Day: April 20, 2014

By Amar Yumnam

The ongoing elections for the Indian Parliament have just been completed, except for the counting and announcement of results thereof, in so far as Manipur is concerned. It has been almost like a province-wide randomised experiment to observe and test the connectivity of the Indian democratic process with the behaviour of the populace of the land. It gave us an opportunity to see the identification of the people of Manipur with the Indian polity. It is an event for testing the connectivity, similarities and differentiations with the larger Indian perception of the event. It is also an event for observing the sensitivity of people of the province as to the level of significance they attach to the parliamentary elections as an important component of Indian democracy. Further, it is an event for assessing the engagement degree of the provincial population with the issues supposedly important for the life and livelihood of the population.

Examining all these issues has been possible because of the isolation of the parliamentary elections from the ones for the provincial Assembly in the current round. In cases where the two elections are simultaneously held, there is a mixture of issues and feelings, and as such the examinations of these issues are blurred. Besides, unlike the previous elections to the Indian parliament, the present one has acquired the characteristics of a path breaking one. Even the elections in 1977 after the Emergency and in which the Congress under Indira Gandhi suffered a huge defeat were not as significant as the present one; it was simply a referendum for path dependence or otherwise. One biggest issue, which has remained unaddressed in India even after seven decades after the colonizers left the country, is the issue of social reforms for social advancement. The prevalence of the Nehruvian modernisation approach (read Westernization) over the Gandhian approach (recall the point-based programme of Gandhi) for putting institutional reforms at the core of policy concern at the initial stage made India lose the opportunity for breaking from the approach of the colonists. The continuation of this approach has made both formal and informal social and political institutions worsen over time. One criticality is the rise in social tolerance of nonsense (like corruption of both grand and petty forms) consequent upon the non-attempt for institutional reforms. The ongoing elections have assumed the potential for ushering in social and institutional reforms as evident from the debates in the country and around the world.  Further the future as against living in the past has emerged as an important agendum in the current elections; Amartya Sen and Jean Dreze have termed India’s contemporary situation as “Uncertain Glory”.  Has it been like these in the case of Manipur?

Without mincing words and without wasting time and words in articulation, we can say that the elections in Manipur have not acquired any of these features. None of the involvements of the general populace as usually seen in elections to the provincial Assembly was visible in the just completed elections for the Manipur part. It is almost as if the elections to the Indian parliament have no connection with the sensibility and issues of the people of Manipur; the people of Manipur care a hoot with what might happen to the composition of the Indian parliament. The moot question is why such a scenario prevails in Manipur and in sharp contrast to what is happening in the rest of India. A clear understanding of this and the interventions needed would have lots of implications for the future trajectory and social reforms of Manipur.   

Now my take on why such a scenario rules in Manipur. Why is it that the people of Manipur have developed an incorrigible tolerance for all the nonsense of governance and the failures on all aspects of livelihood to such an extent that the parliamentary elections are taken as unimportant? The cause for this is to be found at two levels. First, the governance at the country level has never been meaningfully connected with the life and livelihood of the people of Manipur. The sore and core issues of the provincial population have so far not been made part of the national agenda. The governance at the country level has all along been preoccupied with the militaristic solutions to any problem that arises. Here even the perception of the problems has been purely from the angle of the governance at the Centre and never has the sensibilities of the provincial population been given cognisance. Second, the political elite in the province has all along taken advantage of this political economic lapse at the country level. While any failure would be projected as consequent upon the attitude of the government at the Centre, no attempt has ever been made to go for institutional reforms at the provincial level. This gives a very facilitating atmosphere for the provincial governance to indulge in any form of nonsense for aggravation of personal benefits. The resultant outcome of these two failures at both the levels of governance in this country has been that the provincial population perceive elections in any form and at any level as having meanings only when there is scope for potential personal gains, immediate or in the near future; elections have no social significance by any means. Well, this is the connection or rather the disconnection between the provincial population and the democratic process in this country. It remains to be seen how the new government in the Centre might think of addressing this terrible lapse in nation-building.   

Read more / Original news source: http://kanglaonline.com/2014/04/indian-democracy-electoral-process-and-manipur-is-there-any-connection/

By B.G. Verghese

Sanjay Baru, former Press Adviser to the Prime Minister has been pummelled and traduced this past week for all the wrong reasons. “The Accidental Prime Minister” does not stab Dr Manmohan Singh in the back but constitutes a reasoned, balanced, sensitive and sympathetic account of his stewardship of UPA-I and an assessment of his, alas, diminished role in UPA-II. There is nothing in the book that was not already public knowledge in recent years, at home and abroad, and commented upon, often out of context and in a spiteful and demeaning manner,by Baru’s current critics.

The Prime Minister and his family understandably feel wounded today, but a re-reading of the book in tranquillity may lend perspective to an honest political biography that fortunately avoids hagiography and does the nation a service by telling the story as it was. At the end, Dr Singh emerges as man who unselfishly and quietly rendered the state considerable service but, latterly, tragically failed to assert his authority above the din of “coalition compulsions” and inner party intrigue in UPA-II. The Government foundered in hopeless indecision and drift.  

In UPA-I, Dr Manmohan Singh was an appointee of Sonia Gandhi, the Party leader and UPA Chairperson. The division of labour was clear. She would manage the party and coalition politics and he, the technocrat, would run the government. The arrangement worked well. The economy prospered and the Indo-US civil nuclear deal and foreign policy initiatives with Pakistan and China were proud feathers in the PM’s cap.

Come 2008. Baru, by then a trusted confidant, left for academic pastures. The PM’s stature certainly contributed to the UPA’s electoral victory. But Sonia Gandhi was ill and an ambitious coterie had begun to push for Rahul Gandhi as prime minister. Mrs Gandhi did not discourage this undercutting of the PM, while Manmohan Singh himself started the process of abdication by repeatedly announcing his readiness to step down in favour of Rahul Gandhi, a callow “youth” with no credentials other than bombast anda family name that he never failed to flaunt.

The States started flexing their “federal” muscles to stymie the Centre without being sternly called to order. As “scam” followed “scam”, some based on “presumptive loss” without taking account of huge collateral gain,  individual ministers began to take their own line with some senior officials unwilling to stand their ground on principle. The Press broke every semblance of credibility with “breaking news” and The Daily Scream “impact” while the Opposition cried murder. Allegation became fact. Due process was scuttled. Parliament was stalled. And the Government remained supine, confused and divided.  

Though he held the trump cards, as none would have dared oppose him if he had cracked the whip, as over the US civil nuclear deal, there being no alternative and none ready to face elections, he failed to act. The coup de grace came with Rahul Gandhi’s contemptuous stab in the back while the PM was representing India at the UN and US. He described a proposed and, indeed, utterly foolish, government ordinance (on not unseating legislators found guilty of criminality until disposal of the first appeal) as “complete nonsense” and “rubbish” whose proper place was in the waste dump. Yet he had been privy to this very decision, as had his mother, but lacked the integrity and gumption to voice his objections at the right time and place.

The Prime Minister had by then sadly decided to swallow his pride and  soldier on so as not to let the side down when the name of the game, within and without UPA-II, was to get him and ridicule him at every turn. For the Prime Minister’s many friends and admirers, like this writer, this was a matter of genuine grief. For the country it was a disaster. Baru has only recorded history – not invented it. The timing of the book was the publisher’s call. The truth would not have been less or more true six weeks later. The Opposition has of course been only too willing to make the bogus claim that they now have “insider” confirmation!

A few years ago, for whatever reason I was gifted a handsome bronze plaque proclaiming “The Buck Stops Here”. Being of no relevance to me, I presented it to the Prime Minister in the hope that, placed on his desk, it would be an unambiguous assertion to all and sundry as to who was in charge. I do not know what happened to that plaque.

ManmohanSingh’s legacy will survive this traumatic denouement. As he himself has stated, history will be kinder to him than his present-day critics, who lack his personal integrity and vision. Typical of the man, he and his gracious wife, will move out of the official prime ministerial residence, No. 7 Race Course Road, to his permanent retirement abode in Delhi a day before the poll result is announced – a principled gesture that says so much in a smash-and-grab political culture.

The NDA will most probably come out on top in the poll; but it is not certain to this writer that it will gain a majority on its own. And if the gap is wider than the “low” opinion forecasts, who knows the NDA-Plus partners may decide they want a leader who will unite the country. Modi remains a divisive and ruthless figure despite his new rhetoric. Silly interlocutors ask why he does not apologise for 2002?Wrong question. Why should he when he denies any wrongdoing. The right question is why he consistently refused to express remorse at the terrible carnage under his watch. Read the press notes officially issued in 2002 and his broadcasts and speeches. There is not a trace of remorse: only the promise of terrible revenge. The elections will soon be over but not the 2002-related trials and due process.

Regrettably, as the election campaign has continued, communal polarisation has deepened all round. The latest barb was on Ambedkarjayanti when the BJP and Modi personally said the Congress had sought to favour Muslims and Christians at the cost of Dalits, witness the Sachar and Ranganath Mishra Reports. According to a BJP pamphlet distributed that day, “About 15 crore converted Christians and Muslims will become eligible for reservations along with 22 crore members of the Scheduled Castes”! (Indian Express, April 15).

This comes at a time when in Iran, the long-persecuted “Bahai’s of the world” have been gifted by Ayatollah Abdol-Hamid Masoumi-Tehrani, a prominent cleric, an illuminated work of calligraphy of a paragraph from the writings of Baha`u`llah, the Prophet-founder of the Baha`i Faith. Ayatollah Tehrani states on his website that this “symbolic action (is intended to) serve as a reminder of the importance of valuing human beings, of peaceful coexistence, of cooperation and mutual support, and of avoidance of hatred, enmity and blind religious prejudice.” This is a message of remorse and reconciliation.

Are we in India listening?

www.bgverghese.com

Read more / Original news source: http://kanglaonline.com/2014/04/much-ado-about-nothing/