Feasting on instability

Trust Jats to give the most rustic one-liner. And one such was on the offer in Amroha. "Garib ki biwi sabki bhabhi aur amir ki sabki chachi (poor man's wife is universal sister-in-law, while that of a rich man's is an aunt". That was in reply by a Jat leader to a query that Ajit Singh of Rashtriya Lok Dal could again go begging to the BJP after the elections. 

Ramvilas Paswan, Udit Raj, Chirag Paswan

Ram Vilas Paswan could well claim to have the best nose in the political circle to sniff which way the wind is blowing. He did not disappoint his reputation. And after 12 long years of BJP bashing, Paswan is singing praises for Narendra Modi.

"Barah saal me yug badal jaata hai (an era changes in 12 years time)" is what Paswan has to say to volley of questions on his claims of "secularism" and volt-face. It was in 2002 that Paswan had quit Atal Bihari Vajpayee Cabinet just after the post-Godhra riots broke out. 

Though the world thought that Paswan had quit the Cabinet over the issue of alleged state involvement in Gujrat riots, he was rather at that time sulking for having been given the least important ministry. And to top all BJP leader Arun Jaitely had reportedly shouted at him in one of the Cabinet meeting. Also, Pramod Mahajan was alive then, who had the reputation of a no-nonsensical approach and is said to have the most bitter tongue.

But politics is an art in which there is nothing permanent. There is no permanent enemy too and whatever is seen is just for public perception. If not convinced, one may recall Mulayam Singh Yadav and Kalyan Singh joining hands just before the 2009 Lok Sabha elections. That was for political convenience and once the experiment did not yield desired results Kalyan Singh was dumped in quick time on the eve of the tabling of the Babri mosque demolition report in the Parliament.

Ajit Singh of the RLD is known as a fox in the political circle. Same is said of K Chandra Shekhar Rao of the Telangana Rashtria Samiti (TRS). They are not just a few but many in Indian politics and thrive with the weakening of the national parties. And they exact a heavy price from not only the large party with whom they align but also the people at large. 

Sharad Pawar led Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) had a tally of 17 seats in the 15th Lok Sabha. But the kind of clout he enjoyed in the Manmohan Singh Cabinet is envious. Under his pressure the government few weeks before announcement of elections approved a Rs 6,600 crore bailout package to the sugar mills, which they will use to pay the sugarcane growers but the banks will give money to them interest free. There is no free lunch and so the interest burden will be borne by the Central government.     

Ajit Singh on the other hand claims to have pressurized the Union Cabinet to approve the reservation in

An RLD rally at Amroha

government jobs for Jats. Now, the Jats are in the Other Backward Caste category (OBC). The caste, which is a land owning community and prosperous by all accounts, will vie with other OBCs for a pie in the reserved quota for jobs. They are not only prosperous farmers but have always been a socially dominant community. And, thus, they do not meet the criteria of social deprivation to have been considered at all for the "positive discrimination" power of the Constitution. 

But politics defies all logic. And, hence, an upper caste Jat is now a backward community. They now compete with Yadavs for benefits from the government. And thus one hears that rant in an RLD rally, that Jats have not got anything from the Samajwadi government in Lucknow, "which is catering only to Yadavs and Muslims".   

And what compelled Ram Vilas Paswan to go with an "upper caste" party. He himself gives the answer, that "Nitish Kumar created Mahadalit and left out Paswans only". He is apparently following in the footsteps of the Congress and Mayawati's BSP, that Upper Castes and Dalits make for natural political ally. That Dalits are not exploited by the Brahmins but by those who are in the category of OBCs is a well known fact and part of India's political tradition. 

Coming back to the Jat saying on poor man's wife, it's quite evident that the popular saying has now lost touch with the hardcore political reality. Now, the so called "poor man's wife" milks the party, which falls short of the number in the Lok Sabha. 

Ear to ground

Who is the most guarded entity in India? 

If a name out of President or Prime Minister of India or Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi or Lal Krishna Advani or Narendra Modi or Mayawati props up in your mind, you're wrong.

It's Ram Lulla in Ayodhya. And he does not lord us over from a palace but a small, a little bigger than a large umbrella, tent. But the security that He commands is to be seen to be believed. Did I err here; yes I think, because He hardly needs any security and, hence, thousands of men in uniforms are largely there to guard the place against weaknesses of lesser mortals. 

Still, people queue up as long as five km to have a fleeting darshan of Him. None complaints even if he is

soaked in sweat on a summer afternoon. Not far away the Saryu is still as majestic as it would have been in the days of Lordship of Ram. Splash your face with the Saryu waters and you feel you can sprint for a few kms straight.

In the by-lanes of Ayodhya, you may invariably come across a man riding a motorcycle with his forehead all but taken away by tika (religious mark). In an end number of temples in Ayodhya, priests will tell that they have pledged their votes for this man, who makes it a point that he seeks blessings of deities by noon. 

That man is Lallu Singh. For over 22 years he was an MLA of Ayodhya. So, one should have expected people on the street to talk of him again, for innumerable giant pillars with beautiful carvings lie around awaiting the grand dream of a majestic temple built in Ayodhya becoming a reality. 

But that was not the case. And a 12-year old boy, still in school uniform, with sparkle in eyes explaining how the economy of Ayodhya could metamorphose into a glittery dream world if the temple became a reality, talked of a eunuch. Gulshan Bindu was swearing in on Lord Hanuman to cure all ills of Ayodhya and she was getting the crowd to believe her words. 

In Faizabad town (Ayodhya is part of it), a BJP election office was all but deserted. Over a cup of tea, the story unfolded from a hardened Hindutva foot-soldier, that Sonia Gandhi had conspired to send the eunuch in the holy town. Expanding the conspiracy theory further, he included Mulayam Singh Yadav also in laying the trap by fielding a Brahmin candidate -- Tej Narain Pandey alias Pawan Pandey -- against Lallu Singh. 

Incidentally, Pandey was then a rookie politician just out of the college and had earned his reputation of a street-fighter in student's union politics. True to the harsh reality of students' politics in UP, Pandey by then had a number of criminal cases against him but what mattered most was Akhilesh Yadav's benign eyes set on him.

Soon, Pandey defeated Lallu Singh, and Ayodhya got a young MLA after 22 years. That was 2012 UP Assembly elections.

In the same season, on a return journey to Delhi from Etawa, the pocket borough of Mulayam, after a rally, our vehicle stopped at a place for tea and snacks-stockings. A bearded man ensured that it was done fast. He did a namaste to the co-passenger, a Samajwadi Party leader. 

"Guess, who is he," teased the Samajwadi. "No idea" came promptly. "He is a BJP MLA from here and is joining us. Now, guess who is sending him to SP," said the Samajwadi. To another "no idea", he said "it's Varun Gandhi". That was also before 2012 UP Assembly elections.  

A few months before, a top BJP leader had said, off-the-record, that the party had a budget of Rs 200 crores for UP Assembly elections. More must have been spent, one can assume quite safely.

Still, the BJP was handed over the worst defeat in the state and it could win just 47 seats out of 403. And that marked an end to the emotive brand of politics that Advani had mid-wifed in 1990s. 

Not more than two years later, the surveys now predict the BJP winning 40 out of 80 Lok Sabha seats in UP. What happened in between is the big story that will be investigated and analysed in the times to come.

More than a year back, Amit Shah took charge of UP. The Kali Dadhi in the tapes of Gulail neither holds

press conferences no addresses rallies. He does not hit headlines also. But surveys are there and Narendra Modi has addressed some of the biggest rallies in the state so far. So, he has been working and results are being seen.

Ask those who know what's Shah doing and you would be told "micro-management". And through this Shah is making BJP's transition from the proponent of emotive politics to one of bread and butter.

"Out of 1.25 lakh booths, he left out 25,000, which were in the Muslim dominated areas, knowing that they will never vote for his party. In each of the booth, he has set up a team of about six people. They all have smart phones and have been taken to various parts of the country to acquaint them with know-hows of networking. It's ensured that these people never fall short of money and no one asks them how did they spend the money. They can directly connect to Shah on phone," sources in the saffron party said.

Next, they add, Shah set up a team of three to four people in each of the 74,000 Gram Panchayats in UP. They too got same training, money and phone as those at the booth levels. He further rose to the block and district level. And, thus, in the course of a year he set up a multi-tier teams of people running into lakhs with whom Shah has held many close-door meetings.

Additionally, he told all the "big leaders" of the BJP in UP (about 10) that they should let him know from where they would contest Lok Sabha elections and should not waste their time in ensuring tickets for their acolytes. And, thus, he bulldozed all factions in the party, which were earlier working at cross-purposes.

So, when Modi has to address a rally in UP, Shah's cells from booth to Gram Panchayat to block to district get activated and they arrange to bring people on their own at the venue. Thus, the buzz is created right at the ground zero a month before Modi addresses the rally and with huge size of the crowd the message is delivered, that the Modi wave has set in.

And, thus, the BJP, whose obituary was written in 2012 Assembly elections, seems running away with most number of Lok Sabha seats in UP. That also gives a major fillip to Modi's aim of reaching close to the magic figure of 272. The difference in Advani's BJP and that of Modi is massive hard work, planning and funds in the hands of workers not leaders.

Return of anarchists

A week is long time in politics, the intellectually gifted British Premier Harold Wilson had said about 75 years ago. On January 21 and 22, the new star of Indian democracy -- Arvind Kejriwal -- improved upon Wilson's thought. Even two days are quite long time in politics .

And in those two days Kejriwal's Aam Admi Party (AAP) discovered that it's biggest campaigner, the media, was now actually baying for its blood. The trigger, off course, was the "Yes, I am an anarchist" claim of the wonder-boy of Indian politics.

Indeed, anarchism as a socio-political platform had long been subsumed by the communists. After the Bolshevik revolution, the Russian rulers had defeated them in some here and there wars. But the anarchists around the world continue to keep raising their voices particularly in Europe and America. That they have set their feet on the Indian soil is clearly a revelation. 

If not for a pattern, Kejriwal's declaration would have been ignored for an off the cuff remark. But a week earlier, his colleague, Prashant Bhushan, in an interview with The Asian Age, lamented that democracy in India is "minimal". That more than 70 per cent of eligible voters cast their votes in elections passed off as "minimal" democracy for Bhushan allows a pattern to take a shape. This lawyer of quite an eminence, who believes that there should be a referendum on deployment of security forces in Maoist affected areas and Jammu and Kashmir, is a theorist and along with Yogendra Yadav forms the ideological backbone of the AAP. 

And for that matter, one needs to revisit the anarchist school of thought, which took birth in as early as six century BC. One may also be surprised to know that Jesus Christ was considered among the initial advocate of anarchism. Conceptually, anarchism is a political philosophy that advocates stateless societies, with stress on self-governed voluntary institutions, and, for their followers, state is an unnecessary, undesirable and harmful institution.

The AAP's manifesto states that the MP/MLA Area Local Development Fund should be scrapped and that should be given to the Mohalla (locality) committee. A crucial fallback to anarchist thought could be seen here and for that matter Kejriwal's self-description was not an off the cuff remark. 

Zuangzi, who was among the initial anarchist theorist, believed "a petty thief is put in jail but a great brigand becomes the ruler of a nation". He must have been read by Kejriwal and Bhushan with much delight, as AAP's pamphlets hint a throwback to Zuangzi's thoughts. 

More important is Pierre-Joseph Proudhan, a French and first self-proclaimed anarchist, who published

"What is property" in 1840. His theory of "spontaneous order" wherein organisation emerges through peaceful evolution imposing its own idea of order without a central coordinator against the wills of individuals will find a parallel in the agitation of Somnath Bharti, Delhi's law minister, whom the AAP has stoutly defended against his racist and unlawful coercion of people of African nations. 

Even Kejriwal, when asked by this blogger in early 2013 on accusations against him that he had been spreading too much of negativity in the society without offering a platform to channel people's anger, had stated that "people will spontaneously throw an alternative". That did happen on December 8 and proved him right, but also cements his strong belief in the idea of anarchism. 

Indeed, it's a question worth pondering why people are so much in love with veiled anarchists at least in Delhi. Immediate answer would be that the existing political class had left a lot of political vacuum for new people with an idea of alternative politics to fill in.   

But was not India the land of socialism where the communists could not expand beyond Bengal, Kerala, Tripura and fringe areas of Punjab. That the socialism was so powerful as a political tool, it was enshrined in the Constitutions of India too can not be forgotten .

The political socialism, arguably in the Hindi heartland, emerged strongly, but is surely now gasping for breath. South of Vindhyanchal, politics took shelter behind linguistic identity, particularly in Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh.   

The political heirs of socialist Ram Manohar Lohiya were Mulayam Singh Yadav in Uttar Pradesh and Lalu Prasad Yadav in Bihar. That Viswanath Pratap Singh showed up with a little cameo by arming the political socialism with Mandal identity effectively made the campaign caste centric, and alienated the upper castes, whose leaders, had spearheaded the march of socialism in Indian democracy till then.

Later, Mulayam Singh Yadav and Lalu Prasad further shrunk caste based socialism into family owned political enterprises. In 2014 Lok Sabha elections, as many as seven members of the Mulayam clan will be contesting elections, while his son, Akhilesh Yadav, and brother, Shivpal Singh Yadav, lead the state. For Lalu, his politics begins with self and ends with wife; and in between his brothers-in-law too appear.

And for that matter, the political class left a huge space for alternative politics; and that being occupied by anarchists is a telling blow to the delivery of the state in the recent years in terms of services and policies.

In the 19th and 20th century, anarchists were organizationally and ideologically crushed by the communists. But the Left, baring China and Russia, is fast becoming a relic of the gone era and that too for a good reason. The Congress in India is at least in its orientation a socialist and centrist party, while the BJP has over the years metamorphosed into a giant ideological body subsuming the best of the socialism while leaning on capitalism. And they being the only two national parties have to face the challenge of anarchists in the coming years.

President Pranab Mukherjee and BJP patriarch L K Advani are the only two political persons alive who can

understand ramifications of anarchists raising their heads in backyard. President knows that the challenge is serious and a threat to India's national interest. Thus he chose the occasion of the address to the nation on the eve of the Republic Day to warn the people against "popular anarchists".

The anarchists were defeated by the collective might of the communists in Europe and Russia. Now, they have to be defeated by the collective will of the people, for they are status quoist and populist at the expanse of the socio-economic growth.  

The meltdown

"Bapu, the government spends a fortune to ensure that you live a simple and austere life," Sarojini Naidu had told Mahatma Gandhi sometime during the British rule. That, of course, may not be known to the howling brigade, who have clearly taken the borrowed right of freedom of speech and expression from the people for granted.    

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh hoped that history will be kinder to him than the contemporary media and Opposition. That will be known only in future, but would the history be kinder to Indian journalism of past few weeks, particularly in Delhi, must be a subject of debate now and right now. Because in the last four weeks, Indian media -- TV, wholly; and print, substantially -- have forgotten that their primary role is to report and critique.

An editor ranking journalist opined that BJP mascot Narendra Modi is finished and Aam Admi Party led by Arvind Kejriwal would make strong impact in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections. This would hardly concern, for each person is the king of his mental faculty, but what followed then should alarm most.

When asked if the same ferocious critiquing was being done for Arvind Kejriwal as had been done to Modi, the journalist startled with the reply. "No. We are not doing that to Kejriwal. He should get a chance. People are tired of corruption," he quipped, allowing a semblance of Aam Admi to take over his journalistic senses. 

He is not alone in his opinion that Kejriwal should get a chance. One TV editor tweeted that Kejriwal should get 100 days at least before he is judged. Other TV editors have given ample demonstration, that they would love to pamphleteer for AAP.

John Simpson, the famed BBC broadcaster, had chronicled and critically reviewed British journalism during two World Wars in his celebrated book "Unreliable sources". He found both shallow and brilliance in those period among the British journalists. 

If Simpson were to undertake a relatively simple task to review Indian journalism, particularly those in Delhi, for a period, say, four recent weeks, one may hazard a guess that he would find majority of the media houses with their pants down. 

AAP leader and lawyer Prashant Bhushan welcoming Kamal Mitra Chenoy, a Leftist, in his party.

Simpson would easily find that Delhi media were not only taking sides of AAP but were the campaigner of this party. Thus, the newspapers splashed AAP coverage, disproportionate to what it could have actually commanded, and thereby disadvantaged its political rivals, say Congress and BJP.

Furthermore, the constant drum-beating for AAP in TV channels without seriously examining its policies and in fact demanding to know them did succeed in establishing the party in Delhi, which has 99 per cent cable penetration. People discovered after Kejriwal was sworn in that his party favoured referendum on deployment of security forces in Jammu and Kashmir and also in Maoist affected areas and that this outfit believed in subsidising the middle class at the expanse of the poor and so on.

In fact, on the first day of the iconic fast-unto-death undertaken by Aana Hazare at Jantar Mantar in April 2011, one TV reporter too had joined the Gandhian by keeping fast and working too. But his news channel did not know that the reportage was thus compromised and hence he was not sacked, as would have been the case with any professional organisations. Kejriwal then used to drum his support among reporters and liberally employed journalists at his Public Cause and Research Foundation (PCRF) NGO. And thus Kejriwal infiltrated media in a way, that no one could imagine.

And so we see a daily overdose of AAP in print and TV channels. So, the same story wearing the cloth of news appears that Kejriwal refuses security, launches helpline numbers, etc. Initially, they were falling over to brand Kejriwal another Mahatma Gandhi being the icon of simplicity, as he chose only a 10-room duplex for his office-cum-residence. If not for the social media, which reminded them of Mamata Banerjee, Manik Sarkar and Manohar Parrikar, just to name a few, living in much smaller homes, Delhi media would have by now certified Kejriwal another Gandhi.

"Bapu, the government spends a fortune to ensure that you live a simple and austere life," Sarojini Naidu had told Mahatma Gandhi sometime during the British rule. That, of course, may not be known to the howling brigade, who have clearly taken the borrowed right of freedom of speech and expression from the people for granted.