February 04, 2008	Monday	Muharram 25, 1429

Archives Write to Mr. Jawed Naqvi

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh travelled about 2,000 km from Delhi last week to the remote Arunachal Pradesh state to reaffirm India’s sovereignty on the border region claimed by China. But he laid the foundation stone for a power project about 600 km short from the site? Hardly anyone except perhaps the Business Standard noticed the absurdity. The prime minister, who was in Itanagar for a two-day visit, laid the stone for the Rs 16,425 crore Dibang multi-purpose project in the state capital, which is well and truly far removed from Dibang. With a capacity of 3,000 MW, it aims to be the country’s largest hydroelectric power station. The idea is a typical component of Dr Singh’s economic blueprint for India not too different from his obsession with the nuclear deal with the United States. He must have his way even at the cost of annoying his allies and adversaries alike thereby threatening the stability of his own fragile coalition government.

Controversial from the beginning, the Dibang project is being opposed by a host of organisations in Arunachal Pradesh and environmentalists across the country. The mega project is being set up by the public sector National Hydroelectric Power Corporation (NHPC) and is a key component of the plan to add 50,000 MW of hydro power to the grid. A total of 17 organisations, representing primarily the students and welfare organisations of the Idu Mishmi tribe, which lives in Lower Dibang Valley, have protested against the stone-laying ceremony because the project has not received any of the critical clearances. An agitated Tone Mickrow, general secretary of the All Idu Mishmi Students Union (AIMSU), told Business Standard that the Dibang project had not gone through the mandatory environmental and forest clearance procedures. The first public hearing on the environmental impact of the gigantic project took place only on Jan 29, while the second hearing scheduled on Jan 31 at New Aneya, one of the affected villages, was cancelled because of the breach in road communication. The sense of outrage is widespread. “This is a betrayal of the people,” said Raju Mimi, editor of Veracity, a Roing-based weekly that has been highlighting the struggle against the NHPC project. Roing is the district headquarters of Lower Dibang Valley.

I have quoted the report killed or ignored by most newspapers except the Standard to give a flavour of the prime minister’s self-absorbed (others would say selfless) pursuits when his opponents are bracing to evict him in general elections that are not due until May 2009. On the western front, in the politically vital state of Maharashtra, his Congress party entangled itself with another asinine posture on a sensitive issue like communalism. Its regional straps have decided to turn down pleas by secular groups to press charges of communal incitement against Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray.

Justice Shrikrishna named the Shiv Sena head in a detailed and respected report into the anti-Muslim violence in Mumbai in 1993. This has enthused the BJP no end, as it does not mind contesting a weak-kneed Congress next year, particularly when the Congress appears to be coveting the mantle of soft-Hindutva. Dalit leader and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Ms Mayawati, a veritable joker in the pack and a serious candidate for the prime minister’s job, saw in the dithering in Maharashtra an opportunity to twist the knife a little more into the Congress. Her strategy has been to play the BJP against the Congress and help one of them, usually the BJP, by setting up her own pro-Dalit candidates in state elections to spoil the arithmetic for one of them, usually the Congress.

Taking a cue from the Congress party’s quandary on the Thackeray issue, Mayawati put another scalding hot potato in the prime minister’s hands. She recommended an inquiry by the federal police, the CBI, into an old case of communal incitement hanging over BJP President Rajnath Singh and some of his senior colleagues. Addressing the media last week, Ms Mayawati said it was now up to the federal government to file a charge sheet against the BJP leaders, including Singh. Mayawati maintained that after she recommended a CBI probe, the issue was now in the hands of the UPA government.

This is just the opportunity the BJP has been waiting for. The BJP president, former leader of the opposition in the state assembly Lalji Tandon and eight others are accused of releasing a controversial CD during state elections last year. The CD is said to contain brazen anti-Muslim propaganda, including faked visuals of cow slaughter. “We decided for the CBI probe to prevent any political allegation on the government over the sensitive nature of the case,” Ms Mayawati said without chortling and with not a trace of the fun she had extracted from the Congress party’s growing predicament.

Later in the Hindu holy city of Hardwar, Mayawati addressed a public rally where she made a scathing attack on the Congress and projected herself as India’s future prime minister. The Congress was pursuing anti-people, particularly anti-Dalit policies resulting in widespread poverty and unemployment in the country, she said. Sounds like standard political charges by an opponent? Then hear this: The model of Uttar Pradesh, where she had had come to power with the support of Dalits and upper castes, should be replicated in other parts of the country. “Our party is not a party of only one caste or one religion. We want to eradicate all the discriminations and favour the creation of a cohesive social order which is based on equality and justice,” Mayawati said. She made a calculated offer to lower caste Muslims and Christians. They should be also be given the benefit of job quotas available to other Dalits and tribespeople in government services.

In this regard, the most headlined story of course was the anointment of Lal Kishan Advani as the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate in the next polls. The BJP attacked the Congress but appeared to be more wary of the communists. The anti-communist attack came at the BJP’s national executive meeting where Advani was endorsed as the successor of the Atal Behari Vajpayee. It seems to stem from the reality that the CPI-M and its smaller leftist allies will remain key players in the field for the race in 2009. This in spite of the communists’ avowed refusal to join any ‘bourgeois’ government at the centre in the foreseeable future.

That a motley group of leftists commanding barely 60 MPs in a house of 545-member Lok Sabha should be the subject of a major poll strategy speaks volumes about the state of play within the ruling Congress party they had shored up and whose daily output of asinine policies leaves that much more vacuum at the top. The BJP is drooling and can’t seem to wait to occupy the opportunity thus created. Two events offer important clues into the Congress party’s suicidal political trajectory. One reflects its aloofness from the secular cause it had hitherto espoused, the other its obsessive pursuit of unpopular economic policies which its adversaries would not touch with a bargepole – not at least till they win the big battle ahead.

“If you really wish to see a positive change at the Centre, let us together strengthen our common battle against the UPA government,” Advani exhorted his followers. The National Democratic Alliance, which the BJP headed under Vajpayee, has amply shown its commitment to coalition dharma. “The NDA has also recently passed a resolution to contest the next elections on the basis of a common agenda of governance. We respect your views and are willing to work with you. And let us together work for people’s welfare and India’s all-round progress.

“In this context, I have a special appeal to make to anti-communist parties in West Bengal and Kerala. Please do not be under the illusion that either the communists will completely and irreversibly sever their links with the Congress or that the Congress will abandon the communists. The communists are supporting the Congress at the Centre today, and they will do so again in the future if the need arises. This is evident from the fact that the CPI-M, which heads the Left Front, still considers the BJP its Number One Enemy. Indeed, some senior functionaries of the CPI-M have stated recently that all secular forces have to remain united to stop the BJP juggernaut. This being the case, the surest, and only, way to defeat the communists in West Bengal and Kerala is by strengthening the NDA.” This is what Advani said.

By a curious logic this is also what Manmohan Singh may want to happen. A defeat of the Left, though unlikely by present calculations, would ease the passage for his economic blueprint (including the stone he laid at the wrong place for a controversial dam) even if he were thrown out of power in the bargain. The Congress is in a serious muddle. Whistling in the dark won’t do. It would only drive its remaining sympathisers away, quite possibly into the waiting arms of political uncertainty.

jawednaqvi@gmail.com