Celebrating
The BJP's Departure
By
Praful Bidwai
31 May 2004
Kashmir Times
After
a historic election that sent the sectarian Bharatiya Janata Party packing,
Mr Manmohan Singh has put together a Council of Ministers which reflects
India's immense regional diversity and cultural plurality. The composition
of the new United Progressive Alliance government is particularly reassuring
and indeed empowering for India's religious and ethnic minorities, consisting
of over 250 million people, who experienced a sense of insecurity and
marginalisation, if not outright victimisation, under the BJP-led National
Democratic Alliance. But it is no less satisfying for the religious
majority, itself highly diverse and differentiated, most of whose members
have never
had an iota of sympathy for the retrograde and communal politics of
the BJP.
Even the name of
the new ruling coalition, with its felicitous reference to progress
or people's empowerment and unity or social cohesion, is a pleasant
departure from the viciously divisive policies of the NDA. More important,
the UPA's self-appellation is a reminder of its mandate, itself an act
of self-assertion by India's poor. Broadly speaking, the Indian voter
has put the issues of equity and distributive justice firmly on the
agenda. She has pronounced a clear, unambiguous, verdict against managerial-style
politics based upon economic elitism, a corporate takeover of policy
and pitiless disdain for the underprivileged. And she has delivered
a powerful rebuff to communalists and inciters of hatred.
The UPA's mandate
is not just for growth or development. It is for equitable growth and
for development which has people right at its centre. It is not just
for "detoxification" or the cleansing of the many institutions
that the BJP corrupted and communalised. It is for healing and repairing
the secular fabric of India, which has been severely damaged by the
NDA over the past six years. It is for reintegrating the values of humanity
and decency into the very core of Indian politics and for reasserting
the centrality of the principle of popular sovereignty.
This is a highly
positive, forward-looking and broad-ranging mandate from the people.
Regrettably, the selection of personnel and allocation of portfolios
by Mr Singh does not adequately reflect its progressive nature. This
is not because the Congress party has kept all the prestigious high-profile
portfolios for itself-including, Finance, Home, Foreign Affairs and
Defence. Rather, it is because its choice of ministers is mixed and
in many ways conservative. It falls short of what is needed.
To be fair, we must
first look at the upside. The appointment of Mr Natwar Singh as Foreign
Minister and the allocation of Human Resource Development to Mr Arjun
Singh, of Agriculture and Food to Mr Sharad Pawar, Information and Broadcasting
to Mr S. Jaipal Reddy, and Petroleum and Panchayati Raj to Mr Mani Shankar
Aiyar are all very welcome. Mr Natwar Singh will hopefully bring his
strongly non-aligned perspective and his experience in multilateral
diplomacy to bear upon our foreign policy. Under the NDA, this became
obsessively pro-US to the point that India almost sent troops to Iraq.
A year ago, Mr Advani made a commitment to this effect during his US
visit. In the absence of popular protests against that unjust war and
occupation, the NDA would certainly have despatched Indian troops. Under
Mr Singh, we can expect some progress in normalisation of relations
with China, Pakistan and other neighbours. Mr Pawar, an able administrator,
faces a massive challenge in revitalising India's crisis-ridden agriculture
and, even more important, beefing up our collapsing food security. Mr
Reddy can be trusted to make a sincere, purposive effort to establish
Prasar Bharati as a genuinely autonomous corporation and to regulate
the media fairly. And Mr Arjun Singh will doubtless try to purge the
education system, the NCERT's textbooks and the national research councils
system of toxic Hindutva influence. This is a subject close to his heart.
Throughout his career, Mr Singh has never wavered on secularism. Mr
Aiyar will undoubtedly put an end to pernicious attempts to sell off
India's cash-rich public sector oil companies, although he must take
unpleasant decisions like raising the retail prices of diesel, kerosene
and petrol very, very soon because of the high world prices of crude.
Equally significant are second-rung appointments such as those of Mr
Dayanidhi Maran (IT & Communications), the Northeast's P.R. Kyndiah
(Tribal Affairs), Mr Shibu Soren (Coal; Mines & Minerals), the Dalit
leaders Ms Meira Kumar and Ms Selja (respectively Social Justice and
Empowerment, and Urban Employment & Poverty Alleviation) and Mr
Prithviraj Chavan (Minister of State in the PMO). Mr Chavan is one of
the Congress's most serious young leaders. However, one does get the
impression that individuals like Mr Laloo Prasad Yadav and Mr Kabil
Sibal have been given lighter portfolios than they deserve. By contrast,
a relatively poorly known leader like Mr A Ramdoss (PMK) has \ been
given a weighty ministry like Health & Family Welfare and Mr Kamal
Nath has been rewarded with both Commerce and Industry. Mr Nath didn't
distinguish himself as Environment Minister in the 1990s. He diverted
a whole river in order to enhance the value of a hotel he owns in Himachal.
The Commerce Minister
will be called upon to play a crucial role in the coming round of WTO
negotiations in which India's stand, like that of Brazil and South Africa,
as well as the least developed countries', will matter a great deal.
At stake is unrestricted trade in services. Successful negotiations
will need high integrity, acute comprehension and a global perspective,
as well as an understanding of the national interest. Consider the real
downside. Messrs P. Chidambaram, Pranab Mukherjee and Shivraj Patil
raise even more disturbing questions given their past record. Mr Chidambaram
is an
ideologically-driven neoliberal, who like many other Harvard Business
School (N.B: not Harvard University) graduates, especially in Latin
America, remains dedicated to "free-market" dogmas. These
are the very same policies which increased poverty and income disparities
in India and which were resoundingly rejected by the electorate.
There is a difference
in the "reforms" adsorbed by Mr Chidambaram and Mr Manmohan
Singh. Mr Singh triggered India's neoliberal turn in 1991 because he
then believed there was no alternative to this after the collapse of
the Soviet Union. But he is not a "free-market" zealot. He
opposes the
privatisation of the public sector or its dismantling "for ideological
reasons"; he says it should be "allowed to grow if [it] can
compete on an equal footing with [the] private sector".
Today, Mr Singh
would be far more cautious and more responsive to people's needs. It
would have been preferable if he had kept Finance himself. Mr Chidambaram's
appointment seems to be a panic response to the recent stockmarket crisis,
which was in part deliberately rigged to solicit pro-business signals
from the government. Neither Mr Mukherjee nor Mr Patil can even remotely
be accused of being imaginative and boldly innovative or of firmness
in adhering to principle. That's precisely what's needed today in Defence,
which cries out for streamlining, deep cuts in wasteful budgets and
action against extensive corruption. Similarly, Home holds the key to
resolving the Ayodhya dispute through an equitable formula, to abolishing
POTA and other draconian laws, and to outlawing Togadia-style hate-speech
and VHP-Bajrang Dal-style hate-acts. Mr Patil does not exude much hope
in this regard. Mr Mukherjee has been very close to certain manipulative
business houses. In the past, he adopted hawkish positions on the nuclear
issue and on Pakistan.
The present moment
offers a unique opportunity for historic reconciliation with Pakistan.
Islamabad has invested great energy-and hope-in the peace process. The
regional and international circumstances are also ripe for a major breakthrough.
Mr Manmohan Singh himself will have to take the initiative here and
push through bold new proposals. Peace with Pakistan will be a huge
gain. It will qualitatively improve India's security and free resources
for investment in public services and in development. Equally important,
it will remove a major plank from the communalists' demonology, which
blames Pakistan and the ISI for all of India's domestic problems as
well as terrorism, and which vilifies Indian Muslims as Pakistan's Fifth
Column. Peace with Pakistan is a precondition for India's realisation
of its true potential globally, regionally, and domestically.Mr Manmohan
Singh has a huge challenge on his hands. His government's policy orientation
and performance will determine to a large extent the direction of India's
own evolution in the coming years: Will India become a subordinate,
passive component or camp-follower of an unequal, unjust global order
in politics and finance and will it further enlarge its domestic cesspools
of grievances and discontents while keeping the poor insecure and wretchedly
unhappy? Or will India move towards liberating its people from poverty,
ill-health, illiteracy and the multiplicity of injustices they suffer
so that it can contribute to making the world a better place? Mr Singh
can turn the challenge into opportunity-but only if he resolutely and
consistently favours high principle and the public good over pragmatic
and parochial considerations. But as of now, we must say two cheers,
perhaps two and a half cheers, to him.
Courtesy/Harsh Kapoor,
SACW