on The spot
Tavleen Singh
There are weeks in the lives of political columnists when finding something interesting to write about can be a long, hard struggle. This one gone by was not one of them. So many important things happened so quickly that it seemed as if the political season like the weather suddenly experienced an unforeseen moment of surprising and dramatic change. The weather always changes in Delhi in melodramatic fashion just before Holi.
Before you know it winter vanishes, gardens and roundabouts become covered with flowers, the bare grey branches of Red Silk Cotton trees become heavy with fat red flowers and you know for certain that summer is here. As someone who grew up in this city this is one of my favorite seasons but last week I had little time to enjoy its beauty because of what us hacks like to call ‘hectic political activity’.
It started with Narendra Modi arriving at the India Today conclave and dazzling an audience of passionately ‘secular’ citizens with his talk of development and governance. At the very end of his long question and answer session came some tricky questions from journalists about the baggage he carries from the 2002 violence and he evaded giving a direct answer. But, despite this he was given a standing ovation by people, who two years ago at the same conclave, had been more careful about the reception they accorded him. So much has changed in two years that almost everyone I talked to after he made his speech this time said they could not wait for him to become prime minister. In the audience were not just denizens of Delhi’s drawing rooms but retired army officers and bureaucrats, important industrialists and public intellectuals with a keen interest in politics.
They behaved as if Modi had already become prime minister and proceeded to talk of the things he needed to do to bring ‘the India story back on track’.
The next day, as if he had been watching from the wings, Nitish Kumar arrived in Delhi to address a rally in Ramlila Maidan that was bigger than the ones Anna Hazare and Baba Ramdev attracted when the anti-corruption movement was at its peak. Bihar’s chief minister, like his compatriot from
Gujarat, talked about the importance of development and governance but added that he wanted his version of this agenda to have ‘inclusive’ in it.
Political pundits took this to mean that he was positioning himself as the messiah of the poor and underprivileged. Not a bad strategy if you keep in mind that Modi’s critics these days attack him for being too ‘business friendly.’ This dubious line of attack is based on Modi having said more than once that he did not believe that it was the business of government to be in business.
After watching the Ramlila Maidan rally I made up my mind to analyze for you this week the differences between the two men who could become prime minister in 2014. But, before I could get down to thinking seriously about what I would say came that Tamil bolt from the blue. Not even the Congress Party’s ‘high command’ seemed prepared for the manner in which K. Karunanidhi woke up last Tuesday and called an impromptu press conference to announce that he was withdrawing DMK (Dravidra Munnetra Kazhagam) support from the Government. Barely was the announcement made than the ‘hectic political activity’ began.
Reporters raced off to Parliament house to try and find out if the Government was safe and us political pundit types wandered about television studios to give our considered views on the subject. If there was something that politicians and journalists agreed on it was that the wily old fox from Chennai was playing a political game rather than expressing genuine concern for the Tamils of Sri Lanka. The second thing we agreed on was that it would be madness for the Government of India to try and insert the word ‘genocide’ into the resolution against Sri Lanka being moved by the United States in the UNHRC (United Nations Human Rights Council) since the word is grossly inappropriate in a Sri Lankan context. And, as for India’s Parliament passing a resolution condemning the Government of a friendly, neighbouring country we agreed that this would not just be wrong but strategically unwise in view of what the Indian government’s position has always been on interference in domestic matters. What would we do if Pakistan played copycat and passed a resolution attacking India for human rights violations in Kashmir?
What the DMK’s supreme leader has done is put his own political interests above the interests of India and the Tamils of Sri Lanka. This must indicate that he is more than a little aware that a general election comes closer by the day and his party is not just in bad shape, from defeat in the assembly elections and corruption charges, but in a bad position because of its alliance with the Sonia-Manmohan Government. So for him this must have seemed like a good time to get out of an alliance that went stale long ago when one of his ministers in the Government of India was sent off to Tihar jail and when his favorite daughter was packed off to cool her heels there as well. From the political grapevine I have learned that
Karunanidhi believes that the Prime Minister and Sonia Gandhi could have done more to defend A. Raja and Kanimozhi than they did.
In any case there is now a general sense in Delhi that the general election could happen well before 2014. This is based not on speculation but on the perception that a Government that depends for its survival on the unreliable support of Mulayam Singh Yadav and Mayawati is a Government with a bleak future. The sad truth is that even if the Government does manage to survive till next year it may not be the best thing that could happen because of its increasingly obvious weaknesses. If it goes into panic mode we are likely to see a plethora of expensive welfare programmes like the recently announced ‘homestead’ one so there is every likelihood that whoever forms the next Government will have to deal first and foremost with an empty treasury. But, before then we are likely in the nearer future to see many more weeks of ‘hectic political activity’ which is always good for those of us who make a living out of writing political columns.
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