The Daily Observer

The "Party with a Difference" has shown that it has become a debate-stifling, party that tolerates no differences. By expelling Jaswant Singh, an intelligent patriot whose service to the country has been immeasurable, it has shown its preference for dogma over critical thinking. Jaswant Singh is one of the very few, if not only, politicians to have held all the top portfolios (Finance, Defence, External Affairs) except for Home in independent India. He was instrumental in guiding India’s rise as a global power during his tenure in the government. He is probably the only BJP leader in its top echelons who has actively served in India’s army and fought for it.

Are the party’s leaders so blinded by their ‘ideology’ that they fail to see the larger potential agenda behind Jaswant’s praise of Jinnah? For peace to exist between India and Pakistan on India’s terms, it is crucial that Pakistanis do not feel that India wants to conquer them. By continuously denigrating Jinnah, Indian politicains have effectively been saying that they do not believe in Pakistan’s legitimacy. Re-evaluation of the role of Pakistan’s founder can actually help ease Indo-Pak relations. Prior to the 1940’s, it is accepted by many that Jinnah did play a positive role in the evolution of  Indian nationalism. To demonise his subsequent actions without an attempt to understand the motivation behind them serves no good.

In general, robust debate and re-examination of history always leads to a better understanding of the past, which leads to a better understanding of the present.Jaswant in no way implied that his views on Jinnah had anything to do with the BJP. Most BJP leaders who were party to the decision to expel him probably haven’t even read his book. Have they even quoted any passage from his book which could be seen as damaging to Sardar Patel’s repution? I doubt it.

It truly is a sad day for Indian politics when the main opposition party shows it is lacking in intellectual vigor and that ideological rigidity triumphs over  long term national interests.

Who is to blame? I asked myself, this question several times the past three days. I am talking about the horrific acts of meaningless violence that took place in Mumbai this week. I couldn’t come up with a clear answer on who is to be blamed for these attacks. Of course, This group of weak minded and misguided youth, who were devoid of any basic human emotion and displayed such a display of shameless contempt for human life including their own , they need to be blamed for this atrocity. The next logical step is to blame the organization that they belong to , the people that trained them, the people that funded them, the country that sheltered them and helped them to carry on this act.

By the country that helped and sheltered these terrorists, I mean Pakistan. I blame them for this and more terrorist acts that were carried out in India and around the world in the past few years.“But we have no hand in this terrorist act”, the leaders of Pakistan might say. The fact remains that, Pakistan actively allows for these terrorist organizations to thrive in its territory. They allow for the “charitable funds” collected around the world, to find their way to buy weapons and train these terrorists. They allow for their state intelligence agency to procure and share the intelligence that is used to carry out a terror activity in India. Once a terrorist attack is complete, they offer five star accommodations to the perpetrators and facilitators of such act (case and point : Dawood Ibrahim ). Pakistan does everything that it can do, short of stamping its official seal of approval to encourage these heinous activities. So, I blame Pakistan and the terrorist organizations and terrorists that it harbors for this attack. But is that all?

What about the Indian Government? No, I am not suggesting that these attacks might be some crazy conspiracy hatched by the Indian administration. But, I want to ask, what was done to stop these attacks? What was done to secure the people that put them in power ? The current UPA government took office on May 22, 2004. Since then there were 18 major terrorist attacks on Indian soil. 18 terrorist acts in 54 months. Here is the list :

2004 August : 6 killed in car blasts in the city of Mumbai.

2005 October : 60 killed in three bomb blasts that occurred in busy markets of New Delhi

2006 March : 20 killed in bomb blasts in the train station and a temple in Varanasi.

2006 July : 187 killed in the bomb blasts on commuter trains in Mumbai.

2006 September: 40 killed in the bomb blasts in the town of Malegaon.

2007 February : 70 killed in fire bombing of Pakistan bound Friendship express.

2007 May : 11 killed in a bomb blast in Hyderabad.

2007 August : 40 killed in bomb blasts in Hyderabad.

2007 October : 2 killed in a blast at Ajmer Sharif shrine in Ajmer.

2007 November: 15 killed in bombings in various cities of Uttar Pradesh.

2008 May : 65 killed in bomb blasts in Jaipur.

2008 July : 8 bombs go off in Bangalore.

2008 July : 50 killed in bomb blasts in Ahmedabad.

2008 September : 25 killed in Bomb blasts in New Delhi.

2008 September: 80 killed in bomb blasts in Malegaon

2008 October : 20 killed in bomb blasts in Imphal.

2008 October : 80 killed in bomb attacks in Assam.

2008 November: 200 killed in gunmen attacks in Mumbai.

I see a trend here. Every year the terrorist acts went unanswered, it emboldened the terrorists. The number of terrorist acts that were carried out in India multiplied year by year since 2004. The Indian response after most of these bombings is more or less the same- “we blame the external forces that are encouraging the terrorist acts in India. We will endure these attacks……” Lot of words were said after these 18 bombings, not a single solid action was taken to check the terrorist activity in India. The politicians in charge continue to play vote bank politics, too complacent and too incompetent to protect the people who trusted them to protect them – What a shame!.

So I ask again , Should the Indian Government be blamed ? I think so.

What about the people who not only voted for such an incompetent and weak government into power in India but, continue to tolerate it ? Are they to be blamed ?

India has again been hit by a cowardly act of terrorism. The record of the present Manmohan Singh UPA government on internal security is pathetic, poor and shameful. Terrorists have been deliberately targeting cities  of economic and cultural importance and every time a terrorist act occurs, be it the Mumbai train  blasts in 2006 or the Delhi market blasts in 2005 or the  Hyderabad blasts in 2007, the response of India’s Prime Minister and Home Minister is the same…words of condemnation followed by inaction. No attempt to rally the nation behind any innovative  anti-terror steps. No attempt to explain how terrorism not only causes  human suffering, not only causes children to lose their parents and wives to lose their husbands and friends to lose each other, but how random acts of terrorism are actually an attempt to destroy the very concept of India as a successful, internally diverse civilization on the path of economic progress. If the UPA government had spent half its time worrying about India’s security as it spends on pathetic pandering to minorities (Manmohan’s statement that Muslims  have the first right on national resources is a case in point), maybe India would not have suffered so many terrorist attacks in the past few years.

The UPA government’s record can be contrasted with both the previous NDA government’s record on internal security. The NDA government not only had a firm ideological position on terror, it  had the smarts and vision to come  up with out-of the box initiatives…Operation Parakram in response to the attack on Parliament is a case in point. Yes, some incidents did occur but they were followed by immediate action or subsequent legislation or strenghtening of the internal security apparatus. At least the country and the rest of the world had a sense that the government had some concern about terrorism. The UPA government does not indicate in any way that it sees terrorism as a problem. Except for probably AK Antony, the current Defence Minister, none of the cabinet ministers has any record, in terms of action or public political positions, of being concerned about internal security. The defacto head of government, Sonia Gandhi, seems to think that she should be perceived as being hard on terror just because her mother-in-law and husband were victims of terrorism. The UPA made a symbolic statement by making Pratiba Patil, a person with alleged involvement in  a criminal case, as President , and Hamid Ansari, a bleeding heart pseudo-secular "intellectual" as vice-president. The NDA made a statement by making Abdul Kalam, a brilliant engineer who has done a lot through his work to make India powerful and respected country in military terms. Even by its largely symbolic political appointments, the UPA has shown its disregard for national security and emboldened anti-India terror groups.

Yossarin in offstumped has an interesting point -Whereas in the80’s and 90’s terrorist attacks were part of larger secessionist or political movements, today they are random and with the sole intent of weakening India rather than achieving a specific political goal.

The people  of Jaipur, just like the people of Mumbai in 2006, should be admired for not allowing such a dastardly act to blow  into a communal conflagration. But if terrorist attacks keep on continuing, there is a danger to the social fabric of the country. There is also the danger that continued inaction by this government could result in a new government taking over whose desire to prove its anti-terrorist credentials results in actions that are more symbolic than effective and cause harm to basic democratic values and civil liberties.

After a mild resurgence  which included victories in Uttarakhand, Bihar, Punjab and Delhi, India’s main rightist party, the BJP, met its Waterloo in Uttar Pradesh. Predictably the RSS has blamed insufficient promotion of Hindutva for its defeat. Party functionaries have their own views, including the fact that many voters felt that there was a tacit understanding between the Samajwadi party and the BJP, and the fact that the BJP in UP has had a history  of supporting (or at least not opposing) alleged thugs like Raghuraj Pratap Singh, aka Raja Bhaiya. Raja Bhaiya is a guy whose actions and manners are rumored to resemble those of a stereotypical Hindi film villain. For all her faults, at least Mayawati during her previous tenure as UP’s CM tried to use UP’s police resources to bring him down. I’m sure this gave her some degree of credibility with a lot of development and law and order hungry voters.

Anyway, the BJP’s grand strategy of ‘Prakhar Hindutva’ did not pay off. Being the only mainstream right wing party in India today (why did the Swatantrata Party have  to wither away), the BJP  attracts a wide range of supporters, from moderate , free marketer-nationalists to closed-minded xenophobes. The BJP  has, arguably of course, given rise to India’s best post-independence government (NDA from 1998-2004) and India’s most sensible, compassionate, and effective national leader (Atal Bihari Vajpayee). The NDA government under Vajpayee effectively used a combination of national security policies, like the Pokhran blasts and Operation Parakram, sensible free market,  pro-reforms economics, and infrastructure development to greatly enhance India’s influence on the world stage and improve economic opportunities for Indians. Vajpayee himself appointed BJP ministers who were development oriented. Guys like Vinay Katiyar weren’t given much importance, at least at the government level. And despite the fact that the ‘India Shining’ campaign of 2004 did not bring the NDA back to power, Vajpayee was a popular prime minister. And the BJP’s vote share in 2004 was  about the same as it was in 1999.

Some people think that the BJP’s rise began with the Ram Janmabhoomi movement. Some people also equate the Ram Janmabhoomi movement with aggressive, communal Hindutva. I disagree with both positions. Even in 1984,  when the BJP was routed and  got only 2 seats, in terms of actual vote percentage, it was second only to the Congress. Don’t forget that the Congress did so well because of sympathy following Indira Gandhi’s assassination. The Ram Janmabhoomi was about creating a public debate regarding the nature of Indian secularism. It was in no way anti-Muslim, anti-Islam or xenophobic. In fact, many of the movement’s leaders offered to relocate or rebuild the Babri structure at a different location. Had that happened, Hindu-Muslim relations would have improved greatly, and could have reached  the level of harmony and cooperation achieved during the 1857  mutiny. Interestingly, Lal Krishna Advani recently wrote an article http://www.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=86226 in which he writes positively about the contribution of Muslims to India’s first war of Independence. The same Advani is often unjustly castigated by India’s secular-leftist pinko ‘intellectual’ elite as a communal hate monger. They conveniently ignored the political risks to his own career during his recent trip to Pakistan, and the fact that as Home Minister he did not in any way discriminate between Indians on the basis of religion. 

However I can’t deny  the fact that agitations like the Ram Janmabhoomi movement attracted lumpen elements to the BJP. Also, historically the BJP  has never taken steps to expunge itself of hate mongers. A consequence of this was the shameful post-Godhra riot /pogrom period in Gujarat.

The BJP, and RSS, would be wise to realize that the BJP  electorally has done well when it has emphasized development, especially in the recent past when it won MP, Rajasthan, Uttarakhand, and helped win Bihar. Hindutva/Bharatiyata does have a role to play in Indian politics, especially given India’s precarious security situation. But the party should take great care to make sure  that Hindutva never becomes synonymous with hatred  or feelings of cultural supremacy.

 –AS

Reservations, for vacancies in educational institutions and public sector jobs, have always been a source of vigorous debate in independent India. Traditionally meant for the socially discriminated scheduled castes and scheduled tribes, the present UPA government, more specifically the HRD Minister, Arjun Singh, is planning to add reservations for Other Backward Castes (OBC’s) in elite Indian educational institutions. Moreover, for quite some time now the UPA government has been talking about forcing companies in the private sector to adopt government guidelines regarding reservations. The Social Justice Minister, Meira Kumar, has said that since private companies benefited from government licenses in the past, it is payback time for the government, so the private sector should be obliged to adopt reservation guidelines.

This shows the level of perverted political thinking going on in the government. Government licensing rules actually discouraged entrepreneurs and stifled the Indian private sector. India’s economic boom began only after the licensing rules were made more liberal, in some sectors of the economy done away with altogether. Moreover sectors of the Indian economy, like Information Technology, that started out with minimal government support and had to deal with discouraging government rules and regulations (Infosys and Wipro used to pay huge import duties on computer workstations) are at the forefront of India’s international economic image revolution.

Sure, government initiatives, such as maintaining India’s transparent legal system and setting up institutions like the Indian Institute of Science, have helped India’s private sector. On the other hand, in addition to the license-permit-quota raj, the government’s apathy towards basic infrastructure, the maintenance of a bloated bureaucracy, toleration and even encouragement of corruption, have done great harm to the economy in general and the private sector in particular. The reason the private sector survived before the era of economic reforms began, and the reason it is flourishing today, is because in the private sector managers, owners or shareholders can make decisions about what is best for their companies, without being burdened by ideology or vote-bank considerations.

In fact, without a vigorous, growing private sector, unemployment and hence social tensions will increase. The government and polity in general should feel more indebted to the private sector, not the other way around. Forcing the private sector to recruit employees like a government institution would probably make the private sector as lethargic as a government institution, resulting in lower growth and less jobs for everyone, including members of the scheduled castes and tribes and backward classes.

Anyway, any competent recruiter in a private sector company would not discriminate against a person just because he/she belongs to a low caste.

Caste has been and still is a shameful social institution in India. There is no doubt that certain sections of society have been discriminated against, humiliated, and have had uncountable atrocities heaped upon them because of their caste and social background. Even today many Dalits (politically correct term in India for Scheduled Caste members) are subjected to torture and inhuman treatment by high-caste buffoons if they stand up for their rights and try to live their lives with dignity. But mere job reservations are probably not the best way to do away with such kind’s discrimination. They are actually an excuse by governments, both state and central, that are totally incompetent in advancing the interests of SC/ST’s. The prosecution rate for hate crimes due to caste is abysmally low. The quality of primary education in most Dalit dominated localities is atrocious. Local governments cannot even provide good drinking water and public toilets to most places in India, let alone Dalit dominated ones. Job reservations may play a role in lifting some Dalits out of the poverty line and into the middle class, but for the vast majority they have no meaning. It is also very common for the benefits of job reservation to be gobbled up by the already well-off people within the SC/ST/OBC communities, who may already be rich or whose families may have already been the recipients of reservation for generations.

If the government really wants to have the private sector hire more SC/ST’s, rather than forcing them it would be better to offer companies tax breaks for hiring SC/ST’s. Companies can then decide how much benefit they will get and act accordingly. Many companies might come to conclude that having a more diverse workforce makes them more competitive. But forcing them is a different matter altogether.