BJP's catch 22 with Ramdev

June 10, 2011

Ramdev’s theatrics have got the nation hysterical at a point of time when any moral high ground against corruption is sweeping the nation. The BJP has extended its support to the self-styled Bawa, initially tacit and then explicitly, and there is a general perception in the collective consciousness that Ramdev is playing into the hands of the BJP. However, the BJP that is going all out to support Ramdev and in turn hopes to revive their lost political ground is equally apprehensive of Ramdev’s theatrics.

A large section of the BJP leaders believe that Ramdev is not worth trusting and the way he took a U turn with the Congress, he is quite capable of doing the same with the BJP as well. Requesting anonymity some of the BJP leaders admit that since the party is a divided house with various line of thoughts—Advani line, Sushma line, Gadkari line, Jaitley line, but no party line; it is serving the purpose of Ramdev and the party in return is seen to be gaining in the short term. They believe the consequences in the long term can be very costly to the party’s fortunes.

The return of Hindu hard liners like Uma Bharti back to the party and with Uttar Pradesh assembly elections in sight, a section of the top BJP leaders are of the view that Ramdev can prove to be an ace up their sleeves. Though aware of Ramdev’s own ambitions, in the cost benefit analysis they feel it will take quite some time for Ramdev to float his own political party and by then the BJP can reap the benefits before dumping him.

However, not all in the BJP feel the same. The claim to train youngsters for yoga militia has not gone down well with the RSS. The Hindu hardliners believe that by getting into every district to raise cadre is the kind of road map that can make RSS insignificant and hence they are uncomfortable with Ramdev. After all, it would hit them hard if a parallel Hindutva cadre is raised by Ramdev. There is unanimous view among the hardliner Hindutva brigade that Ramdev is neither a natural ally nor his over ambitious streak will make him stick to the ideology of the BJP-RSS in the long term.

Some of the bitter critics of Ramdev in the BJP camp assert that any extended support to Ramdev will amount to creating a Frankenstein’s monster, whose support base suggests that he will eventually grow at the cost of the BJP only. That was precisely the reason why the backroom boys of the BJP preferred a soft dismissal of Ramdev’s yoga militia call by asking its Muslim face Shahnawaz Hussian to say that Bawa’s Ashtra-Shastra (weapons) are his vaani (sermon).

This happened on a day when the BJP leader Sushma Swaraj rushed to Hardwar to announce full support of the party and Sangh Parivar. After all, the BJP does not want to miss the opportunity to show solidarity with a yoga guru whose theatrics have carried the educated middle class in urban India. This has been traditionally the BJP vote bank. And hence the party can’t afford to miss it. But the voices of dissent in the party suggest that it can lead to a significant dent in its traditional vote bank as well.

However, there are very little choices left for the party which is trying hard to overcome the fact that they could draw little mileage despite of a series of scams and scandals coming out in the UPA government. Ramdev episode is seen as the last refuge by the party where internal bickering have led to significant loss of ground even among the fanatic supporters.

The BJP is equally conscious of the fact that the other pole of fight against corruption has maintained a distance with them. Anna Hazare & his team have not allowed the BJP to share dais on the issue and steal the show. They have instead gone to the extent of making it overtly clear that if Ramdev has to join them, he has to distance himself from the party sponsored protest. How can the principal opposition party not be a part of a protest that has been in the media spotlight, of late?

This inherent confusion and dilemma added to the fact that the central leadership of the party is a divided house, has led the BJP to officially support Ramdev. But the back room boys are working overtime to plan out a possible fall out. These may be early days for the final cost-benefit analysis, but the BJP is definitely in a dilemma over support to Ramdev. This catch 22 situation of the BJP is actually eroding its own vote bank, many of the party strategists believe. 

Corruption and political hypocrisy

Nov 18, 2010

On the 1st day of Winter Session of Parliament JD (U) leader Sharad Yadav got agitated during a discussion on the corruption charges on Telecom Minister A Raja, CWG boss Suresh Kalmadi and Maharashtra Chief Minister Ashok Chahvan.  In the heat of the moment the former Union Minister got so much carried that he made a politically not-so-correct yet candid statement that once being a part of the Union Government he is aware that in India investigating agencies are so much under the clutches of the ruling party that any investigation has absolutely no meaning and corruption & political nepotism remains a way of life.
Though the allegation of Sharad Yadav was meant to target the Congress Party, it actually proved to be a revealing statement on how the respective governments in India have misused the central investigating agencies, and hypocrisy is the only buzz word on the issue. The question here is that whether corruption actually is an issue in India beyond middle class hysteria. Well, your guess could be as good as mine. Had corruption been an issue then the ruling Congress party that has been responsible for institutionalizing it had not been ruling the country uninterrupted for almost three decades since independence.
The fact of the matter is that corruption has never been an issue in India and the governments who have performed even decent on the given parameter of governance (development, social justice or just plain PR) have repeatedly been re-elected even after being declared corrupt by the investigating agencies and the court of law. The political parties that are stalling the parliament year after year seem to have learnt the art of engineering the middle class hysteria over corruption, while they are all hand-in-glove, and collectively determined to laugh their way to banks while plundering the public wealth.
What Sharad Yadav said in the House is only the tip of the iceberg. The malaise runs much deeper in the system. Have not we all seen the then CBI chief Joginder Singh saying in Patna that prima facie there is no case to charge sheet Laloo Yadav in fodder scam and then stating otherwise in Delhi in a matter of few hours? After all, he was only following his boss’ (Prime Minister) order against the wannabe Prime Minster. Did corruption charge desert the massive vote bank of Laloo? There are a number of examples where the corruption and other criminal charges have worked the other way and instead mobilized the gullible voters even further.
With the change of time, corruption has only snowballed into a kind of media trial, with the political parties more interested in engaging the public and engineering vote bank than reaching to a logical conclusion. If that not be the case why are opposition parties today demanding JPC with more members of ruling alliance than a PAC with more opposition members? The fact of the matter is that all they are interested in is a drift of DMK from the ruling alliance and not taking the corruption to its logical end. The ruling UPA alliance is playing equally smart to let the bedlam happen and in due course pass the tide. Public memory, after all, is very short.
Had public memory not been that short, the principal opposition party, BJP would not have gathered morale to raise such a hue and cry over corruption. After all, the track record of their own NDA government has been equally pathetic, filthy and stormy over the issue. The telecom scam is not just confined to the grant of 2G Spectrum; it actually started within the NDA Government. When one of the upright ministers, Jagmohan stood out as whistle blower, he was ungracefully shifted from the ministry and sidelined. Who doesn’t know how Reliance was given license for local loop phone initially and then all the norms subverted to favour the corporate house.
When the corruption scandal had surfaced in the Defence Ministry of the NDA government, did the then Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee showed the kind of leadership that the Manmohan Singh has now shown? The BJP had then gone “On Record” saying that it is the prerogative of the Prime Minister to retain and drop a minister, and he is not bound by the wish of the opposition party. It had led to a new precedent in the history of Indian Parliament when throughout the tenure of the NDA government, the opposition kept the Defence Minister George Fernandes boycotted, and never asked any questions. Of course, the common gullible middle class kept wondering that whether our leaders have stood so low that even the coffins of war martyrs at kargil were not spared.
It is due to the all pervasive political hypocrisy that a political party raises a toast over Adarsh Society Housing Scam in Maharashtra, despite the fact that their own Party President is one of the beneficiaries. How conveniently they forget that one of the Chief Ministers of their own party had shamelessly defended corruption with a couplet, “paisa koi khuda toh nahin lekin khuda ki kasam  khuda se kam bhi nahin” (Money may not be god but god swear is no less than god). May be the poor guy was just following the principles set by his Party President who was caught on camera accepting bribe, not leaving even loose currency of Rs. 10.
The country was not so shocked beyond middle class hysteria yet again. The rest had digested the first time whiff of power that brought the greed out of the holier-than-thou political party. They are any way not alone in becoming a poor Xerox copy of the Congress in terms of corruption. The respective Third Front Governments, often a by-product of disenchantment with the two leading political parties, too have been found lusting for the same booty through means fair and foul. Hence when a leading industrialist blew the whistle of being asked 15 crores for airlines license, nobody was surprised or shocked.
The moot point here is that when every political party has been equally shameless then whom to be blamed. The first blame goes to people like us for being hysterical with selective amnesia. So long we are a party to the political vote engineering in the name of whistle blowing on corruption, the soap opera called “war on corruption” will continue. As concerned citizens of the country our agenda should be to boycott the corrupt, and at the same time deplore those who have double-speak on the subject with a holier-than-thou war cry.