The Election Files

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A MINT eBOOK

THE

ELECTION FILES

FOREWORD It seems somehow apt to do an eBook (electronic book) that is also an eBook (elections book). And it’s only fair that a book be done at all. This election deserves it for reasons that will be explained in the book itself.

In early March, we decided to cover this election across four themes—the voter, the leaders, their manifestoes and the physical constituency. What emerged was a rich combination of unusual profiles, youth and leaders, reporter diaries following unique pincodes and a seminal series of essays. Handheld cameras, from-the-studio production and reporter blogs enabled an intergrated newsroom coverage and presentation.

An eBook, we at Mint think, can do justice to preserving and compiling this extensive coverage.

We hope this is a good read.

Do let us know what you think of by emailing feedback@livemint.com R Sukumar, Editor

CHAPTER 1 The Verdict

CHAPTER 2 Some early trends

CHAPTER 3 What makes this election special

CHAPTER 4 Mapping the Electoral Terrain

CHAPTER 5 What Next?

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THE VERDICT GAME SET ELECTION

Rahul’s moment

B Y A NIL P ADMANABHAN anil.p@livemint.com

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he defining moment of the Congress’ campaign in this year’s election came during a rare interaction between Rahul Gandhi and some journalists at his house located in the leafy precincts of Delhi when the general secretary of the Congress and scion of the Gandhi-Nehru family surprised everyone by boldly claiming: “We will improve our tally. We will win and form the government.”

A few days later he repeated the claim to a wider audience at a press conference in the city.

The claims came at the fagend of a campaign that had seen Gandhi in a leading role.

He logged a little less than 90,000 km and visited almost each of India’s states. It was, even Gandhi’s most trenchant critics admitted, his campaign.

And by early afternoon Saturday, it was also clear that the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance’s unexpected success in this year’s election was largely his win.

The Congress has won XXX seats on its own and 258 along with its allies—just 15 seats short of the 273-mark that ensures a simple majority in the Lok Sabha.

The Congress-led United Progressive Alliance’s return to power indicates that India has voted for continuity. The win—the magnitude of it, the unexpectedness of it all, and the way in which it was

achieved—has the potential for unleashing unprecedented change. A lot will depend on how the Congress party wields the hard earned social capital and the opposition weighs its defeat.

Firstly, implicit in this victory is Gandhi’s very public coming-out moment; in short, the son rises. The party’s most public face during the campaign, had endured ridicule from several quarters and forced the issue of the Congress going it alone in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. He also sought to induct young blood and tried to make the Youth Congress in Punjab and Gujarat more democratic in terms of their functioning.

Riding on the victory, the Congress will sooner or later manage the transition of political leadership. Given the way he works, it is unlikely that Gandhi will allow himself to be immediately made prime minister. Still, he is unlikely to turn down an offer to join the union cabinet.

Secondly, the victory has given prime minister Manmohan Singh, whom the Congress has already anointed Prime Minister, a stronger say in not only the choice of ministers, but also on the formulation, conduct and direction of future policy changes. Singh, struggled for most part of the previous tenure of the UPA as demanding allies pulled the coalition in multiple directions, making a mockery of governance. Given the Congress’ strength in the house now, the allies will definitely be chas-

tened if not less demanding.

Thirdly, the victory has ensured a clear continuity of policy. More good news for the stock markets is the fact that the Left will not be part of the new constellation that will take charge of the country’s fortunes. Still, it is unlikely that the Congress will force the pace on economic reform, preferring a more incremental approach, while ensuring no dramatic reversal. This most certainly means that the country will keep its tryst with the Goods and Services Tax (GST), proposed as the single biggest tax reform initiative that will economically unify the country.

Fourthly, the mandate puts to rest the biggest fear of economy watchers, who feared that a fractured mandate would paralyze policy making at a time when the country is struggling to cope with the global meltdown and an increasingly threats in the neighbourhood.

Fifthly, the mandate seems to suggest that there was indeed a pan-India issue, a desire for the status quo. Challenged on security as well as the economy, Indian voters preferred more of the same, in some cases, rejecting populist appeals built around ethnicity and caste.

If this is indeed the case, the Indian electorate, 420 million of whom voted, has surprised the pundits with its incredible maturity.

Sixthly, the election has confirmed what has been apparent anecdotally: the varying fallout of the global meltdown across

India. Mint’s Bharat Shining series that ran in March revealed that rural India was, due to several factors (not the least of which was the UPA’s flagship rural employment guarantee scheme), relatively insulated against the global meltdown.

As a result, the issues of inflation and job losses had less traction with the rural populace.

Seventhly, the mandate has, after a long time proved that small is not necessarily big.

Continuous fracturing of the mandate was beginning to empower regional and smaller parties in a manner that had become detrimental to the interests of the country. It had reached such ridiculous proportions that in the run-up to the elections anybody and everbody believed that they would be in the running for the Prime Minister’s job. This election has seen the two main national parties, the Congress and Bharatiya Janata Party reverse this trend; the Congress more spectacularly so.

Eightly, the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance has come a poor second. This may well be the final chapter in the long political career of the party’s prime ministerial candidate, 81-year old L K Advani. The party did well in Gujarat and it is only logical to assume that Narendra Modi, also the state’s chief minister, would be annointed as the next leader. The BJP’s failure to handle its second successive defeat maturely can only lead to its further disintegration as a political force.

Ninthly, in probably one of

the biggest surprises in this election has been the performance of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), whose juggernaut has been stopped in its tracks, even in Uttar Pradesh. While the initial signs of this defeat have been visible for some time, most people have preferred to ignore them. In the process, they overestimated the influence of the party’s leader Mayawati.

Finally, the victory will only increase focus on the reorganisation of the Congress party.

Initially, Gandhi had positioned himself as a “marathon man” and argued that this change, while slow, would help an once-proud party regain its past glory. The unexpected margin of victory—as opposed to what the exit polls had called and pre-poll expectations had warranted—is bound to fast track the Rahul Gandhi doctrine. At the centre of this strategy is an effort to democratise the party’s structure and to revive the organisation in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. Without an organisation, the political momentum gained by the party in these two states will be frittered away.

Gandhi has already signaled his intent. During the interaction with journalists in his house Gandhi had said, “Today, all our political parties are designed in a way that empowers people whom the leader likes. (In the) long term, this model is not sustainable as it causes fragmentation.”

It won’t be too much to expect the victor to walk the talk.

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EXPERT SPEAK

Challenges ahead for the new government O NIRANJAN RAJADHYAKSHA MANAGING EDITOR, MINT

ne of the first tasks of the new Manmohan Singh government will be to repair the damage done to the Indian economy over the past year.

The outgoing government headed by him had thrown fiscal caution to the winds in an attempt to prevent a complete collapse in economic growth.

The consolidated fiscal deficit of the Union and state governments is now at levels not seen since the economic crisis of 1991. A further fiscal push could tip India into another 1991-style crisis. Global credit rating agencies have already warned that the nation’s foreign debt could get junk status if the fiscal deficit continues to deteriorate.

That itself is an onerous task. But the Indian economy

may be facing deeper problems that cannot be tackled by short-term demand management and lower interest rates.

The latest release of the survey of 17 professional forecasters by the Reserve Bank of India frames the problem in stark terms. These economists expect India’s economy to grow at an average rate of 7.5% over the next 10 years, if one goes by the median forecast. An earlier poll done by the central bank said that these forecasters were expecting a 10-year growth rate of 8.8%.

Now, why is this important?

It is accepted by just about every serious economist that the Indian economy will need to grow at between 9-10% a year over the next decade if there is to be a serious attack on poverty and unemploy-

ment. Singh himself has often made a similar point in various speeches.

Slower growth—through lower tax collections—will also restrict the ability of the Indian state to fund the social security programmes that are needed to help the poor and those who will be undoubtedly hit by business cycle convulsions.

What India now needs, is a new reforms push to keep growth near recent highs.

Singh should know from his own experience as finance minister and prime minister that the best time to strike is either when there is a colossal economic crisis that paralyses interest groups or when have a strong political tailwind to help you forward. The election results provide the latter, at least for now. Thus, the first

100 days will be crucial.

There are many action points; here are a few obvious ones: a quick movement to a national goods and services tax that will finally give us a truly common Indian market more than six decades after Independence; a viable plan to rebuild our grossly inadequate and tattered physical infrastructure; labour market reforms so that businesses have an incentive to offer jobs to a growing labour force; a huge push to reform education (perhaps the last bastion of the license raj) so that there is a supply of skilled workers; an exit policy to ensure that capital is not frozen in dead enterprises; tough decisions on non-merit subsidies on fuel and fertilizer that help the middle class and rich farmers; and

steps to increase financial depth so that more Indians have access to modern finance and risk management.

Previous government and countless committees have already laid most of the groundwork. All that is needed, is action. Without having to look over his shoulder every now and then, Singh should opt for the sort of blitzkrieg that he adopted in 1991-93, before the Congress old guard regrouped and blocked further advance.

And he and his finance minister will need to pay attention to the elephant in the room—the huge fiscal deficit.

Investors will expect a credible plan to set India back on the track to budgetary sanity.

Market has plenty of reasons to celebrate I MANAS CHAKRAVARTY CONSULTING EDITOR, MINT

nvestors could not have wished for a better outcome for the elections.

They now have stability, because the government will have the numbers to last its entire term. They have continuity, because Manmohan Singh will be heading the government. They have hope, because of his reformist credentials. And what they do not have is the Left Front, which had done so much to hold up reforms in the last five years.

Liberalizing foreign direct investment, disinvestment and perhaps even labour law reform will no longer be taboo.

Incentives for investments and the auction of spectrum for third-generation telecom applications, all of which can bring in global money, are also hugely positive moves that can be expected soon. At the same time, the stability of the new government will allow it to fol-

low prudent financial policies as well as reforms because they will be free of populist pressures for at least the next three years.

Long-term infrastructure projects can now be executed.

And perhaps the most important outcome of the election of a stable government not dependent on the Left is that it will have the political will to tackle the bloated fiscal deficit, not by reducing capital expenditure as it has done in the past, but by measures such as disinvestment.

Business confidence will improve substantially, which is often an essential pre-condition for economic recovery. As a research note by Goldman Sachs’ Tushar Poddar and Pranjul Bhandari points out: “Economic activity has increased immediately after five elections out of seven since 1984. On each of those five oc-

casions, a coalition perceived to be stable, has come to power.”

Simply put, the risk in the Indian market has been substantially lowered by the election outcome. So the market has plenty of reasons to celebrate and will certainly send out a resounding welcome to the new government on Monday.

That welcome is likely to be reinforced by the participation of foreign investors. The reappearance of risk appetite has led to a resumption of funds flowing to emerging markets.

The MSCI Emerging Markets index is up 21.89% this year, while the MSCI World Index is flat. Asia ex-Japan funds have been taking in large amounts of money in recent weeks, but a large part of those flows have gone to China, as a play on the revival of the Chinese economy. It’s very probable that

flows to India funds will now strengthen.

MSCI data show that the Indian markets have outperformed the other Bric nations (Brazil, Russia and China) and the emerging markets in the last three months and year to date. That outperformance should now continue.

The divergence in performance is not based on liquidity alone—the fact that growth continues to be positive in both China and India while being negative in the developed countries will reinforce the fund flows. It’s also true that many investors have been sceptical about the current rally and have therefore missed it. As they start putting some of their cash to use, the markets could be propelled higher.

Once the euphoria fades, though, the markets will have to rely on the fundamentals.

While we’re seeing some signs

of recovery, they remain very weak, and meanwhile equity valuations have moved up very sharply. Most experts believe that a V-shaped recovery is out of the question and the developed economies, in particular, will take years to get back to health.

In the circumstances, the rally will continue to be a bear market one, susceptible to a sharp pullback should conditions not improve in the developed countries. But in the immediate future, the markets will breathe a huge sigh of relief that one big risk is out of the way.

Manas Chakravarty is a consulting editor with Mint. Respond to this column at manas.c@livemint.com

Stability will re­ignite growth BY ························· n the context of the looming political uncertainty of a hung Parliament, this is the most decisive verdict that could have been delivered.

More so, from the perspective of economic management of the country at what is arguably the most difficult period in recent economic history.

The most important feature of the election is that a stable government will be in power the next five years. In terms of broad trends, one of the things that this election has shown is the gravitation towards a twocoalition political system.

Of the two main coalitions, UPA has a far more decisive, clearer and well-stated operational economic policy map in place. The NDA lacks it and that may have been the key differentiator between the two.

Indeed, the recent ruralisation of economic policy, in particular the public expenditure and employment policy, has had a positive impact.

I HASEEB DRABU CHAIRMAN, JAMMU AND KASHMIR BANK LTD

Also, the UPA has, and is seen to have, a far superior team of economic managers with credibility and proven track record. This, in these difficult times, is going to be major advantage in governance.

What will this translate into in the coming weeks, months and years? The short-term impact will be hugely positive.

The outlook on India will change for good. Business confidence will get a booster. Investors will be reassured.

In the very short term, the equity markets will react very favourably. One doesn’t have to be an expert to predict that the equity markets will open with a huge positive gap on Monday. The markets, which have been grappling with a ragtag coalition, will now react to political stability even more than to UPA coming back to power. The debt market will see a recalibration of the yields in anticipation of the softer interest rate regime continuing.

The forex market will also see a marginal strengthening of the

rupee.

But once the euphoria emanating from stability and the setback to the Left parties is over, the more enduring aspects of economic policy will come into play.

The next big event will of course be the Union Budget.

The public expenditure policy implicit in the Budget will be the one to watch out for. There is bound to be major policy action on this front. What is most likely to be presented will be a Budget in the spirit of the 1980’s, i.e., a high fiscal deficit and high expenditure budget.

But it will have the flesh and bones of a 90’s budget, i.e., some second-generation stabilisation reforms. There will also be some privatization as well as budget reforms to increase the effectiveness of public expenditure.

The fiscal policy laid out in the Union Budget will, in turn, determine what role monetary policy will have to play. The effort will be to compliment the expansionary fiscal policy with

an accommodating but not an expansionary monetary policy.

This will ensure that the softer bias that we have seen so far in interest rates will continue.

This is, however, easier said that done. In fact, how to run an expansionary fiscal policy even as monetary policy is made to act contractionary will have to be seen. Too much reliance on debt will have a bearing on the market rates of interest. However, the government will have some flexibility as the inflation level is low and demand is still constrained.

Market players are already celebrating the exit of Left parties from the coalition. Even as that may be so, it will not mean that the new government will go for a big bang liberalization and structural reform. On the contrary, we will see more of gradualism and stabilisation efforts the next two years.

The reason for this is not an unwillingness to go for a major overhaul but the fact that the next year or so is not appropriate for undertaking structural

reforms in view of the global macro-economic instability. It needs to be recognized that the one of the features that has saved Indian economy from the fallout of the global meltdown in financial markets is the slow process of external liberalization.

What this really means is that the simultaneous attempts toward structural reforms and economic liberalization will not lead to macro stability or to the restoration of sustainable growth.

What will is the focus on stabilisation of a kind that will reignite growth in the economy.

In line with the existing approach, case-by-case approach liberalization will be ideal. By and large, this has been the style of the UPA government in the past five years and indeed in the 90’s.

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CONTINUITY AGENDA

What now, Dr Singh?

B Y A S TAFF W RITER feedback@livemint.com

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he United Progressive Alliance finds itself in a position in which no Indian government since the Narasimha Rao one of 1999 has been—a position from which it can continue the policies it embarked upon in 2004.

Better still, it finds itself free of the restrictive influence of the Left Front, which prevented it from taking key economic decisions in the first four years of its rule, between 2004 and 2008. Even better, it has come back to power with enough seats in the Lok Sabha to ensure that it doesn’t need to make as many compromises as coalition governments usually do.

Sure enough, executives were quick to emphasize the continuity bit. “The prospect of a stable government and continuity augurs well for business,” said Y.C. Deveshwar, chairman, ITC Ltd. “We look forward to this optimism driving the dream of double-digit growth rates...”

And an economist said Prime Minister Manmohan Singh would have “a better hand to deal with the economy”. That would ensure continuity and stability, said N.R. Bhanumurthy, an associate professor at New Delhi’s Institute of Economic Growth. So, what will the UPA do in its second term?

Unlike the last time, it doesn’t have a common minimum programme that serves as a statement of purpose. This time, there’s the manifesto.

And a quick reading shows that the document emphasizes

continuity—such as interest relief to farmers with good credit history, a follow-up of sorts to the farm loan waiver programme, or the introduction of the long-awaited goods and services tax (GST), which will create a uniform tax code in the country—and the kind of radical reforms that the market likes. One such is the promise of disinvestment (not privatization) of state-owned firms.

Mint presents the key tasks ahead for the next government: FINANCE AND ECONOMY u Creating a new income-tax code simplifying the law and also codifying changes needed to accommodate higher incidence of cross-border transactions u Finalizing the design of GST and bringing about the required constitutional amendment u Pushing the Bill to amend insurance laws and enhancing foreign direct investment in the business to 49% from 26% u Approving the new pension scheme enabling quasi-judicial powers for the sector’s regulator u Reintroducing the banking reforms Bill for private sector banks u Launching a monthly measure of inflation INDUSTRY AND COMMERCE u Announcing the trade policy (an interim trade policy was announced in February) u Approving free trade policies with South Korea and Association of Southeast Asian Nations u Appointing a new commerce secretary u Reviewing new foreign direct investment guidelines

u Passing required laws to get

the competition commission up and running AGRICULTURE AND LABOUR u Passing an Act on the creation of futures market regulator, the Forward Market Commission u Creating a regulator for the warehousing business u Finalizing the Resettlement and Rehabilitation Act POWER u Reviewing slipping addition of power generation capacity u Expediting so-called ultra mega power projects of which only four out of nine planned are in the works u Reviewing allocation of coal to power projects u Driving investments in the transportation and distribution sector PETROLEUM & NATURAL GAS u Revising fuel prices or sharing the losses of governmentowned oil marketing companies through a combination of oil bonds or upstream sharing u Clarifying the scope of an income-tax holiday for seven consecutive years for natural gas production that will affect participatory interest in the eighth round of New Exploration Licensing Policy (Nelp-8) HOME AFFAIRS u Finalizing staffing of National Investigation Agency and strengthening the new elite unit formed to tackle Naxalites u Redrafting the Communal Violence Bill u Managing a possible overflow of refugees from Sri Lanka

Development Bank and the World Bank for Eastern Dedicated Freight Corridor u Reviewing tariffs to beat a slowdown in container traffic u Deciding the future of the locomotive factories in Bihar SHIPPING, TRANSPORT u Rebidding projects for which only one bid was received u Drafting the final version of the Shipping Trade Practices Bill to regulate service providers u Increasing coordination with the Navy and the Coast Guard in light of enhanced security threats to ports across India SMEs u Getting the Reserve Bank of India to approve 15% quota for lending to the small and medium enterprises sector HEALTH AND FAMILY WELFARE u Introducing the Central Drugs Authority Bill (2007) for the centralization of the licensing authority for regulating healthcare and pharmaceuticals u Notifying the Spurious Drugs Bill (Amendment to Drugs and Cosmetics Act, 1940) for stricter punishment.

HUMAN RESOURCES u Increasing public expenditure on education u Implementing recommendations of the National Knowledge Commission u Introducing the Foreign Educational Institutions (Regulation of Entry and Operations, Maintenance of Quality and Prevention of Commercialization) Bill, 2007 u Introducing the Private Universities Regulatory Bill for regulating entry of privately run educational institutions u Approving the Right to Education Bill, which aims to put every child between 6 and 14 in school

RAILWAYS u Tying up funds with Asian

TELECOM AND IT u Restarting the auction process for issuing so-called third generation, or 3G, licences u Resolving the spectrum or airwaves policy and thereby address several related disputes

though both the RJD and LJP were part of the UPA, they didn’t contest the Lok Sabha elections in alliance with the Congress.

“While development is one of the issues, everyone is fighting on caste combinations. Caste is the reality,” Abdul Bahri Siddiqui, Bihar state president of the RJD had earlier told Mint.

However, the RJD-LJP combine’s caste strategy couldn’t surpass Nitish’s strong devel-

opment record.

“The results are not surprising. The era of mandal politics is completely over. The mandal vote has been divided.

The elections is Bihar, even when fought on caste lines, are decided by backwards and forwards,” said Ganesh Prasad Ojha, head of political science department at Patna University. ruhi.t@livemint.com Utpal Bhaskar in New Delhi and PTI contributed to this story

NOT ON CASTE LINES

Development leaves Mandal politics behind B Y R UHI T EWARI L IZ M ATHEW ·························

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NEW DELHI

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n Uttar Pradesh, the state which accounts for nearly 15% of the Lok Sabha seats, it was good news for the Congress, which is leading the United Progressive Alliance back to power at the Centre following a spectacular poll performance.

After winning XX of the 80 seats in the state, Congress looks ready for a fresh innings in Uttar Pradesh, where it had been written off until last year.

Since 1989, the Congress—which once dominated Uttar Pradesh’s political landscape—hasn’t won an assembly election in the country’s most populous state, losing ground to parties with considerable influence among the backward classes.

The rise of such parties, such as Mulayam Singh’s Samajwadi Party (SP), and the state’s ruling Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) led by Mayawati, into promi-

nence, is attributed to a political polarization that followed the Mandal Commission report, which was implemented in 1989, reserving 27% of government jobs for the other backward classes.

“Uttar Pradesh this time has voted on development and not on caste lines... Mandal politics is fading,” said Indra Bhushan Singh, a Lucknow-based political analyst. “People had lost faith in both their regional parties... and they realized that these parties were only busy fighting among themselves instead of working for the state’s development.”

In the 2004 Lok Sabha polls, the Congress managed to win only nine seats. In the 2007 assembly election in which the BSP swept to power, the Congress secured only 22 of the 403 assembly seats and accounted for less than 9% of the total vote share.

“The Congress is reviving itself in Uttar Pradesh and the party organization seems to be

in place now,” said Pratap Bhanu Mehta, president, Centre for Policy Research, a Delhibased think tank.

Like other parts of India, Uttar Pradesh, where elections have so far been dominated by caste and religious factors, seems to have voted on the development plank this time. A factor that, analysts said, contributed towards the improved performance of both the national parties—the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party, or BJP. Says Javed Urfi, Uttar Pradesh state spokesperson for Congress: “Development has been the main issue and people have voted for the Congress based on that. Another factor has been the minority and Dalit vote. Dalits were disillusioned with Mayawati and the BSP since she used their vote to come to power and did nothing for them. Similarly, the minority community saw how Mulayam (Singh Yadav) had betrayed them. In fact, that was

our main campaign plank.”

If the development plank worked for the Congress, an apparent polarization triggered by BJP leader Varun Gandhi’s controversial and inflammatory remarks against the Muslim community didn’t help the BJP make any gains in the state. The BJP, which had won 10 seats in Uttar Pradesh in 2004, added only one more to its tally this year, indicating that there was no consolidation of Hindu votes.

However, the BJP’s ally Janata Dal (United), or JD(U), swept the polls in Bihar, another politically crucial state—also known for its distinct caste divides—on the development record. The Nitish Kumar-led government, which came to power in the state in October 2005 with a thumping majorit, has earned popularity with its good governance, giving it an edge over state rivals like Lalu Prasad’s Rashtriya Janata Dal, or RJD, and Ram Vilas Paswan’s Lok Janshakti Party, or LJP. Al-

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SOME EARLY TRENDS

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WHY IS THIS ELECTION SPECIAL? T

his year’s general election, and its outcome, is important for several reasons.

First, the outcome: This will decide how India negotiates the next five years (hopefully), in terms of its approach to opportunities, threats, and challenges—both internal and external.

Circa 2009, South Asia is one of the world’s troubled spots. Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Myanmar and Sri Lanka are all in a state of internal turmoil—and these will likely affect India. India itself has to decide how it deals with the Maoist menace which

has, arguably, been more visible during these elections than it has been during previous ones.

The world, meanwhile, is grappling with the effects of the financial crisis of 2008 that has, seemingly, left it without the US’ economic leadership. And it is time India started walking the talk on its approach of inclusive growth—or run the risk of a near civil war.

The new government will have to decide India’s response to these issues.

Now for the process.

Elections 2009 saw the emergence of the young first­time voter as a force.

The numbers on this vary: 40% of the electorate, say some; 100 million of around 700 million voters, say others.

Either way, it’s a big number.

This year’s election also marked the first time in at least 30 years that India’s electoral constituencies were redefined. Some became larger, others ceased to exist, and still others were reserved for scheduled castes and tribes (depending, largely, on the concentration of these communities in those areas).

Both were expected to have an impact on the result. Did they?

POLITICS

Two politicians we’re watching These two men hold the key to the future. And no, neither of them belongs to the ruling Congress party

B Y A NIL P ADMANABHAN anil.p@livemint.com

························· n 23 July, a day after the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government pulled off a win in the crucial trust vote, political commentaries were writing epitaphs of the Left parties, whose exit from the government over differences on the Indo-US civil nuclear deal had precipitated the crisis in the first place.

Similarly, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which had pushed hard for the defeat of the UPA under the leadership of L.K. Advani, looked lost. The Congress party, on the other hand, having showcased its heir apparent, Rahul Gandhi, in the debate that preceded the trust vote, seemed to have acquired fresh legs.

Inevitably, the blame for the Left’s loss was laid at the door of Communist Party of India (Marxist), or CPM, general secretary Prakash Karat, who had steadfastly declined to climb down from a position that threatened the UPA’s survival and looked like it would strengthen the electoral prospects of the BJP. However, with less than three months to go for the general election, the circumstances stand substantially transformed.

The country has undergone a dramatic shift in the economic outlook largely in sync with what is happening in the rest of the world. Layoffs are on the rise and a lot of people who rode the economic boom are beginning to hurt. The terror strikes, 13 in the seven months ended in December, has only made the outlook murkier.

And unlike ever before, the elections to the 15th Lok Sabha throw up some unique circumstances. Delimitation has recognized the growing population in urban India. As a result, a little less than one in five members of the Lok Sabha will represent an urban constituency, a significant jump from the past.

According to IIMS Dataworks, an associate of research and consulting firm Invest India Economic Foundation Pvt. Ltd, 40% of the voters will be below the

O

JAYACHANDRAN/MINT

age of 30. Not only do they have aspirations, but they are demanding and are conscious of their rights.

Further, this election is being contested in the context of an unprecedented growth in electronic and new media, largely concentrated in urban areas. India had about 347 million mobile phone users (including fixed wireless phone) at the end of December, and according to a study done by Crayons, the ad agency that will manage the advertising strategy for the Congress, nearly 60% of the mobile users are firsttime voters; the country also has around 49 million Internet users.

Clearly, control of airwaves and mastery of new media would be critical in niche constituencies.

Politically, the BJP, which at one stage last year had looked all set to return to power, is struggling. Similarly, the Congress, despite pulling off a surprise win in the state elections in Delhi, seems bereft of direction. By contrast, the Left parties, notwithstanding the internal divisions in the CPM’s Kerala unit, have not only survived doomsayers but also gone a step further and tied up key alliances in Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu—the two states together account for 81 seats in the Lok Sabha.

Seen against this backdrop, two political personalities—Karat and Advani—hold the key to the future polity. And, indirectly the fortunes of the Congress are closely linked to the outcome of the battle of these two adversaries. So far, it is only the Left parties that have established a clear offensive strategy and in this Karat’s imprimatur cannot be missed.

At the moment, he has painted the bold vision of a third front—an idea which, incidentally was laughed off the stage six months ago—bereft of the Congress and the BJP. The accepted political maxim is that any serious bid to form a government at the Centre requires a political combination to win majority of the seats in one of the northern states of Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh or Bihar. So far, the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) led by Uttar Pradesh chief minister Mayawati has declined any formal pre-poll alliance but at the same time signalled its in-principle willingness to be part of a third front.

Since the BJP and the Congress are a mere peripheral force in this state, the political contest in Uttar Pradesh is likely to be largely a face-off between the BSP and the Samajwadi Party led

by Mulayam Singh Yadav.

At present, the Left parties have 61 representatives in the Lok Sabha. Given the internal divisions in the Kerala unit of the CPM as well as possible political fallouts of the Singur and Nandi-

gram agitations, this tally will be reduced. However, the alliances that the Left bloc has sewn up with the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) and Telengana Rashtra Samiti in Andhra Pradesh and with J. Jayalalithaa’s All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) in Tamil Nadu are expected to make good this shortfall.

The so-called third front expects the BSP to win at least 50% of the 80 Lok Sabha seats in Uttar Pradesh, putting it within striking distance of 150 seats.

The key to the BJP’s success, however, is to successfully shake off its tag of being the political “untouchable” and cobble together a stronger National Democratic Alliance. In addition, Advani needs to move fast to overcome internal dissensions and challenges.

Sudheendra Kulkarni, a key member of the core group in the BJP driving Advani’s campaign, wrote in his weekly column in The Indian Express on 1 February: “The BJP, on the other hand, carries the historical handicap of not being in the reckoning at all in several big states. Further, it has also squandered away precious time in the Opposition battling internal problems rather than on presenting an attractive alternative agenda of governance and development. It should at least learn from its own recent debacle in the Delhi assembly election that the voters are not interested in hearing only negative propaganda about the incumbent government. They want to know: ‘How will you be different?’ There is very little time for the BJP to answer that question.”

If this loss in momentum is a matter of concern, worse news for the BJP is that it has lost what was its one-time edge: being tough on terror.

Much will depend on the ability of 81-year-old Advani to galvanize the party and the cadre in the next few months. Not only would a poor performance impact the leadership of Advani, it may also spell the end of the NDA in its present form.

However, if the BJP is able to substantially improve on its 2004 tally of 138 seats, though it stands depleted at 113 seats at present, and hence bring the NDA within striking distance of power, there is a strong likelihood that it may be able to wean away some constituents of the third front.

Clearly, the Congress stands to benefit if Karat’s strategy falters or Advani is unable to deliver. In 2004, it was the beneficiary of the losses two key NDA allies, the TDP and AIADMK, suffered in their respective states. Will history repeat itself?

Anil Padmanabhan is the Delhi bureau chief of Mint.

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DELIMITATION AND URBAN INDIA MÖBIUS STRIP

On political climate change B Y R AMESH R AMANATHAN ························· hen S.M. Krishna lost the Karnataka state elections in 2004, most pundits suggested that this was due to his focus on the urban voter. The same explanation was offered for Chandrababu Naidu’s electoral defeat in neighbouring Andhra Pradesh. These pronouncements reinforced the view that support of urban issues is a death wish for political leaders.

What a difference four years can make. As we turn into the home stretch of the 2008 Karnataka elections, urban development and urban politics have come out of the shadows to play a prime role in electoral fortunes.

Credit the Election Commission (EC) and its delimitation work. Karnataka is the first state to go to polls after the electoral map was redrawn based on the 2001 census, and the urban shift is

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massive. Bangalore has gone from 16 seats in the 2004 state assembly to 28 seats this time, a jump of 75% in political representation.

This shift is only the beginning of an irreversible trend. Karnataka was 34% urban in 2001 and—going by national trends—will see decadal urban growth of at least 30% and urban share increase of 1.5% every year.

The implication? Demographics drive politics. Urban areas will act as relentless political magnets, drawing power from the rural areas, as people migrate from farm to factory and service-based livelihoods.

Karnataka is just the first domino—we will see this in every election to follow, to a lesser or greater degree. Besides Mumbai to some extent in local issues, no other city or state has witnessed this because the political catalyst was missing—the EC delimitation has provided the spark.

This political climate change has huge implications, not only for political parties but also for the bureaucracy, corporate leaders, urban residents, academics, NGOs and the media. So far, urbanization and its challenges have not met with much rigorous political attention beyond the—almost indulgent—occasional discussions about bus systems or infrastructure bottlenecks. In fact, for the urban middle class, its engagement has so far had an antiseptic quality to it, devoid of the idiom of politics—the resident welfare association working with the city commissioner, preferring bureaucratic succour to political support.

No doubt urban political processes always existed, especially for the urban poor, a route more accessible to them than engagement with the bureaucracy. However, what will change is a convergence of contestations: The for-

mal canvas of politics will become the space in which all urban conflicts will get resolved.

This change will pose challenges for the politician as well, who has so far not had to deal with the urban middle class as a political constituency, looking for services and delivery—better water supply and sanitation, improved public transport and power supply, more transparency and less corruption, and so on. It’s a new language that it needs to learn.

There will also be conflicts within the political system. The trend of state-level MLA seats going urban doesn’t bode well for city governments. So far, the battles of decentralization have been fought only in rural India, between panchayat representatives and MLAs. Greater state-level urban representation will witness similar clashes between MLAs and city corporators.

For the NGO and academic community, the emerging political city presents an ideological challenge. Being a noisy contestation of enterprise and equity, environmental activism and infrastructure development, middle class frustration and urban poverty entitlements, the urban canvas is a continuous flux of negotiations and compromises that resists convenient labelling or superficial explanation.

Urban stakeholders will need to figure out how to make these complex collective processes

work. We need new tools for these negotiations, both among diverse groups outside government, and also between these groups and the emerging political leaders.

All this is ahead of us. Meanwhile, back in Karnataka as the clock ticks to the first phase of elections on 10 May, BJP advertisements openly woo the urban voter—traffic issues, lack of infrastructure, and so on. The Congress response says: “Nine years ago, Bangalore was competing to be a preferred investment destination with Chennai and Hyderabad. We won the battle because of our leadership.” It’s a telling sign of how the wheel has truly turned —an electoral liability from 2004 is suddenly a competitive advantage this year.

Clearly, the decibel level in the arena of urban politics is only just beginning to rise. How we deal with this change is yet unknown. One thing is for sure: This is one phenomenon that will not reverse.

Ramesh Ramanathan is cofounder, Janaagraha. Möbius Strip, much like its mathematical origins, blurs boundaries. It is about the continuum between the state, market and our society. We welcome your comments at mobiusstrip@livemint.com

SAMANTH SUBRAMANIAN | JUST TO CLARIFY (AUDIO)

YOUR VOTE AND DELIMITATION The 2009 general election was the first to be conducted after the latest round of delimitation by the Delimitation Commission of India.

But what is delimitation and how does it affect the fortunes of political parties during elections?

Why is it even done?

K.C. Sivaramakrishnan, chairman of the New Delhi­based Centre for Policy and Research, answers some of these queries on Just to Clarify.

Sivaramakrishnan has also served for 34 years in the Indian Administrative Services, and then worked as an urban management adviser for the World Bank.

Right click to pause/stop

The new political Indian Urban­centric parties, 20­something party workers, management principles in campaign strategies—a movement gathers on the periphery to redeem the meaning of Indian politics

B Y S ANJUKTA S HARMA sanjukta.s@livemint.com

························· n the nondescript, neon-lit auditorium of the Marathi Patrakar Sangh, or the Marathi press club, was a congregation of people who had little to do with each other. A 20-something sophomore from Pune’s Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) in cotton harem pants and Osho chappals (flipflops), a bespectacled, laptopcarrying business journalist, a posse of Page 3 celebs, some corporate executives, housewives and students. The motley crowd, split into small groups, was engaged in animated conversation about the man they had been waiting for—the reason they were there that January day.

The launch of the Mumbai chapter of Loksatta, a political party which began as a civil society movement in 1996, attracted a small but discerning group of prospective voters. By the time the founder-leader of Loksatta, Jayaprakash Narayan, walked in, most of the white plastic chairs in the auditorium were occupied.

Narayan, 56, who is contesting the Andhra Pradesh assembly election this year from the Kukatpally constituency, is a recognized, and admired, representative of an emerging niche in Indian politics—from being the pioneer of a civil society advocacy/activist group, he has become the leader of a party that has accumulated 200,000 registered members since 2006.

As Narayan spoke, the lacklustre press club transformed into a place where something signifi-

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ABHIJIT BHATLEKAR/MINT

cant and heart-warming was in progress. The audience listened in rapt attention as he talked: about Mumbai’s potential to be the seat of urban political revival, about police reforms, about why we have forgotten our own Obamas, and why we, as a democracy, are alarmingly close to anarchy. His agenda, articulated in clipped Indian English—and with a benevolent Everyman smile—was about urban infrastructure and honest governance. “Why should we, first-class citizens, live in such third-class conditions? We have to act now,” he said, and the audience responded with applause.

The unrehearsed, forceful speech resonated with this audience—a milieu that is otherwise put off by the mention of the word “politics”.

NEW WAVE Narayan’s new supporters were among the first groups I met while trying to understand who really was the new political Indian. By the end of the exercise, I wasn’t any less cynical, but I came to some heartening conclusions.

Reports of fringe parties, independent candidates and new activist/support groups started appearing in the margins of election coverage by the media at the beginning of the year. While Naveen Patnaik’s trust vote in Orissa and Varun Gandhi’s antiMuslim rhetoric grabbed headlines in the run-up to the election, a collective desire for longterm alternatives was showing up on the periphery of the political landscape. The educated

Driving force: Jayaprakash Narayan with members of Yuvasatta, the party’s youth wing, at the launch of the Mumbai chapter of Loksatta in January. people of Pune, Hyderabad, Delhi, Mumbai and other cities were embracing the electoral process.

Youth below the age of 25, who roughly make up 51% of India’s 1.15 billion population, seemed to infuse vitality into politics.

Could this year’s election then be a tipping point?

Meera Sanyal, 47, CEO of ABN AMRO Bank and an independent Lok Sabha candidate from the Mumbai South constituency, believes it can. She calls 2009 the year of “the beginning of the new wave in Indian politics”. Kumar Ketkar, editor of the Marathi daily Loksatta, who has followed the rise and decline of many small, independent parties over two

decades, says: “Niche parties and independent candidates will force (mainstream) political parties to direct attention to real issues which they ignore. This isn’t, however, a new phenomenon. In 1967, and later in 1989, we experienced the rise of similar parties, but today they are more important because the political party as an institution is collapsing. Election results are determined by political exigencies rather than by ideology.”

Two days after Sanyal announced her candidacy from Mumbai South, I met her at the home of her campaign manager (a business journalist who has taken leave from work to do

this)—a house on a leafy road between the historic August Kranti Maidan and Mahatma Gandhi’s Mumbai residence, Mani Bhavan. It was around the same time that dancer Mallika Sarabhai announced her candidature as an independent against BJP’s prime ministerial candidate L.K. Advani from Gujarat’s Gandhinagar constituency. Sarabhai had announced, dramatically, that politics was “flowing into her blood”, that it was the appropriate time to jump into the electoral fray: “If I don’t contest now, it will be too late after five years,” she said.

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MADHU KAPPARATH/MINT

Delhi in 2006 as an anti-reservation movement in educational institutes. As of January, it has a political wing too. It has around 20,000 registered members, including doctors, lawyers, engineers, and academics, in 27 cities and 14 states.

The YFE does not yet have the resources to field candidates from all the constituencies in Delhi. “For us, this election is a test run. We want to set an example to political parties and to the general public on how an election should be conducted.

We want to use the New Delhi constituency as a role model project for India,” says Dr Mishra. They are following, they say, “the Barack Obama model—small donations from small people and donations in kind”.

The YFE has two scooters, a Toyota Innova van, a computer and an office space in Gautam Nagar, all of which have been donated. They also have a big presence on the Web through networking sites and blogs.

RURAL VS URBAN

New blood: Members of Youth for Equality distribute pamphlets at Delhi’s Lodhi Garden. ® FROM PAGE E17

BUSINESS OF POLITICS Sanyal, her campaign manager and I strolled across the maidan (ground) talking about Sarabhai and Sanyal’s own five-point “Mumbai agenda”. It covers the city’s infrastructure, the public transport system, security, citizens’ empowerment and the Nagarpalika Bill, and an empowered mayor such as New York’s Rudy Giuliani.

Four things catalyzed Sanyal’s interest in politics: A childhood nurtured by the values of her father, a former vice-admiral in the Indian Navy; her interest in policy matters, cultivated through her years as a banking professional; being part of a diploma programme at Harvard University last year; and finally, the terror attacks on Mumbai in November. “We all have some amount of importance as CEO or editor or consultant. But that’s different from being significant. This was a thought that was in my subconscious, which revealed itself while I was at Harvard, meeting people doing meaningful things with their knowledge and experience,” Sanyal said. “We used to have people with great intellect and passion in politics only 60 years ago. That kind of passion has become unfashionable now.

This is the time to revive it or it will never happen.”

The CEO-turned-politician spoke in measured, carefully chosen words and with calm conviction. Her decision to enter politics, it appeared, was not driven by a lofty, noble idea, but what she believed was a “pragmatic” one. She said she recognized her brand and had a strategy for it to work, with a set of priorities and deliverable goals in mind. “I’m convinced change is possible. I can assure you that 10 years from now there will be more people like me in politics.”

In rhetoric, Sanyal and Narayan are the antithesis of how fringe politics has been traditionally perceived—as too idealistic and romantic; the whimsy of maverick ideologues doomed to fail.

Two days after my meeting with Sanyal, G.R. Gopinath, founder of the erstwhile Air Deccan, announced his decision to contest as an independent candidate from Bangalore, his home turf. At a press meet, he explained: “My plunge into politics was born out of my own frustration, agony and pain on the kind of political set-up we have in our country. Our political parties are either with a particular community or are fighting against a community; they are either with business houses or against business houses. There is no inner party democracy in any party.”

Sanyal’s business management approach is similar to that of the Professionals Party of India (PPI), set up in 2007. Sitting in on a meeting of the party’s core group in Pune was my first brush with the new urban-centric political dialogue. It was 30 January, the 61st death anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi. Early in the evening, 13 party members drove into the campus of an educational institution. R.V. Krishnan, the founder, is a former Thermax executive who now runs a market research and management consultancy. Krishnakumar Iyer or “KK” has worked with Mastek, Siemens, IBM and PricewaterhouseCoopers in Singapore, Australia and the US. Girish Deshpande worked with multinational companies such as Saint Gobain and Krupp for 12 years before setting up his own inbound destination management firm. Jayashri Moorthy had done stints in the marketing and publicity departments of the Union Bank of India and Crompton Greaves before deciding to become a full-time homemaker.

In the past one-and-a-half years, these members have learnt to juggle a day job and family life with party work—but 2009 is their first real test. Making its debut in the Lok Sabha elections, the PPI has announced two candidates—Rajendra Thacker and Mona Patel Shah—for the north Mumbai and south Mumbai constituencies, respectively.

That day, inside a classroom, one of them announced the agenda for the meeting—which included debates over posters and merchandise; members to be recruited; and the PPI’s first major symposium in Ahmedabad. The party now has 12 chapters and 10,321 members.

THE BACKSTORY Like all other urban-centric parties, including the Delhi-based Bharatiya Rashtravadi Samanata Party (BRSP) founded by management guru Shiv Khera, the PPI’s plans are based on simple arithmetic. Krishnan says: “A very large segment of the urban middle class does not, or is not able to, vote. This is due to a variety of reasons, including the perception that no one is worth voting for. We are looking to persuade that segment. If you give them candidates worth voting for, there are enough people to get a majority in Parliament.”

The history of small parties all over the world, however, suggests a different story. Tradition-

ally, fringe parties or small urban-centric parties have rallied around a single issue—be it ecology, ethnic or community groups, or radical political ideology. The first really successful one was the controversial farright Front National (FN) in France that fielded candidates in the 1973 French national legislative election. Its focus was on defending and reclaiming the socalled French national identity and its leader was the charismatic Jean-Marie le Pen. Although discounted by political observers through the 1980s and 1990s, the FN had emerged as one of the strongest and most influential radical right parties in Western Europe by 2000. Similarly, Green parties have succeeded electorally in Belgium and Germany but failed in Italy; and ethnocentric parties have garnered a significant number of votes in Scotland. In her book Party Competition Among Unequals (2008), political scientist Bonnie Meguid says that in the US, the success or failure of small single-issue political parties is determined largely by how established political parties respond to them.

In India, most of these parties are pitching the same development issues. The PPI has an “educational manifesto”, a “social manifesto”, an “agricultural manifesto”, even a “cultural manifesto”. Without distinct identity and branding, most of them are likely to cancel each other out in the polls. How does a voter choose between Sanyal and Dr Shah, PPI’s candidate in Mumbai South, when both stand for almost identical issues related to the city? Pratap Bhanu Mehta, political analyst and president of the Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi, says they are “a flash in the pan”. “Politics is hard. A party like BSP has been at it for at least 15 years to get here. So except Loksatta, which has been around for a while and has the potential to emerge in the next few years, the rest are insignificant now.”

regular at PPI open-house sessions. Jagdhane’s interest in politics was inherited from her father, a former president of the Youth Congress. “I want to join politics one day because for so long we have depended on the Congress and the BJP and their allies in vain. I don’t know what they stand for. What’s the BJP’s manifesto? And by the end of every term, why can’t we see any changes?” Jagdhane says over the phone. We went on to talk about US President Barack Obama, women’s rights, censorship and Rahul Gandhi.

Reuben Mascarenhas, 21, is a student of engineering in Mumbai’s St Francis Institute of Technology and the general secretary of Yuvasatta, Loksatta’s youth wing. A resident of Juhu, Mascarenhas was convinced that politics was worth his time when he heard Narayan speak in Mumbai two years ago. In the past three months, Mascarenhas and his fellow Yuvasatta members have been organizing voter awareness campaigns in colleges across Mumbai. “It’s shock-

ing, the kind of questions we get from people sometimes. A lot of young people are disconnected from social realities and you can’t blame them. We have seen politicians take bribe on national TV. But it’s easy to get young people excited, like the film Rang De Basanti did. Our challenge is to translate that excitement into action. This year, we’ve been able to get many youngsters involved in little issues of governance,” Mascarenhas says.

In Delhi, Kushal Kant Mishra, 33, an orthopaedic surgeon at All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), was catching up on sleep at 6pm when we met him in a cramped hostel room. His Youth For Equality (YFE) comrades Jiten Jain, 24, a software engineer, and Aman Kumar, 20, a law student, were trying to decide which Delhi park they should campaign in, the next morning. Dr Mishra works for the YFE every day from 6-9am and again in the evening, after his shift at the hospital. The YFE was set up in ABHIJIT BHATLEKAR/MINT

YOUTH FOR POWER So the tipping point isn’t so much about small parties claiming a place in governance. It’s a sociological one—a shift in urban India’s collective perception of politics and politicians, and a new motivation for political engagement and action—especially when it comes to the youth.

Some of PPI’s “friends” are college students in their late teens and early 20s. Shwetali Jagdhane, a 20-year-old student and an elected class representative at the Marathwada Mitramandal College of Commerce, Pune, is a

Tall order: Meera Sanyal at the August Kranti Maidan in Mumbai.

In the realm of campaigning, the Internet is the other novel thing in this election. The grand old man of the 2009 election, Advani, has had to adapt to changing times. Long before Sarabhai announced her candidature as his opponent, Advani was photographed lifting weights in a gym. He started writing a blog and has a Facebook group which describes him as “The Iron man of India”.

Rahul Gandhi, 37, has the obvious edge when it comes to navigating this new, young voters’ landscape. In February, he announced a national team, meant to boost the Congress’ youth wing, comprising people from varied backgrounds—all of them were under 40.

One of them, 29-year-old Navodaya Murali, who was appointed general secretary of the Youth Congress, Andhra Pradesh, comes from a family of farmers in a village in southern Andhra Pradesh. He worked with Mithrudu, an NGO founded by social worker M.V. Rajendar, in Hyderabad before he set up his own NGO, the Navodaya Trust, and then a real estate company, Navodaya Properties. Gandhi heard about his work in the fields of health and education in rural Andhra, and asked him to join the Youth Congress. “Being part of a big party has helped me disseminate the message. I still don’t talk hard politics when I meet people on behalf of the party. I tell young people not to expect heroes, but to be a hero yourself,” Murali says over the phone. He is strikingly different from the youngsters I met or talked to in Mumbai and Pune.

He believes that the big changes can come only if there are changes in rural India—by far a much bigger slice of the electoral pie, one which holds the key to electoral fortunes; and synonymous with strong-arm tactics and votebank politics. Murali thinks little of urban-centric politics.

But in Mumbai, Mascarenhas and his friends did their bit with a sense of purpose. On a Sunday morning, a few of them assembled at Bandra’s Mount Carmel Church to educate the parish about the voting process. They fielded questions about parties, candidates and constituencies.

“We city people have the most important vote,” Mascarenhas told the small gathering, echoing what his guru, Narayan, had told the motley gathering at the press club a few days earlier: “Why do we romanticize the village so much? Unless urban India gives its mandate, there can’t be any progress in rural India. It has to be a trickle-down effect. Politicians from villages have failed us long enough.”

Voting might just be the coolest thing to do during this election.

Seema Chowdhry in Delhi contributed to this story.

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FIRST TIME VOTERS PUNIT MUKHERJEE, 18, KOLKATA

No favourites: all politicians are the same

B Y A VEEK D ATTA aveek.d@livemint.com

························· KOLKATA

Punit Mukherjee is upset and anxious about the misfortunes that have befallen his family and couldn’t care less about politics—or voting. He says politicians milked the situation in Nandigram and Singur to gain mileage and have blocked avenues for people to realize the benefits of liberalization

unit Mukherjee was in the middle of his higher secondary school examinations in March when the autorickshaw in which he was travelling collided with a bus.

Punit sustained multiple injuries, the worst of which was nothing more than a broken arm, but the accident means loss of an academic year for the 18-yearold student of class XII. For the family, it means paying his school fees for one more year.

It’s only the latest misfortune to befall the Mukherjee household. Punit’s father Gautam Mukherjee, 48, lost his job when the plywood company that employed him as an executive went bust five years ago. He has been fighting a court battle since to recover the Rs20 lakh he claims the company owes him, and a restaurant he opened hasn’t been doing well, partly because he has no money to expand it.

The economic slowdown that is costing jobs has had Punit worried for his 21-year-old sister Priyanka Mukherjee, who dropped out of a postgraduate programme in international relations to work at a call centre so she can help run the household.

So Punit has got plenty to be upset, anxious and angry about, and couldn’t care less about pol-

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itics—or about voting in the general election.

He hadn’t gotten himself a voter identity card until before the accident, and was more interested in applying for a driving licence, although his family doesn’t have a car. After the accident, he was too distraught to be interviewed again.

“Just look at them,” he said with contempt about politicians.

“Barring a few, all politicians make a mockery of democracy in our Parliament, and the whole world watches it on TV,” he said, sitting in a bedroom strewn with textbooks and study material for engineering entrance tests.

Punit, who had been looking forward to leaving school, would have loved to study aeronautical engineering after school, but wasn’t certain his family could afford to pay for the course that costs upwards of Rs2.4 lakh.

LIVING WITHIN HIS MEANS Family hardship taught Punit to live within his limited means. He would cycle to school and wouldn’t ever be seen at a discotheque, although his friends are regulars. Besides his bicycle, his one treasured possession is an iPod shuffle gifted by friends. Punit is a music enthusiast, and plays the bass guitar—bought when the family was better off—in a band of aspiring musicians.

An occasional pastime is watching a movie at a multiplex.

The downturn in economic

growth has him worried. “I guess we need to be a little more careful with spending now,” he said.

Shaken by the slowdown, Priyanka is looking for another job, but she has had no luck yet.

“I would have loved to study further, but when I graduated from college, it was necessary that I started working. It was important for me to start earning because it was the only way Punit could concentrate on studies (and) focus on getting into a good college,” she said.

Priyanka was a student of Jadavpur University, where she read political science.

Punit’s education costs Rs2,000 a month, a substantial sum for his family in its present situation, but he had not had to cut back on that yet. What troubles him most is the state of affairs in West Bengal. His confidence in the state and its political parties was shaken by the unrest among farmers over land acquisition in Singur and Nandigram. “They (the politicians) claimed to be fighting for the villagers, but actually they were all trying to gain political mileage out of a very sensitive issue…

They are all the same,” he said.

‘COMPLACENT AND ARROGANT’ Though he has no sympathies for the Trinamool Congress, West Bengal’s main opposition party, he squarely blames the ruling Communists in the state

for the “mess around”. “Having been in power for 30 years, they are complacent and arrogant,” he said.

His impression of the administration in the state isn’t any better. “You need to be someone to be heard in this city…you should see how autorickshaw drivers, bus drivers and conductors behave with the common man. You can’t raise a finger even against rash driving because they all enjoy the patronage of Citu (Centre of Indian Trade Unions),” said Punit, disgusted with Kolkata’s traffic. Citu is the union affiliated to the Communist Party of India (Marxist), or CPM. And this he said before the accident.

Speak about elections and the first thing that comes to his mind are the loudspeakers blaring party propaganda that disturb his studies and sleep.

“If it’s the CPM in the morning, it’s the Trinamool Congress in the evening—it’s a menace.”

Impressions have hardened into firm opinions after the November terror attack in Mumbai. “Politicians were slinging mud at each other within days of the terror attack, whereas they should have united in condemning the attack,” said Punit, who has no favourites among political parties and politicians.

Punit has a quarrel with the establishment as a whole, in-

INDRANIL BHOUMIK/MINT

cluding the courts, blaming them for doing nothing to help his father secure what he believes are legitimate claims.

Born months before the country’s economy was opened up to the outside world, Punit said liberalization was a great thing to have happened. “It created a lot more job opportunities…it’s a different matter that not every city and state has benefited equally from it.”

The political climate in West Bengal, he said, has prevented people from realizing the benefits of liberalization. He believes the militant trade unionism that the Left has supported for decades and, more recently, the anti-industry stance taken by opposition parties have forced a large number of young people to move out of Kolkata in search of jobs, while the young in cities such as Mumbai, New Delhi and Bangalore have not had to leave their homes and yet are doing well.

That explains his reluctance to exercise his right to vote.

Punit’s father is stoical about his son’s attitude. “When we were young, opportunities were limited,” he said. “Things have changed post-liberalization, but if you talk of political leadership in this state, choices are still limited. Though I believe one should vote, Punit is a freethinking individual and if he chooses not to, I am not going to pressure him to vote.”

20 SUNDAY, MAY 17, 2009, DELHI ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

ROHIT CHAHAL, 19, NEWDELHI

A model Hindu in modern India MADHU KAPPARATH/MINT

B Y K .P . N ARAYANA K UMAR narayana.k@livemint.com

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He comes from an ultraconservative Hindu household that forbids anything Western. After a brief John Abraham­inspired stint in modelling, Rohit is going for a makeover: a new look, a new role model and—if he can help it—a new govt

here’s something incongruous about model-turned-movie actor John Abraham being spoken of in the same breath as Hindutva champions Guru Golwalkar and Veer Savarkar, whose portraits loom over the spacious living room.

Rohit Chahal, 19 years and eight months old, is aware of the gulf between his one-time role model Abraham and his upbringing in a family that swears by Hindu nationalism and its pantheon. Influenced by the success of Abraham, Rohit took to modelling three years ago.

“People used to tell me that I could easily be a model, given my height and build. I had seen John Abraham and, like a million others, decided to try my hand at modelling,” says Rohit, who is in the final year of a bachelor’s degree programme in human resources and management at the College of Vocational Studies in New Delhi.

His dalliance with modelling was the cause of the first—and last—major disagreement he had with his conservative family, which associated the profession with a freewheeling sexand-drugs culture. “But this was one thing I just had to do.

So I fought at home and walked the ramp,” he says.

The flirtation with modelling proved short-lived and Rohit returned to his family ideology, which is rooted in a long association with the Swadeshi Jagran Manch, an arm of the socalled Sangh Parivar of Hindu

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nationalist groups.

After enrolling in college, he joined the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, the student wing of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), whose lotus-embossed flag flutters from atop his family house in Preet Vihar, a middle-class neighbourhood in east Delhi.

Rohit was born in a Jat family the day after independence day in 1989, about two years before India wholeheartedly embraced economic reforms by dismantling government controls that had fettered its economy for four decades, and opening itself up for foreign investment and technology.

He was the second of three sons born to Naresh Chaudhary, 47, a builder, and homemaker Manju. The couple named their eldest son Shekhar after Chandrasekhar Azad, the freedom fighter and revolutionary who shot himself to death in 1931 to avoid being taken prisoner by British police.

The second son was named after Rajguru, who together with Bhagat Singh and Sukhdev was hanged in 1931 after the three were convicted of killing a British police officer.

“Rohit was to be named Bhagat Singh, but a relative by the same name had passed away around the time our son was born. So we dropped the idea,” says Chaudhary.

ACCESS TO TECHNOLOGY The three sons were encouraged to be religious in a household that strictly forbade partying.

“This Western culture has led to our boys becoming weak. They have lost the courage to deal with life and are

taking to drugs. I will not let that happen to my children,” says Chaudhary.

But the Chahal family’s ultra-conservative attitude didn’t bar access to technology, one of the gifts of liberalization that the young take so much for granted.

According to the ministry of information technology, India has the bragging rights for the world’s lowest mobile phone call rates (2-3 cents, or Rs1-1.5), the fastest growth in the number of subscribers (15.31 million in four months), the fastest sales of a million mobile phones (one week), the world’s cheapest mobile handset ($17.2) and the world’s most affordable colour phone ($27.42).

India also has an installed base of at least 22 million personal computers, 100 million television sets and 65 million cable television connections.

Rohit was in class III when he first handled a computer, in class VI when he logged into the Internet. His father was one of the early buyers of a mobile phone when it came to India in the early 1990s.

“I have grown with all these gadgets and credit cards. They are a part of my life and life would be difficult without them,” Rohit says.

That’s at odds with his association with the Swadeshi Jagran Manch, known for its staunch opposition to foreign investment and technology, and the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, and the causes they espouse.

Rohit, raised in an era of economic openness and a beneficiary of the growth it fostered, says India should focus on “self-sustainability instead

of giving space to multinational companies to exploit India.”

news that the mosque had been toppled.

STINT IN PRISON Last year, he was among a group of students who attacked a history department professor at Delhi University. The students were protesting alleged vilification of Hindu gods in a college textbook when the professor, S.Z.H. Jafri, tried to intervene.

The students said an essay titled Three Hundred Ramayanas by A.K. Ramanujan had made derogatory references about Hindu gods. According to media reports, the students were offended by passages in the essay including one in which Hanuman, the monkeygod, was described as Ram’s “trusty henchman”.

The students, who also vandalized college property, were rounded up and arrested by the police. Rohit spent 10 days in custody, and doesn’t rue the experience.

“I was only defending my faith,” he says.

Rohit’s father agrees and defends his son. “He did nothing wrong. Youngsters have to stand up for the Hindu faith,” says Chaudhary.

The father’s attitude is not surprising. Chaudhary, 47, was one of the hordes of kar sevaks (volunteers) who took part in the December 1992 demolition of the 16th century Babri mosque in Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh.

“That was one of the most memorable days of my life,” says Chaudhary, who recalls that from Ayodhya he took an autorickshaw to the neighbouring town of Faizabad to call his father from a public phone booth and gave him the

BACK TO THE ROOTS Minutes after he hung up the phone, the Chahals’ ancestral house in Daryaganj, in Delhi’s Old City, was attacked by a rock-throwing mob. Relations between Hindus and Muslims in the area deteriorated to a stage where who you did business with or even shared a cup of tea with was being reassessed on communal lines. In 1999, the Chahals moved from Daryaganj to Preet Vihar.

For Rohit, after the brief dalliance with modelling, it has been a back-to-the-roots journey. He will vote the BJP in the coming general election and intends to get himself a personality makeover by switching from jeans and shirt to ethnic wear.

He has no love interest and will marry a woman chosen by his family. (“If any of my boys get into an affair, then they will be out on the streets,” threatens Rohit’s mother.)

He is interested in an army stint, but his long-term goal is to join politics.

Abraham having been forgotten, his role model is the vigilante-like character played by actor Naseeruddin Shah in the Hindi movie A Wednesday.

Shah plays the role of a man who secures the release of four jailed terrorists by threatening to set off a series of bomb explosions in Mumbai. He kills them when they are freed.

Terrorism is the biggest concern facing the country today, says Rohit.

“I identify with the character played by Naseeruddin Shah,” he says. “A common man has to think of how he can battle terror himself.”

21 SUNDAY, MAY 17, 2009, DELHI ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

VIDYA NARAYAN SWAMY, 22, NEW DELHI

A prayer for India’s progress MADHU KAPPARATH/MINT

B Y M ALATHI N AYAK malathi.n@livemint.com

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N Vidya says her generation strives to be traditional yet modern in its outlook. She believes in the power of the legal profession to bring about social transformation andwants to be an independent, activist lawyer fighting for those who have suffered injustice and who don’t have access to legal aid

t’s morning peak hour one March day on the Delhi Metro, and the coach is crammed with students headed for Delhi University. N. Vidya, 22, is on her way to the Faculty of Law. Clutching a mobile phone in one hand and a library book in the other, the first-year law student is composed, oblivious to the noisy chatter of students around her.

The train speeds past billboards that advertise products of the era of economic openness Vidya grew up in. A mobile phone company invites her to send more text messages while a private sector bank beckons her to try its free Internet banking service.

And a health ministry billboard pitches yoga as a cure for “depression” in the “age of recession”—a reference to the hard times the economy is experiencing after years of rapid growth.

Vidya is happy at the way India’s economy expanded in the era she was raised. But she is sorry that the focus on frenzied economic growth in more recent years has masked social and economic divides that have only widened while social ills such as dowry still flourish.

Vidya applied for a threeyear degree course in law last year because of a belief that the legal profession can bring about social transformation.

It was in the early years of liberalization, when Vidya was in primary school, that the legal profession underwent change.

New market-friendly government policies aimed at boosting economic growth created demand for corporate lawyers to advise on foreign in-

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vestments and complex commercial transactions. And a spirit of public interest entered the profession as lawyers took on both corporate giants and the government over issues such as human rights and environmental damage.

Vidya wants to be an independent, activist lawyer. Her ambition is to fight for those who have suffered injustice and those who don’t have access to legal aid. She says she will do pro bono work and take on the poor as clients rather than pursue an attractive career in corporate law that she feels will be “helping rich companies evade taxes”.

POLITICAL INTERESTS Vidya will be a first-time voter in the April-May general election. She has a voter identity card and intends to cast her ballot. She supports the Congress “because it is the only true secular party”.

Politics is something she enjoys “as a subject”, Vidya says, although she has never felt the need to volunteer or work with a political party. Before signing up for the law course, she completed an undergraduate programme in arts, specializing in political science.

“Discussing politics is important in my household,” she says.

Her father M.R. Narayan Swamy, chief news editor at the wire service Indo-Asian News Service, covered Indian politics and Sri Lankan affairs as a reporter for around two decades. Her mother Ranjini teaches English literature at St Paul’s School in Hauz Khas, New Delhi.

“Vidya has on her own taken a certain stand on liberal secularism and is concerned about human rights issues. Sometimes, at the dining table, her knowledge of current affairs...(surprises) me. When I

ask her, she says she learns by reading,” says Swamy.

Swamy grew up in a Delhi—and an economy—far different from the one his daughter was born into. His family lived in Kidwai Nagar, a middle-class south Delhi neighbourhood, before moving further south to a house bought by his father in Saket.

“When my grandfather bought the house, Saket was a remote village with dusty roads. My dad was really upset,” says Vidya.

Swamy’s father was a member of Indira Gandhi’s personal staff in the 1960s, when she was the minister of information and broadcasting in the Congress government.

Swamy says his father was among the first few south Indians, or “Madrasis” as they were called, who moved to New Delhi with skills such as typing and shorthand, looking for government jobs.

Today, Saket is a posh south Delhi neighbourhood. The city’s elite throng the stores in its malls to shop for luxuries.

CHILDHOOD TALES Vidya enjoys going to the airconditioned malls and likes eating out once in a while at McDonald’s and Pizza Hut. Swamy remembers how his own family survived on groceries from the government’s public distribution system, supplied through outlets known as ration shops. He says his father would often be broke by the end of the month because of financial commitments back in his village.

“That middle class which was not poor survived then thanks to the government of India and previous British government’s decision to ration food through the public distribution system by providing rice, oil and wheat at subsi-

dized prices,” Swamy says.

He says that none of this seems “real” to Vidya. “They are just tales she heard while she was growing up.”

Not that the tales have gone unheeded. By listening to them, Vidya says she has learnt her lessons, including the need to value money, since she was a child.

When she gets out of the Delhi Metro station around 1km from her college campus, she begins to walk briskly, ignoring the cycle rickshaws that ferry students to class for Rs10.

“It takes about 15 minutes, but I walk. I only take the rickshaw when I am late,” says Vidya.

She says she budgets her expenditure on transport and phone bills so she does not spend in excess of the monthly allowance of Rs6,000 given by her parents.

She has recently taken up a freelance writing job, which pays her Rs2,500 a month, with an Internet portal designed to inform non-resident Indians about investing in India. Her earnings go straight into her Bank of India savings account.

The ability to earn their own money is another gift of liberalization to those who were born in the era of economic reform—or the years immediately preceding it. Reforms revolutionized sectors such as information technology, telecommunications, aviation and media, and created numerous job opportunities.

The Internet, which supported Web browsing and email, also provided a platform for the young to reach out to the world’s best universities to pursue academic goals and opened up part-time and fulltime jobs to help them gain financial independence.

“Like me, most of my friends have part-time jobs even as they are pursuing their studies,” says Vidya.

TRADITIONAL AND MODERN She prefers using public transport because it allows her to interact with people of all kinds and helps her understand her country better. “The government does a lot,” she says. “You (the youth) are the first ones to complain even though you don’t use it (amenities provided by the government) or know how to maintain it.”

She detests spoilt kids, such as the “17-year-olds driving cars in full speed without licences and endangering their own lives and those of others around them”.

This March day, after college, Vidya is browsing in the political books section at Oxford Bookstore.

The titles she sifts through include Poverty and Human Rights, Secularism and its Critics, Women and Social Reform in Modern India and Promoting Democracy in Post-Conflict Societies.

She says she enjoys reading biographies. Nehru: The Invention of India by Shashi Tharoor is her favourite.

At the magazines section, she ignores the one with a glamorous cover shot of actor Freida Pinto staring down at her. “Such magazines are a waste of paper,” she remarks.

Vidya hasn’t been touched by the exposure to a Western way of living that television brought to Indian homes after liberalization.

“I wear Indian clothes most of the time,” she says, but she is open to concepts such as dating and love marriage that her parents might frown upon.

Like her, she says, her generation strives to be “traditional but with a modern outlook”. She leaves the bookstore and heads out to meet her mother at a neighbourhood temple she visits every day.

Her prayers include one for India’s progress.

22 SUNDAY, MAY 17, 2009, DELHI ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

ZENYA GARCIAS, 19, MUMBAI

A three­dimensional plan ASHESH SHAH/MINT

she doesn’t know who will be standing for election from the various parties as the lists have not been published yet (they weren’t at the time this reporter met her). “We don’t talk much about Indian politics,” she begins. “But we are aware of it.

People don’t want to vote for anyone with a criminal background and when a politician comes up they check his criminal record first. Once a criminal, always a criminal. The politicians should also have basic education and if someone has some idea of what they are going to do and if they are most probably going to do it, then I would vote for them.” In contrast, interest in global politics at the school reached fever pitch during the American elections last year. More recently, conversations over lunch were about whether the attacks on Mumbai in November were linked to the conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians.

Though she flicks through newspapers including The Times of India and the Mumbai Mirror, she says she prefers celebrity journalism and still reads graphic novels because that is where stories for animation films have been coming from these days.

B Y N EELAM V ERJEE neelam.v@livemint.com

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With small­town roots in the conservative heartland of Goa, Zenya Garcias, an animation student and a selfconfessed atheist, dreams of being a part of a new wave of animators in India who will restore the industry to basics

y the t ime she was 13 years old, Zenya Garcias had made up her mind. The moment the restless tomboy discovered Marvel comics and Batman, the prospect of spending hours hunched over school and college books became painful; her father’s suggestion that she follow in his footsteps and become a food and beverage manager on a cruise liner held even less allure.

So, instead of conforming with the expectations of her Goan-born Catholic parents, and teachers, after she left St Andrews School in north Mumbai, Zenya went straight to join the make-believe world of animation.

Now a diminutive 19-yearold, with a tattoo of a dragon snaking over a shoulder and up her neck, and with earrings bearing the image of Che Guevara, Zenya was raised on a diet of television and the graphic novels of Neil Gaiman and Grant Morrison. A graphic novel is a form of comic book, often with a lengthy and complex storyline Zenya started out with cartoons and soaps before graduating to movies and epics.

Soon, she was watching programmes about the making of Warner Bros. cartoons, including Looney Tunes, and with increasing fascination, learnt how each figure was formed in painstaking detail and projected multiple times in quick succession to form an animated sequence.

Her interest caught, Zenya moved fast to work out her options and last year, enrolled herself in an animation degree course at Whistling Woods International, the Mumbai-based film school founded by filmmaker Subhash Ghai. “I picked

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up animation when I was 13 years old, when I would see all the movies and then the films on how they were made,” explains Zenya, kitted out in baggy combat trousers and trainers, and sitting cross-legged on a chair at the school’s outdoor cafeteria during a break in lectures. “I thought if I had to pick one profession I would pick this.

I wanted to be an astronaut, but I didn’t like studying. I had a lot of options, I thought cinematography was also interesting but I love drawing and I love art.”

ERA OF OPENNESS Garcias is the archetypal product of new India, with all the ambition, savvy and enthusiasm of a teenager raised in an era of openness, new technology and access to information. She is part of a generation of young people in the country who are on the verge of availing themselves of opportunities created by a raft of reforms introduced during the post-1991 era of economic liberalization, including choosing a career as an animator.

Currently estimated to be worth Rs1,740 crore in India, the animation industry is tipped to grow in size to Rs3,900 crore by the end of 2013, according to projections by industry lobby Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry and audit and consulting firm KPMG. India’s animation industry has grown 20.1% a year since 2006, driven by outsourcing from abroad and increased domestic opportunities. Industry experts have also pointed to a dearth of trained and skilled animators in India, with the ability to meet the growing needs of the entertainment industry, and have called for investment in time and resources to better equip it to compete on a global basis. Keen to exploit these opportunities, a determined Zenya gave her reluctant parents an ul-

timatum: to let her study animation, or have her stay home and do nothing at all. “My parents wanted me to take something that helps me get a job,” she says. “They were totally against animation in the beginning.

Now my mum is cool but my dad is a little...,” she trails off.

She adds: “My dad actually wanted me to join the cruise liner business because he thinks you meet a lot of people and you can make a lot of money. He is very orthodox actually. But I wanted to do something I love.”

Won over to some degree by her persistence and tenacity, her parents are now increasingly intrigued by her choice of profession, says Zenya, as is her 11-year-old brother, although she adds: “I come home tired. I tell them a little about what I do.

But they still don’t really understand what I do.”

CYNICAL ABOUT POLITICS Zenya was educated at Mary Immaculate Girls High School, a strict convent school in Mumbai, and lives in Borivali West with her mother and brother, while her father spends most of his time away on ship. Despite being raised a Catholic by her church-going parents, she describes herself as an atheist.

“My parents go to church every Sunday and they ask me to come but it depends on if I feel like going,” she says, explaining that most of her contemporaries at the film school similarly shun religion and rarely discuss it, unless they are trying to ascertain the reasons for another’s dietary habits.

Similarly, she is cynical about politics and suspects that like many of her friends and peers, she will not vote in the elections, not because she is politically apathetic, but because she does not want to vote for a criminal and cannot guarantee that her candidate won’t have a criminal record. She adds, however, that

LIVING LIFE TO THE FULL In addition, she is addicted to gaming, enjoys drawing, plays basketball, watches football on television, but hates cricket.

Aware that her choice, enabled by India’s emergence as a global leader in outsourcing and technology while increasingly becoming known for its back-office animation expertise, has broken new ground in her family, she pauses to marvel at how she ended up on a path so far from her parents’ small-town roots in the conservative and Catholic heartland of Goa. She is equally amazed by her conviction and decision to become an animator, given her insular convent education and the decision of many of her peers to work in the retail or service industries after school. As a result, Zenya, who is seemingly fulfilled by the degree course and the level of teaching, appears to be on a mission to live her life to the full at Whistling Woods.

“I like being here, but spare time is hard to come by,” she explains. “Saturday and Sunday are sometimes better and we all party together. I finish my assignments and do my reading and studying.

I haven’t watched television for six months. We have the best people in the animation field here.

They have good contacts and they give us state-of-the-art equipment.” She has no regrets about having to turn down the offer of a place at the California Institute of Arts, as the fees were too steep. Gesturing around her at the facilities, she says: “This is as good as being there. It exposes students to various other fields like cinematography, screenwriting and direction. We start this right in the freshman semester. We have screenwriting in the morning, and acting in the evening. Everyone has film appreciation because that is really important. Recently they got us the latest Macs to work on.”

THINKING OUT OF THE BOX Kumar Chandrashekhar, mentor to Zenya at Whistling Woods, says although she is one of the youngest in her batch, she is mature and focused on her career choice and has taken to the course with enthusiasm, while forming a close circle of friends.

“She thinks outside the box, in a lateral way, and she attracts people who think in a similar way,” says Chandrashekhar.

“She will face a steep learning curve and have to make decisions as her career choices widen, but she is very focused for her age.”

Clenching her hand into a fist to emphasize her determination, Zenya says her ambition is to work in Europe for a few years after she graduates, and then return to India as part of a new wave of animators who will restore the industry to basics.

“There is a lot of room for improvement in animation in India. Have you seen the movie Roadside Romeo?” she asks, referring to the animated Yash Raj Films and Walt Disney Pictures collaboration that was released last year. “I remember wondering how Walt Disney could make such a movie. I feel that if you have less money, then make a short animated film but make it good.

“Also, in India the stories are very mythological. They don’t create their own stories. Everyone here is concentrating on 3-D but there is not a good enough base of 2-D. They are not interested in their drawing skills but more in software skills and they need to improve basics.” Her passion evident, Zenya explains that the most satisfying part of animation comes at the end. After working on a project through days and nights, and having to get every detail right, she says the pleasure of accomplishment when a project is finally complete and correct, is “huge”.

“That is what I love about animation. You start from scratch with a pen and paper and then you make it 3-D. When it is finally done you get a huge pleasure of accomplishing something. At the moment we are learning to draw each and every muscle in the human body. We study the movements when you walk. We study animal movements and how they walk—frame by frame. They don’t usually teach this in so much detail at other schools.”

BLACK SHEEP? She continues: “I would like to work for a big company like Dreamworks or something after I graduate. Or DC and Marvel (the graphic novel companies behind the superheroes Superman and Batman), but it is really hard to get in there. I would like to work abroad for the experience, because people here are not backed by experience and then I would like to come back here and do something. There is a lot of room for improvement here. So, I want to come back and I want to get the industry back to basics with 2- D at the forefront.”

Her gaze firmly fixed on the future, complete with all its possibilities, Zenya says she is too busy for romance, although she does enjoy “partying hard” with her friends. Intent on living her life to the full and not squandering a moment of her freedom, she is disbelieving that her 21-year-old cousin recently accepted an arranged marriage to a man who works on a cruise liner.

“My family are very closeminded and orthodox,” she says. “I am the black sheep of my entire family. They think it is a great thing that my cousin is marrying someone who is working abroad and she is happy about it and I don’t know why.

And I wonder sometimes, don’t they want to do anything? Don’t they want to make a mark?”

23 SUNDAY, MAY 17, 2009, DELHI ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

S SATHYANARAYANAN, 18, WEST MAMBALAM

Mixing Vedas and code in new­age India SHARP IMAGE

towels around middles laden with puppy fat.

B Y S AMANTH S UBRAMANIAN samanth.s@livemint.com

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After seven years of juggling Vedas and school, Satya, a Tamil Brahmin, had to make the big decision: whether to follow his family and make a career in Hindu priesthood—or to forge his own newpath. As an undergraduate engineering student now, he has only temporarily kept the decision on hold

f this were 1989, or indeed 1979 or even 1799, S. Sathyanarayanan would probably not possess the full head of hair he does today. Instead, he would have shaved the front half of his skull and then swept his remaining hair back to resemble a bulging half-moon, knotted loosely at the back— a distinctive do for a young Brahmin who would have been preparing to follow his father, his uncles and his cousins into a career of Hindu priesthood.

But this is 2009, and Sathya, as he introduces himself, has a short but regular haircut, grown out from a few months ago, when he passed his final year’s exams in a pathshala—Vedic school—run by the Sri Ahobila Muth, a Hindu religious institution.

“We had to have our hair pulled back when we sat for our exams. It was the rule,” he says.

Sathya’s new look, though, fits right in at the Rajalakshmi Institute of Technology, where he has started an engineering degree, becoming the first in his family to attend college. Sathya turned 18 in July, just as he was completing seven years of Vedic education that came with a punishing schedule.

“Our Veda classes started at 4.30am and went till 7am,” he says. “Then we had regular school from 9am to 4pm. Then more Veda classes from 4pm to 7pm, and then supervised independent study in school from 7pm to 9pm.”

Apart from two monthly holidays, on the days after amavasya (no-moon nights) and pournami (Tamil for full-moon nights), this arduous regimen ran for six days a week; on Sunday, Sathya was still required to attend Veda classes for five hours in the morning and two in the eve-

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nings.

“He’d never go anywhere but school, or maybe to the market to buy vegetables” his mother Shanti remembers. “Every spare moment he could get, he’d simply lie down and go to sleep.”

Sathya saw his first movie in a theatre when he was 16, and he got his first email address just earlier this year. His only distraction, he admits, was the one universally shared by Indian boyhood: Sunday evening games of cricket, at a cramped ground near his house or in the narrow corridors of his block of apartments.

BRAHMINICAL UPBRINGING Sathya is short and slight, and he has a thin moustache, worn almost out of rebellious joy that he is now no longer bound by the rules of the pathshala, where every student had to be cleanshaven every day. His slow grin fights its way through a mouthful of braces that he wears to correct a misaligned jaw. “Because of that, my speech used to be slurred, and I’d be very reluctant to talk in school, even to my teachers,” he says. He had to give up flute lessons after two years because his gums would begin to bleed. But the braces are helping—Sathya still mumbles, but it sounds less like a medical problem and more like a typical case of teenage shyness. “I find myself talking a lot more willingly in college now.”

Sathya and his family live in West Mambalam, a traditionally Brahminical neighbourhood of the city. Their apartment, at least 20 years old and rented at Rs3,000 a month, is dominated by its square living room, adjoined by a kitchen and a single bedroom; the sirens of trains entering or leaving Mambalam station filter through the windows every few minutes. There is a television that works, and a computer which doesn’t.

“I don’t watch much television anyway,” Sathya says. “Maybe

occasionally the news, but I’m only now beginning to become interested in politics.” He tried to register himself as a voter soon after he turned 18, but couldn’t.

“When I’m able to, I’ll register, because I do want to vote,” he says, but he appears too insulated from national political and economic debates to be able to vote with any real conviction.

SCIENTIFIC ENQUIRY VS UNQUESTIONING ACCEPTANCE During his seven years at the Sri Ahobila Muth pathshala, Sathya balanced his daytime education, which stressed the spirit of scientific enquiry, with his scriptural education, which stressed unquestioning acceptance of the written word. He memorized thick texts written in an ancient Tamil script that mimics the sounds and inflexions of Sanskrit.

“In the 9th standard, we’d get tested on everything we studied over the last four years, and in the 12th, everything from the last seven years,” he says.

Through constant recitation led by his teacher, Sathya learnt rhythm and correct pronunciation. “Every word is like an individual deity, my teacher used to tell us,” he says. “Say it wrong, and you anger that deity.”

The rigour prepared him for the acid test that came at the end of his year in class XII. “Our examiner would basically start any one of the paragraphs we’d learnt, and we would be expected to complete it,” he says. Sathya just scraped through, he says; in his state board science examinations, though, he scored 90%.

Early in the morning, the Sri Ahobila Muth’s Veda classes get under way in a long, low-slung hall that keeps the darkness out with rows of tube lights. In little groups, shirtless boys, many still yawning, sit clustered around their textbooks to recite their lessons in chorus. They are all in white dhotis, some tied properly and some tied like large bath

VEDIC STUDIES In one corner, a group of students stands throughout the morning session. “They were misbehaving yesterday, and now there are rules that prohibit beating the boys,” N.V. Vasudevachariar, the school’s secretary, says wistfully. “But they can’t do anything about making these boys stand as punishment.”

Vasudevachariar, a whitebearded, acerbic man in his 70s, sees a dim future for Vedic studies in the country. At present, for instance, there are no boys enrolled in class XI or class XII at the Sri Ahobila Muth pathshala.

When Sathya started his studies, in class VI, he had 24 classmates, but 21 dropped out over the next seven years, preferring to focus on their modern, rather than their ancient studies. In 2000, there were 53 new admissions; in 2008, there were 14.

“Only the poor and the downtrodden will even consider it, because the education is free and there is nowhere else to go,” Vasudevachariar says. In south India, he adds, he can count the number of worthy pathshalas on one hand, although other priests and educators disagree with him on this. “One of the main problems is a lack of teachers who genuinely want to teach,” Vasudevachariar says. “The profession of a priest is not as moneystarved as we imagine it to be.

You could earn as much as Rs50,000 every month. So, who would want to spend six hours a day teaching boys for Rs6,000 or so a month? Only some priests teach half-heartedly on the side, for some extra money.”

TRADITION OF PRIESTHOOD Very often, the students of a pathshala come from families with traditions of priesthood.

Sathya’s grandfather was a Vedic scholar, and Sathya’s father and three uncles are all priests. Sathya’s parents moved to Chennai in the early 1990s, from a small village named Kottamedu. “My mother-in-law was very keen that we look at the opportunities here, and my husband’s brothers were already here working,” Shanti says.

“Also, Sathya was to start attending school soon, and we wanted him to go to a good one.”

For the first six years, Sathya attended a Christian school called Morning Star and lived with his extended family in an area of Chennai named Choolaimedu. “But there was a temple near our house there, and I’d be very fond of going there to recite my prayers, and I was always interested in my father’s work,” Sathya says.

Seeing this nascent interest, Sathya’s grandmother and aunt suggested that he enrol in the reputed Sri Ahobila Muth school; his sister Satyavati, now in class X, and his cousin A. Saranya, in class XII, also study there.

At home, and as a matter of comfort, Sathya speaks a respectful Tamil that does not seem to be touched by the rough street slang of Chennai. “Our school taught the sciences in English, but somehow, none of us are too fluent in the language,” he says. Asked to converse in English for a while, Sathya becomes more self-conscious about his speech. He selects his words carefully, sometimes con-

fusing his tenses, but making himself understood reasonably well. In a sudden spurt of excitement, he begins a sentence in Tamil, checking himself after two words, and starting again in English, the excitement somewhat tempered now by the quest for accuracy.

Remarkably, for a boy studying in a city with its own Indian Institute of Technology, Sathya had never heard of it until his final year of school. “People would say that they were going to write the JEE (the IIT’s joint entrance exam) and I’d wonder what that was,” he says, laughing. “There was nobody in my family who could really guide me on such things.”

THE SERIOUS AND THE TRIVIAL Attending college has involved some compromises. Some were serious: He wanted to study aeronautics, but his marks were only good enough for a seat in electronics and communications engineering. Some were trivial: It took him a month to get used to wearing a shirt and trousers, and another month to learn how to match his colours.

More importantly, though, it has involved for Sathya the important decision of whether to follow in his family’s profession by joining another pathshala for advanced studies, or to forge his own new path. At his age, his uncle’s sons had neither the means nor the inclination to attend university, so they began apprenticing with their father, accompanying him to the ceremonies he conducted and learning on the job.

In some part, Sathya has handled the gravity of his decision by postponing a portion of it. “You know, I can always finish this degree and go back to studying the Vedas. In fact, I intend to use the next four years to just revise and re-revise everything I learnt in the pathshala,” he says. “One of my seniors, who is my inspiration, and who is writing his chartered accountancy exams and still attending an advanced pathshala, urged me not to leave my Vedic studies because it was a rare skill.”

But his cloistered upbringing notwithstanding, Sathya has also subscribed to the American dream that infuses so many Indian schools and engineering colleges. “I think I’d like to go there, if at least for a few years, to maybe do a master’s or a PhD, or to work,” he says. He freely admits that it’s mostly driven by curiosity: “I just want to see what the big deal is, why people are so keen to go there. I don’t see myself settling down there at all.”

“No, no, don’t you even think about settling down there,” Shanti inserts hotly, at this point. So what, then, is her own ambition for her son? “Oh, I don’t think I have one. I mean, of course, like everybody, I want to see him successful, to see him be a well-dressed executive in a company,” she says. “But when I was a child, I grew up without the burden of specific expectations, and I want the same for him. We put him in this school because we wanted to introduce him to this line of Vedic thought and work. But we also want him to judge for himself how he likes it, and we want him to do what he wants to do. That is our hope for him.”

24 SUNDAY, MAY 17, 2009, DELHI ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

IPL vs ELECTIONS

Cricket, not politics, is top scorer on TV The decline in viewership of news channels is surprising given that the country is currently in the last lap of the general election

B Y P RIYANKA M EHRA priyanka.m@livemint.com

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I

ndian viewers have voted overwhelmingly for cricket.

And the loser has been politics.

A study, done over a fourweek period beginning 5 April and ending 2 May, shows that the Indian Premier League (IPL), the Twenty20 (T20) cricket tournament currently being played in South Africa, attracted the most television viewers in the first three weeks after its launch compared with the previous week.

The most badly hit were news channels whose viewership fell 33% in the three weeks ended 2 May compared with the previous week—before the IPL was under way.

The decline in viewership of news channels is surprising given that the country is currently in the last lap of the general election. Voting started on 16 April and the process will end on 13 May. The results will be declared on 16 May. While IPL is being broadcast

by MAX, the movies and events channel of Multi Screen Media Pvt. Ltd, the elections are being covered in detail by at least 65 news channels across the country.

Also Read IPL Team Analysis The study, conducted by Maxus, one of the media buying agencies of GroupM India Pvt. Ltd, shows that in the week ended 11 April, news channels had a total viewership share of 3.3%. This declined to 2.9% and 2.6% in the next two weeks, respectively

Star attraction: Ashish Nehra of Delhi Daredevils (left) celebrates after the dismissal of Kolkata Knight Riders’ Brad Hodge (right) during the Indian Premier League Twenty20 cricket tournament match in Johannesburg on 10 May. and by the end of the fourth week, it had fallen to 2.3%.

Elections are crucial for news channels in terms of viewership as well as advertising revenue.

A senior executive at a news channel, however, said that the decline in viewership had not affected advertising revenue. “The revenue for news channels over the past month and a half has seen more than significant growth. If that is an indication, certainly IPL has had no effect on the news genre,” said Barun Das, chief executive officer, Zee News Ltd. Channels in other genres

such as Hindi general entertainment, the biggest on the television in terms of both viewers and advertising revenue, and Hindi movies also lost viewers to IPL. The viewership share of Hindi general entertainment channels declined from 23.3% in the week ended 11 April to 20.1% in the week ended 2 May, the study shows.

Likewise, the viewership for Hindi movies dropped from 6.5% to 5.8%. Music and kids channels also saw a decline in their viewership share during this period.

And MAX has been the direct beneficiary of others’ loss.

The channel’s viewership share grew at least 40% during this period. In the week ended 11 April when there was no IPL, MAX’s viewership share was only 3.5%. It rose to 6% in the first week of IPL, to 15% in the second week and to 17.2% in the third week.

IPL’s television rating points (TRPs), which indicate the total percentage of viewers watching a programme at a given point in time, this year have been lower than the previous year. According to TAM Media Research, the Mumbaibased audience measurement agency, IPL’s average TRPs in

the first two weeks of its launch dipped from 4.81% in 2008 to 4.32% this year.

“The cumulative reach of IPL is higher this year, but the overall rating has dropped and this is true for the rest of the genres, too, because of the fragmentation in media...there is just a lot more to choose from even in comparison to last year,” said Priti Murthy, national director, Insights at Maxus.

The data for the study was collated during peak cricket viewing hours across cable and satellite households with viewers above 15 years of age.

CAPITAL CALCULUS | ANIL PADMANABHAN

IPL: it is just not cricket any more N

To read all of Anil Padmanabhan’s earlier columns, go to www.livemint.com/capitalcalculus

IPL will take place in South Africa right in the middle of its national and provincial elections, scheduled to take place on 22 April

ever before has a sporting event spilled over into the national discourse with such passion as it has with the decision to move the second edition of the Indian Premier League (IPL) out of India to South Africa. But then that is what cricket does to Indians, the most ardent followers of a game played by just 10 nations.

For those who are not familiar, IPL is the latest version of instant cricket where two sides play 20 overs a side, referred to as the Twenty20 format.

However, in all the namecalling and finger-pointing that ensued after security concerns forced the league out of India, a bunch of facts have been overlooked or rather escaped the public eye. Not surprising because passion has clearly clouded reason. But as the facts suggest, it may well be time to look at the issue pragmatically.

Firstly, IPL will take place in South Africa right in the middle of its national and provincial elections, scheduled to take place on 22 April.

Four days prior to that, the tournament will start and since election day is a holiday,

two IPL matches will be played that day. So much for the rhetoric of how IPL would be a distraction for the general election due to begin on 16 April.

To be sure, the general election in South Africa cannot be compared with India’s, especially in the light of this country’s vulnerability with respect to terror strikes—similar to the one sponsored from across the border that ravaged Mumbai for three days last year. Yet, the fact is that for the ruling African National Congress, IPL would come as a perfect populist offering ahead of the elections that will not only provide entertainment but also generate an estimated $100 million (Rs505 crore) of investment—a perfect stimulus without any costs to the state exchequer and with dramatic multiplier effects; and unlikely to invite any censure from a model electoral code of conduct.

Which brings us to the second point. While a lot of the attention is focused on the bigticket franchise and player recruitment deals, what one overlooks is the ecosystem of economic opportunity that the league created, both in the formal and informal sectors.

Ranging from the ingenious and enterprising efforts of a league of people, operating informally, to paint a team’s colours on the faces/bodies of fans for a nominal fee to providing for the massive infrastructure—such as catering, housekeeping, security, chairs, parking and enclosures within and outside the stadium.

The decision to shift the second edition of IPL shows it’s the business of cricket that will dictate events, not the sport.

According to an official associated with the league, just this business of providing infrastructure would generate an income of anywhere between Rs50 lakh to Rs1 crore to suppliers in a span of six-eight weeks. This year, more so than last, with the economy rapidly heading south, vendors had looked forward to the bonanza. Now, their counterparts in South Africa will enjoy this stimulus.

Third, as Mint pointed out in its lead edit on 26 March, the latest episode in the two-year history of IPL is testing new notions of nationality and forcing a paradigm shift in the business model. Alongside, IPL has also brought in the notion of portability of what was

otherwise a primarily Indian tournament.

This is something similar to, say, what happened to golf with respect to the European tour. Initially, it was restricted to Europe; 20 years ago, it moved to Asia, later to Australia and then to South America as the popularity of the game spread, while it continues to be called the European tour.

This portability was actually, in principle, always available to IPL as it is a private tournament with the blessings of the official body of international and Indian cricket. So, what a private club does is its own business. But not if it is the “rebel” Indian Cricket League, which beat IPL to being the first Twenty20 club tournament in India, as it is not officially recognized.

Further, ahead of the second edition of IPL, the authorities extended the catchment area for the clubs to include, if it so happened, neighbouring countries—in this case Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and, possibly, Pakistan—coincidentally all the countries where cricket is equally popular.

In other words, the game would have moved out of India

at some stage, once the format got popular. What the face-off between the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) and the government did was to force this move in the second year itself.

Which then leads us to our final and probably the most important point from an avid cricket fan’s point of view. The decision to move the tournament has made clear that it is not sport that will dictate events; instead, it will be the business of cricket.

Given the stakes—BCCI just renegotiated the broadcast rights for an astounding Rs8,200 crore—and the financial independence of the board, IPL could not only afford to walk out on the government, but also ignore thousands of cricket fans and local business in the country.

So, it is now official: Cricket is business and not sport.

Anil Padmanabhan is a deputy managing editor of Mint and writes every week on the intersection of politics and economics.

Comments are welcome at capitalcalculus@livemint.com

25 SUNDAY, MAY 17, 2009, DELHI ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

COALITION POLITICS CAPITAL CALCULUS | ANIL PADMANABHAN

Best chance for a third front kind of coalition A To read all of Anil Padmanabhan’s earlier columns, go to www.livemint.com/capitalcalculus

It is a huge gamble for the Congress because it is a popular belief that no one can take national power without managing to win a majority in one of the key northern states, UP, Bihar or MP

week in politics, they say, is a long time. This cliché fits the Indian context perfectly. One week has all but reversed the initial electoral contours and once again levelled the playing field, as it were. To put it another way, it is once again a very open election.

Even as the faction-ridden Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was patching up its internal differences, the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) suffered a severe jolt when the Congress, its main constituent, decided, after much prevarification, to part ways with its key allies, the Samajwadi Party in Uttar Pradesh and the Rashtriya Janata Dal in Bihar.

It is a huge gamble for the Congress because it is a popular belief in Indian politics that no one can take national power without managing to win a majority of the seats in one of the key northern states—Uttar Pradesh, Bihar or Madhya Pradesh. Between them, they account for 149 seats, which

is a quarter of the total strength of the Lok Sabha and a little over half of what it takes to manage a majority in the Lower House.

Automatically, what would have been two-cornered and three-cornered contests will now become contests with multiple contenders. In this complex game, the outcome will be determined by how caste and wealth come together. The immediate beneficiaries of this falling out are going to be Nitish Kumar in Bihar, Mayawati in Uttar Pradesh and the BJP in Madhya Pradesh.

At the same time, it is increasingly becoming apparent that the Left, too, is facing problems.

Not only has it had issues deciding its contestants, even insiders are now conceding that it is not in a position to retain the 61 seats that it had in the 14th Lok Sabha. A diminished Left would be disastrous for the prospects of the so-called Third Front—a non-Congress, non-BJP alliance.

Without the numbers it will find

it difficult to wield influence and, more importantly, keep the flock together in the 15th Lok Sabha if the electoral verdict is splintered with no clear winner.

No wonder, then, that several regional parties are not willing to commit unequivocally to any of the three political formations.

Some in fact, such as the Biju Janata Dal (BJD), broke away from the NDA after it severed its statelevel alliance with the BJP, but has not hitched up with the Third Front—despite some photo-ops with key Left leaders.

If it is indeed an open election, then what does it augur for the next government at the Centre?

If neither the BJP nor the Congress are able to make substantive gains from their current numbers or at the worst retain them, then their position on the high table will be determined by non-Congress, non-BJP constituents. If the latter is made up largely of the Left-sponsored Third Front, then an alliance

with the BJP can be safely ruled out. An in-principle association with the Congress is not an issue, what would be at stake is the construct, and the individual roles that will have to be assigned. From all indications so far, by design or accident, at this stage it looks as though a Third Front kind of coalition stands the best chance of assuming power at the Centre.

Strangely Indian industry, if some of the recent meetings between top company chiefs and political parties together with the political grapevine are to be believed, is plunking, or at least not averse, to a Third Front. Very counter-intuitive, given the rash of analyst reports, which see this as the worst option that could lead to policy paralysis and maybe even flight of foreign capital.

All the more since some critics have harshly even dubbed it a “mad exercise”.

But maybe that is what Indian industry needs at this point of time—a brief breather in the progress of the liberalization juggernaut. The global meltdown has restricted access to foreign capital, the plunge in the domestic stock markets have ensured that this route for raising money is plugged and cautious domestic banks are not willing to fund any projects where they are either not able to understand the risk or perceive it to be a potential threat to their balance sheets. Strapped

for funds, companies, including the top industrial houses in the country, are technically targets for a takeover; multinational companies, despite the global recessionary outlook, still possess deep-enough pockets to pose a potential threat.

Neither the Congress nor the BJP, which have proved their reformist credentials, have the ideological wherewithal to apply the brakes, unless they are able to justify it on the basis of extenuating circumstances. The Third Front led by the Left will not be similarly handicapped; especially with the Left making it a point to include in its manifesto the point that it would strive to prevent any backdoor foreign direct investment.

While at the end of the day, it is the 714 million citizens of India who will elect the next government, there is no denying the role that wealth plays in shaping the political options that are offered to the people.

Seen from this perspective, the emergence of the Third Front may not be a random occurrence, instead there is method in the madness.

ing the country. It would, however, be presumptuous to think that this is a select preserve. To put it differently, the concept of a stable coalition is only still evolving.

Political parties are slowly beginning to accept the import of the fractured mandate turned in year after year.

According to Election Commission data, the number of state political parties has grown steadily from 30 in 1996 to about 48 at present. Clearly, national is not out, but regional is definitely in, forcing a rethink. After all, prior to 2004, the Congress would never even have considered a coalition arrangement.

It must be borne in mind that the two coalitions led by the BJP and the Congress were able to run their full course of 60 months each thanks to the political glue that held them together.

While the NDA was made up of 13 constituents at the time of its formation in 1998, a number since reduced to eight, the UPA was formed in 2004 with 13 members as well.

In the case of the NDA, the fact was that the BJP held the most number of seats and the leadership of Atal Bihari Vajpayee held the coalition together. In the case of the UPA, it was the outside support extended by the Left parties as well as the behind-the-

scene work done by its chairperson Sonia Gandhi. The minute Left parties withdrew support to the coalition and forced the trust vote on 22 July, the UPA was on shaky ground. It had to cut all kinds of unpalatable political deals to save the government.

The onset of elections has probably spared it the blushes.

At the same time, it is apparent that a relatively stable political coalition is no guarantee against bad policy.

The security situation has worsened, partly because of the ineptitude of two administrations, most dramatically in the first decade of the millennium.

Similarly, the worst slippage in fiscal performance—wherein the government has accumulated an unprecedented amount of debt—has happened during the tenure of the UPA and despite the presence of the most reformoriented prime minister at the helm.

Ironically, some of the most significant reform efforts were undertaken by a non-BJP, nonCongress dispensation. One obvious example is the dismantling of the administered price regime for petroleum products undertaken by the United Front government. The process of unravelling this measure was begun by the NDA and taken forward by the UPA. All this is not to make a case for political anarchy at the Centre under the aegis of some politically headstrong regional satrap at the helm. It is just that the whole is always greater than the sum of the parts. The Indian electorate recognized this long ago. It is time for political parties, too, to acknowledge the fact.

Anil Padmanabhan is a deputy managing editor of Mint and writes every week on the intersection of politics and economics.

Comments are welcome at capitalcalculus@livemint.com

Anil Padmanabhan is a deputy managing editor of Mint and writes every week on the intersection of politics and economics.

Comments are welcome at capitalcalculus@livemint.com

CAPITAL CALCULUS | ANIL PADMANABHAN

The concept of a stable coalition is still evolving Given that the country is still a month away from the first phase of polling, it’s surprising that the Third Front has generated so much apprehension

T

he response to the formal launch of the so-called Third Front on 12 March in Dobbespet, Karnataka, has been anything but enthusiastic.

The last time that a non-Congress, non-Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) coalition came to power at the Centre was in 1996, and the experiment lasted 18 months under two prime ministers—H.D. Deve Gowda and I.K. Gujral.

The lukewarm response stems partly from a sense of déjà vu over the coming together of political parties containing some familiar faces associated with that short-lived political experiment. That’s probably understandable.

Yet, given that the country is still a month away from the first phase of polling, it’s surprising that the Third Front has generated so much apprehension.

Voting patterns show that a Third Front government will require the support of the Congress party.

All the more because it is the only political combination in the country exhibiting some momentum; after managing to string together a combination of regional parties, it continues to chip away at the constituents of the Congress-led United Pro-

gressive Alliance (UPA) and the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA).

So far, it has been more successful with NDA partners while receiving ambiguous signals from some members of the UPA. In contrast, the BJP and the Congress come across as listless and at odds with several coalition partners.

This clearly begs the question: Does the Third Front have a realistic chance of forming the next government at the Centre?

Theoretically yes, but practically it all depends upon how the two largest national parties, the Congress and the BJP, fare in the elections.

At the moment, between them, they account for about 50% of the votes polled and nearly half the number of seats in the Lok Sabha. A bad performance by the BJP will completely eliminate the prospects of an NDA government. At the same time, if the Congress underperforms, it will not only set the stage for the break-up of the UPA, but also enhance Third Front chances substantially.

Either way, going by existing voting patterns, it is clear that a Third Front government will require the support—either from within or outside—of the Congress party. It is very unlikely that the Congress party would opt to be inside a government as a junior partner.

At question is the longevity of such a coalition, the basis for the disquiet generated by the Third Front.

At the same time, it is important to keep in mind that the political debate has moved forward significantly. After nearly 13 years of back-to-back coalition experiments, this form of governance is now a permanent part

of the political lexicon.

Now, the debate is whether a stable coalition can only be led either by the Congress or the BJP—especially after the coalition led by each party completed its full tenure.

Undoubtedly, a stable polity would be key in managing the economic and security risks fac-

PARAS JAIN/MINT

26 SUNDAY, MAY 17, 2009, DELHI ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

TECHNOLOGY THIS ELECTIONS FINE PRINT | P.N. VASANTI

Polling goes hi­fi: digital media and India’s election M To read all of PN Vasanti’s earlier columns, go to www.livemint.com/fineprint

Technology’s role in the US election has further endorsed its relevance in India’s own election dialogue

uch has been written about US Presidentelect Barack Obama’s use of digital campaigning and fund-raising that involved YouTube, blogs, social networking sites, online petitions, Google and Yahoo groups and more conventional email lists to build and sustain support.

In India, in one sense, hi-tech election campaigns aren’t necessarily new.

Telugu Desam Party supremo and former Andhra Pradesh chief minister N. Chandrababu Naidu was known as India’s most “techsavvy chief minister” and has used both text messaging (SMS) and the Internet for campaigning.

Others who have extensively used technologies, especially cellphones, include Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi, and former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee of the Bharatiya Janata Party during the 2004 Lok Sabha campaign.

I still vividly recall his voice messages as well as the fact that all of that fancy campaigning didn’t stop the BJP from losing power as its “India Shining” campaign missed connecting with many voters.

Despite the surge in mobile phone usage, so-called hi-tech campaigns are now important

but not sufficient in winning elections. This is primarily because the so-called information revolution in India still has a small voter base.

While India is estimated to have some 12 million Internet subscribers, I suspect that there are easily some 40 million people online of which 25 million are active on a weekly basis. And some 325 million mobile phone users.

While only about 20% of the Internet user base in India is from non-urban areas, mobile

phones are making fast inroads into rural India.

However, access to the Internet and its advantages are still largely restricted to the educated and the elite in urban areas, a group that doesn’t yet represent the majority of India’s electorate.

Looking back to the last Lok Sabha elections in 2004, one of the reasons that cost the BJP dearly was an urban–rural divide.

A similar fate was in store for Naidu’s technology-led campaign in Andhra Pradesh that didn’t go

down well with the “real India” that was focused on realities such as rising farmer suicides.

But the limited impact of the Web in the campaigning, nothwithstanding BJP chief ministerial candidate V.K. Malhotra’s much-touted website in Delhi elections, doesn’t mean that the Internet won’t become a political tool for elections and help in raising political participation in the near future.

While the technology is still new, especially to many of India’s geriatric politicians, as well as to most of the Indian voters, it is important to keep in mind that a very large percentage, nearly 70%, of the Indian population is under 35.

It is this critical group of young voters, combined with sustained Internet growth and increased connectivity in India, that points to the Web, be it through computers or through mobile phones, coming to play a much greater role in future elections.

Realizing this trend, some of these avenues are already being explored as parties and the media prepare for the 2009 Lok Sabha elections.

Significant campaign budgets are being allocated for the Internet and phone-based promotions, including those that use cellphones

to mobilize both voters and party faithfuls.

What made Obama’s campaign unique wasn’t just the use of such technology, but how online tools were used to coordinate offline action and how precise and persistent messages with clear calls for action, be it fund-raising or mobilizing activities, got significant results.

India’s politicians are still just about getting their arms and heads around using television effectively and, in recent weeks, radio where political ads have been approved.

Notions of interactivity through social networking and informal discussions using blogs could, over time, provide a compelling platform to involve voters, especially young voters, in the political discourse.

There is already a nascent effort by non-partisan groups with initiatives such as Jaago re! One Billion Votes and India Banao! are visible.

These initiatives are using the Internet and mobile technologies for increasing voter registration, raising awareness about voting rules and procedures, providing periodic checks on electoral rolls, and acting as the source of election related news, providing both online and offline opportunities for young people to get involved.

The vital role of the Internet and mobile technologies in the 2008 US election has further endorsed the interest and relevance of these technologies in India’s own election processes and dialogue. Hopefully, this e-democracy will emerge as a channel to enhance political accessibility, increase citizen dialogue and build more expansive participation in our political processes.

CYBER THREAT

New media can trump poll code of conduct Election Commission lacks the tools to check online campaigning during the 48 hours before end of polling

B Y R UHI T EWARI ruhi.t@livemint.com

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T

he Election Commission (EC) says it is yet to find a way to check violation of its model code of conduct by political parties or candidates using the relatively new medium of the Internet, particularly to work around rules that ban campaigning 48 hours before the close of the poll.

This becomes significant given that political parties are ramping up their presence on the Internet to target the estimated 50 million users, located largely in urban pockets in the country.

To be sure, the code—which seeks to keep a check on the activities of political parties and candidates during the time between the notification of polling and its conclusion—is merely a guideline and not legally binding. It tries to ensure, among other things, that no party or candidate is allowed to indulge in activities that might create hatred, communal tension or incite violence.

“We are keeping an eye on the

Internet...but we feel that, as of now, it is technically not feasible to control this medium. We do not have any solution to regulate this medium just yet,” said S.Y. Quraishi, election commissioner, according to whom, given these limitations, the Internet can be used for campaigning even during the 48 hours before the close of the poll.

In fact, the Internet has become a crucial campaign medium with several politicians, including the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) prime ministerial aspirant L.K. Advani blogging actively and most political parties posting their views and agenda on their websites.

While parties such as the Congress and the BJP are using official websites for canvassing, including audio-visual components, the Communist Party of India (Marxist), or CPM, recently launched an exclusive campaign website. Social networking websites such as Orkut and Facebook have also become popular tools for political propaganda.

The EC will, however, keep a tab on bulk messaging through mobile phones. “For other forms of technology and communication devices, we are trying to keep some check. For instance, we ensure that bulk messaging through mobile phones is shown as part of election expenditure by political parties or leaders. If bulk messages do go out, we trace the expenditure involved through cellular op-

erators,” Quraishi said.

But there’s no ban yet on sending text messages from mobile phones on polling day.

Ironically, apart from the Internet and mobile phones, even prohibition of publicity in print media is left out in the Representation of People’s Act, the country’s electoral law. “While there is a specific law prohibiting publicity through the electronic media in 48 hours before the closing of polls, there is no such law for print media and hence, even on poll day, we end up getting political advertisements in newspapers,” Quraishi said.

Even billboards with political advertisements remain intact on polling day, and even after polling... Advertisements on the Internet are similar to this. And the voter has a choice to block it out and not visit the particular website. We need to go by the spirit and not by the letter and I don’t think cyber campaigning goes against the spirit of the code,” said Jagdeep Chhokar, founder member of the Association of Democratic Reforms, a non-governmental organization that works in the area of improving and strengthening democracy and governance in the country.

According to senior Congress leader and Lok Sabha member V. Kishore Chandra Deo, the restrictions are primarily to avoid violence and encourage free and fair voting. “Even now there is no ban on a candidate personally ap-

proaching a voter or visiting his house (during those 48 hours). Of course, technology has made these contacts easier through cyber space, at least in some constituencies. But I do not think it has made the code redundant.”

However, former chief election commissioner T.S. Krishnamurthy does believe that technology has in fact changed things. “I agree that technology has added a new dimension to the issue of the model code of conduct. Perhaps, we need to have an all-party meet to device a code that can take this into account... However, even now, if there is any specific complaint about a blog or website, the EC does take action. The Internet does pose to be a problem but it is not an insurmountable one. Perhaps the EC can have specific observers to keep an eye on the net.”

Television channels owned by political parties prove to be another grey area. Even though they, too, are bound by the model code of conduct, questions are often raised about the fairness of some parties having the advantage of constantly airing their views while not giving any airtime to their opponents.

Two TV channels backed by political parties that Mint spoke to maintain that they don’t violate the code since they refrain from airing political ads 48 hours before closure of polls. They, however, admit that they are under pressure from party bosses not to use the advertisements of political opponents, besides highlighting

news favourable to them.

CPM promoted Kairali TV channel, which had aired the advertisements of the BJP and the Congress in the 2004 general election, has revisited its stance.

“The CPM does not use TV ads for its election campaign,” John Brittas, managing editor of Kairali TV, said. “This time, we decided not to air any ads of any political party.” Asked whether he was under pressure from the party to do so, he said: “The decision was taken by the board of the company (Malayalam Communications Ltd) that runs the channel, not the party.”

But he admitted that there was sharp criticism from the party over the channel’s decision to use the ads of the BJP and the Congress in the last elections.

Another top executive of a TV channel owned by a national party, who didn’t want to be identified, said: “We don’t violate the EC’s code on the 48-hour ban.

There is, of course, pressure from the party not to air the ads of its opponents even though such ads bring us revenues. Also, there is pressure to inject views into news stories and that is a practice as old as politics.”

“Of course, the money and media power of certain political parties gives them an advantage and that is unfair. I remember instances of a channel owned by a political party airing a drama or serial everyday with several episodes till elections, based on incidents in politics but with changed names.

These programmes, even while not taking names, made subtle references to various political leaders and incidents,” said Krishnamurthy.

Liz Mathew and Ullekh N.P. contributed to this story.

POLITICIANS TALK CYBER, USE TECH TO WOO YOUTH With 35 million youths turning 18, politicians have begun turn­ ing to innovative ways of win­ ning their votes, utilizing cam­ paigns across various platforms.

One key strategy has been an initiative to strengthen presence online. A move undoubtedly inspired by the successful Obama online campaign and a realization that Indian urban youth are very much connected.

Both political parties and candi­ dates have, therefore, not only launched official websites but also ventured into blogs and other social networks such as Facebook and Orkut.

But how impressed are the youth? As a part of our series on the hugely important youth vote, Mint tried to ascertain the suc­ cess of these measures by ask­ ing a few representatives of the target group for their verdict.

Featuring Rajneil Kamath, Mani­ sha Vasudev and Monika Kalyani from the YP Foundation, this audio discussion looks at youth perceptions of “politics 2.0”.

They discuss what impact, if any, these online campaigns have had on them, what they feel could be done further and if they feel such measures have succeeded in generating more interest in the 2009 elections.

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27 SUNDAY, MAY 17, 2009, DELHI ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

TRACKING INDIA THROUGH THE ELECTIONS E

lections 2009 weren’t about big national issues. Most voters weren’t worried about the slowdown—rural India was anyway insulated from this—and the nuclear deal, a significant issue on which the outgoing government nearly lost a trust vote in Parliament, wasn’t an issue

that many voters considered relevant.

Regional issues held sway in these elections. In parts of Bihar, for instance, Muslims, a community that had until now voted overwhelmingly in favour of Lalu Prasad’s Rashtriya Janata Dal, seemed to have shifted loyalties to the Janata Dal (United), or JD(U),

because their lives had improved under the current JD(U) government in the state.

To capture trends such as these, Mint’s reporters fanned out across the country. They uncovered a range of issues—some, such as caste equations, old; and others, such as a preference for progressive governments, new.

DEMOGRAPHIC CHANGE

Immigrants issue will be deciding factor in Assam B Y R AJDEEP D ATTA R OY rajdeep.r@livemint.com

························· JORHAT (ASSAM)

M The ‘silent invasion’ of Bangladeshi nationals bothers the people in the state more than education, job scarcity

itali Konwar and Juthika Singha will be voting for the first time on 23 April, the second phase of the Lok Sabha elections in Assam.

Third-year students of Devi Charan Baruah (DCB) Girls’ College, the two are from Sibsagar district neighbouring Jorhat.Konwar and Singha don’t know what they will do after graduating in a region where jobs are scarce. But that or the lack of opportunities for higher education wouldn’t determine which party they vote for.

“We will vote for the party that seriously cracks down on illegal immigration (from Bangladesh) and not use them as vote banks,” says Konwar, who is studying for a bachelor’s degree in economics and the more vocal of the two.

These elections—in two phases on 16 April and 23 April—would be the first in Assam since 2005, when an anonymous mobile phone message and leaflet campaign urging peo-

ple to boycott Bangladeshi people and goods in Dibrugarh and Sibsagar drove thousands of immigrants from the districts.

Konwar and Singha said they had taken part in the 2005 campaign, which was led by the Chiring Chapori Yuva Morcha—a youth organization based in Dibrugarh. “We don’t want our districts to go the same way as Dhuburi and Goalpara (districts in lower Assam, which are immigrant-dominated),” says Singha.

The alleged infiltration of Bangladeshi nationals into Assam is an issue that dates back to the late 1970, when the All Assam Students’ Union (AASU) launched a campaign demanding detection of illegal immigrants, deletion of their names from electoral rolls and their deportation.

Assam, which has 14 Lok Sabha seats, shares a 270km border with Bangladesh. The terrain is such that it cannot be easily fenced or patrolled. People from Bangladesh sneak in through Dhuburi district bordering West Bengal, or through Meghalaya or

the Barak valley, and then work their way up the banks of the Brahmaputra to the upper Assam districts, locals say.

“They settle along the banks of the Brahmaputra, on remote riverine islands and other forsaken places,” says Moushumi Borgohain, a professor and the head of the department of economics at DCB College. “The men pull rickshaws or become labourers while the women work as maids.”

It is widely believed that the demographics of districts such as Dhuburi and Goalpara have changed because of the phenomenon. Even districts such as Kokrajhar, Morigaon and Nagaon are believed to be immigrant-dominated now.

Recent unrest in Barpeta, Nalbari and Darrang districts indicate that these districts too are headed that way, according to Samujjal Bhattacharya, a veteran leader of the AASU. “Everyone but the Congress government (in Assam) acknowledges that of the 26 million people in Assam, as many as six million are illegal Bangladeshi im-

INDRANIL BHOUMIK/MINT

Opposing infiltration: (from left) Moushumi Borgohain, Juthika Singha and Mitali Konwar, with (on her right) Barun Borgohain, retired head of department of agronomy, Assam Agricultural University. migrants… We are facing a silent invasion and no political party is bothered,” says Bhattacharya, who’s now turned an adviser to the organization.

Dhiren Bezboruah, foundereditor of The Sentinel newspaper and a former president of the Editors’ Guild of India, says migrants would create a “Greater Bangladesh” in Assam if they were not stopped from entering Indian territory immediately.

“Effectively, the border has shifted towards India thanks to the takeover of districts in lower Assam,” adds Bezboruah, who blames both the Congress party and the opposition Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) for the border not being sealed.

The AGP, which has ruled Assam for two terms, is an offshoot of 1970s campaign waged by AASU against the alleged infiltration. The party, then composed mainly of students, came to power for the first time by winning the December 1985 Assam assembly elections.

Resentment against infiltration from across the border has continued to simmer.

“If it carries on like this, in 10 years an illegal Bangladeshi immigrant will become the CM (chief minister) of Assam,” says Bhattacharya, the AASU leader, who vows to mobilize young first-time voters to fight for the state’s future.

elections in West Bangal last year, the state government had decided to go slow with land acquisition in 2008, admitted Abdur Rezzak Mollah, West Bengal’s minister for land and land reforms. But he declined to comment on why the state government was trying to start land acquisition ahead of the general elections.

“The fresh drive to acquire land is in line with the Left Front’s decision to use industrialization and employment generation as key poll planks for the Lok Sabha elections. The decision (by the Left Front) was taken after Tata Motors (Ltd) announced its decision to move

its (small car) plant from Singur,” said an official of the land and land reforms department, who did not want to be named because the minister of his department had refused to answer the same question.

In several public meetings in the run-up to the general election, West Bengal’s chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee and commerce and industries minister Nirupam Sen have said that the state government wouldn’t give up its drive for employment generation through industrialization despite strong resistance from the Trinamool Congress, the main opposition party in West Bengal.

AGAINST THE CODE

Bengal plan to acquire land earns EC’s censure B Y R OMITA D ATTA romita.d@livemint.com

························· KOLKATA

T The commission has asked the govt to wait for the polls to end before it tries to acquire 17,000 acres

he Election Commission has spiked the West Bengal government’s proposal to start acquisition of farmland in four districts—Burdwan, West Midnapore, Purulia and Howrah—ahead of the general election.

The state government is looking to acquire close to 17,000 acres in these four districts for industrial projects that it plans to set up, and had sought the commission’s permission to issue the preliminary notification for starting the process of acquisition. Such notifications are issued under Section 4(1) of the Land Acquisition Act, 1894.

Companies that have proposed to invest in West Bengal were getting impatient, Subrata Gupta, managing director of West Bengal Industrial Development Corp., or WBIDC, had told the commission, explaining the state government’s urgency to start acquisition of land ahead of elections.

The decision to acquire land in these districts was taken long

ago by the state cabinet and the allotment of land had been announced to the investors and the public as well, he added.

But the commission said the proposed land acquisition couldn’t start until after the general election in view of the model code of conduct, that all political parties and governments are expected to abide by ahead of election.

“Cabinet decisions are taken in closed door meetings. But once notifications are issued, people come to know about the projects (for which land is to be acquired) and how they will benefit from them. We cannot allow section 4 notifications to be issued before the election,” N.K. Sahana, joint chief electoral officer of West Bengal told Mint.

WBIDC’s Gupta said the corporation will continue to acquire land for which notifications have already been issued.

“We wouldn’t waste time because of the elections.”

The West Bengal government has been struggling against local resistance to acquire farmland for industrial projects.

Protests by farmers against

land seizure have forced the state government to abandon several projects such as the proposed chemical hub in Nandigram and DLF Ltd’s 4,840-acre township in Dankuni near Kolkata.

Following the ruling Left Front’s setback in panchayat

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28 SUNDAY, MAY 17, 2009, DELHI 째 WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

29 SUNDAY, MAY 17, 2009, DELHI ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

ECONOMY PLANK

Sri Lanka is now distant from Sriperumbudur

Touching a chord: PMK candidate A.K. Moorthy campaigning in Sriperumbudur’s Mugalivakkam township.

B Y S AMANTH S UBRAMANIAN samanth.s@livemint.com

························· riperumbudur, Tamil Nadu: A short distance before the Rajiv Gandhi Memorial, on the gleaming Chennai-Bangalore highway, a right turn transitions without warning into a rutted, small town road.

On the corner of that road stands V. Suresh’s vegetable shop, a dark, narrow, thatched space that is the polar opposite of his workplace five months ago: Sriperumbudur’s sleek, modern Hyundai Motor India Ltd (HMIL) factory.

As a level III technician on the cusp of confirmation, Suresh was earning Rs6,000 per month, the vision of a doubled paycheque within reach. “Then, a day before Christmas, around 250 of us were told that we were being laid off because of the bad economy,” Suresh, still wearing a grimespotted dark-blue Hyundai Tshirt, said. HMIL laid off a total of 2,000 temporary workers in December. “In February, with nothing else to do, I started this shop.”

Touching a chord: PMK candidate A.K. Moorthy campaigning in Sriperumbudur’s Mugalivakkam township. Samanth Subramanian / Mint In Suresh’s game effort to spot the silver lining—“I was lucky even to get that job in the first place, because the factories here don’t hire too many locals”—is a small sign of the changes that Sriperumbudur has witnessed in the last decade, and the consequent shift in priorities.

Before 1999, Sriperumbudur’s claim to national renown rested, in a sense, with the memorial, a tidy park with pillars and bas-reliefs built on the spot where, campaigning in 1991 for the Congress party candidate Mar-

S

gatham Chandrasekhar, Gandhi was assassinated by a Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) suicide bomber.

Over the last three months, the Sri Lankan army has moved within a hair’s breadth of crushing the LTTE, and the plight of Tamil civilians stranded in the war zone has clawed its way on to the front pages of Tamil Nadu’s vernacular press, creating prime grist for the state parties’ pro-Tamil electoral mills.

One might have expected to hear the political echoes here, in a town that first shot to national fame on the back of the LTTE’s most political act on Indian soil.

But this election season, economic concerns are trumping abstract political issues. A decade ago, Sriperumbudur was an agricultural town, where the only employer without a farm, as one resident put it half-seriously, was the Coromandel Country Club.

Today, it is an industrial hub of technology parks and special economic zones, home to multinational manufacturers such as Nokia, Hyundai, Saint-Gobain, Motorola and Ford.

Politically, the keenest shift in Sriperumbudur has lain in how the Congress has completely yielded this constituency, rich in symbolic significance, to its regional partners. The last Congress candidate to run in Sriperumbudur was K. Jayakumar, in 1998; he lost heavily, polling only 9.33% of the votes. In the four elections beginning 1996, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) candidate has won thrice, but that was prior to delimitation.

Now the Sriperumbudur constituency—no longer a reserved one—has been augmented by parts of south Chennai and parts of Kanchipuram. It portends a heated contest, then, that the

leading candidates are the member of Parliament (MP) from south Chennai and a former MP from Kanchipuram. Respectively, these are the DMK’s T.R. Baalu, the Union minister for shipping, road transport and highways, and the Pattali Makkal Katchi’s (PMK) A.K. Moorthy, a former Union minister of state for railways.

Campaigning recently in a township named Mugalivakkam, Moorthy rode a tempo accessorized with bunting and loudspeakers through narrow streets.

His back still ached from the previous day’s canvassing, and he was liberally coated with pain balm. Next to him, the speakers hollered out messages such as: “A.K. Moorthy is the railways, the railways are A.K. Moorthy.”

The PMK has staunchly pushed the Sri Lankan Tamil issue—and the DMK’s alleged letdown of the Tamils—into the centre of electoral rhetoric. But the recorded speech on Moorthy’s campaign got to it only after going through a raft of economic and development bullet points: jobs, roads, even a public wedding hall.

In his conversations with journalists, Moorthy did not even mention Sri Lanka. He stayed resolutely on an economic plank, going into detailed plans for the new international airport scheduled to come up within the constituency’s borders, for a system of check dams to capture drinking water, and for a new railway line.

Sriperumbudur’s industrialization, Moorthy said, has not benefited the locals at all. “First, land has been bought from the poor, to be given to these companies, for prices that are too low. Some of the poor don’t even have title deeds to their land,” he said. “Then, the companies say

that they will provide work, but they don’t. A maximum of 5% of the jobs in these factories go to locals, and maybe 20% to people from Tamil Nadu. The rest go to people from outside the state.”

Moorthy wants to push companies to give a higher proportion of jobs—even as high as 50%—to locals, and he wants to suspend land transactions for 10 years, time enough to issue accurate title deeds to everybody.

And he promises he will attend to these tasks: “Elect T.R. Baalu,” the loudspeakers say on his behalf, “and he will get on a plane and go back to Delhi. A. K. Moorthy will stay with you”.

The industrialization of Sriperumbudur has, thus far, seemed a relatively smooth process, devoid of the attendant complications of, say, Singur in West Bengal. And indeed, its residents admit to certain benefits: roads have improved, rents for houses have gone up and scrap metal businesses have enriched their owners. “But there is so much progress on one side of the road,” said Suhasini Frederick, editor of a local fortnightly publication called Sriperumbudur News. “On the other side, things are just as bad as 30 years ago.”

The township of Sriperumbudur, with its factories and technology parks, has a voter base of 165,000, according to the office of the chief electoral officer of the state. The constituency as a whole, with villages that have no contact with any technology park, has 1.19 million voters.

Some villages, such as Panchalapattu, still struggle for drinking water.

In a village called Villaipakkam, a few people have jobs at the Sipcot (State Industries Promotion Corp. of Tamil Nadu Ltd) park, but they find it difficult to get there because there are no

buses,” Frederick said. “How do you get to the main road from the village? From the main road to the Sipcot entrance? There isn’t a health centre. These won’t cost even half as much as the new airport, but they haven’t been done.”

The two big issues that Moorthy stressed—land and jobs—have a more substantial backstory than he lets on in his explanations. T. Mohanraj, the tehsildar of Sriperumbudur, admitted that the compensation offered for land was too low. “It followed the guideline value rather than the market value, but that is the case everywhere in the country,” he said. “But there also are poor people occupying poromboke land—land belonging by default to the government—and even in these cases, some have been issued title deeds.”

Anecdotal evidence points to both a meteoric rise in land prices since 2000, as well as a significant decline in the last six months. “In 2000, an acre would have gone for Rs1 lakh. Now it may even go for Rs1 crore,” Mohanraj said. But since November, the willingness to purchase land has dipped. Nanjil Suresh, a youth counsellor at the local chapter of the Nehru Yuva Kendra, narrated the story of a friend who bought land for Rs5 lakh six months ago; forced to sell it urgently to finance a wedding last month, he only got Rs4.5 lakh.

Suresh is in a position to testify on youth employment as well.

“Few of them are qualified to work in the extremely technical jobs, it’s true,” he said. “But the companies can undertake to train them, and to keep them on the rolls rather than as temporary workers.” The Nehru Yuva Kendra conducts six-month or one-year vocational training courses, and while these help get “the smaller jobs”, Suresh said, “they are not permanent solutions.”

Like his namesake in the vegetable shop, Suresh also offered a low guesstimate for the proportion of factory workers who are locals: less than 20%. But Rajiv Mitra, HMIL’s deputy general manager for corporate communications, disputed this figure. “I can’t give an exact number, but the proportion of contractual labour from the immediate area is very high—definitely over 50%,” he said. “Why would you not hire a local guy?”

Frederick had an answer to Mitra’s rhetorical question. “The factories prefer to hire people from outside the area because they won’t unionize. The locals can easily strike work and go home, but boys from outside, living in their lodges, can’t give it up so easily,” she said. “And local attempts to unionize will find support from local thugs. Frankly, I support the companies on this one, because they’ve otherwise done so much for the area, changed so many lifestyles, created so many facilities.”

In the electoral fight, Frederick spotted the upper hand for Baalu, despite her contentions that previous DMK MPs had not done enough for Sriperumbudur. “If anybody can do anything, it is Baalu,” she said.

“Hopefully he can see the other side of the road and do something for it. If he wants to, he has the means and the money. The others, even if they want to, won’t have the means or the money. I think the residents of Sriperumbudur recognize that, in one way or another.”

30 SUNDAY, MAY 17, 2009, DELHI ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

BHUBANESWAR DIARY | JOHN ELLIOTT

Patnaik’s fortunes remain binding issue as Orissa wraps up polling COMMENTARY

T

he helicopter landed in one of the most desolate and poorest parts of Orissa’s Puri constituency in the usual swirl of blinding dust that heralds the arrival of top politicians on India’s general election trail.

But that did nothing to deter the enthusiastic welcome of the crowds gathered to see their chief minister at Rulango in Dalang on Monday evening—and the man who alighted from the aircraft had none of the arrogant power-strutting swagger of many Indian politicians.

Instead, Naveen Patnaik, the 62-year-old chief minister of Orissa, emerged as a slightly stooping man with a friendly smile but stern eyes, who carefully kept those around him at a distance, but did so shyly, without causing offence. His smile was genuine as he went to the platform and read out the first part of his speech in the local Oriya language, which he cannot speak easily, and then, apologizing, turned to his more comfortable Hindi. His manner was that of a kindly headmaster addressing an end-of-term pupils’ meeting as he spelt out his government’s successes, rarely raising his voice but receiving cheers at all the right moments.

“Nice to see you again,” he said to me as he walked away from the platform. I asked what his main issues were. “He’ll tell you,” he replied, waving at Pinaki Mishra, the local parliamentary candidate. I reckoned that was one of the longest interviews Patnaik has given to a foreign correspondent. He is famous for saying little and rarely meeting journalists—indeed, rarely meeting anyone outside his small inner political circle.

Almost a recluse in Bhubaneswar, he socializes little and

reportedly even vets guest lists when he spends evenings with his two closest political friends and allies, member of Parliament Jay Panda and Orissa minister A.U. Singh Deo. Once a friend of Jacqueline Onassis and Mick Jagger, Patnaik unexpectedly abandoned a grand and exclusive international jet-setting lifestyle for Orissa politics after the death 12 years ago of his father, Biju Patnaik, a popular politician and former chief minister. Known to his friends as Pappu, he did not seem to have the grit to remain in politics for long. Yet, he now looks likely to break records by winning a third successive term as Orissa’s chief minister, having managed to carve out an image that appeals to the electorate, even though the state has sunk while he has been in power to become India’s poorest, with 39.9% of the people below the poverty line. That is worse, amazingly, than Bihar.

I decided to come to Orissa to write about the general election and the state’s assembly elections (where the second and final stage of voting takes place today) because I thought the sleepy, low-performing state was full of urgent social and other election issues. My list included tribal clashes last year with attacks and killings of Christians, violent demonstrations and deaths over the use of agricultural and tribal land for big steel and other projects such as those planned by Posco, Tata Steel Ltd and L.N. Mittal, plus a growing Naxalite threat (with 29 people killed on Orissa’s first polling day last week). Also on my list, of course, was Patnaik, who unexpectedly broke his Biju Janata Dal’s (BJD) 11-year alliance with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)

last month and who, to quote a journalist friend, “seems to have the state in his grip”.

That seemed a basket of important subjects—religion, land, lawlessness, dynasty, and coalitions—till I spoke to a friend in Bhubaneswar and asked what the issues were.

“Rice politics,” he replied, explaining that much of Patnaik’s popularity is based on having reduced the price of rice to Rs2 a kg for roughly half the state’s 37 million population. “With rice, BJD schemes to get third time lucky,” said a newspaper headline. Now, the Congress and the BJP have been promising to reduce that to Re1.

It is, I thought, the same the world over. Between elections, all sorts of issues grab public and political attention, but when it comes to voting in the next government, it is the price of food in the shops that counts.

Yet, when I arrived in Orissa, I discovered that even though rice is perhaps the determining factor for many of the poor, there are few policy clashes.

“The election is being fought without any issues,” says Sudhir Pattnaik, editor of Samadrushi, an Oriya magazine. “There’s no difference between the parties.”

The BJP has certainly lost ground because of the antiChristian riots at Kandhamal last August, with thousands of Christians still in relief camps, but that is being offset to some extent by criticism of the way Patnaik dumped the party. Past social unrest over big projects does not seem to be an issue, except in the localities affected. Abhaya Sahu, the Communist Party of India (CPI) member who led the anti-Posco movement, has been in jail since last October, but no one seems concerned, even

though the CPI has a seat-adjustment deal with the BJD. And the Naxalite attacks seem to be tolerated, even though the government has allowed the Maoist influence to stretch to 18 districts in recent years.

Instead, the major focus is on Patnaik and whether he can survive and maintain his party’s presence in Parliament without the BJP. He has made many enemies because, behind the kindly exterior, he can be a brutal operator and has sacked at least 10 ministers and a clutch of senior bureaucrats, sometimes for corruption or other misdemeanours.

Despite the need to collect funds on big projects to fund the BJD—and reports of links with some leading businessmen planning big projects—these sackings have enabled Patnaik to build something of a corruptionfree image among the poor. I asked Pyarimohan Mohapatra, a former top bureaucrat who is Patnaik’s main adviser, how they managed to accumulate party finances. “We don’t ask for donations, but I will say thank you if (someone) comes and offers at the time of elections,” he replied, smiling. He claimed this approach had drawn businessmen to the state.

In the assembly, the BJD currently has 61 seats, supported till last month by the BJP’s 32, with the Congress’ 38 leading the opposition. Observers expect the BJD figure to go down because of the break from the BJP, and the consequential split vote that could benefit the Congress. Mohapatra, however, forecasts the BJD will go up to an astonishing 85-93, reducing the BJP to 12-14.

That is partly based on an opinion poll he commissioned before the split, which showed that 79%

of those voting for the BJD-BJP alliance in 2004 were really supporting the BJD and only 21% the BJP. This gave Patnaik the confidence to break away when the BJP and its allied Sangh Parivar organizations became a political embarrassment after the Kandhamal riots.

In the outgoing Parliament, the BJD has 11 representatives while the BJP has seven from the state and the Congress three.

Mohapatra forecasts the BJD will go up to 13 or 14, which will make it a significant though maybe not a major player in deciding which political combine comes to power. He says the BJD will not support any government led by either the Congress (for historic reasons) or the BJP, and will insist on pro-Orissa policies, notably an agreement to boost extremely low royalties paid to the state for iron ore mining.

If, as seems quite possible, the BJD does get somewhere near Mohapatra’s forecasts and wins a third successive term in office in Orissa, Patnaik will have confounded his critics. But then there will be pressure on him to do more to lift the state from the bottom of India’s poverty league.

Formerly with the Financial Times, John Elliott is a Delhibased contributor to Fortune magazine and writes a blog, Riding the Elephant, at http://ridingtheelephant.wordpress.com.

This is the first in a four-part series offering an outsider’s view of the biggest democratic process the world has seen. Next week: Meera Sanyal—the banker who would be MP. Respond to this column at feedback@livemint.com

MUMBAI SOUTH DIARY | JOHN ELLIOTT

Expression of exasperation set to leave a mark COMMENTARY

M

eera Sanyal, the ABNAmro banker running as an independent candidate for Mumbai South that goes to the polls on Thursday, must know that she will not win the Lok Sabha seat—but she tells me, “I already have won”.

And so she has, in the sense that she has made a personal mark in politics, nationally as well as in Mumbai. She has raised the profile of independent candidates and helped to give voice to a groundswell of exasperation with India’s often corrupt and ineffective politicians, as well as raising economic and other local and national issues that the main parties were virtually ignoring.

The exasperation has been expressed most graphically by the six or so slippers and shoes that have been thrown at politicians this month, as well as by a crop of initiatives devoted to improving the way politics operates—for example, the Public Interest Foundation’s Forum for Clean Politics, which is headed by Bimal Jalan, a former Reserve Bank of India governor and now a Rajya Sabha member.

The question now is whether these initiatives will continue to grow after the general election, and have a significant impact on future polls. Sanyal certainly

seems to be planning to continue and sounds as if she is at the start of a new phase in her career.

The 47-year-old daughter of an admiral, she has been country head since the end of 2007 of ABN Amro (now part of Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc.) and is on a sabbatical till the polls are over, when she will return to work if she does not win.

Her family says she has been talking about entering politics for a long time because of a wish to contribute to public life, but it was the 26 November Mumbai terror attacks that made her act. She says she felt directly involved, partly because her ABN Amro office is directly behind the Oberoi (where one of the attacks took place), and especially because Ashok Kapur, founder and chairman of Yes Bank Ltd who originally recruited her into ABN Amro, was among those killed in the hotel.

I walked with her earlier this week around Mumbai South’s Lower Parel area where mills and other factories have closed in recent years. This is a difficult constituency—both for Sanyal and for Milind Deora, the 33-year-old Congress party MP, who is defending his seat.

The boundaries have been significantly redrawn beyond the well-off areas in the south of the

city that elected Deora last time. There are now 1.9 million voters, 35% of whom come from slums and have been represented since 2004 by Deora’s main opponent, Mohan Rawle, a veteran MP for the Maharashtrabased chauvinist Shiv Sena party.

There’s a mood of almost naive euphoria among Sanyal’s small team of volunteers as they sing “we shall overcome”. “Being together is enough of an event,” said one of the helpers, who despaired of the quality of India’s governments. People came to the windows and balcony grills of their blocks of flats to look down as Sanyal called to them through a loud hailer. Some smiled and waved while others looked indifferent.

Known to be personally ambitious in her banking career as well as professionally competent and effective, Sanyal clearly has her eye on something bigger than tramping the streets canvassing for votes. She told me that if she loses, she will contest again in the next general election “and the next and the next and the next”. Some people have suggested to her that she should run for the Maharashtra legislative assembly later this year, but she says she will not do so, though she will encourage others.

Significantly, she does not

rule out joining a political party—“of course not” she replied when I asked her. That answer puts many of the new-style professional independents’ initiatives in perspective: they would become party candidates if they could but, knowing that is unlikely, are making their mark as independents.

Murli Deora, a veteran Mumbai politician and a current Union minister who is Milind Deora’s father, gave me the establishment’s practical reply to such ambitions. He acknowledged that Sanyal is “a successful banker and has a lot to contribute to the country”, but added: “It would be a little difficult to give her a seat straight into Parliament—one would have to wait a little and do some work”.

Deepak Parekh, chairman of HDFC Bank Ltd, who has publicly backed Milind Deora rather than Sanyal, said candidates should be backed by a party, adding, “We need strong national parties to give continuity and stability”.

Sanyal of course does not really disagree with that, but says that “if parties were to practise inner-party democracy, then people like me wouldn’t need to stand as independents”. Put another way, the dynastic and vested-interest links that dictate who is chosen by the main political parties block would-be

new entrants such as Sanyal as well as Captain G.R. Gopinath, the airline entrepreneur who is a candidate in Bangalore, and dancer Mallika Sarabhai who is contesting against L.K. Advani, the Bharatiya Janata Party leader, in Gandhinagar, Gujarat.

When Prime Minister Manmohan Singh visited Mumbai two weeks ago, he said that independent candidates were ‘spoilers’. Many of them probably are, but I wonder if he would like it to be any different.

He must feel more in tune with people like Sanyal than many members of his cabinet, and would have made a perfect independent candidate himself if P.V. Narasimha Rao, the Congress prime minister, had not got to him first in 1991 and made him finance minister.

Formerly with the Financial Times, John Elliott is a Delhibased contributor to Fortune magazine and writes a blog, Riding the Elephant, at http://ridingtheelephant. wordpress.com Respond to this column at feedback@livemint.com

31 SUNDAY, MAY 17, 2009, DELHI ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

WEST BENGAL DIARY | JOHN ELLIOTT

Massive rejection of the CPM, Trinamool to gain COMMENTARY

M

ajor issues literally came pouring out into our path when I went electioneering in the Barrackpur parliamentary constituency of West Bengal with Dinesh Trivedi, the Trinamool Congress candidate, a few days ago.

The apparently massive rejection—I was going to say disenchantment but it is not a strong enough word—of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), or CPM, whose Left Front government has run the state for 32 years, was expressed by many people, especially women, during 3 hours I spent walking around the Amdanga rural area with Trivedi.

“I wish you to win. I want peace and an end to terror,” said Arpita, an 18-year-old student who will be voting for the first time on Thursday, when West Bengal goes into the second of its three election stages. “We want a peaceful election. Here people force us not to vote.” Many others expressed similar views with stories that alleged CPM threatened violence against those who would vote.

I went to West Bengal—as I did earlier in Orissa—to see if votes would be swung by clashes over the socially crucial issue of using agricultural land for industrial development. In Orissa, problems over controversial Posco, Tata and other projects seemed to have little impact in the elections. Here, in West Bengal, however, Tata Motors Ltd’s car factory at Singur, and plans for a chemicals special economic zone (SEZ) at Nandigram play

large, along with localised issues such as demands for a separate Gorkhaland state in the north of West Bengal and police violence against tribals.

This is firstly because, unlike Orissa, these two now-abandoned development projects became, and remain, a primary battleground between the state’s two major political parties—the CPM and the Trinamool. Secondly, Singur and Nandigram showed CPM at its worst when its cadres used force to gain control and to try to force implementation of the projects. Consequently, they have provided a base for wider opposition, especially in rural areas, as was shown by the women of Amdanga.

The open way that people dared to come out of their homes to meet us seemed to illustrate a significant anti-CPM tide. Many Kolkata observers suggested the Left’s 35 Lok Sabha seats in West Bengal (out of a total of 42) will come down by about 15. An official at the CPM headquarters said it would only lose three-five, and a strong supporter said seven. The Trinamool, led by Mamata Banerjee, was tipped to be the main beneficiary, with its Congress ally benefiting less.

I heard many reports, both in Barrackpur and elsewhere, of CPM ballot rigging. Trivedi has done research that shows the party has prepared dual voter lists for this election—he has tabulated evidence of over 8,000 names—despite the introduction of electronic voting. This allegation was supported by others

who said that, when they went to a booth in the past, they were turned away by officials saying “your vote has already been cast”. Other people told me that the CPM can switch perhaps 10% of the votes providing it has about 40% of the locality on its side and controls the bureaucrats in the voting booths. I was also told that two past leaders of the Congress used to be good at counter-fixing, but that they are no longer available.

It could be argued that these issues show that the general election is being fought in Bengal, as elsewhere, on local and not national concerns. That would, however, be wrong because, alongside CPM’s rough and often violent power tactics, there is the crucial national issue of how India can provide land for industrial development without the agricultural poor being deprived of their traditional livelihoods.

What happened at Singur and Nandigram, and in Orissa, underlines the urgent need to repeal the 1894 Land Acquisition Act and replace its powers of compulsory acquisition so that sharecroppers and landless labour, as well as landowners, receive adequate compensation. A way also needs to be found for these stakeholders to have some lasting investment as compensation, which cannot be quickly lost or frittered away, for losing land that has been held for generations. Secondly, governments need to note that society has changed and it is no longer possible to push through disruptive

development projects such as the SEZs that were promoted without adequate policy preparation and then enthusiastically picked up by influential business groups.

There is also a lesson for political parties: you cannot expect easily to take away that which you have given. As Rajat Roy, a local journalist, pointed out to me, it was a misjudgement of CPM to believe that it could compulsorily acquire rich agricultural land from people to whom it had given that land as part of its widely-admired land reforms over the past 30 years.

CPM supporters counter this by saying that it has distributed 30,000 acres under land reforms in recent years, which far outstrips that needed by the projects, and that the government has to use some agricultural land because it accounts for 78% of West Bengal’s land area—far more than in many other states. That may be true, but the Singur and Nandigram land was part of a highly fertile belt that stretched down the state on either side of the Hooghly river.

The first major project on this rich agricultural land was a new town at Rajarhat built about nine years ago on the edge of Kolkata.

This was followed by Tata’s Nano car factory at Singur, which was followed by the SEZ at Nandigram promoted by the Salim group of Indonesia. Rajarhat was built without protest, but Trinanmool’s Banerjee saw Singur as a platform for opposition in 2006. After many months of

secret negotiations with Tatas, she returned to oppose the car project again at the end of 2007 when Nandigram had blown into a focal point for opposition.

Uday Basu, a veteran Statesman journalist, told me that she “cleverly turned the land grab issue into populist politics”. She had—and has—no primary policy agenda but then “hijacked the Left’s old land-for-the-poor policy”.

All this is quite a change for Buddhadeb Bhattacharya, chief minister since late 2000, who became the darling of the West in his early reformist years.

Rudrangshu Mukherjee, an editor at Kolkata’s Telegraph newspaper, remembers that Henry Kissinger likened Bhattacharya to China’s great economic reformer, Deng Xiaoping, when the two met in November 2007.

Kissinger, of course, was nearer the truth than he realized because Bhattacharya clearly thought he would take over land occupied by the rural masses in the style of China’s leaders.

Many people would say that this brought out CPM in its true colours. The voters of West Bengal now have a chance to pass their verdict.

Formerly with the Financial Times, John Elliott is a Delhibased contributor to Fortune magazine and writes a blog, Riding the Elephant, at http://ridingtheelephant.wordpress.com.

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OLD DELHI DIARY | JOHN ELLIOTT

Chandni Chowk’s Muslim minority seeks bigger role COMMENTARY I n a general election dominated by local issues, one of the most personalized contests has been waged in old Delhi’s Chandni Chowk constituency, where voting takes place today. The debate is simple and straightforward—which of two public figures can fix things best to improve the area’s inadequate and dilapidated public services, and which can make a sizeable Muslim community feel cared for?

Is it Kapil Sibal, the 60-yearold member of Parliament (MP) from the seat for the past five years and India’s minister for science and technology? He appears on TV screens almost every night as a leading Congress party spokesman, and has the national clout needed to achieve progress, but is criticized for not caring enough for the constituency.

Or is it 45-year-old Vijendra Gupta, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) candidate, who has for the past two years been chairman of the municipal corporation of Delhi’s (MCD) powerful standing committee, which has extensive executive powers over a conurbation of some 16 million people? He has prowled the Byzantine corridors of city politics so knows how to get things done, but has little track record in Chandni Chowk.

Ideally, they would both win and merge their considerable talents. They’d be a rather good team—the urbane globe-trotting lawyer and national politician who has become one of In-

dia’s most focused and effective science ministers, and the energetic people-savvy urban fixer—but that is not possible.

As I write, the odds are on Sibal—“The Candidate” as he is known by his team, which is credited by observers for running an effective campaign that has outclassed Gupta’s efforts.

He has had a difficult job because the recent redrawing or “delimitation” of constituency boundaries has massively enlarged Chandni Chowk from 400,000 voters, focused in and around Old Delhi’s walled city and the famous Chandni Chowk bazaar-packed thoroughfare, to a much higher total of 1.4m. That has reduced the Muslim population—Congress’s traditional supporters—from 34% of the vote to 14%. The constituency now includes urbanized villages and more modern areas such as Rohini, 12 stations away on the Metro railway where Gupta has been actively involved in local development as the local MCD representative.

For me, as a foreign journalist, the most interesting facet is the old Chandni Chowk area. It is a microcosm of India and in particular reflects the frustrations of India’s Muslim minority that feels it is “just a vote bank”. Talking to a Muslim family in one of the area’s many old havelis, I heard about these frustrations—expressed specially strongly by young people who are becoming better educated and more ambitious and impatient, but who despair of Congress.

“It suits Congress to keep us backward and unrepresented,” said the father, a retired politician. “They think they can then count on our vote”.

There was special frustration that two of the constituency’s Muslim candidates, who are standing for smaller parties, have been scarcely visible in the campaign, especially Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) candidate, Haji Mustaqeem. He “does not speak much—he just walks, taking quick steps”, The Indian Express reported a few days ago. “He’s been bought off,” a young Muslim journalist told me, adding other names who he said the Congress party paid, or rewarded in other ways, not to stand. Consequently, Muslims had to vote Congress or not vote at all, since few if any would go for Gupta’s Hindu-nationalist BJP. As we talked, my hosts dreamed of a Mayawati emerging, either as a Muslim leader or of a party such as the BSP or the Samajwadi Party (SP) that would form a reliable national alliance and make Muslims a significant force and not just a vote bank.

They did not however think there was much chance of a national Muslim leader because, they said, repeating the phrase, “he would be bought off”.

I have been with both Sibal and Gupta electioneering in the old city area over the past few days. In temperatures of 40 degrees Celsius and more, both have walked the lanes and narrow alleyways of bazaars and tenements. Gupta was relaxed as

he was showered with orange and pink flower petals from balconies and roof tops in Saddar Bazaar, led by three noisy drummers who beat out his path. “Local development is the main issues”, he told me. “People are angry the MP did not turn up for five years but I will be available and accessible and easily approachable”.

That is the main—indeed the only—complaint about Sibal, but I heard it everywhere, including from his supporters. “No doubt he is a good leader but he never visited here—though I’ll vote for him,” said a shopkeeper on the main Chandni Chowk thoroughfare. “He must become a patient listener,” said another.

In a way, Sibal’s personal achievements set him an impossibly high bar as a leading lawyer, a government minister, TV commentator, and even a poet—a collection of poems titled I Witness of his personal musings about contemporary society was published last year and sold out almost immediately.

Many people—especially Muslims— told me that they had expected more when he became their MP and are disillusioned.

Sibal says he is available and has visited the constituency about 500 times for various events. “Even if I went every day I’d only meet maybe 20,000 in a year—there would still be people who had not met me,” he said.

He has used his influence as a central government minister to organize construction of a new local reservoir that will double the area’s water capacity, and

has worked on a development plan for the historic Jamma Masjid area, as well as using his own science ministry’s resources to help road construction, healthcare and other developments.

Gupta has successfully turned unpopular increases in school fees into a significant election issue—he is patron of the Delhi Parents’ Association that has been campaigning against fee hikes for several months. His record as MCD committee chairman includes boosting Delhi’s spending budget and various allowances for councillors, as well as increasing provisions for the aged.

Whoever wins will have a constituency that expects more of its MP. Just 30-40 minutes drive from Parliament and ministerial homes, voters expect the winner to be visible, and regularly. It is ironic that a constituency located far away, where an MP would have to make long weekend journeys to fulfil his local duties, probably gets more attention than one so near the centre of the Capital, that was once itself the heart of the city.

Formerly with the Financial Times, John Elliott is a Delhibased contributor to Fortune magazine and writes a blog, Riding the Elephant, at http://ridingtheelephant.wordpress.com Respond to this column at feedback@livemint.com

32 SUNDAY, MAY 17, 2009, DELHI ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

WHAT NEXT? What happens after the new government has been sworn in?

There are decisions to be taken, Bills to be passed, crises that need to be resolved.

In the hurly­burly of the electoral process, however, such issues tend to take a back seat. Through a series of incisive editorial page columns and a

series titled National Agenda, Mint has sought to highlight these issues.

On what should the new government focus? Where will it have the most impact?

POLICY TRACK | S NARAYAN

New political priorities I

rrespective of the coalition that comes to power and quite irrespective of the groups that vie for positions in power, the priorities for the nation have shifted, and are shifting My room at the National University of Singapore overlooks the lush greenery of the botanical gardens, and the quiet and peace is in stark contrast to the upheaval in South Asia. Last week, there was the question of why the Pakistan military had agreed to take on the Taliban—with several Pashtun regiments and Frontier regiments in the armed forces, it is quite inconceivable that these soldiers will agree to fight their own brethren. The clear consensus at our institute was that the Pakistan army is running rings around the US, extracting concessions and weaponry and engaging with the Taliban to please the Americans, and that after a few skirmishes, the army would declare success and withdraw.

There is a real threat that we will see them within our borders in the next decade.

The events in Nepal overshadowed the latter part of the week, and from an Indian point of view, it appeared quite

astonishing that a constitutional president (some say with India’s blessing) would ask the army chief to stay on and disobey the government.

Some of the scholars in the institute wrote quite strongly last week about this in newspapers.

And finally, the running wound of the events in Sri Lanka continued to fester, and it was quite clear that the end of the war was but the beginning of a period of further conflict, which could be won only through accommodation, communication and understanding from both sides, which does not seem likely.

There are real concerns that the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam will infiltrate into Tamil Nadu and Kerala, and use these states as a base for operations, as well as for resources.

The discussions at the institute centred on the attitude, strategy and responses of India. From the point of view of an outsider, there does not appear to be a clear strategy to deal with these neighbourhood issues. It is quite amazing that the establishment and the policymakers are viewing all these events as developments that would not have

long-term repercussions on India, that they would not affect us at all.

The important conclusion from this that in the last two months, there have been events in the region that are far more important for the stability of India than the economic crisis or the fiscal deficit, and it is unfortunate that these events have occurred at a time when the entire government machinery has been in election mode and unable to respond. These threats are real and need cool and mature strategic solutions, lest they threaten, in the long term, the Indian way of life altogether.

Irrespective of the coalition that comes to power and quite irrespective of the groups that vie for positions in power, the priorities for the nation have shifted, and are shifting. It is important to assume that for all political parties, small or big, preservation of this democracy and stability are important, and therefore, there are tasks that need to be done from the national perspective rather than merely from the point of view of power and commerce.

First, it is important that we strengthen ourselves in order

to protect and defend ourselves against infiltration and terrorism. This would mean the modernization of the police forces, more equipment, training—especially in intelligence—and the deployment of the enormously sophisticated technical skills that we possess, in remote sensing, computers and electronics, to secure our borders and to safeguard our citizens.

The territorial waters need to be defended better. The positions of the defence and home ministers have become the most important, and whatever the combination, whoever the incumbent, it must be one that is nation-minded and fired with the zeal of making India safe for its citizens.

Second, these messages must be communicated to the world at large, and a strategic position adopted in diplomacy, trade and energy security.

It is important that the external affairs minister be a combination of a diplomat with intimate knowledge of trade and commerce, to further India’s interests. In particular, the new Afghanistan-Pakistan policy of the US has repercussions for India and needs careful management. China and Asia

require greater and better engagement.

The position of finance minister is very important, but I would put that in the third place. In fact, what is required is a mature, seasoned politician who is able to position talented people in the institutions under his charge and to allow them to work.

Most importantly, given the pulls and pushes of coalition politics, there should be a clear understanding that strengthening India to deal with internal dissensions and external threats is the most important task before the government in the coming days and that these issues will not go away unless confronted and dealt with. There should be no compromise on these ministries, and the best from any party, with a national bent of mind, should be placed there and accorded the full support of all.

S. Narayan is a former finance secretary and economic adviser to the prime minister.

We welcome your comments at policytrack@livemint.com

MÖBIUS STRIP | RAMESH RAMANATHAN

Open letter to Rahul Gandhi T

his year’s election shows political parties as opaque, eccentric institutions run largely by power brokers sitting in back rooms and greased by black money Dear Rahul In barely a fortnight, the fate of the 15th Lok Sabha would be known, by means of a forgettable national election. In fact, the desultory turnout—variously attributed to middleclass apathy, summer heatwaves, the Indian Premier League, election fatigue—suggests Indians are exhausted by what is increasingly becoming an election charade, just as the fake sets in a film studio that get dismantled after the shoot is done.

You have a unique role to play in defining India’s political destiny over the coming decades. This has come to you significantly by virtue of your birth into the Nehru-Gandhi family. To be fair, you didn’t ask for this, and it’s very possible that you would have preferred a more private life, one that demanded less of you and other members of your family.

However, we all play the cards we are dealt.

There is an inevitability to your eventual ascension to the leadership of the Congress

party. Thousands of ambitious party folk want you to become the leader, to feed their own careers. They idolize you so as to make you their puppet. It must be claustrophobic to be surrounded by sycophants, scraping and bowing at every glance you throw in their direction and “yes-sir”ing every word you utter.

Last Sunday, Barkha Dutt’s show on NDTV We The People was about the rise of Mayawati. An accusation was made about her authoritarian style, and how she isn’t building the Bahujan Samaj Party. A staunch defender of hers said, “The same can be said of the Congress party—does any senior Congress leader have any final say in critical party matters?” Dutt replied, “Yes, fair point”, others nodded, and the discussion moved on. The Congress’ “high command” structure has become so deeply entrenched that it’s not even worth a debate—the country has simply accepted it.

A political party cannot be an Animal Farm-style institution, where some individuals are more equal than others. In your heart you must know that unless this fundamental character of the Congress changes, nothing can really change.

While there are many peripheral issues that you can take up, there is one daring option: To publicly renounce aspirations to the office of prime minister, permanently.

It seems ridiculous for the scion of the most famous political family in India to make this seemingly unnecessary “sacrifice”. But it has the potential to trigger a gigantic wave of change. Think about it. India is a civilization to which the idea of tyag—sacrifice—is very central. This singular act of yours can release the shackles in people’s minds, set free their aspirations and ignite a belief that the possibilities of India are built on a foundation of equity. By living Gandhi’s words—“my life is my message”—you can show people by example that public service—important nation-building work, at that—is not necessarily about occupying the most powerful seat at the head table.

I am not suggesting you renounce political life and take vanvaas. In fact, the moral authority you will gain by making your way into the hearts of millions of Indians will give you more space to undertake the changes that can truly transform India’s politics and de-

mocracy.

This year’s election shows political parties as opaque, eccentric institutions run largely by power brokers sitting in back rooms and greased by black money. The ugly ritual of post-election compromises and barters will be upon us in a few days. Having an election every five years may show the world that the machinery of our democracy is in reasonable working order, but we are losing our soul.

Cleaning this cesspool has to start with restructuring our political parties. If you renounced prime ministerial aspirations, you would have all the political capital to revamp the Congress. Make it a rulebased institution, with inner party democracy for key decisions such as choice of candidates.

Establish thematic working groups for critical national issues. Set the highest bar for financial transparency in the party by publishing the audited financial statements.

Require all candidates to publish their tax statements, going beyond the meagre requirements of the election law.

Give the youth a real voice in party leadership: In any Congress-led government at na-

tional or state levels, let at least one cabinet position be held by a person who is genuinely young—less than 30. Let this person be someone who has come up from the grass roots, not a direct recruit who is a scion of a political family—no offence to Sachin Pilot, Milind Deora and others, but the message to the youth must be that anyone can make it, not just those who have access and connections.

It requires guts to publicly withdraw your name from contention for the prime minister’s post—after all, it’s almost yours for the taking, either today or in the not-too-distant future. Nobody will blame you for seeking the crown, but everyone will respect you for renouncing it. And this will be your greatest contribution to India’s possibilities.

Ramesh Ramanathan is cofounder, Janaagraha. Möbius Strip, much like its mathematical origins, blurs boundaries. It is about the continuum between the state, market and our society.

We welcome your comments at mobiusstrip@livemint.com

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HAVE YOU HEARD

blogentries Lok Sabha election, 2009: The main losers B Y R UHI T EWARI ························ he first phase of the 2009 general elections begins in less than 24 hours. The greatest democratic exercise in this country, however, has been preceded by one of the most undemocratic and politically churlish phases. The period leading to the current election has seen political maturity and discourse plummet to record lows, dampening the very spirit of democracy and politics. And the culprits range across the political spectrum.

A few days back, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh referred to independent candidates as ”spoilers”, urging voters in Mumbai to ”not encourage them because they cannot win”. This statement is not only condescending and pompous but is downright undemocratic. And coming from the Prime Minister of the country, who is eyeing a second term, it also sets a dangerous precedent. If the Constitution of the country permits individuals, who choose not to or are unable contest on party tickets, to stand as independents, then

T

nobody has a right to question their candidature.

By calling independents spoilers and questioning their winnability, Singh has not just reduced his stature as a politician but has also inadvertently disclosed his party’s dismissive attitude towards those who choose to contest in their own right and not be affiliated to any political party. Dr Singh, independents are not ”spoilers”. Perhaps people who decide to lead the country, staking claim to the top post without having the courage to face the electorate are ”spoilers” for this democracy.

The prime minister’s unfortunate comment, however, was just one of the many offcolour remarks passed in the pre-election phase.

Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi launched an unwarranted, childish attack against the Congress, calling it ”budhia” (old woman) and later ”gudia” (doll). While Modi’s secular credentials are more than just dubious, he has done well for himself by playing up his development plank, which has worked for him at the hustings as well.

Mr Modi, by indulging in an unnecessary game of mindless semantics, you are not only reducing your election speeches to at best page 10 entertainment, but are also depriving Indian politics of meaningful debate.

Modi’s phrases were so juvenile that they didn’t even warrant a reaction. But Priyanka Gandhi decided to humour him and responded with an equally inane statement. ”Do I look old to you...Does Sonia Gandhi (Congress president and her mother), Rahul Gandhi or I look old to you,” she asked. Better sense prevailed a day later (but not before enough damage had been done to pre-election discourse) when she termed Modi’s ‘gudia’ comment ”ridiculous” and said the focus should be on development issues.

BJP prime ministerial candidate L K Advani has been constantly attacking the Prime Minister as ”weak” and Singh has responded with equally acrimonious and unintellectual barbs.

Unfortunately, the level of political repartee in India has become so poor that it is not just unintelligent and far from being witty but also not

Where is the common agenda, Mr. Advani?

O B Y L IZ M ATHEW ······················ n April 3, while releasing the BJP manifesto, National Democratic Alliance (NDA)’s prime ministerial candidate L.K. Advani promised that the opposition alliance would come out with a with a common agenda for governance before the first day of the polling. Around 124 constituencies in 17 states went to vote on Thursday. However, there is no sign of a common agenda from the NDA. BJP leadership claims that the document could not be prepared because all the NDA leaders were busy with election tour. ”We will send it (the manifesto with all the controversial issues such as construction of Ram Temple in Ayodhya, uniform civil code and revocation of Article 370 which guarantees special status of Jammu

and Kashmir) to them (the NDA allies) and ask which are the things they agree with and then jointly prepare the NDA’s agenda for good governance and vision for the country’s future,” Advani has said. What happened to that promise? Is it because the NDA has already crumbled?

Interestingly on the day manifesto was released Advani ”sympathized” with the ruling coalition saying that its allies have ”abandoned” the United Progressive Alliance (UPA). (He had expressed sympathies for the Congress’ future on the eve of 2004 election also. His prediction was that the Congress’ tally would go below 100! But Congress emerged as the single largest party and formed the government). Advani also reminded that the NDA has got new friends like Indian National Lok Dal, Asom Gana Parishad and Rashtriya Lok Dal. But

the leaders of these parties could not come up with a common agenda, despite their prime ministerial candidate’s promise! Is it not important for the voters to know what is the NDA offering to them, especially at a time when it is almost sure that the BJP - for that matter no party - would be in a position to form the government alone.

The UPA also has not revealed its common agenda.

However, the Congress has already indicated that the equations would change after the election and new formations would emerge in the post-poll scenario. The nonCongress, non-BJP alternative, the so-called third front, also clarified that only ’Maths’ (the number of seats each party gains) would decide the ’Chemistry’ of new alliances. But voters would love to know what happened to Advani’s promise!

entertaining.

Varun Gandhi’s now-infamous speech is another example of meaningless, undemocratic rant in the run up to elections. But even worse than his venomous words was RJD chief Lalu Yadav’s response, which invited the Election Commission’s ire.

The heated exchange between Lalu’s wife Rabri Devi and JD (U) chief Nitish Kumar was made of the same irrelevant stuff.

Election 2009, which boasts of political assertion by several regional parties, a close contest between various blocs and participation by urbane, intellectual independents, has seen personal mud slinging and a mindless escalation of words, which have done irreparable damage to public discourse. Instead of engaging in constructive and sensible debate and discussion, India’s political class has reduced itself to the lowest possible standard.

I do not know who will win the 2009 Lok Sabha election, but democracy, political maturity and public discourse will definitely emerge as the main losers.

Mr. Prime Minister, get your feet wet in politics!

B Y L IZ M ATHEW ················································ ast week, while interacting with women journalists in the national capital Prime Minister Manmohan Singh fiercely defended his decision not to contest the Lok Sabha polls. According to him, his poor health - the prime minister had a bypass surgery in January this year - was one of the reasons why he continued as a Rajya Sabha member.

He also pointed to the Indian constitution that allows a member of the upper house of parliament also to hold the top post. Despite repeated taunts from the opposition and advice from the constitutional experts, the 76-year-old Manmohan Singh remain unfazed. Fair enough!

The prime minister also admitted that he was not a good speaker and that’s why he was unwilling to accept opposition leader L.K. Advani’s challenge to indulge in a public debate with him. For a moment, let’s forget about the argument that presidential debates have not been a part of our system. But is Manmohan Singh’s excuse a valid one? He may have expected to win some sympathy by making such a candid confession.

But does the post he is holding justify sympathy? Is that how he should win the hearts? If one goes by his own favourite phrase the proof of the pudding is in the eating - should he not take on the challenge instead of earning sympathy votes?

The latest reports suggest that he may not even go and cast his votes. Well, both the government and many private firms have been running campaigns urging the citizens to exercise their franchise. However the security situation in Assam, which has witnessed serial blasts on 6 April, may force both, the PM and his wife,of them to refrain from voting. According to a PTI report on Sunday, he and Gurcharan Kaur are liste d as voters in the Dispur assembly segment (serial no 726 & 727, house no 3989) that forms part of the Guwahati Lok Sabha constituency. Apparently, the security agencies have not given a green signal for the prime minister to visit Assam on 23 April to come to the polling booth located at Dispur Government Higher Secondary School. Interestingly, in the 2006 assembly polls too, the prime minister did not vote.

Humbly put, Mr prime minister, you have to get your feet wet to swim in the political waters, even if it is dirty.

L

Was Jarnail Singh right?

B Y L IZ M ATHEW ························· s me and my friend were excitedly discussing ‘Bushing’ on P. Chidambaram by a fellow journalist at the Congress headquarters, a passer-by became curious and wanted a detailed report from us - I was right at the second row watching Jarnail Singh throw the shoe at the home minister. We being good reporters explained the scene minute by minute to him. Suddenly he asked: ”Do you think he did the right thing?” We both looked at each other. He did not ask us before throwing the shoes,” my friend snapped, may be sensing the danger in giving an answer.

But I wanted to be courteous. ”Well, he may be thinking he is right. We do not know what made him do that,” I said. The questioner was obviously not satisfied, but he walked off.

Was Jarnail Singh right? How could a person like him -I have always known him to be very quietdo that? What shocked me more

A

were the reactions of some journalists. ”We apologize for what happened!” one journalist told Chidambaram. ”All the journalists here were upset and shocked” said a television journalist in his live reporting from the Congress headquarters. But I was not apologetic nor was I upset. ”How could they speak on behalf of all the other journalists,” I asked my friend, who also said she did not share those feelings. Are journalists not supposed to be above caste, creed, religion?” asked a senior journalist. Of course they are. But are they? Do they not take sides when they cover political party beats? Do they not give any favoritism while writing about their favorite ministers or politician? I felt like quoting the Bible-”He who is without sin among you, let him cast the stone.” But I did not!

Later, while discussing the Tuesday’s hot topic -the shoehurling at Congress headquarters had overshadowed Monday’s Guwahatti blasts that killed at least 15 people on television channels -

I got some more points (just hearsay, no confirmation). Jarnail Singh’s family was also a victim of the 1984 anti-Sikh riots. ”He was one of those children who had to braid his hair to escape the Congress hooligans that time,” said one of his friends. ”I wont blame him because I am a person who had witnessed the gory scenes of anti-Sikh riots,” said another journalist. May be she is right. You never know how frustrated Jarnail Singh was at the CBI’s clean chit to Jagdish Tytler, named as one of the Congress leaders, who instigated the riot in Delhi after late prime minister Indira Gandhi’s assassination. More than 3000 people, including 2000 in the national capital alone, were killed in the riots that targeted the Sikh community. May be that is why Singh asked Chidambaram in the press conference: ”Don’t you know hundreds of Sikh hearts are bleeding over it. We have been waiting for 25 years for justice?”

Chidambaram obviously was not aware of what was coming after that question!