telephoned the taxi operator for a taxi to the railway station. “Sir, please tell any landmark near your house, so that I can find your address”, the taxi guy asked. “I live in Kutteyan wali gali”, I replied. The taxi was at my door in no time.
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Ukraine crisis: More bitter strife ahead
The bigger question is whether President Poroshenko is prepared to continue with a combat mission that may well take months, with all the attendant instability and rising casualties
Kim Sengupta

A woman cries as pro-Russia militants parade to mark Donetsk and Lugansk regions' independence from Ukraine in Donetsk on May 25. — AFP |
THE election of Petro Poroshenko as the President of Ukraine was followed by warplanes carrying out strikes at Donetsk airport and the Kremlin declaring that it was ready to open talks with the new leader to try and find a solution to end the bitter strife in the east of the country.It was a dramatic start to the confectionery billionaire taking over the helm, but what significance does it have for his divided land? After his overwhelming victory in the polls, at least in the parts of the country where voting could take place, Mr Poroshenko has spoken of amnesty, reconciliation and the need for reform after his victory. But the new President is yet to take office and it is unclear how much say, if any, he had over this latest military action by the outgoing caretaker government in Kiev. The "Chocolate King", however, could hardly be seen to be wilting at this point before an electorate which has become anxious and angry at the dismemberment of their country. The most he could do was offer veiled criticism of the conduct of the mission launched by the administration's acting President Oleksandr Turchynov two months ago. No chance of offensive abatingSpeaking at a press conference in Kiev as the fighting got under way, Mr Poroshenko declared that the "anti-terrorist operation should not last two or three months; it should last a matter of hours". Those of us who have observed the current unfolding conflict can say with a degree of certainty that there is absolutely no chance of the current offensive finishing with the successful recapture of a dozen towns and cities across the region in days or weeks, let alone hours. The Ukrainian forces do not have the numbers or the weaponry to do this, and many of the regular troops spoke of their unwillingness to take part in a bloody and internecine civil war with the inevitable loss of civilian lives. The appetite for such a scenario may be there among the recently raised National Guard and oligarch-funded private armies, but these have tended to come off worse in the skirmishes so far when faced with well-armed militant fighters, many of them veterans of Ukrainian and Russian forces. The Kiev administration has been carrying out its media offensive about the “anti-terrorist operation” largely through Facebook, with the acting Interior Minister Arsen Avakov leading often with highly inaccurate postings. But today's posting on Facebook by Vladislav Seleznyov, a spokesman for the "anti-terrorist" operation, appears to have reflected what happened on the ground. The military acted after separatist fighters took over the airport. Confrontation or negotiation?Denis Pushilin, a separatist leader, acknowledged fighters had been sent to confront the forces of the “Kiev junta”. The “chairman of the governing council” of the People's Republic of Donetsk has, however, lost the power to order military action two weeks ago, in a putsch. Col Igor Strelkov, of Slovyansk, a militant stronghold, is now the commander of the People's Militia and would have been in charge of the airport operation. The bigger question is whether Mr Poroshenko is prepared to continue with a combat mission that may well take months, with all the attendant instability and rising casualties. Or will he, after a show of force, start negotiating with the separatists to arrive at a federal system which seems the only form in which Ukraine can survive as a state? Mr Poroshenko, who does not like being called an oligarch and would rather be described as a successful businessman, needs to do business with the Kremlin. He is already committed to dialogue, stressing: “Without Russia, it will be impossible to speak about the security of the whole region”. Just before the election, Vladimir Putin, who had repeatedly accused the Kiev government of being illegal, stated that he would be prepared to work with the new President. Today Sergei Lavrov, the Foreign Minister, reiterated: "We are ready for dialogue with Kiev's representatives, with Petro Poroshenko". Moscow still complains that the presidential election should not have taken place until a new constitution, including the federal option it favours, had been discussed. But that apart, having accepted Mr Poroshenko as a legitimate leader, it has no excuse not to work towards a speedy solution in the east. It can no longer charge the Ukrainian administration with being full of fascists. Moscow's controlThe government which took power after the fall of Viktor Yanukovych indeed contained unsavoury extremists. But, in the week when the far right was gaining ground in elections across Europe, the electorate in Ukraine delivered them a firm rebuff. Oleh Tyahnybok, the candidate for Svoboda Party, polled just 1.3 per cent while Dmytro Yarosh, of the Right Sector, whose paramilitaries have been accused in the east of carrying out killings for the Kiev administration, received only 1.1 per cent, according to exit polls. Just how much control does Moscow have over the separatists? Colonel Strelkov, who was born Igor Girkin, is a member of the GRU — Russian military intelligence — according to the Kiev administration and the EU. No conclusive proof, it must be said, has been provided for this. But there is evidence that he has been at least in liaison with members of the Kremlin's security apparatus. Why, the question may be asked, did the commander of the People's Militia order his fighters to seize Donetsk airport, starting a battle, just as news came through of Petro Poroshenko becoming President, with the chance it brought of a negotiated
settlement? — The Independent
The Background
- Ukraine and Russia trace their roots to the ninth century, when a collection of tribes founded Kievan Rus around modern-day Kiev. Ukraine struggled to carve out a national identity, falling under Moscow's sway through most of the Russian and Soviet empires.
- More recently, the two neighbours have been bound together by energy: Ukrainian pipelines provide transit for Russian natural gas en route to European markets and Russia supplies half of its neighbour's own gas needs.
- While the Soviet legacy still looms large, Ukraine is divided. The country of 45 million is split between Russian-speaking regions in the east and the Ukrainian-speaking provinces of the west near the border with Poland, Slovakia and Hungary. The country's trade reflects that fault line, with about a quarter of exports shipped to the EU and the same amount to Russia.
The origins
- The unrest began when Ukraine's pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovuch snubbed a free-trade pact with the EU last November in favour of a deal deepening ties with Moscow.
- Yanukovych was ousted in February, after street battles with riot police that left 100 dead.
- Russian forces seized Crimea, home to Russia's Black Sea fleet, with Putin annexing the peninsula weeks after a disputed referendum. This triggered sanctions from the US and the EU.
East or West?The dispute over whether Ukraine would face East or West has raised broader questions about its future as a unified state, and relations between Russia and the rest of the world. Protesters who prevailed in Ukraine said aligning its future with the EU would strengthen institutions, bolster democracy and stem a slide back towards Soviet rule. The support in Russia for Putin's actions underscored the growing gulf in the worldviews in Moscow, Kiev, the US and Europe. Tying all sides together is Russia's oil and gas: Discounts from Moscow have amounted to a crucial subsidy for Ukraine that Putin has now revoked. Russia provides one-third of the EU's gas imports. Those sales have fuelled Russia's economic growth. To deepen sanctions, European leaders have to face the question of what economic penalty they are willing to pay to rein Russia in.
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