BJP Imploding (Part III): Lack of Leadership and Way Ahead

Post Reference:
Bharat Karnad:professor at the Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi. http://www.livemint.com/2009/05/31212229/BJP-finding-the-right-centre.html
Ramesh Thakur: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Opinion/Editorial/TOP-ARTICLE--Press-The-Reset-Button/articleshow/4600720.cms

Anti-incumbency, a nondescript track record in office and an insufficiently thought through nuclear deal should have drubbed the Congress in this general election. The botch-up by the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) ended up increasing Congress’s margin in Parliament. But a larger truth lurks behind the BJP’s failure, beyond supposed lapses in electoral strategy and a misreading of the public mood. It even surpasses the little noticed irony of the Congress party acquiring a youthful sheen only because the dynast Rahul Gandhi hand-picked young men and women as candidates, something which L.K. Advani—heading a less autocratically run outfit—could not do. Its failures include lack of vision, leadership and strategy.

Lack of leadership
Taking a swipe at Advani, Karnad says, the problems of the BJP are manifested in the persona of Advani. An ineffably sad man who strived mightily to invent and reinvent himself—in his last stretch, as a latter day “ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity”—he was flatly rejected by the people as much for his pretensions as, perhaps, for his lack of conviction. Wanting to be prime minister is no bad ambition to have; but, tethered to a nebulous set of beliefs, it became a liability.

The likely successor to Advani, Narendra Modi, too frittered away the opportunity to influence the public consciousness positively and to position himself as a leader of substance for the 2014 general election. Rather than talk about his success in providing power and water 24x7 to Gujarat—the only state to attain this—or his well-founded reputation for incorruptibility and, as its downstream effect, a clean administration at the grass-roots level, Modi heckled the ruling party as a “budhiya” (crone).

What Could be the way ahead?
Moderating its “Hindu” image (Influenced by the Saffron led RSS Militant Hinduism), replacing its intellectually exhausted and morally compromised leadership and returning to the virtues of party discipline, conviction and values that promote national integration and equality for all; pro-growth economic policies that encourage and reward entrepreneurship yet institute compassionate social safety nets; and a foreign policy that rests on confidence in India's ability to compete with the world all of this will position the BJP to capture a significant chunk of India's growing middle class. It can then capitalise on government shortcomings and the corruption issue, by forging winning coalitions with regional parties whose loyalties between the two national parties will continue to fluctuate.

BJP Imploding (Part II): Lack of Electoral Strategy

Post Reference:
Bharat Karnad:professor at the Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi. http://www.livemint.com/2009/05/31212229/BJP-finding-the-right-centre.html
Ramesh Thakur: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Opinion/Editorial/TOP-ARTICLE--Press-The-Reset-Button/articleshow/4600720.cms

Anti-incumbency, a nondescript track record in office and an insufficiently thought through nuclear deal should have drubbed the Congress in this general election. The botch-up by the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) ended up increasing Congress’s margin in Parliament. But a larger truth lurks behind the BJP’s failure, beyond supposed lapses in electoral strategy and a misreading of the public mood. It even surpasses the little noticed irony of the Congress party acquiring a youthful sheen only because the dynast Rahul Gandhi hand-picked young men and women as candidates, something which L.K. Advani—heading a less autocratically run outfit—could not do. Its failures include lack of vision, leadership and strategy.

Lack of Electoral Strategy

The BJP's blistering attacks on Manmohan Singh as a weak and vacillating prime minister taking orders from the Gandhi family, turned the election into a referendum on Singh. Manmohan Singh’s a calming influence amidst terror attacks and the financial crisis and his qualities- decent, honest, unassuming, mild mannered, soft-spoken and likeable are rare qualities in politicians that sit agreeably with voters. So too did the renunciation of political office by Sonia and Rahul in contrast to the clutch of wannabe PMs from other parties. The squandering of economic opportunities over the past five years was blamed by voters on obstructionist coalition parties, not Singh. Attacking him provoked a backlash. Rahul and Priyanka presented younger Congress faces to the BJP's 81-year-old L K Advani. The moderate majority was repelled when fundamentalist Hindus attacked Christians in Orissa and young girls in a Mangalore pub. The BJP alienated its core constituency by hypocritical opposition to the nuclear deal with the US. Strenuously opposed by China, Pakistan and the non-proliferationists, the sweetheart deal was one the BJP would have grabbed in office. Yet it joined the communists with their long history of favouring foreign fellow-ideologues over national interests. Opportunity was squandered also with 26/11 when initial unity collapsed into shrill squabbling at a time of national peril. Attacked for his record on terrorism, Singh counter-punched by recalling Advani's hand-wringing as home minister during a string of terrorist attacks, including on Parliament; release of hardcore terrorists to the Taliban in Kandahar; the year-long military mobilisation against Pakistan that led nowhere; the Babri masjid demolition; and the anti-Muslim pogrom in Gujarat.
The BJP's reputation for communalism distanced allies from the rhetoric and agenda of Narendra Modi and Varun Gandhi. The BJP's only vision was that of the rearview mirror. As India changes, the Indian voter's profile changes. The BJP could neither embrace nor repudiate Varun Gandhi's virulent anti-Muslim rhetoric. It could not reach a broader constituency while appealing to militant Hinduism. On the other hand BJP would/will have lost its core Hindu base if it diluted its ideological purity. The tension will affect its search for fresh leaders. It was entrapped also in the disastrous strategy of trying to win an election on the basis of fear and divisiveness. Hope, generosity of spirit and optimism usually triumph over grievance and negativity.

The BJP’s impressive record of good governance in Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh as well as issues where it holds the whip-hand—such as strong national defence, and an economy speedily unshackled from the remnants of the licence-permit raj—were left adrift. A sustained campaign to pillory the nuclear deal in terms of the “Indian bomb in danger” would have left the Congress utterly on the defensive. The BJP, however, talked of “renegotiating” it, leaving the Congress to walk away with the game.

Taliban: Loosing its Social and Idealogical base

In an earlier post http://newspaper-posts.blogspot.com/2008/12/is-terror-political-problem.html, i had discussed terror and militancy being a social problem foremost. It is only when the conditions in the society favour radical thought do people and societies favour such radical and exteremist steps. Thus, weeding out terrorism involves striking at its social and idealogical roots to make an impact. It is a commonly accepted fact, that Taliban and Al Qaeda have recieved the patronage of the peoples of the frontier provinces in Pakistan and Afghanistan that has blunted the effects of the US, Pakistan and NATO forces. However, relentless fighting, harsh Sharia laws, belligerence and intransigence and relentless blood shed of the Taliban has started eating into its own social base amongst the people in FATA. Mathew Rosenburg and Zahid Hussain (Wall Street Journal) cover the tribes' dissent and anger with the Taliban.

PESHAWAR, Pakistan -- When the Taliban began filtering into Gul Khan Mehsud's town along the Afghan border nine years ago, residents offered food, shelter and ammunition.
"How could we turn them away? The Americans were killing them. We wanted them to fight," says the 38-year-old from South Waziristan, one of the tribal regions that border Afghanistan and arguably the Taliban's most important stronghold in Pakistan. "We thought the Taliban would help us."

People carry a man injured in a suicide bombing at a mosque Friday in the Upper Dir district, west of the Swat Valley in Pakistan. Military leaders in the country say they are hoping anger among residents at the Pakistan Taliban will help fuel an anti-militant campaign and a coming offensive.
Instead, Mr. Mehsud was forced from his home in South Waziristan earlier this year after the Pakistan Taliban, which grew out of the militants who fled the 2001 U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan, accused one of his cousins of helping the U.S. plot missile strikes from drone aircraft.
Mr. Mehsud now lives with nearly two dozen relatives in two rooms in this city, the gateway to the tribal borderlands. "I didn't want to be shot," he says.
With Pakistan on the brink of taking its anti-militant campaign to the tribal areas on the restive border with Afghanistan, civilian and military leaders in Islamabad are banking on growing anger with the Pakistan Taliban among tribesmen such as Mr. Mehsud, whose Pashtun ethnic group straddles the frontier and lives in the core of the insurgency in both countries.
Popular support for the insurgents has undermined years of attempts to subdue the border areas, where the Taliban hold sway and al Qaeda operates openly. Residents who have fled report an intensifying reign of terror. The region is largely off limits to outsiders -- foreigners and Pakistanis alike -- and there are signs of growing disgust with the Taliban's hard-line tactics.
Pakistan's military hopes to channel that disenchantment behind its coming campaign in North and South Waziristan, which is likely to be grueling. An estimated 15,000 militants from the northwestern mountains of Pakistan and parts of eastern Afghanistan have massed in the area before an offensive expected to begin in the next month or two.
Anger at the Taliban in tribal areas mirrors a broader anti-Taliban sentiment across Pakistan that backed the military's recent offensive in the Swat Valley, a onetime vacation area overrun by the Taliban in the past two years.
The military launched its assault in Swat, which is roughly 100 miles from Islamabad, about a month ago after the Taliban violated a peace agreement that gave them control of the area.
Pakistan's top brass say the army has cleared militants from most of Swat, but there still are pockets of resistance in the valley and sporadic violence in areas around the region. On Friday, a suicide bomber killed at least 30 people attending afternoon prayers at a mosque in the Upper Dir district, a remote area to the west of Swat. According to Pakistani officials, there was no immediate claim of responsibility, but one local government official blamed the Taliban, saying it was likely in retaliation for the Swat offensive.

The tribal areas -- remote, mountainous and untamed by outside authority for centuries -- represent a far greater challenge. Pakistani intelligence officials say the top leaders of the Swat Taliban have retreated, along with hundreds of followers, to North and South Waziristan.
North and South Waziristan are part of the so-called Federally Administered Tribal Areas, a rugged region cut off physically and politically from the rest of the country. Unlike Pakistan's four main provinces, the region has historically been under only loose federal government control.
There still is broad popular support in the area for militants fighting U.S. and North Atlantic Treaty Organization forces in Afghanistan. And the Pakistan Taliban hasn't lost its allure among the tens of thousands of people whose relatives were killed or homes were flattened in military attempts to reassert authority in the tribal areas.
"Each time there is badly aimed artillery firing or the Americans fire missiles, if one person is killed, all his brothers and sons and cousins join the Taliban," said Hazrat Muhammad, 36, who last year fled fighting in the Mohmand tribal area near South Waziristan.
Even among those, such as Mr. Muhammad, who say they now oppose the Taliban, there's deep distrust of the government, which has done little for the tribal areas since Pakistan was created six decades ago.
In social and economic indicators, the region trails the rest of Pakistan. Per-capita annual income is about $500 -- roughly half the national average -- and literacy hovers under 20%.
Rustam Shah Mohmand, a former official who served as top administrator for both Waziristans, said the people "don't want the Taliban. But they don't want the army. They want to go back to their old ways."
The old ways allowed Islamabad to govern through a network of moderate tribal elders, known as maliks. Pakistani law didn't apply to the tribal areas, and the army stayed out of the region.
The system, which originated more than a century ago when Britain ruled the subcontinent, was upended by the Taliban and al Qaeda after the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. Hundreds of maliks were killed or forced to flee, and the few government officials in the region brought to heel.
The army sent in soldiers in 2003, but they did little to restore civilian authority. A new generation of Taliban warlords filled the vacuum, banding together in 2007 to form the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan and fight Islamabad.
The group's most powerful commanders are based in the Waziristans. Among them: Baitullah Mehsud, the nominal leader of the Pakistan Taliban.
In one indication of the growing anger at the Pakistan Taliban, a rival from within Mr. Mehsud's tribe is gathering fighters to challenge the commander.
"The government is an enemy," said Gul Khan Mehsud. "First the Taliban must go. Then the army should go," he said. Asked who would then govern the tribal areas, he replied, "We can work that out ourselves."

BJP Imploding (Part I): The lack of a Coherent Vision

Post Reference:
Bharat Karnad:professor at the Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi . http://www.livemint.com/2009/05/31212229/BJP-finding-the-right-centre.html
Ramesh Thakur: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Opinion/Editorial/TOP-ARTICLE--Press-The-Reset-Button/articleshow/4600720.cms

Anti-incumbency, a nondescript track record in office and an insufficiently thought through nuclear deal should have drubbed the Congress in this general election. The botch-up by the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) ended up increasing Congress’s margin in Parliament. But a larger truth lurks behind the BJP’s failure, beyond supposed lapses in electoral strategy and a misreading of the public mood. It even surpasses the little noticed irony of the Congress party acquiring a youthful sheen only because the dynast Rahul Gandhi hand-picked young men and women as candidates, something which L.K. Advani—heading a less autocratically run outfit—could not do. Its failures include lack of vision, leadership and strategy.

No Ideological Core apart from Hindutva / Lack of a coherent vision

That truth relates to the BJP’s having no ideological core. There is space for a centre-right national party alongside the Congress on the centre-left, around which politics can be structured and coalition governments formed. Instead of basing itself on any progress and development led idealogical core, BJP went alongwith Hindutva and Congress bashing as its electoral idealogy. After BJPs losses in the 6 state assembly elections (including Delhi), it was expected that BJP would reconsider its electoral USP and communication strategy. However, BJP clung on to its Hindutva platform and demeaning the Congress (instead of exulting its own agenda or achievements).

BJP's challenge was to preserve Hindutva loyalty and yet reach out to a broader social coalition. For the aam aadmi, Jai Shri Ram is increasingly passe. The BJP had a choice: Cling to the past the glory that was India with a shrinking voter base or embrace a vision for the future the glory that awaits India which appeals to the growing voter cohorts of the young and urban.

The Congress at least offered the solace of rhetoric, regardless of whether the condition of the “aam aadmi” (ordinary citizen) is ever bettered by the party’s exertions in power. Election slogans encapsulate the promised thrust of government. It does not matter if the end state is never reached. Recall Indira Gandhi’s “Garibi hatao” (End poverty)? It did little for the poor but kept the Congress party in clover for nearly a generation. In this context, faced with the BJP’s campaign, the average voter would have concluded that it was disconnected from reality.

Social order and stability were the preconditions for the rights and freedoms enjoyed by the citizenry as well as for a free market. It is these principles that the BJP should associate with.

A better bureaucracy

In a separate post,some time back (http://newspaper-posts.blogspot.com/2009/01/thumbs-up-for-china-thumbs-down-for.html), i had discussed a point of view (widely accepted amongst Indian professionals), that while the growth of China is a result of their governance and bureaucratic efforts, Indian growth is more to do with the effort of individuals, businesses and entrepreneurs. A latest report ranks Indian Bureaucracy as being the worst in Asia. For long the accountability of the bureaucratic class has been a pain in India's governance.Reproducing an article by S. Narayan (former finance secretary and economic adviser to the primeminister) on the same issue.
http://www.livemint.com/2009/06/07212419/A-better-bureaucracy.html

With the reconstitution of the Planning Commission, the government has once again sent out signals that it means business. The new faces in the commission represent a class of people who have achieved considerable success in their own work environments, and who bring a passion to the roles they have been assigned. The President’s address to Parliament has underscored the determination to produce results, and there is evidence that ministries are being activated and some strategies worked out.
The air of expectation that things will happen this time is quite palpable, but one wonders what is different now. Improvements in levels of governance cannot come out of existing systems and deliveries, and yet there is little indication of how things will change. There have been no suggestions of reforms in processes and procedures: The reports of the Administrative Reforms Commission have offered little by way of solutions, and the major impediment to foreign direct investment (FDI) appears to be the excruciating pace at which the bureaucracy works.
Political and Economic Risk Consultancy, a Hong Kong-based organization, in its latest report has ranked India’s bureaucracy the worst in Asia, with a score of 9.45—zero being the best grade and 10 the worst. It is the only country whose ranking has worsened in the last three years. There are several reasons for this.
The first is ambiguity in policy. There are several examples. The foreign institutional investment (FII) policy, for example, allows free flow of funds without transparency of origin, for short-term investment into markets and market-related products, and has a low taxation burden in the form of capital gains tax. FDI has to bear the burden of full corporate taxation, as well as clearances from multiple agencies and continuous scrutiny. Poor mining policies and lack of consensus with states have stultified mineral exploitation, converting it into a resource available only to those with political access. However, most of these problems are in the realm of implementation issues, and can be addressed by ministers who are determined to get matters moving at their ministries.
The second is in the area of implementation strategies and monitoring. In the last five years, there have been several expert committees whose reports (nearly 70 in number) are available with the government, representing suggestions for implementation in areas as wide-ranging as agriculture and skill development: These only need effective implementation at the ministry level, this at the level of secretaries and joint secretaries. There has been almost no attempt to get these recommendations off the ground.
The third is the most difficult. This is in the area in which the public interfaces with the government, in the day-to-day business of life. In the area of sales tax and income tax, in paying bills and getting planning permissions, in running hospitals and schools, the functionaries of the government behave as though they are an Inquisition to extract the most from clients. This cutting edge bureaucracy, the reluctance at the lower levels of government to change, the lack of responsibility and accountability are all states of governance that we have wished upon ourselves.
Part of the problem is probably the scales of pay, but this has been substantially taken care of after the Sixth Pay Commission. More importantly, it has to do with how government servants perceive themselves and how society perceives them. They are part of the elite; and part of the way they display their importance is by being difficult to work with—whether in matters requiring their approval or when dealing with the people they meet. One reason could be the lack of checks and balances—as was demonstrated last week by the inspection of the Sushruta Trauma Centre in Delhi by the health secretary. But this is not all. The real problem arises from the hierarchical nature of decision-taking and the intense fear of taking the wrong decision, resulting in the tendency to pass the buck upwards. From the civil servant’s perspective, it is ideal to hide a decision behind a committee. In India, over the years this has gotten worse—decisions we used to take at the level of joint secretaries now require cabinet approval, that too after a formal recommendation by the committee of secretaries.
The Right to Information (RTI) Act and public interest litigation (PIL) have no doubt contributed to transparency in decisions, but they have also increased the reluctance to take decisions at lower levels. The answer is “no” unless there is no way of avoiding a “yes”—and corruption flourishes in such an atmosphere.
There are no easy solutions here. One way is to distance people from the bureaucracy through technology—payment of bills, tickets for travel, and applications for jobs and admissions can now be done without face-to-face contact. There should be an attempt to enhance these services. However, at the level of approvals for economic activity, improvements can only happen if those at the top are more vigilant—through better supervision and checks and, most importantly, speedy deterrents.
We need to change the way government transacts its business.