Anil Anand
The celebrations should be over by now that Ms Mehbooba Mufti has become the first woman chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir. Had it happened under normal circumstances the party could have lasted a little longer but she has assumed the reins of power under abnormal circumstances and a hostile environment with expectations riding high?
Stepping into her illustrious father Mufti Mohammed Sayeed’s shoes is not going to be an easy task but then there is hardly any option for her. She has to start from where the Mufti senior left and build a new edifice over the foundations already laid by him. This does not imply that basic architecture as conceived earlier should remain the same and the change would depend on how she views the challenges differently from her father.
The doves and hawks of all varieties must be waiting for the first available opportunity to strike lest she falters. Ms Mufti, as of today has zero margin to trip on administrative and political fronts and above all to falter on the basic beliefs of her political mentor the Mufti senior.
In this context the announcement of Mufti Sayeed Food Entitlement Scheme by her cabinet as among the first few acts sends mixed feelings. The reference here is not to the public welfare scheme per se but naming it after someone who always preferred to act and manipulate behind the curtains and administratively let his work do the talking.
This is one aspect of the feeling. The other could be that Ms Mehbooba has few options other than this. May be she has a strong compulsion to begin invoking her father’s name from the word go to keep herself going. Nonetheless the Mufti would have been the last person to relish schemes or projects being named after him.
He had his share and style of hogging limelight but was never outspoken and going overboard was not his forte. Still he made a mark for himself though with a fair share of controversies chasing him all the time. The catch lies in the fact that he deftly fought and to some extent matched the Sher-i-Kashmir (Sheikh Mohammed Abdullah) and his son Qaid-i-Sani (Dr Farooq Abdullah) in political manoeuvres and achievements without forcing anyone either to sing paeans or bestow titles on him.
He was a great admirer of former Prime Minister Mrs Indira Gandhi whom he in many ways would describe as his benefactor and political mentor. But one acquired a feeling that he abhorred over-personification of any kind even if it was attached to his leader.
No one would know him better than his daughter. Questioning her move to name a scheme after her father at the beginning of her inning could at best be aimed at keeping her flock together. And surely be the means and not end in it. Sustenance should be sought in the beliefs pursued over the decades with makeup here and there to keep pace with the changing times.
Her father’s name is Ms Mufti’s biggest asset in a politically hostile atmosphere where she seems to be hard-pressed to find true friends, supporters and sympathisers. After all, as is in the air, one of Mufti Sayeed’s senior cabinet colleague and confidant was conspiring to upstage her into becoming chief minister through engineering defections in the PDP. As the details are rolling out he was assisted by some others within and outside the PDP.
This could be an index of her predicament as whom to trust or not. This could also be the reason behind her current aloofness. People around her and in the related public domain have been left guessing as to who her advisors are and whom is she trusting. She seems to be in quest of finding the right encore for herself which is both secure and effective.
Ms Mehbooba is being lambasted for having wasted time to finally agree to be the chief minister of PDP-BJP alliance. Given the sensitive nature of the state, the delay was justified but only to some extent. A quick decision could have outsmarted those who sought to create wedge in the PDP in search of the chief ministership but it would have been a limited gain at a great cost.
The biggest factor behind the delay as one presumes must be her concern to develop her own encore. It is very difficult to assess at this juncture whether forming government without any delay and backed up by the same encore would have been a better option for her or not. Mufti Mohammed Sayeed was the founder of PDP with a long political career behind him. Running the PDP or the PDP-BJP coalition government without any mention of his name is unfathomable. More of it would be seen as the government progresses by the day.
The challenge would lie for Ms Mehbooba on how best to do it which could accrue real benefits to her government, party and the state. Launching schemes in his name is the easiest but not best of the options. If done so it would open another front of competitive politics between the alliance partners and the resultant cross-connections.
It would be my icon versus yours. Underneath this battle of icons if allowed to unfold would lay the simmering volcano of regional distrust. It is more dangerously tilted towards her than others.
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