VICTORY BEFORE BATTLE!

SUNNY THOMAS

The critics were busy writing his political obituary. Notwithstanding his office, he was the most inconsequential man in Indian politics, they said. The doctors diagnosed him as paralysed; not suffering from the common paralysis but policy paralysis that only Presidents and Prime Ministers are capable of. Stormy petrel Mamata Banerjee left him, expecting a red-carpet welcome back to UPA. But the learned Sardar just mumbled, Economic Reforms, and the whole world hailed him as the Winner, Leader and Messiah! Even a die-hard critic like Arun Shourie lauded him as a man who displayed leadership qualities!!

General Manmohan Singh won even before the battle, which could be the envy of even Napoleon Bonaparte. In 1969, driven to the wall, Mrs Indira Gandhi nationalized 14 private banks which her political opponents controlled, crippling their economic power and reducing them to mere noises and voices. She skillfully added a socialistic dimension to the political drama that the people thought milk and honey would flow on the streets thereafter. But it was the late Amul Kurien that flooded the markets with milk, which people call the White Revolution, and the enterprising bee hive keepers that flooded the markets with pure honey, for which socialism had no role to play.   

In the words of the former Prime Minister I.K. Gujral, in 1991 when the politicians had no answer they turned to the economist who in 15 days turned a crisis into a grand opportunity. The foreign exchange crunch became a matter of history and India became a land of Opportunity. The learned Sardar has done it again! As soon as Mamata left UPA, the rupee stabilized, and the bulls of the stock market started jumping up; the foreign investors are packing their bags and baggage to stage a comeback while the Walmart-happy Indians are dancing on the streets!  

There is hope for farmers and consumers that farm products now rotting on the fields – 30% of farm good are rotting for want of refrigeration – will be available (in good condition) to consumers in the metropolis, bringing down their prices while farmers will get better prices, preventing mass suicides. But there is one problem that the middlemen who are the backbone of some of the regional parties are jittery. Their profit margin will come down because their profit comes from throttling the poor farmers and exploiting the consumers.  

Prices of farm goods will undoubtedly come down in the initial phase because otherwise global retail chains will not get a foothold on the market. What changed the mood of the nation dramatically was the Prime Minister’s address that turned the table on his critics. There was more intelligence in his words than in all the screeching and screaming of the Opposition. The husky voice of the PM had a ring of honesty that you seldom find in his detractors’ speeches.   

Yet the PM was not speaking the whole truth, though what he said was true. The economic mess that we find ourselves in is not the creation of America, China or Pakistan. It is UPA’s own creation, beginning with the profligacy of the Commonwealth Games, 2G Spectrum allocation and finally the Coalgate. Who can deny that coalmines auctioned would have generated enough funds and more to buffer wild fluctuations in international crude prices? That is prudent economic management, which the PM did not engage in.

Every time a housewife goes to the market, she is angry with Manmohan Singh because he has pinched whatever little money she had in her purse! It must not be wide of the mark to say Manmohan remains India’s most insensitive Prime Minister, insensitive to the needs of the common man. There is not a shred of evidence to prove the contrary.  (Of course, we are not including part-time Prime Ministers who have not completed even one term). In sheer cold blood, Narasimha Rao squandered all the goodwill Congress had enjoyed so far, by his pro-Rich policies, eternally mortgaging its safe vote bank – the backward class and the minorities.     

Every argument has a counter-argument: India invested in Commonwealth Games to create Mary Kom, Saina Nehwal, Vijay Kumar, Sushil Kumar and Yogeshwar Dutt! And 2 G spectrum allocation afforded cheap mobiles even for the humble domestic servant. But what about coal scam? What scam? Today everyone is talking about Reforms, and no one is taking about coal scam, not even the Opposition. That’s, perhaps, because (as Ajit Ninan has brilliantly put it in his cartoon in The Times of India, (Friday, Sept 28: No, not a gay marriage . . .) It's a UPA scam in which NDA also has a tie - up. The bitter truth is elections need scams, because Congress and BJP, and all other political parties, need to cough up funds for 2014! And the television boxing (debate) goes on.  

At last, wisdom has dawned on L.K. Advani, who hinted that the party should have a secular image. The plain truth is the majority of the majority community are broadminded and would not fall into the ideological trap. Their upward mobility and frequent foreign travels have given them a global vision, not to be traded with a religious tag. Unless the party woos a section of the minorities, electoral arithmetic simply won’t work. But there is a deadly missile in Advani’s words: secularism instantly disqualifies the Most Eligible Narendra Modi, for whom India’s hundred million population are beauty-and-figure conscious and hence go hungry or are malnourished. Modi’s contribution to his party in 2014 would be to block a winnable Prime Ministerial candidate from BJP!  

With all the scams and high inflation, if Congress still emerges as the single largest party – no matter how slim the margin – it will be a sad commentary on BJP leadership!