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Mainstream, VOL L, No 16, April 7, 2012

Subterfuge and Lies Spelling Doom for the Congress

Friday 13 April 2012, by Diptendra Raychaudhuri

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The Age of Brazening Out

It was a sunny morning in Delhi, just a couple of hours through an interesting day of counting of votes polled in five States, including UP. As the first trends of the election started pouring in, a Congress leader with a not-so-trustworthy track-record appeared on a national channel to break the secret: the High Command would soon take a final call on whom to ally with, SP or BSP.

That the Congress was secretly toying with such ideas was not unknown to the political observers and media-watchers. But what was equally true was that the top brass of the party, including Rahul Gandhi, were sending strong signals contradicting those news items. Rahul Gandhi, the leader of the campaign, said categori-cally that the Congress would not do business with those parties which, according to him, were corrupt in various senses.

So, watching the leader on the screen, the question that first came to mind was a simple one: Was Rahul lying? Well, the leader on my TV screen decided to brazen it out by putting forward another simple argument. During the campaign, the leader stressed, various things were said and those should not be taken seriously after the elections were over.

To be honest, it was the general view of the second layer of leadership in the party. But what does it boil down to? Election time is a time when you have full liberty to fool the people in various ways. You tell lies during the campaign and come back to your true colour after the election. Excellent. Earlier, politicians showed various reasons for not being able to stand on the promises they made during the election. Now, an altogether new category of people have come up. These lots, who are for grabbing all managerial slots (political, economic, sports and whatever possible), believe that there is nothing to be ashamed of in revealing that elections are won by frauds and subterfuges.

This is probably the lowest point of our democratic life which, contrary to the constant campaign of the elite media, is still fragile from the root. To make things worse, brazening out has spread to turn into a ubiquitous disease in India among the political class.

Our democracy has failed to solve the basic problems of the majority till today, but is unaba-shedly creating an oligarchy by allowing a few to corner huge wealth, mostly through fraudulent practices. It makes them mightier-than-god for the rulers. Germany has a GDP figure which is three times that of India, and has a per capita income which is 40 times that of India, but has as many billion-aires as India has. Nowhere in the developed and civilised world such disparity can be noticed as in India. This is where Manmohan Singh has brought India, and is still going on harping, occasionally, the need for equitable growth. If he can throw open the retail sector for FDI, this disparity will grow further.

To camouflage it, the Planning Commission headed by Mamohan’s favourite aid dishes out figures that show how poverty is reducing magi-cally. The intention is clear. While the figures show barely the subsistence line, they would call it ‘poverty’ figures to fool the world. The truth is, even if we accept government figures that many believe fudged, one-fourth of Indians still live a life like stray cats and dogs, another forty per cent live a life in squalor. This not only retards India’s potential for growth and development, but threa-tens to create an anarchical situation in the future. But our present politicians and administrators believe in subterfuge, and have no guts to tell or confront the truth. The poverty figures will be reconsidered now after widespread condemna-tion of the insensitivity and brazenness shown by the government, but things will change little.

No Talk about Hidden Subsidy

THE subterfuge, that now has become the last resort of the elite. is evident in the administration too. The government laments its limited resource and talks regularly of the dire need of cutting subsidy. It has lost one lakh seventy thousand crores of rupees in the Telecom scam. In present state of things, it was quite natural that a very smart Minister tried to wish off all this. But after the higher judiciary reprimanded him he has fallen silent on that count, and has started giving arguments like ‘we followed the NDA policy’. He does not even understand that the question that comes next is a simple one: if they are incapable of judging things and change policies accordingly, why do they contest elections instead of leaving things for more capable persons?

Now, the CAG has come up with a draft report that talks of Rs 1 million crore loss to the exchequer due to non-auctioning of the coal blocks. The estimate is new, but that the loot was going on was known for a long time. If I am not wrong, in the past the Chhattisgarh Government protested against giving away mining blocks to private parties without auctioning. The debate was going on, and meanwhile the honest Prime Minister’s govern-ment was passing on national assets to the private players without making any effort to get at least maximum price. Like in Telecom, here also the government formulated ‘policies’ for ‘the sake of the nation’ to allow this loot. The quantum of windfall gain for at least seven private parties was to the tune of more than Rs 10 thousand crores. The three topmost gainers were Strategic Energy Tech System Limited, a Tata-Sassol Joint Venture (Rs 33,060 crores), Electro Steel Casting and Others (Rs 26,320 crores), and Jindal Steel and Power Ltd (Rs 21,226 crores). In a slightly different case of allotment, Anil Ambani’s company too has got such a huge share of ‘windfall gain’. According to The Times of India (March 22, 2011) that broke this news, even if the prevailing price level at the time of allocation is taken, the figure of windfall will be Rs 6.31 lakh crores. But then they have done their arithmetic on the assumption that the coal was of the lowest grade, though in reality it is not so.

True, the windfall of Rs 4.79 lakh crores went to the private companies and Rs 5.88 lakh crores to the PSUs. This is, however, no solace. First, the PSUs. This use private miners (who can easily sell a large portion of coal to outside market at a rate four times higher than what is known as the ‘government rate’), and, more importantly, in the age of liberalisation a PSU may become a joint sector company any day. During their days, the BJP-led NDA Govern-ment excelled in such vanishing acts. But all this was done between 2004 and 2009 (when Shibu Soren was the Coal Minister for some time, and for the rest it was the Prime Minister himself). However, the draft report being a draft report, determination of the dimension of the ‘scam’ may have to wait till the final report. But, the figures of benefit to the private parties, directly or indirectly, will not change. And coal is not the only component of the mining sector. There exist so many other mines which have been given away for a pittance in the same way. People have cried hoarse about allowing this loot. But, for reasons known to him, Manmohan Singh has never evinced any interest to make things transparent.

But, at this age of subterfuge and brazening out, we will soon see huge efforts to wish off all these figures. Manmohan Singh tried to brazen out every issue of corruption of his government by bringing in the question of his personal inte-grity. The Opposition, filled with many corrupt leaders and MPs, turned silent then and then. It seems as though a Prime Minister is supposed to be corrupt and Manmohan is scoring a point on this count because he is honest. It seems as though from Jawaharlal Nehru to Atal Behari Vajpayee, every PM was dishonest, and Manmohan Singh is the single exception.

What is more relevant for this article is how an astronomical figure is being doled out as subsidy to the ultra-rich without a word being discussed about it. The government played a pivotal role in raising much hue and cry by the pundits, with the media playing second fiddle to it, about Rs one lakh crores subsidy on food (and using the cacophony the elite has already delayed the food security bill by three years even more than six decades after Independence). But, in less than ten years, the government has doled out subsidy to the tune of at least Rs one and a half million crores to the super rich in various ways. Mining rights to spectrum rights to vulgar Com-monwealth Games, this invisible subsidy was paid by the government by making the exchequer poorer.

This is plain and simple subterfuge that the government of Manmohan Singh is taking recourse to. Very cleverly, the PM encourages talks on reducing direct subsidy that, if continued, will help the hungry, the people in distress. But, the hidden subsidy (through conscious policy deci-sion of the government) is higher than the direct subsidy on food, fertiliser and fuel (a part of fuel subsidy is irrational and helps the upper middle class and the rich). This part is kept hidden by the government, the media and the elite as a whole as it benefits all sections of the rich and upper middle class.

This subterfuge on subsidy reflects the most inhuman approach of governance.

Mamata’s Obstinance

IT is believed that Manmohan Singh was over-enthusiastic to get rid of Mamata Banerjee so that he can sail unfettered with further reforms, mainly FDI in retail and hire-and-fire policy. It is also believed that the scions of the Gandhi family (Sonia and her son Rahul) have not given a go-ahead to his insidious plan.
Manmohan, with his limited political acumen, tried to make a repeat show of 2008 in 2012. That time it was Prakash Karat who fell a victim to subterfuge on the issue of the Nuke Deal, this time the target is Mamata and the real issue is FDI in retail. This time Dinesh Trivedi came up to play the role Somnath Chatterjee played at that time. Like 2008, once again the Samajwadi Party was ready to bail out the government. As the government successfully divided the CPI-M then, this time also a split in the Trinamul was planned. But history, when it repeats itself, does not repeat the same way. It repeats itself, according to Karl Marx, first as a tragedy and then as a farce. Proving that true, this time it has become tragic for the PM who has been shown his place by a regional party’s boss. Even the Railway Budget placed in Parliament was amended to spare the poor and middle class.
But, there is no reason to think that the war has ended. What we see now is a truce. It cannot be otherwise because the fight is between the neo-liberal thoughts and Leftist ideals.

Mamata Banerjee is not a very intelligent poli-tician. She often mixes up things, and makes re-marks that do not behove a Chief Minister. She has in the past opposed hike of petrol price, though a car is a vehicle used by the richer sections and no logic can justify why all taxpayers will bear the burden for them. In the Rail Budget also, there was no reason to reverse the hike of AC chair car and three-tier tickets.

But many believe her heart is at the right place. Mamata, till now, is a glaring example of playing with a straight bat (except for her handling of the Naxal issue). She started acting like a Leftist from the days of the Nandigram and Singur movements and remains so even today. The till-now-largest partner of the Congress-led government at the Centre is opposed to FDI in retail, opposed to land acquisition for industry, and opposed to the hire- and-fire policy. She has her own reasons to do what she is doing. She wants to make the Left redundant in Bengal as well as in Indian politics, and to block their path she has assumed the role of the Left. And she, still now, has not taken recourse to subterfuge. Mamata Banerjee, true to her pro-mises, has not acquired land for the Jindal group’s project. By arresting the AAMRI Directors (a devastating fire in the super-speciality hospital made ninety people its victim because all safety norms were flouted) she proved that her government was not for the rich alone, and the rich should not consider themselves above the law. It was a rare action, and without understanding the changed paradigm the FICCI officials tried to pressurise the CM, and failed miserably in their bid.

Like Mamata Banerjee, there are some other State or regional-level mass leaders—Narendra Modi, Nitish Kumar, Naveen Pattnaik, to name a few—who too stand for principled politics in their own way. Someone may follow a communal line, someone Leftist line, someone somewhat Rightist line, but they stand for what they are. They have an identity of their own. By refusing to wear an Islamic cap, Narendra Modi stood his ground on the question of principle. He denies that he presi-ded over the genocide of Muslims a decade ago, but he does not deny that he stands for Hindutva. This communal politics should be condemned. But, Modi has not taken recourse to subterfuge, not even played like an Advani, and stood his ground, giving the electorate a chance to see his true colour. If you like it, vote for it; if you don’t like it, don’t vote for it. Straight and simple.

Rahul Has to Take His Call

COMING back to the point, and we have already made it, it is quite evident that the Congress party is taking recourse to subterfuges that commonly go with the fundamentalist parties, those having a core ideology for which they constantly carry on false propaganda. The Congress does not belong to that category. But recently, for the last eight years, we have witnessed how doublespeak and treachery have become the order of the day in that party. While the party claims vote on the aam admi plank, its government has remained obsessed with growth rate and in turn has put the aam admi in distress.

It seems now, like that of the fundamentalist parties, the Congress too has a core ideology, and that is neo-liberalism. It is trying to camouflage it in various ways, but subterfuges do not pay for long. All the voters cannot be fooled in a demo-cracy for all the time.

What will be the consequence of such fraud and subterfuge in the long run? Will the citizens, after being cheated for decades together, have faith in the political parties? Suppose Mr X is a floating voter, who at present is against both Mayawati’s and Mulayam Singh’s parties, and in search of an alternative he voted for the Congress. He was assured by Rahul Gandhi, through his public speeches, that this party would not support either of the parties he disliked. And then he finds that in a prominent national channel a Congress leader appears to clarify that what was said during the campaign was meaningless! It was said only because a party could not concede that it would not get absolute majority in the House. So, instead of taking a principled stand, the party was taking recourse to subterfuge. Would Mr X vote for the Congress ever again? And if he is left with no choice, why should he vote? Does it augur well for a democracy with all sorts of problems ranging from utter poverty to separatism?

Those who do not represent the people, those who may or may not win an election if the umb-rella of the party is not on his or her head, those who are basically political bureaucrats, may believe such subterfuge is politics. But, Sonia Gandhi or Rahul Gandhi does not belong to that category. Particularly, in the context of UP, Rahul owes an answer to the people before whom he would like to project himself as a mass leader.

Some in the Congress thought Rahul Gandhi will do miracle in UP, and probably Rahul himself was suffering from same illusion. But, Rahul must understand that his identity of ‘crown prince’ will not help him anyway any more. People will judge him on the performance of his party. He cannot have the best of both the worlds. Walking around as an innocent idealist, promising weaker peo-ple to be their ‘soldier’ in Delhi, or assuming that a single speech in the Lok Sabha will be the ‘game-changer’ goes well with an amateur politician. But, as a leader who has to attract voters, one would have to show what he stands for, that too with evidence. Unfortunately for Rahul, the record of the Congress party in the last eight years is like serving the aam aadmi with the left hand and stripping away whatever is served with the right hand. And Rahul himself is in a dilemma. At times, like his mother, he talks of the poor, and at other times supports steps that are sure to harm millions of poor and lower middle-class people, like FDI in retail. Rahul may think that his support to the PM will clinch all issues. True, it clinches everything within the party for the time being; but as the people have refused to have faith in his clinchers, it may not work within the party for long.

If the results of five States are any indication, the Congress is facing as bleak a future as it faced in 1996. It required a Sonia Gandhi to join politics to win over one-third of the voters of the country. Now, the electorate are turning their face from Sonia and Rahul, and at the same time, from Priyanka too. To bring it back to the centre-stage, Rahul Gandhi will have to ponder about the functioning of his party and the governments his party leads at the Union and State levels.

Subterfuge and brazening out have spelt doom for his party. The BJP is paying for their subterfuge the epitome of which was the ‘India Shining’ campaign. In 2004, the Congress came to power thanks to negative votes cast against the BJP. In 2009, it was a positive vote for the Congress (and probably hundred days work was a major contri-butor). Three years later, it seems the regional parties are asserting themselves like never before and the bi-polar Indian polity is moving towards a funda-mental change.

Instead of taking recourse to subterfuge, the Congress must acknowledge the reality that even in 2009 only one-third of the electorate voted for them. They will have to read the writing of the wall and work for the bottom half of the society on a war-footing. Though Rahul Gandhi has pro-jected himself as fit for this role, this is yet to be proven. Further recourse to subterfuge and braz-ening out can only spell further doom for the Congress, the only truly national party which still can play a role in saving our democracy by serv-ing the poorer people.

Diptendra Raychaudhuri is a Delhi-based free-lance journalist and author of the novel A Naxal Story. His e-mail id is dip10dra@yahoo.co.in

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