Ravi Batra is an Indian American economist and a professor at the Southern Methodist University, in Dallas, Texas. Over the years Batra has made many predictions which have turned out right. He correctly predicted the fall of communism in USSR and at the same time said it would continue in China. He also predicted an enormous rise in wealth concentration in the United States that would generate poverty among its masses. These predictions were made way back in 1978 in his book The Downfall of Capitalism and Communism. These along with many of his political and economic predictions have come to be true over the years (for a complete list click here). Batra uses the Law of Social Cycle to make these predictions. On the basis of this law he now predicts the rise of the Team Anna political party. “Through long and painful fasting Anna Hazare has captured the attention of people, and finally decided to form a political party. Indians will indeed vote for him or the candidates he supports,” says Batra. Batra is the author of many bestselling books like The Crash of the Millennium, The Downfall of Capitalism and Communism, Greenspan’s Fraud and most recently The New Golden Age. In this interview he speaks to Vivek Kaul.
Excerpts:
What is the law of social cycle?
The law of social cycle was pioneered by my late teacher and mentor, Shri Prabhata Ranjan Sarkar. It can be explained in a variety of ways. Let’s start with a simple observation. A careful examination of every society reveals that there are three possible sources of political power –the army, popular ideas, or money.
Could you explain that through an example?
For instance, if we carefully explore the political landscape of our world, we find that in places like the United States, Western Europe, Canada, India, Australia and Japan, money rules society and super-materialism prevails. In places like Iran, the priesthood is dominant with control over religious ideas, whereas in Russia former intelligence officers such as the ex-KGB chief, Vladimir Putin among others, hold the reigns. In China, the communist party is supreme but the ultimate source of political power is the military, which established the party’s rule in a Marxist revolution in 1949. The Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989 clearly illustrates this point. When the Chinese government faced a serious challenge to its authority, it is the army that restored order in the country and crushed the opposition to the communist rule?
So what does this suggest?
This suggests that there are three main sources of political power—the military, human intellect, and, of course, money or wealth. Religion may also bring power, but priests dominate society by mastering scriptures and rituals. In other words, they also utilise their intellect to control and influence people. Thus, ultimately political power or societal dominance stems from three sources—physical strength or skills, human intellect or intellectual skills, and the hoarding of wealth. As a result, through the pages of history, we find that a society is sometimes dominated by warriors, sometimes by intellectuals (including priests), and sometimes by acquisitors who are experts in making money. However, the law of social cycle goes a lot further than merely describing the three classes of people.
Could you explain that?
It analyses the evolution of civilizations and states that a society evolves in terms of a cycle wherein a nation is first dominated by a group of warriors, then by a group of intellectuals, and finally by a group of wealthy acquisitors. Then towards the end of the age of the wealthy, there is so much corruption and crime that people get fed up and revolt against the elite or the rulers, who are overthrown in a social revolution. Since it takes a lot of courage to revolt against the authorities, the successful revolutionaries are the true warriors, who start another warrior age and bring an end to the corrupt rule of money. This way the social cycle begins anew and moves along in the same succession of warriors to intellectuals to acquisitors and then to the social revolution.
That’s very interesting…
Historically, the warrior era has been represented by the rule of the army, and the intellectual era by the supremacy of the priesthood or prime ministers. By contrast, the eras of acquisitors have occurred when feudal landlords or wealthy bankers and merchants were dominant. Thus warriors come to power with the help of physical might, intellectual with the help of ideas, and acquisitors with the help of money.
Since when has this cycle existed?
The social cycle has existed since the birth of human society and its validity can be proved by written history and the logic of social evolution. For instance, in India, around the times of Mahabharata, warriors dominated society; then came the rule of brahmans or intellectuals, followed by the Buddhist period, when capitalism and acquisitors were predominant; this era ended in the flames of a social revolution, when a great warrior named Chandragupta Maurya, put an end to the reign of a king named Dhananand, and started another age of warriors. What is interesting is that India’s overwhelmingly powerful caste system, wherein the brahman is placed atop the social hierarchy followed by kshyatriyas, vaishyas and shudras, was not able to thwart the law of social cycle. There were times when in practice, though not in theory, the brahman accepted the supremacy of people belonging to other castes. During the Buddhist period, for instance, the vaishyas were treated with great respect. They were called shreshthis, meaning “superiors.” In today’s acquisitive age, of course, we clearly see the priest eagerly and humbly accepting money from the rich regardless of their caste.
What happened after Chandragupta Maurya?
Reverting to the cycle, the Mauryan age of warriors was followed by another age of intellectuals in which the kings themselves claimed to be brahmans. The latter period was followed by feudalism, representing the age of acquisitors. Later, the feudal landlords, sometimes called rajas, were overthrown by an illustrious warrior, named Samudra Gupta, who thus organised another social revolution against the rule of acquisitors. Some historians have called the Gupta king the Napoleon of India, because he destroyed the armies of a large number of landowners and brought the wealthy under control.
And the age of Samudragupta was followed by?
The Gupta warrior era gave way to another intellectual era in the 9th century, when a renowned ascetic named Shankracharya revived brahmanism and uprooted Buddhism from the land of its birth. Priests and prime ministers dominated again, but their influence waned in a few hundred years and gave way to another round of feudalism, which was followed by yet another age of warriors, this time under the rule of Muslim invaders. Thus began the Muslim warrior era during the 14th century and continued as the Mughal empire in the 15th. Akbar the Great was the most illustrious emperor of this age, which lasted for a while and then gave way to another intellectual era, this time under the dominance of Muslim priests or Ulemas, who held sway over the Mughal king Aurangzeb. Around these times the great warrior Shivaji founded the Maratha Empire, which, after his death, came under the influence of brahmans known as Peshwas. At the same time, the northern Mughal Empire came under the sway of its wazirs or prime ministers. Thus this Mughal-Maratha period was the latest era of intellectuals, which was followed by yet another era of acquisitors, when the British took over around 1800. India has been in this age ever since. Indians will indeed vote for him or the candidates he supports
So what is the point that you are trying to make?
The main point is that no class remains in power forever, and that the acquisitive age always ends in a revolution. Such was the case in all civilizations. In fact new revolutions are already taking place in the world. Muslim society, where Saudi oil wealth is the main source of power, is also in the age of acquisitors, as is much of the planet. Rebellions have already occurred in the Islamic nations of Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen, and now Syria is facing the same fate. The Syrians have shown admirable resolve, and even though unarmed or heavily outgunned they are revolting against their ruler, President Assad.
What about the current state of affairs in India?
Courage is contagious and gradually inspires the masses to fight tyranny. The wave of courage that has dethroned many Muslim rulers is now budding in India under the guidance of Shri Anna Hazare and Baba Ram Dev. The movements they have started are still in the early stage but such movements are likely to grow and ultimately succeed in their mission to rid the nation of political corruption, because the age of acquisitors is about to end around the globe. Who could have imagined just a few years ago that Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak and Libya’s Colonel Kaddafi would be overthrown by their people?
Yes you are right…
A revolution doesn’t occur overnight, but when it starts it engulfs the nation in a mighty wave that crushes the ruler. It is initiated by small groups that have been opposing corruption for a long time, and for a while it faces public apathy and even opposition, but when the right moment comes it ignites the people to decimate the elite. The current decade is likely to be the decade of revolutions that will consume the ruling classes around the planet. The revolutionary wave began in the Muslim world and it is bound to spread in all areas where the acquisitors are dominant, because remember that courage is contagious. India gained independence in 1947 and so did many other countries within a few years. The point is that when a revolutionary wave begins in one area, it unleashes a flood that engulfs the neighbours. The moment has arrived to dethrone the corrupt acquisitors, and someone has to seize the moment to feed this flame. Anna Hazare and Ram Dev are doing it and they deserve the support of moralists around the world.
But how do you see the current rule of wealth being overthrown in India?
The rule of wealth in India will end through the electoral process, because people will vote for those who vow to end corruption. Through long and painful fasting Anna Hazare has captured the attention of people, and finally decided to form a political party. Indians will indeed vote for him or the candidates he supports. Although, some of his followers will be unhappy with his decision to enter the political fray, this is the right thing to do. As Mahatma Gandhi demonstrated, fasting alone is not enough to achieve a desired goal. You also have to offer a concrete and credible alternative. The social revolution against the acquisitors has started in Muslim society and is slowly gathering steam in India and the United States. By the end of this decade, if not sooner, the age of acquisitors will be a thing of the past, and those with courage to oppose the elite will start a new age of warriors, because courage is the chief hallmark of a person of warrior mentality. Today, an acquisitor’s democracy prevails in most nations; in the near future it will give way to a warrior’s democracy, where money will not be needed to win an election.
So how do you see this new age that you are predicting?
During the Buddhist period preceding Chandragupta’s ascension kings were elected in some areas of north India. That was an example of warrior’s democracy wherein a person’s martial skills, not wealth, brought him the high office. Similarly, in the future a candidate’s military background could be important in his rise to power. Whoever brings about the new warrior age will also give birth to a new golden age.
(The interview originally appeared on www.firstpost.com on August 7,2012. http://www.firstpost.com/economy/raghuram-rajans-advice-isnt-what-upa-may-want-to-hear-410694.html)
(Vivek Kaul is a writer and can be reached at [email protected])
Politics
Media and the art of misreading LK Advani’s blogpost
Vivek Kaul
Sunday evenings are normally difficult days for newspaper editors. There is not much happening politically. Businesses are shut and so is the government.
So unless there is a rail mishap somewhere or India happens to win bronze medal at the Olympics, bringing out the Monday edition is a major challenge in comparison to most other days.
Unless, someone like LK Advani happens to write a blog which smells of the foot in the mouth disease, and can be read between the lines.
Newspapers have gone to town highlighting that Advani has conceded to the possibility of a non BJP-non Congress government emerging after the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. “A non-Congress, non-BJP Prime Minister heading a government supported by one of these two principal parties is however feasible,” wrote Advani. This has become the headline point.
But the truth is a little more complicated than that. The word to mark in Advani’s statement is “however”. The context in which he uses the word however has been missed out by the newspapers while reporting on the blog.
Advani starts the blog with an informal chat he had had with two Senior Cabinet Ministers in the current United Progressive Alliance at a dinner hosted by the Prime Minister(PM) Manmohan Singh, for the outgoing President Pratibha Patil.
As he writes “In an informal chat with two senior Cabinet Ministers belonging to the Congress party before the formal dinner, I could clearly perceive an intense sense of concern weighing on the minds of both these Ministers. Their apprehensions were as follows: a) In the Sixteenth Elections to the Lok Sabha, neither the Congress nor the BJP may be able to forge an alliance which has a clear majority in the Lok Sabha. b) In 2013 or 2014, therefore, whenever the Lok Sabha elections take place, the Government likely to take shape can be that of the Third Front. This, according to the Congress Ministers would be extremely harmful not only for the stability of Indian politics but also for national interests.”
The blog then goes on to address the concerns of these Congress ministers. “My response to the anxiety voiced by these Congressmen was: I can understand your concern, but I do not share it. My own view is: i) The shape which national polity has acquired in the past two and a half decades makes it practically impossible for any government to be formed in New Delhi which does not have the support either of the Congress or of the BJP. A third Front Government, therefore, can be ruled out. ii) A non-Congress, non-BJP Prime Minister heading a government supported by one of these two principal parties is however feasible. This has happened in the past also. But, as the Prime Ministership of Ch. Charan Singh, Chandrashekharji, Deve Gowdaji and Inder Kumar ji Gujral (all supported by Congress) as also of Vishwanath Pratap Singhji (supported by BJP) have shown, such governments have never lasted long.”
Essentially Advani is saying three things in a very direct way. The first and foremost is that the Congress is worried after having been in power for nearly eight years at a stretch. The second thing is that he does not expect the third front to come to power, as a certain section of experts has been widely speculating. The third and the most important point is that no government in the country can be formed without the support of either the Congress or the BJP. Hence even if the Congress or the BJP do not form the government they will run the government. Given this, such a government is not expected to last long.
While Advani has said that a non-BJP non-Congress PM can emerge in the 2014 Lok Sabha election, he has also said that such a PM cannot last long as has been the case in the past. This is a very important point that has been missed out on by the media while reporting on the blog and thus creating an incomplete picture.
As expected the Congress leaders are shouting from the rooftops that Advani has already accepted defeat. “Advani has conceded defeat by saying that there can’t be a BJP prime minister in 2014. It means he has conceded defeat… After this blog, how will a BJP candidate win?” said ex journalist and now BCCI office bearer and Congress leader, Rajiv Shukla.
That feeling does not come out anywhere through a proper reading of the blog. In fact Advani clearly says that “it may be the first time when the Congress Party’s score sinks to just two digits, that is, less than one hundred!” Whether that happens or not remains to be seen, but the statement does make it clear that Advani hasn’t accepted defeat in any sort of way.
Shukla’s statement should also be seen in light of the fact that Advani attacked the Gandhi family in his blog. As he wrote “The party’s (the Congress party) miserable performance in Rae Bareilly, Amethi etc. which have long been regarded as pocket-boroughs of the first family, in the U.P. Assembly polls held recently and its dismal record in the Corporation elections of Uttar Pradesh where as against the BJP’s score of ten out of twelve Corporations, the Congress drew a big blank are clear indices of the party’s collapsing fortunes.”
The main job of any spokesperson of the Congress party is to keep the flag flying for the Gandhi family and that’s what Shukla was basically doing.
Another cocktail party theory going around is that Advani has basically used the blog to make a veiled attack at his own party, the Bhartiya Janta Party (BJP), and the senior leaders who are busy projecting Narendra Modi as the party’s Prime Ministerial candidate for the 2012 elections. The logic being that Narendra Modi cannot lead the BJP to a win in the Lok Sabha elections and so he (i.e. Advani) still remains the right candidate, his age notwithstanding.
Now that is something only Advani himself can throw light on and we can only make speculations on the same.
To conclude, let me throw in some lines from a popular reggae song called “Games People Play” first released in 1994 and sung by this group called Inner Circle. As the lines go:
All the games people play now,
Every night and every day now,
Never meaning what they say, yeah,
Never say what they mean.
Politicians are a tad like that.
(The article originally appeared on www.firstpost.com on August 6,2012. http://www.firstpost.com/politics/media-and-the-art-of-misreading-lk-advanis-blogpost-406759.html)
(Vivek Kaul is a writer and can be reached at [email protected])
What Team Anna can learn from Nirma, Sony, Apple and Ford
Vivek Kaul
The decision by Team Anna to form a political party has become the butt of jokes on the internet. A Facebook friend suggested that they name their party, the Char Anna Party and someone else suggested the name Kejriwal Liberal Party for Democracy (KLPD).
The jokes are clearly in a bad taste and reflect the level of cynicism that has seeped into us. Let me paraphrase lines written by my favourite economist John Kenneth Galbraith (borrowed from his book The Affluent Society) to capture this cynicism. “When Indians see someone agitating for change they enquire almost automatically: “What is there for him?” They suspect that the moral crusades of reformers, do-gooders, liberal politicians, and public servants, all their noble protestations notwithstanding are based ultimately on self interest. “What,” they enquire, “is their gimmick?””
The cynicism comes largely from the way things have evolved in the sixty five years of independence where the political parties have taken us for a royal ride. Given this the skepticism that prevails at the decision of Team Anna to form a political party isn’t surprising. Take the case of Justice Markandey Katju, who asked CNN-IBN “Which caste will this political party represent? Because unless you represent one caste, you won’t get votes…Whether you are honest or meritorious nobody bothers. People see your caste or religion. You may thump your chest and say you are very honest but you will get no votes.”
Former Supreme Court justice N. Santosh Hegde said “Personally, am not in favour of Annaji floating a political party and contesting elections, which is an expensive affair and requires huge resources in terms of funds and cadres.”
Some other experts and observers have expressed their pessimism at the chances of success of the political party being launched by Team Anna. Questions are being raised. Where will they get the money to fight elections from? How will they choose their candidates? What if Team Anna candidates win elections and start behaving like other politicians?
All valid questions. But I remain optimistic despite the fact that things look bleak at this moment for Team Anna’s political party.
I look at Team Anna’s political party as a disruptive innovation. Clayton Christensen, a professor of strategy at the Harvard Business School is the man who coined this phrase. He defines it as “These are innovations that transform an existing market or create a new one by introducing simplicity, convenience, accessibility and affordability. It is initially formed in a narrow foothold market that appears unattractive or inconsequential to industry incumbents.”
An excellent example of a home grown disruptive innovation is Nirma detergent. Karsanbhai Patel, who used to work as a chemist in the Geology & Mining Department of the Gujarat government, introduced Nirma detergent in 1969.
He first started selling it at Rs 3.50 per kg. At that point of time Hindustan Lever Ltd’s (now Hindustan Unilever) Surf retailed for Rs 15 per kg. The lowest-priced detergent used to sell at Rs 13.50 per kg. The price point at which Nirma sold made it accessible to consumers, who till then really couldn’t afford the luxury of washing their clothes using a detergent and had to use soap instead.
If Karsanbhai Patel had thought at the very beginning that Hindustan Lever would crush his small detergent, he would have never gotten around launching it. The same applies to Team Anna’s political party as well. They will never know what lies in store for them unless they get around launching the party and running it for the next few years.
Getting back to Nirma, the logical question to ask is who should have introduced a product like Nirma? The answer is Hindustan Lever, the company which through the launch of Surf detergent, pioneered the concept of bucket wash in India. But they did not. Even after the launch of Nirma, for a very long time they continued to ignore Nirma, primarily because the price point at which Nirma sold was too low for Hindustan Lever to even think about. And by the time the MBAs at Hindustan Lever woke up, Nirma had already established itself as a pan-India brand. But, to their credit they were able to launch the ‘Wheel’ brand, which competed with Nirma directly.
At times the biggest players in the market are immune to the opportunity that is waiting to be exploited. A great example is that of Kodak which invented the digital camera but did not commercialize it for a very long time thinking that the digital camera would eat into its photo film business. The company recently filed for bankruptcy.
Ted Turner’s CNN was the first 24-hour news channel. Who should have really seen the opportunity? The BBC. But they remained blind to the opportunity and handed over a big market to CNN on a platter.
Along similar lines, maybe there is an opportunity for a political party in India which fields honest candidates who work towards eradicating corruption and does not work along narrow caste or regional lines. Maybe the Indian voter now wants to go beyond voting along the lines of caste or region. Maybe he did not have an option until now. And now that he has an option he might just want to exercise it.
While there is a huge maybe but the thing is we will never know the answers unless Team Anna’s political party gets around to fighting a few elections.
The other thing that works to the advantage of disruptive innovators is the fact that the major players in the market ignore them initially and do not take them as a big enough force that deserves attention.
A great example is the Apple personal computer. As Clayton Christensen told me in an interview I carried out for the Daily News and Analysis (DNA) a few years back “Apple made a wise decision and first sold the personal computer as a toy for children. Children had been non-consumers of computers and did not care that the product was not as good as the existing mainframe and minicomputers. Over time Apple and the other PC companies improved the PC so it could handle more complicated tasks. And ultimately the PC has transformed the market by allowing many people to benefit from its simplicity, affordability, and convenience relative to the minicomputer.”
Before the personal computer was introduced, the biggest computer available was called the minicomputer. “But minicomputers cost well over $200,000, and required an engineering degree to operate. The leading minicomputer company was Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), which during the 1970s and 1980s, was one of the most admired companies in the world economy,” write Clayton Christensen, Michael B Horn and Curtis W Johnson in Disrupting Class —How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns.
But even then DEC did not realise the importance of the personal computer. “None of DEC’s customers could even use a personal computer for the first 10 years it was on the market because it wasn’t good enough for the problems they needed to solve. That meant that more carefully DEC listened to its best customers, the less signal they got that the personal computer mattered — because in fact it didn’t — to those customers,” the authors explain.
That DEC could generate a gross profit of $112,500 when selling a minicomputer and $300,000 while selling the much bigger ‘mainframe’ also didn’t help. In comparison, the $800 margin on the personal computer looked quite pale.
Another example is Sony. “In 1955, Sony introduced the first battery-powered, pocket transistor radio. In comparison with the big RCA tabletop radios, the Sony pocket radio was tiny and static laced. But Sony chose to sell to its transistor radio to non-consumers – teenagers who could not afford big tabletop radio. It allowed teenagers to listen to music out of earshot of their parents because it was portable. And although the reception and fidelity weren’t great, it was far better than their alternative, which was no radio at all,” write Christensen, Horn and Johnson. Sony went onto to come up with other great disruptive innovations like the Walkman and the CDMan. But did not see the rise of MP3 players.
The point is that incumbents are so clued in to their business that it is very difficult for them to see the rise of a new category.
So what is the learning here for Team Anna? The learning is that their political party may not take the nation by storm all at once. They might appeal only to a section of the voters initially, probably the urban middle class, like Apple PCs had appealed to children and Sony radios to teenagers. So the Team Anna political party is likely to start off with a limited appeal and if that is the case the bigger political parties will not give them much weight initially. Chances are if they stay true to their cause their popularity might gradually go up over the years, as has been the case with disruptive innovators in business. The fact that political parties might ignore them might turn out to be their biggest strength in the years to come.
Any disruption does not come as an immediate shift. As the authors write, “Disruption rarely arrives as an abrupt shift in reality; for a decade, the personal computer did not affect DEC’s growth or profits.” Similarly, the Team Anna political party isn’t going to take India by storm overnight. It will need time.
Business is littered with examples of companies that did not spot a new opportunity that they should have and allowed smaller entrepreneurial starts up to grow big. The only minicomputer company that successfully made the transition to being a personal computer company was IBM. “They set up a separate organisation in Florida, the mission of which was to create and sell a personal computer as successfully as possible. This organisation had to figure out its own sales channel, it had its own engineers, and it was unencumbered by the existing organization,” said Christensen.
But even IBM wasn’t convinced about the personal computer and that is why it handed over the rights of the operating system to Microsoft on a platter. Even disruptive innovators get disrupted. Microsoft did not see the rise of email and it’s still trying to correct that mistake through the launch of Outlook.com. It didn’t see the rise of search engines either. Nokia did not see the rise of smart phones. Google did not see the rise of social media. And Facebook will not see the rise of something else.
Team Anna is a disruptive innovation which can disrupt the model of the existing political parties in India. There are three things that can happen with this disruptive innovation. The Team Anna political party tries for a few years and doesn’t go anywhere. That doesn’t harm us in anyway. The Team Anna political party fights elections and is able to build a major presence in the country and stays true to its cause. That benefits all of us. The Team Anna political party fights elections and its candidates win. But these candidates and the party turn out to be as corrupt as the other political parties that are already there. While this will be disappointing but then one more corrupt political party is not going to make things more difficult for the citizens of this country in anyway. We are used to it by now.
Given these reasons the Team Anna political party deserves a chance and should not be viewed with the cynicism and skepticism which seems to be cropping up.
(The article originally appeared on www.firstpost.com on August 4,2012. http://www.firstpost.com/politics/what-team-anna-can-learn-from-nirma-sony-apple-and-ford-404843.html)
(Vivek Kaul is a writer and can be reached at [email protected])
Rahul Gandhi is paying for the mistakes of Indira Gandhi
Vivek Kaul
Some twenty eight days before my tenth standard exams I started reading William Shakespeare‘s Julius Caesar, seriously, for the first time. And I am still trying to figure out why the world fusses so much over plays written in a form of English that went out of fashion a long long time ago.
My memory of the play is very hazy now, given that it’s been two decades since. But what I do remember is that in Act 3 scene ii of the play comes a line which I found very relevant to the way world operates. “The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interred with their bones,” says the character of Mark Antony in that scene.
The evil that men (and women) do lives after them and in some cases the coming generations have to bear the consequences for it. Take the case of Indira Gandhi who systematically destroyed the institution of democracy. As historian Ramchandra Guha recently told CNN IBN “Nehru nurtured institution of democracy – an independent election commission, an independent judiciary, bureaucracy autonomous of political interference, pluralism, secularism. Indira systematically undermined all of this.”
This included democracy within the Congress party as well. During her heydays she first had Dev Kant Baruah installed as the President of the Congress party. Baruah is best remembered for saying “Indira is India and India is Indira”. Such was the level of the sycophancy that was prevalent when Indira Gandhi was at her peak.
After Baruah, Indira Gandhi took the presidency into her hands and was the president of the Congress party from 1978 to her death in 1984. Her younger son Sanjay more or less ran things within the party as well as the government (when Indira was in power) for a major part of this period.
She was succeeded as the President of the elder party by her son Rajiv who remained the President of the party till his death in 1991. This more or less institutionalized “dynastic” rule within the Congress. As Guha said “Even Nehru’s fiercest critic wrote at that time that the Nehru has no interest in promoting dynastic rule… Indira promoted first Sanjay and then Rajiv.”
With no democracy at the top of the Congress party, it simply wasn’t possible for the party to remain democratic at the state or the district level for that matter. The lack of internal democracy and the centralized nature of the Congress party led to the coining of the legendary phrase “high command”. It was also ironic that the world’s largest democracy was and is governed by a party with very little “internal” democracy.
More recently the party has seen Rahul Gandhi, fifth generation of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty, at the helm of things, trying to correct the lack of democracy within the party. In October 2008, while addressing girl students at a resort near the Jim Corbett National Park, Rahul referred to “politics” as a closed system in India. “If I had not come from my family, I wouldn’t be here. You can enter the system either through family or friends or money. Without family, friends or money, you cannot enter the system. My father was in politics. My grandmother and great grandfather were in politics. So, it was easy for me to enter politics. This is a problem. I am a symptom of this problem. I want to change it.”
Rahul has tried to change this by trying to introduce some internal democracy within the Congress party by trying to ensure free internal elections. As Rasheed Kidwai writes in 24 Akbar Road – A Short History of the People Behind the Fall and Rise of the Congress, “Rahul Gandhi took it upon himself to bring about inner-party democracy in the Congress. He hired retired election commissioner JM Lyngdoh to design processes and implement policies to ensure that there were free internal elections within the party and that all initiatives and representatives were backed by elected representatives.”
While this is a good move but it is not going to lead to instant rejuvenation of a party that has constantly lost hold over the Indian electorate over the last two decades. Also, any move to initiate democracy within the Congress remains a non-starter given the lack of any democracy at the top.
Rahul’s mother Sonia Gandhi has been the President of the Congress since March 14, 1998, when the Congress Working Committee members led by Pranab Mukherjee invoked the Clause J of the Article 19 of the Congress constitution to throw out the elected President Sitaram Kesri. They then installed Sonia Gandhi as the President. This was unprecedented in the history of the party where an “elected” President of the party was thrown out by invoking a vague clause. The clause did not clearly point whether an elected President could be removed, by invoking it.
As The Hindu wrote after the death of Sitaram Kesri:
“The constitutional coup was hailed widely as restoring the party’s leadership back to the site of its only natural entitlement – the Nehru-Gandhi family. When the historians get to chronicle the import of that eventful day, most of the honorable men of the Congress would be shown to have acted way less than honourably; even those who owned their rehabilitation and place in the CWC to the old man had no qualms in abandoning him. The transition that day cast the Congress (I) once again in the dynastic mold, and the consequences are visible.”
Sonia Gandhi has been the President of the party ever since. Even if the party had presidential elections regularly the chances of anyone else other than Sonia Gandhi (assuming she continued to contest) winning the elections remained low. As Jitendra Prasada found in November 2000, when he ran against Sonia Gandhi, in the hope that she would ask him to withdraw his nomination and reward him with a senior position. Sonia never did and got nearly 99% of the votes polled. As Rashid Kidwai writes in Sonia – A Biography “As the date for the withdrawal of names drew nearer, Jitty Bhai waited in vain for a call from 10 Janpath offering a face saving, last-minute withdrawal. Humiliated and marginalized, Jitty Bhai realised that this gambit had failed. Accompanied by a handful of leaders from Uttar Pradesh, Prasada filed his nomination papers and was humbled in the party polls as Sonia went on to get nearly 99 per cent of the votes. The peacemakers and many of those who had encouraged Prasada to teach Sonia a lesson were nowhere in sight.”
Prasada never recovered from the humiliation he suffered at the hands of Sonia and died of a brain haemorrhage a few months later.
So try as much as Rahul might to revive the democratic process within the Congress party, it doesn’t really matter. To paraphrase what Dev Kant Baruah said about Indira Gandhi: “The Nehru-Gandhi family is the Congress. And the Congress is the Nehru-Gandhi family”.
The only constant in a party which lacks any ideology is the Nehru-Gandhi family. Given this, it doesn’t really matter if the Congress party has internal democracy or not. What matters is whether there is someone around from the Nehru-Gandhi family around to lead it.
It’s time Rahul Gandhi realised this and moved on from a full time party role to a role in the government while continuing with his role in the party as well. This will go in a long way in motivating the party cadre than all the moves to promote democracy within the party. There is nothing more that a Congress party worker likes than being led by a scion of the Nehru Gandhi family. This move also becomes even more important in a scenario where Pranab Mukherjee the principal troubleshooter for the party has decided to retire and move to the biggest house in the country.
It’s been nearly twenty three years since Rajiv Gandhi lost power to Vishwanath Pratap Singh. A Nehru-Gandhi family scion has not been a member of the Indian government since then. It’s time for Rahul and the Congress party to set that anomaly right.
(The article originally appeared on www.firstpost.com on July 30,2012. http://http://www.firstpost.com/politics/rahul-gandhi-is-paying-for-the-mistakes-of-indira-gandhi-396001.html/)
(Vivek Kaul is a writer and can be reached at [email protected])
Pawar is no Mamata di! He is giving the Congress batting practice
Vivek Kaul
“A woman and an elephant never forget an injury,” wrote Hector Hugh Munro better known by his pen name Saki. Wonder whether, Sharad Pawar, the sharp man that he is, has ever read Saki? (On a totally different note, the short stories of Saki are an absolutely delightful read).
The Maratha strongman Sharad Pawar resigned from the Union Cabinet last week. Media reports suggest that he was miffed by the fact that after Pranab Mukherjee decided to retire, and move to the Rashtrapati Bhavan, he was not made the number two in the Union Cabinet .It seems that the defence minister AK Antony has been allocated the seat to the right of the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, where Mukherjee used to sit, making him number two in the government. And that’s a seat that Pawar had wanted.
The Congress Party has been trying to mollify Pawar and his Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) since he quit a few days back. “In a Parliamentary democracy, all are equal in Cabinet. The Prime Minister is first among equals and there is no number two or number three,” Congress general secretary Digvijaya Singh told the Deccan Chronicle.
That apart it would be rather stupid of Sharad Pawar to assume that the Congress would offer the number two position in the cabinet to him, assuming there was a thing like that. Pawar was one of the first to raise revolt against Sonia Gandhi by bringing her foreign origins to the forefront, after she had taken over as the President of the Congress Party in the late 1990s.
Even before that Sonia and Pawar never shared a great relationship. As Rashid Kidwai writes in Sonia-A Biography “When she (Sonia Gandhi) took over as the Congress chief, there was a certain unease between her and Sharad Pawar. Though Pawar concurred with the party’s decision to request Sonia to save the Congress, he later candidly admitted that he was never comfortable with her. Their conversations never lasted long and even that short duration was punctuated by long pauses.”
On March 14, 1998, the Congress Working Committee unceremoniously shunted out Sitaram Kesri, an elected President, and requested Sonia Gandhi to take over as the President of the Congress.
Kidwai in his book suggests that after Sonia took over as the President of the Congress, Pawar got an informal poll survey done. The results of the survey concluded that if he raised the banner of revolt against Sonia on the issue of her foreign origin, he would be the second Lokmanya Tilak. “The actual findings of the survey were never made public,” writes Kidwai. Things got nasty a little over a year and two months later on May 19, 1999, when Sharad Pawar, P.A.Sangma and Tariq Anwar raised a revolt against Sonia Gandhi on the issue of her foreign origin. Sonia resigned in a huff. But she took her resignation back after the trio was kicked out of the Congress party.
Therefore things went from bad to worse between Pawar and Sonia. “After revolting against her on the ground of her foreign origins, Pawar said that Sonia would never openly speak to him, but a CWC member who had tried hard to bring about a rapprochement between Pawar and Sonia said the same thing about him: ‘We encouraged him to have an open, heart-to-heart discussion with the Congress president, but he would just not open up,’” writes Kidwai.
So all this suggests that Pawar and Sonia share a very uneasy relationship and probably bear each other because of the compulsions of coalition politics. Also Sharad Pawar effectively ensured that Sonia Gandhi never became the Prime Minister of the country. Given that it is highly unlikely that Sonia would appoint Pawar number two in any union cabinet which she effectively controls.
Pawar of course understands this more than anyone else given the shrewd man that he is. So why is then all the drama of quitting in a huff happening? The major reason seems to be the fact that the Maharashtra chief minister Prithiviraj Chauhan is seen to be hurting the interests of the NCP. He has announced a white paper on the irrigation department which has been headed by Pawar’s nephew Ajit Pawar for ten years now.
The other major issue has been with co-operative banks. The Reserve Bank of India had dissolved the board of directors of the Maharashtra State Co-operative Bank which was controlled by Ajit Pawar in May last year. Pawar junior had come down heavily on the manner in which Chavan had implemented the RBI order in haste.
A few months back in March, RBI dissolved the NCP controlled Sangli District Central Cooperative Bank for violation of the Banking Regualtion Act. This move came a week after the NCP leader Dinkar Patel was elected as the Chairman of the Bank.
Chavan has also distanced himself from the refurbished Maharashtra Sadan in New Delhi. Allegations are now being made that relatives and family members of public works development (PWD) minister Chhagan Bhujbal, a senior NCP leader, benefitted considerably from contracts that were awarded out at inflated costs.
The NCP is also unhappy with the fact Chavan is not giving Pawar enough respect. “”In the past, CMs would make it a point to call on him and give him the respect due to a tall leader,” Times of India reported sources as saying.
The other theory going around is that Pawar is worried about the increasing influence of his nephew Ajit among the party legislators. Hence this move of resigning from the union cabinet is also being seen as a pressure tactic to get a ministerial birth for his daughter Supriya Sule, who is a member of the Lok Sabha from the Baramati constituency. As the Times of India on July 22 “Congress sources feel Pawar is shrewdly leveraging his unhappiness with the CM to pressure the Centre on demands ranging from a say in governorships, appointments to various boards, a ministerial perch for daughter Supriya while invoking the coalition mantra. He is also seen to be pitching for a say in Rajya Sabha nominations.”
The game is all about drawing some concessions out of the Congress party. At the end of the day we must remember that Pawar is no Mamata Banerjee. The influence of the NCP is limited to parts of western Maharashtra (primarily in districts around Pune). Pawar and NCP cannot win an election in Maharashtra on their own, unlike Mamata can and did in West Bengal. They need the Congress party as an alliance partner as much as the Congress needs them. The elections in Maharasthra are due in 2014. NCP is a party of business barons who have huge stakes in co-operative banks, sugar co-operatives and education institutes. Given this, it is important for them to remain in government. And they won’t remain in government unless they have a seat sharing agreement with the Congress party.
So what Pawar is doing right now is throwing some tough deliveries at the Congress party to give them some batting practice and hoping that he is able to draw out some goodies from them in the process. In the meanwhile we will some serious rhetoric from the NCP continuing. The one that caught my eye was of Jitendra Ahwad, an NCP leader, recently telling CNN-IBN that Sharad Pawar was the best man to be the Prime Minister.
(The article originally appeared on www.firstpost.com on July 23,2012. http://www.firstpost.com/politics/pawar-is-no-mamata-di-he-is-just-giving-cong-batting-practice-386923.html)
(Vivek Kaul is a writer and can be reached at [email protected])