CRISIS OF CONSENSUS

Posting an old blog .... (January 28, 2009)

As the Indian Republic enters the 60th year, it’s perhaps time to take stock of what ails our polity. And the answer could well be- a crisis of consensus.
Nation-building is a continuous process and requires a consensus among those in power and those in waiting. But sadly, this has rarely been seen in India, preventing the country from realising its actual potential.
Opposition for the sake of opposition negates its very role in a vibrant democracy. It’s indeed an irony that within a modern political system that gives a level playing field to all, our leaders lack the maturity and look at national issues though the prism of partisan politics and electoral compulsions rather than judging them on merit.
Let’s take a couple of examples. Over several years, each terror strike has led to a raging debate on measures to tackle the menace. But instead of sitting together to put up a united front against terror, leaders have always indulged in political blame game.
The outcry of citizens against the entire political class after the Mumbai terror attacks, was perhaps long overdue. In that sense, many thought the Mumbai attacks and the protests thereafter could be an eye-opener for the political leaders.
But that was not to be! The all-party meet convened by the UPA government was given a miss by BJP’s prime ministerial candidate L K Advani and party president Rajnath Singh. This was surprising considering that the main opposition party had been demanding anti-terror laws, accusing the UPA of being soft on terror.
Finally, Parliament passed the bills setting up a National Investigation Agency and approving amendments to the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act. But soon political discord was visible at conference of the chief ministers on terror. As expected, differences cropped up with BJP-ruled states voicing reservations against NIA, saying it dilutes the federal character of the polity.
In short, a consensus on anti-terror measures still eludes us as a nation and it is unlikely that it can ever be achieved.
The next best example is perhaps the Indo-US nuclear deal. The debate on it had more to do with partisan politics rather than the merits or demerits of the deal.
Parties opposed to the deal – ironically from both extremes of the political spectrum (the BJP and Left) – found new ammunition when days before India finally secured the NSG waiver, the US media leaked some communication from the US Congress to the State Department. It said how the communication was kept under wraps to shield Prime Minister Manmohan Singh from political opposition back home.
Both the BJP and the Left parties latched on to it, accusing Manmohan Singh of lying to the nation and calling for a privilege motion against the prime minister in Parliament. It was the same story earlier before the draft of the nuclear deal was cleared by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The main bone of contention is the ‘testing’ clause and fuel supply guarantees and Singh was, time and again, blamed of lying in Parliament on the issue.
On his part, Singh had made it clear in Parliament that India retains the sovereign right to test. The fact that consequences will follow if India were to test including sanctions and perhaps the death of the deal are too obvious. Deal or no deal, the consequences for testing would be the same for India. After all New Delhi had been facing the technology denial regime since the first explosion in Pokhran in 1974.
A day after the NSG waiver, Brajesh Mishra, National Security Advisor in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government, said as much, something diametrically opposed to the BJP’s stand.
If not anything else, the BJP should have taken half credit for the deal. The deal’s foundation was, in fact, laid during the Vajpayee regime when the then External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh held marathon talks with Strobe Talbott after the heat of Pokhran-II subsided. The BJP’s subsequent opposition to the deal stemmed more from its current political space that it occupies rather than any sound rationale.
As regards the Left parties, their opposition to the deal was perceived to be rooted in ideology-unable to see India as a strategic ally of the US- rather than the deal per se.
Whether the deal is good or bad for the country is debatable. But unfortunately, the political debate on it could not come out of the fold of party politics.
As India aspires to play an increasingly important role on the global stage, it’s imperative that parties shed their narrow political agenda and think in terms of a national agenda that cuts across party lines.
By retaining Defence Secretary Robert Gates, Barack Obama has shown the way that in the ultimate analysis party politics should be subservient to national interest. We need to emulate that model to take the country to the next level – the high table of global leadership.

BJP’S EXISTENTIAL DILEMMA

I haven’t read Jaswant Singh’s book on Mohammad Ali Jinnah, but it reminds us of the controversy generated by L K Advani’s words of praise for the founder of Pakistan a few years back. Only this time, the BJP leadership is completely silent while Advani was forced by the RSS to quit as party president after having come under attack from his own party colleagues.
First Advani and now Jaswant Singh. Is it all an attempt to project a moderate image, realising the pitfalls of exclusivist politics? All this brings forth a larger question- Has Hinduta become the BJP’s existential dilemma?
The results of successive parliamentary polls have proved beyond doubt that the BJP cannot come to power on its own on the steam of Hindutva that it followed in the last nearly three decades since its inception. Even at the height of the Ram Temple movement, its tally fell far short of 200, something the Congress achieved without any perceived wave in the 2009 elections.
Sitting within the confines of the newsroom in the run-up to the polls earlier this year, I always told my colleagues reporting politics that the BJP had no chance and that the Congress will have a distinctive edge. Even two days before the exit poll results were made public, in response to an SMS query from a friend and former colleague, I had put my entire money on the Congress forming the government at the Centre. In fact, I had also told our psephologist to revise the UPA’s tally to more than 200, far in excess of the projected 155. Finally, it turned out that the Congress alone crossed 200 seats.
No boast here. The writing was clearly on the wall and one needed no expert advice or ground data to guess the broad poll outcome. It’s true regional or state-level alliances do have a bearing on poll results. But let’s not forget, the major chunk of the Indian political space has no place for the Right or Left. By nature, Indian political culture is centrist, something for which the Congress is still considered the best bet as a coalition by itself. This year, added to this was Manmohan Singh’s credentials at a time of economic crisis besides the lingering memory of Sonia Gandhi’s renunciation after the polls in 2004.
As the BJP leadership went into introspection, Hindutva was the major issue of debate. While the RSS attributed the defeat to dilution of Hindutva, some BJP leaders openly admitted that it pulled the party down when it came to competing for a pan-India appeal.
In a few days, the BJP holds its ‘Chintan Baithak’, a stock-taking exercise. Its leaders will do well to realise the futility of holding on to Hindutva. Bulk of the population, whether in urban areas or the rural hinterland, expects the political leadership to come up with a blueprint of economic opportunities rather than a Ram Temple at Ayodhya. The sooner the BJP and Sangh Parivar realise it the better for the party. Or else, we could well be looking at the return of the era of one-party dominance which in the decades immediately after independence came to be known as the ‘Congress System’.

SHARM-AL-SHEIKH AND INDIAN DIPLOMACY

There has been much hue and cry over the Indo-Pak Joint Statement issued after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s meeting with his Pakistani counterpart Yousuf Gilani at Sharm al Sheikh in Egypt. The opposition came from across the political spectrum including the ruling Congress.

After a heated debate in Parliament, the prime minister did try to explain his and the government’s stand with his much publicised ‘trust but verify’ line, taking a leaf from former US President Ronald Reagan. But the controversy refuses to die down. The criticism has been mainly on two grounds- delinking bilateral talks from terror and the mention of Balochistan where a separatist movement has been raging for quite some time now. Islamabad accuses New Delhi of stoking the fire in Balochistan.

But critics of Sharm el Sheikh document are, perhaps, missing the fine print.
While it was important for New Delhi to suspend bilateral dialogue in the wake of the November, 2008 Mumbai attack to put pressure on Pakistan to act against perpetrators, but it shouldn’t be seen as the stand taken to continue in perpetuity.

For two nuclear neighbours who cannot go to war, the only option is to engage in dialogue and in senses more than one, Manmohan Singh’s step to resume talks doesn’t deserve the criticism it has invited from all over.

Also the mention of Balochistan by itself doesn’t necessarily give Islamabad a handle against New Delhi. If India has nothing to hide, the mention of the so-called ‘B’ word in the joint statement doesn’t mean much as it is being made out to be. In fact, it only reflects India’s openness in contrast to Pakistan’s doublespeak.

One shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that it’s Pakistan which wants to change the status quo with regard to various issues with India. Islamabad is at liberty to come up with radical formulations on various issues including Kashmir, which was particularly evident during Pervez Musharraf’s rule.

On the face of it, all this makes Pakistan’s diplomacy sound much more aggressive. But it’s a greater challenge for Indian foreign policy makers to stick, by and large, to the stated position while trying to make forward movement. India’s caution shouldn’t prevent it from making slight changes within the overall stated position to make incremental progress in bilateral talks.

The most important part is dialogue without which it’s difficult to make any progress. It becomes all the more important if the two nations are neighbours with bilateral ties permeated by an element of trust deficit.

Good diplomacy is all about dialogue management rather than avoiding it and Sharm-al Sheikh should be seen in that light.