Communal Challenge Can Certainly Be Rebuffed

Harkishan Singh Surjeet

NOW that the BJP national executive meeting at Hyderabad has given the prime minister a go ahead about when to dissolve the Lok Sabha, his hope is that he would be back in his seat by April end at most. Vajpayee has also made clear that both houses of parliament will meet on February 3, 4 and 5 to pass a vote on account, after which the lower house would be dissolved. 

POLL BODY IGNORED

THAT thereby hangs more than one tale, is undeniable. The first thing is that the main ruling party has, in the process, bypassed the Election Commission while seeking to get the Lok Sabha polls concluded by March end or mid-April. Till now, the practice was that the government used to hold consultations with relevant constitutional bodies and place its opinion before them about what the schedule of holding elections should be. But nothing of the sort was done in the latest case. The way the BJP general secretary Pramod Mahajan went about telling the whole nation that Lok Sabha polls would be over by March end, was itself an indication of the casual attitude, if not contempt, which the party’s leaders harbour for the EC and other bodies.  

It is not surprising that this episode has embarrassed the BJP leadership. It was reported that at Hyderabad, Advani chided Mahajan for making the statement. According to The Statesman (January 13), Advani “reportedly said that by doing so Mr Mahajan had emerged as an authority above the party, above the government and above EC.” Yet, what the poor chap’s fault was that he divulged before time what the party had already decided. As the same paper says, “The decision to give the option of March to EC was taken at a meeting of top BJP leaders in Delhi. But the leaders decided not to announce it before the national executive meeting.”

So, it is the top BJP leaders who were to give the EC the option of March!

Yet, the party seems to have forgotten that examinations in most parts of the country start by mid-March and elections at that time mean a big disturbance to the students who would be preparing for or appearing in exams. One wonders whether the student community will take it lying down if the rulers are so oblivious to their future.

There remains one more fact. Mid-March to April end is harvesting season in many parts of the country and peasants are dead busy at this time. But the BJP seems to be oblivious to their fate also. The fact is that, in its haste to go to elections at the earliest, the BJP has ignored the concerns voiced by its own allies like the Akalis and INLD which are worried over such a poll schedule.  

Another factor to take into account is that electoral rolls revision is going on or yet to start in several parts of the country, and this will take its own time. Then, the EC will have to set apart a mandatory 15 days for inviting objections before giving the rolls a final shape. Whether this process will be over by mid-March is anybody’s guess. As a commonsense proposition, the EC will have to determine the schedule on the basis of the state-wise voter list that it will finalise and publish last.

The fact is that if only the government had held consultations with the Election Commission before the BJP leaders made their announcement, all such issues could have been discussed and sorted out. But, no, this was not to be. And the most obvious reason is that BJP leaders seem to be wary of discussing the schedule with J M Lyngdoh, the chief election commissioner, who with his functional independence has been a bit uncomfortable for them. Nay more, if the prime minister wants to recommend the Lok Sabha’s dissolution after the first week of February, one of the reasons may be that Lyngdoh is set to retire by that time and the BJP may be hoping to have a ‘less independent’ person in his place.

REALITY OF “FEEL GOOD”

AS for the unseemly haste which BJP leaders displayed about the holding of elections, their hope is that the more the delay in holding elections, the more the reality of their so-called “feel good” factor will dawn upon the people. At the moment, they are busy shouting from rooftops that, excepting the fiscal deficit issue, all fundamentals of the economy are strong and this they hope will fetch them more votes than last time. We are not going to comment upon it in any detail as this has been dealt with in these columns from time to time. Suffice it to say that the fundamentals of an economy being strong is simply meaningless unless it translates into a better life for those on the ground. This is where the government has miserably failed.

Not to go into other details, if poverty and unemployment are taken as the two basic tests of economic development in a country, India still has more than 30 crore people below the poverty line, and a defectively defined at that. At the same time, the last five years saw a steady and unprecedented killing of jobs, further aggravating the unemployment situation in the country. In such a situation, if peasants are committing suicide in one or another part of the country or if the poor die for want of food in Orissa and some other states, even when the FCI godowns are overflowing with grains, what solace it can be for them if the Sensex crosses the 6,100 mark?

This is the ugly reality of the “feel good” factor the Vajpayee regime boasts of. The fact is: the regime is projecting as good for the entire Indian nation what in fact is the “feel good” for a very small section of population.    

It is in such a situation that finance minister Jaswant Singh came out with two rounds of sops for various sections of people on January 8 and 9, as a please all and catch vote device. 

Here we can only say one thing. If the regime’s “feel good” policies had really been able to address the problems facing the masses at large, these sops would have been simply unnecessary, in the first place.

Another thing is that the sops announced are heavily skewed, with not much provided for the peasants, workers and other downtrodden. For example, today, even public sector banks are not prepared to lend money to the poor and middle peasants, a fact the RBI governor himself has testified, while the regional rural banks have been made virtually defunct. The result is that most of our peasants are still in the clutches of rural moneylenders. Therefore, unless a government streamlines and strengthens the credit system in favour of the rural poor, what does it mean for them if the interest rate on agricultural loans is brought down?

Moreover, even after the recently announced cut, the interest rates on agrarian loans remain much above those for the corporates who are being given loans at rates that are even below the prime lending rate. Now the fun of it is that a wealthy Indian can own a ranch in Brazil, as the prime minister boasted on January 9, even if peasants here do not get sufficient irrigation water!

BYPASSING THE PARLIAMENT

A SPECIFIC aspect of these sops is that they were announced over the head of the parliament. Today, we know that parliament is going to meet in the first week of February to pass a vote on account; even otherwise, it could have met in the third week of next month. The meaning is clear: in their haste to please all and garner votes, the rulers have bypassed as important a democratic institution as the parliament.

The game is too obvious to hide. As a Times of India report (January 10) says, “The government has done all this outside parliament, just six weeks before a regular budget was slated to be presented.” The Statesman editorial, titled “Bad Politics,” commented on the same day, “The obvious, entirely valid and unanswerable criticism of Jaswant Singh’s quasi-budget are, first, it devalues the parliamentary process, second, it is a too-clever-by-half avoidance of electoral code of conduct restrictions and, third, it is fiscally adventurous. The BJP argument that constitutional propriety has been maintained while announcing tax concessions worth Rs 10,000 crore, is irrelevant. No one expected the government to violate the letter of the constitution. It is the spirit of a legislative and electoral system that has suffered.”

Thus, the government has been guilty of an affront to the highest law making body of the country as well, apart from the Election Commission.

A COG IN THE US’S WHEEL

BUT what more could be expected from a government that has always been eager to please the bigwigs at the cost of the downtrodden and foreigners at the cost of national interests. A case in point is the propaganda about improvement in our relations with Pakistan. No doubt significant progress has taken place on this front, and the CPI(M) could not but welcome it as it has for long been favouring a betterment in Indo-Pak ties. This is what our editorial last week did. But my article in the same issue also pointed out that the government of India moved in this direction not because of any change of heart but under US pressure. Also that Brajesh Mishra had been in regular contact with the US national security advisor Ms Condolezza Rice before and during the SAARC summit. 

And here is one more proof of the veracity of what we said last week. On January 12, according to a Hindu report, US secretary of state Colin Powell said it was the work done by the US with India and Pakistan that “produced a breakthrough over the last several days.” Powell also disclosed that “we have been working with the Indians and Pakistanis for almost two years.” One may note that if we said over the last five years that the Vajpayee regime was working in tandem with the US administration, the regime always denied it. Even the latest US-India deal on space research is nothing more than a sop the US has given so as to keep India by its side.

It is thus clear that the Vajpayee regime has been acting more like a cog in the wheel of US hegemonistic designs instead of pursuing an independent foreign policy on its own. That this poses severe threats to our economic sovereignty and independent status in the world, goes without saying. 

HOLLOW CLAIMS & DUPLICITY

AS for the BJP national executive’s claims about the Vajpayee government’s performance, they don’t deserve serious attention. For example, the claim is that Vajpayee “has strengthened the centre-state relations” and that the “needs and concerns of all states have been sincerely addressed, without any discrimination on political grounds.” But who can forget that it was his government that toppled the elected RJD government of Bihar? Or that, forget the discrimination against West Bengal and Tripura, even the Gehlot government went on crying but adequate drought relief was not provided to it. The BJP did provide, and correctly provided, much assistance to Gujarat government for relief to the quake victims, but similar generosity was lacking in case of cyclone victims in Orissa or flood victims in Bengal.

As for “bold measures” for strengthening the nation’s internal and external security, the less said the better. The period saw a spate of terrorist attacks not only in Kashmir but in other parts too. Also, the government was caught napping when incursions were going on in Kargil; it is our patriotic forces who, through their sacrifices, saved the day for us. Tripura has been asking for restoration of the central forces the Vajpayee regime withdrew from the state, but even today these forces have not been restored to the earlier levels.

In short, the January 12 resolution of the BJP national executive will be remembered more for its unfounded eulogy of the prime minister, personally, and of his government than for any substantiable claims.

It is with such hollow claims that the BJP says it will face the coming polls on the issue of development. Yet, while the party says the contentious issues will be kept aside, it does not mean it is not going to utilise them. On being asked whether the party has buried its pet agenda, the BJP president said, “Ayodhya is important for the country…. We are in favour of a temple.” He also said “no issue was given up by the BJP. We will raise these issues as and when the need arises.” On his part, Advani too sought to justify the unjustifiable, that is, what he called “our vision of cultural nationalism.”

It is clear that the BJP has not given up the divisive issues that are its raison d’etre. One will recall that they utilised to the extent possible the communal issues during the recent assembly polls, even while claiming to contest on development issues. The VHP has again threatened to intensify its fratricidal campaign, obviously at the RSS’ behest. The RSS too has announced to throw its weight behind the BJP, after shouting hoarse for decades that it is a non-political, cultural body. Truly, the Sangh Parivar’s duplicity knows no bounds.

ELECTION WITH A DIFFERENCE

BUT this is what gives these polls an unprecedented significance. For, never was our national unity so much under threat as it is today. Never did a regime back the divisive forces so nakedly as the BJP led one has done. This is what makes the coming election an election with a difference, rather extraordinary. The fight today is thus to save the very secular fabric and pluralistic ethos for which India has always been known.

This devolves a heavy responsibility on the secular and patriotic forces who will have to devise suitable ways to take the saffron brigade head on.

As for the BJP’s hopes, as The Hindustan Times editorial on January 10 says, despite its eagerness to cash in on its success in the recent assembly polls, “the electorate can be notoriously fickle minded. Besides, the outcome of a nationwide election cannot always be gauged from the results of a few state elections held in a particular area.”

The fight is certainly tough but defeating the BJP is not something impossible. The NDA, which has been providing clutches to the BJP, is itself in disarray. After the five parties who quit the NDA earlier, the latest to quit is the PMK while some more NDA parties are feeling uneasy. In Assam, the AGP has indicated that it may fight the polls on its own. There is also the possibility that more parties may quit the NDA if they see an alternative emerging. In the last few days, encouragingly, the need to defeat the BJP has dawned even on some such groups that were so far wavering or not very clear about it. On the other hand, despite their bravado, BJP leaders are themselves worried about such a prospect. Any more or less working understanding between the secular forces can only hasten this process.