Watching Sachin Tendulkar lord over the proceedings of the Chepauk test match on the final day of the first test match with England, a plethora of emotions held sway over the mind. 19 years after making his international debut, the realization that Sachin – “The Wall” was as constructive as and no less destructive than Sachin – “The Master Blaster” hits you with a pang of guilt thrown in. Haven’t we all not been guilty of writing off the champion, haven’t we cribbed about the waning of his batting abilities, haven’t we all thought that perhaps Sachin was a spent force, every time he failed to put up a good score or when he had to grind his way for runs?
In 1989, a 16 year old, bloodied in the nose from a Waqar Younis delivery shrugged off all requests for medical attention and straight drove the next ball to the fence. Later in the tour, he belted 27 runs off an over by retiring Abdul Qadir in the one-day series that followed. Of course all this is cricketing lore, but India had discovered not just a new idol who played cricket to the needs of television, but also a whole new generation of youngsters devoted to watching the game. I would know, because I was a 9 year old then, who started desperately following Sachin’s exploits on tv, newspaper, radio and finally on the internet. And after 19 years, on Monday, December 15 in the autumn of Sachin’s career, the long held dream of watching him play in front of my eyes materialized. And he didn’t disappoint.
Cricket has become a big man’s game with almost every player out on the field being powerfully built or standing six feet tall. And there was Sachin who looked a midget in comparison, but with the magnetism that accompanies great achievers, dwarfing every other player in sight as fifty thousand pairs of eyes willed him on to a century and an Indian win. The pitch misbehaved – it gave the spinners turn and the pacers uneven bounce. Through every watchful stroke, every run, every conversation with Yuvraj Singh, the determination that he would finish the task without leaving it for another man was evident. Cricket lovers are quickly forgetting Tendulkar’s erstwhile breathtaking shots as they realize the efficacy of his stoic defence, perfect technique and the wizardry of his behind the wicket shots.
Spoilt by powerful television cameras that slow down the cricket ball at delivery followed by slow motion views from several angles, the viewer in me at the stadium realized, not without a little shock the blinding speeds at which the ball reached the batsman, whether bowled by a spinner or pacer. The split-second decision to go for the behind wicket shots, and the tight precision needed to get the bat to the ball for those stock shots by Sachin, made me bow down to his amazing resilience towards the way his game, his body, his team and his relevance has changed over the years. Sehwag, Yuvraj and Dhoni may be the future. Bradman, Richards and Lara are of the past. But none can deny that any of these players had to face the weight of expectations that Sachin has had to shoulder for the last 15 years. At 99, with the Chennai crowd roaring manically for his hundred, a fellow journalist quips, “This is crazy. How can he not go mad? Others would have crumbled!” Superhuman. I could think of no other word.
P.S - Feature written for sports page in college newspaper.
Wednesday, 17 December 2008
Saturday, 13 December 2008
Are we asking the right questions?
Like everyone else, I was also a proud Indian, until a few months back. I believed most of what the media dished out to me as news and most of what the Indian government did as part of state policy. Of course like every other Indian, I was wary of the sly politician, the corrupt bureaucrat and the all powerful police. I was also a staunch believer of the responsibility of newspapers to the public and its role as a watchdog of democracy. And then I quit the IT industry to become a student, eager to join the hallowed profession of journalism, and ``serve’’ the society even while I earned my bread and butter. But the first lessons we were taught at journalism school was to question everything, especially all that was appearing in the media as news.
This business of questioning was painful. But it didn’t bring my concept of India crashing down. Instead it woke me up to the harsh realities that India has to live with - realities that are swept under the carpet for the sake of pragmatic politics, booming economy and national pride. We have not bothered to ask why Kashmir revolted against India in 1990. We have not inquired why a microscopic minority of Indian Muslims took to terrorism after 2002. Neither do we ponder why the Naxalites have come to dominate matters in 150 out of the 602 districts in India. Nor do we think about why the LTTE turned against the Indian government.
For long, the media has been feeding us with one side of the story. It could be convenience, it could be laziness, it could be fear of government repression, it could be blind trust in the government, it could be the conservative beliefs of media bosses or it could be the absence of a tradition of questioning what is taught to us - a sad remnant of our long colonial history. A few magazines like Economic and Political Weekly and Tehelka have shown the courage to go out of their way to ask the tough questions and provide insightful analyses but the mighty state can afford to turn the other way as these publications, with their limited circulation, rarely reach the masses.
Since I have made grave charges against the government in the earlier paragraph, I will attempt to address them as succinctly as I can within the constraints of the space allocated to me. The roots of the Kashmir problem lay in the Indian government rigging polls successively, until in 1987, several of today’s ``separatist’’ leaders like Abdul Majid Dar, Yasin Malik and Shabir Shah took up the gun in disgust after the rigging deprived them of victory in the elections. The phenomenon of home-grown terrorism started after the Gujarat genocide of 2002, when young Muslims lost their faith in the Indian state’s intention to protect them; this was evident, if evidence was needed, with the failure of the Central government to sack Narendra Modi as Gujarat Chief Minister.
When Manmohan Singh called Maoists as the ‘single biggest threat’ facing India, he chose not to address the reason for their overwhelming popularity with the Scheduled Tribes. The Adivasis who make up around 10% of our population had been systematically deprived of their lands and livelihood for the sake of economic development of our country and none else stood up for them. The Indian Peacekeeping Force(IPKF) that went to Sri Lanka in 1987 to keep peace between Sri Lanka and the LTTE ended up taking sides with the Lankan Army and alienated the long-oppressed Tamil population of that country.
Of course, we have had examples of great journalism in the past when the Indian Express opposed the Emergency or The Hindu unravelled the Bofors scandal and the media as a whole exposing the spate of corruption scandals that came out during the early 90’s during P.V.Narasimha Rao’s rule, the reportage of P.Sainath in the Times of India in 1993-94 that signalled quite early on the lopsided path to development that India was taking, through the New Economic Reforms of 1991, by cutting down on public spending in health and education. Contrast this with the last 4 years of UPA rule and not a single corruption scandal involving the government has been uncovered. Has the government played straight or do you also smell something foul in the silence of the media? The world over, the media has grown lethargic and treat governments and erring institutions with kid gloves. How else would you explain the several acts of mal-governance by George Bush and co that went un-investigated?
It is important then, that we question and ask the right questions, if the media does not do it for us. The next time you read the newspaper, read it with an open mind (of course, feel free to criticize me too for lack of objectivity in this article, if you think I am wrong). See the news item from the perspective of a factory worker whose job is under threat; a farmer whose lands are about to be acquired; a pensioner whose pension funds were siphoned away and we will realize the havoc that an all-powerful state and unscrupulous corporates could wreak. But then, we are the middle-class, we earn good salaries, our lives are safe and secure, we live in cities which are pampered by the state, but think of the thousands of families in Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh whose lands and homes will go under water when the dam is completed and the waters of the Narmada rise. Ask the right questions today. Tomorrow you could be the person blindsided by the State.
P.S - Article to appear in the upcoming issue of Sparx Mag - a recently launched weekly e-paper "targetted" at the IT and BPO crowd in Chennai. Check out the website
This business of questioning was painful. But it didn’t bring my concept of India crashing down. Instead it woke me up to the harsh realities that India has to live with - realities that are swept under the carpet for the sake of pragmatic politics, booming economy and national pride. We have not bothered to ask why Kashmir revolted against India in 1990. We have not inquired why a microscopic minority of Indian Muslims took to terrorism after 2002. Neither do we ponder why the Naxalites have come to dominate matters in 150 out of the 602 districts in India. Nor do we think about why the LTTE turned against the Indian government.
For long, the media has been feeding us with one side of the story. It could be convenience, it could be laziness, it could be fear of government repression, it could be blind trust in the government, it could be the conservative beliefs of media bosses or it could be the absence of a tradition of questioning what is taught to us - a sad remnant of our long colonial history. A few magazines like Economic and Political Weekly and Tehelka have shown the courage to go out of their way to ask the tough questions and provide insightful analyses but the mighty state can afford to turn the other way as these publications, with their limited circulation, rarely reach the masses.
Since I have made grave charges against the government in the earlier paragraph, I will attempt to address them as succinctly as I can within the constraints of the space allocated to me. The roots of the Kashmir problem lay in the Indian government rigging polls successively, until in 1987, several of today’s ``separatist’’ leaders like Abdul Majid Dar, Yasin Malik and Shabir Shah took up the gun in disgust after the rigging deprived them of victory in the elections. The phenomenon of home-grown terrorism started after the Gujarat genocide of 2002, when young Muslims lost their faith in the Indian state’s intention to protect them; this was evident, if evidence was needed, with the failure of the Central government to sack Narendra Modi as Gujarat Chief Minister.
When Manmohan Singh called Maoists as the ‘single biggest threat’ facing India, he chose not to address the reason for their overwhelming popularity with the Scheduled Tribes. The Adivasis who make up around 10% of our population had been systematically deprived of their lands and livelihood for the sake of economic development of our country and none else stood up for them. The Indian Peacekeeping Force(IPKF) that went to Sri Lanka in 1987 to keep peace between Sri Lanka and the LTTE ended up taking sides with the Lankan Army and alienated the long-oppressed Tamil population of that country.
Of course, we have had examples of great journalism in the past when the Indian Express opposed the Emergency or The Hindu unravelled the Bofors scandal and the media as a whole exposing the spate of corruption scandals that came out during the early 90’s during P.V.Narasimha Rao’s rule, the reportage of P.Sainath in the Times of India in 1993-94 that signalled quite early on the lopsided path to development that India was taking, through the New Economic Reforms of 1991, by cutting down on public spending in health and education. Contrast this with the last 4 years of UPA rule and not a single corruption scandal involving the government has been uncovered. Has the government played straight or do you also smell something foul in the silence of the media? The world over, the media has grown lethargic and treat governments and erring institutions with kid gloves. How else would you explain the several acts of mal-governance by George Bush and co that went un-investigated?
It is important then, that we question and ask the right questions, if the media does not do it for us. The next time you read the newspaper, read it with an open mind (of course, feel free to criticize me too for lack of objectivity in this article, if you think I am wrong). See the news item from the perspective of a factory worker whose job is under threat; a farmer whose lands are about to be acquired; a pensioner whose pension funds were siphoned away and we will realize the havoc that an all-powerful state and unscrupulous corporates could wreak. But then, we are the middle-class, we earn good salaries, our lives are safe and secure, we live in cities which are pampered by the state, but think of the thousands of families in Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh whose lands and homes will go under water when the dam is completed and the waters of the Narmada rise. Ask the right questions today. Tomorrow you could be the person blindsided by the State.
P.S - Article to appear in the upcoming issue of Sparx Mag - a recently launched weekly e-paper "targetted" at the IT and BPO crowd in Chennai. Check out the website
Friday, 12 December 2008
Swamped by waste
The expanding girth of our cities has devoured in its wake every landform like villages, lakes and farmlands that supported in the first place, the existence of these urban centres. Pallikaranai is one such sad story of a fresh water marshland that humans, birds, animals all depended on for their sustenance until the rapid growth that Chennai witnessed, needed a dumpyard for the thousands of tonnes of waste that the burgeoning metropolis manufactured daily. The tragedy of Pallikaranai was compounded by landfilling that converted several hectares of land on its fringes into affluent settlements for the upwardly mobile population of the city.
Once spread over 5000 hectares, Pallikaranai Marsh is home to 61 species of water plants, 110 species of birds, 21 species of reptiles and 46 species of fishes besides being a source of drinking water for the people in surrounding villages. Dumping at Pallikaranai began in 1985 on a small scale but now extends to atleast 700 acres. And guess what the citizens of Chennai contribute for the upkeep of this dumpyard - 2500 tons of garbage daily! The cast of characters in the epic struggle at Pallikaranai includes naturalists, resident associations, corporation officials and ragpickers. Each has a stake in what becomes of Pallikaranai for different reasons. Naturalists are protesting environmental damage, resident associations complain of health problems, corporation officials struggle with finding an alternate dumpyard while for ragpickers it is a question of livelihood.
With the fresh water habitat declining in area and quality, migratory birds which had made Pallikaranai their temporary abode for ages have stopped coming back. Poisons emanating from non-degradable wastes like plastics, heavy metals, etc have seeped into the soil posing enormous threat to the ground water system of Chennai. The filling of land around the boundaries of the marsh have severed this ecosystem’s connection with the Bay of Bengal and during heavy rains the several arteries that once acted as a channel for flood water are now choked causing flooding in nearby areas like Velachery. Environmentalists like Nityanand Jayaraman and A.Murugavel say that the Chennai Corporation recent decision to restrict dumping to 200 acres won’t help but were hopeful that their agitation for zero-dumping at Pallikaranai will succeed.
Residents in and around Pallikaranai were the first to start agitating against the dumping and burning of garbage but their struggle gained force only when the environmental angle got highlighted. Today 793 acres of the marshland have been classified as reserve forest area. Residents complain of unbearable stench, lung-choking smog, mosquito menace, respiratory diseases like asthma and sadly studies conducted have discovered even toxins in breast milk, caused by the rampant dumping and burning of organic and inorganic wastes. From the IT companies that have set up shop in the area through upper middle class residents of recently constructed apartments to the poorer residents of the old villages around the marsh, everyone wants the dumpyard to close down, but is the corporation listening?
Corporation officials blame the continuation of dumping at Pallikaranai on the unavailability of another place to dump and the low capacity of the Perungudi recycling plant to handle all of Chennai’s wastes. Their efforts for segregation of waste at source and for localized disposal of organic wastes have just taken off and may take years to yield results. They also conveniently pass on the blame of the burning at Pallikaranai to the ragpickers, and say that they are being demonized for no crime of theirs. While corporation officials say that ragpickers burn the garbage to unearth the metal scraps that earn them more money, Exnora International, a group that works with ragpickers says that the dumpers have orders to burn the garbage so that more of it can be accommodated. Moreover, the ragpickers collect not just the metal; anything from plastic to rubber is of value to them. Finally, ragpickers do the work that everyone from the waste producer to the collecting and disposing agencies are supposed to be doing: retrieving anything and everything that can be recycled!
The last act in this long winding drama surrounding Pallikaranai saw the Madras High Court on November 17 step in and serve show cause notices to Chennai Corporation on why contempt of court proceedings should not be initiated against it. The burning stopped but residents are wary of a return to old habits. The environmentalists’ demand for making the entire Pallikaranai Marsh a reserve forest area is yet to be addressed. The court’s concern for citizens’ health rather than the environment is obvious when it wanted the burning to stop but through the order obliquely allows dumping to continue. Ultimately, the struggle to save Pallikaranai must begin from Chennai’s homes. For long we have blamed civic authorities for their waste disposal practices; it is time we waste producers are held accountable too. It is an irony of our progress that a once picturesque area like Pallikaranai has today become an eyesore. Nature can regenerate; Pallikaranai can still save itself. But only if we want it to. Only if we keep our hands off.
P.S - Feature written for college newspaper.
Once spread over 5000 hectares, Pallikaranai Marsh is home to 61 species of water plants, 110 species of birds, 21 species of reptiles and 46 species of fishes besides being a source of drinking water for the people in surrounding villages. Dumping at Pallikaranai began in 1985 on a small scale but now extends to atleast 700 acres. And guess what the citizens of Chennai contribute for the upkeep of this dumpyard - 2500 tons of garbage daily! The cast of characters in the epic struggle at Pallikaranai includes naturalists, resident associations, corporation officials and ragpickers. Each has a stake in what becomes of Pallikaranai for different reasons. Naturalists are protesting environmental damage, resident associations complain of health problems, corporation officials struggle with finding an alternate dumpyard while for ragpickers it is a question of livelihood.
With the fresh water habitat declining in area and quality, migratory birds which had made Pallikaranai their temporary abode for ages have stopped coming back. Poisons emanating from non-degradable wastes like plastics, heavy metals, etc have seeped into the soil posing enormous threat to the ground water system of Chennai. The filling of land around the boundaries of the marsh have severed this ecosystem’s connection with the Bay of Bengal and during heavy rains the several arteries that once acted as a channel for flood water are now choked causing flooding in nearby areas like Velachery. Environmentalists like Nityanand Jayaraman and A.Murugavel say that the Chennai Corporation recent decision to restrict dumping to 200 acres won’t help but were hopeful that their agitation for zero-dumping at Pallikaranai will succeed.
Residents in and around Pallikaranai were the first to start agitating against the dumping and burning of garbage but their struggle gained force only when the environmental angle got highlighted. Today 793 acres of the marshland have been classified as reserve forest area. Residents complain of unbearable stench, lung-choking smog, mosquito menace, respiratory diseases like asthma and sadly studies conducted have discovered even toxins in breast milk, caused by the rampant dumping and burning of organic and inorganic wastes. From the IT companies that have set up shop in the area through upper middle class residents of recently constructed apartments to the poorer residents of the old villages around the marsh, everyone wants the dumpyard to close down, but is the corporation listening?
Corporation officials blame the continuation of dumping at Pallikaranai on the unavailability of another place to dump and the low capacity of the Perungudi recycling plant to handle all of Chennai’s wastes. Their efforts for segregation of waste at source and for localized disposal of organic wastes have just taken off and may take years to yield results. They also conveniently pass on the blame of the burning at Pallikaranai to the ragpickers, and say that they are being demonized for no crime of theirs. While corporation officials say that ragpickers burn the garbage to unearth the metal scraps that earn them more money, Exnora International, a group that works with ragpickers says that the dumpers have orders to burn the garbage so that more of it can be accommodated. Moreover, the ragpickers collect not just the metal; anything from plastic to rubber is of value to them. Finally, ragpickers do the work that everyone from the waste producer to the collecting and disposing agencies are supposed to be doing: retrieving anything and everything that can be recycled!
The last act in this long winding drama surrounding Pallikaranai saw the Madras High Court on November 17 step in and serve show cause notices to Chennai Corporation on why contempt of court proceedings should not be initiated against it. The burning stopped but residents are wary of a return to old habits. The environmentalists’ demand for making the entire Pallikaranai Marsh a reserve forest area is yet to be addressed. The court’s concern for citizens’ health rather than the environment is obvious when it wanted the burning to stop but through the order obliquely allows dumping to continue. Ultimately, the struggle to save Pallikaranai must begin from Chennai’s homes. For long we have blamed civic authorities for their waste disposal practices; it is time we waste producers are held accountable too. It is an irony of our progress that a once picturesque area like Pallikaranai has today become an eyesore. Nature can regenerate; Pallikaranai can still save itself. But only if we want it to. Only if we keep our hands off.
P.S - Feature written for college newspaper.
Friday, 5 December 2008
Road to New Delhi: 2009 general elections
With the 15th Lok Sabha elections slated to be held before May of next year, all political activity in the country has geared towards addressing people's issues and mobilizing party machineries. The ball was set rolling during the no-confidence motion against the present dispensation, when fears of the UPA government falling, seemed a taut possibility. A re-alignment of sorts happened with parties scrambling to form new alliances to stabilize and destabilize the present government, while also having an eye on the impending general election.
The Congress-SP-JMM, BJP-INLD, the short lived BSP-Left tie-ups were an immediate result of this search for new partners. In the months following the confidence vote, political parties all over India began hectic parleys to find common ground in an effort to create pre-poll alliances. The emphasis on pre-poll rather than post-poll alliances signifies the acceptance of ground realities by the two major national parties, Congress and BJP that their base has further shrunk. The third front that the Left is attempting to stitch together will be a major player in the next Lok Sabha too with parties like BSP, TDP, Praja Rajyam, AIADMK, DMDK, JD(S), TRS and RLD searching for space in the national arena, as they are currently not allied with either the UPA or the NDA.
The issues that ordinary citizens are most concerned with have not changed significantly from 2004. To be certain, the UPA will not make the BJP's mistake of presenting a "Shining India" to 80 per cent of the country who had no part in the rapid economic growth India saw. Moreover the economic slowdown, has deflated any claims, the Congress would have loved to make, of the massive economic reforms that it undertook which took the Sensex to record levels, despite the opposition from Left parties.
The UPA can boast of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS), Right To Information (RTI) and Indo-US nuclear deal while the Left will pat itself on the back for backing NREGS and RTI while obstructing attempts to subvert the RTI Act, diverting Pensions and Provident Funds and increasing FDI's in insurance; the last two of which would have put India in trouble from the global economic crisis. The BJP predictably has latched on to the terrorism threat and weaknesses of the UPA in fighting terror but its nationalist agenda received a severe setback following the involvement of Hindu "extremists" in the Malegaon blasts and brought undone its claims that terrorism was a Muslim domain.
However, it is a reality that the spate of bombings across the country have become a concern for citizens, but who they choose to throw their lot with on this count remains in doubt as successive governments of the BJP and Congress have fared equally poorly on the security front, but the Congress is on the backfoot as it has repeatedly fumbled on evolving a strategy to combat terrorism and addressing the flaws in the security and intelligence apparatus. The recent violence against Christians, the UPA's hesitation to ban the Bajrang Dal and the pressure to bring POTA back has foisted insecurity on minorities. The Congress has been sceptical of playing the secular card in recent times, and has lost significant minority support to third front.
The economic slowdown might be a boon to the ruling UPA, as it has brought demand and hence inflation down. The Congress has a masterstroke up its armoury which it is waiting to unveil: lowering of petrol and LPG price. This will satisfy the middle class and the agriculture sector as prices of essential items will come down in the short run. The recession's impact on the service and industry sectors is troublesome for the UPA as the work-force in these sectors enjoy enormous sympathy in the media but is not a major factor in votebank politics. However Manmohan Singh seems to have got it wrong, when he talks of a financial stimuli or bailout for industrialists while forgetting that a similar crisis exists in the agricultural sector too where incomes have continued to deflate or remain stagnant as a result of our pursuit of neo-liberal policies.
The recently held assembly polls to the Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chattisgarh, Jammu-Kashmir, Delhi and Mizoram will act as the true curtain raiser to the Lok Sabha elections. Though local issues and performance of the state governments will decide the contest, no political party can afford to see the results in isolation as these elections come with a strong psychological factor which will boost the morale of the parties that win, ahead of the general election. The assembly polls are significant for another reason that in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Delhi and Chattisgarh the Congress and BJP are directly pitted against each other while both parties hold significant stakes in Jammu & Kashmir.
Also interesting to observe, will be the performance of Mayawati's BSP which is a fringe group in Madhya Pradesh, Rajastan, Delhi and Chattisgarh. A credible performance by BSP will boost her standing as a probable prime-ministerial candidate for the third front and make her a strong national player. The Left Parties will see their numbers fall from the high of 61 MP's they now possess, as the Trinamool Congress in West Bengal and the Congress-led UDF in Kerala have regained significant strength to put up a stronger fight this time.
Though anti-incumbency, policies and performance are the major forces in deciding most elections, caste politics will also play a major role in deciding the outcome of the Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka elections. The middle class will split between the Congress and the BJP while rural India where a majority of the people live, will be swindled again by parties which promise a lot for agriculture but end up pursuing neo-liberal policies and undoing the welfare state that India strived to become for the first 44 years of independence.
The 15th Lok Sabha elections are important because it could change the course of recent developments like the junking of non-alignment for the Indo-US alliance, terrorism, rising insecurity of minorities, the undeniable influence of Maoists, agricultural stagnation and the demand for a regulated economy versus more globalization. The Americans dubbed Obama's presidential elections as a vote for change; our politicians too will come knocking at our doorsteps with better slogans. Several actions of the UPA government in the last two years were indicative of a government for the corporations, not for the common man. The sad reality of different Indias for different Indians can still be fought. But it is no secret that the warped policies of the past will continue, whichever existing political party comes to power.
P.S - Op-Ed written for college newspaper.
The Congress-SP-JMM, BJP-INLD, the short lived BSP-Left tie-ups were an immediate result of this search for new partners. In the months following the confidence vote, political parties all over India began hectic parleys to find common ground in an effort to create pre-poll alliances. The emphasis on pre-poll rather than post-poll alliances signifies the acceptance of ground realities by the two major national parties, Congress and BJP that their base has further shrunk. The third front that the Left is attempting to stitch together will be a major player in the next Lok Sabha too with parties like BSP, TDP, Praja Rajyam, AIADMK, DMDK, JD(S), TRS and RLD searching for space in the national arena, as they are currently not allied with either the UPA or the NDA.
The issues that ordinary citizens are most concerned with have not changed significantly from 2004. To be certain, the UPA will not make the BJP's mistake of presenting a "Shining India" to 80 per cent of the country who had no part in the rapid economic growth India saw. Moreover the economic slowdown, has deflated any claims, the Congress would have loved to make, of the massive economic reforms that it undertook which took the Sensex to record levels, despite the opposition from Left parties.
The UPA can boast of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS), Right To Information (RTI) and Indo-US nuclear deal while the Left will pat itself on the back for backing NREGS and RTI while obstructing attempts to subvert the RTI Act, diverting Pensions and Provident Funds and increasing FDI's in insurance; the last two of which would have put India in trouble from the global economic crisis. The BJP predictably has latched on to the terrorism threat and weaknesses of the UPA in fighting terror but its nationalist agenda received a severe setback following the involvement of Hindu "extremists" in the Malegaon blasts and brought undone its claims that terrorism was a Muslim domain.
However, it is a reality that the spate of bombings across the country have become a concern for citizens, but who they choose to throw their lot with on this count remains in doubt as successive governments of the BJP and Congress have fared equally poorly on the security front, but the Congress is on the backfoot as it has repeatedly fumbled on evolving a strategy to combat terrorism and addressing the flaws in the security and intelligence apparatus. The recent violence against Christians, the UPA's hesitation to ban the Bajrang Dal and the pressure to bring POTA back has foisted insecurity on minorities. The Congress has been sceptical of playing the secular card in recent times, and has lost significant minority support to third front.
The economic slowdown might be a boon to the ruling UPA, as it has brought demand and hence inflation down. The Congress has a masterstroke up its armoury which it is waiting to unveil: lowering of petrol and LPG price. This will satisfy the middle class and the agriculture sector as prices of essential items will come down in the short run. The recession's impact on the service and industry sectors is troublesome for the UPA as the work-force in these sectors enjoy enormous sympathy in the media but is not a major factor in votebank politics. However Manmohan Singh seems to have got it wrong, when he talks of a financial stimuli or bailout for industrialists while forgetting that a similar crisis exists in the agricultural sector too where incomes have continued to deflate or remain stagnant as a result of our pursuit of neo-liberal policies.
The recently held assembly polls to the Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chattisgarh, Jammu-Kashmir, Delhi and Mizoram will act as the true curtain raiser to the Lok Sabha elections. Though local issues and performance of the state governments will decide the contest, no political party can afford to see the results in isolation as these elections come with a strong psychological factor which will boost the morale of the parties that win, ahead of the general election. The assembly polls are significant for another reason that in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Delhi and Chattisgarh the Congress and BJP are directly pitted against each other while both parties hold significant stakes in Jammu & Kashmir.
Also interesting to observe, will be the performance of Mayawati's BSP which is a fringe group in Madhya Pradesh, Rajastan, Delhi and Chattisgarh. A credible performance by BSP will boost her standing as a probable prime-ministerial candidate for the third front and make her a strong national player. The Left Parties will see their numbers fall from the high of 61 MP's they now possess, as the Trinamool Congress in West Bengal and the Congress-led UDF in Kerala have regained significant strength to put up a stronger fight this time.
Though anti-incumbency, policies and performance are the major forces in deciding most elections, caste politics will also play a major role in deciding the outcome of the Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka elections. The middle class will split between the Congress and the BJP while rural India where a majority of the people live, will be swindled again by parties which promise a lot for agriculture but end up pursuing neo-liberal policies and undoing the welfare state that India strived to become for the first 44 years of independence.
The 15th Lok Sabha elections are important because it could change the course of recent developments like the junking of non-alignment for the Indo-US alliance, terrorism, rising insecurity of minorities, the undeniable influence of Maoists, agricultural stagnation and the demand for a regulated economy versus more globalization. The Americans dubbed Obama's presidential elections as a vote for change; our politicians too will come knocking at our doorsteps with better slogans. Several actions of the UPA government in the last two years were indicative of a government for the corporations, not for the common man. The sad reality of different Indias for different Indians can still be fought. But it is no secret that the warped policies of the past will continue, whichever existing political party comes to power.
P.S - Op-Ed written for college newspaper.
V.P.Singh’s legacy
Very few political careers have seen the kind of turmoil, courageous actions and blemishless conduct that have been the hallmark of V.P.Singh's public life. Singh basked in the centre-stage of national politics for a mere seven years. First as Finance Minister, and then as Defence Minister in Rajiv Gandhi's cabinet followed by 11 months in office as Prime Minister, Singh's career was marked by fights against corruption and championing the cause of social justice.
The Janata Dal that V.P.Singh cobbled together achieved the impossible in Indian politics by bringing the Hindu Right and the Left parties together to defeat the Congress in the 1989 Lok Sabha elections. His implementation of the Mandal Commission recommendation of 27 per cent reservation for OBC's in central government jobs blew the lid on the inequalities in India. Despite violent protests and acts of self-immolation by upper caste youth, Singh went ahead with the commission's recommendations. For the first time, caste as the strongest reality in Indian politics came out in the open, and Indian politics have never been the same again.
The upper caste, upper class attitude to V.P.Singh changed overnight, and for the last 20 years he has been vilified in the strongest terms for what was seen by these groups as the subversion of Indian politics and the denial of "equality of opportunity" to them. The Congress rule in the Hindi heartland had been simultaneous with Brahminical dominance over the other caste groups until 1990. But the political formations that soon sprung up, based themselves on caste affiliations throwing out all pretensions of socialist agendas, and quickly ate away the Congress base in the politically important states of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh which then contributed 140 seats to the Lok Sabha.
Simultaneous with the rise of casteist politics as a by-product of Mandal, was the rise of Hindutva politics through the BJP, and together these two forces of caste and religion contributed to the marginalization of the Congress in large pockets of North India. Along with language, an identity that forced itself out in the open during the fight for linguistic states, India had soon become the playground for two more identities its common people held dear to their hearts: caste and religion. V.P.Singh lost his prime ministership in 1990 and stayed out of the public spotlight. The level of acceptance he enjoyed with non-Congress, non-right wing parties was obvious when he was invited to become Prime Minister again in 1996, an offter that he politely refused.
India has not seen single party rule since 1989 and the so called national parties like the Congress or BJP, have accepted coalition governments grudgingly. Mandal was approved by the Supreme Court and by most political parties. Today, reservations have been extended to institutions of higher learning and measures to implement reservation in private education and jobs might soon follow. An act of political courage by V.P.Singh had thrown open opportunities for India's historically oppressed in many spheres of life. Herein, lies his primary contribution to India and though the bourgeoisie press and upper castes and classes will continue to deride his role in restructuring India, history textbooks will remember V.P.Singh as our first ruler who successfully empowered the lower castes.
P.S - Editorial written for college newspaper. Long-time readers of my earlier blog will remember my blatant opposition to reservations. Thanks to this man, who in one lecture, convinced me that reservations are right.
The Janata Dal that V.P.Singh cobbled together achieved the impossible in Indian politics by bringing the Hindu Right and the Left parties together to defeat the Congress in the 1989 Lok Sabha elections. His implementation of the Mandal Commission recommendation of 27 per cent reservation for OBC's in central government jobs blew the lid on the inequalities in India. Despite violent protests and acts of self-immolation by upper caste youth, Singh went ahead with the commission's recommendations. For the first time, caste as the strongest reality in Indian politics came out in the open, and Indian politics have never been the same again.
The upper caste, upper class attitude to V.P.Singh changed overnight, and for the last 20 years he has been vilified in the strongest terms for what was seen by these groups as the subversion of Indian politics and the denial of "equality of opportunity" to them. The Congress rule in the Hindi heartland had been simultaneous with Brahminical dominance over the other caste groups until 1990. But the political formations that soon sprung up, based themselves on caste affiliations throwing out all pretensions of socialist agendas, and quickly ate away the Congress base in the politically important states of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh which then contributed 140 seats to the Lok Sabha.
Simultaneous with the rise of casteist politics as a by-product of Mandal, was the rise of Hindutva politics through the BJP, and together these two forces of caste and religion contributed to the marginalization of the Congress in large pockets of North India. Along with language, an identity that forced itself out in the open during the fight for linguistic states, India had soon become the playground for two more identities its common people held dear to their hearts: caste and religion. V.P.Singh lost his prime ministership in 1990 and stayed out of the public spotlight. The level of acceptance he enjoyed with non-Congress, non-right wing parties was obvious when he was invited to become Prime Minister again in 1996, an offter that he politely refused.
India has not seen single party rule since 1989 and the so called national parties like the Congress or BJP, have accepted coalition governments grudgingly. Mandal was approved by the Supreme Court and by most political parties. Today, reservations have been extended to institutions of higher learning and measures to implement reservation in private education and jobs might soon follow. An act of political courage by V.P.Singh had thrown open opportunities for India's historically oppressed in many spheres of life. Herein, lies his primary contribution to India and though the bourgeoisie press and upper castes and classes will continue to deride his role in restructuring India, history textbooks will remember V.P.Singh as our first ruler who successfully empowered the lower castes.
P.S - Editorial written for college newspaper. Long-time readers of my earlier blog will remember my blatant opposition to reservations. Thanks to this man, who in one lecture, convinced me that reservations are right.
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