India Modified A new era in politics A.J. Philip The elections to the 16th Lok Sabha (Peoples Chamber), India’s Lower House of Parliament, are historic in more sense than one. After nearly three decades, a single party has won absolute majority in the 543-member House. Though the winning Bharatiya Janata Party (Indian Peoples Party) contested the election in alliance with several smaller parties which, too, picked up quite a few seats, it will not be dictated by its allies. The people had become so fed up with small parties, often, controlled by a single person like Chief Minister Jayalalithaa of the southern state of Tamil Nadu, that they voted massively for the BJP. The previous government of Dr Manmohan Singh and the ones before him led by the BJPs Atal Bihari Vajpayee and several others were all hamstrung by the compulsions of coalition politics when smaller parties assumed larger-than-life dimensions. The single outstanding feature of the elections is that they have thrown up a strong leader in Narendra Modi, who has been successfully ruling the western state of Gujarat. That he won all the 26 seats in Gujarat was a measure of his popularity. Elsewhere, too, he dominated the elections so much so that it would not be a misnomer to call what India witnessed as a Modi tsunami. While there is exhilaration over the BJPs victory, there is also concern among a large section of the population, particularly Muslims and Christians. This is because the BJP is a right-wing party with a religious and sectarian agenda that rattles the secular-minded. Ideologically, it never came to terms with the secular nature of the Indian state, though it has been fighting elections under the same Constitution that it never really approved of. When the BJP came to power following the elections in 1999, it made a feeble attempt to redraft the Constitution and it even set up a committee of experts for the purpose but it could not make much headway, mainly because the party did not have a clear mandate. Now that the National Democratic Alliance the BJP heads enjoys near two-thirds majority in the Lok Sabha, it is in a position to pursue its own agenda like doing away with Article 370 of the Constitution that gives some special rights to the northernmost state of Jammu and Kashmir where the Muslims are in a majority. Two other divisive subjects are enforcing a uniform civil code, which the Muslims oppose because they think it will undermine some of their religious rights, and constructing a magnificent temple at Ayodya in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh on the spot where a centuries-old mosque was demolished in 1992 by the foot soldiers of the same party. Though the church, which is heterogeneous in character, never took a stand against the BJP, the Christians, generally speaking, have been wary of the party. They believe that the right to propagate their religion would be compromised by the BJP. It is a different matter that Christianity, which traces its origin in India to the arrival of Saint Thomas, a disciple of Jesus, at Kodungalloor in the southernmost state of Kerala in 52 AD, is practised by less than 3 per cent of the population even after two millennia of “evangelisation”. When the Indian Constitution was drafted in 1950, there was a debate on whether India should declare itself a Hindu state or not. A small section of the Constituent Assembly argued the case for going the way of Pakistan, which declared itself an Islamic state where non-Muslims could not hold certain posts like the President of Pakistan or the Army Chief. In the end, the opinion of leaders like Dr B.R. Ambedkar, who chaired the Assembly, and Jawaharlal Nehru, who became the first Prime Minister of India, prevailed. Though the BJP did not exist at that time, it was started by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (National Volunteer Corps), set up in 1925, which believed that India should become a Hindu state. The Constitution guarantees the minorities certain rights like the freedom to run their institutions like schools and colleges in the manner they deem fit. Of course, this right has, over the years, been diluted by the government, which today enjoys a great say in the running of such institutions. Nonetheless, the minorities fear that the BJP might tamper with their freedom. Some states have passed laws to prohibit religious conversion. They fear that a national anti-conversion law might be introduced. There are writings by the RSS founders like Dr K.B. Hedgewar that they were inspired by the rise of Adolf Hitler in Germany and Benito Mussolini in Italy. This, again, is something the minorities have not been able to reconcile themselves to. Of course, none of this was debated during the elections. That Modi was the Chief Minister of Gujarat when the state witnessed an anti-Muslim pogrom in 2002 is old story. Whether he failed to stop the riots or he encouraged them to teach Muslims a lesson and to polarise voters on religious lines were not issues that bothered the electorate this time. They saw in Modi, a leader who could provide a stable, decisive government at the Centre. Modis task in the elections was smoothened by the multiple failures of the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government. In the popular perception, it was corrupt and indecisive. Congress president Sonia Gandhis son Rahul Gandhi did not have either charisma or political astuteness to stand up to Modi. That many Congress leaders like former finance minister P. Chidambaram were not even ready to contest elections for fear of defeat showed the utter helplessness of the party. Right from the word go, it had been Modi all the way. Modi captured the imagination of the voters by addressing over 400 meetings where tens of thousands of people attended and travelled over 350,000 kilometres in the gruelling heat. He has promised a government, which will be just to every section of the people. He has been in public life for nearly 30 years but little is known about his views on economic and foreign issues other than his commitment to promote self-reliance in all economic activity. The Congress had all along followed what was called non-alignment in foreign policy, that is maintaining equi-distance from the US and the erstwhile Soviet Union but in effect opposing the US on most issues. The BJP government of Vajpayee changed all that. It forged better relations with the US, a policy continued by the Congress government that followed it. In fact, the nuclear deal India entered into with the US was the culmination of a process begun by the BJP. True, it outwardly opposed the deal. Again, the BJP is considered an opponent of the two-nation theory that allowed the vivisection of the country and the formation of Pakistan. But that did not prevent Vajpayee from visiting the memorial for the Lahore resolution that the Muslim League passed in 1946, which ultimately resulted in the division of the country on religious lines. Whats more, Vajpayee signalled a new turn in India-Pakistan relationship. In contrast, Dr Manmohan Singh could not even visit Pakistan, though no other prime minister had visited as many countries as him. In comparison, Modi is better placed to negotiate with Pakistan and try to settle the festering border problem with the neighbour. It is difficult to deny that no Indian or Pakistani government has ever tried to find a solution to the problem. At least, Modi does not have to look back over his shoulders for he can take decisions on his own. During the campaign, he attacked Congress president Sonia Gandhi, who was born in Italy, for not keeping the Italian marines accused of killing two Indian fishermen in jail, instead of a guesthouse, and for letting them go to Italy to take part in the voting there. Given this position, Modi is unlikely to be softer towards the two marines. There is a saying that no matter which government comes to power, the foreign policy will remain unchanged. This has been true so far. Modi is out and out an anti-Communist but he is said to be fascinated by the fast economic growth in China. It is one of the few countries he has visited as Chief Minister. There are striking similarities between the Gujarat model of development and the Chinese one. In China, the Communist government has created special economic zones where it has provided huge chunks of land for setting up factories and warehouses. Modi, too, followed such a policy so much so that when the House of Tatas failed to get enough land to manufacture Nano, the worlds cheapest car, initially priced at US $2500, in the eastern state of West Bengal, it was to Gujarat that it went. The corporates, which solidly supported Modi during the campaign, would like him to follow a policy which would help improve the economic growth rate. That economic growth does not necessarily lead to a reduction in the gap between the rich and the poor is altogether a different matter. Small wonder that India has one of the worlds largest clubs of billionaires. Even the richest and the third richest Britons are also Indians. This does not speak much about the Indian situation. India still has the worlds largest population of illiterates and its infant and mother mortality rates are only slightly better than that of sub-Saharan Africa. The population has been growing at such a rate that there are fears that, if not controlled, it will cause problems no government will be able to control. Agriculture growth has come to a standstill and a population of nearly 1.3 billion is unmanageable. Apart from corruption, what influenced the voters decision was the runaway inflation and the resultant price rise. Modi is committed to control both. True, the day the news about his victory came, the Indian rupee appreciated marginally by 40 paise against the US dollar. The share market is also buoyed by the BJPs victory. In other words, there are great expectations from Modi as Prime Minister. For a small section of the population his promise of bullet trains as in Japan, roads as in Germany, 100 smart cities and linking of all the major rivers is all that matters. However, for a vast majority of the people development means three square meals a day, a proper shelter, access to potable water and hospital and the best education for their children. One quality that Modi has in abundance is that he evokes either admiration or hatred. India follows a Cabinet system of government as in Britain where the prime minister is the first among equals. He has virtually introduced a presidential system of government in the country. Time alone will prove whether India needs a robust system of governance or a strong leader who can even bypass the system. Call it the quirkiness of Indian democracy or whatever, the number of votes a party wins does not necessarily match the number of seats it gets. For instance, the BJP won 170 million votes and garnered 282 seats while the Congress secured 102 million votes and won 46 seats. The BSP won 22 million votes and zero seats. This is essentially because the country follows what is known as the first-past-post system. Modi can use his power in two ways. Either to improve the socio-economic conditions of the people or to pursue the agenda of making the nation a theocratic state where the minorities have only limited rights in the political, social and economic spheres. He can improve relations with Indias neighbours like Pakistan, China, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Myanmar or follow a confrontationist policy. The choice is his own. In 1972, the Congress led by Indira Gandhi was re-elected Prime Minister with a massive mandate but she was roundly defeated in the next 1977 elections. It is a pointer to the possibility that the very people who salute Narendra Modi today can turn against him tomorrow, if he is perceived to have failed to fulfil their dreams. It is one thing to promise the sky and quite another to redeem it. Anyway, the Modi era of Indian politics has just begun. It is time to wait and watch. The writer is a New Delhi-based senior journalist and political commentator ---- Courtesy: ilRegno, published from Bologna, Italy.
Posted on: Sat, 12 Jul 2014 07:03:34 +0000