Anticipating India (The Best of National Interest)

494 Pages·2014·1.94 MB·English

by  Shekhar Gupta

ANTICIPATING INDIA
THE BEST OF NATIONAL INTEREST
Shekhar Gupta
For
Viveck Goenka,
nineteen years, 900 columns and not one call to ask ‘why’. If you find more
newspaper owners like him, please do exchange notes with me.
&
Mandakini, Rudraneil, Abhimanyu and Swati, the four points of my compass.
CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
INTRODUCTION
PART 1: NDA DAYS
WISE MEN TALKING
WHAT INGRATITUDE, MY GOD
SCREAMING, SILENTLY
ASSAM’S LOST DECADE
AH, THE SWEET SMELL OF POVERTY!
UTTAR PRADESH AS IN THE UGLY PICTURE
BACKFIRE’S BURNING QUESTION
POT’S BLACKER THAN THE KETTLE
THE BREACH CANDY DILEMMA
THE MODI MAGNIFIER
THE HMT ADVANTAGE
POLITICS IN PAST TENSE
THE JAMES-JUSTICE TEST
NEW DELHI, NEW VOTER
THE RESULTS ARE IN
PART 2: CONGRESS SPRINGS A SURPRISE
MR VAJPAYEE’S HIGH GROUND, MRS GANDHI’S ROAD AHEAD
BEST BAKERY VERSUS UPPER CRUST
IT’S MANMOHANOMICS, MANMOHAN
IT’S THE BROKER AND THE FARMER
PURUSH VERSUS PARIVAR
MAXIMUM CITY, MINIMUM PROGRAMME
CRIPPLING THE DOCTOR
LIBERATE OUR CITIES
OUR POOR LITTLE RICH
OLD POLITICS VERSUS NEW ECONOMY
GENERATION EX
WHO’S AFRAID OF THE BULLDOZER?
EVEN LOHIAITES ARE LEARNING
MY SEAT, MAI-BAAP

WILL THE BULLY NOW DO WHAT BULLIES USUALLY DO WHEN THEIR BLUFF IS CALLED? IF MODI WINS ON SUNDAY
NORTHEAST IS INDIA
AND THEN THERE WERE NINE
THE RURBAN MIND
IT’S NOT ABOUT 272
YES, WE CAN’T
THE CHATTERANTI
THE GLORIOUS CERTAINTIES
COCKTAIL PARTY OF INDIA
HINDU RATE OF BJP GROWTH
HANDS DOWN
PART 3: THE RETURN OF THE UPA
HIS NEXT CLASS ACT
BABUJI DHEERE CHALNA

THE MAKING OF THE FLAW PURUSH DROUGHT-PROOFING INDIA
TEARING DOWN NARASIMHA RAO
SECONDERABAD
NO SILENCE, PLEASE
THE BUCK STARTS HERE
WITH ALL DUE RESPECT
THE POWER OF ONE
IS ANYBODY THERE?
LEFTOVER AT THE CENTRE
PART 4: THE UPA IN DECLINE
UNITED REGRESSIVE ALLIANCE GO, OR GET GOING
SO NEHRU KILLED GANDHI!

THAT FUNNY BOFORS FEELING DIRTY BUSINESS
UPA’S METEORIC FALL
THERE ARE TWO CONGRESSES
IS ANYBODY OUT THERE?
LOK SABHA, 2014
THE GREAT LETDOWN
THE SUMMER FREEZE
MUMBYE
DECIDE ON THE DOCTOR
THE OFFICER RAJ
NO NOOSE IS GOOD NOOSE
THAT SINKING FEELING
BLUNDER JANATA PARTY
THE STATES STRIKE BACK
ANYBODY OUT THERE?
CRUDE POLITICS
MEENA KUMARI POLITICS
FIXERPRENEURSHIP

FIRST FAMILY, SECOND NATURE NAGPUR, WE HAVE A PROBLEM A RETREAT TO REFORM
EARS WIDE SHUT
THEM VERSUS THEM
PROUD TO PAY
ONE DYNASTY DIMMING

STILL MANDAL, STILL MANDIR LAWLIPOP POLITICS
OUR POOR LITTLE SANJU
NOT ENOUGH, BOSS
CRONY, CRAWLY CAPITALISM
THE BLEEDING HEARTLESS
PART 5: THE RISE OF NARENDRA MODI
MODI VERSUS HIS PARTY

THE CHIEF IN CHIEF MINISTER BODY POLITICS
LOSE-LOSE
THE DEFORMISTS
MODI-HIT
SCARED WITLESS

CURRENT ACCOUNTABILITY DEFICIT THE CONGRESS’S MODI

AKHILESH, YOUNG AND LISTLESS I’VE GOT THE VETO POWER
HIS MORAL HIGHNESS
THE ACCUSED
MY SARDAR VERSUS YOURS
OR ELSE, MODI
PART 6: FROM ANNA TO AAM AADMI
AAM AADMI VERSUS SAB CHOR
THANK GOD FOR POLITICS
WE, THE THIEVING PEOPLE
JANTAR, CHHU MANTAR
THE GREAT INDIAN HIJACK
OUT WITH OUR RAGE
OUR SINGAPORE FANTASY
THE AAM ANNA AADMI
ANNATIONALISM
HOLIER THAN COW
THE CASTE OF CORRUPTION
FOOTNOTES
INDEX

ABOUT THE AUTHOR COPYRIGHT
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This book would never have happened if I had not met Surendra Pratap
Singh (SP), a brilliant Hindi editor who made his mark across genres, the daily
Nav Bharat Times, weekly Ravivar and then as my editorial adviser for the Hindi
edition of India Today, and finally as a key founder of Aaj Tak. He mentored an
entire army of political journalists in English and Hindi. I am happy to be
counted among them. SP and I met and became friends a bit late in my working
life. I had built a track record of sorts for covering troubles within India and
around the world. But SP told me emphatically that I would remain a fair-
weather, parachute journalist living from story to story unless I graduated to
writing about politics. Over the following years, therefore, he became my
teacher in Indian politics, particularly in the complexities of caste and class in
the heartland, and helped me understand what lay beneath what many saw as the
excesses of the Mandal Commission. It didn’t stop there. It was at his urging that
I gathered the nerve to leave my very secure and comfortable perch at India
Today to move in as the editor of the Indian Express, our most political paper by
far. And yet, again, even when interrupted by calls from the Aaj Tak newsroom
on the mobile phone that mystified him (1995– 96, when the first mobiles came
to India), he nagged me to start a weekly column if I wanted to be taken
seriously as an editor. The world of journalism and a family lost SP too early, to
a stroke. I have missed him all these years and owe not just the column, but also
my evolution as a political writer to him.
This book is dedicated to Viveck Goenka, publisher of the Express Group,
and that must sound unusual. Because sure enough, there was competition, not
just from immediate family but, as those who know my wife and me, children
and children-in-law well, from the so many dogs and cats who enrich our lives.
My choice of Viveck is very well thought out. I dedicate this collection to him
because through nearly nineteen years as editor of the Indian Express, one of our
greatest institutions, and through the publication of more than 900 National
Interest articles that rubbed people across the political, bureaucratic and
corporate spectrum the wrong way, I never, ever, got a phone call from him even
to ask why. Even when people called him to complain, he usually responded
with the equivalent of switching off his phone. No editor can ask for a better gift
from his publisher. It’s such a pity that so few today are cast in this mould.
We spent several frustrating days thinking of a name for the column. Many
were tossed around but were not convincing—also because I wanted the freedom
to write on anything, from politics to defence, security and foreign policy to
cricket. The answer came from S. Prasannarajan, he of the quaintly complex and
charming prose and intriguingly refreshing turn of phrase. Call it National
Interest, he said, and you can write on cricket, Bollywood, anything. So, thank
you Prasanna, for giving me such intellectual space and licence.
Raj Kamal Jha and Unni Rajen Shanker, currently editor and managing
editor, respectively, at the Indian Express have been my friends, colleagues and
partners in much for more than twenty years. I have rarely felt sure of the drift
without brainstorming with them before starting to write every stressful Friday
afternoon. In much of Indian journalism you have never seen anybody who can
write a headline as Raj can. National Interest has benefited greatly from his
brilliant headlines, as I from picking his phenomenal bank of knowledge and
ideas even when he was on long sabbaticals in totally hopeless time zones. Unni
has the finest sense of political nuance, as also of what is non-kosher even for a
writer as reckless as me. Raj brings a refreshingly globalised intellectual view to
all issues, helps you cut through the clutter as no other. To him, I also owe a
lesson every journalist should engrave on his sleeve: never switch off your
bullshit detector.
Raj and Unni lead a formidable reporting team at the Indian Express whose
brilliant work served as primary research for my pieces. Investigations Editor
Ritu Sarin, Delhi Editor Rakesh Sinha and Express News Service Editor Pranab
Dhal Samanta, thank you for doing that fact-check a minute before deadline.
Swapan Dasgupta headed our editorial page when the column began. From
him on to A.J. Philip, Pamela Philipose, Saubhik Chakrabarti, Mini Kapoor and
Vandita Mishra, truly wonderful editors headed the Indian Express opinion pages
with a small, stellar and uncomplaining team of talented young women and men.
I thank them all, and apologise to them for holding them up late Friday evenings
when they deserved to go home or party. Amulya Gopalakrishnan, Sudeep Paul,
Ipsita Chakravarty, Yamini Lohia and Parth Mehrotra in the current team, and
many talented ones who have now grown so wonderfully well in the profession
—National Interest belongs to you as much as to me.
One of them, however, deserves a very, very special mention. Mini Kapoor
has selected these columns and spent months editing, fact-checking, putting in
references and citations. It is only her perseverance and patience that has made
this book a reality. Thank you Mini, friend and colleague. And remember, we
aren’t done yet.
Usha Uppal, without whom, I sincerely believe, not even a word would
have been written. She makes the impossible so easy, she runs my back-office
blending art with magic I have still not figured out. Many of these columns were
written on scraps of paper faxed from hotel counters, my handwriting legible
only to her; sometimes in chunks of garbled paras texted from my BlackBerry.
Only Usha could translate all this—which she did with a smile. And another ally
who can teach you to deal with any calamity—including a self-perpetuating one
like me—with a smile. If you need a can-do tutorial, call Ambreen Khan.
Another unusual thank-you note to two extraordinary friends and comrades.
Libel, contempt of court and some laws nastier than these are hazards journalists
live with. I have spent half a lifetime squabbling with overly cautious lawyers
who threaten you with nothing less than the possibility of jail if you dare to step
out of the line they, of course, draw for you. In Vaidehi Thakar and Poorvi
Kamani, the Indian Express has much more than a brilliant legal team. It could
not have asked for a finer set of guardians of its unmatched and uncontested
editorial freedoms. It does no harm that both also happen to be my most regular
readers, fair if unforgiving critics, and never forget to chide me on the odd
Friday that I get too lazy to write. But if anything ever brings legal trouble, they
are wonderful allies, particularly along with Nachiket Joshi, quicksilver in the
courtroom. And, of course, the guru of them all: so thank you also Goolam
Vahanvati. Can I ever forget and be not grateful to you for being such a calm
lifesaver in Chandigarh's high court in 1996 for what was indeed a criminal lack
of judgement on my very first day as editor of the Express—baptism by fire, as
you told the furious bench—even if it was not direct but vicarious. Lawyers who
love to fight the good fight are the greatest editorial force multipliers.
Krishan Chopra is the most patient publisher you will find. And a
perfectionist. His persistence has made this first publication with HarperCollins
possible. Once again, let me say what I just said to Mini, we aren’t done yet!
National Interest, my (mostly) Saturday column, is now in its eighteenth
year. Our politics and political economy are its most visited themes. Anticipating
India is a selection from the columns on these themes. It is by no means a
definitive work of contemporary history. Nor does it pretend to be so. It isn’t
entirely chronological either. That would be too predictable. Indian politics, like
a hardfought cricket Test match that fluctuates session to session, follows a
stop/go, lean-back/leap-forward pattern.
That’s why the Congress can get defeated in 1989, and the BJP and Left
both support a largely leftof-centre V.P. Singh government, apparently to keep
the corrupt dynastic rule out. But in 1996, the Congress and the Left are to join
hands to install a United Front (Gowda and Gujral) government in power, now to
keep the evil communal forces out. In the same year, and then in 1999, the
Congress and the Left vote together to defeat the BJP-led NDA twice in the Lok
Sabha. The Left again supposedly gulps the chalice of poison and enables the
Congress-led UPA to take power in 2004 only to keep the now even more
communal ‘Modi-fied’ BJP out of power. Just four years later, in 2008, it is as if
the Left and the BJP have had a dip in the Ganga together. This time to keep
dirty American hands off India’s foreign policy, symbolised by the nuclear deal.
How do you explain all this? And frankly, you can go on. Gowda and Gujral,
who got the country’s top job (1996–98), did so only so that the BJP could be
kept out of power. Soon afterwards, both embraced the BJP as a senior partner.
Gowda’s party aligned with the BJP to share power in Karnataka. Gujral’s son
Naresh is now a Rajya Sabha member and spokesperson of the Shiromani Akali
Dal, the BJP’s most durable ally in Punjab and India’s most anti-Congress party
of all.
‘Can you please, please explain your country to me?’ asked my late
afternoon caller in 1998. This was a totally befuddled Frank Wisner, US
ambassador to India. How could Sitaram Kesri pull down such a stable-looking
and generally efficient (at least on the economy) government on a mere pique?
Truth to tell, I was then as confused as he, and have no answers even now for
how things change in Indian politics and why. So please do not expect this
selection of writings to settle such arguments. The Congress, under Sonia
Gandhi’s diktat, also brought down the second UF government under Gujral,
because the DMK was in the coalition and somehow ‘compliant’ in Rajiv
Gandhi’s assassination, as claimed somewhat dodgily by the Justice Jain
commission of inquiry. The report was leaked by Arjun Singh, who wasn’t going
to miss an opportunity to upstage Kesri and draw Sonia directly into politics. He
said the Congress couldn’t keep in power a government of ‘Rajivji’s killers’. Six
years later, the DMK became the same Congress party’s most loyal ally, the
assassination forgiven if not forgotten.
You want more surprises? The two-year Gowda–Gujral arrangement was
our most left-of-centre to date. It even had two key cabinet members from the
CPI (Indrajit Gupta, home, and Chaturanan Mishra, agriculture). Yet it carried
out some of the most path-breaking reforms. Chidambaram’s dream budget of
1997, the Voluntary Disclosure of Income Scheme and then setting up of the
Disinvestment Commission under G.V. Ramakrishna. That flurry of change is
outdone in its improbability by the stalling of all reform under UPA 2 now. Even
though it had a healthier majority, a much stronger reform dream team led by Dr
Manmohan Singh and Chidambaram, and a buoyant, near-surplus economy.
Once again, therefore, how do you explain this India? You only watch, observe,
converse, reflect. And enjoy.
It is not as if there is no logic to Indian politics. It is just that it is complex,
with many variables, shifting loyalties, alliances, flexible ideologies, shuffling
priorities and unshakeable vested interests. You get wisdom more likely from
conversation than from reading books on political theory or history. And often
from unlikely interlocutors. One of my favourites is a conversation with H.D.
Kumaraswamy, Gowda’s son.
‘How do you justify your father joining hands with the BJP to make you
chief minister of Karnataka when he had himself become prime minister only to
keep that supposedly evil party out?’ I asked him on NDTV’s Walk the Talk.
‘Sir, my father actually made a big mistake by becoming prime minister of
India,’ he answered so promptly as if he had anticipated my question.
‘Why do you say so?’ I asked.
‘Because by becoming prime minister for a few months, sir, my father lost hold
over his own party and his own state. So our power was permanently damaged.’
Since I looked unconvinced, he clarified: ‘We have to learn from the DMK and
AIADMK, sir. You hold power in your own state, and then trade it for a share in
the central government, whoever may lead it.’ A still young and inexperienced
inheritor of a single-state kulak legacy had taught me an essential political fact.
That in any Lok Sabha election now, anything from 60 to 100 seats will be won
by parties whose ideologies are totally fungible with power. That is why 200 is
the new 272 in our politics.
A completely different message was to be read in the Aam Aadmi Party’s
successful debut in Delhi and the Congress party’s outside support to its
government. Included in this selection is a column that stated that the Anna–
Kejriwal movement’s essential impulse was anti-Congress. That still hasn’t
changed even if the AAP’s brief alliance with the Congress has left many of its
original BJP or pro-BJP backers stunned. All this proves is that we Indians learn
politics quickly. Even when we started out being basically anti-political. This
state election has left the Congress a marginal party in Delhi. It is also by far the
weaker party going into national elections. So the risks of aligning with it for
power in Delhi, howsoever corrupt you may have called it, are much less than
going with the BJP, and you have a better negotiating position as well.
I did not start out as a political reporter. I only strayed into that most vaunted—
and fun—part of our profession. Once in a while when the senior political dadas
were not available for some reason. Or when, as a cub reporter usually left to
cover crime in a city so benign it averaged only six murders a year (Chandigarh)
or dealing with what was called, in typically vicious newsroom language,
trayand-fire (the clip-tray with press releases like some ‘Lions Club’ celebrating
Diwali with ‘pump and show’, and the routine call to the fire department before
going home), you were told to go to the usually empty state assemblies late