THE ENABLER NARENDRA MODI

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BY 1971 Indira Gandhi was perched as an empress of Indian democracy. She had established a political cult with no parallel. After about six years of flux in Indian politics, Indira Gandhi had unveiled a one party rule. She had no challengers. She had run her surgical knife on Pakistan. She midwifed birth of Bangladesh with a surgeon’s precision. She lifted the doom from the conscience of millions of Indians who suffered collective national depression following India’s humiliating defeat at the hands of mighty Chinese army in 1962. The Opposition hailed her as ‘Durga’ (symbol of Shakti, power).

Destiny could not have been more kind to Indira Gandhi. She had her firm grips over absolute power. She was the face of India’s resurgence. She effected fundamental changes in Indian democracy and economy. She gave Indian democracy twin legs of secularism and socialism by incorporating them in the Preamble of the Constitution. India firmly embraced an identity of a welfare state.

The mighty lady is arguably the mother bank of ideology of not only her party Congress, but also the whole lot of socialist parties which dot vast swathes of the country. Pandit Jawahar Lal Nehru had groomed her politically and ideologically. He shaped his daughter’s worldview. Destiny was much kinder to her, for Indira Gandhi not only grew in the bosom of Pandit Jawahar Lal Nehru but was also adored by Mahatma Gandhi.

Pandit Jawahar Lal Nehru was an internationalist. He was arguably the father of industrial India. His daughter was a case in contrast. She was more of a nationalist than an internationalist. Her father co-opted industrial world. She shunned them. Her father knocked at the doors of United Nations for solutions to vexed Kashmir issue. She cared the least for any international power. She was uncluttered and shunned lures to romance an international stature. She charted her own course.

Mahatma Gandhi was arguably her ideological father. Nehru dreamt of India having large industries and equitable distribution of wealth. She embraced his ideas in her statecraft. She anchored her politics on the plank of anti-poverty measures. She was no believer in large industries and the free market economy taking care of the poor. She unapologetically disowned Nehruvian economy through industrialisation and instead believed in direct transfer of wealth to poor.

FOUR and a half decades later Narendra Modi is perched as an emperor of Indian politics. Even his political rivals privately admit that Modi has surpassed the 1971 stature of Indira Gandhi. They firmly believe that India is on the cusp of a single party rule for quite a long time. He has eclipsed all his rivals. He has a grip over absolute power. His stature is a notch larger than that of Indira Gandhi of 1971.

Indira Gandhi incidentally had to struggle through her political course, as she was a contemporary of a galaxy of stalwarts not only within the Congress but outside. If Kamraj and Morarji Desai were her challengers in the Congress, she had to politically outweigh leaders like Jayprakash Narayan, Charan Singh, George Fernandes, Atal Bihari Vajpayee et al. But Modi seems to be lucky as he has none to challenge him inside his party and outside as well on a scale as faced by Indira Gandhi. 

NARENDRA Modi is also arguably the first non-Congress Prime Minister of India. There were seven before him from non-Congress ranks, including BJP's Atal Bihari Vajpayee. But they all bore strong ideological footprints of Congress and carried the legacy of Indira Gandhi in their thoughts, beliefs and statecraft. Modi stands apart because he carries no Congress baggage in thoughts and actions. He could do so because, he does not belong to New Delhi, which has a character of thinking India being just an aggregate of various bungalows in Lutyens' zone.   

In 1991 when Narsimha Rao took over the reign of the country, India was reeling under deep economic crisis. India had to mortgage gold to meet the requirement of current account deficit and pay interest on international borrowings. Rao appointed Manmohan Singh as his finance minister and gave him a template to revive the economy. Singh unleashed a slew of reforms and broke the shackles to put India on the path of free capitalist economy. 

A lot of systemic changes were brought in without being conscious of the poor, as the belief was in growth rate and trickle down theory. No doubt growth was achieved, but a vast population were left on the margins, leading to rise of Left Wing Extremism. Most of the analysis have revealed that liberalisation and LWE witnessed parallel growth. Later, when Vajpayee took over, he and his finance minister Yashwant Sinha followed the same path and Indian growth story reached to its zenith (9+ growth).  

In 2004, the Vajpayee government and the ruling party launched “India Shining” campaign. But it backfired. The left leaning and socialist forces galvanised against the ruling NDA. Even Congress sided with Left policies and managed to become the nucleus for such forces to dislodge the Vajpayee government.

However, it was a travesty of history that the architect of liberalisation, Dr Manmohan Singh, became the leader of the left leaning group of parties. Singh was anointed the Prime Minister of India. As the Manmohan rule progressed, it had the imprint of Sonia Gandhi and the four left parties with more than 60 seats in Lok Sabha supporting the government. Here again Manmohan Singh did not work on his own template, as was the case when he had been the finance minister. Then he worked on Rao’s template’ and as Prime Minister he worked on a combined template of Sonia Gandhi and Left Parties. Thus began the one decade of India being a ultra-welfare state, as the UPA government was repeated in 2009. Several pro-poor direct transfer and right based policies were put in place. They included like MGNREGA, RTE, RTI and food security act.

Now with Narendra Modi at the helm, it seems the state has drifted from its path of ultra-welfare activities and instead sowing seeds of being an enabler for people to avail benefits of the fruits of development. In case of most of the UPA flagship schemes, Modi did not discontinue, but has showed least interest in them in their implementation. Today nobody is talking about MGNREGA and even if some talks are made, they are all about non-payment of wages to labrourers. Even Right to education seems to have become a non-issue. Right to Information too has become irrelevant as many thousand applications are reported to have been pending in the office of CIC. 

In place of these the new government has launched several social sector schemes to empower people living on the margin. But in none of them the state is directly contributing anything. Be it Jandhan Yojna, or Pradhan Mantri Bima Yojna or for that matter Atal Pension Yojana, the basic criteria to avail them is to contribute, though very meager. Therefore, the Modi is government, in the name of welfare, has only been creating platform for people to come and join with their own money and get the benefits of the schemes. And that is the template of an enabler Narendra Modi India is witness to after the 2014 verdict.

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Hinterland onslaught

POLITICAL STABILITY HAS PITFALLS TOO. It allows shift of attention to issues unattended for years or decades. Such issues could have potential to disturb social amity. Some of them are well known to those who matter, but they refuse to open their eyes for fear of consequences. 

Larger worries for cascading effects of political instability preoccupied people for two and a half decades. And they ignored social upheavals taking place in their backyards. In those years of collective social disbelief, nature-loving tribals in Jharkhand, Chhatisgarh, Odisha and Andhra Pradesh were lured by benefits of education and healthcare along with other material gains to become Christians. The governments, both at the Centre and states, knew well of the goings-on, but chose to become silent approver or collaborator at some places.  

That the Christian Missionaries savoured poverty of tribals in India's hinterland is a fact commonly known. And the manner in which tribals of Jharkhand and other states turned Christians is brazen to speak the least of the Missionaries. Also, to say that Missionaries broke all the rules of the book will be just an under-statement, for they in the process showed that they had least respect for India's Constitution. 

In Congress they found a benign political patron. And, the Missionaries went about their proselytizing jobs in the hinterland with impunity, while Sonia Gandhi remote-controlled the Manmohan Singh government for a decade. The Congress rule earlier in a few of the states directly (Andhra Pradesh) and in proxy (Jharkhand) gave them the kind of hunting ground for proselytizing they just dreamt for.   

Yet, tipping point came after the emboldened Missionaries began targetting Dalits for conversions. And their brazenness brought them at staring glance of those who sought out to defeat their designs through their own trade in the tribal land.

Incidentally, Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram, an affiliate group of Rashtriya Swayam Sewak Sangh (RSS), had been trying to slow down conversions of tribals with their educational activities in Jharkhand and Chattisgarh. Former Jharkhand chief minister Babu Lal Marandi is a product of this RSS offshoot, besides many others. However, it could not match the wherewithal of the Missionaries who could afford to bribe the poor in lieu of change of religion with the might of foreign fund flow. And the foreign fund flow ballooned in the last one decade, with Sonia Gandhi making the Manmohan Singh government bend to the extreme.

Ironically, Manmohan Singh had questioned the NGOs getting foreign funds after they tried to stall the Koodankoolam Nuclear Power Plant and many such bodes came under the scanner of the FEMA (Foreign Exchange Management Act). The Centre ensured fund flow squeeze. But no such clampdown happened on those brazenly carrying out conversions by the UPA government for a decade.

HOWEVER, the BJP with Narendra Modi changed the status quo. And the Christian zealots had since been angry with Modi. They are yet to fathom how could a Hindu "hawk" become Prime Minister of the country. 

K V Thomas

Prof. K. V. Thomas is one such Christian Congress leader from Kerala. He became Union minister in Monmohan Singh Cabinet by taking care of Sonia Gandhi's taste buds. Congress leaders would tell gleefully, that Thomas would bring freshwater fishes to 10, Janpath straight from Kerala for years, and the reward later ensued in him becoming a minister. 

Now, he's an angry man.
  
"He's a dictator. Can you believe, this government sent non-Catholics to represent India when two Indians were canonized by the Pope. Earlier, only Catholics were sent. I called up Sushma Swaraj to tell her that never ever non-Catholics had been sent to Pope, but she was unaware of who had made the decision and was helpless. Only one man calls shot in this government and he's is Modi," ranted Thomas.

Incidentally, Thomas is not a solitary angry bird. Sonia Gandhi had been more angry than him and any other Congress leaders. Her eagerness to rally her MPs and those of the Trinamool Congress in the Lok Sabha to create ruckus has been noticed on numerous occasions.   

And she finally succeeded during the Winter session of the Parliament to paralyse the Rajya Sabha, with the CBI stung Trinamool Congress more than willing to eat out of Sonia Gandhi's hands. The Mamata Banerjee brigade along with the Congress paralyzed the Rajya Sabha on an alleged incident of re-conversion,which allegedly took place in Agra in Uttar Pradesh. Taking part in a discussion on the same issue, Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav refuted any tension in his state and wondered why was it being discussed in the Lower House. 

COMING Coming back to the issue of conversions and simmering tensions, the Congress must take credit for exponential rise of Christian population in the country. The Congress prepared the grounds for the Missionaries for their proselytizing activities by keeping education and health care infrastructure moth-eaten.   

Children in this country are at the mercy of the Missionary schools for their education. The poor in the hinterland can not access reliable health care except for those offered by the Missionaries. And there is no free lunch in the world is not lost on these evangelical zealots. They've extracted the price by swelling their numbers. And the governments, both at the Centre and in the states, have done just lip services to these twin areas, which make people, especially the poor, vulnerable. And, it's to the credit of the Congress, that people in this country largely are at the mercy of the Missionary schools and nursing homes for the basic needs.

Going forward, there may be more confrontation among the offshoots of the RSS and the Christian zealots. The design to proselytize can not be defeated by replicating the modus operandi for lack of financial muscle. So, the war will need to be won at the psychological level, that by the use of the muscle.

And, it's true, that the lack of monetary wherewithal could well be compensated by that of the muscle. That seems to be the strategy now to turn away the tidal wave of religious conversions.

Postscript:

ARTICLE 25 of the Indian Constitution grants the freedom to practice and preach one's faith. No right comes without reasonable restrictions, which in the case of preaching (and promoting religion) is that there should not be any inducements. The Central government never bothered to codify these restrictions. But the state of Odisha did it first followed by Madhya Pradesh, Chhatisgarh, Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh and Jharkhand would soon do it. 

"My freedom ends when my elbow touches someone else's body,"

Bhartruhari Mahatab

said erudite BJD MP in Lok Sabha Bhartruhari Mahatab, while taking part in a discussion on the issue of conversion. 

He detailed extensive conversions of tribals in South Odisha carried out by the Missionaries and explained how the anti-conversion law enacted by the state has now become a role model for other states.  

The elbow has not just touched, but bruised others. 

And that calls upon the Centre to enact a strong law to define and codify room for the elbow to swing.

Besides, there is a strong need with the right intention to block the foreign fund flow for religious conversions and let there be a CAG audit of all the religious bodies receiving donations from abroad in the last one decade.  

Nehru: A forgotten icon

HISTORIAN'S pen and surgeon's knife are a lot similar, for both know no emotions.

Elders rightly lament that history had been unkind to Pandit Jawahar Lal Nehru. But an argumentative and cynical India finds no hero in Nehru now. And he makes for no political capital either. Nehru's statesmanship and his fashion style may appeal those in power, but the mass has moved away from him. This blogger seeks to put Nehru in today's perspective.   

WHILE travelling in a car to a political rally, Pandit Jawahar Lal Nehru's eyes caught a wall poster claiming a Congress candidate for the Kerala Assembly elections having committed financial irregularity. He was headed for a rally to boost chances of that candidate only. On stage with the candidate in question in tow, Nehru told his audience, that he would no more be the Congress candidate and asked people to choose a better alternative. 

The crowd was in disbelief, but that was the character of Nehru, who sought spotless characters of people in politics. Nehru would have been a misfit in today's politics. The current practice of "ends justify all" was alien to his brand of politics, as "means" was much more important to him. 

Those who were young in Nehru's time and now pushed by age to that painful reflective phase of their lives recall India's first Prime Minister as a true democrat. Surely, he earned rare contradictions in his political life when he dismissed the Left led Karala government and later put Sheikh Abdullah in jail. 

Yet, he was not only tolerant but even receptive to the Opposition voices. That he encouraged leaders of his time to express their opinion freely is well known and fill pages of the golden history of Modern India. His praise and appreciation for the then young Atal Bihari Vajpayee is now legendary and his prophecy of his becoming Prime Minister one day came true three decades after his death.

But history has not been kind to Nehru. His contribution in building Modern India is no less than that of Mahatma Gandhi in winning freedom for the country. On closer examination, it may emerge that history is less kind to those who wield power. And Gandhi was the supreme leader of India till his death, but never occupied a seat of power. In contrast, Nehru led the provisional government even before Independence and made many enemies. 

True to the characters of youth, Nehru did differ from the painfully slow method of Gandhi to win freedom for the country. That he subordinated his angst to the ideals of Gandhi is well documented. He, arguably, did not believe in the Gandhian method to polarize Muslims for the cause of Khalifa, that to the understanding of this blogger sowed the seeds of Muslims as a separate nation. Rest is history, as Muhammed Ali Jinna ran his knife on the body-soul of this nation.  

WHILE India insulated Gandhi from critical review by elevating him to the Father of the Nation, Nehru became the fall guy for the gloom of the 1970s. That his internationalism cost the nation dearly in relations with China and earlier in Kashmir bear high in the minds of the people. 

Ironically, while Nehru did not come off in flying colours in the political domain, the nation undoubtedly should be grateful to him for his economic vision. He tied up with Germany to set up IIT-Madras and Rourkela steel factory and replicated this model with the erstwhile Soviet Russia, etc. India's economic resilience owes its strength to Nehru's vision.  

Most importantly, Nehru with the help of able and astute Sardar Vallabh Bhai Patel shaped and fortified India. Together, they proved many doubting Thomeses wrong, who in those days dreamt balkanisation of the country (Lord Mountbatten was one of them). And the most important contribution of Nehru was making the people of the country believe, that India can stand on its feet firmly and with pride. 

While millions of people are apparently enamoured to hear long and extempore speeches of Narendra Modi, people in villages in the 90s still recall travelling several kilometers to hear the oratory of Nehru. They still believe that none spoke like Nehru and after hearing him out they sensed confidence in them. 

That Nehruvian era is gone and gone forever. And it was none else, but her daughter late Indira Gandhi, who made sure that people forget Nehru so soon. Her systematic destruction of the Congress and constituting a political dynasty were all un-Nehruvian works. And, she was surely not a worthy political heir to Nehru.

Now that Rahul Gandhi seeks to Nehru legacy to revive his gloom-stricken Congress, Nehru has zoomed out of the box. But he again is misguided, for Nehru no more makes for any political capital for any to invest in. He is history and has played his innings. 

Foolishness has no ends and many fools hope for historical icons to revive their political career. History enlightens and offer clues to issues of present and future. And one clue that history offers to Rahul Gandhi is to embark on a path to rid the Congress off the sycophants.

Five percent politician

NOT many months ago, a chief minister snubbed his senior ministerial colleague in a Cabinet meeting in such a manner that tears rolled out in torrents from the swollen eyes of the poor soul. In politics, tables turn often, and, fortune too.

The tearful man, that day, is now chief minister of Bihar -- Jitan Ram Manjhi -- and his tormentor then was an aspiring Prime Minister, until May this year -- Nitish Kumar. And after the turning of the wheel, Manjhi is paying back in kind for what all he got for over a decade from his political master.

Just another day, Nitish Kumar showed up in New Delhi in the august company of Shivpal Singh Yadav, who has many identities besides that of a brother of Mulayam Singh Yadav and senior minister in Akhilesh Yadav Cabinet, but his fame is for his being a popular political "goonda" of Uttar Pradesh. Also giving him the company was Prem Chand Gupta, the man-friday of Lalu Prasad and not known for great virtues. 

A few weeks back Nitish Kumar showed up at a rally of Jat leader Ajit Singh in western UP for political unity of parties smashed by the Narendra Modi wave. That commitment for political unity lasted only a few days, as Mulayam Singh Yadav found no space at his home for the Jat leader. That should sufficiently speak of the political convictions of Nitish Kumar and his restlessness to leapfrog to the national limelight again.

A month after the May verdict on Lok Sabha elections, a mentor and man instrumental in propping up Nitish Kumar as CM of Bihar had this to say: "It was his personal ambition that Nitish helped Narendra Modi's cause in becoming BJP's PM candidate. If we -- JD (U) -- had not snapped ties with the BJP, Modi may not have bulldozed through his party to become the PM candidate. We were a bone stuck in BJP's throat and snapping ties with the party we ourselves helped Modi. It was not ideology but a personal decision to break away from the BJP."

DID Nitish Kumar really believe he could have been a PM candidate? The media is conditioned to patterns, and most believed people can not give majority to a party at the Centre, that too to the BJP. And they drummed up the Nitish Kumar card since 2012 as the acceptable face for the PM post. "Yes, he not only believed, but had started living the dream. And a number of BJP leaders had helped him believe this dream," the mentor-turned-senior leader of the JD (U) told this blogger.  

Nitish Kumar not only lived the dream, but turned destructive to nurse his personal enmity with Narendra Modi. And, he continues to find ways and means to gather the strength to challenge his political turned personal enemy -- Narendra Modi.

"Nitish Kumar never forgives any and can wait for years to take revenge," Sabir Ali, once a close confidante of Nitish Kumar and former Rajya Sabha MP said when asked to spell out five negative features of former Bihar chief minister. His personal ego overwhelms other issues and carries arrogance in party and administrative works, said Ali, while listing the negatives.

On the positive, of course, Ali credits Nitish Kumar to be a pleasant person for whom smile comes naturally. "He told me once that even if a CIA agent spends whole day with him, he would fail to take out any secret," Ali quoted Nitish Kumar having told him about his art of keeping secrets. 

And for that matter, Lalu Prasad never tired of saying for over a decade that "while all have teeth in their mouths, Nitish Kumar had them in his stomach". Lalu Prasad's description was not for Nitish Kumar's art of keeping secrets, but for his guile. But enemy of an enemy is a friend in politics, and both are now family. That bonding obviously has happened after politics took a turn hostile to their brand of politics.

THOSE who have seen Nitish Kumar from close quarters also state that he is a man of few friends. And that cripples his worldview. For that matter, his eyes and ears were two persons for at least a year running into the May Lok Sabha elections -- Pawan Kumar Verma, an unlikely person from the background of Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR) and a prominent journalist, who wears and smokes socialism to an extent that the changing wind easily gives him a slip. 

These two made Nitish Kumar believe that the Narendra Modi wave was all about the one pumped through a "blower". And people heard him his denial of changing winds in politics. He had been blinded by the blindness of his two friends. Such blindness is attitudinal for which, sadly, there is hardly any cure.  

Whenever a political biography of Nitish Kumar is written, an apt title for it could be "A political gambler". His belief in politics of arithmetic is religious. And he believed that the combo of Backward-Dalit-Muslims is too tall a wall for any to climb. That Modi not only climbed but smashed it has been spoken and commented enough for any repetition. Religious belief lasts long and still beholds Nitish Kumar.

                                                                                                                                                            

And, hence, he propped Jitan Ram Manjhi, a Mahadalit, to win back the community, which to his shock, had deserted for the BJP in the Lok Sabha elections. But the gamble seems to be going haywire. Manjhi soon realized that he had had enough of his master and began shrugging off his shadow. That Bihar is hostage in recent times of drama enacted each day by Manjhi is part of the larger political design. The gap between the pawn (Manjhi) and his master had been so wide in recent days that Sharad Yadav had to dash recently to Patna to build bridges. 

Nitish Kumar is restless to carve out a role for himself in national politics. So, he was in the company of Mulayam Yadav, Lalu Prasad, H D Deve Gowda, Dushyant Choutala and others. 

Chirag Paswan, son of Ram Vilas Paswan and Lok Sabha MP, would largely be considered a political novice. But his take on Nitish Kumar's efforts to reunite the old Janta Dal to counter Narendra Modi is worth taking note of. "All of them have been tigers of their respective territories. If they all come in one cage, the fate of the cage could well be imagined," junior Paswan told this blogger.   

For the moment, tigers invite only skepticism, because two plus two is not necessarily four in politics and that too in India.