“Modi
Lost Because He Did Not Corporatize Fast Enough?”
Saeed Naqvi
Politicians and pundits across the
country have been served notice by the Delhi electorate: please take a bow and
make way. Mingled with the voter’s ecstasy is a primeval cry: we are tired of
old politics.
Meanwhile Kejriwal’s cup runneth over.
“Dene waley mujhe dena hain to itna de
de
Phir mujhe shikwa e kotahiye daaman ho
jaaey”
(Creator, shower on me your blessings in
such abundance that I turn to you with my next supplication: O Creator, give me
more space.)
There, out of the window goes my plan to
take a seat in the press box to write my “ringside” column on Delhi Assembly.
Parliament has become a predictable bore; it would have been fun tracing the
new assembly’s baby steps.
A daily piece on the present assembly
will inevitably bring Messrs Jagdish Pradhan (Mustafabad), Om Prakash Sharma
(Biswas Nagar) and Vijendra Gupta (Rohini) into disproportionate focus. In
parliamentary systems, the opposition provides the flavor. If they are smart,
the BJP trio can hog all the limelight, force development in their
constituencies. Property prices would shoot.
It will be no fun for the media carrying
handouts from the Treasury Benches. Anxiety for TRP ratings may trigger
inventiveness. Searchlights will locate AAP’s internal faultlines. 67 members
in a House of 70 are one too many to be accommodated in a cabinet which, by law,
can only have six ministers, Delhi being only a Union Territory.
Rumours were floated that Adarsh Shastri
from Dwarka, a first time MLA, may be made Minister. Why? Because he was a senior
executive with Apple. Comes a non sequiter from the rank and file: does AAP
belong to Apple or the poor man?
Take a Muslim minister; don’t take one.
This is the second untended crop of AAP in two years. This year has been a
bumper harvest. Still too early to visualize a party with a coherent ideology.
It will have to improvise some more before it finds its feet. But the luxury of
coming to power with 54 per cent of the popular vote, 96 per cent of seats has
clearly filled AAP with courage to gamble for truth, fairness, justice and
secularism which the Congress bartered away. The BJP never claimed to be
secular.
If Narendra Modi’s economists have
coaxed a lesson from the defeat, what will it be? How will it express itself in
the budget later this month? The US treasury Secretary Jacob J Lew is at hand,
just in case Modi falters. The pink papers (and the New York Times) would like
Modi to count his worry beads and chant: I lost because I did not corporatize
fast enough. The great cartoonist, R.K. Laxman would have had a field day.
NYT has almost dared Modi. “After
imploring Americans, Japanese and Chinese, as well as Indians, to believe in
his vision, it is a good bet that no Indian Federal budget will be more
scrutinized for what it may, or may not, deliver on building infrastructure,
reforming taxes and making a tangled, stratified system more efficient than the
one Mr. Modi is expected to make public by the end of the month.”
Soon there will have to be an AAP
budget. Comparisons will be fascinating. And, further afield, comparisons with the
far left Syriza in Greece, will disturb and excite.
Last year a statement was extracted from
Kejriwal: he was fine with capitalism but not crony capitalism. And yet, there
is a resemblance between Kejriwal and Alexis Tsipras of Syriza. Both are in
their forties, charismatic and pro poor. But unlike Tsipras, Kejriwal has not
evolved from doctrinaire Marxism. The ideologues around Kejriwal like Prof.
Anand Kumar and Yogendra Yadav, derive more from socialism of the Lohia school.
Looking for resemblances nearer home, AAP’s
welfare net may be quite as extensive as Jayalalita’s in Tamilnadu. And
Jayalalita’s grip on the electorate is quite firm, fiscal discipline or no fiscal
discipline.
In the new politics that AAP has set
into motion, Jayalalita, Naveen Patnaik, with luck, Nitish Kumar, are the only
regional leaders who may survive the coming rounds. Ignored by the media, Manik
Sarkar, the Communist Chief Minister of Tripura, in his fourth term, exists in a
different zone altogether.
Just look at the JDU-JD parade outside
Rashtrapati Bhavan. A less appetizing congregation of political turn coats is
difficult to imagine. What chance does this lot have against a force of such
freshness as AAP.
Unfortunately, neither AAP nor a
residual Congress exists in Bihar to make any difference. Could disgusted
electorate, starved of choices, lurch in unforeseen directions. Which
direction? Before JP movement ousted it in the mid 70s, there was a lively Left
movement in Bihar.
Syriza is part of a long tradition of
Euro communism. The infection could spread to Spain, Portugal, Ireland, Italy.
Paradoxically, the Nordic North of Europe, traditionally liberal, has turned
sharply to the right, frothing in the mouth against immigration.
As part of the global grid, India cannot
remain unaffected and AAP by the same logic cannot be just a local happening.
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