“Modi Lost Because He Did Not Corporatize Fast Enough?”

“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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Changing American Views On Israel May Determine Peace Outcome

Changing American Views On Israel May Determine Peace Outcome

                                                                                              Saeed Naqvi

To win the March 17 Israeli elections or to postpone them (because he may lose), Benjamin Netanyahu is turning heaven and earth. Last month’s Israeli air strikes killed six Hezbullah commanders and an Iranian General in the Syrian town of Quneitra.

The purpose was to invite retaliation. Warlike atmosphere would block Secretary of State John Kerry with his skates on towards a nuclear deal with Iran.

What will be his next gambit? Some big skirmish in Gaza or Southern Lebanon or further afield. But after his March 3 meeting with Obama?

One may be forgiven for asking what came of the meeting of 21 world leaders in London, who swore to fight the ISIS? Those fighting the ISIS on the ground are Iran, Syria, Hezbullah, precisely last month’s Israeli targets. And now Jordan has been dragged in. At what possible cost? American public see the ISIS is the biggest threat to US interests, not Iran as Netanyahu does.

Whether Netanyahu wins or loses, Israel for the time being looks the most secure real estate in the region. But how long does a nation look safe when everything around it is falling apart?

Israel was once a softer place, with gentle Kibbutz and, in the shadow of Mount Hermon, Fa Giladi seemed a wonderful place to read, reflect, write. Peace was broken occasionally by shelling from Habbariya in Southern Lebanon. Both, Palestinian resistance and Israeli determination, seemed reconcilable – at some future date.

Then, suddenly, everything began to look irreconcilable once the Soviet Union collapsed in 1990. Even before that date, Ariel Sharon had moved into Lebanon. That was the beginning of the gradual decline of the world’s most elegant city – Beirut. Nabi Beri’s Shia Amal gave way to the religious, militarized Hezbullah. So, Israeli action splintered Lebanon into its religious components.

A decade later when Bosnian brutalities were daily fare in the global media, a senior French official told me in Paris: “The balance of power had shifted against the Christians in Lebanon; it was now shifting against the Muslims in Bosnia.”

At the time that Sharon was in Lebanon, the Soviets were in Afghanistan. Began the biggest manufacture in history of Islamist Jihadists on a scale that would match Pope Urban’s crusades beginning 1095. Zbigniew Brzezinski said he would not worry about some “stirred up Muslims” so long as the West won the Cold War.

That may have been Brzezinski’s perspective. But various world capitals, New Delhi included, were gripped by deep anxiety. The Indian Foreign office, like the rest of the establishment, was split down the middle. The Foreign Secretary was waiting for the coup to succeed in Moscow, while his colleagues celebrated when Boris Yeltsin appeared atop a tank in Moscow.

The inauguration of bandit capitalism in Russia was a benign act, we were told. The other day I saw Bill Clinton sharing his deep understanding of Russia with Fareed Zakaria. “Yeltsin was a much better President than Vladimir Putin”. The entire New York Times reading public of the free world would agree.

Was it Western triumphalism or pique, I cannot be sure, but one by one targets were picked from among the Arab states once in the Soviet bloc. Saddam Hussain’s picture appeared on the cover of Time magazine as Hitler. He may have been worse than Hitler, but the thousand mile road he laid from Amman to Baghdad was like a continuous billiard table. Hospitals, schools, colleges, universities thrived.

The best fish in the world, Masgouf, caught from the Dajlah (Tigris) and roasted on open fires along the river is now a delicacy lost. When I looked for my favourite Masgouf hut two years ago, I was told they now get their fish from a nearby lake because the river fish had turned scavenger. This was discovered by a customer who found a baby’s finger in the stomach of the fish.

I would not miss my delicacies if there were other compensations. But no. Totally secular Baath socialism was replaced by acute Shia-Sunni divisions.

After a decade of what Obama thought was a pointless involvement in Iraq, he was, at work again, this time in Damascus and then in Tripoli, destroying a secular and a moderate society to be replaced by rampaging Islam.

Nothing will ever measure upto Beirut, but Damascus too was quite a “markaz” for gracious living. Tripoli would not be boring if it had bistros and bars lining up the splendid boulevard. But it could boast being a city without Mullahs; the most educated in the neighbourhood could lead the Friday prayers. Its military academics for women, an efficient cradle to grave welfare system were not to be sniffed at.

Iraq, Syria, Libya, possibly because of their earlier Soviet affiliations, needed to be cleansed more thoroughly. In the new landscaping of the region, Israel looks fine. But, is it really? Surrounded by dysfunctional societies which were once the region’s most efficient states. Dictatorships, yes, but functional, unlike Afghan democracy where the winner is declared CEO and the loser, President.

Israel must know that a sort of fatigue is setting in all around at its persistent intransigence. I commend to my Israeli friends that they read Shibley Telhami’s opinion poll on shifting ideas in the US about Israel, something even Thomas Friedman is worried about. There may be a shaft of light.

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Loss In Delhi Bad For Parivar, Not The BJP

Loss In Delhi Bad For Parivar, Not The BJP

                                                     Saeed Naqvi

In politics, sometimes normalcy looks abnormal. That the BJP should be with its back to the wall in the Delhi battle is abnormal for those who have not yet recovered from the awesomeness of Narendra Modi’s victory in May, 2014.

That was a tsunami. Tsunamis subside. Modi has risen phenomenally, riding that and another wave. A third is due, maybe after the Delhi elections.

The first wave he crested when he became Chief Minister of Gujarat without ever having contested an election. This was 26 days after the two planes brought down the twin towers in New York on September 11, 2001 – 9/11, in brief.

The US air strikes against Afghanistan began on October 7, exactly the day Modi became Chief Minister. Ofcourse there is no connection between the two. And yet, there is. The saturation TV coverage pummeling Muslim societies created for the BJP a favourable atmosphere. The BJP hoped to win the crucial election to the UP Assembly due in February 2002. Rajnath Singh was the Chief Minister in Lucknow. To his and his party’s dismay, BJP lost the election which had been fought on a hard platform, Ram Mandir included.

The Kar sewaks assembled at Ayodhya for victory and Ram Mandir celebrations were stunned by the election reversal announced on February 24/25, 2002. Imagine the black mood in which the Kar Sevaks boarded Sabarmati Express which reached Godhra on the morning of February 27. Gujarat BJP was waking upto two defeats in bye elections. Modi won Rajkot narrowly. Then the Godhra train carnage took place and the Gujarat pogrom.

The lesson from the electorate’s rejection of the hardline in UP should have been a sober and softer line in the future. But, no, the 96 year old head of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, Keshvaram Kashiram Shastri thought otherwise. The global war on terror was a boon. In an atmosphere so conducive for Hindu consolidation a harder, not softer, line was required.

I met Jayanti Ravi, collector of Godhra when Gujarat was still smouldering. The investigations, she said bitterly, had instantly been handed over to Vijay Vipul, DIG anti terror squad. Terror was the flavor of the season. So, terror it was for Godhra and Gujarat too.

Then Modi rode the second crest with even greater aplomb. This one was to deliver unto him the Prime Ministership of India.

A timid Manmohan Singh carrying on his forehead labels of scams he may not have committed, made for a soft target.

Worse was the Nehru-Gandhi family. Yes he will; no he won’t, but he might – this exasperating indecision of Rahul Gandhi made for a silly side show in the middle of what should have been a do or die campaign. He made a fool of himself with FICCI, CII, in the Arnab Goswami interview, the high point of his life being a night of great simplicity he spent with David Miliband in a Dalit hut.

The mother would disappear to far off hospitals and reappear without the nation being any the wiser as to what the ailment was and whether a transition was round the corner.

Election after election was being lost but the mother and son duet would neither disappear nor connect. A private social group remained more important than the more public, but supine political group. It was appalling for the country’s oldest party to be neither in nor out of reckoning. Meanwhile corruption charges, beginning with Bofors, would just not go away.

It was this universal anger with Congress leadership that Modi’s campaign managers brilliantly harvested. Add to this the greatest media campaign ever mounted.

The helpful Sonia-Rahul negative image is, alas for Modi, now out of the way. A Muzaffarnagar like polarization cannot be repeated in quick succession. This is too gentle a country.  Even Kali and Durga have their seasons.

The open season given to Yogi Adityanath, Sakshi Maharaj and a Sadhvi adept at abusive diction will never be tolerated by the world’s oldest civilization.

The writing has been clear on the wall since the bye elections in UP. A reversal in Delhi will not be such a bad thing for the BJP. It will enable the party to off load those interests who by their vulgarity neutralize gains like the Obama visit and who have all too frequently made the BJP look embarrassingly inelegant.

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India’s Friends Israel and US Differ Sharply On Arab World

India’s Friends Israel and US Differ Sharply On Arab World

                                                                              Saeed Naqvi

The death of King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia will push the rapidly changing West Asian landscape onto the middle of the agenda President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Narendra Modi will discuss on Sunday. Terrorism was already a theme, but now cause and effect of that rampaging evil may also get an airing, something neither Riyadh nor Jerusalem quite like.

Abdullah, even as Crown Prince, was brilliant at managing Washington. Witness how he coped with all the criticism and suspicion when fifteen of the nineteen masterminds of 9/11 turned out to be Saudis.

He was on an equally slippery slope when ISIS was found with Saudi recruits. It also had active cadres inside Saudi Arabia. A few days ago, ISIS militia breached the Saudi border with Iraq and, working on prior intelligence, killed the general guarding the Kingdom’s northern frontier.

The kingdom’s incredible wealth made it more equal than others eversince the discovery of oil, but Abdullah’s recent co ordination of policy with Israel had enhanced his clout with the West in geometrical progression.

When he came out of convalescence from hospital in February 2011 and saw his friends Hosni Mubarak and Zine El Abidine Ben Ali as casualties of the Arab Spring in Cairo and Tunis, he swore to block the Spring.

He rained $135 billion on the people of Saudi Arabia, a brazen purchase of support. No monarchy would be allowed to fall, he declared. He even made up with the estranged Emir of Qatar whose singular asset, Al Jazeera TV, was required by him and his western allies for propaganda during the Syrian and the Libyan operations.

Let me explain this:

When war breaks out, the first casualty is the truth. After the collapse of the Soviet Union and operation Desert Storm in February 1991, the global media has been called upon to cover so many conflicts, that principal channels like CNN and BBC lost credibility in the process of dressing up the West’s case. Al Jazeera TV, built up a reputation covering the “other side”. An exhasperated Washington, bombed al Jazeera offices in Kabul and Baghdad. This boosted Al Jazeera credibility sky high, a priceless commodity at a time when audiences were simply not believing CNN, BBC and Fox News. But by serving the interests which the principal western media did in the past, Al Jazeera too has lost its sheen? The field is wide open for a truly Independent Indian global media.

There are other, much more important Saudi initiatives, past and present, which have come a cropper. The terrorist mayhem in the world is commonly traced to the training imported to the Mujahideen in Afghanistan. What is not so well known is the late Saudi interior Minister, Prince Naif’s scheme to train Mujahideen in Yemen as a bulwark against Soviet influence in Aden.

It is these which have mutated into today’s Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, linking up with Al Shabab in Somalia and spreading violence along the Sahel upto Nigeria’s Boko Haram.

Nearer home, Saudi Arabia has made itself extremely vulnerable by promoting interests to the South of it which are so unpopular among the people that the Shia Houthis are today in control of Sanaa.

Abdullah always flailed his arms against the Shias but the Arab arc surrounding his kingdom is just what he would abhor. Shias rule in Baghdad; Bashar al Assad (so far) is an immovable force in Damascus; Hassan Nasrullah is the most powerful leader of Lebanon. This has invited an Israeli riposte.

Israeli air strikes have hit where it should hurt: against Hezbullah, Syrian and Iranian military assets in the Syrian city of Quneitra. An Iranian General and six Hezbullah commanders have been wiped out. Iran says they were training Syrian hands against “Takfiri-Salafist terrorists”. There has been no statement from Washington and no retaliation from Hezbullah, Syria or Iran. Sometimes restraint is lethal.

Well, Israel has election on March 17. Kerry is pushing for a nuclear settlement with Iran, also in March. If the Israeli strike in Quneitra invited a response from, say, Hezbullah, the atmosphere would have been fouled up and impeded the nuclear deal.

Meanwhile, Secretary of State John Kerry and British Foreign Secretary, Phillip Hammond, led a conference of 21 world leaders in London to strategize against the ISIS in Iraq and Syria.

Consider the irony. Israelis killed military assets who were ostensibly training the sorts of forces that the sponsors of the London conference would require to fight the ISIS.

Are Jerusalem and Washington working at cross purposes?

New Delhi is friendly with both. Here is a chance to obtain clarifications first hand.

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