The IMF has after a thorough review of the state of Pakistan’s economy with the help of its officials has come to the conclusion that corruption in Pakistan is pervasive and deep-rooted. That it should come to this conclusion after three years of military rule is both significant and very disturbing.

It underscores the urgency to uproot the pervasive corruption in a country with increasing poverty to make the best use of our limited resources, costly aid and the relief we have been seeking. Such periodic reviews are held essential under Article IV of the IMF Charter before additional aid packages are released. The IMF has been releasing tranches of the three-year Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility without too much protest in view of the current strategic importance of Pakistan and its partnership in the war against terrorism led by the US. And our finance officials have been stressing that soon we would strengthen the economy so much we could do without a new IMF bail-out by the middle of 2004. If that has to become a reality we have to eliminate the varied abuses in the economy, ensure good governance on a sustained basis, and make the best of our resources and aid from elsewhere.

As for the elimination of high level corruption during the military rule, we would know the reality only long after the end of that rule and after the political process begins, and such sins of commission come before the Auditor General, Public Accounts Committee, the Parliament and the Press.

As far as the Corruption Perception Index of the Transparency International of Berlin is concerned, with 10 as the base for no corruption it has risen to only 2.6 from 2.2 but it is still ranked 77 out of table of 102 countries evaluated for corruption.

The IMF says Pakistan conducted 154 enquiries against politicians, including one against a former prime minister and former ministers, 290 against bureaucrats, 38 against businessmen, and seven against officials of the armed forces. It said the National Accountability Bureau has received Rs 80 billion so far.

But according to a report provided by the NAB to this newspaper, it investigated 879 individuals for charges ranging from embezzlement to over-stepping of their powers. Of them 510 persons were referred to accountability courts for trial where 170 had plea-bargained and returned the money. Among them were 87 politicians, 203 bureaucrats, 43 businessmen and 8 armed forces persons, and 33 others falling in miscellaneous category. The NAB has also collected Rs 2.28 billion through additional plea-bargaining. In addition to making indirect recoveries or savings of Rs 20 billion. The NAB has also helped the recovery of defaulted bank loans of Rs 80 billion and rescheduling the debt of Rs 56 billion. For all this, claims the NAB, it had incurred an expenditure of only Rs 602 million.

As far as the people are concerned, they are interested in not only the political leaders they prosecuted but also in those whom they did not. Then there are the categories like Asif Zardari whom the government detained for a very long period but could not prove any offence conclusively. There are also smart and notoriously corrupt officials who were allowed to get out of the country.

As far as the plea-bargaining and getting money out of the very corrupt is concerned, it is better to get as much money out of them as we can, instead of letting them go scot free or stay in jail, underground or abroad.

The fact is whether it is in Iran, Mexico, or the Philippines the successor governments have not been able to recover the wealth looted by the dictators. Imelda Marcos rules the roost in the Philippines and has been even elected to the Parliament. Only Nigeria has been able to achieve practical success in recovering the loot of its military rulers as that was too excessive.

The question is what next in Pakistan? The National Accountability Bureau has prepared a new National Anti-corruption Strategy and it is to come under the prime minister so that he may not accuse the president of misusing it against his ministers, and party supporters. But a high-powered anti-corruption set-up under the prime minister and the provincial chief ministers is something not new. In fact there has been a duplicity of such bodies since the days of Muhammad Khan Junejo in 1985. After an enquiry is held against a minister or member of Parliament by a high-powered body and the report comes to the PM, the buck stops there. The same happens in the provinces. Sometimes if a minister or member of the assembly protests too much the enquiry is called off quick for political reasons. And the offender commits more irregularities.

So there is a need for such anti-corruption bodies to be truly autonomous with a fixed term of three or five years appointed by the National Assembly. It is easy to suggest the judiciary should appoint such an official, but following the tradition of our judiciary he may take five years or more to give a verdict.

Regardless of the shape of the anti-corruption body and under whose control it is, the Parliament should become more effective in controlling public expenditure. Its standing committees for various ministries should become strong and assertive and put in hard work. The National Assembly is too large for everyone to make long speeches now or for others to be really interested in all such speeches. Hence the real work should shift to the committees which should be open to the Press and the public, if possible.

And the Public Accounts Committee should effectively control public expenditure and recover the looted and wasted money after the Auditor General had done the essential preliminary work. And the AG should be unsparing in exposing accounting misdeeds or lapses.

But how can the MPs do their job well if they will not want to pay their lodge bills or other dues to the NA secretariat? Now we are told of an excess of expenditure of Rs 485 million on the building of parliamentary lodges and they had been making no effort to recover the amount.

Now the newly elected MNAs are protesting the lodges are in a shambles, while those who cannot get the lodges allotted in view of the increase in their numbers suddenly complain of dearth of lodges. That means far more will have to be spent on putting up new lodges and even better ones. That along with the highly enhanced pay scales and allowances for the legislators will make the new quasi-democracy cost far more to the people. But the legislators can’t be blamed for their wasteful ways when the Speakers have been much too spendthrift and keeping 9 to 11 limousines at public expense wholly needlessly.

We are now told Pakistan and China are to develop a scandal-free financial system for Pakistan. It has been reported from Beijing, following a conference attended by our senior chartered accountants, that Pakistan financial experts are prepared to join hands with their Chinese friends to develop a scandal-free management system. The two countries could also enhance their professional skills in the field of accounting. China has also been greatly concerned over the increasing corruption there following the fast expanding economy, particularly in the private sector. Hence what emerge through such cooperation would be interesting.

A parliamentary democracy means not only Parliament acquiring more and more powers or declaring itself sovereign but also using those powers for the good of the people, particularly to remove the poverty and misery of the masses in a poor country with increasing human hardships. And those powers should be used not only in the constitutional, and political spheres but also in the economic and social sectors for a balanced development and human happiness.

Such an approach has been lacking among the political leaders who had too often been preoccupied with their survival while the more powerful among them had been concerned with their private gains. So they fell out of office soon and after a military interregnum another set-up politicians were elected only to fall again soon blaming the dominant military for all that.

In such circumstances what can the NAB under the Prime Minister and the indirect oversight of President Musharraf do effectively to deal with civilian and military corruption, inclusive of judicial corruption? The military regime excluded the military, except for rare outstanding cases, and the judiciary from the scope of NAB. There should be no exception under the new anti-corruption strategy. Holy cows are not a welcome breed or a safe bunch.

The NAB has announced earlier it would give suitable rewards for informants whose tips lead to the recovery of large embezzled or defrauded amounts, but did not give much details of amounts to be paid in this manner. The CBR now says it would pay an informant a tip of 10 per cent for helping in the recovery of Rs one million and the reward would go down to 4 per cent step by step for amounts above Rs 3 million.

Simultaneously the government is embroiled with an American company which has asked for payment of Rs 250 million for helping in the recovery of unspecified amounts besides the arrest of Admiral Mansoorul Haq, former chief of staff of Pakistan Navy. The amount claimed, besides what had been paid for the arrest of Admiral Mansoor, is very large as the NAB says its total expenditure hitherto is only Rs 602 million including the expenditure on Admiral Mansoor.

But the company threatening to sue the government in court is a too famous one, Duncan Broad-Sheet which owns the internationally famous rating company of Moody’s which has just now given Pakistan the raised outlook on Pakistan’s external debt from stable to positive following its foreign exchange reserve of 8.6 billion dollar. Hence Pakistan has to handle this claim discreetly.

What is important is that money defrauded or embezzled from Pakistan should be recovered as quickly as possible and before that can be invested in fixed assets or vanishes abroad. If a certain amount of money has to be paid for getting information, then it is useful. Plea-bargaining is also proper if large amounts are to be surrendered instead of Pakistan losing money in the manner other countries which had suffered dictatorial rule have despite their best efforts to recover the looted money.

The issue is not of principle or morality alone. The poor people of Pakistan need the money looted from their country to help relieve their distress. If all the money looted cannot be recovered, as much as possible should be, and as quickly as possible. How far the new rulers will be successful in that remains to be seen. They have to focus on that instead of resorting to their own money making as they have spent heavily on their own elections in the old style.

IMAGINE a prime minister who makes his first visit to the world’s fourth largest democracy and refuses to meet the leader of the opposition.

Even if Luiz Inacio “Lula” de Silva, the working class former trade union leader, had not been ahead in the polls for the presidency at the time, Tony Blair’s decision not to see him during his trip to Brazil last year would have been a mistake. Now that Lula has won the election as president of Latin America’s largest nation, it becomes a blunder.

Blame rests partly with Blair’s foreign policy advisers, but the prime minister himself is most at fault. Lack of intellectual curiosity and the traditional British ignorance of Latin America overruled whatever good advice he was offered. He apparently preferred to listen to Peter Mandelson, who has been openly contemptuous of Lula’s party, comparing it with old Labour and saying it had no chance of being elected.

The irony is that Lula is more New Labour than old. After losing three previous presidential elections, the candidate of the Workers’ party has won this time as “Lula lite”. He has modified his policies and his image. He chose a rich businessman who belongs to small right-wing party as his running mate. He signed a joint declaration with the Brazilian stock exchange, pledging to develop Brazil’s private pension funds.

Promising financial orthodoxy, he rules out any default on Brazil’s huge foreign debt and is committed to the deal that the outgoing centre-right president, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, made with the International Monetary Fund. It is rather like Godeon Brown’s pledge to maintain the Tories’ level of spending in the first two years of labours of Labour’s first term. Lula may even follow Brown’s example and free the Central Bank from government control. One of Lula’s top economic advisers recently visited the Bank of England to find out how the switch was made.

The southern cone of Latin America has been a tested for globalization. In the 1960s and 1970s its management was in the hands of people who kept their economies relatively closed. They protected local manufacturers from foreign goods and capital takeovers through high tariffs and exchange controls. Over the past two decades all that changed as the barriers to the trade and capital flows were lowered. The region saw uneven growth, high inflation, the privatization of its utilities, exchange rate crises and volatile capital movements. Efforts to stabilize the currency in Argentina and Brazil by neo-liberal methods worked for a time, but eventually unravelled because the rates were kept artificially high. Argentina’s debt default earlier this year had a serious knock-on effect in Brazil.

President Cardoso prevented a catastrophe on the scale of the one in Argentina, but Brazil’s currency has fallen sharply and economic growth is not enough to keep up with the rise in population. The wealth gap between the world’s most developed countries and Latin America widened in the last quarter of the 20th century. Average incomes, which were just under half of those in western Europe, Japan and the US, are now under a third. This contributed to the feeling in Brazil that it was time for a change.

One benefit of Lula’s assumption of power on January 1 will be peaceful transfer from one freely elected civilian president to another for the first time since the years of military rule. It is hard to believe that the Latin American stereotype of Pinochet-style generals in dark glasses was valid less than 20 years ago. Equally important is the shift of style away from men of the elite to a former metalworker from a family of sharecroppers. Yet while this symbolic shift is important, the record of Lula’s party in the cities and smaller states where it has ruled has been pragmatic. His is not a classic party of the left, and in his three earlier runs at the presidency Lula never won a majority of votes among the poorest — his party has relied on public sector workers, trade union members, the liberal intelligentsia and grassroots activists. Its appeal is based on a record of honesty in a system where corruption has been high.

The main problem of a Lula victory is the high level of expectations it arouses. People who are impatient for change are likely to be disappointed. Lula’s party has no majority in Congress and will probably join forces with President Cardoso’s party, giving Brazil a kind of grand coalition.

The only surprise is that the international capital markets, unlike on this occasion the US government, have been panicking. Ironically, their hysteria helped Lula. It forced the outgoing government to raise interest rates, thereby taking the blame for more hardship imposed on ordinary people. More importantly, it highlighted the crisis of sovereignty that lies at the heart of globalization.

In too many countries democracy has been forfeited to narrow social elites, military rulers or international institutions. How can governments that want to recover democracy succeed without having their economies undermined?— Dawn/Guardian Service

“PRESIDENT Musharraf is on the verge of winning the Nobel Peace Prize. But first, he must transform the economic future of Pakistan. And to do so he has to focus not on economic policy, but on resolving two debilitating conflicts - Karachi and Kashmir. Without their resolution there will be no systemic revival of the Pakistan economy.”

Omar Noman, a UN high-up in New York, has floated this thesis to test the international waters and happily discovered that powerhouses in America and abroad have a lot of time for him. Radiating credibility while streaking across the globe and addressing elite audiences of lawmakers, government officials, academics, NGOs and influential think-tanks, Pakistan-born political scientist and a respected socio-economic analyst wants Kashmir cause jettisoned.

Can Musharraf play the wild card the UN official is handing him?

“This is the moment for General Musharraf to go down in history as the leader who made the decisive break. As anti-Indian as Nixon was anti-communist, Musharraf may also look at de Klerk example in South Africa. A staunch supporter of apartheid, de Klerk led the white population into a historic compromise with Nelson Mandela to end apartheid.”

Pakistan is involved in a low-cost operation in Kashmir to “forever embarrass India” and “keep the flame alive”. Calibrating his next step, Noman says Pakistan’s president needs to engage in an “honourable deal with India” in reducing conflict, “Musharraf’s China is India.”

Has Musharraf like Nixon the muscle to pull off such deal?

“I was in South Africa where everybody told me that there is no white leader who would dare do a deal with Mandela and agree to dismantle the apartheid. So I have lived through that,” jumping ahead, Noman wants Musharraf to be the maverick and tell his people three things:

1) I tried everything. I even tried Kargil.

2) Look at the experience of the former Soviet Union. It crumbled with all its nuclear weapons because it could not compete militarily or economically with America. The situation for Pakistan vis-a-vis India is even worse. Throughout the Kashmir conflict, India has continued to grow and is now the second fastest economy in the world, while Pakistan is the only country in South Asia where poverty has worsened. Our economy is bleeding, we cannot sustain this arms race.

3) The world environment has changed after 9/11 and if anybody thinks that there will be world support for a separatist Muslim movement, he’s got to be living on Mars; on planet earth it won’t happen.

The above arguments will inarguably be music to the Indian ears?

“The task of the Indian political leadership is to provide him the honour, the courtesy and dignity that he deserves if he approaches India with good intentions and sincerely expands relations, trade and realizes that militarily you are not going to get Kashmir.”

Musharraf’s regime has been in power longer than either Benazir Bhutto or Nawaz Sharif’s governments. But the average annual growth rate during the three years of the current regime is 3.2 per cent which is barely positive in per capita terms. Under Benazir Bhutto, the average was 5.2 per cent, while under Nawaz it was 4.7 percent.

Between 1987-99, poverty has almost doubled. “Pakistan has made a cruel choice. For the first time in its history, defence spending alone exceeds all of development spending.”

Noman, who in his demotic style is openly and stridently pushing such an agenda while wearing a UN hat (albeit he insists this is his personal view and not the UN’s), is the international pied piper who may fail to arouse a following in Pakistan.

On the contrary, he thinks shoring up popular support should not be a problem.

“He is a ‘can-do man’ with a ‘can-do spirit’. I think he has the vision.” When Indian Prime Minister Vajpayee came to Lahore for a dialogue on Kashmir settlement during Nawaz Sharif’s tenure, the lack of protest was astonishing. What does that indicate? That the people of Pakistan want peace with India. “Musharraf has to pick up the courage and change the nature of the debate.”

All that’s needed is a national referendum: ‘Do you want war with India’?

“If so, we’ll either get thrashed or go nuclear,” warns Noman.

Should Musharraf seek the intellectuals’ support?

“Oh forget the intellectuals. They will come around. He has to bring on board every major political party which I know will support him, even parts of MMA,” says Noman, whose latest book on Pakistan “Inclusive Democracy and Economic Development” has installed him among the world’s top scholars and academics. Before joining UNDP in 1996, Noman taught at Oxford University.

He is currently writing a book titled ‘Karachi and Kashmir’ that sums up the economic collapse of Pakistan caused by the two. “Violence in the coastal region of Karachi and the conflict with India, are directly responsible for the rise in poverty, declining private and public investment and the spread of madarassahs.”

No country in the world has made progress with its principal commercial city and port in the mess that Karachi has been since the mid-1980s, says Noman of his beloved city. He remembers attending two export fairs: one on leather, dominated not by discussions of price competitiveness and productivity, but by bombs, deaths, thefts and mayhem. In one of the fairs, a bomb exploded at the hotel, and curfews were imposed in three areas of the city.

“Many of the Pakistani manufacturers present were more keen to discuss how they could invest their capital abroad and were frequently asked by their visitors on why they should expect outsiders to come when domestic capital was shy to invest.”

He recommends deweaponization for Karachi. The problem with all previous efforts has been the “manipulation and mischievous” intent of the government itself, he says. “One or other group was favoured”. The fact that they were allowed to bear arms while others were being disarmed ruined the legitimacy of the process. Noman cites El Salvador and Albania as examples of deweaponization programmes.

Palpable as the Kashmir solution is to Omar Noman, India’s segued cunning can always deal Musharraf a diplomatic pratfall. Vajpayee is already putting conditionalities on his participation at the Saarc summit scheduled for January in Islamabad.

E-mail: anjumniazusa.com

WHOEVER says the world is not insane has not been in the Washington area recently. We just survived a horrendous 21 days of people being afraid to leave their houses because of the sniper killer (who turned out to be two snipers).

They were finally caught and the evidence is overwhelming that they are the right guys.

So far so good. But now that they are caught, they have to be tried. The problem is that Maryland, Virginia, Alabama and the feds in Washington all want to do it.

At the Rams Head bar, Blumquist said, “I think they should get the death penalty.”

Everheart said, “I do too. The question is, which state should have the honour?”

Delmar said, “Virginia has the record for the most executions. They also permit juveniles to get the death penalty.”

This got Sparrow mad. He lives in Montgomery County, Md. He said, “We had the most people affected by the snipers and we have the most evidence to present to a jury.”

Allen said, “What about the federal government? They are demanding first rights because Ashcroft is the chief enforcer of the nation. The feds also have the death penalty and the FBI on their side. When Ashcroft goes on television, the people listen.”

I spoke up. “But Ashcroft is a strong advocate of guns and an honoured member of the National Rifle Association. He may have an objection to the sniper rifle being introduced as evidence.”

Blumquist retorted, “We can’t eliminate Alabama. They also have the death penalty and they had a sniper killing before Maryland.”

Allen said, “This is what I think. The prosecutors of the different states and the feds all want to have their 15 minutes of fame. This is going to be one of the biggest trials ever on TV, and how they handle themselves will affect their political futures.”

Sparrow said, “The trouble with that is they are all trying get Muhammad to open up and he’s playing one against the others. For example, Maryland will offer him a cigarette, and Virginia will hit him over the head with a truncheon.”

I agreed and said, “After they were captured we all thought the serial killings were over. Now we have to decide for or against the death penalty and will John Lee Malvo, the 17-year old, get life or the chair?”

Blumquist said, “If the big shots can’t solve the jurisdiction in the halls of justice, can we solve it with a beer in a bar?”

The bartender said, “If anyone is driving a blue Chevy Caprice, it’s blocking the driveway.”—Dawn/Tribune Media Services

ATAL BEHARI VAJPAYEE is not a Hindu, says the self-appointed guardian of Hinduism, Acharya Giriraj Kishore, vice-president of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad. He is a manavvadi, explains the vice-president. The statement says nothing about Mr Vajpayee. It does however say a great deal about Acharya Giriraj Kishore.

He must be the first Hindu with any reputation to believe that a humanist cannot be a Hindu. All religions have a supernatural aspect, which involves faith in an afterlife; and a natural one, which guides the worldly behaviour of the faithful. In that sense the defining tenets of Christianity are love and sacrifice, for that is what Jesus represented.

Equality before one Allah, justice and charity are, similarly, the key facts of Islam. If Hinduism has a defining message, then it is humanism. There is space in its philosophy for everyone, which is one reason why India is a home to every single religion in the world.

Anyone who has been persecuted anywhere else, whether Parsee in Muslim Iran or Jew in Christian Europe, has found an undisturbed haven in India. This remained true even when men distorted the philosophy of Hinduism and introduced the inequities of caste: the attitude of Hinduism to other faiths continued to be liberal. Hinduism is synonymous with humanism. That is its essence and its great liberating quality.

Acharya Giriraj Kishore may however, and perhaps inadvertently, have defined his problem. In a very real sense the struggle within the Hindutva Parivar is about the definition of Hinduism. For the Kishores and the Praveen Togadias, Hinduism is about imposition. For the Vajpayees it is precisely about what Kishore found objectionable: manavvadi, or humanism.

What is the difference between what we call, perhaps for want of another word in the English language, secularism and communalism? Secularism is inclusive. Communalism is invasive. Belief and the practice of faith is not communalism. Muslims are celebrating the holy month of Ramazan now with fasting and prayer. A Muslim who fasts does not become communal. A Sikh who wears a turban or a Hindu who wears puja marks on his forehead does not become communal.

But when a Muslim begins to impose fasting on those who are not required by their faith to do so, then he becomes communal. This is the distortion, in for instance, Saudi society (I deliberately call it Saudi society rather than Arab society, for the two are quite different) that makes the regime there quasi-fundamentalist.

This was what we saw in Punjab in 1983 when the pressure of fundamentalists forced the closure of cigarette and liquor shops so that neither Sikh nor Hindu might be able to smoke or drink. This is forcing your mores upon others who may not agree with you, and have the perfect right not to agree. Perhaps the worst form of religious fundamentalism occurred in Spain and Portugal during the Inquisition when some 25 per cent of the population, consisting of Muslims and Jews, was either driven out of the country or forcibly converted to Christianity. The Kishores and Togadias want to change Hinduism into a militant, aggressive, invasive movement that forces all other communities into a submissive status.

They also believe that they have found the man who will convert their passion into a political movement: Narendra Modi. The extremists of the Parivar have formally given up on Atal Behari Vajpayee. This is evident. It is equally evident that the prime minister has given up on them. He knows he cannot change them; they know they cannot change him. Both also know that their response must be calibrated by other realities. Vajpayee is not so naive as to believe that he can eliminate them from the broad coalition that constitutes the Hindutva Parivar. He will deal with them the best way he can even as he pursues his own agenda in power. If the militants thought that they could replace Vajpayee as prime minister, then they were excessively foolish even by the standards of a restricted average IQ.

Vajpayee’s strength is a trifle paradoxical for a man who has served a party all his life. He has no real constituency in the BJP. His forte is his acceptability to the electorate, which brings us to the second paradox: it is precisely because he is, intellectually and emotionally, a humanist that he receives the support from Indian voters that he gets. It is so often forgotten by the hard ideologues of the Parivar that India is a secular nation not because India’s Muslims and Christians want it to remain secular, but because by far the greater percentage of India’s Hindus want the nation to remain secular. Minorities cannot determine the political culture of a nation. It is the majority that keeps India secular.

The challenge before the extremists of the Hindutva Parivar is to change the mind of this majority. They do not believe that Vajpayee will help them in their mission. They are also getting convinced that L.K. Advani will not either. They once thought he was a wolf in wolf’s clothing. They are now beginning to feel that Advani is a sheep in sheep’s clothing. Both Vajpayee and Advani, in their view, irrespective of their cosmetic differences, or perhaps deliberate differences (good-cop-bad-cop is traditional strategy), remain in the conventional mould of Indian politics, which still believes in persuasion rather than coercion. They want a hardliner ready to draw his lines in crimson. Their hero is Narendra Modi, who has indulged in havoc, demonized Muslims, threatened Christians, smirked at liberals, taunted the “respectable” and will win an election. How perfect can you get?

There are two principal reasons why Modi will win. He satiated a very powerful thirst for violent revenge across a wide belt of Hindu opinion after the infamous incident at Godhra. The violence was left to the urban Hindu lumpen but it had the implicit support of those who would never be seen on the street but were nevertheless pleased that the Muslims were being taught “a well-deserved lesson” for having over-reached themselves. The insidious propaganda against Muslims, labelling them as “filth” that needs to be cleansed from the Indian body politic may not have any effect most of the time, but seemed terribly credible in the post-Godhra moment.

The electorate will thank Modi with one victory. It will be only one. Such emotional support tends to be ephemeral, and in fact the temporary hero could invite a severe negative reaction three months down the line, but in the interim the victory will excite the hardliners into delirium and conviction that this is the way to keep both the secular and the “pseudo-secular” out of power. Ironically, when the Kishores and Togadias think of “pseudo-secular” they think of Vajpayee and Advani.

The second reason why Modi will win is because of a mistake made by the Congress. When a party runs out of conviction and ideas it chases the opponent (The Democrats did this against George Bush in the mid-term American elections). Shankar Sinh Vaghela has tried to defeat Modi not by arguing that Modi is fundamentally wrong, but by saying he can be a sophisticated version of Modi. If it is a question of only electing another Modi, why settle for the fake when the real one is available? Sardar Patel is the icon of both parties.

I am certain that the Sardar would be absolutely horrified at both the BJP and the Congress, the first for claiming him when he was never a believer in Hindutva; and the second for telling voters that he is really their man, and if the Congress could allow closet-Hindutva five decades ago, it can do so again. I wonder how many posters the Indian National Congress has sent out in this election campaign with the face of Jawaharlal Nehru; or even of the most famous Gujarati of all, Mahatma Gandhi. This has been a me-too campaign; not a you-are-wrong campaign.

Will a Modi victory change the future of Indian politics, as is being trumpeted, a bit pompously? Better men than Modi have tried to change the future of Indian politics, and discovered that Indian politics has changed their future instead. Let us cite just one example. Can the Modi-Togadia tune play in Uttar Pradesh? They could try it, but it will cost the party its alliance with the Dalit chief minister Mayawati. The Dalit is no friend of violent extremism. In Bihar, such politics will reconsolidate the demographic alliance that keeps the ineffective and irresponsible government of Laloo Yadav in power.

The BJP is the engine of a national train now; and the key question of a national party is not what wins a state, but what preserves a nation. Arson might provide passing pleasure in politics. But to build anything needs the values and culture of a manavvad. The BJP will continue to need Vajpayee more than Vajpayee needs the BJP.

The writer is editor-in-chief, Asian Age, New Delhi.