Turning of the wheel of time

A decade back India's most admired politician Atal Bihari Vajpayee could not believe that the people had rejected him. That six years of "good works" could not impress people seemed beyond his comprehension.

In his moments of disbelief, his friend and colleague Sharad Yadav visited him one evening in 2004 just after the Lok Sabha elections. "Aap bhi haar gaye (you too lost)," Vajpayee sighed at the sight of the socialist. 

"Aapko to maaloom hai ham kis liye haare...(you know why we have lost)," gushed Yadav.

Vajpayee, with a sense of rejection, sat down to chat with his former Cabinet colleague. They concurred, that the NDA government would have retained power in 2004 had Gujrat chief minister Narendra Modi been punished for the post-Godhra riots in 2002.

"This country did not re-elect Vajpayee because he could not act against Modi. People forgot all the good works of Vajpayee and punished him for the (mis)deeds of Modi. Yeh desh Modi ko kabhi PM nahi bana sakta (this country can never make Modi a PM)," Yadav told this blogger last year, after his party, JD (U), had snapped 17 years long relations with the BJP.

Yadav has lost another elections from the same Madhepura Lok Sabha seat in Bihar.

In 2004 he had lost to RJD's Lalu Prasad. Now, he has lost to Rajesh Ranjan alias Pappu Yadav of the RJD. And, Madhepura where Yadavs consider themselves to be too intellectual to elect a muscleman has exactly done so.

But Vajpayee is no more in his senses to receive Yadav and ask him why he lost another elections. India's most admired politicians for many decades no more recognizes people and at the most he smiles at those who go to meet him.

However, if Vajpayee had been in his senses, he would have again been bewildered to see that India has elected Modi for Prime Ministerial job. That too with a number so stunning, that the whole Opposition may stay in shock for quite longer time.

And with his insight he would have known that his belief in 2004 of having lost re-elections due to post-Godhra riots and his inability to act against the "rogue" chief minister was so off the mark.

That the 2004 NDA defeat had much to do with arrogant "India shining" campaign and sheer arrogance of Pramod Mahajan were lost to majority of media, who were blinded by stereotyped campaign against Modi and now hopefully seeks to rediscover their sight, after the people have given their verdict. 

The wheel of time has turned.

Now, India's most demonized politician for a decade is all set to be sworn in as Prime Minister. He inspires so much of hatred in his rivals, that Congress president Sonia Gandhi and her son Rahul Gandhi do not consider proper to take his name on their lips. And true to the character of the Congress, other leaders of the party ape the mother-son duo to the hilt.

But India has moved much beyond the comprehension of Sonia Gandhi and her son. And by the time they would realize that India is no more a country of people seeking free rice and wheat, Modi would have delivered fatal blow to the very roots of the Congress.

An unemployed educated in Bhagalpur, Bihar.

Last two and a half decades of Indian democracy saw willy politicians  putting fetters of "secularism" to the people.

In the garb of protecting India's secularism, these willy politicians institutionalized dynasty in Indian politics. And to perpetuate their "secular" politics and safeguard dynasties, they took an ultra-Left turn for worse. 

The game-plan may have lasted a little longer if not for P V Narsimha Rao opening up India's windows to the world.

That Manmohan Singh was such a gifted Finance Minister under Rao and such a wasted Prime Minister under Sonia Gandhi should surely be a matter of another commentary, but he did help India see enormity of opportunities, which lied on the path of development.

In those frosty years of 1990s, India and its people had seen and read progress made by South-east Asian nations. And they rightly thought and aspired that India too could do much better than the smaller South-east Asian nations. 

Furthermore, Vajpayee gave wings to dreams of teeming millions of people. And then the A P J Abdul Kalam phenomenon happened. This dreamy man made Indians not only dream but even chase them.

And he made a lot of people believe that India would be a developed nation by 2020.

But Vajpayee was ousted, and, with the support of the Left, the Congress led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) came to power in 2004. The Left painted the UPA in deep red colour.

The dream of India becoming a developed nation by 2020 was thrown into a dust-bin and the country returned on the path traversed in 1980s.

If the Left was not enough, Sonia Gandhi packed her National Advisory Council (NAC) with ultra-Leftists and jhollawaalas who ran NGOs here and there.

And they believed that ensuring almost free rice and wheat to 75 per cent population of the country was the job for which there should be a government in New Delhi. 

A village in Itawa (UP)

A whole decade was lost. A generation soaked themselves in anguish at the lost opportunities.

The colleges graduated skilled professionals, who sought jobs to sell soaps.

Government stopped recruiting and corporate began laying off.

And India soon had an army of unemployed and under-employed and improperly employed mass of youth cursing each and every one on government and politics.

India had been such a paradox from 2004-14, that the posterity would ask, how could so many fools ruled the country at the same time. And the younger generation knew better than the most, that they could not afford to waste another decade chasing the discarded Russian ways of governance.

In Modi, India has seen a hope to redeem itself. And, he as a true politician had the measure of the pulse of the nation before any one else had. He knew that there is a lot of anger in India, which is aspirational. 

And, the "culprit" who cut short the innings of Vajpayee presented himself as the man who could empathize with anger of the nation and yet jacked up aspirations manifold. But he carried the track-record, which made the people believe each word that he uttered.

"A business house based out of Kolkata had applied online to Gujrat government for setting up a plant in the state," said a senior Samajwadi Party leader, who tried to drive home the point why Modi was connecting with the people.

A couple of days later, mobile phone of the businessman rang and to his hello, the man on the other side said, that he was Narendra Modi speaking. Still in shock, the businessman heard Modi asking him if he could come to Ahmedabad next day for a 2.30 PM appointment.

He readied a suitcase of files to make presentation and met the appointment. As he spread out his files on the table, with Modi sitting on the other side, Gujrat CM told him, that the papers could be put back in the suitcase. 

"This is a three-page MoU, which we have prepared, wherein we have mentioned what all support the state government would provide for your proposed plant. If there is anything missing, you can let us know," Modi told the businessman, who found that there was nothing missing. And the MoU was signed there and then.

"Now, tell me which chief minister in India works like that and if he is able to connect with the people, why should any one complaint," the SP leader told this blogger.

Arguably, 2014 verdict is a body blow to practitioners of politics of secularism in Gangetic plains of UP and Bihar. The only other state where this brand of politics could survive even after the Modi Tsunami is West Bengal.

That the mercurial wonder lady of Indian politics has survived Modi onslaught is true, but is surely not going to be her permanent feat. And she will have to face a much bigger push of developmental politics in 2016 state elections, which is written clearly on the wall. 

Some dreams never die.

The wheel of time has turned and has turned against all those who take people for a ride in the name of saving India's "secularism". 

And not only Vajpayee was wrong in diagnosing defeat of NDA in 2004 even his comrade L K Advani has been utterly out of sync with time.

You can't flog one man all years for one riot irrespective of the fact whether he was complicit or not. There has been 179 communal riots under the watch of Akhilesh Yadav in UP since 2012 and still this chief minister is "greatest custodian of secularism".  

Hypocrisy has an expiry date. And it lasts a little longer only in places, where people are hell-bent to commit suicide.

Worshiping poverty

There is much to gain from poverty. In contrast to Mao's war cry in China that "power flows from the barrel of the gun", the political power in India flows from the hungry mouths. There is no better shortcut in politics than being seen fighting the war against poverty.

But in the last 66 years, the war against poverty has only added more poor to the population. This has worked well for those who reap political dividend out of the growing numbers of poor. Those concerned with questions of their bellies in variably would not ask larger questions of erosion of their collective prospect.

Therefore, it's understandable why the Sonia Gandhi lead Congress, with drum-beater Rahul Gandhi, and the "famed" economist Prime Minister Manmohan Singh are keen to thrust Food Security Act at a cost of Rs 1,30,000 crore a year on the nation. The China model of growth is naturally brushed aside by the priests of poverty temple with one single broom called "democracy with socialism". Therefore, any comparison with China is largely "thinking aloud" or day-dreaming by the "idle" academician.. 

Add another Rs 30,000 crore annually (Rs 1,50,000 crore, $ 38 billion, so far in six years) sucked in by Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), which would imply that India commits over Rs 1,60,000 crore ($ 40 billion) annually in the political battle against poverty. Further add another Rs 60,000 crore ($ 15 billion), which the banks let go in bearing the cost of the loan waiver of the farmers' debts, which was pushed through to buy votes for the UPA-I. The nationalized banks had taken a body blow from this act so much so that the government had to infuse more capital into them later.   

Incidentally, projects worth Rs 1,50,000 crores ($ 38 billion) of the railways are stuck for want of funds. No wonder the railways minister Pawan Kumar Bansal yawns when he speaks on the subject of bullet trains to an audience, which is largely foreign.

He knows the money in India goes to perpetuate poverty and not to build the nation. Over Rs two lakh crore ($50 billion ) is locked into unproductive activities essentially designed to "buy" votes. They create their own web wherein the life-breath of India struggles for oxygen (investment).

Admittedly, the bullet trains would not bring the poor out of their poverty curse but the infrastructure development does lift a lot of people out of the vicious cycle. 

Thirteen years ago former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee on his birth day, 25th December, launched the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojna (PMGSY). A large number of states have actually

A PMGSY road in the Puri district of Odisha which brought
in apartments amid paddy fields, while helping the villagers
to engage in a number of economic activities like
poultry farms, etc. 

been able to make remarkable changes in the lives of the poor who now engage in gainful employments through a host of economic activities.

If the rural road connectivity can give such windfall to the people in villages, one may imagine what could be the spin off if large projects are executed without waiting for years for the World Bank and Japan to sanction loans.

No wonder India's famed growth is now tottering at fiver per cent rate. "If India has to grow at eight per cent rate, the railways will have to grow at 11 per cent, which is currently three per cent. The funds have to be pumped into the railways infrastructure. It's not just desirable but unavoidable," said Mr V. K. Gupta, Managing Director, Dedicated Freight Corridor (DFC).

But the money is locked in activities which buy votes. "We are going to give you legal rights for foodgrains. We have given you MGNREGA. We waived off Rs 60,000 crore of the farmers' loans," Rahul Gandhi tirelessly reminds his audience everywhere; be it Karnataka or Uttar Pradesh or Bihar.

The government would like people to believe that Food Security Bill, which would cover 67 per cent of India's population, would ensure a savings of an average Rs 4,400 in the hands of the poor, which would consequently be spent in their additional consumption.  This would spur demand!

But the government avoids mentioning that by sucking 62 million tonnes of the foodgrains out of the market, the massive price spiral and the collateral damage in inflation could starve the very engine of the growth in the end. The savings of Rs 4,400 in one hand would be outmatched by erosion of a minimum Rs 10,000 from another hand, who would not spend on their demands. So, the demand may not be spurred but spiked.

For the last four years, the high inflation has baffled all. It has left the RBI (Reserve Bank of India) clueless, while drying up credit for businesses to expand and in the end bringing down the Indian economy to its feet.

One is compelled to believe the maxim that "speak as if your audience consists of idiots"; and such speakers apparently abound in the UPA dispensation.

The Bihar leader Lalu Prasad Yadav was shocked to find the Tughlaq Road, where he resides in Delhi, lined up on both sides by the SUVs on which the Sarpanch and Mukhiya (village headmen) lined up to seek tickets to contest the Assembly elections recently. 

The MGNREGA helped the petty politicians in amassing wealth. It's not confined to Bihar but is a feature of India.  In a recently held conference of the Panchayati Raj at Vigyan Bhavan, the Union ministers kept staring at rural women leaders. It was not for lust but for the fact that the rural women leaders were loaded with heavy gold jewellery. "That's what the MGNREGA has done," quipped one Union minister, with lips pressed hard against each other to stifle a laughter at the state of India's policy making.

Politics in India demands "quick-fixes". It does not matter if such "quick-fixes"further fortify the temple of poverty. The analogy of the head of the ruling party being the chief priest of the temple of poverty and her son being the conch-blower may not be far off the reality.

Habits die hard and the Congress leaders would like to continue worshiping poverty in place of commissioning programmes, which can actually take out the poor from the vicious cycle of poverty. 

The power truly flows from the empty stomach of the poor.