The missing apple

If anything is only as strong as its weakest link, then Indian democracy took a quantum leap forward this week. The Muslims of Uttar Pradesh deserve serious congratulations for rejecting the politics of patronage and manipulation with the contempt it has always deserved and rarely got.

Better still, their means was laughter, not anger. The form is as important as content, for anger encourages tension and laughter is a sign of political maturity.

Patronage is always cynical. Politicians have convinced themselves that the Congress model for the Muslims continues to work - that they can ignore the Muslim need for education, empowerment and an economy for five years and woo them with a religious crumb or two just before they queue up to vote.

Mulayam Singh Yadav thought that the Muslims of Uttar Pradesh would do some extra 'rikat' of namaaz in order to beseech the Almighty for his electoral success when he ordered state institutions to shut down for Friday prayers. The Muslims replied that they did not need Yadav to lead them towards Allah. Thanks, but no thanks. He could take his sops elsewhere.

It is possibly the first time in electoral politics that a community has placed rational logic above prejudice. I am proud of the fact that the Indian Muslims have taken a lead that others should emulate. Such crumbs come with a heavy if hidden price tag. This is the sort of thing that lends weight to the BJP charge of minority appeasement.

A rather evocative phrase from the language of Uttar Pradesh describes the syndrome rather well: "Lene ke dene par jaate hain (Instead of receiving, you end up giving)." Muslims have suffered enough of such exploitation. Within 24 hours Mulayam had to withdraw from such unwanted generosity.

Ironically, it was Yadav who played a critical role in the maturing of the Muslim vote when he called the expanding bluff of the Shahi Imam of Delhi some half a dozen years ago on the eve of yet another crucial election.

The Shahi Imam's self-appointed status as the wholesale dealer of the Indian Muslim vote began life with the 1977 general elections when he mobilized the community against Indira Gandhi's Emergency. But it acquired credibility only when Hemvati Nandan Bahuguna and Indira Gandhi signed a "pact" with him before the 1980 general elections.

The balloon had been expanding ever since, until the Yadav pinprick. Yadav simply told the Shahi Imam that he could not care one way or the other what the Imam said or did. The Muslims proved Yadav right, for they ignored the Imam and voted for Yadav. Why then such a silly mistake in 2004? The only explanation can be weak-minded advice from the cluster of insecure Muslims around Yadav. But explanation is not expiation.

The curve balls and googlies of UP politics are important because the fate of the next Lok Sabha will be decided in the three big, uncertain states of UP, Bihar and Maharashtra. The definitive word is "big"; the operative word is "uncertain". Between the three they command 168 seats. The electoral situation in the rest of the country is more or less evident, barring a slip-up or two. The Northeast will vote against the establishment; Bengal will remain with the Left.

Jayalalitha should pull in Tamil Nadu, as should Navin Patnaik (despite surrendering some seats), both with BJP help. Ditto Chandrababu Naidu, once again with BJP help. Kerala will turn Left, and Karnataka will split three ways. Gujarat, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh/Chhattisgarh have become BJP fortresses. Punjab will turn against the Congress while Haryana will vote for the Congress.

But if the BJP thinks it has already won the elections, it should invest in a cold glass of water, known to be good for premature hangovers. The BJP may not lose out to the Congress in 2004, but it can always be defeated by itself. The BJP's biggest shock could come from Maharashtra, where it has fallen in love with itself.

It has, in the company of the Shiv Sena, set up fat cushions and slipped into comfortable recline, on the assumption that anti-incumbency will rake in votes. True, governance is a debilitating business. But Sushil Shinde is not a pushover like his predecessor Vilasrao Deshmukh. Shinde and Sharad Pawar have been old allies who as an alliance are at least one street ahead of the Sena-BJP combination.

In Uttar Pradesh the BJP corrected some of its weaknesses precisely because it was not complacent. In Bihar the party knows that it has a difficult battle. But in Maharashtra it is taking the vote for granted.

Here is a tip for all BJP candidates: get out of Atal Behari Vajpayee's way. Don't come between the prime minister and the voter. Don't, for instance, waste any money on posters showing any candidate's face. The voter is interested in only one picture, the PM's. Without Vajpayee in this election the BJP slips back to its 1996 tally of 120-odd seats.

With Vajpayee the BJP can hope to become the first ruling party since 1957 to increase its number of seats after five years in power, even if that increase is by half a dozen seats. It is not entirely coincidental that Jawaharlal Nehru rode to power in 1957 on the twin wheels of peace and prosperity, themes that are at the heart of the Vajpayee message. (1957 came after the Avadi Congress in which Nehru mapped out an India progressing in planned five-year leaps.) Vajpayee has always admired Nehru even though he has never had time for the Congress.

There will be those who argue that Indira Gandhi pole-vaulted the Congress to a two-thirds majority in 1971 after its thin victory in 1967. But that is not an exact parallel. Indira Gandhi split the Congress in 1969 and left the incumbency baggage on the rump she left behind.

The Congress is suffering from evident depression since no one in the party seriously believes that it can form a government this year. The prospect of another five years in the wilderness can weaken the heart of any sixty-year-old (check the age of the "young" leaders of the Congress: they are staring at 60 if they haven't crossed it already).

But the party could have done immensely better were it not for some critical strategic mistakes. Sonia Gandhi is chasing the tail when the battle is for the head.

The Congress is always vulnerable to the charge that since it won the elections in 1971 on the slogan of "Gharibi Hatao" it has acquired a sort of vested interest in poverty. The party's criticism of the BJP campaign should have been part of its response, rather than the whole of it.

It should have shifted the battleground to an alternative vision of a better future that promised growth along with equality and justice. Instead of promising a future it has become embroiled in a losing argument about the immediate past.

There are other problems. Those who advise Sonia Gandhi are clearly oblivious to echoes. For instance, a mass-contact programme is something you do between elections, not during them. Visiting the far corners of the country is something a Congress president should have been doing over four years, not over four months. Such shortcomings are not going to be filled by the induction of the next generation. Priyanka Gandhi might energize a single constituency; she is not going to deliver Uttar Pradesh.

Defeat is not an option that the BJP is willing to consider, but embarrassment is always a possibility. The real danger before the BJP is not that it could lose the elections - but that it could end up one apple short of a picnic. That missing apple could be somewhere in Maharashtra or Uttar Pradesh.

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

Murder of two innocent girls

Kawish this week takes up the issue of the rising trend of atrocities against children in Sindh. It writes: "The brutal murder of two minor girls in Gadap and that of a boy in Naushahro Feroze evokes the memory of the killing of two cousins over a family dispute in Larkana."

It deplores that the horrifying incidents have taken place in Sindh which was known as the land of peace in the past when criminals also followed a 'code of conduct' which bound them to avoid targeting children and women. With such traditions having become history, contemporary Sindh seems to be gripped by a wave of barbarism whose ugly face is every now and then exposed by brutalities committed against children (and women).

"As far as the Gadap case is concerned," the daily says, "police seem to be endeavouring to save the accused police officials. This is obvious from the facts, as reported in the press, that despite having picked up four accused, police have shown only two of them, and one of them, the area SHO, is receiving VIP treatment in custody."

The paper says that the attitude of police is intensifying the feeling insecurity among the people of the province. It calls on the higher authorities to take serious notice of the incident and ensure that the culprits are brought to book. If such criminals are not awarded a befitting punishment, crimes against children will continue unabated, it contends.

Referring to the death of a mentally retarded teenaged girl after falling into an open drain in the SITE area of Hyderabad, Ibrat recalls that the same drain had claimed the life of a four-year-old girl a few days ago. The daily says that the city's drains claimed the lives of at least four children in recent days, the Water and Sanitation Agency (Wasa) has failed to cover the death traps.

Not only that, the poor performance of Wasa in Hyderabad has turned this beautiful city of the yore into a lake of dirty water as its dilapidated roads and streets have been inundated by sewage overflowing from a drainage system, which has outlived its usefulness.

Tameer-i-Sindh comments on the arrests of Jeay Sindh Qaumi Mahaz activists and registration of a case under anti-terrorist laws against them and their leaders for staging a protest sit-on in Sakrand against the Kalabagh dam and Greater Thal canal projects.

It argues that the arrests and the case coupled with government's indifference to 10 JSQM workers, whose hunger strike unto death has entered third week, demonstrated apathy of the rulers towards the continued anti-dam/canal protests in Sindh. The daily warns that the government attitude will increase the feeling of frustration among the people of water-starved Sindh.

Barsat says that 427 people had been provided jobs in the Fishermen Cooperative Society without the consent of the fishermen community. A representative organization of fishermen is of the view that the jobs should be provided to unemployed offsprings of fishermen and not to outsiders.

The community is also feeling that it is being deprived of its only source of livelihood by the award of fishing contracts to foreign companies. The government should review its policy of ignoring fishermen's needs and take measures to settle their grievances, the paper adds.