What a time to be dumb

By M J Akbar

Nothing comforts the Establishment more than a holiday in the name of the working class. May Day came on Tuesday; not quite as convenient as Monday, which would have meant a long weekend, but at least it did not coincide with a regular holiday. Give Calcutta a holiday and the price of fish goes up. Calcuttans are relaxed. Even politics is invisible in the city. The tension begins to rise, slowly but perceptibly on the second, with only eight days to go before a contest that promises to be pivotal in the history of Bengal.

There are suggestions, a few streaky signs in the air, that the pivot could swing. The crowds at Mamata Banerjee's rallies are pheronically higher than those at Communist meetings and this is not because of novelty value, I can assure you. The young have found a nickname for the Communists; Kamiye Neesh, or Make Your money in Bengali. This is unfair, the level of corruption in Calcutta would invite a snee/e of disdain from a peon in Delhi. But the judgment of the electorate is tough kind of justice. The Communist answer to crowds is party muscle. How much of this support will alchemic into votes? Senior and highly experience as well as much respected cynics say that the party machine has the ability to cover as much as a twenty to twenty five per cent gap.

The Left's real worry may in fact have very little to do with the specific situation in Bengal. There is a perceptible and growing anger against all Governments, against any Establishment that is going to make re-election difficult even for the best organized political force in the country. The conviction that all politicians are on the take (Kamiye Neesh, has topped the prevalent frustration, particularly of the young, who see the gap between their expectations and reality continue to grow. The young are now the most decisive fact of elections. Their anger will defeat the Left in Kerala. DMK in Tamil Nadu and the AGP in Assam but there is an attendant paradox. The credibility of the parties that are seeking to replace the DMK and the AGP and the Left is not particularly high. The anger could well travel into a myriad revulets in a state like Assam, where each constituency seems to have a favourite party of its own.

The novelty of the election is the sight of two middle aged ladies campaigning together. Sonia Gandhi has learnt to walk like Indira Gandhi, but she still talks like Sonia Gandhi. If anyone could become Indira Gandhi by imitation. Ben Kingsley would be a better Mahatma Gandhi than the original. Compared with this artifice. The left is a portrait of sanity. Its only problem is that it has been around too long and there is a price to be paid for age.

Bengal has a reputation for violence. That reputation has outlived reality. The real violence is further east.

The grey had lifted from the skies of Guwahati but it had enveloped the mood of the city. There was a bandh on Wednesday, called by All Assam Students Union to protest the murder of an AGP-BJP alliance candidate by ULFA, a militant organization that, well, controls the shot. Every day the news from Assam is written the colours of death. The targets are political, the only party that is state from ULFA is the Congress, because the Congress has made a deal with ULFA in order to insure a victory. The dearth of opponents is strange kind of life insurance. The only argument that the Congress has, in private is that Prafulla Mahanta made exactly the same kind of deal before the elections he won five years ago. Cynicism then, cynicism now. ULFA has not forgiven AGP for reneging on the deal the moment the elections were won. Prafulla Mahanta chased the ULFA with a determination that surprised his friends and unsettled the terrorists. What will the Congress do after using ULFA to achieve power? The realist view is that Congress ministers and MLAs will be too busy recovering what they spent or the election (in many cases, starting with purchase of the nomination) to worry about ULFA or anyone else. That of course is the point. The anger against future betrayal will be far more intense. Assam has become a beautiful grave yard. No politician move without a phauaux of guns protecting him. The less privileged must remain at the mercy of God who at the moment has other things to do.

The Congress has learnt nothing from its past. Punjab paid such a heavy price in the eighties for the parties deals with Sant Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale.

There will be no victors in these Assembly elections, because all political parties are on a losing streak. Someone will get more vote than somone else, but that is arithmetic, not politics. A victory in politics represents hope at all the very least the hope of some change for the better. No matter who wins the elections in the four states, no one will represent any hope. The Left can only be more of the same. Assam shudders even while it prepares to vote against the Government. The Tamil voter has been there, seen everything about Jayalalitha she is a cyclical necessity rather than a revolution. Kerala has elected and the defeat A K Antony before, more than under Mamata Banerjee promises change, and other confusion.

The regions, are an image of the nation. The same situation prevails at the Centre and therefore nationally. The Government has lost its commanding popularity, but no one has gained from the Government's loss. There is no stream into which this anger can flow it keeps breaking up in search of a destination. Sonia Gandhi can barely lead the Congress let alone lead a coalition that can offer a sensible alternative, either in this Parliament or during the next elections. We have heard of speechwriters in public life; Sonia Gandhi is the first speechreader. Whenever she speaks she also confirms that she is a foreigner. India is not ready to accept a foreigner as Prime Minister. In fact one of the reasons for growing popular anger against the BJP is that it is selling out repeatedly to foreign interest.

There is immense resentment against the BJP led coalition at the Centre Individually the BJP is trained as corrupt; and the Government has acquired the dubious distinction of ultra loyalty to American interests and the policy. Allegations, some spurious, some with substance, about Yashwant Sinha's economic policy, not least by the RSS, opened the gates of doubt. His colleague Jaswant Singh's unilateral declaration of dependence to George Bush's nuclear shield has converted doubt into conviction. The foreign minister's decision is without parallel and precedence. Apparently he consulted no one in Delhi before committing India to a place at the head of an obedient quence. I can only assume that the foreign minister thought he was serving his country, although, he might have checked back with his country. The most charitable explanation is that he wanted to get brownie points from a reluctant superpower on a dream which is unlikely to become substantial and therefore means very little. As I noted, such an explanation can only be described as charitable.

The Government could take comfort from the absence of a serious adversary on the national battlefield. Such complacence would be unwise. The true adversary of any Government is not a political party but the people. Atal Behari Vajpayee and Lal Krishna Advani should have powerful memories of the Emergency; political parties did not remove Mrs Indira Gandhi from power the voter did. The Janta Party was actually formed after it had won the elections. Some formation will rise that will catch the spirit of the next moment.

The BJP will do badly in these elections, losing vote shares in all states (in Assam, the true comparison would be with what it was expected to get). If the Prime Minister does not reinvent his Government, that slippage will enter free fall. He could have continued if he had been in charge of a single party Government a coalition cannot bear the strain of relevance. The defeat in Uttar Pradesh, now a mater of time rather than speculation, will complete the journey to the margins.

The horrifying thought is that the vacant center-space of the Indian politics could be claimed by a gaggle of confused competitors. People realize this, even if they will not admit it. Congress leaders will agree, on condition their view is not reported to Sonia Gandhi. They are in terror of her disfavour. She exercises draconian control over her party without having genuinely won anything even applause. She will be tempted to advertise a victory in Assam as vindication of her leadership that would be self-delusion.

The Congress is in a position to provide stability in the vacuum; it has the structure, the history, the institutional credibility and the national presence. But it cannot move forward because it has cut off its tongue and shackled its limbs.

What a time to be dumb.

Why putins haunts the west

By Satyabrata Rai Chowdhury

President Vladimir Putin has already achieved a certain notoriety as a ruthless autocrat. In the latest example of the autocrat's crackdown on his critics. Andrei. Babitsky, the journalist detained in a camp in Chechnya, has been banned from travelling to Bucharest to receive a prize for his excellent reporting. Instead of the award, he how faces charges of carrying false documents. Many believe his crime was simply his critical coverage of the war.

The move against Babitsky has coincided with the fourth interrogation of Vladimir Gusinsky, chairman of Media - Most, Russia's only independent media empire. Gusinsky has been arrested and imprisoned on charges of defrauding the Government of 7 million pound sterlings.

The charges against both men have been ridiculed by journalists, politicians and commentators who have called the Gusinsky case the most blatant attack on the media by Putin since he became President of Russia. They also argue that the attacks are the latest in a series of authoritarian measures about which the West has been too forgiving.

Liberals have warned the West that its soft approach to Putin's intimidation of journalists is even counter-productive because it is interpreted by the Kremlin as a blank cheque to harass its critics. Igor Malashenko, a senior executive in Gusinsky's holding company who has been himself detained recently, said that the West's lack of forceful criticism of the Russian President has sent the wrong message to the Kremlin.

"Appeasement does not work, "he said. "Mr Tony Blair's meeting with Putin created the misconception for the President that he will be admitted into the exclusive club of Western leaders. Western leaders should be much more tough in dealing with Putin.

Tougher criticism would not isolate Russia rather it would have an important influence on the new Russian but regime. Instead, there has been an over-confident mood among the President's men," he said. "People in the Kremlin think they can do anything they want about Chechnya or anything else," he said.

Sergei Kovalyov, Russia's veteran human rights campaigner, said it was simply easier for Western Governments to pretend things were fine in Russia. "They don't want to examine things properly. That is exactly what the Putin team is counting on," he said.

Kovalyov said that the Russian Government could go on harassing the press in myriad says without having to resort to the psychiatric hospitals or labour camps employed by the Soviet regime. "No Gulag is needed because inside every Russian person there is a prison guard, and that is much more effective than an actual prison."

Even Sergei Dorenko, a prominent journalist widely perceived as a Kremlin supporter, has condemned the President's clampdown. He said, "It's hard for foreign and Russian investors to understand what is happening here. On the one hand, we seem to be in favour of investment, but on the other, democracy is being replaced by what even cautious critics are calling elements of a police State."

Critics of the West's handling of Putin point to a lengthy list of decisions indicating that his instincts for control, honed during his KGB years, have come to the fore. The Security council, an unelected body dominated by figures from the intelligence services, will run the country, if a State of emergency is declared, according to a new law which may be passed by Parliament soon. In addition, Gazprom, the natural gas giant which is the country's biggest company, is now de facto under the President's control.

The President has also just pushed through a law enabling him to dismiss elected regional governors, further tightening central control of the country. Further, he has not introduced the promised legislation to implement wide reforms in Russia, for instance, of the judicial system, which largely acts in the interests of the rich, powerful and, of course, those who are close to the President.

"The Western leaders are certainly aware of this situation, but their role as silent spectators is not only amazing but also distressing. They are never tired of criticising the Chinese leaders for their human rights violations. But whey are they so impervious to what is happening in Russia under the boots of its President?" says Kovalyov.

As such criticism continues assuming increasingly strident forms, the Western leaders are at a loss how to deal with Putin. Obviously, they have been caught in a cleft stick.

Until, now, Putin has been joying the comfort of economic stability because of high oil prices and the rouble devaluation in 1998. He has said recently that inflation would rise, to 2.5 per cent, and the effects of devalution are fast wearing off. Now the oil prices are falling. Observers are woried about low Putin will save the country if the country's economy takes a nosedive.

Disquiet about his represessive tendencies has reopened the debate in the West about how best to deal with his leadership. Although Prime Minister Blair and President Clinton had sought to establish good working relations with the new Kremlin, on the assumption that he would be running Russia for the next decade, there are now lingering doubts in the Western capitals about him and his failure to get to grips with the priorities facing his country.

One British source, which has watched Putin closely, said: "There were great expectations when he came to office and the shine has worn off. Threats against press freedoms are disturbing. Equally, where is the programme for reform we heard so much about earlier?" there is a palpable sense of drift, with Russians not clear sometimes if the Governments or the Security Council is actually running the country.

In the West, there are some signs of a reassessment. In every country of the West, there is a feeling that it is time to readjust its policy towards Moscow. "Mr Bair's heasty embrace to Putin owned everything to competitive opportunism and nothing to be balanced judgement," he said.

"We need close relations with powerful but unstable state such as Russia and China, but we don't need to check-in our values at the check-out desk when we visit them.

They won't respect us if we do." However, how the West deals with Russia in the future may well depend on President Bush whose administration is likely to usher in a far more hawkish policy to wards Moscow. PTI