Usual Suspects

By Swapan Dasgupta

A couple of years ago, I asked a very senior official a question that many people once asked: why doesn't Rahul Gandhi gain some real political experience by joining the Manmohan Singh government as a minister? A possible reason, he suggested, was that the Gandhis are not accustomed to working under anyone. But a more likely reason, he informed me, was that ministers come under the purview of the Right to Information Act.

Translated into plain English this meant that the travels of the heir apparent would be subject to possible scrutiny by the busybodies who have acquired control of Act. At present, Rahul is merely a backbench MP, albeit one who is protected by the SPG. This implies that all his movements are closely monitored and recorded. In theory, someone could move an RTI application for making these details public. However, it takes very little effort for the government to fob off inconvenient questions by citing security concerns.

After all, if the land transactions of Robert Vadra is presented as classified information, what chance that the aam aadmi will ever get to know the enthralling details of the air miles collected by the man who is apparently born to rule?

Don't get me wrong, I don't think it is a national priority to unearth details of every short break or long vacation that Rahul baba has taken. As long as he has travelled on his own money and not used the Government of India's resources, what he does with his own time is entirely his business. For example, it is now quite apparent that Rahul doesn't like spending his birthdays in India. The reason for this annual flight from the fatherland to the extended motherland is a subject of unending speculation and each of India's professional Gandhi-watchers have their own version of the truth, some seemingly credible, others quite whacko.

Ironically, all this feverish speculation is actually fuelled by the Congress Party. In its anxiety to celebrate Rahul's birthday each year with needless fanfare and revelry, the mindless retainers of the family draw public attention to a birthday bash minus the birthday boy. Invariably the question is asked: where is Rahul? And invariably the speculation centres on which country of the European Union was lucky enough to receive his patronage this year.

Rahul was a bit unlucky this year that his annual birthday break coincided with the tragedy in Uttarakhand. The Congress vice-president didn't quite realize the enormity of the disaster - after all he isn't terribly familiar with religious tourism - and was missing from the photo frames when the PM and Sonia Gandhi did their mandatory aerial survey and Narendra Modi rushed in where angels fear to tread. When he finally returned - did he cut short his holiday? - Rahul did the mandatory aerial survey but he failed to dispel the impression that he is never there when his party needs him the most.

The point is that Rahul's periodic breaks from the heat and dust of India have begun to be noticed and commented upon. Every now and then he disappears from public view and social media goes ballistic when he is sighted at Singapore airport or a transit lounge in Dubai. I think this is unfairly intrusive but it is also very Indian. The average Indian is not attuned, like Europeans are, to the idea of a getaway-from-it-all holiday. For the average desi family, a holiday is invariably a journey to a relative's house for a marriage or a religious pilgrimage. The idea that a politician who is already pampered with privileged housing and fast-track services should need another vacation to chill seems bizarre and is inevitably interpreted as a rich guy's indulgence. More so, when it is shrouded in excessive secrecy.

Recall the fuss some 27 years ago when Rajiv Gandhi took his extended family and friends for a Christmas break in Lakshadweep? It was said that he saved a whale but what people remembered was a PM in party mode, with the Indian Navy at his beck and call. The only other PM in recent times to take the odd break was Atal Behari Vajpayee. But even he had to pretend it was a busman's holiday by getting some ghost writer to pen some pretentious 'musings'. Contrast this with the US President who has a ranch at his disposal and the British PM who has a grand country house for both entertainment and reflection. And despite a gruesome murder of a soldier by a crazy Islamist in a crowded Woolwich street, David Cameron still went off on a private holiday where he was photographed sipping coffee with his wife, soaking in the sun and perhaps even under-tipping the waitress.

Presumably Rahul's shortbreaks are also full of such innocent pleasures - so important to keep one's sanity. Such a shame India doesn't understand him and his European sensibilities.

Sunday Pioneer, June 30, 2013

By Swapan Dasgupta

The disaster in Uttarakhand was a national tragedy that resulted in loss of lives, human suffering and considerable damage to both private property and the public infrastructure. However, the partly natural and partly man-made catastrophe had a major collateral fallout in the world of politics. 

There is, of course, the inevitable impact on the fortunes of Chief Minister Vijay Bahuguna who has been widely perceived to be lacking in purposefulness. But at the national level the impact may be more consequential: it has demolished the well-meaning, but naive, belief that the 2014 general election will be a clean fight involving the different formations and their projected leaders. Instead, the murkiness of the past week prompts the unfortunate conclusion that the Lok Sabha poll will be a no-holds-barred confrontation where the choices before voters will be distorted by vicious dirty tricks. Worse, the skullduggery will not be confined to the political parties for whom the stakes are naturally very high. There are clear indications that other institutions, not least the media, will also engage in sharp practices. 

A clear foretaste of what is in the offing was provided by the furious controversy over the so-called Rambo act of Gujarat Chief Minister that involved the rescue and evacuation of a large numbers of Gujaratis (a community that are intrepid travellers) from the disaster zones. Predictably, this claim, first publicised by an English-language national daily, has been bock mocked and ridiculed. It has been suggested that Modi is a habitual "liar" (an unparliamentary expression that found its way into the editorial pages of a well-respected daily), that he has hired a US-based public relations agency whose other clients are to be found in the rogues gallery of politicians and that he is so utterly parochial that he divides India into Gujaratis and others. 

At the political level, there is no doubt that this adverse publicity has not been to Modi's advantage. At this stage, he has no choice but to lick his wounds and prepare for the next round. 

A post-mortem of this kerfuffle over India's political Rambo may, however, prove rather revealing. It would seem that the figure of 15,000 people rescued from the wrath of the Gods arose from a 'sexed-up' version of a normal journalistic report. I don't say it was deliberate or part of a diabolical conspiracy but the problem arose when a simple assertion that the Gujarat Government provided "relief" to 15,000 people was conveniently changed to "rescued" this number. The casual substitution of one word changed the meaning of a ground report and made Modi appear as needlessly boastful and prone to hype--attributes that don't go down too well in politics. 

I understand that Modi brought this distortion to the attention of the publication but journalists being journalists don't like admitting their mistakes, especially if the offence involves colleagues up and down the line. So it was that when another newspaper, known for its consistent and pathological dislike of the Gujarat Chief Minister, attempted to examine the fantastic claim, the writer of the offending report pinned the entire blame on a lesser-known BJP functionary of Uttarakhand. Strangely in the original report this assertion wasn't attributed to him and he has subsequently denied making such a claim. That stands to reason. If Modi had indeed single-handedly rescued 15,000 people, why would the BJP in Uttarakhand have been so squeamish about claiming credit? Would this achievement have been given as an "exclusive" to just one publication or would it have been proudly proclaimed at a press conference? 

These are questions that naturally arise, except that it doesn't occur to professionals who have a self-image of infallibility and who can't let go of a nice big stick to beat Modi with. 

Whatever the real reasons, the creation of a counterfeit Rambo became the occasion for a flood of reports that broke the thin line between fact and fiction. A Hindi reporter having observed Modi put a shawl round an old woman and touch her feet, came to the imaginative conclusion that the frenzied rescue efforts of the Gujarat Chief Minister owed entirely to personal considerations: his old mother was among those stranded by the disaster. In the normal course, it wouldn't have taken much doing to find out if Modi's mother had indeed undertaken the pilgrimage from Ahmedabad. But when did facts ever deter a good story? 

The larger point that emerges from the coverage of Modi in Uttarakhand is something that should not be lost sight of. In the coming days, as the battle for the hearts and minds of India intensifies, we are likely to see an epidemic of reports that target Modi. Of course, there will be the odd report that also highlights the fact that Rahul Gandhi has not made a single meaningful intervention on a subject of national importance and that he is invariably away on holiday when he is needed the most by his doting party. But these will be few in number. After all, the editors will tell you a man's private life is his private life. 

There could be another less innocuous reason. In an intervention whose significance was perhaps not understood (not even by the otherwise hyper-active social media) the Managing Editor of Times of India penned an article that left the reader in no doubt that the UPA-2 Government is using a massive advertisement budget to browbeat the media into adopting an editorial line that is politically supportive of the regime. By implication this means that the more "difficult" sections of the media will not be beneficiaries of the government's largesse (paid for by taxpayers) if they choose to be recalcitrant. It is so reminiscent of the last days of the Rajiv Gandhi Government when the XP division of the Ministry of External Affairs was transformed into a special unit for managing the media. 

In 1988-89, a large section of the media resisted these pressures while others capitulated and grovelled. The difference this time is that the financial stakes for the media, at a time when India's growth is barely 5 per cent, is much higher. A generous handout from the Bharat Nirman budget can make all the difference between survival and going under. 

There is another factor. Rahul Gandhi may be both elusive and reclusive but the old Congress Establishment is known and all-pervasive. Decades of uninterrupted power has given the media a comfort level with the props of dynastic democracy. By contrast, Modi is the archetypal outsider whose connections with the ruling Establishment are tenuous. Moreover, the BJP has not been successful in building a counter-Establishment that has the intellectual capital and social self-confidence to take on those who believe they were born to rule. 

The implications of this asymmetry are obvious: to prevail, Modi has to adopt very different strategies. He has to outflank the Delhi Establishment by sustained pressure from below, using the only weapon at his disposal--the public yearning for change. The campaign of calumny around the Uttarakhand tragedy was only the starter. The main course will be even more poisonous. (END

Last week, I sent a twitter message from Jaffna town which I was visiting after 25 years. “There are more sandbags and police pickets in south Delhi”, I observed, “than there are in Jaffna town.”

This terse message based entirely on my observation provoked howls of protest. Various individuals responded denouncing me as “anti-Tamil” and a stooge of Sri Lankan President Rajapaksha, the latest whipping boy of the morally indignant. It is entirely possible that a brief 24-hour visit to a town where it was once common to find gun-totting members of various para-military factions walking with a swagger, does not qualify me to pass judgment on the totality of the situation in Sri Lanka’s Northern Province.

Yet, it would be fair to say that the Jaffna I returned to was a very different place from the war-torn but sleepy town that existed in the late-1980s. What I encountered was a mid-sized town with good roads and lots of new buildings, bustling with activity. The Nallur temple looked as grand as ever and the Jaffna library whose burning in the 1990s had created so much tension was a picture of old-world serenity. The stadium named after Alfred Durriapah, whose murder was among the first of the LTTE’s ‘hits’ seemed well maintained and there is even an Indian Consulate in place in a carefully renovated bungalow. Yes, there were the occasional signs of the bitter war that had ended barely four years ago; but anyone who didn’t know that this town was once in the frontline of one of the most ugly civil wars of all times would never have guessed.

This is not to say that everything is hunky dory. At a gathering of members of Jaffna civil society, there were voices raised against the acquisition of “Tamil lands” by the Sri Lankan army in its security zone adjoining the airport. There were complaints about “Sinhala colonisation” of areas in the southern regions of the Northern Province. And in Colombo, MPs belonging to the Tamil National Alliance presented us (a five-member team invited by the Bandaranaike Centre for International Studies) with a well-written account of Tamil grievances. Its leader, the 80-year-old Rajavardayam Sampanthan, who resembles a majestic Roman senator both in appearance and eloquence spoke about the Sri Lankan Government’s underlying desire to make the Tamil people “extinct” from the Northern and Eastern Provinces.

Yet, at a lunch hosted by businessmen of Indian origin in Colombo, I asked a Chettiar businessman how many Tamils there are in the capital city. “About 30 per cent of the city” he replied. “And do you control 60 per cent of the business?” I asked smilingly. “Only 60 per cent”, he retorted with a tinge of disappointment. “It’s more like 70 per cent” he said with a hearty laugh. Clearly, the noble Sampanthan’s theory of Tamils being an endangered breed in Sri Lanka doesn’t have too many takers south of the Elephant Pass.

The ‘Tamil problem’ that provides livelihood to the global human rights industry and provokes indignation in some circles in India seems essentially a Jaffna problem, and should be renamed as such. At the heart of the problem is the term devolution which was recommended to the Sri Lankan Government as a possible solution to the problem by the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) set up by President Rajapaksha in the aftermath of his famous military victory over the murderous LTTE.

For India, which still takes a needlessly gratuitous interest in the internal affairs of a sovereign neighbour, ‘devolution’ basically means implementation of the 13th amendment which formed a part of the embarrassment called the Indo-Sri Lanka Accord signed by Rajiv Gandhi and JR Jayawardene in 1987. This amendment promised two things: the merger of the Northern and Eastern Provinces, the so-called Tamil homelands, and the formation of Provincial Councils, akin to India’s State Governments.

But two problems have arisen. First, the merger of the Northern and Eastern Provinces was set aside by the Sri Lankan Supreme Court on procedural grounds. Sampanthan calls it a “dishonest judgment” but the de-merger is now a reality. Secondly, it would seem that apart from the Northern and Eastern Provinces, the Sinhala areas aren’t terribly enthused by the idea of Provincial Councils. Yet, elections to the Provincial Councils have been held in all provinces barring the Northern Province. At one time it seemed that the Government was having second thoughts about holding Provincial Council elections in the Northern Province but President Rajapaksha has categorically announced that the democratic exercise will be undertaken in September. The TNA, which is certain to win the election, now says that the powers of the Provincial Councils are inadequate. It wants the local Government to control land and the police. The Government may concede the first point but there is no way it will relax its control over all aspects of security in the North.

Who can blame Colombo for its reluctance? It’s just four years since the LTTE was decimated and it’s just too early for the Central Government to let down its guard. It is not that there is a desire to militarise the province. The Sri Lankan Army is present in large numbers in the Northern Province but it operates well below the radar. Logistically, the army wants to insulate itself in the security zones, build strategically located cantonments and operate as a rapid response force just in case insurgency resurfaces.

Ideally, the TNA should have no problem with this arrangement because its members were also murderously targeted by the LTTE. Moreover, it has declared, perhaps under Indian pressure, that it is committed to the territorial integrity of Sri Lanka. It may still believe in emotional separatism but it has formally abjured political separatism and abandoned the erstwhile TULF’s call for ‘self-determination’.

At the same time, its actions suggest that it wants to keep tensions and the ethnic conflict alive. It doesn’t make sense until you realise that Tamil separatist politics derives its main impetus not from the ordinary people of Jaffna who are desperate for a breather but by the Tamil diaspora, the ones who bankroll the seemingly respectable, ‘moderate’ politicians. With a view of the island that is frozen in time, it is the diaspora that is proving to be the biggest impediment to Sri Lanka getting over its troubled history.

Sunday Pioneer, June 9, 2013