What Now My Love - Frank Sinatra

What now my love?

What now my love?

What now my love,
Now that you’ve left me,
How can I live, through another day
Watching my dreams, turn into ashes
And all my hopes, into bits of clay
Once I could see, once I could feel,
Now I'm numb-
I’ve become unreal.

Gilbert Becaud- Carl Sigman

The much “covered” song, “What now my love,” was first written in French by Gilbert Becaud in 1961, not long before the Naxalites first appeared in rural Bengal, and was given its English lyrics by Carl Sigman. It mirrors, I think rather well, what the vanquished Left Front must be feeling today.

And this, despite the fig-leaf of having garnered 41% of the popular vote in the recent West Bengal Assembly elections. But since The Left have had an innings lasting 34 years, everyone, except possibly some of the more committed amongst that 41%, is quite dry-eyed to see the backs of their nice white bhadralok dhoties sitting in the Opposition.

The question, more importantly, now that Ms. Mamata Banerjee and her 44 strong team of ministers has just been sworn in; significantly featuring members manning the oars from both the TMC and Congress; is where does West Bengal go from here?

The loaded question is reminiscent of one posed by a very rich, very shallow, young lady in literary fiction. One can almost imagine the memsahib, in summer dress and straw hat, ice tinkling in her drink, segued onto a New Alipur verandah in May 2011; but asking the question that first appeared in F Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby in 1925.

“What’ll we do with ourselves this afternoon?” cried Daisy Buchanan, in her priceless little rich girl voice; “and the day after that, and the next thirty years.”

The fact is, now that the citadel (Writer’s Building) is won, Ms. Banerjee is faced with the riddles and enigmas of governance; likely to be very different from the emotive and very successful poll cry of Ma, Mati, Manush that spearheaded her landslide victory.

“Didi” is saddled with empty, actually shockingly overdrawn, coffers; and a populace deluded and rendered toxic by their sense of entitlement nurtured over three decades of Communist propaganda. The people of West Bengal have become expert at the “cholbe na” brand of agitational politics, ruinous state sanctioned Bandhs, and blaming anyone but themselves for all their ills. They have entrapped themselves into a stagnant time warp, but are paradoxically consumed by a corrosive envy, thinly disguised under the revolutionary clap-trap of “class struggle”.

So much so, that it has been, in the run up to Ms. Banerjee’s spectacular victory, hard to distinguish between the Communist cadres going on their Stalinist pogroms in the rural hinterland, and the Maoist “struggle” in many of the very same places. But now, where will all this adrenaline go to ground?

Of course, Ms. Banerjee will be vastly aided, unlike the Left Front, post Mr. Prakash Karat’s divorce from the Congress Party during UPA I; by the fact that the Congress are her allies, and UPA II will, she must calculate, rule at the Centre till at least 2014.

But Didi is going to face a vast cultural problem. In fact, the mature contours of her own Ma Mati Manush philosophy is yet to unfold, and will be watched with great interest by all. It is likely to retain a number of populist features of course, but usually it is difficult to be both populist and successful at development.

On the plus side, much business and industry, the few in-state and those who have run away but want to come back, including MNCs, will be interested in a relatively low-cost-to-do-business state, with ample educated and intelligent manpower; given the prerequisites of peace and quiet to get on with their business.

But notwithstanding any sagacity Didi is able to manifest in this regard, the Leftist malaise that has set in over thirty plus years will not be banished overnight. Everyone in West Bengal has been made-over to a lesser or greater extent. And the unlearning could also take time, very much like our socialist politicians and bureaucrats, all over the country, post 1991, trying to adapt to the new liberal clarion call.

Didi herself may find it impossible to act for development if she senses that it may be politically inimical. It is obvious that she didn’t take 19 years to get to Writer’s Building only to vacate it in a hurry.

After all, over the last 34 years, every aspiration had to be couched in the anti-capitalist garb of essential dogma. So you find a rich Marwari or Punjabi, still the moneybags in Kolkata, as they were when it was a much fancier and glitzy Calcutta, averring most sincerely that whatever he thinks, speaks or does is with the sole objective of helping the poor.

But, in time, who knows? There is an essentially capitalist soul of “Calcutta” buried under the overlay of Stalinist Kolkata rudely stripped of its rich traditions. Perhaps it will re-emerge now and assert its joie de vivre much faster than one anticipates.

Pre-independence Bengal and its capital, till 1905, was the centre of Britain’s sub-continental empire stretching from Burma in the East to the Gulf in the West. It knew and forgot tricks that other places and people are yet to acquire!

The spirits of those storied merchants, zamindars, nawabs, maharajahs, courtesans, femme fatales, artistes, artisans, company factotums, beribonned military men et al still sigh in the decaying gullies of an evocative city that is over three centuries old; backed to the hilt, no doubt, by its knowing, slumbering, sensuous, countryside.

That once-upon-a-time Bengal, alive still in literature and film, divided ruthlessly by Curzon, did not give up either; not even through the two World Wars and Partition. And Calcutta was the city you had to call a city right up to the fifties.

And then came the blight of the Naxalites ; followed by the ultimately barren land redistribution of the Left Front; the flight of capital, of industry; then the grinding poverty, the soul destroying unemployment that gave the Communist dream its most poignant lie; and now here we are.

There must be great meaning in this most impressive revolution via the ballot box - in this demonstrated yearning for change. Could this then be the beginning of a Bengal Renaissance to rival all its previous incarnations?

We will have to listen hard to the essential spirit of Bengal, very much older than the mouldering paper heroes of the now lost dispensation; to divine this for sure.

(1,096 words)

20th May 2011
Gautam Mukherjee


Published as Leader Edit on the Edit-Page of The Pioneer on Monday 23rd May 2011, in the epaper, and online at www.dailypioneer.com as "Road ahead for Bengal". Also archived under Guest Columnists at www.dailypioneer.com

The Politics Of The Ultimate Stakeholder

The Politics Of The Ultimate Stakeholder


Everyone is talking about “Anna” Hazare and his crusade against corruption. He has, by his own description, combined Gandhian ahimsa with Chatrapati Shivaji’s militancy, and this, projected via blanket media coverage, has produced spectacular results.

For his followers, he is the latest incarnation in the tradition of Mahatma Gandhi and Loknayak Jayaprakash Narayan. India, or is it Bharatmata, seems to throw up such saviours spontaneously whenever the body politic is in dire need of cleansing.

But Mr. Hazare’s clarion call won’t amount to much in the long run, unless, like the Mahatma fighting the imperial yoke, and Mr. Narayan challenging Mrs. Gandhi the 1st, he manages to also galvanise the rural masses who actually do almost all the voting. But to them, weaned on the inequities of corruption and inequality for generations, the present movement may seem a trifle exotic. So, Anna Hazare may have to broaden his message to interest them too.

While conducting his fast unto death in textbook Gandhian fashion, Mr. Hazare spiced his comments with calculated insults flung at politicians in general, and the ruling Government in particular, inspired, he informs us, by Chattrapati Shivaji.

And now, having won round one, Anna intends to install an incorruptible Lokpal soon. While the contours of this Lokpal to be are not as yet clear, he or she might possibly be moulded in the Oliver Cromwell or Maxmillien Robespierre tradition of revolutionary probity.

The charter, after all, is massive, because the Lokpal will be tasked to keep watch on all the three branches of Government as well as its bureaucracy etc. Ms. Kiran Bedi, the erstwhile supercop and Magsaysay Award winner, is thought to be a good fit.

But what will the Lokpal do to make its writ stick? How will it dictate terms to an elected Government? Or will it just be the representative of the Union of “Ultimate Stakeholders” as the CAG put it, entitled to a seat at the high table for selective deliberations?

And it must be remembered, however reluctantly, that both Cromwell and Robespierre, who turned their respective monarchies on their heads, were in fact elected and executive authorities. And Robespierre too was guillotined in the end, while Cromwell died very disillusioned with the Puritanism he spearheaded.

Part of the problem, we see now, was the introduction of impossibly high moral standards. The other was that the advent of Cromwell and Robespierre did not succesfully create the new political order they envisaged, but instead put an end to the excesses of absolute monarchy. Still, both were men of historic destiny, and represent rousing notions of purity and reform. And more than a little of their idealism and egalitarianism rubbed off on the process of political evolution, and not just in Britain and France.

In India too, Hazare’s snowballing folksy movement has taken the holders of power by surprise, their tired alibis blown skywards by this sudden gust of populist wind. Windiness of the vaporous variety was also on display. Congenitally unresponsive political, bureaucratic, judicial and associated quasi-ruling classes found themselves sputtering about “blackmail” and wagging a frightened finger at Civil Society.

Likewise, dark prognostications about this movable feast against corruption being hijacked by vested interests has not cut much mustard. And why should it, when this possibility is weighed against the Government sitting paralysed atop an absolute termite’s nest of rot of its own creation?

And so, the Mumbai motormen, the CAG Mr. Vinod Rai, top industrialists, the more politically inclined Bollywood stars, writers, poets, artists, professors, sportsmen including the all conquering MS Dhoni, NGOs who do not fear being upstaged at their long-standing and lucrative game, as well as obscure ones with nothing to lose, men and women in saffron, Delhi Metro hero Mr. Sreedharan, a pervasive and responsive media presence; and politicians from every party, except the ruling combine - can’t all be labelled conspirators and extra-constitutional subversives!

This then is an attempt at cleansing the system from without, because very few within it seem the least bit interested. That Hazare calls the present Government “Kale Angrez” does, of course, suggest some interesting parallels but also illustrates just how far the UPA Government of 2011 has drifted away from its “ultimate stakeholders”.

A Government that thinks nothing of routinely robbing, cheating and hoodwinking its ultimate stakeholders, has only itself to blame for provoking this backlash. Nobody believes in its attempts at punishing the guilty from its own ranks, particularly because it has not happened even once so far.

A Satyam like situation that has ruined its erstwhile fraudster-owner Mr. Raju, or the fate that befell the “Big Bull” Harshad Mehta, could probably never happen to a Mr. A. Raja, no matter how heinous his corruption may prove to be.

Besides, the Government has experience on its side, and the concession made by it to Hazare’s opening salvo, may be only to gain time in order to subvert his movement, take the pressure off ongoing and forthcoming Assembly elections, and to let the ardour of Civil Society, well known for its dilettantism, dissipate in time.

If the elite from South Mumbai failed to vote even after 26/11, will they change their mind after the jamboree at Jantar Mantar? And as long as the urban middle classes do not vote to at least 75% of its eligible strength, they will not affect the temper, timbre and behaviour of the political establishment. Mr. Hazare realises this and has even advocated penal measures against those who fail to cast their vote.

But in counterpoint to this perception of widespread apathy, is the profoundly more disturbing idea that Civil Society may no longer be satisfied with co-option at all. The very people who don’t vote citing lack of viable choice, may wish however to truly upset the applecart. They may be questioning the relevance of the Indian Constitution which has been so thoroughly subverted by our elected representatives.

These people, and who knows how many there truly are, in places rural and urban, may want to nominate their rulers henceforth after all, and set the cat amongst the pigeons with regard to the notion of elected legitimacy. They may think it the best way to improve the quality of our governance. Mr. Hazare then may indeed have quite a few things in mind when he calls this the beginning of a long struggle.

(1,056 words)

11th April 2011
Gautam Mukherjee

Reality check

Reality check


Bertrand Russell, a towering Leftist philosopher himself, critiqued the Bolshevik Revolution, that too shortly after it took place, saying that the Communists did not live up to the theory of their creed.

The dictatorship of the proletariat was, said Russell, just a plain old dictatorship, presided over by Lenin and Trotsky, with Stalin still carrying the bags and bringing up the rear at the time. And the “proletariat” consisted of carefully vetted yes men of the goonish persuasion, busy ruthlessly gutting all dissent in the ranks.

That Mr. Russell was right has been borne out by the collapse of Communism and its offshoots of Fabian Socialism and even Scandinavian and French versions of Welfarism; albeit for a variety of reasons other than venality. But these reasons do not offer much comfort because they range from indictments such as rank naïveté to a revolutionary wooliness - as in Cuba, lost in a time warp, ignorant of the thrust and parry of human nature.

But such disintegration might be the fault of the original formulations of Karl Marx himself, writing away in the warm bowels of the British museum while Engels picked up his bills. All people alas are simply not created equal, except in their mother’s eyes and in the eyes of God, and that is all there is to it.

Indian democracy for all its impressive Election Commission supervised exercises, of largely free and fair elections, doesn’t work in a particularly democratic way. After the votes are counted, the netas prefer to take a page out of the colonial book and render themselves inviolate.

The voter that actually can be herded to the hustings, is only seen as important at election time, when he and she is wooed, flattered, bullied and threatened if necessary, and/or mildly bribed with cash, kind, and liquid refreshment for his vote.

This is because not a single institution with the possible exception of the RTI mechanism has been created since independence to actually empower the hapless voter. Nothing beyond anodyne grievance mechanisms that are designed to be better at stone-walling than actual redressal. And a judicial system that delivers at snail’s speed.

The urban voter, growing more numerous as progress sends more and more people into cities and towns, does not get much change out of his elected representatives. As for the rural voter, still constituting the backbone of the election process; his plight is best described in the numerous R.K. Laxman cartoons over the decades since independence.

All of them are variations of the same theme. They feature helicoptering visits of politicians in dazzling white malmal, solicitously enquiring about the welfare of their destitute voters, while the latter stare uncomprehendingly in their tattered loin cloths, their bellies distended with promises, painfully trying to make sense of the big man’s questions.

The great white hope out of this third world morass that mocks at our rapid GDP growth, is the dawning realisation amongst some politicians that development and growth in the hinterland, amongst the great unwashed, may be the way to obtaining and holding on to power. That is, without the constant flux and eddy that characterises the old politics of caste, creed, regionalism, dynastic and nepotistic succession, and so on.

Bihar and Gujarat, both run by determined men of humble origin, certainly demonstrate this possible new maxim. And both states have also succeeded in lowering the boom on corruption with Chief Ministers demonstrating a high level of personal integrity, and thereby leading their political and bureaucratic flock by example, if not by the nose or ear. And let it be remembered that neither state was exactly a paragon of probity in the past!

But apart from the evolution of our polity from an elected anarchy, that owes more to the bazaar than it does to the Westminster model: towards something more coherent; we may be forced to re-evaluate many assumptions about the virtues of elite leadership.

Many of this miniscule species, are now, it is seen, morally spent, and unlike their ilk in the decades before independence, do not have the will or desire to provide leadership to an emerging world power. Our elite, sustained quite largely by inherited privilege, may be too enfeebled by good living and cronyism to make any serious effort at anything as selfless as nation building. And many amongst this charmed circle have even forgotten how to be ashamed.

However, happily for the multitude, the people from the smaller towns and villages, identified both by management thinkers such as Ms. Rama Bijapurkar and business heads such as Mr. Ratan Tata, as the “treasure” at “the bottom of the pyramid”, both in terms of their collective buying power and their aggregated human resource, hold out hope for the future and may well come to the rescue.

If they do, turning exceptions into the rule of thumb, it will be a most welcome if unbidden phenomenon, that may however have its roots in the earlier democratisation of our elected representatives, with the higher caste politician being joined plentifully by others of much humbler antecedents.

This has had some raucous consequences, such as chairs and microphones hurtling through the air in state legislatures; and some falling away of notional airs and graces past their prime, including the villainy and lecherousness of the rural “Chowdhary” in film after Bollywood film of a certain vintage; and even an explosion in corruption like starving people with sudden access to the banquet table; but through all this turbulence has come a renewal of unseen but subliminal benefits.

The parallel, while drawn in the blood of millions, could be the emergence of the working classes after the debacle of the first World War in Europe. The old aristocracy was largely wiped out then, but not only because of the attrition of leadership involved. Folly, arrogance, insouciance and incompetence may have had a good deal to do with their demise, and the consequent changing of the world order.

Here in India, the small towns and villages are demonstrating a competence and leadership that comes with not being jaded. The small towner is not ashamed of his origins or his culture any more, and these days looking at the calibre of the city folks, he has little reason to doubt his relative competitiveness. The old manipulations and stratagems of the elite therefore may be no more than at a last gasp of history.


(1,064 words)

5th April 2011
Gautam Mukherjee

Unseen blushes and desert air

Unseen Blushes & Desert Air

Full many a gem of purest ray serene
The dark unfathomed caves of ocean bear:
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air.

Thomas Gray


Thomas Gray’s Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard brings back school-room memories for many of us, replete with the occasionally baffling rigours of poetry appreciation. The lines quoted above are not only a poignant ode to anonymity, evocative of the unsung and obscure life, but profound in its implication of a tragic waste.

Mr. Gray was lamenting the fate of the generic peasantry in a bucolic agrarian 18th century British setting, but times may not have changed that much when applied to a country like ours, bursting at the seams with a population growing towards a billion and a half mostly unsung souls.

Quantity we indubitably have, and the recent Commonwealth Games and the Asian Games after that demonstrated that our winners often come from small towns and villages; but as a rule, how much do we do to nurture quality?

And to enhance this quality is essential to our better tomorrows. We must have three basics to do so. One, we must have a full belly, and then we need robust health and a dynamic education system.

The Government is not, as yet, doing enough to modernise agriculture towards that full belly of nutrition. We are still reaping the harvest from the Green Revolution of the eighties with nothing substantial done to improve the agricultural, food processing and cold chain infrastructure since then. And this despite persistent food price inflation and the pressure of a huge and growing population.

Still, given as we are to foreign prompting, we might respond to celebrated billionaire philanthropists Bill and Melinda Gates’ recent talks with the authorities in Bihar and yet others in Delhi, because they want to do something to modernise our agricultural practices.

But, lo and behold, the Union Government seems to be doing something worthwhile about the major lacunae in our Health and Education allocations at last. In the flurry of information packed densely in the Union Budget proposals 2011-12 there is a potential gem of great value, typically embedded in the detail. Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee has sought to boost the fortunes of both Education and Health by making a deft structural change in policy he is well known for.

“Henceforth”, intoned Mr. Mukherjee, “capital stock in educational institutions and hospitals will be treated as infrastructure sub-sectors,” replying to a discussion on Budget 2011-12 in the Lok Sabha. He went on to state that both would now qualify for capital subsidies through “viability gap funding”.

Now, what this jargon exactly means will have to be revealed in the unfolding of this policy shift, but it seems to suggest that the Government will pitch in with funds to meet budgetary shortfalls of new schools and colleges and technical training establishments and yes, for immunisation and public health awareness programmes as well as hospitals and clinics too!

Where the Government will find the considerable resources needed for this purpose to uplift these woebegone and chronically inadequate infrastructures is not known, but perhaps the miracles of deficit financing will come to the rescue yet again. But to be fair, in an economy growing at near double digits, the deficits will be bridged, as long as the Government is not too profligate, and the money will be well spent as long as the intended beneficiaries are actually delivered their benefits.

This important development could have very favourable consequences if implemented with will and imagination. Already Mrs. Sheila Dixit’s subsequent budget for Delhi does seem, most laudably, to echo this changed emphasis with its higher allocations to both Health and Education and the most welcome announcement of free healthcare for school going students.

But a major worry is the Government’s talent for ruining a good initiative by administering a policy thrust in their typically sarkari fashion. The private sector with its clear-cut profit and growth motives may be far more successful at maintaining standards, collaborating successfully with foreign educational and health entities, unleashing competition, economies of scale, and in short revolutionising our Health and Education landscape. They need to be incentivised and this may be a beginning in that direction.

Should this programme be privatised successfully, one will not hear of school buildings collapsing in the first season after they are built. Nor about rampant corruption that creates black holes into which as much as 90 per cent of the development funds disappear. We would not have to deal with the callous imperviousness engendered by the job from which one cannot be sacked. We would not be building classrooms without teachers, or clinics with a higher rodent population than humans. We wouldn’t be looking at the waste of unusable and ill-maintained medical equipment. We would not be paying the bill for inflated and manipulated tendering and an almost complete lack of accountability. In short, for such routine delights that come as a consequence of most governmental implementation and execution.

The Economist in a recent article entitled Bamboo Capitalism suggests that most of the double–digit Chinese GDP growth, an estimated 70 per cent of it, is “produced by enterprises that are not majority-owned by the state”. The magazine goes on to say that the notion that: “state directed capitalism and tight political control are the elixir of growth” is mistaken. “In fact China has surged forward mainly where the state has stood back” says the article.

This is not to say that the Indian Government’s role as facilitator is not important. Japan, China, South Korea, Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia and others in our Asian region have all benefited from strong Government support of private enterprise that executes objectives the Government holds dear.

There is no reason why we cannot also do this, except perhaps the entrenched mindsets of much of our bureaucracy and political leadership was nurtured, not in the liberating winds of change post 1991, but in the preceding socialist and public-sector favouring decades prior to that dawn.

Therefore, it may be some time yet before we properly start implementing policies meant for a resurgent 21st century economy. Still, the Government needs to be congratulated for doing something good about a vital need at last.

(1,048 words)


25th March 2011
Gautam Mukherjee

Updated version published as Leader on Edit Page of The Pioneer under title"Mindset that stifles hope" on April 5th, 2011 and simultaneously online at www.dailypioneer.com and in the Pioneer epaper. It is also archived under Columnists at www.dailypioneer.com

Clearer and Farther

Clearer and Farther

Those who are really convinced that they have made progress in science would not demand freedom for the new views to continue side by side with the old, but the substitution of the new views for the old.

V.I.Lenin in his pamphlet “What Is To Be Done?” (1901)

Vladimir Illyich Lenin brought about the epoch-altering 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, more or less by dint and force of his own character. He led from the front, and his party men followed as he finally turned out, not just the Tsar, but his moderate Menshevik colleagues too, and seized power. This,  despite being personally irascible and unpleasantly blunt. Still, the reason why the Bolsheviks stood fast behind Lenin was because he saw the issues in a clearer perspective, and thought much further forward, than anyone else around him- including the altogether more persuasive Trotsky.

                                                                                                                     

Today, as India stands presumptive on the threshold of its transformational renaissance, the political leadership lacks an overarching and strong vision to tackle the tremendous and widening disparity between the haves and the have-nots. This is all the more urgent as India’s economy grows at near double digits, and cannot but be seen as a callous and glaring failure of policy.

                                                                                       

But all we can witness towards addressing this great shame is lip-service and lousy implementation of some desultory and wasteful poverty alleviation programmes. Nobody seems willing to set about solving the problem as one of our two greatest priorities by throwing massive intellectual and monetary resources at it. We need productive and sustainable rural prosperity for sixty percent of our people. Indeed, if we confined our planning process to this one objective, we would probably be using those fine economists in the Commission far better.

The other looming and lurking 800 pound gorilla receiving little enough attention is the crying need for comprehensive modernisation and infrastructure creation. What’s being done, and it is not as if nothing is happening, is woefully inadequate and hardly on par with the best global standards.

Let us enumerate a few of our inadequacies: We have perhaps one quarter the electrical power we need with little hope of catching up at the pace we have adopted; our roads and highways are better than before, but hardly world standard; our railways are still in the 19^th century with electric and diesel locomotives tacked on in place of steam engines. Our overall systems and processes are obtusely labyrinthine and medieval. Our government to people interaction is feudal and colonial in tone and tenor. Our legal system is ponderous and its backlogs gargantuan. Our water is unfit to drink. Our food is sub-standard in quality and neither stored nor processed properly. Our municipalities are totally swamped, chaotic, ignorant of civic standards, and garbage is piled high everywhere.  The listing of our weaknesses is nearly endless. Nothing works in a manner befitting a developed country, not even in the show-piece capital of New Delhi, aspire as we might; and the end is nowhere in sight.

We manage to be self-satisfied nevertheless, consoling ourselves that things are better today than they were yesterday. But the fact is, in a rapidly globalising and technologically driven world, we cannot afford to move at our quaint and antiquated pace any longer. We are not only left far behind the now near-bankrupt developed world; but practically all the other emerging nations of every political persuasion, including the much cited BRIC or ASEAN or the GCC, the G-20, even most of the nations in the UN General Assembly!

And yet we want, and will probably get, for a variety of favourable geopolitical reasons, a permanent seat in the UNSC. We will be the most under-developed UNSC member of them all, with little hope of catching up, and hard-pressed to meet our consequent obligations on the world stage.

 

This gradualism, the hallmark of our policy-making in all matters, may be wise enough to contain political paradoxes but here could yet be the blight that wrecks the promise of a better future. Perhaps it isn’t this realisation that matters, otherwise it wouldn’t be ignored. But if more states vote to reward development as they have in Bihar recently, and in Gujarat before that, then the broader political classes will have to move out of their extended stupor for their own survival.

We cannot afford to be slow. And yet, each successive Railway Budget for instance, does not attempt to upgrade our railway system into something appropriate to the 21^st century, like France’s exemplary TGV system. Instead we tinker with old-hat populism as if we were still in the socialist dawn of 1950 and the informed commentary is relieved because train fares are not raised! 

The Union Budget 2011, as usual, will also focus on a plethora of micro issues, provide miniscule reliefs and tweak existing provisions, in a masterful balancing act signifying very little and showing the way forward not at all.

There will be no bold strokes, no Maoist attempt at a “great leap forward” with its exciting possibilities and ambition. This even as the term Maoist itself has changed meaning completely from the policies and homilies written down by the partly forgotten Chairman in that once fashionable Little Red Book. Today a Maoist refers to   tribal and agent provocateur terrorists in India’s jungle tracts trained, supported and sustained covertly however, by China.

Revolutions don’t often produce the results the people may want, as is borne out by the rear-guard and vainglorious action Colonel Muammar Gadhafi is fighting before his imminent ouster after 42 years of iron-fisted tyranny. But he too has ruled so long in the name of the people. He too wrote his telephone-directory sized Green Book in lieu of the institutions he destroyed.

But asking for policies that promote rural prosperity and widespread creation of new state-of-the-art infrastructure is not ideologically revolutionary. China and Brazil and Russia have adopted this path to their lasting benefit despite some excesses and redundancies. But at least they have left the era of chronic shortages of essential enablers behind and can concentrate on refining their governance.

India needs to do something urgently. Now, when both credibility and resources mobilisation are far less of a constraint than they have ever been in our 62 year republican history, there is no excuse to keep going slow. The Leninesque bit will however be in throwing out gradualism in favour of a dramatic makeover.

(1,066 words)

26^th February 2011

Gautam Mukherjee

Published at Leader on the Edit Page of The Pioneer with the same title on March 12, 2011 and also online at www.dailypioneer.com and in the pioneer epaper. Also archived undr Columnists at www.dailypioneer.com

Macavity

Cat -Pablo Picasso

Macavity

He always has an alibi and one or two to spare
Whatever time the deed took place, Macavity wasn't there!

The Mystery Cat-TS Eliot



The Prime Minister’s bravura, brazen, evidently much rehearsed performance, at the interaction with the senior broadcast media recently, was reminiscent of poet TS Eliot’s poem about an elusive mystery cat he called Macavity.

As spectator sports go, one finds the packaging of a position between a rock and a hard place particularly fascinating. But still, the nation waited and waited for a gritty, integrity-laden truth out of the whole thing. Instead, we were treated to a series of anodyne and self-serving statements. But perhaps, to read the tea leaves properly, our wait will have to be extended. Because the only clear-cut thing Dr. Singh said is that he wasn’t quitting, and that he intended to do some restructuring of the cabinet after the Budget session.

But verily, he has matured and ripened as a politician. Dr. Singh now uses his natural gifts of modesty, personal honesty, erudition, the familiar white bearded and sky blue turbanned persona, to not just give an appealing and sympathetic account of himself but attempt an audacious suspension of disbelief worthy of a master cinema director.

Many senior media persons and Opposition politicians have already marvelled at how the PM has positioned the precarious state of governance with corruption and bad news pouring out of every orifice, as a matter he is just about to tidy up, having recently located his misplaced broom.

The transmogrification, over the years, of the once decidedly Leftist professor and economist turned World Bank inspired reformer, liberator of the Indian economy in 1991; eliding, kaleidoscopically, imperceptibly, into the blasé politician of today, is impressive.

The Dr. Singh of 2011 must have been reminding himself, as he fielded questions with a practiced ease, that he was exactly where he wanted to be. He was informing us that he was determined to go down in history as the first non “family” Congress PM to stay for two full back-to-back terms.

And, by implication, he underlined that there was no one in the UPA or the Opposition who could unseat him. And increasingly, this very durability and tenacity of tenure may turn out to be his lasting testament. This, and the knack he displays to see his pet projects through. In this, he has quite a lot in common with former US President George W Bush who was also not thwarted from his essential purposes by mere criticism.

Besides, even if we cast Dr. Singh into the Faustian mould of having struck his particular bargain, to share power with the Congress party head, we can’t fail to note his emphasis on the satisfactory performance of the GDP growth under his helmsmanship. And based on this success alone, Dr. Singh seeks to minimise the impact of all the corruption on his watch.

Besides Faustian pacts aside, a sharing of prime ministerial power is hardly unprecedented. Our first PM Jawaharlal Nehru had to do so with both the Mahatma and Home Minister Patel, while they lived. More recently, the charismatic Mr. Atal Bihari Vajpayee shared his primus inter pares powers with his friend and comrade in arms, Mr. LK Advani. Besides, it has taken Dr. Singh off the hook on matters connected with the electoral success of the Congress Party.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the binary of power, all does not seem well. Electorally there have been hardly any state assembly or by-poll successes. Equally, we can’t help but note the shambles in the poverty alleviation and rural employment programmes for the aam aadmi.

Dr. Singh could therefore be consciously benefitting from the weaknesses in his own Party. He also seems determined to reach out to the Opposition to rescue the Budget session from the fate that befell the Winter Session, even if it means finding a way through to appearing before the much demanded JPC. And, in this, he is likely to be met more than half way by the Opposition.

Dr. Singh, the politician, is also adept at breaking logjams. He did it in UPA 1 to get the Left off his back by deftly utilising Mr. Mulayam Singh’s numbers in the Lok Sabha. The Left has been floundering both politically and electorally ever since.

To assess Dr. Singh as politically naïve or weak may be a classic misjudgement. He knows how to play the hand he has been dealt adroitly. He also knows age and health dictates that this is his last dance in active politics. And while minding the store and sweeping out the Augean stables of domestic politics interests him, it is not by any means his passion. The economy qualifies in this regard, as does foreign policy.

Dr. Manmohan Singh will see to it that that India tilts decisively towards the United States by way of our defence purchases before he leaves high office. This will reduce the strategic disadvantage we have always found ourselves in with regard to neighbouring bugbears China and Pakistan.

Both these countries are occasionally strident in their relationship with the US but know which side their bread is buttered. They have consequently benefitted enormously from being perceived as allies.

By way of contrast, India has long been in the Soviet camp while pretending to be non-aligned. The Russians today may also be selling us military equipment on more or less favourable terms, though the Admiral Gorshkov affair and the faulty Sukhois sent to India lately seems to give the lie to this.

An economically pressured America and Europe now won’t be that far behind in pricing and technology transfers too. To hark back to the nuclear fuel stoppages after our covert nuclear weaponisation as American/ Canadian/ European unreliability ignores the Civil Nuclear Deal which couldn’t have come off without their concerted support. Besides, Russia stopped supplying us the cryogenic engines too.

Fact is, we have to trust in our own usefulness, not so much in the old way of the world divided into blocks, but the emerging new world order of functioning democracies and/or economic clout. China, in the contest of the permanent UNSC seat for India, is beginning to see India in these terms, despite itself. After all, in a changed world, the future may need India and China to jointly pick up the pieces that used to be Pakistan.

(1,063 words)

20th February 2011
Gautam Mukherjee

Published as Leader Edit on Edit Page of The Pioneer as "Macavity of our times" on Saturday 26th February 2011. Also online at www.dailypioneer.com where it is archived under Guest Columnists. Also published in The facsimilie edition on 26th February 2011 of The Pioneer ePaper.