Taming Game

27 November 2019

#MahaNatak #MaharashtraGovernmentFormation

If you ask folks on ground, they feel that this is Karnataka all over again in Maharashtra. They feel like Mr Yedurappa Mr Fadnavis was sworn in and resigned before facing the SC ordered Floor Test. They feel that like Karnataka this alliance of clear Anti BJP ism, for there is no other ideology here at play, will develop chasms over which another exercise can be mounted, for here instead of just two player teams to woo, we have four- Independents, SS, INC and NCP. Even better, the situation in Maharashtra is more in flux with a whole host of leaders and workers shifting allegiance on poll eve, including the royal of Satara, the kingpin of Navi Mumbai, and the man at the heart of the current game- Mr Ajit Pawar!

Yet, for all those saying that the INC was not able to up the ante, was not quick enough to deal with an emerging situation, for those writing that Mr Rahul Gandhi must split the Congress party, or those wishing for his return to ensure that Congress as the last bastion of secularism does not end up in the camp of Hindutva votary Shiv Sena, the message is still not loud enough? In Maharastra as else where, the Modi effect has been clearly that issues like Secularism, Constitutionality, ( allegiance to a Constitution that was celebrated yesterday in letter and spirit) is that these ideals and pillars of a modern state are more likely to be observed in the breach than otherwise. So while the SC yesterday delivered a death blow to horsing around in Maharashtra, one is awaiting the verdict on the Karnataka saga of MLA resignations as a route to defile mandate as defined by the Anti Defection Act. That today, the Congress party openly welcomed the prospect of the SC ordered Ram Temple, was also already a position for which precursor was the retraction in Sabarimala, which incidentally was led by the ‘progressive liberal’ Mr Tharoor. It shows that the INC as a politically experienced party is at odds with the credentials that Mr Rahul sought to establish for it, and hence the resignation of Mr Rahul did not trigger mass resignations, that the entrenched within the party apparatchik feel entitled to await a better Gandhi aka Ms Priyanka Vadra, rather than lose their sleep over the direction Mr Rahul sought to give them.

Yes, the little the INC did in the Assembly elections by way of mass contact, had Mr Rahul as its spear head. The little the INC does in Parliament too, by way of opposing is also spear headed by him. His presence in Wayanad has taken that rural remoteness to national mainstream, his speeches and his presence have a core of young wannabes in the INC, and it is speculated often that if they are not empowered soon enough, they may waltz over to the BJP any time, as Ms Swati Chaturvedi keeps speculating, a list that includes Mr Milind Deora, Mr JA Scindia, Mr Sachin Pilot, but which saw till now, only Ms Chaturvedi and Mr Vadakkan, both spokespersons rather than ‘spokes’ in the Congress wheel locally or nationally, who have not transformed yet from being media savvy to market savvy, like Mr Tharoor.

So what does Maharashtra put out. First, the severe damage of dropping an alliance partner of several decades affords the BJP an opportunity to speed up the appointment of a full time party president and prepare for an alternative set of top honchos to the current Gujarat Model. Trust me, already Nagpur is very very deeply concerned, because it did not accept the feedback given by Mr Nitin Gadkari, that there was a growing resentment about the public posture and dominance that the duo had created even in the run up to May 2019. Now it is clear, that if the media had not turned puppy and pliant, if Pulwama had not happened, Mr Rahul could have stopped Modi-Shah in their tracks nationally. If you see the Assembly outcomes after Demonetisation effects became feedback through economic pain, the BJP has been on a slippery slope, and whatever herculean recouping that was effected in MP, Rajasthan, Gujarat before that and even in Karnataka was all the charisma of Mr Modi and the hyper nationalism swaying voters. From 2017 onward, now the pain is more apparent on ground. Secondly a popular yarn is getting spun over how the indomitable Mr Shah was outfoxed by Uncle-Nephew Pawar, not just through memes but now it will join folklore. Because first, the BJP was to suddenly void the President’s rule it had imposed in the midnight move, it co-opted Mr Ajit Pawar as Dy CM and swore him in, and then it acted in haste to clear not just farm distress compensation but also in closing several cases against him ( their Dy CM), giving him now the perfect fig leaf to inform Courts and the public that any future investigation into irrigation scams and corruption on his part would be plain vanilla vendetta! Then he skipped a meeting chaired by the CM, the SC order came and Uncle spoke to Nephew and the fuse was blown,(https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/maharashtra-government-news-what-ajit-pawar-told-devendra-fadnavis-before-quitting-2139119?pfrom=home-livetv) bringing Mr Fadnavis down on his knees! This makes for poor optics, very poor optics…

Thirdly as I spelt out earlier in my opinion on this saga, the law of diminishing returns is kicking in. Even if the mainstream media is skirting the Parliamentary Committee interrogations on the Electoral Bonds issue, it is clear to any one who wishes to be informed of how this has hugely benefited the party in power at the utter disadvantage of other political players. If the BJP were now to address these issues before the SC pares down the law on it in the judicial review pending before it or strikes it down, it will be because, if the BJP were to be at the receiving end, it would face a vacuum so powerful that it could end up dead leaf in a flash itself it it were no longer ruling. This is another issue that Nagpur is likely to engage in in coming days. The aspect of all pervasive corruption and cronyism through methods that are more refined and technical, or the arbitrariness that met with decisions like Rafale, the bank mergers, the current decision to sell an Oil vendor, Air India as disinvestment, the contracts for airports, ports and more as infrastructural build up are all being fish mongered in our Mofussil markets as Adani-Ambani payoffs. Till the time, BJP was only saddled with one Mr Yedurappa, it was okay, but now there is one in Assam, one in West Bengal, many in Maharashtra, in Andhra, so much that a new political sutra has emerged calling BJP the Holy Prayag of parties, that any taint gets absolved and cleansed by taking a dip in it. This has destroyed Mr Modi’s thunder of ‘Na Khaunga, Na Khanedunga!’ If you saw the rise of Mr Amit Shah’s son from a nowhere broker to a stellar prospector to now BCCI administrator, we see another fundamental credo promised by the BJP being violated of ‘son rise’.

Of course Ms Arundhati Roy is right in trying to speak her mind on India as she did in New York with a rare eloquence, in what I felt was an essay more of a contemplative surrender and appeal to finer sense, than an outright decrying of India’s surrender to her worst instincts. I have read it, and I advise that it is not for the faint hearted, though she is nowhere as rabid or iconoclastic as she was in her earlier essays on ‘greater common good’! (https://www.thenation.com/article/arundhati-roy-assam-modi/) Yours truly feels that I can get where she is coming from. While her fears may bear out, I can only say that Gandhi could not have read India wrong, even though right now she is in the grip of Godse and Savarkar. I can read an inner resilience in India that would have already revealed her hand but for the utter collapse of India’s pillars- her judiciary, her fourth estate, her legislature and her government officials, the weak kneed response in the face of the majoritarian mandate that has been claimed by the BJP. If any thing, Maharashtra saga reveals to you that India still has the smarts to overcome and not be overwhelmed by such pressure from all ends. As one who normally does not watch TV, I watched webcast of TimesNow yesterday. Till Mr Fadnavis threw in the towel in the afternoon pressor, the anchors were going whole hog about how the INC was likely to slit right down the middle, that it was in a chaos over its legislative leadership riven by factions, and the ‘storm troopers’ were busy gaming how the numbers would stack up for the BJP to outclass the ‘aghadi’ in the Floor Test intended for today. This kind of gloating, gleeful cheer squad attitude from a major news station is something that needs to be addressed by India. Not only was the news in the realm of pure speculation, but also was it squarely pure propaganda that  Joseph Goebbels could not conjure in his hey days! What is more devastating is how in other days, these studios are busy ‘othering’ India by slanting the public discourse over contentious issues like NRC, CAB, Pakistan and more. Yesterday’s top news should have been how the recent Kerala encounter of Naxals was a fake encounter as per its own Internal Assessment Board report, or the developing story of how Delhi’s police operated to arrest a few persons in Assam for a ‘plot’, and how alternative media of online security analysts raised a red herring over the timing of this arrest and its plot surmise of high value targets- Jharkhand campaign eve!

I see hope where others see despair. For me, Mr Sharad Pawar has shown not just rank opportunism to defend his ‘legacy’ by standing in the rain and convincing voters to shut out the turn coat royal in Satara, but also by cobbling up this impossible coalition and keeping it intact to thwart the designs of the BJP, he has played a game in the same coin as them. Of course, the game just reached the next level. But at least it did. I also can see how Jharkhand and  Bihar and whatever state else to follow, will now consolidate this ‘anti BJP’ mood. There was a time where anti-Congress-ism was the dominant opposition ideology, so the BJP can take that as a left handed compliment. More importantly I can see that at a level of the average voter, there is bound to be voter fatigue on Ultranationalism and ‘Othering’ which is perhaps a global tidal wave that Post Truth World delivered to our shores too in 2014, and which is also now seen to be retreating in places in first originated in. The predatory majoritarian is now not recklessly on the prowl, there is a game afoot to tame the beast!