READ RAHUL, READ!

SUNNY THOMAS

I have a dream, said Martin Luther King, at a historic moment. Now, Mulayam has a dream that all the Opposition parties can join him and peacefully co-exist under his prime ministership!

For Mulayam Singh and L K Advani, it’s now or never. How long can one be in politics and not be the prime minister? Even career diplomats and bureaucrats like I K Gujral and Manmohan Singh have become prime ministers. And even farmers like Charan Singh and fumble harmer (read humble farmer) Deve Gowda made it to the PMO. Why, even Reservationists like V P Singh and Young Turks like Chandrashekhar had their fill. The Indian political system is patently skewed against seasoned politicians!  

By each passing day, the number of leaders throwing their hats in the ring is bourgeoning. It was Mamata who first offered her services to the nation as prime minister, discreetly though, through the Trinamool double-speak asking for a mid-term poll and later denying it. If there is a stalemate after a mid-term poll and the major regional players are check-mated, as it often happens, Trinamool could serve the nation by occupying the PMO and garnering a couple of major portfolios.

But the most qualified man among the like-minded (mid-term poll-minded) is, of course, Navin Patnaik. Every inch an Anglophile, and more English than Englishmen, Navin is the ideal choice. His name suggests he is a Renaissance man! But outside Odisha, he is still a gadfly.   

Nitish Kumar (whom Rahul Gandhi wanted to draft in his Vision India) is the most mature politician of all. His radical, people-friendly image would be decisive in the selection of a prime minister, and would be a counter-balance against Narendra Modi. It is no small measure of success that he liberated Bihar from the vice-grip of lawlessness and caste vendetta. 

Once the wags called BJP the Bharatiya Jayalalithaa Party because under the 13-month dispensation of Atal Behari  Vajpayee’s prime ministership, Jayalalithaa was the second-most important person, who could shake the dog by its tail. She even claimed at a press conference in Delhi soon after the fall of NDA government that she could be the next prime minister. She is ardently wooed by Narendra Modi, but the moment of truth has passed by her.    

      

We now come to the most formidable player, Narendra Modi whose very name would send shivers down the spines of a section of the people. He could be projected as the icon of development and the darling of the business community, or diabolically with a skull and two bones as you see near the electricity poles. A blown-up photo of Qutubuddin Ansari pleading for his life with a caption `Vote for Modi’ would nail Modi’s prime ministerial ambition. But there is no denying that Modi has the potential to re-define the Indian republic, should BJP get an absolute majority.   

If the nation wants a statue-maker (not a statute-maker), Maya will be ready and be willing to serve the nation. And if there is a mid-term poll every year (ideally, every six months), more and more people could be prime ministers. But one thing is certain: three of the most unlikely people to become prime ministers are Sharad Pawar, Advani and Mulayam, in that order. Ambition alone does not make anyone prime minister! And the most winnable prime ministerial candidate from the Opposition galaxy is Nitish Kumar.  

If Congress does not wish to eat the humble pie in 2014, the mandarins must learn to be humble! Make Mulayam the Deputy Prime Minister and offer a financial package for UP; give a major role for Trinamool and placate Mamata’s ego. Jaya’s mind, nobody can forecast, not even Jaya. If Congress wins over Mulayam and Mamata, Jaya would like to be with the winners. Forget about the present predicament of Congress; four states do not make India. And whoever makes a winning alliance, will win Election 2014. 

Congress must look back and learn from Jawaharlal Nehru, who was a superb political artist. He kept a lynx-eye on emerging regional leaders and inducted them in his Cabinet. When Praja Socialist Party was winning elections, he adopted socialism as Congress ideology and offered political office to its leaders, thus taking the wind out of its sail. He did not tolerate opposition; rather he destroyed opposition with consummate political skill.

Those who wish to rule the country must learn to win hearts, not enemies. A hundred years ago, Dale Carnegie wrote a book, as if exclusively for Rahul Gandhi: How to Win Friends and Influence People. If you haven’t read the book, Read Rahul, Read!        

GOOD BUDGET FOR BAD TIMES

SUNNY THOMAS

Peeling the budget onion live, three things emerge: numbers, survival, and nation! All budgets are about numbers, but Pranab Dada’s numbers strike a different stroke. They are about the number of numbers rather than the numbers per se. (In a democracy, the number of votes in Parliament matters more than the numbers un the budget). So without politics, the budget makes no sense; and, in fact, what gives economics its pre-eminence is the politics (popularity) behind it. After nuclear science, economics has emerged as the most sought-after discipline, and good economists are sought after by presidents and prime ministers the world over. Dada’s numbers in reality reflect the political composition of the Indian parliament.  

Homo sapiens display their elements when threatened as a species, or even as a political party or as individuals. The budget has something for each of its allies, in hope or in reality, that the general mood among them is one of optimism. After all, national politics is all about dividing the cake among the stakeholders.  

Thinking about the nation, the first thing that comes to our mind is the bravado of the one and only Dinesh Trivedi, ex-Railway minister: The nation comes first, the family second, and the party third. The statement has a ring of greatness, as Caesar’s `I went, I saw, I conquered!’ or Napoleon’s `The word impossible is found only in the dictionary of fools’ or Kennedy’s `Therefore my countrymen, Do not ask what the country can do for you, but always ask, what you can do for the country’. 

Notwithstanding his greatness, the man just disappeared like a ticketless traveller as the ticket examiner appeared in the compartment. The ticket examiner was, of course, Mamata Banerjee in Delhi! (Seeing what happened, a friend suggested that the National School of Drama should be shifted from Delhi to Kolkota since all the actors of this drama, Dada, Didi and Vedi, hail from the same state).    

The wisdom of this Grand Old Man, Pranab Mukherjee, is reflected in his budget because he found time to think of the nation and the economy even while sitting in an uneasy chair. But the budget would always be anti-people for CPM and directionless for BJP because the only person who can give a sense of direction is Narendra Modi! Every TV channel has budget prophets who ``sitting in the same studio last year forecast the budget deficit’’ proving the finance minister wrong all the time!  

The one criterion to judge any budget is the question, `Are the numbers credible?’ Dada’s numbers are mostly credible and where they tend to err is on the window-dressing side, which is the prerogative of every finance minister to project optimism rather than the ground reality. The finance minister’s optimism is as much important to the economy as that of the investors on the stock market.      

Perhaps the best analysis of the budget came from two outstanding citizens, Chanda Kochhar, CEO, ICICI Bank, and Kumara Mangalam Birla, chairman of the Aditya Birla Group. They indeed merit our time and enlighten us on the intricacies of the craft.

Kochhar: The budget is a pragmatic exercise aimed at growth and stability in the backdrop of the challenging year gone by and the broad consensus needed for various policy measures. Given the fiscal imperatives, it goes further to set a direction for fiscal consolidation to ensure long-term stability and sustainability of the growth momentum in the economy.

Fiscal 2012 has been a challenging year for the Indian economy. Both global and domestic factors resulted in a moderation of economic activity, led to persistent inflationary pressures and contributed to a deterioration in the current account and fiscal position.        

Birla: The finance minister has presented a credible and prudent budget. This is commendable, considering the multiple headwinds, by way of anaemic global recovery, persistent high oil prices, lower than budget tax revenues, sharp movements in rupee exchange rate and stubborn inflation during much of the year, resulting in high interest rates. The compulsion of managing a coalition government, no doubt, has narrowed policy option.    

Despite these negatives, the budget ends up as being pragmatic. It aims to rev up GDP growth from 6.9% in 2011-12 to 7.6% in 2012-13. This would be lower than the 8.4% GDP growth in the preceding two years. The budget also seeks to contain the fiscal deficit at 5.1% of GDP, down from 5.9% last year.  Clearly, a fine balance is sought to be struck between the twin imperatives of growth and fiscal soundness.

After reading Kochhar and Birla, both practitioners and high achievers, you tend to discount tons and tons of trivia aired or printed as expert comments. God save our experts! But don’t forget the Indian economy was the first to come out of the global meltdown and India, along with China, holds the key to hedge a second global meltdown!    

THE MAFIA WANTS MIDTERM POLLS

SUNNY THOMAS

Overexposed, the mafia wants a midterm poll. And a patronizing government that allows plundering the nation’s natural resources. Money and muzzle power, the mafia has, as the killing of honest (police) officers demonstrate. To sync with the mafia, some of our political parties clothed in the ideological fig leaf to cover their naked ambition, too, demand a mid-term poll. In the name of patriotism, they want to loot the country!

Dancing behind the move is a fickle-minded chief minister, known for her trail of misery wherever she goes and the Group of Five scheming ahead for vain glory. That frequent elections are a drain on the Exchequer that stoke inflationary pressure on the economy that will rob people of their hard-earned incomes are of little concern for the Gang of Five in their horse race of aggrandizement.     

The alluring thing about a mafia democracy is that it can eliminate political rivals who are difficult to match in a battle of the ballot. No judiciary can touch the mafia because it leaves little tangible evidence, and even if there could be witnesses by accident, chilling fear down their spines silences them.

The intelligence mafia in America got John F Kennedy and Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King assassinated in the 1960s, inaugurating an era of trigger-happy Presidents who sent American troops abroad at the slightest of provocation, and turning America from the most admired nation to the most disliked nation of the world! 

In the Canadian equivalent of Watergate – perhaps, too mild a comparison – nine sitting judges suddenly died, presumably silenced by the mafia for their knowledge and involvement. In a media bombshell, lawyer John Frederick Carten revealed that some politicians hand in glove with the water mafia were planning to redirect the flow of certain north Canadian rivers to benefit some private interests.

Williston Lake sits at an elevation of 2200 feet above sea level (671 m). A properly constructed aqueduct would permit water to flow down hill to California without the aid of expensive energy consuming pumping stations. Ten feet of water, taken from the surface, every year, would provide approximately 4 million acre feet, annually. If a fraction of the outflow of Williston Lake, 4 million acre feet, were diverted and sold in southern California for $1,000 per acre foot the annual revenue would be $4 billion. BEHIND EVERY GREAT CRIME IS A GREAT MOTIVE. 

In Italy, politicians often court mafia who can obtain votes during elections. An influential mafia can bring in thousands of votes for a candidate. The Italian Parliament has 945 seats and a large number of political parties vying for them. So the candidate wins by a few thousand votes and mafia support is decisive for success.

There are between 1,500 and 2,000 men of honor (mafia members) in Palermo province. Multiply that by 50 and you get a nice package of 75,000 to 100,000 votes to go to friendly parties and candidates.

It is the transition from feudalism to capitalism that witnessed the birth of mafia in Sicily in the mid-19th century. In India, it is the transition from command economy to free market economy that makes the home soil fertile for mafia. In Sicily, rising food prices made many law-abiding citizens bandits; in India, the rising petroleum prices (Dr Manmohan Singh’s favourite dose) would tempt many law-abiding citizens into mafia-dom.  

Long live the mafia, the porn mafia, the drug mafia, the sand mafia, the mine mafia, the realtor mafia, the b’rat (short for bureaucrat) mafia and the T-mafia (T for Trinamool)! Let us make Indian democracy safe for mafia!! 

THE REALITY OF INDIA

SUNNY THOMAS

There are three kinds of reality: reality, reality of reality, and media reality. Philosophers, excuse. We are not talking about the ultimate reality, which they alone seem to know. We are talking about Planet Earth!

Reality, understood correctly, is the perception of people. Hence the reality on Planet Earth is the sum-total of all reality, as perceived by the inhabitants of the living planet. But, of course, there is an Arab reality, an American reality, a Euro reality, and an Asian reality. What’s an Arab reality but to jettison Israel into the Arabian Sea? What’s an American reality but Brand Walmart Super Ego? The Euro reality is built around euro and its endemic troubles, and Asian reality ‘We can and we will’ sort of stuff.

Reality of reality are things we don’t like to talk about but haunt us all the time – Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Iran, al-Qaida. And media reality is the hype and hoopla with which television channels play their TRP game, and the fair-tale sensationalism with which newspapers spellbind their gullible readers. Media reality is never the reality but at best a window to reality.

Once again the UP elections have proved the reality of India that we vote our caste every time we cast out vote. Caste started as division of labour to achieve economic efficiency in a feudal society, which also provided a semblance of security in its consolidation. Remember, the millennia-old feudal mindset cannot be changed by a few election rallies!

Rahul Gandhi did the same mistake which his father Rajiv Gandhi did in 1989 – to go it alone. History repeats itself because what history teaches is that man learns nothing from history. By forming a rainbow alliance, Atal Behari Vajpayee turned the most untouchable party into the most respectable party of India. If our comrades did not allow Joyti Basu to become prime minister in 1996, they made the historic blunder of not turning CPM into the most respectful party of India in place of BJP.

There are golden moments in history, which if you let go, slip out of your hand for ever! Rahul and Rajiv are/were novices in politics. Both seemed to suffer from the illusions of grandeur that the Nehru-Indira legacy breeds, forgetting that Nehru was on the vanguard of the Freedom Movement, with a martyr’s appeal having faced lathi-charge and gone to jail several times, and Indira rowing up in the lap of the Father of the Nation and forming her own monkey brigade, while the dynasty’s children have nothing more to offer than their surnames and good-looks!

As talent cannot be taught but only fine-tuned, political acumen cannot be transferred. Either you are born with it, or you don’t have it in you. Robust common sense is what is needed in politics. In a land where a Yadav will vote for a Yadav, and a Bahuguna for a Bahuguna, and an OBC for an OBC, the virtues of a western education – even the best of it – will fall flat faced with a feudal electorate. To his credit, Akhilesh Yadav was able to hide his western education under the saffron cap and party outfit.

Indian voters are indeed one of the most intelligent species on earth. They vote for relevance. We often hear city-bread, foreign-educated media comedians throwing up their hands and declaring the electoral verdict is very confusing. To a confused mind, intelligent signals are confusing. They represent the paranoia and the apprehensions of a people struggling to exist – living under conditions of humiliation and fear of torture by the brute leviathan of the government machinery.

To the prime minister living in Delhi, GDP and Moody rating are important, and so are commonwealth games and Olympic Games. But to the poor farmer of Andhra and Vidharbha, the price of pesticides is important because even committing suicide is becoming expensive by the day.

As the reality of the farmer is his crop, and the reality of the unemployed the job, and the reality of those stuck in grinding poverty the debt-trap, let it be known to the czars and czarinas of our time, that the reality of sixty per cent of our population is nightmare!

The moral of the story is those who do not understand the matrix of feudal India should not enter politics, which does not mean Rahul Gandhi will not be prime minister in 2014.